Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Earthquake in Cumbria
There was a minor earth tremor in north-east England yesterday as reported here.
It reminds me of the spoof charity appeal email I received from a Dudley-born friend after the quake there in 2002. It is, as they say, a classic and is preserved on this site. We Brits are never more comfortable than when mocking ourselves. The following is the closest to my memory of the original, though it's been reworked since with regional variations:
At 00:54 on Monday 23 September an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale hit Dudley, UK causing untold disruption and distress -
* Many were woken well before their giro arrived
* Several priceless collections of mementoes from the Balearics and Spanish Costas were damaged
* Three acres of historic and scientifically significant litter were disturbed
* Thousands are confused and bewildered, trying to come to terms with the fact that something interesting has happened in Dudley
One resident, Donna-Marie Dutton, a 17 year old mother-of-three said "It was such a shock, little Chantal-Leanne came running into my bedroom crying. My youngest two, Tyler-Morgan and Megan-Storm slept through it. I was still shaking when I was watching Trisha the next morning."
Apparently though, looting did carry on as normal.
The British Red Cross have so far managed to ship 4000 crates of Sunny Delight to the area to help the stricken masses.
Rescue workers are still searching through the rubble and have found large quantities of personal belongings including benefit books and jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
* £2 buys chips, scraps and blue pop for a family of four
* £10 can take a family to Stourport for the day, where children can play on an unspoiled canal bank among the national collection of stinging nettles
* 22p buys a biro for filling in a spurious compensation claim
PLEASE ACT NOW
Simply email us by return with your credit card details and we'll do the rest!
If you prefer to donate cash, there are collection points available at your local branches of Argos, Iceland and Clinton Cards.
It reminds me of the spoof charity appeal email I received from a Dudley-born friend after the quake there in 2002. It is, as they say, a classic and is preserved on this site. We Brits are never more comfortable than when mocking ourselves. The following is the closest to my memory of the original, though it's been reworked since with regional variations:
At 00:54 on Monday 23 September an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale hit Dudley, UK causing untold disruption and distress -
* Many were woken well before their giro arrived
* Several priceless collections of mementoes from the Balearics and Spanish Costas were damaged
* Three acres of historic and scientifically significant litter were disturbed
* Thousands are confused and bewildered, trying to come to terms with the fact that something interesting has happened in Dudley
One resident, Donna-Marie Dutton, a 17 year old mother-of-three said "It was such a shock, little Chantal-Leanne came running into my bedroom crying. My youngest two, Tyler-Morgan and Megan-Storm slept through it. I was still shaking when I was watching Trisha the next morning."
Apparently though, looting did carry on as normal.
The British Red Cross have so far managed to ship 4000 crates of Sunny Delight to the area to help the stricken masses.
Rescue workers are still searching through the rubble and have found large quantities of personal belongings including benefit books and jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
* £2 buys chips, scraps and blue pop for a family of four
* £10 can take a family to Stourport for the day, where children can play on an unspoiled canal bank among the national collection of stinging nettles
* 22p buys a biro for filling in a spurious compensation claim
PLEASE ACT NOW
Simply email us by return with your credit card details and we'll do the rest!
If you prefer to donate cash, there are collection points available at your local branches of Argos, Iceland and Clinton Cards.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Passivity and moral implication
A letter to this week's Spectator magazine by a Thomas Furber of Greenwich directs us to the blog of Charles Stross for materials written by Julian Assange, "editor-in-chief" of Wikileaks. Stross' blog includes excerpts from and links to Assange's essays from late 2006, the period in which Wikileaks was founded.
These essays (3 Dec 2006 here and 10 Nov 2006 here) are a sort of attempted revolutionary rationale and have something of the flavour of the autodidact, which to some extent Assange is. They remind me of the 1970 film "The Strawberry Statement", in which the lead character (Simon) gets caught up in the feeling of revolution before he has any particular reason to revolt; at one stage, Simon composes and reads a revolutionary paper of his own, semi-incoherently, blah-blahing his way over passages that even he is impatient with. Interestingly, Assange himself rehearses the old Zen story after which this film is titled (see the entry for 24 October 2006 here).
There is an enemy in Assange's philosophy, but a very generalized one: "authoritarian power". As a child, my imagination fed on war comics, I would drift off to sleep absorbedly machine-gunning Germans running across a barbed-wired battlefield. I suspect the motivation in his case now is the same as mine was then: testosterone, the urge to have a go. The imagery used in the essays is tellingly violent - "knife", "throttle".
Mixed in with this is a sort of cybernetic analysis of communication systems in political circles and a reaching for ways in which communications can be disrupted to create disorder and the collapse of the tyrannous regime, to be replaced (of course) by "more humane forms of governance". (It's amazing that even self-styled right-wingers like James Delingpole harbour this delusion - his latest Spectator column ends with the words "Until we learn to stop thinking like slaves we shall never have the revolution that will set us free." It's as though neither man has read anything about what really happens in and after revolutions.)
As I said here a few days ago, I think the most likely consequence will be a mutation of confidential communications - more use of encoding, more done by whispers and note of hand, more sofa government but this time on the sofas of special advisers' homes rather than in Downing Street or the White House; that sort of thing. The system will react rather like Hot Lips Houlihan in the "natural blonde" scene in M.A.S.H.: humiliated, but afterwards enduringly careful - and resentful.
And yet... here is a footnote on page 1 of "Conspiracy as Governance":
Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance, since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution of a people’s character, the impact of reported, but unanswered injustice is far greater than it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity and excesses provide their populace with an unprecedented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly unanswerable injustices.
That chimes with me: the sense of being powerless, yet also defiled by inaction when action seems impossible. We see a self-serving and corrupt body of politicians and others - two ex-ministers publicly disgraced and disciplined yesterday; a coalition government of parties that didn't win the last General Election and very likely won't win the next one; the official exoneration of the banker who presided over the vast collapse of his firm and almost the banking system; ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair recalled to the Chilcott Enquiry to give "further detail" about how he led Britain into what many say was an illegal war; big bonuses all round for failure; and so on.
There is certainly plenty to be mended, even though I think Assange is not the man, and his methods not the means, to do it.
These essays (3 Dec 2006 here and 10 Nov 2006 here) are a sort of attempted revolutionary rationale and have something of the flavour of the autodidact, which to some extent Assange is. They remind me of the 1970 film "The Strawberry Statement", in which the lead character (Simon) gets caught up in the feeling of revolution before he has any particular reason to revolt; at one stage, Simon composes and reads a revolutionary paper of his own, semi-incoherently, blah-blahing his way over passages that even he is impatient with. Interestingly, Assange himself rehearses the old Zen story after which this film is titled (see the entry for 24 October 2006 here).
There is an enemy in Assange's philosophy, but a very generalized one: "authoritarian power". As a child, my imagination fed on war comics, I would drift off to sleep absorbedly machine-gunning Germans running across a barbed-wired battlefield. I suspect the motivation in his case now is the same as mine was then: testosterone, the urge to have a go. The imagery used in the essays is tellingly violent - "knife", "throttle".
Mixed in with this is a sort of cybernetic analysis of communication systems in political circles and a reaching for ways in which communications can be disrupted to create disorder and the collapse of the tyrannous regime, to be replaced (of course) by "more humane forms of governance". (It's amazing that even self-styled right-wingers like James Delingpole harbour this delusion - his latest Spectator column ends with the words "Until we learn to stop thinking like slaves we shall never have the revolution that will set us free." It's as though neither man has read anything about what really happens in and after revolutions.)
As I said here a few days ago, I think the most likely consequence will be a mutation of confidential communications - more use of encoding, more done by whispers and note of hand, more sofa government but this time on the sofas of special advisers' homes rather than in Downing Street or the White House; that sort of thing. The system will react rather like Hot Lips Houlihan in the "natural blonde" scene in M.A.S.H.: humiliated, but afterwards enduringly careful - and resentful.
And yet... here is a footnote on page 1 of "Conspiracy as Governance":
Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance, since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution of a people’s character, the impact of reported, but unanswered injustice is far greater than it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity and excesses provide their populace with an unprecedented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly unanswerable injustices.
That chimes with me: the sense of being powerless, yet also defiled by inaction when action seems impossible. We see a self-serving and corrupt body of politicians and others - two ex-ministers publicly disgraced and disciplined yesterday; a coalition government of parties that didn't win the last General Election and very likely won't win the next one; the official exoneration of the banker who presided over the vast collapse of his firm and almost the banking system; ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair recalled to the Chilcott Enquiry to give "further detail" about how he led Britain into what many say was an illegal war; big bonuses all round for failure; and so on.
There is certainly plenty to be mended, even though I think Assange is not the man, and his methods not the means, to do it.
Purple prose
Sackerson's Prose Prize goes to Liz Jones in today's Mail on Sunday:
Like everything vaguely pleasurable these days – holidays, sofas – Christmas has been so super-hyped that the real thing is bound to disappoint. Isn’t Christmas Day always a bit of a let-down? I far prefer the promise of Christmas Eve, the twinkly equivalent of foreplay.
I am half-suppressing a mental image of tiny lights, um, ...
Like everything vaguely pleasurable these days – holidays, sofas – Christmas has been so super-hyped that the real thing is bound to disappoint. Isn’t Christmas Day always a bit of a let-down? I far prefer the promise of Christmas Eve, the twinkly equivalent of foreplay.
I am half-suppressing a mental image of tiny lights, um, ...
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, revisited for real
If this is to be believed, health workers are effectively kidnapping an autistic lad without sectioning him... a case of officialdom creating the problem it claims to be trying to solve?
Please read this and pass it on.
Please read this and pass it on.
And on the other hand ...
In contrast to my item yesterday, which I consider 'reality' (in my own biased way), we have the following piece on a Sudbury alternative school No Teachers, no homework .
The article contains this gem: 'While some may question how the format works with reading and math, "the truth is, that's the easy stuff,'' Ekendiz said. "Our children will need skills like self-understanding, self-motivation and creative problem-solving.'''
Hands up those who think that the typical child from this school will find reading and math 'easy'.
The article contains this gem: 'While some may question how the format works with reading and math, "the truth is, that's the easy stuff,'' Ekendiz said. "Our children will need skills like self-understanding, self-motivation and creative problem-solving.'''
Hands up those who think that the typical child from this school will find reading and math 'easy'.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Some people get it
I was referred to The Heresy of Higher Education by Sackerson.
It is an excellent piece, echoing my frequent diatribes that higher education generates far too many people who want to 'manage' without actually producing anything (or having any skills, for that matter).
It is an excellent piece, echoing my frequent diatribes that higher education generates far too many people who want to 'manage' without actually producing anything (or having any skills, for that matter).
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Serbian Jazz is hot!
Even Johnny Depp comes to Serbia - admittedly more for the film, but the brass sound seems to be "in."
My favourite so far is this one:
BOBAN MARKOVIC-RROMANO BIJAV-LA BELLEVILLOISE
Uploaded by aceituna11. - Watch more music videos, in HD!
My favourite so far is this one:
BOBAN MARKOVIC-RROMANO BIJAV-LA BELLEVILLOISE
Uploaded by aceituna11. - Watch more music videos, in HD!
A 13th century account of the Big Bang
At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard.
The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter.
From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so.
As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it.
From this initial act of creation, from this etherieally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.
Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (aka "Ramban" or "Nahmanides"), 1194 - 1270; Commentary on the Torah
Wikipedia article here, looked up in reference to a reader's query in the Dail Mail today.
The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter.
From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so.
As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it.
From this initial act of creation, from this etherieally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.
Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (aka "Ramban" or "Nahmanides"), 1194 - 1270; Commentary on the Torah
Wikipedia article here, looked up in reference to a reader's query in the Dail Mail today.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
The blind leading the blind ...
I have wondered for some time whether the investment community were a bunch of con artists, or deluded.
I believe that I have my answer.
In the November issue of the US edition of Playboy is an article titled 'How to Destroy a Bank'.
In it, the author interviews several investment bankers. All of them lost a great deal of money in the recent collapse; are convinced that they can make it back with 'hard work'; and see financial Doomsday as impossible.
In other words, they are idiots.
I believe that I have my answer.
In the November issue of the US edition of Playboy is an article titled 'How to Destroy a Bank'.
In it, the author interviews several investment bankers. All of them lost a great deal of money in the recent collapse; are convinced that they can make it back with 'hard work'; and see financial Doomsday as impossible.
In other words, they are idiots.
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