2015

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For the sake of something which no one loves, strife never arises, there is no pain if it perishes, no envy if it is possessed by someone else, nor fear, nor hatred, and, to put it all briefly, no commotions of the mind at all.

Baruch Spinoza - Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (1677)

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Smelting

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Is there a connection between Tony Blair's climate change charity, the world's largest aluminium smelter and a Russian oligarch?

Give up?

Try Paul Homewood's post

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I don't know

Hans Holbein the Younger: "The Ambassadors" (1533)

There they are, wealthy, powerful, knowing who's who and what's what. And there it is, the distorted skull cutting across the illusion of three-dimensionality.

A few weeks ago, the always-original thinker Scott Adams tried his hand at explaining the universe, and explaining away any notion of a divine creator. Yet as I wrote to him, maybe some questions may have a truth-value and yet not be scientific. For if (if) someone created the universe, which we now understand to be a continuum of space-time, then the categories of space and time may not apply to the creator. Even if the universe has always existed (and this is to apply the concept of time in a way that may not be legitimate, since it seems to see the universe as framed in time, rather than time being part of the structure), there is still the question, why is there something rather than nothing? And for those who explain the universe as the product of collisions between unobservable meta-universes, the same question can be asked again. As Wittgenstein said, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Think of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who abandoned his huge work of systematic theology after an experience that left him saying, "All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me."

Or of the SF writer Philip K Dick - and the revelation that led him (among other things) to save his infant son's life. See Robert Crumb's artstrip here.

I just don't know, and maybe those who think they do also don't know.



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Ourobouros and the melt-up

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We appear to be entering a very dangerous phase. The system is using deceit to cover the fact that it is creating its own investment. Like flying by pulling on your bootstraps, it can't work, so it won't.

Frances Coppola has been discussing Juncker's plan, and a commenter explains how a dodgy trader's scheme will get the money in and straight out again - with doubtless nice fees and bonuses for the illusionist.

This is "melt-up" territory. If you get it exactly right, you will make a fortune, and if you don't, you'll lose your shirt. I've never claimed or wanted to be that sort of adventurous trader, and goodness knows what happens to the ordinary person during and at the end of this Wild Ride.


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Attenuated regret

H H Munro (Saki)
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Reggie listened with the attenuated regret that one bestows on an earthquake disaster in Bolivia or a crop failure in Eastern Turkestan, events which seem so distant that one can almost persuade oneself they haven’t happened.

H H Munro (Saki) - The Toys of Peace and Other Papers (1919)

Every now and then one comes across a gem of a phrase which perfectly encapsulates an aspect of social behaviour. To my mind, one such is attenuated regret as Saki used it. 

Did he invent this delicious phrase? I don't know, but a Google search for "attenuated regret" only gives around 218 results which is appalling for something so delightfully precise.

TV news readers have special facial expressions for attenuated regret, used when reporting disaster or tragic misfortune.

I wonder if they practice in front of the mirror, adjusting their features to achieve the correct degree of attenuation while at the same time preserving a clear semblance of regret? 

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Justice denied

A few days ago I did an anonymised summary of what happened to Victor Nealon, who served 17 years of a 10-year sentence for an attempted rape of which DNA evidence subsequently cleared him. Now he's being pursued for the legal cost of refusing him compensation.

How about a case from 1970 that went to the Court of Appeal four times and was rejected every time, despite a highly dodgy impromptu identification made in an unannounced 2-3 second night visit to the suspect's doorstep, accompanied by police officers who had simply "had a hunch" that the man might have been involved?

He'd been celebrating his birthday at home with his wife and daughter at the time, but as the judge counselled the jury: “Watch it, members of the jury …. This is a family alibi.”

Then, three years after the man's release from prison, a London gangster copped to having done the job, giving plenty of verifiable detail. But even that wasn't enough to reverse the verdict.

Tony Stock, the man jailed for the crime, died in 2012 unexonerated.

More here.


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A Complaint

Our new contributor Sebastopol McToffbodger highlights a consumer issue for parents:

Dear Disney Store

I wish to make a complaint. I recently purchased a Toy Story Woody Talking Doll for my son Liam as the film is definitely one of his favourites, he plays it all the time.

But imagine his disappointment when he opened the box and found the item above left which is not at all like the picture on the web (right). I told him that that is how cowboys dress in winter but I’m not sure he believes me.

The voice is wrong too, you can hardly understand what it is saying but what you do hear isn’t like in the film, it keeps on with ‘Cost of living crisis’, ‘It’s the same old Tories’ and ‘squeezed middle’ which doesn’t make sense to either of us though Liam’s stepdad laughed and all vodka came down his nose.

The version we bought is supposed to be recordable but when my partner tried to make it say “Labour’s deficit” and “I was a Privy Councillor with the last lot” the string stuck and the jaw just flapped up and down silently.

I am sure you will agree this is not at all the service we expect from a major supplier like yourselves and I look forward to hearing what you intend to do about it.

Yours sincerely

Bethan-Marie Carter-Allsopp (Ms)

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