'Something is better than nothing'

While watching last night's second leaders' debate (in all its digital wide-screen glory, as the house where I stay when in London is appropriately decked-out for this telly-obsessed culture), I was reminded of an essay that I had coincidentally read earlier this week.

I'd found a sharply reduced copy of Tony Judt's book Reappraisals (at the browseworthy Waterstone's on Gower Street....a cheap paperback is also available, I noticed today, at the also wonderful Judd Books) which appealed to me immediately, as I'm working my way (slowly) through his excellent Postwar.

The first essay that caught my eye (because I'm interested in this kind of issue) was entitled 'The Good Society: Europe vs. America', a review (originally published in the NY Review of Books) of books by Jeremy Rifkin, T.R. Reid and Timothy Garton Ash on the European Union.

It's a nicely balanced examination of 'Europe' in the sense of the -- alternatively inspiring and exasperating -- supra-national political entity that has emerged over the last half century (and it presages themes picked up on by Judt more recently).

I thought of it last night because of the apparent perception that Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg faces a problem for being a bit too Europhile.

(Not that the EU is uncomplicatedly or wildly popular in other European countries, but in Britain opposition to it takes on a special quality.)

Judt is clearly positively disposed toward the EU, but one of the things I liked about his review was his sober scepticism towards the more high-flown claims for the EU's potential, especially Rifkin's description of Europe as 'a giant freewheeling experimental laboratory for rethinking the human condition....':

These claims are absurd. The European Union is what it is: the largely unintended product of decades of negotiations by Western European politicians seeking to uphold and advance their national and sectoral interests. That's part of its problem: It is a compromise on a continental scale, designed by literally hundreds of committees.

Actually this makes the EU more interesting and in some ways more impressive than if it merely incarnated some uncontentious utopian blueprint. In the same vein, it seems silly to write, as Rifkin does, about the awfulness of American mediocrity without acknowledging Europe's own eyesores. This is a man who has never stared upon the urban brutalism of Sarcelles, a postwar dormitory town north of Paris; who has not died a little in Milton Keynes; who has avoided the outer suburbs of Modern Milan.

Having spent nearly a decade seeing both some of the highs and lows of my adopted home-continent -- and having 'died a little in Milton Keynes' on a regular basis -- I can appreciate Judt's point here.

Nonetheless, Judt expresses eloquently why -- for all its occasional frustrations and absurdities -- the EU is far more worthwhile than it is often perceived to be, explaining why, if it can manage to 'speak with a single voice in international affairs, the EU will wield a lot of power':

The reason is not that the EU will be rich or big -- though it already is both. The U.S. is rich and big. And one day China may be richer and bigger. Europe will matter because of the cross-border template upon which contemporary Europe is being constructed. ... Globalization is about the disappearance of boundaries -- cultural and economic boundaries, physical boundaries, linguistic boundaries -- and the challenge of organizing our world in their absence. In the words of Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the UN's director of peacekeeping operations: 'Having lost the comfort of our geographical boundaries, we must in effect rediscover what creates the bond between humans that constitute a community.'

To their own surprise and occasional consternation, Europeans have begun to do this: to create a bond between human beings that transcends older boundaries and to make out of these new institutional forms something that really is a community. They don't always do it very well, and there is still considerable nostalgia in certain quarters for those old frontiers. But something is better than nothing; and nothing is just what we shall be left with if the fragile international accords, treaties, agencies, laws and institutions that we have erected since 1945 are allowed to rot and decline -- or, worse, are deliberately brought low. As things now stand, boundary breaking and community making are something that Europeans are doing better than anyone else.

Heavy thoughts, perhaps, for a Friday night in a hotel bar in central London.

But I'm looking forward to crossing some frontiers tomorrow on a train that will take me through four countries (and languages) to a home that I'm missing very much at the moment.

And not, primarily, for political reasons.

Clegg captures German votes, hearts

British-German relations would, you might think, be pretty far down the scale of Vital Issues in the current British election.

Yet, they were curiously introduced into the (surprisingly lively) campaign trail via a 2002 article by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

When an MEP, Clegg wrote what I find to be a quite insightful and personal reflection on British attitudes toward Germany. Although this is hardly news, perhaps, he quite effectively uses memories of a student exchange trip to highlight how those attitudes have remained largely mired in the Second World War.

And he concludes thus:

All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. I wish Mr Puhle and Mr Sawartzki well. We need to be put back in our place.

This might have remained largely in the archives had Mr. Clegg not emerged as a surprisingly popular figure, according to polls, after what was seen as his strong performance in the first party leaders' debate.

As a result of that, the above passage was worked into one of those typically subtle Daily Mail headlines: 'Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain'.

And you can find plenty of frothy outrage in the comments that followed.

Still, Clegg can look on the bright side, having no doubt wrapped up the German vote, which is, of course, decisive in every British election.

Actually, it's been odd being in London during this whole 'controversy', not least watching the Conservative papers turning in goose lock-step yesterday to aim their fire in Clegg's direction and, today, to annoint David Cameron as the clear victor in last night's second debate. (From the Labour side, the Mirror's headline 'One foot in the Dave' has the same quality: today's headlines are analysed at the New Statesman here.)

Being familiar with two other countries (Germany and the US) where most of the mainstream press tends to observe at least a surface-level neutrality in its campaign coverage, the Pravda-like partisan contortions of the British papers is pretty breathtaking.

Curious Friday Music

Thanks to Spiegel I now know that there was a brief "Motown muss deutsch werden" movement. To which even poor Marvin Gaye was co-opted.

"Ich sage - yes - my little baby":



Gaye's near accent-free German is far more convincing that that of Diana Ross:



There's a hell of a lot of rhoticity going on there!

Separated by a common language

Spotted in the World's Pictorial News from 1929:

Not a few American talkies are responsible for introducing British film-goers to a new form of vocabulary. This is particularly apparent in the dialogue sequences of “The Broadway Melody,” in which some of the expressions used by the actors are, to say the least, rather spicy.

Thus we are beginning to learn that to “inhale poison” means to drink bad liquor; a “grand” means a thousand dollars; and “How about getting hitched up?” is not a polite invitation to a horse, but is an eloquent way of asking a girl to marry.

A joy ride in a high-priced motorcar is invariably referred to as a “buggy ride.” Expensive diamonds are “cracked ice.” A good provider is a “sugar daddy,” and an opulent lady is a “classy momma.”

If this goes on much longer we should really carry a glossary with us when we go to hear an American talkie.

Reg. Mortimer, 'A “Grand” from Your “Sugar Daddy”', World's Pictorial News, 2 June 1929, p. 8.

Apt music

To all those stranded in some airport or other: Your ship will sure come soon, too!



De Mens, "Hier komt mijn Schip" (heard yesterday somewhere on the motorway between Antwerp and Aachen)

Pressing matters

Over at Grazerlei Frau Malzahn sings the praises of Austria's national newspapers. Her thoughts struck a chord - though in a syncopated kind of sense - and prompt me to disrupt my blog silence.

Because at the moment hardly a day goes by that I don't feel the visceral urge to loudly (and in the presence of others) bemoan the failings of the German national press, whose manifold weaknesses are multiplied in the über-sloppy editing of the online versions I tend to read, with their embarrassing grammatical mistakes and pseudo-racy headlines.

Consider, for instance, a certain liberal paper from Munich, which I always thought had wit, style and a certain mature balance. Not so. Said paper has increasingly become a disappointment to me, not only because of its flawed content, but also because its employees seem to stubbornly resist my didactic intervention.

A few years ago they insisted on illustrating an article about German-born writer and artist Judith Kerr with an photo of Germaine Greer (who is only 15 or so years younger than Kerr). Although I pestered them with Emails demanding the immediate righting of this faux-pas, Germaine stayed put and me frustrated.

Then there was the publication of a photograph of Margaret Thatcher and a pubescently hirsute William Hague during the 1977 Tory party conference, which ran: "Margaret Thatcher and a [emphasis mine] high school student at an election rally."

Did they bother to change it after I tried to set matters right? Repeatedly. No.

Not that all this would matter to most German readers: These are minor details that irritate only crazy Anglophiles (though woe to an English paper that gets its Umlauts or German geography wrong) and could be ignored if they weren't part of a larger pattern that even impinges on genuinely German issues. Hence a few weeks ago, in said paper, the author of a thoughtful little column-filler (so thoughtful I can't tell you what it was about) used the beautiful term "Hybris" - the German equivalent of "hubris."

Only to spell it "Hypris."

Which - as any educated speaker of High German will tell you - sounds ... not so good.

I think I can explain this mistake. I'm pretty convinced that the author was a Franconian - i.e. from the impoverished and part-Protestant northern parts of Bavaria, where people famously can't pronounce p's and t's. Which is why there is the singular distinction between "hard b's" and "soft b's." And a tendency to comically overcompensate by those who want to sound really posh.

You want to know how to make a pretentious Franconian blush? Ask him or her to say the word "Anekdote."

But cultural differences are really no excuse. There must be standards! To have a Franconian write articles in a national newspaper may be considered a misfortune. To have her or his spelling checked by a Franconian copyeditor looks like carelessness.

Which pilfered witticism my brings me to today's journalistic clanger, where a picture-heavy piece on film adaptations of novels inspired by Oliver Parker's recent Dorian Gray opens with the following apodictic wisdom:

"Only a handful of books were written in 1890s England. And these are, again and again, turned into movies."

Only a handful of books? In which (Bavarian) University Department of Comparative Literature did you receive the degree that qualified you to write such nonsense, honey?

Random notes from the dust zone

Since there are two or three of you who might be wondering what happened to us over the last week or so, we are happy to inform you that we were simply away from our desks and at the coal face of cultural knowledge exchange, i.e. the European Social Science History conference.

The conference was held in Ghent, which is a lovely city that I recommend you visit. (Although give it another year or so: there is some fairly intensive construction work going on in part of the central city (seems to involve installing or replacing tram lines) which means that that part of town is not at its best.) If you're driving, you may wish to tune into Belgium's Radio 1. I can't vouch for their usual quality, but we hit some kind of chart show on the way back (see reference by The Wife) and the music they were playing was far above your average radio fare.

It also introduced us to this song, which is not exactly great, perhaps, but which is nicely absurd and, because of context, took on a special quality.


Arno & DLS Band, 'Brussels'

The conference went very well (thank you for asking), at least from my perspective, and it was a pleasure to renew my contacts with a number of people and also to meet a few other people for the first time.

Of the latter, I especially wish to mention Randy Roth, whose recent book, American Homicide, was one of the featured books at the conference. I have been invited to comment on the book at a conference in Chicago in November, which is a tremendous honour, given how good it sounds, as far as I can judge from a few excerpts and conversations with the author himself. Some discussion of the book's contents might follow in the next few months.

In the meantime, we wish Randy--and a few other people that we met in Ghent--the best of luck in finding their way back to the US in the face of the Airborne Toxic Event volcanic ash cloud that has grounded pretty much all European air travel over the last few days. Given that a bunch of scary maps have tended to place where we live as part of a big red danger zone, we are happy to report that life--other than air travel--carries on pretty much as normal here under the Enormous Ash Cloud.

Not to say that it isn't a bit odd to have the skies cleared of aircraft (or nearly cleared: a few small planes and gliders were out this afternoon, but they fly well below the dust cloud, or at least that's what a computer graphic somewhere explained ...)

This is especially so as it's really only the second time I've experienced this kind of silent sky, the first being in the days after 11 September 2001.

There is something eerie about it.

As there was about something in a conversation with a now-retired historian in Ghent. He who was offering personal reflections on events in the 1960s and 70s and commented on the way that, if they live long enough, historians become not only investigators of the past but also, themselves, 'primary sources'.

This reminded me, in turn, of a discussion I'd had with a dear friend in London a few weeks earlier. I mentioned to him that it had occurred to me that Black Sabbath's self-titled 1970 debut (of which I am very fond) had had its fortieth anniversary in February of this year.

In the course of the conversation that followed, my friend pointed out that from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old today, that event was as distant historically as World War Two was to me at the same age (i.e. 1983).

Now, somehow that's obvious, I know, but I've been haunted ever since by the realisation that not only Black Sabbath but also my own birth is about as historically remote to a modern thirteen-year-old as was the battle of Stalingrad to someone of my generation at that age.

I'll have plenty of time to ponder this tomorrow, as I head off on a long-planned train trip to Britain. So far as I know the trains are running fine...except for likely being packed full of frustrated air travelers.

Ah, joy.

Something overlooked

Not long ago, our friend Andrew posted something that was rather up our alley, and we neglected to pass on the word.



Very nice. Brilliant, in fact.

And it reminds us, while we're at it of this. This. And this.

Pause for thought

Things have been rather quiet here recently, which we can only explain by the fact of having too much writing to do in the real world (i.e., in the jobs that pay us). And we'll be off the next week to darkest Belgium for a big social history conference, so things might remain a bit silent here for a while.

Still, given the events of recent days, we would like to express our sympathies to our Polish neighbours regarding the loss not only of their president but also a substantial number of their political, military and cultural elite.

I must confess to never being a fan of Lech Kaczynski--to say the least--but I would have much rather seen him voted out of office this year than killed in a symbolically significant accident like this plane crash near the site of one of the 20th century's most notable crimes.

The obliteration of so many prominent people from the Polish leadership is not only a difficult burden to bear but also a reminder of the power of contingency over the lives of even the most powerful.

Thus, to the extent that our small voice means anything, we would join Chancellor Merkel in offering sincere condolences to the Polish people.

Carry on Westminster

Now, I'm all for efforts to spice up what has so far been a pretty lacklustre pre-election election season in Britain: but is it just me or is there something a bit...desperate?...about the Guardian's 'three-way swingometer'?

What's next, electoral key parties?

Britain enters twentieth century, loses last remaining bit of style

I'm sorry, folks, but this:



Via le Grauniad.

Just reminds me of this:



And that was a silly little spoof in the first place.

They don't get modernity in Blighty, do they?

Or - hang on: Is this maybe the Empire designing back? Haha, I got it! This is a piece of postcolonial public art - Anish Kapoor's answer to the Brighton Palace (or Royal Pavilion or whatever you call it).

In favour of the mean, mean moves

Tunng have a new song and it's very good:



"Hustle"

Slow News Day

Over at The Times, Frank Skinner has nothing new to say about the idiosyncrasies of British television. Nothing new, that is, for faithful readers of this here blog. If Skinner's column is anything to go by, there appear to be thousands of Brits out there who still need to be enlightenend about the irritating ubiquity of one Adolf Schicklgruber on Blighty's manifold TV channels.

Yawn.

May I take this opportunity to remind you that the observation that Englanders simply dig Hitler (Skinner nicely surmises that he is the middle-aged Briton's Lady Gaga) is a staple of the Obscene Dessert corpus and has been made umpteen times by me or the hubband - for instance here, here, here, here, here, here and here (special Nazi Raccoon edition) - during the past three years or so?

La La La for Spring

Yael Naim has written a very nice little song here, methinks:



"New Soul"

All the news that fits

And while we're on the topic of the press: a few comments on the Daily Herald's move in the 1920s away from featuring only serious news toward a certain 'frivolity':

On 20 December 1929, it might have been expected to lead on rural council attacks on Neville Chamberlain’s poor law policy. Instead the main headline was ‘Hunchback shot dead in billiard saloon’; undoubtedly the closest the Herald ever came to the New York Post’s immortal ‘Headless man in topless bar’.

Huw Richards, The Bloody Circus: The Daily Herald and the Left (London: Pluto Press, 1997), p. 133.

A quick check shows that the Post's headline was actually 'Headless Body in Topless Bar' (15 April 1983).

Either way, it's a classic.

[UPDATE]: Looking through the World's Pictorial News -- a paper that definitely focused on the sensational and bizarre -- it also appears that the hunchback-in-the-billiard-hall case occurred in October 1928 rather than December 1929. (Unless, of course, there was another hunchback killed in another billiard hall. But that seems a bit unlikely.)

The story in brief: 'Entering a Manchester billiards hall, a bookmaker's clerk shot a man dead and wounded another. Then dashing out of the saloon he made his escape in a motor-car. He was traced to his home by two detectives, whom he held up with two revolvers and then shot himself dead in his own bedroom.'

Man: drama.

The WPN, in any case, definitely had nothing to say about Chamberlain's poor law policy. Whenever that was released...

The more things change

Noted, in passing, in the British Library:

Indeed, there are times when it seems that the [£]40,000,000 we spend on national education is no less wastefully disposed of than the £120,000,000 devoted to the fighting forces. ...For (our) £40,000,000, we seem, apart from patriotism, to do little more than teach our children how to read. And in a world full of Daily Mails that is more of a danger than an advantage.

Arthur Bourchier, 'Art and Culture in Relation to Socialism' (1926), p. 8

'I would have liked to have gone out with a bit more flair...'

Quite by chance, I ran across an article and a couple of videos about Margaret Moth, a CNN camerawoman who died of cancer earlier today at the age of 59.

Among many other striking stories, Moth returned to work in Sarajevo after being shot in the face there by a Serb sniper in 1992, followed by numerous bouts of reconstructive surgery.

Moth referred to the incident with a remarkable amount of equanimity:

" 'We came into their war. Fair's fair,' " former CNN correspondent Stefano Kotsonis, who was with her when she was shot, remembered her saying. " 'I don't blame anyone for firing at me. They're in a war, and I stepped into it.' "

There is, I have to admit, something unsettling about her brand of single-mindedness.

But also something impressive.

And I was also struck while watching those videos by the reminder that when we see video footage from a war zone, there is a human eye behind that viewfinder.

I forget that too often.

Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice

Alex Chilton, RIP.



And for added pathos, a cover of Chilton's lovely 'Thirteen' by Elliott Smith.

A blonde by any other name

Just by way of extending John's recent foray into linguistics, here's another lovely German neologism that our Anglophone friends might consider worth adopting:

"Verhaltensblond."

That is, "behaviourally blonde."

Apparently the term has been around since 2000, but that was a time in my life when I was busy doing other things. In them days I probably would still have found this term sort of sexist. How one learns to relax in merely a decade! From where I am right now this strikes me as an absolutely lovely expression. So apt and true! How many "Verhaltensblonde" do you know? I know at least one bald one, he, he, he ...

Fremdscham is the new Schadenfreude

One of the most interesting things about emigrating to a country where you are not a native speaker is that you will spend probably the rest of your life discovering new and wonderful words that those who grew up with the lingo don't appreciate in quite the same way.

A few, you will find, are words that don't exist in your own language, but, really, should.

My favourite this week is the verb fremdschämen, which I ran across in an article in Der Spiegel about German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle.

The word was, in fact, applied directly to Mr. Westerwelle, so some background is in order, as I don't presume that anyone living outside of Germany has the slightest notion of our domestic politics.

After leading his party, the FDP (or 'Free Democrats' or 'liberals' [in the European 'free market, small government' sense]), to a historic victory in last year's federal elections, Westerwelle has seen his popularity and that of his party slump dramatically, due to 1) giving an impression that they're not very good at running things, seeming to spend most of their time picking fights with their larger (and long-desired) governing partner, the CDU and 2) seeming to be misusing (German) their arrival in government mainly to benefit the well-off and their main business donors (in this case, then, essentially the same group of people).

Matters have reached a bit of a head this week, as Westerwelle has been accused (English) of using his office to benefit party donors, friends and family, who have been accompanying him on his international trips. Politics as usual you might think; however, the foreign minister seems to have a special place in Germany: as a representative of the nation, standards are higher.

Even sneaker-wearing, policeman-beating Joschka Fischer managed to maintain stratospheric levels of popularity during his stewardship of that office as part of a government that was by no means universally loved.

In any case, Roland Nelles, in a commentary (G), referred to Westerwelle and used the word that you find in this title: fremdschämen.

I had never run across it before, though I recognised the components: fremd -- which has a variety of meanings from 'foreign' or 'other' to 'stranger' -- and schämen which I have usually encountered in its reflexive form referring to feeling embarrassed or ashamed.

A quick Google search brought me to a site that explained it (in German, of course), via a quote from Nadia Zaboura's book, Das empathische Gehirn: Spiegelneurone als Grundlage menschlicher Kommunikation (i.e., 'The Empathic Brain: Mirror Neurons as the Basis of Human Communication').

The crucial bit being (my translation):

The phenomenon of 'fremdschämen' refers to an empathic process in which person A feels ashamed in place of person B. Person B is not aware that they are in a situation about which they need to feel shame; person A, however, absolutely is. From this embarrassing feeling of being touched by the situation in which person B finds himself unknowingly, person A feels vicariously ashamed for him.* [Emphasis added]

Nelles, thus, in his Spiegel article, suggests that our Guido should be ashamed, doesn't realise he should, and is running the risk of making other people feel ashamed for him in his place.

Much like the more well-known Schadenfreude, it seems that Germans have invented a word that doesn't exist in English, but, somehow, needs to.

This is a bit difficult, though, as the verb fremdschämen not only has one of those tricky Umlaute (vowels with the two dots over it that change the pronunciation in ways that Anglophone speakers find confusing) but also is a 'separable prefix' verb that (sometimes) separates into different parts when used: i.e., the first part (fremd) moves to the end of the sentence.

(This is a German specialty about which Mark Twain long ago bitched.)

However, it occurs to me that the noun form, Fremdscham (so, something like 'vicarious shame'), seems ready for export.

So, for which public personage do you immediately feel a strong sense of Fremdscham?

I have the feeling that if we work at it, we could introduce a new and entirely useful noun to the English language.

I'm counting on you.

*'Hinter dem Phänomen »fremdschämen« steht ein Einfühlungsprozess, in dem eine Person A sich an Stelle einer anderen Person B schämt. Person B ist sich der schämenswerten Situation nicht bewusst, Person A aber durchaus. Aus dieser peinlichen Berührtheit für die Situation, in der Person B sich unwissend befindet, schämt sich Person A also stellvertretend für diese.'

On gloveworthy childhoods and clips round the ear: or, the children of the poor find their own way home

What follows are some comments on the police from C. H. Rolph, a former police officer himself, from his edited book, The Police and the Public: An Inquiry (London: Heinemann, 1962).

One of Rolph's topics was 'the ear-clipping period', i.e., that (possibly mythical) time when police constables took a more, shall we say, rough and ready approach to keeping Britain's potentially feral youth in check, based on techniques of which today's Daily Mail reader would no doubt approve:

I have heard citizens of little more than thirty speak of it fondly, as though it belonged to a golden age before the invention of juvenile delinquency. But any man who is forty today was in his pram when I first joined the police service, and even then the ear-clipping period was spoken of as past. The formula is usually the same, ‘In those days the bobby gave you a clip on the ear with his gloves, and you heard no more about it. Nowadays you’d have to go before a juvenile court, hang about for months waiting for the result, remand home, probation officer’s report, women police, children’s officer, attendance centre, perhaps an approved school – the lot.’ In the version I heard as a child, the policeman always put wooden blocks in the tops of the glove fingers to make them hurt more. I had an Edwardian childhood, its leisure hours being partially spent in pursuits that, from a police point of view, were outstandingly gloveworthy. But no police glove ever clipped my ear, though once or twice I was caught (this was rare because the police were fatter in those days).

Nowadays, by comparison, ‘if a policeman strikes a boy there’s a Parliamentary debate and a Committee of Inquiry’; and this, according to the glove advocates, is the cause of the ‘juvenile crime wave’. (187-188)

The more things change, eh?

I also like this quip about the public image of the police:

Apart from the armed forces, the police service is in fact the only public serve whose ultimate sanction is physical force: inside every gentler policeman there lurks a hired strong-arm man, a licensed tough. This is the policeman perceived most readily by some people; others see always the uniformed constable with the lost child in his arms. Both are middle-class conventions, if not smoke-screens: the children of the poor find their own way home and the children of the rich are not allowed to get lost. (188-89)

Suffer the little children

A brief addendum to Ophelia's exasperated comment over at Butterflies and Wheels on the Catholic Church's habitual proclivity to conflate sinfulness and homosexuality - which, as was to be expected, is being wielded as the killer argument in the current debate around sexual abuse committed by representatives/employees of the Catholic Church.

Here's a snippet from a statement to the press by Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German episcopal conference, in which he craftily uses his public apology to the victims as a vehicle to expound the Vatican's views. "Twisted and impervious" indeed, as Ophelia notes. What makes the whole performance even more daunting is the sanctimonious delivery. The guttural lilt, the self-righteous rhoticity - this is what all Catholic priests in Germany sound like.

As Zollitsch asserts smilingly at the end of the video, sexual abuse is not a systemic problem in the Catholic Church, but rather an accumulation of instances of individual deviance. Read (I guess, considering Ophelia's comment) homosexuality.

Which makes you wonder what the heck it is about the Catholic Church that apparently makes it so attractive to deviants all over the world.

Sting achieves absolute tantric position, sticks head up own arse

Alternative title (courtesy of The Wife): "I know the Uzbeks love their children, too."

I've never liked the smarmy lute-strumming bastard (even before he began massacring Dowland). He was only ever bearable with The Police. At least they had a beat.

Tabloid kicking

I'm still defrosting after our return yesterday from lovely (but cold) Finland and am a bit bogged down with preparations for our next journey tomorrow.

Hence the general silence around these parts.

But to reward your stopping by, here are a few choice words from the ever-reliable Charlie Brooker on the topic of the British press:

A child who idolised the tabloids would grow up to be a ­sanctimonious, flip-flopping, phone-tapping Peeping Tom who thinks puns are hilarious and spends half its life desperately ­rooting through bins for a ­living. If I had a child like that, I'd divorce it. Or kill it. Whichever proved cheapest.

The rest is, as nearly always, equally worth your time.

Totally Fucking Gaga

I've been thinking about designing a graph illustrating the British Medienlandschaft for one of my classes next semester. I have a nice research exercise mapped out and I need a way to give students an idea of the basics. You know, with the x-axis indicating the political allegiances of different dailies and the y-axis reflecting their level of intellectual sophistication?

But right now I'm really no longer so sure that this is even feasible. I mean: what do you do when you open the website of one the dailies that, at least nominally, used to be among the more liberal and enlightened of the bunch, only to see the following screaming headline:

Revealed: eerie UFO sightings recorded in MoD files

You read on and stumble upon the following passage:

Aircraft of all shapes and sizes have been witnessed flying over a wide range of locations - including Chelsea Football Club and the former Home Secretary Michael Howard's home in Kent.

The paper doesn't say (as would be accurate): "People claimed/believed that they have witnessed aircraft of all shapes and sizes." No, the formulation here firmly asserts that visitations of extraterrestrial tourists have actually taken place.

Then you read further, only to learn that

Experts believe the records highlight how shapes of reported UFOs have changed over the last half-century.

Yeah, right - if "experts" believe it .... At least this time its "reported UFOs." But still.

And then it turns out that one of the experts the only expert consulted is yet again The Independent's favourite crystal ball gazer, David Clarke from Sheffield Hallam University (who has been previously mocked chez nous), making some banal statements about how UFO sightings are conditioned by advances in aircraft design.

This is the front page of The Independent online, people, and its most popular story today.

It think I'll just redo my y-axis: it now starts at "gaga" and ends at "totally gaga."

Scapegoating Wednesday

Recent events have led me to think about causality. This kind of thing happens more often than you might think in this household.

First, today's Times features a silly little article about how "green issues are causing more family rows than ever" in the already distraught and traumatised British middle class.

Second, over here in Germany, Bishop "Deep Thought" Mixa once again does justice to his aptly onomatopoeic surname by claiming that the sex scandal at an elite Jesuit college in Berlin - where, it has recently been discovered, scores of students have been sexually molested over decades - is an aftershock of the 1960s "Sexual Revolution".

Yeah, right. Because fundamentally fucked up institutions (the family, the Church) really need (at least potentially) progressive political ideologies to go off the rails.

Cops and coppers

As I've noted, one of the nice things about early twentieth-century advertising was the use of hand-drawn artwork.

The charm of which is apparent, I think, in these two adverts for 'Gallaher's Park Drive Cigarettes' from 1927.

(They also demonstrate a rather relentless -- though perhaps typically British -- fondness for punning.)

(Daily Herald, 7 April 1927, p. 8)

(Daily Herald, 16 June 1927, p. 8)

Fashion victims: 'Suicide Hat' edition

I realised that it has been a while since I've updated my historical bycatch series, so I thought a quick trip back to the fashion world of 1930 was called for.

It was an exciting, even dangerous world for the good women of Albion, as this front-page article from the Sunday Express makes clear.

SUICIDE HAT PERIL.

ANOTHER INSANE PARIS FASHION.

‘BLIND’ WOMEN.

The Suicide Hat—a wide-brimmed monstrosity which screens the eyes and imperils the life of its wearer in traffic—is the latest insane fashion which Paris designers are attempting to foist on the women of this country. And this follows swiftly on the heels of the plot, exposed in last week’s “Sunday Express,” to bring back the full-length skirt for day wear.

That plot is failing. Lady Duff Gordon killed it when she announced to a protest meeting of women in London that they would rather go forward to wearing trousers than back to long skirts.

What will be the fate of the Suicide Hat? It has already been responsible for many street accidents.

It is impossible for the wearer of such a hat to see either to right or left without effort. She can see nothing that is not directly in front of her.



Another form of the Suicide Hat is made with blinkers like a spaniel’s ears, and this type is all the more dangers because motorists do not realise that the wearer cannot see.

SKULL CAPS ARE SAFE!

A “Sunday Express” representative spent an hour yesterday watching women crossing the road to Hyde Park Corner, one of the most dangerous spots in London.

Women in skull caps crossed safely and without incident, and then there stood on the edge of the pavement, a woman in a wide black felt-and-straw hat of the new type.

The hat looked charming and its wearer looked happy. At the kerb her expression changed to one of anxiety. She hovered for a moment and dashed across to an island. A taxi-cab on her right that she had not seen pulled up with a scream of brakes, and its driver had “a few words” to say.

The Woman in the Hat was far too agitated to hear them. She had to reach another island, before making a final plunge for the opposite pavement. During the last lap a box-tricycle missed her by an inch. She arrived, safe but thoroughly unnerved, with the hat on one side.

Sunday Express, 11 May 1930, p. 1

Phew!

Though the notion that women might be capable of turning their heads to look doesn't appear to have occurred to either the Woman in the Hat or the Sunday Express representative.

Antoine Doinel lives!

Don't you think so?



I mean, sort of?

Self-promotion Thursday

I recently received the confirmation that an article of mine has seen the light of day in the Journal of Social History.

Since the goal of seeing a work of mine published in the JSH has been one of my goals ever since, oh, the late stages of my undergraduate days (so we're talking about the time that Nevermind was released), this has meant a little bit more to me than my other publications.

(I've done a lot of reviews for them, but a peer-reviewed article is something special.)

In any case, for those of you who are interested, the article is '“Those Who Have Had Trouble Can Sympathise with You”: Press Writing, Reader Responses and a Murder Trial in Interwar Britain', and the abstract reads like this:

This article considers reader responses to newspaper coverage of a British murder case in 1928. Accused of the arsenic murder of her husband, Beatrice Pace became a fixture on the front pages of the British press. More than two hundred letters sent to her after her acquittal have survived in papers kept by her solicitor. Although far from a perfect source for gauging public opinion, the letters provide a rare and valuable glimpse into the range of reactions that media stories inspired in the past. Although it is clear that press coverage crucially influenced public attitudes, reactions to Pace were also highly individual and affected by readers’ personalities and previous experiences. On the other hand, there are obvious patterns in the responses, most notably related to gender. From their letters, it is apparent that many female readers identified with Pace, whether as women, as mothers or as fellow victims of domestic violence. Men’s reactions were motivated by respect, desire (sometimes in the form of marriage proposals) or business opportunities. Other themes apparent in the letters were shared across gender lines: most notably religion (including an emphasis on divine vengeance), spiritualism and the desire to make contact with a famous figure.

Those of you without access to a university library that subscribes to the journal may nevertheless read an earlier draft (which contains a few more typos, among other issues) here, along with some draft versions of my other humble scribblings.

Or, alternatively, get in touch, if you want to read anything.

Enjoy, and thanks to the people (well, mainly one person) at JSH for always being good to work with.

Blackmail

I think I've been tired of the Anglican Church - this strategically manufactured sanctuary of silly crypto-Catholics with their Church-fatherly fear of all things femininine - since 1534.

No, not all cultural idiosyncrasies deserve to be honoured

Certainly not this one.

And after reading that, I find the trailer to David Baddiel's film "The Infidel" not so funny any more.

I don't mind losing self-respect

Just because (I know a few people who seem to love losing their self-respect. On a regular basis, like):



Maximo Park, "The Kids Are Sick Again"

Applied science: Make my day edition

According to a report in the Guardian, new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (the original article is freely available) considers the relative speeds of proactive and reactive movement.

In the context of a quickdraw gun duel.

The conclusion:

"You move faster if you draw second, but you're still going to die," Dr Welchman said. "You'll die satisfied that you were quicker, but that's not much use to you."

So, along with that other scientifically sound gun-related admonition ('Always aim for the head when confronted by zombie hordes') we can add something else: 'always draw first'.

We have also learned something else: it seems that Niels Bohr was handy with a pistol.

Niels Bohr, who worked on the structure of the atom at the beginning of the 20th century, tested his theory by staging his own mock duels with toy guns at his institute in Copenhagen. His gunslinging partner, the Russian-born George Gamow, drew first and lost every time.

"[Bohr] can't have won because he was quicker in reacting," Welchman said. "It must be that he was a really good shot as well as a really good physicist."

I wonder how rare that particular combination is.

Incidentally, the PRS website is full of fascinating stuff: the currently most-read article is apparently Brennan, Clark and Prum, 'Explosive eversion and functional morphology of the duck penis supports sexual conflict in waterfowl genitalia'; full text is also available for free.

The methodology in a nutshell:

We used high-speed video of phallus eversion and histology to describe for the first time the functional morphology of the avian penis.

This does not sound like quite as much fun as staging mock duels with toy guns in the lab: but it sounds pretty damned interesting.

Science is so cool.

"Wot, racist - me?"

I think J. G. Ballard would have shared my enjoyment of this insightful snapshot of provincial Britain ("From Shanghai to Southampton" wouldn't be an entirely bizarre trajectory) and the accompanying stream of ill-spelt and incoherent demotic ire in the comments section. It's always nice to have your Weltanschauung confirmed - even if that entails fostering your misanthropic despair.

Not only delicious but also quietly soothing

Apparently, there is, in reality, no such thing as an 'ambient' sausage roll...

A Co-op spokeswoman said: "The use of the word 'ambient' on the label of this product was an administrative error - labels for in-store bakery items are printed in store and the word 'ambient' was incorrectly printed on the label.

...which is, somehow, rather a shame.

Raising more questions than answers. Not that that's a bad thing at all.

There have been a couple of interesting (and brief) posts in recent days at Crooked Timber.

On America:

But there are clear senses in which it is not right that the U.S. is a center-right nation. For example, it’s at least odd to have a center-right nation that lacks a center-right. There aren’t that many Olympia Snowes around – not even Olympia Snowe herself, during this whole health care business. It’s not as though America is the country where, when you elect a guy like Obama, you have to beat the center-right off with a stick, compromise-wise, when the center-left is plainly crying out to meet somewhere in the middle.

On Europe:

Almost every state of any significance in history has aspired to dominate its known world. In the last century, Britain, Germany, Russia and even France aspired to this role, and right now Russia and China are keen to try. Religiosity, militarism, inequality, and governments that do little for their subjects are the norm rather than the exception. Long hours of hard work have been the lot of humankind at least since the arrival of agriculture.

The real exception to all of this is Europe. The largest economic aggregate in world history, it has enough military power to repel any invader, but is deeply uninterested in using this power to any more glorious end. It grows by a process of reluctant accretion, controlled by ever more onerous admission requirements. In all of history, it would be hard to find anything comparable in terms of pacifism, godlessness, equality, leisure for the masses or public provision of services.

... It’s for these reasons that American views of Europe resemble de Tocqueville in reverse. Something so unprecedented, and against the laws of nature, they think, cannot possibly survive, let alone prosper. And yet it does.

[Footnote references removed.]

I find both of these comments to be on target.

But a comprehensive explanation for either phenomenon eludes me.

But they're both worth thinking about.

If you don't hug your son, some other man will

You want to know why I believe in an evolved human nature? Because of the "low-flying behaviourist" (Stuart Hall) nonsense spluttered by people like gay conversion God Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, co-author of The Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality:

"Homosexual behaviour is always prompted by loneliness [....] It's a pathology, a struggle to connect with the male identity [....] We advise fathers, "If you don't hug your sons, some other man will." We train the mothers to back off.

I'm in despair, as so often these days, not only because of the head-banging painfulness of statements like this, but also because even sane people will continue to harp on about the totalitarian dangers of biology and genetics, while quietly ignoring the irrational nether worlds of social/psychological constructionism as illustrated by the above. Because biology is deterministic and cultural determinism is good, right?

Birmingham language pledge: Learn German while you drive (into or out of the car park)

German spoken with an English accent is bad enough and I don't like to think what Brum-German might sound like. But according to a report by the BBC, this is exactly what we're going to get - until the good people of Birmingham have sorted out their ticket machines. Which are currently spewing German obscenities at unassuming citizens looking for a place to park their Vauxhalls Opels.

You see, vee haff much moar kanning vays of meking you toalk (Tscherman) than by pleing futbol in bleck shörts.

If a body catch a body coming through the rye

J. D. Salinger has apparently died.

It's difficult to say anything original about The Catcher in the Rye, and there is most likely nothing all too unique about saying that this novel made more of an impression on my teenage brain than just about any other book did.

It's apparently sold something in the range of 60 million copies. So, I suppose I'm far from alone in saying something like that.

I read it probably a dozen times between the ages of...I think...15 and 22. It set me off on a tour of reading anything else of Salinger's I could find. I liked his other texts (especially Franny and Zooey) but nothing ever quite hit me like Catcher.

Maybe it's time I took another look.

So long, J. D.

The game's the thing

Now, I'm clear on the concept that being in prison means not getting to do all the stuff you want to do.

It's part of what incarceration is all about.

And, as a principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Still, I'm having some difficulty following the specific reasoning of prison officials in Wisconsin and, more particularly, that of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: as reported in the New York Times, the latter have upheld a ban imposed by the former on the venerable role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. (Via PZ)

As the Times helpfully explains to those readers who had better things to do with their adolescence:

Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures, often working together as a group, with the help of complicated rules.

The court rejected the appeal of Kevin Singer, 33, who is serving a life sentence for intentional homicide (he killed his sister's boyfriend with a sledgehammer, the magical properties of which were not specified), against the ban on all D&D materials in the prison.

The D&D ban is based upon security concerns:

Prison officials enacted the ban in 2004 after an inmate sent an anonymous letter expressing concern about Singer and three other inmates forming a ''gang'' focused around playing the game.

Singer was told by prison officials that he could not keep the materials because Dungeons & Dragons ''promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling,'' according to the ruling. The prison later developed a more comprehensive policy against all types of fantasy games, the court said. [Emphasis added.]

That list of negative side effects sounds rather similar to the reproaches I recall being leveled by Concerned Adults against the rather fervid devotion of my own 'gang' to such games during my wayward youth.

However, D&D's well-known advocacy of Satanism is a curious absence on this list of Very Bad Things.

(Source and discussion.)

Maybe they dropped this feature of the game in the third edition, which came out after my gaming activities has subsided. Shame, really: the human sacrifices were always the best part.

In any case, it would be hard to top a fondness for 'addictive escape behaviours' as a summation of my teenage mentality.

And I can see why you wouldn't want to promote that sort of thing to someone actually, you know, living in a dungeon.

But I would think that as long as prison officers stipulate that any party (sorry, 'gang') has to contain at least one lawful good cleric, I'm sure Mr. Singer and his fellow inmates wouldn't get up to too much mischief.

Those guys always were a drag.

Still, if Mr. Singer or other inmates in his position need any encouragement....

I recall that back in the day we managed to invent our own role-playing game, which we referred to as 'insanity in a box'--rather ironically, as there was no box. In fact, there weren't any rule-books and all we needed was a single six-sided die. (Some kind of randomizer is important in these contexts: should prison rules outlaw any kind of dice as well, I suppose one could get away with flipping a coin or drawing a card from a shuffled deck.)

The 'rules', such as they were, were a bit vague (no more than a short set of shared principles) and shifting (the game master had an inordinate amount of discretion to use at his whim). However, the only important thing was the creation of a good basic story in which our creative (and Dr.-Pepper-fuelled) interaction could unfold.

We managed to have a good time, even in spite of all the 'competitive hostility' (not to say Satanism) that resulted.

Die Gedanken, after all, sind frei.

'Are we so sure that there are no floods to come?'

I have finally gotten around to reading an essay by Tony Judt that was referenced in a recent (and rather harrowing) article about the New York University historian's ordeal with motor neurone disease.

The piece, 'What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?' appears in the New York Review of Books.

I think it's well worth reading.

It's quite a lengthy excursion across the subject suggested by the title, and--among other topics--Judt considers differences between the political language of western Europe and the United States, the lingering relevance of nearly century-old economic debates and the difficult necessity of recovering a sense of common social purpose and belonging.

Much of it is not really earth-shattering, and there are some bits where I'm not really convinced.

But I was most struck positively by the parts of his essay in which he discusses, first, the past accomplishments of social democracy and, second, the need for it--if it wishes to maintain its success in the future--of reminding people about the reasons it emerged in the first place.

As to the past:

The welfare state had remarkable achievements to its credit. [...] The common theme and universal accomplishment of the neo-Keynesian governments of the postwar era was their remarkable success in curbing inequality. If you compare the gap separating rich and poor, whether by income or assets, in all continental European countries along with Great Britain and the US, you will see that it shrinks dramatically in the generation following 1945.

With greater equality there came other benefits. Over time, the fear of a return to extremist politics—the politics of desperation, the politics of envy, the politics of insecurity—abated. The Western industrialized world entered a halcyon era of prosperous security: a bubble, perhaps, but a comforting bubble in which most people did far better than they could ever have hoped in the past and had good reason to anticipate the future with confidence.

The paradox of the welfare state, and indeed of all the social democratic (and Christian Democratic) states of Europe, was quite simply that their success would over time undermine their appeal. The generation that remembered the 1930s was understandably the most committed to preserving institutions and systems of taxation, social service, and public provision that they saw as bulwarks against a return to the horrors of the past. But their successors—even in Sweden—began to forget why they had sought such security in the first place.

As to the future:

The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve. It is the right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. Social democrats, characteristically modest in style and ambition, need to speak more assertively of past gains. The rise of the social service state, the century-long construction of a public sector whose goods and services illustrate and promote our collective identity and common purposes, the institution of welfare as a matter of right and its provision as a social duty: these were no mean accomplishments.

That these accomplishments were no more than partial should not trouble us. If we have learned nothing else from the twentieth century, we should at least have grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences. Imperfect improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek. Others have spent the last three decades methodically unraveling and destabilizing those same improvements: this should make us much angrier than we are. It ought also to worry us, if only on prudential grounds: Why have we been in such a hurry to tear down the dikes laboriously set in place by our predecessors? Are we so sure that there are no floods to come?

Well, are we?

I've spent a certain amount of time over recent years trying to figure out the processes that have made relatively decent societies and those that have seen them unravel.

I'm still not entirely sure; however, I think that being very aware that they can unravel is a healthy corrective to complacency.

And that's, perhaps, a start.

Poco on ice

Whoopee!!! Neo Post-colonialism has finally arrived in Russia!



Who knows, they might be organising conferences on the New English Literatures next.

UPDATE: Really, I don't know what the whole fuss is about. Pretenders to Aboriginal identity don't seem to be that rare. The notorious case of Mudrooroo springs to mind, who - without having the least bit of Aboriginal heritage - nevertheless managed to found Australian Aboriginal literature with his "first-hand accounts" of indigenous life.

This ethnic charade is, of course, a nice illustration of the entirely hypothetical "theoretical" concept of mise en abyme, but I really don't think that it is entirely koscher to employ neo-colonial acts of symbolic exploitation to justify the claims of deconstruction.

Then, of course, there are all the white guys who pretend to be James Brown. Jason Mraz is a particularly grating example:



"You make my slacks a little tight", my arse!

And then there are tour operators in New Zealand hiring Europeans and Israelis to play at being Maori for the delectation of tourists. Says Terina Puriri, director of The Discovery Heritage Group responsible for these ... events, defensively:

Some of our Maori are too slack to promote themselves. Some of our Maori are too lazy to get out of bed to do that.

Ms Puriri may say that, because Ms Puriri is part Maori herself.

Still, I wonder whether the term "heritage" still applies in such a case (and whether the gullible tourists who bought the heritage ticket will get their cash back for this sad carnival). Or is heritage a moveable feast in this day and age of self-invention? I've come across academics who would claim just that.

In any case, I'd suggest Ms Puriri read Julian Barnes's England, England - which lampoons exactly the kind of fakery that she is engaging in. Or rather, lampooned it already 10 years ago. Which leads me to the question: Did Julian Barnes know that Terina Puriri would be ripping off ageing tourist on their one holiday of a lifetime on a grand scale in 2009/10? Or is life imitating bloody art yet again?

The Cameron Variations

Even if the Internet never comes up with another Fun Thing as good as the David Cameron poster creation machine, then it's nevertheless established its Daseinsberechtigung.

I mean, the original is humourous enough.

But the variations....

I'm quite fond of Cthulhu, Absorbency and...um...Kittens.

The following isn't nearly as funny, but it was the first thing that occurred to me.



Thanks to the Ranter for bringing this to my attention and for discussing it so (expectedly) well.

Frauenpower

While taking a short mental break from research in the British Library, I ran across a couple of interesting articles at the New York Times.

One is on changes in family life and motherhood in Germany as more women enter the labour market.

This is hardly a new topic, of course, but there are elements in the article that touch upon what I've found to be a distinctive mixture of modernity and traditionalism in my adopted homeland.

Much of it focuses on Bavaria, where these tendencies are, in my experience, more marked than usual.

As is kind of summed up in this passage:

Even five years ago, all-day schooling in Neuötting seemed unthinkable, Mayor Peter Haugeneder said. There is a crucifix in his office, in every classroom of the Max Fellermeier school and even in the Spanish-themed restaurant run by the gay butcher.

Also related in some way is an article on the increasing tendency for men to marry women who earn more and are better educated than they are.

There are, apparently, men who have a problem with this, causing some frustration in the world of dating.

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

If true, it is.

Making new friends

We have a new addition to our household.

Well, maybe not new, as we're not sure exactly how long she's been here.

In any case, a few days ago we spotted her lurking terrifyingly casually hanging around in our front hall.

Folks, meet Erika:

Erika, perched above a doorway in the front hall where she can more

easily launch a surprise attack partake in the warm familial atmosphere.

I admit, we're just guessing on the gender and as for the name itself, it just...kind of occurred to one of us and has stuck. It has no specific significance.

But, just possibly, personalising our new eight-legged friend helps one of us to cope better with an almost paralyzing fear of arachnids (we won't mention which one of us it is, other than to note that he remains convinced that said phobia does not in any way serve to undermine his otherwise virile masculinity).

And it also occurs to me that our practice of naming the critters that wander around (and, far more rarely, into) our house allows us to feel a similar sense of animal companionship enjoyed by actual pet owners without...well, all the hassle of actually being a pet owner.

Perhaps.

Erika, by the way, is no longer in the front hall.

She was seen later hanging around in the corner where the wine lives in the Wohnzimmer.

She has since set off for parts unknown.

"She's probably moved into your coat", said The Wife, helpfully.

I'm not sure, but I think this may explain why I've not been out of the house for three days.

French teen flick

Granted, the trailer to Éric Rohmer's Conte d'Été might lead one to believe that this film is just a slightly downbeat teenage romcom (minus the make-up artist):



But let me assure you: it's a very sweet movie, to which I attach very fond memories. The same goes for numerous other films by Rohmer, who has just died. How sad: We only watched Signe du Lion over Christmas (in fact, it was a Christmas gift). I have a penchant for films where nothing much seems to happen until suddenly characters burst into passionate philosophical arguments over the tarte aux pommes!

In one of the YouTube comments to the above video Rohmer is called the French Woody Allen, which might well be true. We also watched plenty of Woody Allen over Christmas. Stuff like that calms me down like nothing else, which is why I'm so nostalgic about these films.

An Englishwoman's home...

I'd never heard of Myleene Klass before about...oh, fifteen minutes ago. It appears that she's one of that very common breed of British celebrity mainly known for getting her kit off.

Which is all well and good and is, in any case, not what brought her to my attention; rather, it was an article about her having been warned by police for doing...well, something rather sensible, I'd have thought:

Klass was in the kitchen with her daughter upstairs when she spotted the youths in her garden just after midnight on Friday. She grabbed a knife and banged the windows before they ran away.

Hertfordshire police warned her she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an "offensive weapon", even in her own home, was illegal.

I admit that my verdict on the Hertfordshire police view of the matter--which runs something along the lines of 'fucking nonsense'--may be the result of having grown up in a country with, shall we say, a more relaxed attitude toward home defence.

But self-defence--even with 'offensive weapons'--is a fundamental right.

And it seems that the British police have a bit of a problem when it comes to recognising the important role of context when it comes to the use of weapons.

Hip to be square

I've had a fair amount of post-colonial baloney already this year - young though 2010 might still be - and somehow this enforced exposure to stuff I can no longer believe in has caused my poor brain to play the same, seemingly related track by The Flaming Lips on an endless mental loop:



Yes, I know - it's all only by analogy, but it might well be my own little hymn for the past year and the years to come.

Unfortunately, there's no decent video to be found, only the typical sad mobile phone recordings of open-air festivals. So I've gone for the sound quality rather than the visuals.

And here for the holistic experience:

What's all this then?

Ah, yes: I think we can rest easy that all is well with the implementation of anti-terrorism legislation in Britain:

They [a series of stupid, plodding efforts by the police to bother law-abiding citizens] stem from section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, which designates particular areas as vulnerable, and within those places the police can stop and search whomever they want, even without what is legally termed "suspicion". As the Metropolitan Police's website helpfully explains: "Officers have the power to stop and search a person who they reasonably suspect to be a terrorist."

Thus, last year, police officers must presumably have thought they had reason to suspect that Alex Turner, taking pictures of a fish and chip shop in Chatham called Mick's Plaice, was in fact a terrorist. Chatham no longer has its dockyard, or indeed any army barracks... but that didn't stop two officers from stopping him taking his fishy snaps; and when Mr Turner – quite rightly, in my view – questioned their authority to stop him, he was arrested, held handcuffed in a police van, searched and interviewed by two plain-clothes officers.

(Observant readers will note that the act that has led to such things was passed before that fateful Date That Supposedly Changed Everything.)

And these are the people that will soon have new powers to root around in our pants.

I'm...hmm...yes, I think reassured is the word.

On the other had, think of the positive side of this: you'll be able to tell future generations of a time when airline travel was not a grim, dehumanising torture. (Even though, by some counts, things have rarely been better, safety-wise.)

I already feel nostalgic for...what, a couple of weeks ago?

An exercise in interfaith dialogue

From an article in yesterday's Guardian:

"May you burn in hell!" one of the men shouted at Westergaard.

"Can we talk about it?" the cartoonist asked.

"May you burn in hell," the man repeated.

"Well, I guess we'll have to talk about it in hell, then," Westergaard finally said.

And more on this topic.

Yesterday's tomorrow today

Which magazine--that your humble narrator used to read avidly--had a penchant for making the following kind of predictions?

"By 2000...Sweden will have a largely automated robot society."

Paul Collins remembers Omni.

On the importance of not always looking on the bright side of life

As someone with more personal experience than I'd like to have with watching (and listening to) people deal with cancer, I was rather interested in the excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich's forthcoming Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World published in the Guardian.

In it, she describes (and laments) what she refers to as the 'tyranny of positive thinking' that surrounds American cancer treatment and patient support (one to which, it seems, many patients actively contribute).

This extends to the view expressed by at least a few people that cancer might best be seen as a 'gift'.

Now, I'm thinking hard here, and to be honest I can't think of a single example of a person I know whose life has been improved by this particular experience, although I've seen a lot of impressive bravery and even dark humour emerge in response to the illness.

Facing the likelihood of reasonably imminent mortality can bring forth all kinds of complicated emotions, and I'd be the last person to tell others how they should react.

But I share Ehrenreich's doubts:

But rather than providing emotional sustenance, the sugar-coating of cancer can exact a dreadful cost. First, it requires the denial of understandable feelings of anger and fear, all of which must be buried under a cosmetic layer of cheer. This is a great convenience for health workers and even friends of the afflicted, who might prefer fake cheer to complaining, but it is not so easy on the afflicted. One 2004 study even found, in complete contradiction to the tenets of positive thinking, that women who perceive more benefits from their cancer "tend to face a poorer quality of life – including worse mental functioning – compared with women who do not perceive benefits from their diagnoses."

I don't read Ehrenreich as arguing for meek, passive acceptance of cancer: quite the contrary. There are a lot of unpleasant and horrible things in life that have to be faced with grim determination or an active, even combative, spirit of resistance. Seeking encouragement of whatever kind, finding reasons to laugh and making plans beyond the disease is all to the good; however, there does seem to be something deeply imbalanced in the cancer-culture Ehrenreich describes:

Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a "gift", was a very personal, agonising encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before – one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune and blame only ourselves for our fate.

And that doesn't sound very positive at all.

In the bleak midwinter

There is something strikingly poetic, spare and lovely--but also gloomy and foreboding--in George Orwell's diary entry from 2 January 1940:

No thaw. Fallen ash-boughs all stripped & gnawed by rabbits. Pan of water left out all day is thickly frozen by evening.

6 eggs.

Winter. Can it end already?