Peter Household - things that have interested me

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

2012-02-13T14:30:00.000Z

I'm writing the story of the Trojan Horse, as part of my collection of children’s stories. Which I hope one day will make me rich. If that occurs I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, what of the proverb “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”?

The Trojans drag the wooden horse into their
city - as imagined by Wolfgang Petersen in
his 2004 film epic Troy. Soon Greek soldiers
climb out and open the gates, and the city falls

The scene you are meant to picture is the beach under the walls of Troy. The Trojans are inspecting an enormous wooden horse and debating what it is, what to do with it, and why after 10 long years the besieging Greek army has suddenly disappeared. Some say the horse is a peace offering, some a gift from the gods, and some a trick.

The priest Laocoön declares “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. Although of course he doesn’t, he speaks Latin. For it’s the Latin epic poem The Aeneid which is the source for this story.

Laocoön’s actual words are : Equo no credite Teucri! Quidiquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

The first part of which means “Place no faith in that horse Trojans! Whatever it is …”. Now we come to timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Latin can pack lot of meaning into a few words. Translated literally, this phrase could be “I fear the Greeks even (or perhaps especially) when they come with gifts” or “I fear the Greeks and those who bring gifts”.

The 18th century poet John Dryden, has "Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse." For Laocoön’s speech in full, as rendered by Dryden in his 1697 translation, see this pdf file.

The saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” has become so embedded in the English language that it’s now hard to think of the phrase translated any other way. What I haven't yet found out is, who first came up with this translation? The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2004, lists it under Proverbs as “Fear the Greeks bearing gifts”. First found in print late 19th century, but no author given.

What of other modern languages? The only ones I've checked are German and Swedish. Neither has an expression equivalent to “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, though both use the expression “Trojan Horse” the same way that English does, to indicate a treacherous, invasive, gift.

A field full of shallow holes

2012-02-11T12:27:00.000Z

The immature student seeking the water of knowledge, said the Buddha, will dig a three-foot well here, a three-foot well there, until he has a field full of shallow holes, but no water.

I heard this on the radio, and I thought: Oh dear. Sounds like me. Perhaps I ought to devote myself to digging just one deep well.

Except that although this feels like a saying of the Buddha, I have it on good, I'm tempted to say unassailable, authority, that it isn't. He should have said it, and for all anyone knows he did, but no such statement has ever been attributed to him. A pity really.

It seems more likely there's an ancient proverb from India about the desert: if you want to strike water, don’t dig ten wells six feet deep, dig one well sixty feet deep.

Giles Fraser for Pope!

2012-02-03T22:53:00.002Z

Giles Fraser is my kind of Christian. He quotes the Magnificat, extolling a God who puts down the mighty from their seats. Any politician advocating such measures today, he comments, would be accused of class war.

He hath shewed strength with his arm :
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat :
and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things :
and the rich he hath sent empty away.

I've lost track of whether the Occupy London protesters have been evicted from the vicinity of St Pauls. The last I saw was on Monday. The Guardian reported they had been evicted from a disused office block, and implied the St Pauls encampment is next.

Giles Fraser and the St Pauls encampment

Which brings us to Giles Fraser. Formerly canon chancellor of St Paul's, he resigned on 27th October over a decision by the cathedral chapter to seek an injunction against the protesters.

He sees it as particularly appropriate that the anti-capitalist camp should be outside St Paul's, where it sits on a "fault line between God and Mammon". He claims "economic justice is the number one moral issue in the Bible," and believes the Occupy protest was a tremendous opportunity for the cathedral.

Or, to express the matter the other way round, as one Guardian commentator did, but sadly I've lost the piece now: the protesters handed the Church of England a heaven sent opportunity to prove itself irrelevant.

Giles Fraser isn't out of a job, he's now working for The Guardian. You can see his stuff here.

On Christmas Day he was on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week discussing Constantine, the man who invented Christmas. A war-mongering Roman Emperor, Constantine reinvented Christianity for his own military ends. Whilst delighted to dwell on the baby in a manger, and the crucifixion, he wasn’t so keen on all the anti-establishment preaching that came in between. Which is why the Nicene Creed, written under Constantine’s supervision, doesn’t mention it.

Worth listening to. As indeed Start the Week usually is.

Saudi oil minister calls global warming “humanity’s most pressing concern”

2012-02-01T00:24:00.002Z

Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi

I don’t know what to make of a speech by Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi. But I think it's worth reporting.

It was given on Monday at the Middle East and North Africa energy conference in London.

I understand that Al-Naimi once called renewable energy a “nightmare”. But on Monday he hailed energy efficiency and solar as important investments, global warming “real” and “pressing,” and explained that drilling for oil “does not create many jobs.”

“We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties.”

While Al-Naimi said he believes that oil production “will continue to play a major role in the overall energy mix for many decades,” he also made some very explicit statements about carbon emissions:

“Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity’s most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role.”

I'm at a loss to know what that “leadership role” is — except to pump out more oil and gas.

Although, Al-Naimi did give a plug to efficiency and renewables as increasingly important part of the country’s energy strategy:

“The efficient use of energy is as much an issue for Saudi Arabia, with its huge natural resources, as it is for all countries. Increased efficiency makes sense environmentally, but also economically.”

“We are striving, also, to raise awareness among the public, and specifically addressing children and schools about the tangible benefits of energy efficiency. And we are investing manpower, and brainpower, in efforts to develop new thinking when it comes to energy efficiency.”

A Saudi oil field

“I see renewable energy sources as supplementing existing sources, helping to prolong our continued export of crude oil. And this is why we are investing in solar energy, which we also have in abundance. The Kingdom experiences roughly 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, emitting about 7,000 watts of energy per square metre. Saudi Arabia also features empty stretches of desert that can host solar arrays and it is blessed with deposits of quartz that can be used in the manufacture of silicon photovoltaic cells.”

Saudi Arabia is considering a renewable energy law that would help promote a modest increase in solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, biogas and waste-heat-to-energy. However, if the strategy is seen only as a way to “prolong continued export of crude,” it doesn’t really match Al-Naimi’s statement that carbon-based resources are “among humanity’s most pressing concerns.”

But it’s surprising nonetheless to see concern about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming from this quarter.

And just think: if I'm confused, how confused must Mitt and Newt be with their rabid anti-environmentalism. If they can't count on a Saudi oil minister whom can they count on?

My source is the Climate progress blog. This is, I believe, a blog you can trust. I recommend it.

"Capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us"

2012-01-30T22:39:00.000Z

Economist Klaus Martin Schwab

Not the words of an Occupy protester, but the founder of the World Economic Forum who hosted the recent Davos meeting for world business and political leaders. He's the German economist Klaus Martin Schwab, age 73, and on 22nd Jan the AFP news agency (Agence France-Presse) quoted him saying :

"We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations … Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole. We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual … Capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us." (Reported on Yahoo News Canada)

Something interesting is happening when anti-capitalist rhetoric has become mainstream. We need to be aware that it’s rhetoric. But it’s still interesting.

Another example. At about the time Schwab was making his speech, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney was under attack for “vulture capitalism”. Again, what makes this interesting is that the attack came not from the left but from other Republican candidates.

And it’s prompted a backlash from Republican leaders; for even if they have not endorsed Romney, they nonetheless take fright at this type of attack on a fellow conservative. To them it amounts to an assault on capitalism and the free market system which lies at the heart of the Republican Party’s ideology. For example, South Carolina Governor and Tea Party star Nikki Haley, warned :

Republican contender Mitt Romney

"It’s a sad day in South Carolina and across this country if Republicans are talking against the free market."

Reported on BBC News 20 January, Is capitalism under attack in the 2012 Republican race?

Meanwhile in the UK, the right-wing Freedom Association dedicated to individual freedom, limited government and a free market economy, feels obliged to heap scorn on the notion of a fairer capitalism. When it’s lefties or Ed Milliband promoting the idea, they don’t mind. What bugs them is that even Conservative prime minster David Cameron has promised to clamp down on excessive pay, and is promoting belief in better or fairer capitalism and promising to curtail “crony capitalism”. The Freedom Association derides such ideas as “brave new capitalism” whilst moaning that conservative politicians, to court popularity, score a cheap point by pandering to the belief that the successful have won unfairly.

For more see the Freedom Association website

Analysing this

Writing in the mildly leftwing American magazine The Nation, William Greider analyses the vulture capitalism attacks on Romney as opportunistic cross-dressing by conservatives. There are no candidates in this year's politics, he says, “witless enough to stand up and defend the most bloodthirsty tactics of rapacious capitalism.” And he suggests this opportunism reflects a deeper confusion of purpose and an insecurity in the Republican Party.

His article is Why Attack 'Vulture Capitalism'?, January 24.

Daffodils in January

2012-01-29T14:09:00.000Z

Daffodils in my woodland garden yesterday. They’ve been in bloom for a week now. Surely this should not be. Which brings me to a new version of the US Plant Hardiness Zone Map released this week.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has advised gardeners and farmers to count on warmer weather. The map’s colour-coded zones are widely used as a guide for what perennial flowers will survive in a particular area, or when to plant crops.What's being measured is the average low temperature during wintertime. Higher zone numbers indicate a warmer average.

On this map, the zones have all shifted northward, showing that in much of the country, winters aren't as cold as they used to be, and spring planting comes earlier.

When the Department of Agriculture introduced their new map to reporters, the nationwide shift in the planting season provoked lots of questions about just how much to attribute to climate change. But NPR reports that officials insisted they were making no claims about global warming. Quite right too. They need to eat. There's an election coming. And who knows, the next President may not like global warming.

The new map includes 13 zones, with the addition for the first time of zones 12 (50-60 degrees F) and 13 (60-70 degrees F). It replaces one issued in 1990.

It's official : Irish neutrality was morally bankrupt

2012-01-27T22:48:00.001Z

Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter

Holocaust Memorial Day. And Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter has condemned Irish neutrality during the Second World War.

He did this while opening a Shoah exhibition in Dublin on Monday. From the reporting of the speech, it appears this is the first time a government minister has ever said this. The Irish Daily Mail’s headline, for example, was “Irish minister admits for first time that neutrality policy during WW2 was 'morally bankrupt'”.

I think however that he's committing the intellectual crime of reading history backwards. To follow some of the arguments see a post I made 12 months ago.

Back to Minister Shatter’s speech. He also claimed the "doors to the state were kept firmly closed to Jews fleeing Hitler" while UK took thousands.

The Irish Times quotes him : “This position was maintained from 1939 to 1945 and we should no longer be in denial that, in the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy.

“This moral bankruptcy was compounded by the then Irish government who, after the war, only allowed an indefensibly small number who survived the concentration camps to settle permanently in Ireland ... and also by the visit of President de Valera to then German ambassador Edouard Hempel in 1945 to express his condolences on the death of Hitler. At a time when neutrality should have ceased to be an issue the government ... utterly lost its moral compass.”

Deserters from Irish army

In the same speech he tackled the desertion issue which has become a live topic in Irish politics recently. He is quoted : "Many who fought in British uniforms during that war returned to Ireland. For too many years, their contribution in preserving European and Irish democracy was ignored.

"Some of those include members of our Defence Forces who left this island during that time to fight for freedom and who were subsequently dishonourably discharged from the Defence Forces.

"It is untenable that we commemorate those who died whilst continuing to ignore the manner in which our State treated the living, in the period immediately after World War II, who returned to our State having fought for freedom and democracy."

There’s a campaign for a pardon for 5,000 members of the Irish armed forces. Today’s Irish Times carried two interesting letters that I might get round to saying something about.

As a postscript, we need to be aware that Shatter is in Fine Gael, and prone thereby to condemn anything de Valera ever did. But we should also remember that Fine Gael supported the neutrality policy at the time. On International Holocaust Memorial Day that may not look too good, but back then it was pretty much impossible to do anything else. Only France and the British empire declared war on Germany voluntarily. Not the USA, not the USSR. How realistic is it to suggest Ireland should have stood out from the crowd?

Meat grown in a lab? Yuk!

2012-01-24T01:39:00.000Z

Pigs at a farm in Germany.
Michaela Rehle/REUTERS

Chicken meat grown in a laboratory. Yes there's a yuk factor. But though I've never seen one, I suspect there's a much bigger yuk factor in an abattoir, and a chicken factory farm probably more yukky still.

Read this article in The Observer, 22nd Jan. Could lab-grown meat soon be the solution to the world's food crisis? Hanna Tuomisto, who specialises in environmental impacts of food production at Oxford University, says small quantities of “cultured meat” are being produced in research laboratories, and suggests that this innovation could have a dramatic effect on global hunger and climate change.

Left to myself I’d be happy to make my contribution by the simple expedient of eating far less meat. But globally, as developing countries and their people get wealthier, they are increasing the amount of meat in their diet, and this is a trend that worthy individual initiatives are unequal to combating. Meat production is one of the major contributors to global environmental degradation, especially deforestation, global warming, fresh water scarcity and loss of biodiversity. It has to stop.

And that’s before we even start on the question of how we treat animals. See Peta website.

On the uses of religion

2012-01-19T23:58:00.001Z

Ballygiblin church, Mitchelstown parish

Tonight to a special mass for John, who tomorrow is to have an operation for cancer. I gather it’s an amputation, maybe a life and death affair for all I know. I don’t know John but his brother has done some tiling for us and his sister has a florists shop in town. Ballygiblin church was full, I guess about 300 in the congregation. Canon Tim said that prayer is powerful and the most powerful prayer is when the whole community is gathered together. The gospel reading was Jesus saying take up thy bed and walk to the man who was sick of the palsy. (Except tonight Jesus said pick up your stretcher and the man was a paralytic. It’s the one where his friends lowered him through a hole in the roof. Mark ch 2.)

You can have a secular wedding or funeral, but I've never known a secular version of what happened tonight. Canon Tim was right about the whole community gathering together to pray. When John is told that 300 people have been praying in church for him, that knowledge has got to fortify his immune system, no question.

It was a moving experience to be there, all those people turning out on a cold dark night to pray that John’s operation is successful, and that God will restore him to heath. They prayed for the surgeons and nurses too.

The historian

2012-01-19T14:10:00.000Z

Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog ... and one might wonder: who is more blind? Mayakovsky, who as he wrote his poem on Lenin did not know where Leninism would lead? Or we, who judge him decades later and do not see the fog that enveloped him?

Milan Kundera, born 1929

I'm afraid I can't vouch for the quote's authenticity but I think it's from his book Testaments Betrayed (1995). Joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia while in his teens, was expelled, supported the 1968 Prague Spring. Author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984).

I ought to add that I have read none of these books. Came across the quote in The Irish Catholic. Yes, my secret is out. I read this paper every week. I'm not proud of it. But I feel better for having made a clean breast of it. A longer version appears on the website of the Association of Catholic Priests.

Wikipedia links:
Kundera
Mayakovsky

Shaw: the unreasonable man

2012-01-12T22:25:00.000Z

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903

To boldly preserve where no man has preserved before

2012-01-10T21:55:00.000Z

Buzz Aldrin salutes the US flag, 1969. (Wikipedia)
Footprints in foreground: how long will they last?

In a bizarre act of extraterrestrial heritage imperialism, the California state historical commission has placed a preservation order on the Apollo 11 Moon landing site.

Actually they did this two years ago on January 29, 2010. But I've only just found out about it (thanks to Tom) through today's New York Times.

So the state of California has declared that its cultural resource protection law extends to a site outside the state’s territory and, in fact, beyond the surface of planet Earth. And its historical commission now technically claims to protect the 1969 Apollo 11 landing site. Which contains the discarded landing platform of the lunar module, the American flag planted in the moon dust by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and various tools and discarded equipment.

Other US states have made similar declarations, all on the grounds that they hosted firms, labs, or government agencies that took part in NASA’s Apollo programme.

The serious point here is that archaeologists and historians are worried lest the next generation of Moon visitors might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. So these bizarre designations are important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artefacts.

The New York Times cites Beth L. O’Leary as an influential member of the preservation campaign. She’s a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University and is quoted saying “I think it’s humanity’s heritage … It’s just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven’t begun to look at until now.”

International law

Under international law, the United States government still owns everything it left on the Moon.

On the other hand, 100 nations, including the United States, have signed the Outer Space Treaty, in which they agree not to claim sovereignty over the Moon or any part of it.

It seems federal government officials are wary – and rightly so - that other countries would see granting historic protection to the Apollo sites as a ruse by the United States to put down territorial claims.

New moon missions

NASA was intending to send astronauts back there until the Obama administration changed course a couple of years ago. But Russia and India plan to send robotic landers. And crucially, says the New York Times, the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition among 26 teams to become the first private organization to put a spacecraft on the Moon, offered a $1 million bonus for visiting an historic site there.

At least one team announced it was heading for the 1969 Apollo 11 landing site (so-called Tranquillity Base). But it seems they’ve now backtracked on this and will stay away to avoid obliterating the archaeological record. The New York Times story suggests that this is due to the publicity attracted by the spurious preservation orders.

Guidelines but no legal force

A couple of months ago, NASA's lunar science institute set guidelines for preserving the Apollo moon landing sites. Robert Kelso, a NASA manager, has catalogued what was left on the moon after the six Apollo landings, and has recommended how to balance historic preservation with the likely desire in the future to investigate how well the materials have lasted.

For Apollo 11, his recommendations ask that any visitor, robotic or human, stay at least 75 meters from the lander. This would protect every footprint and all the flight hardware

For Apollo 17, the suggested protection zone is 225 meters wide because a lunar buggy let the last two men on the moon, Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt, cover much more ground.

The recommendation for the other landing sites is that visitors can get close but not touch anything. There are also suggested guidelines for the flight paths of spacecraft overhead, to limit the chance that rocket exhaust will blow around lunar dust and damage the footprints.

None of this has any legal force. “We are hoping that whether it’s an international team or a commercial team, they would honor and recognize the value of these sites and honor these recommendations,” Kelso is quoted as saying.

It would be nice to add the site to the United Nations’ list of world heritage sites. But first the rules would need to be changed. Currently, nations can nominate only sites that are “on their territory.”

How long will the bootprints last?

Will those footprints outlive all human artefacts on Earth? With no atmosphere, perhaps only a direct meteorite strike would obliterate them. I wonder if anyone has estimated how long they will remain intact. Millions of years perhaps? There are moonquakes, but I don’t know if they are strong enough to disturb the dust imprinted by the astronauts’ boots.

By the way, "bizarre act of extraterrestrial heritage imperialism" isn’t my phrase. It comes from a blog I've looked at. I couldn't resist plagiarising it; but I fully support preserving these sites. Though the photo I've included of Buzz Aldrin saluting the US flag is, I admit, ill-suited for harnessing international support for the enterprise.

Wot! No Winterval stories!

2011-12-29T17:04:00.000Z

Winterval-hater: The Daily Mail’s
Melanie Philips

Rats! My pen was sharpened and my green ink bottle uncorked in readiness to write to the papers scorning a story under the headline Christmas cancelled in politically correct frenzy. But alas and alack no such story came to my attention.

There was no shortage last year, but I just didn’t get my letter drafted in time. I would have relied on Oliver Burkeman’s 2006 piece in The Guardian on this theme. This is where he exposed the falsehood that in a bid to appease Muslims the English city of Birmingham had renamed Christmas Winterval.

And I was all eager to quote The Daily Mail's delicious Winterval retraction. This came in the wake of yet another they’ve-cancelled-Christmas lament from columnist Melanie Philips.

The retraction appeared on 8th November: "Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham in 1997 and 1998. We are happy to make clear that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas."

Link to article in New Humanist magazine

Household tax : protesters’ fox shot?

2011-12-21T23:35:00.002Z

Protests in Kilkenny & Donegal over €100 Household Charge (RTÉ)

Has the Irish government shot the household tax protesters’ fox?

The protests are against an interim flat tax of €100. But RTÉ has today been reporting that under pressure from growing opposition, the Department of the Environment is urgently examining ways to have a "more progressive and fairer" property tax in place, possibly as early as 2013.

Figures quoted on the radio suggest the tax would be graduated from a minimum of €188 up to €3,125. This would be on houses up to €1.5 million; with even higher amounts on houses over €1.5 million.

Were this plan implemented, the €100 flat tax would apply for the year 2012 only.

This seems to me to torpedo the no-pay campaign. Yes it’s still extra taxation. And yes its purpose is to recompose bondholders for their gambling debts. But it’s going to be a whole lot harder to argue that it’s just this particular tax that should be targeted for protests.

The reason being, that there's almost universal consensus that a progressive property tax is a necessary part of a fair taxation system.

Before 1977 there was just such a progressive property tax, known as “Rates”, abolished to buy that year’s general election. There's a history here that I know only a smattering of. About how the Rates have gradually been replaced, in the teeth of protests, some more successful than others, mounted by the same people who now head the campaign against the household tax.

What little I do know I've put in this pdf file, but I'm hoping that something more comprehensive will appear soon in an op-ed somewhere.

Link to socialist party campaign “Don't register, Don't Pay!”. Note that the campaign is against water taxes as well as the household tax.

And Thursday’s Irish Times: Environment minister Hogan confirms the process of devising the new tax has been speeded up,

Foxhunting

Incidentally the existence of the expression “to shoot someone’s fox” gives the lie to those who defend fox hunting on the grounds that its a form of pest control.

Household tax campaign. Guess I'm sort of obliged to join this one

2011-12-16T01:48:00.004Z

Thursday's launch of the campaign against the new Household Charge.
Clare Daly TD, Cllr Cieran Perry and activist Eoin Ryan
in Buswells Hotel, Dublin. Photograph: Frank Miller/The Irish Times

So. The lines are being drawn. A campaign against the new Household Charge has been launched in Ireland. Takes me back to my Poll Tax protest days. In 1991 Eileen and I with millions more refused to pay the Poll Tax, and here's my attachment of earnings order when I was taken before York Magistrates Court, to pay my arrears of £188.45.

Margaret Thatcher: my part in her downfall

The Household Charge is both like and unlike the Poll Tax. Environment Minister Phil Hogan is quoted in today’s Irish Examiner as admitting it is "not an ideal or a fair system". That's because like Thatcher’s Poll Tax, it’s a flat tax, the super rich pay the same as the almost poor. But the coalition government intends it to be replaced by a graduated tax in future years. And for now it's only €2 a week. So that blunts the flat tax argument.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny is defending the household tax by saying it’s expected to raise €160 million, which will fund local authorities, including fire services, library services and water. But he lies. This is what really makes it objectionable. Because it’s actually to plug the hole left by forking out to the bankers and bondholders.

Is this the campaign we have been waiting for that will focus opposition to the bankers bailout?

Link to Irish Times article

Bosses pay too high? Then move to Cuba!

2011-12-08T23:36:00.001Z

A report has suggested that workers representatives should sit on company remuneration committees. But the idea is barking mad and if that’s what you think you should move to Cuba. So said Heather McGregor of executive recruitment firm Taylor Bennett on the BBC.

Here's a BBC Today Programme interview with John Humphrys on 22nd November, the day the report was released.

click link to play - the audio file will open up in a new tab 
or right click to save as mp3 file 

Deborah Hargreaves
chair of the High Pay Commission

It’s good knockabout stuff. Hear McGregor say there is no such thing as too much, or too little for that matter, and that the concept of fairness is for 7-year olds. While the High Pay Commission’s Deborah Hargreaves reveals that in the past 30 years we have seen the ratio between company directors and average pay stretch from a multiple of around 13 to over 100.

The background is a year long inquiry into boardroom pay which has found that excessive deals for the UK's top bosses is having a corrosive effect on the economy, for companies as well as society as a whole.

The High Pay Commission was set up by the mildly leftwing think tank Compass. Their report argues that, left unchecked, income inequality will be back at Victorian levels before long. One of the drivers of this is the runaway train of boardroom pay. Despite the financial crisis, executive pay has continued to grow at levels far in excess of inflation.

It's an argument very much in line with The Spirit Level , a must-read book that produces a wealth of evidence that inequality (not merely absolute poverty) causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives, whilst functioning as a driver of consumption and depleting the planet's resources.

Links

Here's a Guardian podcast where Deborah Hargreaves discusses her report with Guardian city editor Jill Treanor.

High Pay Commission

Heather McGregor's company

Christina Rossetti - Remember

2011-12-06T20:22:00.001Z

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

By Christina Rossetti 1850, when age 19, first publication date 1862

Listen to Eleanor Bron reading it

click link to play - the audio file will open up in a new tab 
or right click to save as mp3 file 

Christina Rossetti was the subject of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time on 1st December. Massive respect to Melvyn Bragg for devising the In Our Time format, but is it time he went? In this episode he's slightly annoying, chuckling at in-jokes that none of us understand.

Download the episode at this page; and for the contributors, blurb and further links go here.

Eleanor Bron

I muse on Frankenstein and his monster

2011-12-04T16:51:00.007Z

€1 in Mitchelstown on 28th Nov

Whiling away a spare half hour before my bus to Cork last week, l bought a battered copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in a charity shop. I decided to familiarise myself with this iconic work.

Here's what happens. The young Swiss Victor Frankenstein growing up in Geneva develops a passion for natural philosophy and chemistry and enrols as a student at the university. There he becomes consumed by the desire to discover the secret of life and after several years of research, attains the knowledge he seeks.

For months he feverishly and clandestinely fashions a creature out of old body parts and strange chemicals. One climactic night, he brings his creation to life. But the monstrosity he has made horrifies him. He flees the scene. Sickened by his disgusting deed he falls dangerously ill.

On recovery he returns to Geneva, to his family, and he hopes, to his old life. But the monster dogs his steps, and over the course of the book commits four murders. The first of these is Victor Frankenstein’s little brother. The second is when the monster cleverly contrives a miscarriage of justice so that the kind, gentle Justine, a sort of adopted cousin, is tried for the murder, condemned, and executed,

Only Victor knows of the monster’s existence, which he dare not divulge.

Overcome by grief and remorse, he flees to the Alps. Here the monster (sometimes called a dæmon, sometimes a fiend) tracks him down, and here we would expect the monster to kill him, end of book. But no, the monster whilst admitting to the murders, begs for understanding.

It emerges that the monster has previously attempted to befriend human kind but has been rebuffed due his hideous appearance, and so travels at night and hides in dark places, seeking revenge on Frankenstein. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at Victor’s little brother in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a female monster equally grotesque, to serve as his sole companion.

Creating another monster

Appalled at the prospect of creating a second monster Victor at first refuses. But the monster is eloquent and persuasive, and eventually Victor is convinced.

After many delays (reminiscent of Hamlet, perhaps) Victor secludes himself on a desolate island in Orkney and reluctantly works at his ghastly task. One night, consumed by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor perceives the monster glaring in at him through a window with a horrid grin. Alive for the first time to the awful consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation.

Whereupon the enraged monster vows revenge, and swears that he will be with Victor on his wedding night. After more adventures, and another murder (of Victor’s friend Henry) Victor returns home to Geneva, where he marries his cousin and childhood sweetheart Elizabeth. Whom, true to his word, the monster murders on their wedding night.

Like Moby Dick

Vowing to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge, Victor tracks him ever northward into the arctic ice. His obsessive pursuit puts one in mind of Captain Ahab pursuing the great white whale, a parallel Melville surely had very much in mind.

In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this critical moment, Victor Frankenstein is saved by the crew of an arctic exploration vessel, but after some days expires of exhaustion. Not however before he has told the ship's captain Walton his entire story.

Later Walton is startled to find the monster weeping over Victor’s body. To Walton the monster confides his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now his creator is dead, he too can end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die.

I've put an edited version of the book’s last four pages in this pdf file.

Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin)
1797–1851

Nested narratives

The novel’s structure is the nested narrative, like the Arabian Nights. The arctic explorer Walton’s letters to his sister back in England envelop the entire tale. Victor’s story fits inside Walton’s letters. The monster’s story fits inside Victor’s. And there's more nesting that I won't go into here.

Who is most monstrous?

Eight feet tall and hideously ugly, the monster is rejected by society. His monstrosity resides not only in his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation. One commentary I've seen suggests that there are a number of monstrous entities in the novel, of which the monster is only the most literal.

There's the dangerous knowledge that Victor employs to create the monster. And then there's Victor himself - is he a kind of monster. Ordinary on the outside, his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society, and at last he's consumed by obsessive hatred of his creation.

Finally (it says here), many critics have described the novel itself as monstrous, a stitched-together combination of different voices, texts, and tenses (see nesting above.)

A classic

Mary Shelley was only 18 when she wrote it, and in some places it shows. But what an achievement. As a metaphor for responsibility in science it’s unrivalled, although doubtless often used carelessly by people who, like me until last week, haven’t read the book. If you are so minded, you can also read a Marxist metaphor into it: Frankenstein the capitalist system, the monster the working class that capitalism summons into existence. These metaphors are not Mary Shelley's own of course. But they are there to be read, and they are why the book is a classic.

The book’s subtitle is A Modern Prometheus, in reference to the ancient Greek myth that the god Prometheus was assigned the task of creating mankind.

I googled some images to spice this post up a bit but none were satisfactory. I wonder if any of the film versions do it justice. I've not seen any, but I speculate that the answer is no. I suspect it's a book that should remain as a book. This Wikipedia link is to Frankenstein in popular culture.

Solidarity with all on strike in the UK today

2011-11-30T12:46:00.003Z

A picket at a York hospital this morning (York Press)

Public service workers are not asking for more – they just want the pension benefits they signed up for to stand.

The 19th century black anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass said:-

"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

Lowest common denominator ban declared

2011-11-25T00:38:00.009Z

Tahrir Square, 24th Nov. An injured protester wakes up.
Photograph: Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP

Any decent revolution comes in two stages roughly eight months apart, and now that Egypt is in the throes of stage 2, I'm looking at what was written earlier in the year. And I find this in The Guardian of 12th August, under the heading "The Arab Spring's Bottom Line", by Khaled Diab.

He asks why the Arab spring concentrated on political reforms, without addressing economic injustice. The strapline to his article is “You can have all the democracy in the world, but without addressing economic injustice, reforms will be hollow”.

In Egypt and Tunisia trade unions and workers were a vital driving force behind the protests, holding regular strikes and sit-ins, Diab writes. Even the 6 April youth movement, which called for the first protest of the Egyptian revolution on 25 January, was originally set up to express solidarity with textile workers. So why have demands for social justice been sidelined?

One reason, he suggests, is that in order to topple the old order, the Tunisian and Egyptian popular uprisings needed to appeal to all strata of society – young and old, rich and poor, socialist and conservative. To do this they focused on the lowest common denominator: regime change, the creation of a level political playing field and the protection of human rights.

But incompatible class interests meant that on economic issues such as pay and workers rights, there could be no consensus about how to proceed; so the once-united opposition splintered into political factions.

You can read the article here.

At this juncture I must come clean and confess I've been toying with you. This post isn’t actually about politics, it’s a rant in defence of mathematics, and against the persistent abuse of a particular mathematical term, the "lowest common denominator".

9/11 sensationalism

But first, another example. It’s a reader's letter in the London Independent on 6th September, about the glut of media commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The letter is from one Paul Harper who notes with considerable disappointment that The Independent has joined the rest of the media in commemorating the anniversary by what he calls “mindless wallowing”. A time for dignified reflection on the causes and effects of 9/11 has been squandered in favour of “sensationalist ratings-grabbing specials. It is lowest common denominator bottom-feeding journalism feeding off crocodile tears of fake emotion. … The media should be ashamed of itself.”

Now I ask: what do Khaled Diab and Paul Harper mean with this expression "lowest common denominator"?

In the piece about the Arab Spring, it appears to mean something like “the only issue shared by the disparate opposition groups and classes”. (I'll return to this example at the end).

In the letter about the 9/11 commemorations, it appears to mean something like “the lowest of the low”; little more than a piece of vulgar abuse, in fact.

An elegant mathematical procedure

I wonder if they teach finding the lowest common denominator in school maths these days. It’s a device you need when adding or subtracting fractions. Suppose you want to do the following sum:-

4/15 + 5/9

Outside of a classroom it’s actually quite unlikely that you would want to do this, you would express the amounts as decimals instead. But just as a mental exercise, say we do wish to add 4/15 and 5/9, how do we do it? We express both fractions with a common denominator; preferably the lowest common denominator.

This will neatly lead you to the answer, which is 37/45.

In this answer, 45 is the lowest common denominator. It’s an elegant procedure, and it's all in this pdf file in case you want to see how it works.

My point at the moment is this.

How, exactly, is this piece of maths connected to the phrase "lowest common denominator" as used by journalists, politicians, business pundits and letters to the editor? Do these people understand the above procedure?

I suspect they do not.

Moreover, suppose we skip the maths, and just for the time being take my word for it that 45 actually is the lowest common denominator of 4/15 and 5/9. What do we notice about this number 45?

That it's larger than any number we started with. So the lowest common denominator isn't even a low number. It’s a high number. Hah!

Moreover the lowest common denominator is also the best common denominator. Other common denominators can be used, but none is as neat as the lowest common denominator.

Yet those who employ the phrase lazily convey the impression that the lowest common denominator is a riffraff number, a base, degraded species of entity.

Anathema

Consequently I declare "lowest common denominator" the third most annoying expression in the English language, I anathematise it and ban it altogether.

For an epilogue, let me just return to my first example, from The Guardian. Whilst in most instances I've come across, "lowest common denominator" is used lazily, often (as in the readers letter about 9/11) as a stand-in for vulgar abuse, such may not be the case here.

In the piece about the Arab Spring, we've noted that "lowest common denominator" appears to mean something like “the only issue shared by the disparate opposition groups and classes”. I thinks it’s fair to deduce therefore that the writer, Khaled Diab, does perhaps have in mind the phrase's actual mathematical meaning. If he's genuinely keen on a mathematical metaphor, then I would suggest the apt one to use is highest common factor. (As in 15 is the highest common factor of 30 and 45).

Thus he could have written “To do this they focused on their highest common factor: regime change, the creation of a level political playing field and the protection of human rights.” I don’t necessarily recommend this. But it works a whole lot better than lowest common denominator.

I could multiply examples but it would become tedious. Woody Allen is fond of using “lowest common denominator” about Hollywood, and I've found an example in the writing of Tony Cliff, late guru of the SWP. See this pdf file if interested.

An Irish solution to an Irish problem

2011-11-22T14:26:00.005Z

Ajai Chopra - an embarrassed axeman

I must be slow on the uptake as I've only just grasped that whenever this cliché of Irish journalism is used, it is with ironic intent.

Back in April (how did I miss this one?) IMF axeman Ajai Chopra, discomforted himself by using the phrase when addressing a press conference to spin the bailout as good for Ireland.

Here's now the Irish Independent made sport with the innocent Mr Chopra on Saturday April 16th under the headline “Chopra's cock-up leaves him open to having the Michael extracted”.

Maybe Ajai Chopra had read or heard the phrase somewhere, and thought it had an elegant, simple ring to it. Moreover, it sounded sort of complimentary, and the IMF bigwig is a very polite pooh bah anyway.

And it's a tough task trying to convince the beleaguered citizenry of Ireland that the bailout is a Good Thing and doesn't represent the overthrow of democracy, and sure not to worry as we'll get our sovereignty back in a few years.

And so Ajai carefully explained it to the rows of media crammed into the Troika's press conference.

"This programme is a lifeline for Ireland," he said in his slightly plummy accent. And then he paused before delivering his new soundbite.

"It represents an Irish solution to Irish problems."

He looked a bit perplexed as titters and sniggers and chuckles rose from the locals massed in front of him.

Read the whole article

What Mr Chopra didn’t know, and nor did I but I do now, and so I guess does he, is that this term is associated with condoms.

And with any official response to a controversial issue that is timid, half-baked, expedient, an unsatisfactory compromise that sidesteps the fundamental issue.

Charlie Haughey - unembarrassed

For this state of linguistic affairs we have Charlie Haughey to thank. In 1979 when health minister, he proclaimed his family planning Bill as an “Irish solution to an Irish problem”.

The Irish problem was that it was illegal to import contraceptives into Ireland but legal to use them.

Illegal to import, due to a 1935 law which had been written to conform to Catholic teaching.

Legal to use, due to campaigning by the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, their 1971 “Contraceptive Train”, and a 1973 landmark legal case.

The Irish solution was to introduce an Act which laid down that contraceptives would only be available from pharmacies on the presentation of a valid doctor’s prescription. It did not say that the person receiving the contraceptive had to be married; only that “the person is seeking the contraceptive, bona fide, for family planning purposes”.

For more about the Irish Womens Liberation Movement and the Contraceptive Train, here's a personal account from Mary Maher, a journalist with The Irish Times, and a founder member of the IWLM. The link includes a report from the Irish Times archives on the contraceptive train.

This pdf file contains some historical background to Charlie Haughey’s Irish solution remark.

I've also posted about Garret Fitzgerald's input into these matters.

By the way, the Irish Independent article concludes:

On reflection, perhaps Ajai's use of the phrase "an Irish solution to an Irish problem" was particularly apt. Sure the country is screwed anyway.

Of Swedes and turnips

2011-11-17T15:15:00.007Z

Here’s a tasty dish I enjoyed while staying with my cousin in Stockholm last week. Root vegetable gratin. Various root veg including potatoes, carrots, swede, turnip, also celery, onions, leeks. Slice thin and bake with cream and a vegetable stock cube in a shallow dish.

The conversation at table turned to the English word swede, and whether it’s connected in any way with Sweden. Such has occasionally been suggested to me in a spirit of fun, but I had always supposed that the similarity between the name of my mother’s native land and a big turnip was mere coincidence.

Not so, it seems. My Shorter Oxford Dictionary tells me that Swede has the following three meanings:

(1) a native of Sweden (first use 1614)

(2) a Swedish ship (rare, first use 1799) and

(3) a large variety of turnip with yellow flesh introduced from Sweden in 1781-2 (first use 1812, earlier known as Swedish turnip).

So “carrots, swede, turnip” is incorrect. It ought to be “carrots, Swede, turnip”. However since I write “rugby ball” and not “Rugby ball” I'll stick to swede for what I eat and Swede for what I half am.

If the date of introduction, 1781-2, is right that would fit in with the 18th century agricultural improvement drive in Britain. But Wikipedia suggests an earlier date.

The swede originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip, something that would I imagine be readily apparent to anyone that’s actually grown them, which I haven’t. The Swedish for swede is kålrot (cabbage root).

Wikipedia says that in North America the common term for the plant is “rutabaga”, derived from the old Swedish word “rotabagge”, root bag.

(Subsequent note 19th Nov. I cooked the dish last night but not a complete success. I thought crème fraisch might be a good idea but it wasn't. More liquid needed, and a slow oven.)

So obvious we all thought it was silly to suggest it

2011-11-05T19:02:00.001Z

Graphic showing putative extrasolar planet
with cities, a moon, and partially eclipsed star

Inspect extrasolar planets for the lights of alien cities … that’s the way to find ET.

Such a stupid idea we would all be embarrassed to mention it. Unless you're a Harvard scientist that is. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights. "Looking for alien cities would be a long shot, but wouldn't require extra resources. And if we succeed, it would change our perception of our place in the universe," said Loeb.

Hitherto, in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses.

See City Lights Could Reveal E.T. Civilization (press release, Thursday Nov 3, from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics).

That extrasolar planets can be detected at such distances against the glare of the parent start is stupendous enough, without seeing lights from cities. But the guy’s from Harvard, so we presume he knows what he's talking about.

I ought to add that the graphic is misleading in one respect. We might infer from it that astronomers can train their telescopes on an extrasolar planet and spot the city lights just as shown. That’s not what is proposed, nor, I guess, would it be possible with any foreseeable technology. Astronomers don’t actually “see” extrasolar planets in this fashion, they “read” them from strings of data, and what's proposed by the two professors is that by analysing the light emitted from a planet, they could easily distinguish artificial light from starlight, by its different signature of wavelengths.

Vote NO in the Irish referendums

2011-10-25T14:47:00.005+01:00

I'll miss the referendum and presidential votes on Thursday as I'm in England. I strongly recommend a no vote in both referendums. As to the president I can't get excited about this; but I'm dumbfounded that a Fianna Fáil businessman should be the frontrunner. And I say that without having followed yesterday's latest brown envelope story. Truly baffling. Michael D Higgins seems a decent cove. Sinn Fein is hard to take seriously as a leftwing party in view of its record in the North. But most important, the interest in this race is really displacement activity. The office has little role other than the important one of checking that legislation conforms to the constitution and seeking a Supreme Court ruling in cases of doubt.

So now about the two constitutional changes. The parliamentary enquires clause will open the door to McCarthy-esque kangaroo courts. Ah I hear you say it’s only bankers and bishops who will have their collars felt. But then I ask you to consider that to erode civil liberties in the hope that it doesn’t mean me it means someone else is a shortsighted policy.

The constitutional change to allow reductions in judges’ pay is a hard one to argue against but I'm going to anyway. There are good reasons for the constitution prohibiting the government from reducing judges pay and the conditions in the proposed clause are worthless. It would allow the government a lever over the judiciary and so fuzz the separation of powers.

Off to the airport now so no time to give you any links or reasoned arguments to back up my wild assertions. Both referendums will pass with a substantial majority so if you have an interest in Irish politics you’ll just have to bookmark this post and make a diary note to come back to it in 5 years time to see if I was right.

Oh, here's a link which, being signed by barristers including the erstwhile leader of one of the most rightwing parties Ireland has ever had, Michael McDowell, is a slight embarrassment to me, bit it’s the best I can do for now.

My cousin

2011-10-23T21:01:00.001+01:00

I've been quiet for a fortnight, since I heard a cousin of mine died in Sweden. He was a year older then me, and it was sudden and unexpected. I shall attend the funeral in Stockholm on 8th November. Perhaps cousins get to mean more to you as you get older. But today I feel in the mood again and here are a couple of contributions, one on the cleansing of the temple, the other about a divinity shaping our ends.

A divinity that shapes our ends

2011-10-23T21:00:00.019+01:00

New Cambridge Shakespeare (not the 1936 edition)

Hamlet Act 5, Scene 2.

… and that should teach us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

Hamlet tells Horatio how on the ship to England he rashly ventured from his cabin at night and found the letter that would have sealed his fate, enabling him to substitute a forgery, so that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz went to their deaths instead of him.

It seems there's a famous footnote to these lines in John Dover Wilson's 1936 Cambridge edition of Hamlet. A gentleman named Malleson (whose son later mentioned this in a letter to Wilson) happened on a craftsman and his mate making fence posts, and the craftsman told him :-

"He rough-hews them and I shape their ends".

Yes really.

It appeared in The Guardian correspondence page on the who-wrote-Shakespeare theme, as evidence that whoever did was familiar with labourer’s talk. I shall get hold of Dover Wilson's 1936 Hamlet when I get the chance and look the note up, to see what he makes of it.

False memory syndrome

Theatre director Trevor Nunn believes Shakespeare really did write Shakespeare's plays, and in The Guardian on Friday 14 October he relates that many years ago an actor friend of his was walking down a country lane in Warwickshire. Passing two men at work hedging, he stopped and asked, what are you two doing? To which one of them replied, "It's quite simple, I rough-hew them and he shapes their ends."

An instance of false memory, perhaps. Probably (as Hugo Barnacle points out in a reader’s letter on 22 October) Trevor Nunn is actually recalling the Dover Wilson note of 1936, yet really believes that he talked to an “actor friend”, who met two Warwickshire labourers hedging, one of whom uttered a sentence about rough-hewing and the shaping of ends.

In case you want to follow the discussion about who did write Hamlet (which personally I don’t) here's a link to the Trevor Nunn interview in The Guardian.

Will Shakespeare’s acting pals who all knew him well, plus Ben Jonson, were in no doubt who wrote the plays, and they published them after Will’s death. That they could all have been mistaken beggars belief.

Church pathetic not prophetic

2011-10-23T21:00:00.010+01:00

Casting out the money changers by Giotto, 14th century (Wikipedia)

In yesterday’s Guardian Zoe Williams derides St Pauls cathedral, for closing its doors in the face of London's anti-capitalism protest. A Church of England vicar told her why he supports the protesters:-

" In the gospels, Jesus makes a courageous and subversive stand against the corruption of the powers that be, and against the implicit assumption that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. You feel Jesus's anger in his protest, which actually wasn't that peaceful. "

He's referring to Jesus’s own anti-capitalism protest in the Temple. It’s the only account of Jesus using physical force in any of the gospels, and occurs in all four them.

In this episode Jesus and his disciples travel to Jerusalem for Passover, where he expels the money changers from the Temple, accusing them of making it a den of thieves through their commercial activities. In doing so he stood in the tradition of Old Testament prophets railing against the rich’s treatment of the poor. Zoe Williams suggest it will sadden Christians even more than atheists which side the cathedral came down on.

Any dominant class rules by persuading a submissive population that existing arrangements are necessary, right and inevitable. Occupy Wall Street and the similar protests in numerous cities worldwide pose the question: oh yeah, who says?

Getting things by their right names, as the Chinese say

2011-09-29T22:00:00.010+01:00

The first step to wisdom, as the Chinese say, is getting things by their right names. (E O Wilson, Consilience, 1998, p 2)

What do you do about alleged Chinese proverbs? Try to source them and discard them if they prove phoney?

“May you live in interesting times”, the supposed Chinese curse, is often asserted to be phoney, although according to this Wikipedia article the argument isn't all on one side. The fact is, that whether or not it’s ever been a Chinese curse, it’s certainly become an English saying, of which the first use known to the Wikipedia contributor was by Robert F. Kennedy in 1966. Actually the more I think about it, the less plausible it is that living in interesting times is an idiom that can be freely exchanged between Chinese and English.

Which brings us back to The first step to wisdom is getting things by their right names. Well, I like it. So let’s just say that the first step to wisdom, as E O Wilson says the Chinese say, is getting things by their right names, and leave it at that. Let's not concern ourselves with whether it really is ancient Chinese wisdom.

E O Wilson in 2007, age 78

Of course we need to be alive to the possibility that E O Wilson is simply fooling with us. He could have opted for “the start of any philosophical discussion must be correct terminology”, which would have been true but unmemorable. He could have said “The first step to wisdom is getting things by their right names”, which has a zing but might have sounded pretentious. Throwing in “as the Chinese say” may be nothing more than a device for disclaiming wisdom for himself and displacing it to long ago and far away.

I'm told by the way (see this review for example) that were I to read to the end of E O Wilson's book, I may not like it. Be that as it may, to find a pearl on page 2 isn't bad going.

Djado, ruined Saharan slave city

2011-09-27T15:22:00.010+01:00

The ruined city of Djado, with nomadic women gathered in the foreground. October 1989. (Wikipedia)

Seem to have dwelt on old ruins quite a bit lately. Here's something I'd never heard of. Djado is a ruined city sticking up from the Djado Plateau in the Sahara, in north eastern Niger. It is known for its cave art (often of large mammals long since absent from the area), but is now largely uninhabited, with abandoned towns and forts visible.

Today Niger is one of the most undeveloped and poorest countries in the world, recently coming to international prominence due to the story that Gaddafi had escaped there. The city of Djado is thought to have developed as a station on a slave-trading route between Niger and Libya, long before Europeans arrived. (I'm not sure when that was, 16th century?)

Surrounded by malarial swamps, the dwellings are now the abode of scorpions and snakes.

The building material is adobe, which is made from sand, clay, water, blended with some kind of fibrous or organic material (sticks, straw, and/or manure).

Google map

Source: The Guardian 8.9.11 and Wikipedia. Can't find anything in online Britannica.

Massive Roman shipyard found

2011-09-23T21:27:00.007+01:00

Like the look of this one. Archaeologists think they have found an ancient shipyard about 20 miles (32km) from Rome, at Portus. Ships for the Roman empire were built or repaired and maintained there, they think. This is definitely a story to keep an eye on, as I presume excavations are ongoing, and more finds will come to light.

It's in a press release dated yesterday. So far archaeologists have excavated the remains of a building five storeys high. It’s said to date from about 117 AD, The illustration is a computer graphic reconstruction imagining this as a shipyard building, with ships under construction. They think it was used for ships that traversed the Mediterranean. A tiny figure of a workman gives the scale. (Image credit: University of Southampton.)

The archaeologists believe it had some form of imperial connection and might have been used for a base for galleys that transported emperors, such as Hadrian, across the empire. But so far as I can tell there's no direct evidence ships were actually built there. Professor Simon Keay of the University of Southampton is quoted as saying "We need to stress there is no evidence yet of ramps which may have been needed to launch newly constructed ships."

Portus was a crucial trade gateway linking Rome to the Mediterranean throughout the Roman period.

Tacks have been found which would have been used to nail lead on to the hulls of ships inside one of the bays. They hope to dig down and find more evidence of the shipbuilding use of the site.

Afterlife - and a note of caution

Whist the hypothetical reconstruction is fascinating, what I find even more fascinating about ancient structures is their after-life. The Southampton University press release says the building underwent many changes since its construction in the time of the Emperor Trajan, AD 98-117. Excavation within one of the bays has revealed that its use changed, once 90 years into its life with the construction of a series of inner partition walls, and then again in the late 5th century AD when changes were made to allow the storage of grain. In the early to mid-6th century AD, parts of the building were systematically demolished, probably as a defensive measure during wars between the Byzantines and Ostrogoths, AD 535-553.

A note of caution though – whilst we may like to read history forwards, archaeologists have to read it backwards. First they found the grain store, then they surmised an earlier use as a shipyard. Prof Keay says, and note his words carefully:

“At first we thought this large rectangular building was used as a warehouse, but our latest excavation has uncovered evidence that there may have been another, earlier use, connected to the building and maintenance of ships. Few Roman Imperial shipyards have been discovered and, if our identification is correct, this would be the largest of its kind in Italy or the Mediterranean.”

A good reason to do reconstructions on a computer rather than on the ground. See my post on the Bamiyan Buddhas and whether they should they be left as rubble.

(Incidentally, does this imply even larger Roman shipyards have been found elsewhere I wonder?)

Eating from supermarket waste bins – disgusting!

2011-09-20T22:06:00.022+01:00

What a freegan eats. Image credit: Tristram Stuart

I was musing on food waste. Well actually I was musing on Al Capone, and that led me to food waste. And now to Tristram Stuart, who's a fregan, he takes food out of waste bins. The giant bins that lurk in the loading bays behind supermarkets. Some people find this disgusting. But, he says, the really disgusting thing is that good food is put there in the first place. He's written a book Waste, and in July 2009 he talked to Andrew Marr about it on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.

If you're in the UK, it's here on BBC iPlayer. You’ll find Tristram 21 minutes into the programme. If that doesn’t work for you, here’s a clip I've made. The whole clip is 20 minutes, of which the first half is Tristram, and the rest is David Haslam on his book Fat, Gluttony and Sloth.

Or you can see Tristram on this Youtube clip, interviewed by David Frost on Al-Jazeera's Frost over the World, 2 Oct 2009 (9.30 minutes into the programme).

A couple more links may be of interest. Jonathan Bloom is an American who writes about food waste. This is his blog. He is the author of American Wasteland - how America throws away nearly half of its food, and what we can do about it.

He welcomes the new UK regulations, see next post on Al Capone (though my understanding is that they are not regulations, just unenforceable guidance.)

Finally here's Wikipedia on food waste

Did Al Capone invent sell-by dates and was that a good or bad thing?

2011-09-18T00:19:00.022+01:00

A flurry in social media about Al Capone pioneering sell-by dates. On milk. It seems Billy Connolly revealed this fact a few days ago on his new Route 66 programme on ITV.

There's a move in the UK to dispense with sell-by dates, and I imagine this is what prompted Billy Connolly to look into the subject. Studies have shown that sell-buy and eat-by dates contribute to the horrendous waste of food in the West. I used to suspect them to be the invention of corporate lawyers rather than nutritionists.

However it seems it was neither, but actually Al Capone in good guy mode.

Here's a story discussing food expiration dates and crediting Capone with introducing them. It’s the website of something called Times News Inc. I can't vouch for it. It says that whilst the Federal government viewed Capone as a gangster, to many people in his adopted city of Chicago, he was a modern-day Robin Hood. He was the first person to open a soup kitchen to feed the poor during the Depression, the article claims. At a time of 25% unemployment, Capone's kitchens served three meals a day to ensure that everyone who had lost a job could get a meal. And he even served the food out himself.

The Time Magazine cover depicting Alphonse “Scarface” Capone was March 24, 1930, and the story was his release from prison under a special Governor’s order.

As to eat-by dates, treat these as a rough guide only. Nature supplied us with noses, we should use them. For more see this story in the London Independent, 16th September. It says supermarkets oppose a new date labelling regime and claim it will increase and not reduce food wastage.

Bamiyan Buddhas - should they be left as rubble?

2011-09-14T00:22:00.007+01:00

The taller of the two Buddhas of Bamiyan in 1976
(Wikipedia)

A story on NPR about the broken Afghan Buddhas. They are being put back together following destruction by the Taliban ten years ago. The work is being done by UNESCO (UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.)

Audio clip (4 mins) and transcript.

A human rights activist is interviewed who says the rubble should be left where it lies, to show the destructive force of religious fanaticism. The remade Buddhas are not history he says. History is the destroyed Buddhas.

He has a point. Those Buddhas no longer exist. When the reconstruction work is finished, what we shall be looking at is not the Buddhas, but something else.

History

The Buddhas overlook the Bamiyan valley in central Afghanistan, and indeed had already been doing so for several centuries when Islam reached the region, having been built in 507 CE, and 554 CE. But the Taliban, fanatical about eliminating everything they considered un-Islamic, declared they were "idols". In March 2001, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, the statues were dynamited.

One Buddha stood nearly 180 feet tall and the other about 120 feet (55 and 37 metres).

The main bodies were hewn directly from the sandstone cliffs, but details were modelled in mud mixed with straw, coated with stucco. This coating, practically all of which was worn away long ago, was painted to enhance the expressions of the faces, hands and folds of the robes.

It is believed that the upper parts of the faces were made from great wooden masks or casts. Rows of holes (some visible in the photograph) were slots that held wooden pegs to support the outer stucco.

The cliffs are at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,202 ft).

This Newsweek article from December 2001 is worth reading for a detailed account of the demolition, and opposition amongst local Afghanis.

Archaeology and restoration - some thoughts

So. Back to this question of restoring them. It’s a thorny one for archaeologists. Many these days (well, the two I've discussed it with) are disinclined to reconstruct ancient sites. One told me that sometimes people restore things as they think they would have looked originally, and in some cases they end up resembling a set for a Hollywood movie. (He didn’t say if he meant New Grange. See New Grange restored all wrong?)

My friend John says : “the past is composed of many alternative narratives but a reconstruction offers one point of view, it offers no alternatives, so any single reconstruction will be misleading. I say leave it to the imagineers at Disney, and leave the rest of us to make our own reconstructions!”

When restoration does take place, it’s considered essential to mark where what survives ends and where the restoration begins. Archaeologists feel very strongly about this, architects do not, commented one wryly.

Other examples of controversial restoration are Skellig Michael in Co Kerry and Knossos in Crete.

The Buddhas on the other hand seem to raise different considerations. The reconstruction, so far as I can ascertain, is not intended to bring them back to their original state, just to how they were before 2001. And there's no doubt what they looked like then, there's photographic evidence and very precise measurements. But then there's this: they were carved in the name of religion, and they were destroyed in the name of religion. That’s history. Like the empty niches in medieval English churches, originally filled with statues, which were smashed in the Reformation.

Above us only sky

2011-09-10T12:39:00.002+01:00

I hereby announce the winner of the best corporate motto competition. Liverpool John Lennon Airport for “Above us only sky”. Can’t award any points in the best logo competition however.

(Here's the lyric if you want reminding)

Cameron, the Bullingdon Club and the riots

2011-09-04T15:33:00.007+01:00

Hear Cameron on BBC's Today programme on Friday. Presenter Evan Davies asked Cameron whether there was any parallel between the antics of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club of which Cameron was a member, and last month's riots.

ED : “Did you witness stuff at the Bullingdon Club … did you see people throwing things through windows, smashing up restaurants … ?”

DC : “No I didn’t. We all do stupid things …”

ED : “It’s all written about as a very violent group.”

DC : “… when we’re young. And I think that’s clear. But I think what we saw in terms of the riots was actually very well organised in many cases … ”

ED : “Well, the Bullingdon Club was well organised.”

DC : “ … looting and stealing a thieving. We have to react very clearly to that.”

Ugly cigarette packs - watch this one get dirty

2011-09-04T13:52:00.012+01:00

Here's a story that’s going to be huge. Australia plans to force tobacco companies to use plain packaging carrying graphic health warnings on all cigarette packages. Big tobacco considers it’s fighting for its life on this one.

We've seen death threats against climate scientists in Australia. I wonder if that’s the sort of thing we can expect. Watch out also for links between lobbyists for tobacco and for climate change denial.

Under the Australian law, colours, brands, logos and promotional text on cigarette packets will all be banned. It will be a world first and is described by both supporters and opponents as the most draconian measure yet to reduce tobacco sales. The implementation date is next July.

I recommend “Ugly cigarette packs”, an Australian radio programme in the Background Briefing series.

The Australian law isn't in place yet. Their parliament has passed two bills, steered through by Health Minister Nicola Roxon. But there are more constitutional steps to go through yet before this becomes law, and I can’t tell you any more about the process.

Law may come to the UK

The UK government is to launch, within the next few months, an official consultation on a ban on promotional cigarette packaging. This is the background to tobacco giant Philip Morris demanding access to Stirling University’s research into the smoking habits and attitudes of teenagers.

The tobacco companies are threatening to use World Trade Origination rules to sue Australia for infringing intellectual property rights, hoping to spend significant amount of money in the courts and whack Australia with a huge compensation bill. But they won't be stopping at legal action, just you watch.

PS I've heard the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan goes one step further - becoming a smoke free nation. Not entirely sure that that means.

Here's another recent story (London Independent Saturday, 3 September) :
Smoke and mirrors: how the tobacco industry hides behind lobbyists

The day I met a famous man

2011-09-03T13:55:00.014+01:00

Now then where was I. Pondering Chou En Lai not having said that it was too soon to assess the impact of the French Revolution.

This led my thoughts to the great antiquity of Chinese civilisation and to gunpowder, printing, and the magnetic compass. Early in the 17th century the English scientist Francis Bacon made the cogent observation that those three key inventions distinguished his modern world from the ancient world. Whilst to Bacon the origins of each were obscure, the fact is, all three came from China.

This was unearthed by the Cambridge scholar Joseph Needham, who found also that the stirrup, chains and chain drives, suspension bridges, canals with lock gates, blast furnaces, wheelbarrows, toilet paper, playing cards, kites, inoculation, chess, and the accurate establishment of π were all invented in China. Not to mention porcelain and silk.

The Needham Question

Joseph Needham - dating I suppose
from around the time I met him
(Needham Research Institute)

All this prompts the question, how come modern science and technology developed in Europe, when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? That’s the Needham Question; something I first came across 5 years ago thanks to BBC's In Our Time.

I met Joseph Needham briefly in 1971. He must have been 70 at the time, and was Master of Caius College, Cambridge. A lifelong Marxist, he had written me a letter of support and encouragement while I was in prison for the Garden House affair, and I called to thank him in the splendour of the Master’s Lodge. At the time I had little idea that he was a colossus in his field. Nor indeed what his field was. I can go further. I can say that while I was at Cambridge I had little idea altogether. What a waste when I think back on it.

For three years (minus one term spent elsewhere) there I was in the midst of a buzz of intellectual activity that has few parallels: and how did I use the time? Stuck to my courses of study that’s what (English literature at first, then 19th and 20th century history). And punted on the river. And yes, attended a demo. I never even visited Ely Cathedral for heavens sake. Actually it’s worse. I don’t remember visiting King’s College Chapel. And I could see it every morning when I got up, 300 yards from my window. It’s truly scandalous.

(I did see some films though, must wrack my brains for them sometime.)

All this came back to me a few years ago when I attended a course of lectures at University College Cork on science and society. The lectures were compulsory for humanities undergraduates. As each lecture ended the students clapped their notebooks shut and rushed for the exits, whereupon I and a post-graduate law student by the name of Noel, the only ones not really meant to be there, would nip down to the front and importune the lecturer with questions sometimes for up to half an hour.

Truly education is wasted on the young.

Nowadays, to find this sort of stuff, I have an hour’s bus ride and a half hour walk to get to UCC. Back then, I was in the thick of it, yet oblivious.

But I digress. What's the Needham Answer? Well there are several. The one that always seems to come to the top of the list is that in medieval and modern Europe, there were many competing élites. Whereas in China, there was just the emperor. A crucial consequence of this seems to be that Europe and not China sent out the voyages of discovery. Then there's glass. Glass is essential to scientific experiments and observations. By an accident of history, the Chinese failed to produce it. And whilst the Chinese invented stuff, they weren't interested in scientific enquiry for its own sake. This ultimately held them back.

Finally, by cruel irony, the printing press, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass had a huge impact on Europe precisely because they burst suddenly and disruptively on to the European scene; by contrast, their adoption in China was gradual, so less disruptive, and so less of a spur to creativity, due to being invented there.

I've elaborated on this list if you're interested.

Resources

An edition of In Our Time in October 2006 on China and The Needham Question.

"The man who unveiled China", an essay by Simon Winchester. The strapline runs “An English biochemist single-handedly changed the West’s perception of China, revealing its past scientific glories and predicting more to come.” Appeared in Nature 24.7.08. 3 pages

If that's too long, try these notes about Needham (1 page)

The Needham Research Institute, Cambridge

Can't say fairer than that

2011-09-01T20:27:00.013+01:00

Here’s the best joke from the Edinburgh Fringe, widely reported on 25th August.

I needed a password 8 characters long, so I chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

No I don’t think so either. We have Nick Helm to thank for that one, pictured. The prize was awarded by somebody or something named Dave. Here's a better one from BBC sports correspondent Gary Richardson who came on air on the Today programme immediately after this item.

A man went to the doctor and said I need speech therapy, I'm having trouble with my F’s and my T’s.

Doctor : You can't say fairer than that!

A couple of things to say about these jokes. Firstly, they have a common feature, namely each depends on the absence of speech marks around the operative phrase. Secondly, in the doctor joke, why did a man go to the doctor? Would it be better to say a patient or even a woman? No it wouldn't, imho. This really is an occasion where it’s better to be politically incorrect. Anything else distracts from the joke.

Chou En Lai on the French Revolution : Did he say it's too soon to tell?

2011-08-24T09:32:00.002+01:00

Nixon with Chou en Lai in February 1972 - taken for all I know in the
walled garden (Encylopedia Britannica)

It is said that Chou En Lai, asked to assess the impact of the French Revolution, replied:

"It's too soon to tell."

Not according to Nixon’s interpreter, the American diplomat Chas Freeman, who has recently spoken about this. But before we see what Freeman had to say, let’s have a look at the story as it’s usually told.

Legend has it that, while preparing Richard Nixon for his historic visit to China in 1972, Henry Kissinger mentioned that Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai was an avid student of French history. During his trip, Nixon met with Chou in the walled garden of the Forbidden City. As they walked slowly around the lily ponds, Nixon remembered Kissinger's comment. To break the ice, he asked Chou what he thought had been the impact of the French revolution on western civilization. Chou En-Lai considered the question for a few moments. Finally, he turned to Nixon and replied, "The impact of the French revolution on western civilization - too early to tell."

It seems this shows up in a few different versions. Sometimes it's said to Kissinger, sometimes, as related above, to Nixon, and sometimes a full twenty years earlier to someone else. So it looks, or looked, like a good guess that Chou En Lai did actually say this, though precisely when, or to whom, isn't clear.

Chou’s answer has become a frequently deployed cliché, used as evidence of Chinese leaders' sage, patient, and far-sighted ways, in contrast to impatient westerners.

But now up pipes Chas Freeman and kills off this cosy anecdote. Here's what he says happened.

Chou and Nixon did indeed converse about events in France. But whilst Nixon’s question referred to the Revolution of 1789, Chou’s reply referred to les évenéments of 1968 – the Paris student riots and sit-ins just three years before.

It seems this all came out at a seminar in Washington (in early June, I surmise) to mark the publication of Kissinger’s book, On China. Chas Freeman is reported to have said “I distinctly remember the exchange. There was a misunderstanding that was too delicious to invite correction”; also that Chou’s misconstrued comment was “one of those convenient misunderstandings that never gets corrected”. Moreover that this probably occurred over lunch or dinner, during a discussion about revolutions that had succeeded and failed; not in the walled garden.

He said Chou had been confused when asked about the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, since “these were exactly the kinds of terms used by the students to describe what they were up to in 1968 and that is how Chou understood them.”

Just a 300-year interlude

I'm partly sorry this story has been debunked. That the Chinese take a long view of history may be both a cliché and actually true, even if the Nixon/Chou story can no longer be cited as an instance of it.

As an example of short- and long-term historical perspectives, let's note that in the West, China’s emerging economic dominance is surprising and disturbing. To the Chinese on the other hand, it’s wholly unsurprising. Through most of recorded history their country has been the world’s foremost economic power; there’s been a 300-year interlude, that’s all.

As to the effect of the French Revolution, this event brought about the rise of the nation state and was the precursor of the Russian revolution, and the Chinese revolution, and arguably of the First World War (and thereby also the Second World War). Who can say what the long term consequences of all that is? Chou’s answer, the answer we now have to believe he never gave, was quite apposite.

China’s long predominance in world history prompts the question, why did modern science and technology develop in Europe, when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? It’s known as the Needham Question … but here I'll stop ... more another day.

Sources:
Financial Times, 10th June (restricted access)
Media myth alert - blog by W Joseph Campbell

Riots: More politics than I thought

2011-08-19T23:27:00.004+01:00

Have just come across this article in last Saturday's Irish Examiner (13th Aug), by Mohammed Abbas, a Reuters journalist writing from London.

‘This law and order is dishonest. I get stopped and searched. You won’t’

There's more politics in here than I thought. Mohammed Abbas talked to some rioters in Hackney, and here are a few quotes:-

"The looting was done, not just because they can’t afford the stuff, it was done to show they just don’t give a shit... We’re here and not going away."

"It’s like the old days. It’s bringing the community spirit back. Even though it’s a sad way to do it, it’s bringing the community together."

"But if the riots kick off again, I’m going. It’s history, it’s a revolution."

"I loved Hackney during the riot. I loved every minute of it. It was great to see the people coming together to show the authorities that they cannot just come out here bullying."

Giving rioting a bad name

2011-08-18T14:43:00.017+01:00

‘If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.’ - Malcolm X

First of all: you can hold disparate opinions about the riots if you want to. I can say that the causes of the riots are rampant consumerism, vast and rapidly increasing inequality, and thousands of lives without hope. And I can say that the looting perpetrated by the rioters was an amateurish affair compared to the industrial scale looting perpetrated year after year by bankers. Yet at the same time I can also say I should take it a deep personal failure if any grandchild of mine was mixed up in most of what I've seen on the screen and read about. I can say that some of the rioters were the scum of the earth. I can also pose the question: how did they come to be this way? All those things I can think simultaneously.

Yes. What happened in London and elsewhere in England has given rioting a bad name. The very word riot implies some sort of political consciousness which was notably absent. Not wholly so though. I did see one looter say to a reporter who challenged him ”these big shops can afford it”. But that doesn’t excuse indiscriminate (indiscriminate is the operative word here) looting, arson and violence.

The Spirit Level

If you haven't read The Spirit Level you should. It produces a wealth of evidence that inequality (not merely absolute poverty) causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives, whilst functioning as a driver of consumption and depleting the planet's resources.

The full title is The Spirit Level - Why equality is better for everyone, 2009, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Cameron can declare war on gangs but he needs to lose his attitude first. If gangs didn’t serve a purpose they wouldn't exist. He needs to work out what their purpose is. And why that purpose is served by gangs and not by more socially useful organisations such as work, trade unions, political parties, churches, youth clubs and the like.

Who were the rioters?

A few extracts from the newspapers.

From The Guardian Wednesday 10 August. “Who are the rioters? Young men from poor areas; but that's not the full story”. Paul Lewis and James Harkin reported that the crowds involved in violence and looting are drawn from a complex mix of social and racial backgrounds. As Lewis and Harkin followed a group of looters who had just finished ransacking a pawnbroker's, and had started cleaning out a local fashion boutique, they witnessed an angry young black woman berating one of the looters.

" ‘You're taking the piss, man. That woman hand-stitches everything, she's built that shop up from nothing. It's like stealing from your mum.’ A girl holding a looted wedding dress smiled sheepishly, stuck for anything to say. ”

The context suggests the angry young black woman was herself a looter, though the story doesn’t say.

Terry Prone had a piece in the Irish Examiner 15th August “No easy answers as to why ordinary people were stirred into looting”. She mentions two cases that came to court. The youngest of the looters captured was an 11-year-old who had stolen a trash can. It might have been a wheelie bin. Or it might have been a static garbage container. The details didn’t come out in court. All that came out in evidence was that he had stolen this trash can. Outside the court, his mother turned to him and asked him the lethal simple question, to which she got no answer: “Why?”

The other case Terry Prone mentions was an aspirant social worker. Natasha Reid, aged 24, didn’t wait for the police to identify her from CCTV footage. She had nicked a TV set from one of the shops broken into during the rioting, and turned herself in, having, according to her mother, spent a couple of days in her bedroom, doing nothing but crying. This young graduate knew she was guilty, and was ashamed of what she had done.

Her mother, baffled by the three days which had put her daughter on the front pages of newspapers worldwide and put paid to any chance of getting a job as a social worker, told reporters: ’She didn’t want a TV. She doesn’t even know why she took it. She doesn’t need a telly.’ "

Looting in the London Blitz

A couple of pieces from the papers in 2010, the 70th anniversary of the Blitz. Duncan Campbell revealed how black marketeers, thieves and looters took advantage of the misfortunes of war, in The Observer 29 August 2010.

And then there's the Café de Paris incident, a nightclub hit on 8 March, 1941. Two bombs hurtled down a ventilation shaft from the roof and exploded in the basement nightclub right in front of the band. The carnage caused by the explosion in that confined space was dreadful. The Daily Mail online 9th April 2010 reports :

“The worst of human nature was in evidence that night too – amid the rubble and the chaos, unscrupulous looters were seen cutting off the fingers of the dead to steal their rings.”

It is also widely reported on the internet (but always in precisely the same phraseology which means it may be false) that on the same night "even the wounded in the Café de Paris were robbed of their jewellery amid the confusion and carnage".

Echo here of that prize scum of the earth incident, the Youtube clip of the bad samaritans, two youths pretending to assist a hurt Malaysian student whilst robbing him.

Links

Red Pepper blog

Zoe Williams in The Guardian, Tuesday 9 August: The psychology of looting - she says the shocking acts of looting may not be political, but they nevertheless say something about the beaten-down lives of the rioters.

More Malcolm X quotes

Morality is what you do when you think no-one is looking

2011-08-14T19:59:00.002+01:00

Even, if this Youtube moment is to be believed, in Bern, Switzerland

Cameron’s Britain – is it come to this?

2011-08-10T12:57:00.002+01:00

You get what you pay for I suppose. In Syria we see people withstand tanks and snipers in the name of freedom with unbelievable dignity and bravery whilst in London a brutish mob loots jeans and televisions. And if I accosted one of them and said lets discuss what you're protesting against, Karl Marx had something to say about it, my recompose, I fear, would be a bop on the nose.

Milliband eschews 20/20 hindsight

2011-08-10T10:32:00.011+01:00

Snellen eye chart

This morning on BBC TV news Ed Milliband, declining to criticise the ineffective police response to the London riots, told the interviewer “I'm not going to engage in 20/20 hindsight”. What did he mean?

From the context in which it's normally used I've always assumed 20/20 vision meant perfect vision or maybe, as Milliband appears to think, all-round vision; but actually no, it signifies normal vision, for which the technical term appears to be normal visual acuity (VA).

To an optometrist, 20/20 vision means that when you stand 20 feet away from a wallchart, you can see what someone with normal vision can see at that distance.

If you have 20/40 vision, your visual acuity is rather poor. It means at 20 feet, you see what a person with normal vision can see at 40 feet. 20/10 vision means your visual acuity is good; at 20 feet you can see what a person with normal vision would need to step up to 10 feet to see.

20/100 vision means that at 20 feet you can read no more of the wallchart than a person with normal vision could at 100 feet. And 20/200 is the cut-off for legal blindness in the United States.

The information comes from the American Optometric Association. For all I know 20/20 vision may be a specifically American expression, and perhaps something different is used in Europe. It certainly seems to have entered the language as an instance of American business speak. Annoying at the best of times. Doubly so when it's misunderstood even by those who use it.

In metric terms 20/20 becomes 6/6. So if Milliband wanted to be right up to date with his jargon, perhaps he ought to have said “I'm not going to engage in 6/6 hindsight”. Lacks a certain rhythm, but would it have been more happening and abreast of the modern thing?

More on Swedish neutrality in the 2nd World War

2011-08-02T00:25:00.016+01:00

Holiday snap in Stockholm, 17 July 2011

My cousin Kim took this picture of me standing on the steps of the Stockholm office of the Swedish employers federation three weeks ago. The address is Södra Blaiseholmen 4a, and during the Second World War it was the German embassy. My aunt Inger once said: “during the war we were ruled from that building.”

German military trains, known in Swedish as permittenttåg, were allowed to use Sweden’s rail network to transport troops to and from occupied Norway. As Sweden was neutral, this was and remains controversial.

During my visit last month the 70th anniversary occurred of the permittenttåg. The TV news showed an interview with an elderly German who, as a junior officer in the Wehrmacht, had travelled on these trains. It was like travelling through a friendly country, he said, he encountered no hostility. A black and white movie clip was shown, taken from the moving train. Two Swedish girls standing by the track waved at the German soldiers as the train passed by. OK, so the clip was probably from a Nazi propaganda film, but nonetheless, the evidence accumulates.

My aunt and her sister reminisced about their life in Stockholm during the war, and how Stockholm was full of Nazi sympathisers. They had a Jewish sounding surname, and one day they discovered a swastika daubed on the door of their apartment. Inger (who would have been about 12 at the time) cried “I wish we weren't called Levin”, according to her sister.

These are all anecdotes. When I have time, I intend to look up some of the history.

For a different angle on those trains, see a couple of pieces I posted early this year:

A German troop train in Sweden

My Swedish cousin and the German cigarettes

And see also Irish & Swedish neutrality during the Second World War

The Swedes have a word for it: Murdoch chose wrong salad

2011-07-30T21:48:00.000+01:00

Today I'm back home after visiting cousins and aunts in Sweden. As usual I came away with a list of new words and expressions to memorise. Some are a bit specialised and may come in useful only rarely. Last Friday night for example I learnt the expression “att pissa i fel sallad”; which captures the mistake that led to Murdoch’s downfall with such precision that I doubt I shall ever again find a context as apt.

I hope you’ll forgive the crudity and agree with me that the day Murdoch’s hirelings hacked Milly Dowler’s phone they “pissed in the wrong salad”.

What I liked and didn't like about the atheist bus

2011-07-24T23:56:00.000+01:00

January 2009 - an atheist London bus

Some belated reflections on the 2009 atheist bus campaign. I didn’t like that slogan. But they say to understand all is to forgive all and I've looked up the British Humanist Association website which explains the thinking behind it. These buses were a reaction to Christian adverts suggesting you would burn in hell; “probably” was included to avert a legal challenge; and “go and enjoy your life” was intended to convey that there's no life except this one.

They also describe the amazing number of small donations they received to fund the campaign, as well as a big one from Richard Dawkins.

My thoughts are these. First and foremost, the campaign was a brilliant idea. My second comment was about the inclusion of the word probably. This deserves as essay all to itself (which I'm already working on, so it may come soon). But my big objection is to the advice: so go and enjoy your life.

If I’d had a vote, the wording would have been “so go and make a better world”.

Here's why I didn’t like this enjoy your life stuff. It says that non-belief in god makes you shallow. I'm a regular reader of a weekly newspaper called the Irish Catholic. Their columnists direct frequent pokes at secularism, and a regular trope is the identification of secularism with consumerism. An identification which "so go and enjoy your life" seems to invite.

I ought to add that secularism is more important than atheism and these columnists are mistaken to confuse the two. More about this another day.

The German atheist bus carried some interesting slogans

I've included a picture of the German atheist bus. The words in brackets say "with a probability bordering on certainty".

It carried some interesting extra slogans. The lower slogan Werte sind Menschlich – auf uns kommt es an means “Morality is human – all depends on us”; but I suspect the German succeeds in capturing this thought much more snappily than English can; or at least much more snappily than I have been able to.

There are a couple more slogans not visible here. Aufklärung heißt, verantwortung zu übernehmen : "Enlightenment means to take responsibility".

Another says Ein erfülltes Leben braucht keinen Glauben: "A fulfilled life needs no belief".

German by the way is my all time favourite language and I would learn it if I had time.

So that’s the end of Murdoch then

2011-07-15T11:02:00.002+01:00

And the end of my pretensions to political punditry. As Thatcher said about unemployment, a small price to pay. Or was it Tebbit.

Cameron must be looking and feeling foolish. Milliband, if the comments I’ve seen are right, is riding high. And Vince Cable is vindicated for being at war with Murdoch. When the Daily Telegraph tricked him into declaring this in December he was greeted with gasps of astonished disproval from the establishment. For his sake I hope he didn’t do too much backtracking in the meantime.

According to someone called David Carr writing in the New York Times, "a kind of British Spring is under way”, now that News Corporation’s system of punishment and reward for politicians has crumbled. That sounds going too far to me. He seems to mistake social media roaming “wild and free across the story” for protesters camping out in Parliament Square. Still an interesting thought.

The main thing is the BBC should be safe for now. Murdoch's plan to destroy it is now on ice along with his BSkyB bid. And let us hope will stay there. At least if it's revived there is the prospect of widespread protest.

Murdoch will win? Polly Toynbee says no

2011-07-09T21:13:00.002+01:00

Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

Here’s Polly Toynbee in her Guardian column Fri 8th. Labour, she says, sank humiliatingly low in its dealings with Murdoch, a monopolist who has made his fortune out of intimidating governments, avoiding taxes and trouncing regulators in exchange for political support. Every plea to Labour leaders, to Blair and Brown particularly, to regain their dignity and find the nerve to stand up to Murdoch, fell on deaf ears.

Even Labour leader Ed Milliband wavered at first; but Toynbee says he has now crossed the Rubicon, for him there is no going back. Emperor Murdoch has lost his clothes - and many commentators seem to agree.

Meanwhile what of Cameron - he hit rock bottom, hiring Coulson to appease Murdoch, and eager to change the law on press and broadcasting diversity for him. But even Cameron is now creeping back up, says Toynbee.

Other commentators have echoed this view, Steve Richards in The Independent for example: “The tyrants lose their swagger and those that lived in fear dare to speak out”.

Well one should beware of contradicting Polly Toynbee, but we’ll see. We’ll see also if the News of the World has really finished. Massive protests may be necessary.

I’ll say no more on this subject. Look back at this in 6 months time.

Why the British government won't stand up to Murdoch, and why it matters

2011-07-07T20:20:00.008+01:00

Will the British government stand up to Murdoch?

No.

2 reasons:
* They don’t dare
* They don’t actually want to

If it was a Labour government, the answer would be the same, but the reasoning would be different.

* They would actually want to
* But they wouldn’t dare

This story is more than just good fun. Last September, The Guardian reported that MPs had backed down from summoning News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks to testify to a parliamentary committee after being warned their lives would be investigated. (The issue was the same then as now: illegal phone hacking.)

Adam Price, a former Plaid Cymru MP, told Channel 4 News that MP’s shied away from issuing a warrant for Brooks to attend after being warned that News International would "go for us". It was hard to interpret this story in any other way than straightforward blackmail. Disrupting the working of Parliament by threatening members of an all party select committee with presumably illegal investigation, and the ruination of their careers, if they forced Brooks to appear before it.

When politicians don’t dare confront News International because they seek sympathetic coverage, that’s serious. When they don’t dare confront News International because they feel blackmailed by the the threat of exposure of their private lives - by illegal means moreover – that's really serious. It's a consequence of billionaires being allowed to own the media.

The big question right now is whether News Corporation will be allowed to take full control over BSkyB. A government announcement is expected, but they have recently said a final decision will take "several weeks" – the delay being due to the “weight of correspondence” from the public over the Milly Dowler hacking issue.

Meanwhile Ed Miliband has questioned David Cameron's "close relationships" with News International.

You tell ‘em Ed. (hmm. Would you like those close relationships yourself?)

Milly Dowler (Guardian)

The background to this latest hacking scandal is a report that the voicemails of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler were hacked into by News of the World journalists shortly after her disappearance in 2002. It was suggested that her voicemails were deleted by the NoW “in order to free up space for more messages”; so the paper could publish them. This caused her friends and relatives to think Milly had herself listened to and deleted the messages, thus concluding wrongly that she might still be alive. Police investigating her disappearance feared evidence may have been destroyed. (Reported in The Guardian )

An amusing twist is that the News of the World is now getting its own columnists to distance themselves from the paper and its goings on. Someone called Dan Wootton who it seems is their “showbiz editor” has been paid for writing this: “It is disgusting. To be honest, I feel sick about the hacking of anyone. I would NEVER even think about doing that or believe it is acceptable in any way.” He promises to continue to bring his readers “X Factor, Cheryl and Ashley, Kate Moss, TOWIE and all of that good stuff” in a “legal, ethical and moral way”.

All links to The Guardian, and especially the Guardian live blog on the News of the World phone hacking story

Death threats on climate scientists – a proxy war

2011-06-29T20:24:00.012+01:00

Leading Australian scientist Anna-Maria Arabia.
She has received death threats

Climate scientists are being subjected to personal attacks including death threats. The conflict seems at its most intense in Australia. See Australian Broadcasting Corporation story Scientists hit back amid fresh death threats (20th June).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has felt impelled to draw attention to a similar situation there. Their statement (28th June) says:

We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public.

This links into a story run by Scientific American last year, in March 2010: Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned. Researchers must purge e-mail in-boxes daily of threatening correspondence, simply part of the job of being a climate scientist, it reported.

So what's going on? A proxy war is being fought, that’s what. It’s not really about climate. It’s between those who think capitalism has a future consisting of growth, deregulation, business as usual, and those who challenge this (even from a moderate perspective).

A name to look out for is Marc Morano, executive editor at ClimateDepot.com, a conservative lobby group.

The Guardian environment blog focused recently on “peace talks” to end the climate war. I can’t see it myself, but it’s worth reading, and so are some of the comments.

How Midas and his ass’s ears spread around the world

2011-06-24T18:36:00.012+01:00

A couple of months ago I was puzzling over two stories about a king with animal ears and a barber who couldn't keep a secret. They were the ancient Greek tale of Midas with his ass’s ears, and the Irish tale of Lowry Lynch with his horse’s ears. I was musing on their similarity. Each king hid his shame with long hair, and each was betrayed by a magical plant, to which his barber had unburdened himself. In the ancient Greek version we have talking reeds. In the Irish version, the barber tells a tree, the tree is made into a harp, and the harp sings out the secret.

In this bronze wall fountain, from a 16th Century original,
the artist has imagined King Midas's hair too short to cover his asses ears.

So. Is the Irish story an adaptation of the Greek one, or do they both derive from a common source, I asked myself?

Well I've been to the Boole library at University College Cork to find the answer, but first let me digress to reveal that both stories are folktales of type 782.

Yes, type 782 no less.

Uther's Types of International Folktales

It’s all in a 3-volume book called The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography by Hans-Jörg Uther, 2004. Hereinafter known as the yellow book. There's a broad category of folktale known as The Truth Comes To Light, and within that category, type 782 consists of tales about humans with animal ears or horns.

Cinderella, to anticipate your next question, comes in the category Tales of Magic, and is type 510A.

It seems this classification system is known as the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification, and folklorists will say that the ATU number of tales about humans with animal ears is 782, and the ATU number of Cinderella tales is 510A.

Professor D. L. Ashliman seems to be big in the world of folklore and fairy tales. He lists on his website six instances of the tale about a king with animal ears and a barber. Starting with Midas, he includes Lowry Lynch, as well as stories from Wales, Serbia, India and the Philippines.

In the Welsh tale, the barber tells his story to the reeds, the reeds are made into a musical pipe, and the pipe sings out about the king’s ears. So that overlaps with Lowry Lynch (a plant is made into a musical instrument) and with Midas (there are reeds). In the Serbian version an elder tree is made into a flute. In the Philippine tale we have talking bamboo, and no musical instrument.

In three versions, the barber digs a hole in the ground and tells his story to the hole. Later a tree or reeds grow up on the spot. That’s how the reeds appear in the Midas story as told by the Roman poet Ovid; though in my telling of the story I have the barber telling the reeds just where they grow along the river bank, because that’s the way I remember it from school.

A hole occurs also in the Serbian version and the Philippine version. Which by the way, according to a note on Professor Ashliman’s website, is an adaptation of the classical story of Midas brought there by the Spaniards. (Disappointed? Read on it gets worse.)

The Indian tale is the only one of the six which doesn’t involve a plant; the Indian barber blurts his secret out to another person.

How are the stories related?

It turns out there are many more variants besides these. The yellow book lists 46 of them, from disparate languages, countries and regions.

So back to the original question. Which now, with 46 variants, has become an even bigger question. How are all these stories related? How do we account for their worldwide distribution? I had rather hoped to discover that the tale had emerged spontaneously and independently in all these places, evidence for the existence of a Jungian archetype buried deep within the human psyche, involving shameful ears, a barber, and magic talking reeds. Failing that, I had hoped to find evidence of an oral tradition and a common human culture that was widespread long before the emergence of writing.

But no. The yellow book, having listed all the 46 variants, tersely informs us under remarks: “Classical origin, Ovid Metamorphoses (XI, 174-193)”. Ovid's version is very spare, as you can see from this translation.

So that’s that.

Categories of tales

A comment about the yellow book and how folk tales are arranged in it. The top-level categories are these: Animal Tales, Tales of Magic, Religious Tales, Realistic Tales (Novelle) and Tales of the Stupid Ogre (or Giant or Devil).

Every tale ever told fits, it seems, in one of the categories on that list. Equally surprising, Midas comes under Religious Tales; the sub-categories of which are God Rewards and Punishes, The Truth Comes to Light, Heaven, The Devil, and Other Religious Tales.

Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature

Midas comes in the sub-category The Truth Comes to Light. Other tales in this sub-category include The Singing Bone, where a brother (or sister) kills their sister (or brother) and buries the body. From the bones a shepherd makes a musical instrument of some sort which brings the secret to light. Or the murder is revealed by a speaking tree growing from the grave.

Note that here we encounter a motif we have seen before. A secret being given away by a musical instrument or by a tree.

These motifs have themselves been listed, in another book, twice the size of the yellow one. It’s called Motif-Index of Folk-Literature by Stith Thompson, 1956. It comes in 6 volumes, and is dull green. (I've since found an on-line version, and a search engine for it, but I think it's worth the bus fare to Cork just to handle the real thing.)

A speaking musical instrument is motif D1610.34. A speaking tree is motif D1610.2. (They both come under Magic.) Motif F511.2.2 is a person with ass’s or horse’s ears (that's listed under Marvels). Motif N465 is a secret physical peculiarity discovered by a barber (under Chance & Fate).

Any given tale can be built up around one, or several, of the thousands of motifs listed in this tome.

So now we know how folklorists occupy their time.

A romanticised view of oral tradition

A final point. Until I read the yellow book I had a romantic notion that oral traditions had existed unchanged for centuries, and are somehow more to be valued than literary sources. It seems that folktale scholars generally held this view up until the 1960's, but have now abandoned it. According to the introduction, literary texts by such as the 14th century story-tellers Giovanni Boccaccio and Geoffrey Chaucer, are a major source of folk tales. So it seems that tales can weave in and out of oral tradition. We now know that many so-called oral narratives can be traced back to works of literature, indeed have a rich literary history. The Midas story would appear to be an instance of this. Written down by Ovid (who, let us assume, received it as oral tradition) and then spread around the world in a variety of forms, some oral, some written.

Donkeys eat my compost heap

2011-06-22T13:01:00.011+01:00

Photo taken a few days ago. The grass in the field had gone sour so the donkeys preferred to lean over the wall and munch the leaves and grass clippings on my compost heap.

I'm not entirely sure what is meant by sour. It seems to mean more than weedy (though weedy it certainly was). I think it means that the donkeys have fouled it, and being fatstidious animals (unlike cows) they then refuse to eat it.

The field has now been topped - mown with the mower at a high setting, with the cuttings left to melt back in. This will encourage tasty fresh growth, after which my compost heap will become less appealing.

Epxoesd : Cmabrigde Uinervtisy rsereach fitciitous

2011-06-20T18:26:00.008+01:00

The other day I cited reesarch at Cmabrigde Unervtisy purporting to show that it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

However, the case is much as I ssupceted. The jumbled text was circulated on the internet in September 2003, but as of July 2008, no such research had been done at Cambrdge. Who says? Matt Davis who works, or worked, at the Cambridge cognition and brain sciences unit, where they investigate how the brain processes language. If there's a new piece of research on reading that's been conducted in Cambridge, he thought he should have heard of it ... and he hadn’t.

He concedes the text has elements of truth, but also some things which psycholinguists know to be incorrect. There is a cost to reading words with jumbled letters. (I suppose that’s obvious really). And the degree of jumbling in the circulated text was actually carefully limited, so it’s an exaggeration to say the only important thing is that the first and last letters be at the right place.

Matt Davis has written a page to try to explain the science behind this meme. (Or behind this idea. Meme is a word of whose utility I have yet to be convinced.)

Thanks to Ben in York for telling me about this (and the next one).

Move over Madrid, we’re in York

2011-06-20T17:37:00.005+01:00

Just found out that Library Square in York rivals Sol square in Madrid for the world's biggest democracy camp.

We visit Madrid protests

2011-06-19T14:04:00.030+01:00

X
Two protests that we visited in Madrid earlier this week. Sol Square where they were protesting for a new society. Or, according to an alternative account, to release some demonstrators arrested at an anti-cuts rally. (Left, a poster advertising this demo disparages politicians and bankers.)
And near our hotel, a housing protest. A developer had disappeared (gone bust I suppose, though this point wasn’t clear to me) with the deposits of hundreds of people who thought they had purchased apartments. They explained the thinness of their numbers by the rest being at a demo. “In Sol Square” I asked hopefully? “Oh no” she said “we don’t associate with them”.

The owner of our hotel thought the Sol protest had finished, and here's a Guardian article from 4 days previously which suggested that indeed it had. But the square still seemed to be pretty much occupied when we were there. Over half the square a labyrinth of improvised tents and makeshift structures. Maybe at its height the protest covered the entire square in this fashion.

We offered both sets of protesters money, but they refused to take it. We signed their petitions, which necessitated adding our passport numbers. Your signature isn't valid without it.

The housing protest. Not associated with Sol

Strictly speaking “we” didn’t offer money to both the protest groups. With the Sol protest Eileen was unimpressed. Couldn't quite go along with this new society malarkey.

A few more details about the Sol protest. Their leaflet (a poor affair not worthy to be scanned and displayed in this blog) answers the question “Who are we?” by explaining that they are volunteers who assembled in Sol square after a demonstration on 15th May “to establish ourselves in order to claim dignity and political/social conscience … We are here because we want a new society that gives more priority to life than to economic interest.” Non-violence is emphasised. The English isn't brilliantly clear. But at least an English version was offered, which is rare enough in Spain. Later I'll explain the difficulties I've been under due to Spanish museums displaying explanations in Spanish only. (I don’t complain about this, I merely comment that it is the case.)

I picked up a handy organisation chart, listing working groups and commissions that the protesters had set up. Working groups dealt with economy, politics, immigration, technology, feminism, and other things that I either can't read or can't translate. Commissions dealt with the organisation and administration of the protest camp - documentation, arts, participation, provisions, legal, health, communication, information.

They have a website in Spanish, which links to a page in English called Take the square.

Here's a flavour of it: "We are the outraged, the anonymous, the voiceless. We were there, silent but alert, watching. Not gazing upward at the powers that be, but looking from side to side for the right time to unite with each other. No political party, association or trade union represents us. Nor do we want them to, because each and every one of us speaks for her or himself. Together, we want to design and create a world where people and nature come first, before economic interests."

I can well imagine the arguments and debates that went into drafting that one! I'm afraid I might have had to dissent from the bit where it says “Nor do we want them to, because each and every one of us speaks for her or himself.”

Above : Eileen at Sol, unimpressed by the prospect of a new society
Below : The information stall at Sol

A council worker (orange jacket) cleans up filmed by a TV cameraman. The banner draped on the equestrian statue (enlarged below) says "We know the way back".

An abandoned placard hopes for a secular Europe for all. Not sure what they have in mind with this particular slogan.

Tnihk slpeling's ipmorantt? Tnhik aiagn!

2011-06-16T08:25:00.006+01:00

Jsut bcak form Mdriad. Will bolg auobt it soon. Maenwlihe waht's tihs?

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod gneeunily uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to reesarch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig or waht? And tehy awlyas tguaht us selpling was ipmorantt!

Aulaclty I cna’t vcuoh for the Cmabrgide Uinevrtisy sfutf, all I konw is sonmeoe snet me tihs as a biarn taeesr.

Luddites wanted - act against technology 'hurtful to commonality'

2011-06-07T19:20:00.004+01:00

Luddites smashing machinery

King Ludd was a fictitious character invented by the Luddites to prevent any of their actual leaders being executed or deported. Artisan cloth workers in the Midlands and North of England calling themselves Luddites claimed to be led by "King Ludd" (also known "Ned Ludd") and in 1811-12 rose up against factory owners who were imposing new machines and putting them out of work.

Since the 1950's (it says here – but only since the 1950’s??) the Luddites have been painted as fools opposed to all technology and progress, but in fact the Luddites were very selective in their attacks, breaking only machines they thought were 'hurtful to Commonality'.

Luddites 200 Organising Forum thinks the Luddites can teach us about the ongoing use of technology to replace workers’ jobs, as well as issues like GM food and nuclear power. They denounce the myth that technology always brings progress.

Tomorrow night Wednesday June 8th, in London, on the anniversary of the first action against a GM crop site in Britain, they are organising a discussion of these issues.

I've left it a bit late to advertise this meeting but it’s an organisation I like the sound of. Their questions are worth asking.

Wikipedia on Luddites.

Stonehenge - why?

2011-06-06T10:53:00.009+01:00

Have been mulling over a visit to Stonehenge in April. Amazing that those neolithic farmers could devote such time and effort to something essentially pointless. But perhaps I've gone too far. So is a cathedral pointless, or the Parthenon. But we don’t ask why the ancient Greeks devoted time to building the Parthenon which was essentially pointless. We could do. But I don’t think we do. Though spookily we might possibly speculate on the ancient Egyptians building essentially pointless pyramids. So is there a double standard at work here - maybe we can see the mote in another’s eye so long as the other is sufficiently distant; yet we can't see the beam in our own eye.

The photos were taken between 8 and 9 am on Saturday 16th April on a Cork Astronomy Club outing. We were allowed to wander amongst the stones, something which is denied nowadays to most visitors. But you can gain access if you're an astronomy club. Or witches it seems, since we met some Dutch witches who were similarly privileged. Maybe the management misread our application. Category 3b: astrology, witchcraft, and sim.

pic 1 above: My figure helps gauge the size of these enormous stones. pic 2 below: a group photo, with (top left) a severely eroded tenon carved atop an upright stone. For mortise and tenon see pics 3 and 5.

So. About its purpose. No doubt Stonehenge served as a means of connecting Neolithic people to the universe. One answer to the perennial question of what it means to be human. It's been suggested it was an observatory. Never! Though the king who ordained it may have offered that as a pretext.

They would indeed have done astronomy. That’s for sure. They needed a calendar to know when to sow their seeds in the spring. (A calendar would be handy at harvest too, but I imagine it’s less important then, since you can inspect your crop to determine if it’s ready.) But my point is they would have done astronomy with wooden posts and instruments, not with 25-ton stones.

No. Stonehenge served as a means of controlling the population in the interests of an élite. The astronomy connection can be summed up in this way, that the astronomical alignments would have been a way for the priests to impress the peasants, in religious ceremonies. The most staggering fact about Stonehenge is the vast amount of labour which that society of Neolithic farmers 4,500 years ago was able to divert from tilling the soil, in order to hew these enormous stones out of the quarry, to trundle them 15 miles, and then to erect them in precise configuration. For all this to be done must have required a centralised state with the ability to command and organise squadrons of labour.

Stonehenge was erected about 2500 BC. For a detailed chronology see this Wikipedia article. A separate article covers the archaeoastronomy debate.

And there's a brief history on the official website

pic 3 above: Eithne with a fallen cap stone, showing the severely eroded mortise into which the tenon (pic 2) fitted. pic 4 below: nesting crows

pic 5 : diagramme of mortise and tenon joint (mortise brown, tenon blue)

… and then … after hewing and transporting the stones, to chisel out the mortise in the cap-stone, the tenon on the upright, and drop the cap-stone on to two uprights, with each mortise and tenon pair matched up …

pic 6 : panorama of Stonehenge with dramatic cloud formation and bright sunlight throwing clear shadows (Wikipedia 2004)

In which Garret Fitzgerald invades a TV studio and debates feminism

2011-05-31T12:29:00.028+01:00

Garret Fitzgerald as Taoiseach in the 1980’s

Much recent commentary about Garret Fitzgerald after he died during the queen’s visit (18 May). Here's an episode from his life that I hoped to learn more about, but which sadly attracted few mentions.

First a bit of context. On 14 April 1971 the Irish women’s liberation movement was launched at a packed meeting in Dublin’s Mansion House. I strongly recommend this 28 minute episode of RTÉ radio’s History Show (1 May 2011) where these events are recalled by three of the movement’s founder members. “We had no idea if anyone would turn up - we thought there might only be 20 women there in the Mansion House” says one. Another describes a woman taking the microphone and announcing “I am an unmarried mother”; and tells of the stamping of feet, the cheering, the tears, that greeted this statement. Because up to that point in time no-one in Ireland had ever uttered the words “I am an unmarried mother”; the phrase was only ever whispered in hushed tones, and used of someone else.

Now we skip backwards five weeks to 6 March 1971. To a debate on the Late Late Show on RTÉ television presented by Gay Byrne. A group of feminists formed the panel promoting equal pay, equality before the law, contraception, as well as justice for deserted wives and unmarried mothers. This broadcast is credited with attracting publicity to the movement and making the Mansion House meeting a few weeks later the storming success that it was.

Saturday 22 May 1971. Women at Dublin's Connolly Station ready to board the "Contraceptive Train" to Belfast. This was 6 weeks after the Mansion House meeting. Hear more on The History Show Photograph Jack McManus (Irish Times)

So what of Garret Fitzgerald? At this time he was 45, a TD, but 10 years before being Taoiseach. And he was there in the television studio.

But here's the point of the story : he wasn’t invited.

It seems the feminists’ appearance that night on the Late Late Show generated such heated argument that Fitzgerald left his fireside and took it upon himself to turn up in the studio to discuss the problems with the women on the panel. But in the words of one of them, June Levine, “a free-for-all screaming match followed between Garret Fitzgerald and various women in the audience”. (footnote 1)

Another, Mary Kenny, describes the event like this:

Gay Byrne host of Late Late Show

“Halfway through the programme, Gay Byrne suddenly announced that Garret FitzGerald had been sitting watching the show at home and had felt so engaged by the subject that he asked if he could come and join us, and Gay had eagerly agreed.

The announcement was greeted by a sustained, and entirely spontaneous, orchestra of booing from the assembled group of women, panel and audience. 'You're hijacking our show!' we cried. There was huge resentment, both of Gay and of Garret, that these two men couldn't have let the women have their say, uninterrupted, without trying to muscle in on the act. Garret, all innocence, protested that he was a male feminist. Oh, yeah? Maybe so, we all agreed afterwards, but he is also a politician. And a politician knows just when to jump on a bandwagon. Even if he was sincere - and he certainly was sincere - the prevailing feeling of the sisters was that men just won't let women speak without putting their oar in. It's the 'pasha complex': in a harem of women under the Ottomans, you had to have the male, the pasha, take charge.” (footnote 2)

I should dearly like to get hold of a recording of that Late Late Show but I've checked with the RTÉ archives, and none exists. Recollections differ. The three women on the recent History Show that I mentioned above, seem to recall the audience being rather quiet.

Just a few more comments about Garret Fitzgerald. To tell the truth, until he died I had him filed away in my head under miscellaneous conservative politicians. But all commentators seem to agree that he was special in some interesting ways. He was a top intellectual in economics and statistics. (In reference to which Charlie Haughey - routinely described in the obits as “Garret’s nemesis” – made a habit of calling him “Dr Fitzgerald” as a put-down). To the end of his life he was extremely open to the ideas of young people.

As Fine Gael leader Fitzgerald launched a social reform programme aimed at secularising the Republic to make it more attractive to Protestants in the north. He championed reforms concerning divorce, contraception and abortion, and faced stern opposition from the Catholic church, and some within his own party. He believed in being ahead of public opinion, not in focus group politics. In office he lost on divorce (badly), lost on abortion, but won on contraception. But it’s generally accepted that divorce wouldn't have become legal as soon as it eventually did (1995) without Fitzgerald having blazed the trail. The consensus is that he laid the groundwork for social progress in Ireland. He sounds to me like an all round good egg.

By the way I'm not sure it’s technically possible for a man to be a feminist.

Footnotes

(1) June Levine, Sisters: the personal story of an Irish feminist, Dublin, 1982, p.166. She was one of the panellists that night

(2) Mary Kenny, Irish Independent, 20 May 2011. Also on the panel.

Links (First is Irish Times, the rest are Wikipedia):-

IWLM : This is a personal account from Mary Maher, a journalist with The Irish Times, a founder member of the IWLM, and a platform speaker at the Mansion House meeting. Also includes report on the contraceptive train from the Irish Times archives

Divorce : GF was hammered two to one in the 1986 referendum, but it passed by narrow majority 9 years later.

Contraception : GF succeeded in a liberalising the law in 1985.

Abortion : in 1983 the constitution was amended to ban abortion. GF unsuccessfully campaigned against the ban. It remains banned under the constitution

Mismanaged banks? Less pay for shop workers! Sorted!

2011-05-27T18:22:00.004+01:00

Minister Bruton: Isolated. Good job too.
Stick him on a desert island to encourage the others

The media here are reporting that Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton is looked “increasingly isolated”. Good job too. I'm getting hot under the collar. Takes me back to the mother and father of a row on just this issue when I was a union convenor 10 years ago in York. When’s the demo that’s what I want to know. I've heard various union leaders on the radio in the last 24 hrs but can't find any campaigning material yet. Soon I hope.

Ah yes, I forgot to mention what this whole thing’s about. Bruton is mounting an assault on premium Sunday and overtime pay rates for low-paid workers, and correspondents are reporting that Taoiseach Enda Kenny and cabinet colleagues are distancing themselves from him on the issue.

Kenny called Bruton’s proposals the “publication of a personal agenda". And an RTÉ correspondent reported on the radio an hour ago that Kenny gave Bruton bad body language in the Dáil today. If the Labour Party who are in this coalition government allow this through … well lets hope not, they are making the right noises at the moment …

I don’t quite follow the technicalities, but it seems Bruton is intending to cut Sunday pay (and maybe other premium rates it’s not clear at present) by monkeying around with the terms of employment rights orders (ERO) or registered employment agreements (REA). The sectors that will suffer include hotels, restaurants, hairdressing, contract cleaning, security, grocery, retail and tailoring.

EROs fix minimum pay and conditions in sectors based on the deliberations of a joint labour committee of union and employer representatives with an independent chairman. REAs are collective agreements between employers and unions which are registered with the Labour Court and are enforceable in law.

There's a Duffy-Walsh report, which recommends overhauling the basic framework of the existing joint labour committee/registered employment agreement system for setting wages. But Bruton has gone further than this and has announced his assault on premium pay rates.

Explainer in the Irish Times.

Mr. Gandhi what do you think of western civilisation?

2011-05-26T21:15:00.004+01:00

I imagine we've all sent or received this postcard at some stage in our lives. But is it true?

Gandhi's famous reply to a reporter's question about western civilisation features in any compendium of Gandhi quotations, but none that I have seen supply the time and place where this encounter is supposed to have occurred.

I think it may be apocryphal. On the other hand, the question would be a perfectly sensible one for a reporter seeking a quote, and the answer is one which I'm sure Gandhi would have been delighted to have thought of, even if he didn’t. It would have been quite in character, since he is credited with an impish sense of humour.

Western civilisation was a frequent theme in Gandhi’s writing and speeches. He did not hold it in high regard. For example, this from a speech to Young India, 8th September 1920. Speaking of the recently ended First World War he said:

“The last War however has shown, as nothing else has, the Satanic nature of the civilization that dominates Europe today.”

I wonder if the what-do-you-think-of-western-civilisation thing appeared in the 1982 Richard Attenborough film. I doubt it. Cliché.

For language nerds, the joke relies on a sort of pun. It may have a special grammatical name, unknown to me. When the Reporter uses the word civilisation, he uses it as an abstract noun, meaning a society which is city-based. When Mr Gandhi uses the word (and I hope I have this right) he is using it as a gerund, that is a part of the verb "to civilise". So it means an action or process, which instils admirable, or acceptable, norms of behaviour.

Royal visit - I got it wrong

2011-05-22T01:11:00.015+01:00

I retract my statement about the absence of interest in the queen’s visit.

Queen Elizabeth lays a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance honouring those who fought against the British crown

It’s been huge news in Ireland. Today’s Irish Examiner leader says “It has probably been the most memorable and successful visit of any head of state since the visit of US President John F Kennedy in 1963” and I've spoken to people who strongly share that positive view. And moreover (to their own surprise) found themselves quite moved by it.

The Queen and President at Islandbridge where world war dead are buried

Principal comments I have heard are

We’re so relieved she’s got back without a terrorist incident – it would have been the end of us if that had happened. For many people this is the number one comment.

Pride in Ireland. We did it well. Especial praise for President Mary McAleese. Her grace and dignity, her speech at Dublin Castle, and in particular her remarks on her pride in Irish nationalism, and that we meet the Queen as an equal (yes for some that does still need mentioning).

The well-judged symmetry of the two wreath-laying ceremonies, one to honour those who fought Britain for Irish freedom, the other to honour those who had fought for Britain in two world wars (more on this theme below).

The Queen bowed her head at the Garden of Remembrance. This is the shrine to those who have died fighting against the British for Irish freedom.

She said that with the benefit of historical hindsight we can all think of things that should have been done differently or not at all. This was at the state dinner at Dublin Castle on the 2nd day of the visit. (See video below.)

She smiled a lot. The walkabout in Cork just before she went home was hugely appreciated, especially here in Cork.

It was right that the GAA welcomed her at Croke Park; and the GAA President was right to refer to Bloody Sunday (more on this below).

Frequent comments that Mary McAleese should be allowed to serve a third term (not allowed, to the regret of many, under the constitution).

A few more words on a couple of themes that have been prominent in the media these past few days. Firstly, the symmetry of the two wreath-laying ceremonies. The first of these was at the Garden of Remembrance (honouring those who have died fighting against the British) and the second was at Islandbridge, which is where the Irish fallen from two world wars are laid to rest. It has been repeatedly commented that until recently the Irish dead from the First World War have been passed over in embarrassed silence. A bit like Vietnam veterans in America. Fighting for the imperialist oppressor. Mary McAleese is credited with putting an end to this shameful amnesia and neglect. (This is a big subject which deserves as essay in itself. RTÉ radio did an excellent series in 2008 called Our War, and you can listen to two episodes that touch on the amnesia theme here.

Great War Debate (79 mins)
Thomas Davis Lecture (25 mins)

Shameful amnesia and neglect is a tendentious term of course, and dedicated republicans might dispute it.

Next, about Croke Park, the national stadium of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). On 21st November 1920 at a Dublin-Tipperary football match, 14 people lost their lives when British forces entered the stadium and started shooting. Included in the dead were Michael Hogan, a player on the Tipperary team. The Hogan Stand is named in his honour. Also Thomas Ryan, shot on his knees whispering an act of contrition to Hogan. Full story on the GAA website.

In a dignified speech to welcome the Queen, the President of the GAA Christy Cooney referred to this event. The consensus is that the GAA was right to welcome her and that Christy Cooney was right to refer to Bloody Sunday. He didn't, in point of fact, name it. He referred to it oblquely, with the phrase "including those that died in this place".

However those who oppose the Queen’s visit find it particularly obnoxious that she should have been welcomed at Croke Park.

Forelock-tugging is another accusation that has been levelled in connection with the visit in general, for example a reader’s letter in yesterday's Examiner from Dominic Carroll, Ardfield, Co Cork. He derided “the forelock-tugging shoneens who this week bent the knee to Mrs Windsor of London” and especially the academic staff of Trinity College Dublin who “lined up like schoolchildren as they awaited a few words of condescension from the royal personage; it was stomach-turning” he says.

There will be more letters like this in the next few days but in my neck of the woods my sense is that they are in a small minority of opinion. You may ask if the opinions I hear are taylored out of politeness to my English ears. I don’t think so.

Here are the videos and full text of the speeches at Dublin Castle on the Wednesday 18th.

Full text of President Mary McAleese's speech
Full text of speech by Queen Elizabeth II

The Queen video. Watch the first 3 minutes in particular. “Differently or not at all” comes at 2:24.

President Mary McAllese video. Reflects on difficult centuries, 4:25. Deeply proud, 5:40

Religious reactions to bin Laden killing

2011-05-21T13:54:00.017+01:00

Bin Laden was killed on May 2nd. We saw what Jessica Dovey blogged. So what did religious leaders have to say? Here's a selection, in no particular order.

Church of England

Initially Lambeth Palace refused to comment on the death of Bin Laden but, when asked at a press conference what he thought of the killing, The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams replied: "I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling; it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done.

"I don't know the full details any more than anyone else. I think it's also true that different versions of events have not done a great deal to help.

"In such circumstances, when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal in terms of the atrocities inflicted, it is important that justice is seen to be done."

Note sure of the date, probably 4th May. Earlier, the archbishop of York gave a measured response to the dramatic events in Pakistan, saying people should not celebrate Bin Laden's death and that the terror chief was "evil but not Satan".

The Vatican

Vatican press chief Fr Federico Lombardi issued a statement on 2nd May. He pointed out the role Bin Laden had played in the promotion of “division and hatred between people," but continued "Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace."

A Quaker comment

"William Penn said 'A good end cannot sanctify evil means, nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it'. Was the summary execution an evil means to bring about a good end? An opportunity to demonstrate to the world what separates those who value life from the terrorist has been lost."

The following reactions all come from the USA, between 2nd and 9th May

New York: Fr Stephen Mimnaugh at Manhattan’s St Francis of Assisi church (Roman Catholic)

"Justice may have been served, but we Catholics never rejoice in the death of a human being." He went on to cite the next comment from James Martin.

It’s relevant to note that Fr Stephen Mimnaugh is successor to Mychal F. Judge, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, and the first recorded victim of the September 11, 2001 attack. He was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor.

James Martin, an Amercan Jesuit priest

He wrote in America, a weekly Catholic magazine, that "no matter how monstrous" a person is, "as a Christian, I am asked to pray for him and, at some point, forgive him."

Brook Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The Rev David Howard

The Rev David Howard shouted his approval from outside his church. A prominent sign publicising the sermon Howard planned proclaimed: "Osama bin Laden, Satan and the Final Victory of Jesus".

The Rev Howard said : "We should pray for bad people, evil people, that when we pray to God he will change their lives. But if he won’t change their lives, especially those who have a lot of power to hurt a lot of people, you pray for their end because they’re causing so much pain. You pray somehow God will take them out. The Bible is very clear that God is in control and every person in power is because God put them there.

"He can put them there, he can keep them there or he can take them out. That’s his prerogative."

Imam Hassan al-Qazwini at the Islamic Centre of America in the Detroit, one of American’s largest mosques

Imam Hassan al-Qazwini told worshippers. : "There is no doubt that this man was a thug, he was a murderer," Imam Hassan al-Qazwini told worshippers. "His hands were stained by the blood of thousands of innocent people — Muslims and non-Muslims alike." Delivering his sermon in a hall filled to capacity, he said the Koran is clear that someone who kills one innocent person "is doomed to hell forever." And he was incensed that bin Laden "committed atrocities against innocent people ... while he was calling ‘Allahu akbar’, or ‘God is great’."

Armitage Baptist Church in Chicago, Pastor Charles Lyons

Pastor Lyons told his congregation that sometimes "evil must be stopped."

"We do not rejoice in the death of the man named Osama bin Laden (but)... truth provides a platform for justice."

Church member Angelia Parker said bin Laden’s death should have been a time for contemplation, not cheering in the streets. "I think that was kind of weird," she said. "It was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ We are celebrating this person’s death? We didn’t celebrate in the streets when Saddam Hussein was killed."

The Rev Bill Kelly, priest at Saint Mary of the Assumption in Dedham, near Boston (not sure of denomination, Roman Catholic at a guess)

The Rev Kelly said he was taken aback because he detected bloodlust. But he added that the emotional reaction is understandable.

Congregation Neve Shalom, a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Metuchen, New Jersey, Rabbi Gerald Zelizer

Rabbi Zelizer said that according to the Talmud, if someone is trying to kill you, "you are obligated - not permitted - to kill that person before he kills you."

"But that obligation does not carry with it at all the privilege of rejoicing."

As services ended, a heated debate over how to respond broke out. Kathryn Zahler said that taking delight in anyone’s death feels un-Jewish. But Mindy Epstein disagreed. "I don’t care if that makes me a non-Jew or not," she said. "Put it on pay-for-view for the (September 11) victims."

Sources

Church of England : The Guardian 5th May

Vatican : Catholic News Service
Quaker comment from The Friend website

USA reactions: Irish Examiner 10th May

The woodland garden in May

2011-05-18T15:47:00.001+01:00

I wish I could show you a before and after picture. Before would show a scene of destruction, my woodland garden cluttered with a straggling heap of sawn off branches and leaves. Today it's not nearly as bad as it was the day before yesterday and by tonight it'll be almost back to normal. Actually better than normal because I've had two large limbs lopped off an old apple tree, and this has let a lot of light in, and will allow my hedge to flourish unhindered. It’s not the first time I've found myself wishing, near the completion of big task, that I could show a picture of how daunting it appeared at the start.

But that’s the very reason I didn’t take the photo. Because I was too daunted.

So here are some pictures I took on the 4th of this month before the tree lopping took place. And yes I know I chose the very worst month to be lopping limbs off trees but when a neighbour shows up with a chainsaw, you just need to seize the opportunity.

The visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland

2011-05-16T21:03:00.005+01:00

The visit of Queen Elizabeth (tomorrow) “has Ireland in a frenzy” according to yesterday’s Irish Mail on Sunday (that’s the Irish edition of the London paper of that name). I'm not sure that’s true. It’s a topic of conversation right enough and the most common sentiment I've heard expressed is “I just hope nothing happens and she gets back all right”. The visit cropped up in the sauna at the swimming pool in Fermoy today. A man recalled the day in 1979 that Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin, was killed by an IRA bomb on his boat on a lake in Ireland. He said he was in a pub in Cork that day and the prevailing mood was disgust and anger at the deed; but the British press misrepresented the mood in Ireland to be one of rejoicing. (What the truth behind that is I don’t know, that’s just what be said.)

I've seen the visit described as the biggest security operation in the history of the State. The Irish Government is allowing 120 armed British police officers to patrol the streets of Irish cities to protect the Queen during the visit. Oddly, this hasn’t provoked as much hostile reaction as I expected when I first heard the news (which was yesterday). There'll be no walkabouts in fact it's been said she'll be driving through empty streets, so strict is the security.

A few weeks ago there was a lively exchange of readers letters in the Irish Examiner on the topic of the Queen’s visit. Here are three of them, just a small sample to give a flavour of it. (The paper used to be called the Cork Examiner and judging from the letters page it still has a largely Cork readership.)

(1) From James O’Leary, Bantry, Co Cork, Thursday, April 14

It’s hard to forget British sins of the past

Is there anyone out there who feels like me? All the PC brigade will frown, but this upcoming royal visit sticks in my craw. I’ve heard all the "build a bridge and get over it" comments and how friendly and different things are now and history should be left in the past, but I still cannot swallow it.

Am I to celebrate the arrival in my country the very epitome of a regime that has persecuted, maimed, murdered and destroyed so many of my countrymen? Am I to stand and wave my Union Jack like an obedient little colonist of yesteryear eager to catch a glimpse of an aging monarch? I feel I would be betraying not only the ghosts of generations before me but of a still living generation who have experienced the special treatment of crown forces. They were batoned at Burntollet for having the cheek to demand one man one vote. They were shot dead in Derry marching for civil rights. They were maimed and killed by rubber bullets. They were let starve to death rather than given their rights. I could go on and on but I am supposed to forget all these things because its all behind us now. I might be able to forget it if it weren’t for a line from Donegal to Louth which divides my land. This division of my country is upheld by forces who pledge loyalty to this visitor.

I think Yeats’ lines are more apt today then they were pre-1916 "Romantic Ireland is dead and gone, it’s with O’Leary in the grave."

(2) From Raymond White, Ballinspittle, Kinsale, Co Cork, Thursday, April 28

They gave us a lot, so let’s welcome the queen (this one cries out for the title "what the British did for us")

Barack Obama’s and Queen Elizabeth’s visits are a badly-needed boost for financially ailing Ireland and should be welcomed by all.

The queen’s visit is much longer and a blessing. Britain is our nearest neighbour and our biggest trading partner, and with the huge Irish-English population living a few miles from us, they are our best tourist visitors.

We should extend a "céad míle fáilte" to them and anyone else who wants to visit our Island. Remember, they built our universities, churches (ie Maynooth 1795), they constructed our lighthouses, our houses of parliament, bridges and viaducts. They built the big houses, which are tourist attractions today, the Grand and Royal Canals and our railway stations.

Under their supervision, railway tracks were built from most main cities to towns and villages throughout the country only for us to rip them up and sell off everything for scrap.

Our lifeboats are still controlled from Britain, they gave us St Patrick to convert us, and the English flag carries his cross.

Our prized Book of Kells was printed in Lindisfarne in northeast England and was brought over to Kells for safe keeping as the Viking attacks were sweeping westward. They built our main army barracks and firing ranges, which are still in use today but sadly falling into decay.

When our main ports — ie Lough Swilly, Beare Island and Spike island — were handed back to us in 1938, they were fully equipped. Yet, once again, everything was ripped apart, large guns scrapped and sold off, and generators and other equipment went in all directions.

Now we are trying to fix up those sites — that is what is left over — and open them up as tourist attractions.

The British took our cattle and produce during the First and Second World Wars and, yes we know that bad deeds were carried out on all sides, but I know for sure that we got the best of the colonial powers. Would we be better off under the Belgians, Dutch, Portuguese, Germans, or Spanish who slaughtered everyone during their conquest?

If the royals from those countries came here, would there be a protest? Let’s get on with life and promote our country.

(3) From Cormac Cahill, Maryborough Woods, Douglas, Cork, Monday, May 2

The harsh reality of life under British rule

Raymond White (April 28) thanks the English for all they gave us, or rather had us build for them, and says we should be grateful that we didn’t have worse overlords like the Spanish, who perhaps may have slaughtered us.

We did not get to chose our colonial masters and if we had I am sure we would have chosen none, thank you.

Yet, Ireland suffered multiple famines, numerous bouts of ethnic cleansing and forced expatriation through our history with England.

There is a school of thought out there that says we should forget this and move on.

There is another school of thought says no, especially as the British flag flies over six of our counties.

Wherever one stands on the issue of history, the revisionist phenomenon as displayed by Mr White of thinking of our time under our colonial masters as an enlightened walk in the park where we were shown how to behave properly is delusional.

Such thinking merely feeds into a latent nationalism in many Irish people, and would have me rather join with the protesters than the growing brigades of fawning sleveens.

Another string of letters explored the anti-royalist theme: an hereditary monarch is illegitimate and has no place in a republic ... yes but she's been chosen as head of state by the British people ... oh yeah when was that then.

Finally, the Sinn Fein line is that the royal visit is “premature”.

Shlomo Sand and his book "The Invention of the Jewish People"

2011-05-10T19:58:00.028+01:00

To a lecture on Friday at University College Cork by Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People. An historical tour de force offering a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history, according to the blurb, which continues:-

“Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent 19 weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.”

His book demolishes the argument, fervently believed in by most Israelis, that Jews have an historical right to occupy the land of Israel (more about this below). He’s had death threats from Israelis who are scared of his conclusions.

Yet despite these conclusions, he lives in and supports Israel.

Afterwards over wine and vol-au-vents I asked him how he justifies the Jewish state. He said: too much pain and suffering to undo it, even though it’s a colonial creation. In an interview in The Jewish Chronicle November 12, 2009 he was quoted saying “If there is no such right, what justifies our existence here? Arabs also ask me, after writing this book, how can I justify the existence of Israel. I say to them that even the son of a rape has the right to live. It was a kind of rape in 1947 and ‘48 and the Palestinian tragedy continues. But you can say the same about the USA and Australia.”

Somewhere on my laptop I have a podcast interview with him saying something similar but I can’t find it.

Genetic studies of Jewish populations

In the Q&A session I asked him about genetics. Last year a study was published tracing the ancestry of Jewish people, concluding that Jewish populations around the world have a common genetic background, being all descended from a founding community that lived 2500 years ago in Mesopotamia.

On the face of it, this flatly contradicts his thesis that most European Jews are the descendents of converts, and I wanted to know what he made of it.

He gave a long answer. At first, as a non-scientist, he respected genetic science; but the more he looked, the less he respected. He made a disparaging aside about Zionist geneticists. In 20 years we will laugh at it all, he said. In the 1950s they sought a Jewish fingerprint. “I don’t believe there is Jewish DNA.” Genetics the last refuge of the scoundrel. “It’s anti-semitism which has convinced us we are a race.”

So there.

Prof Sand is a specialist in European history, not Jewish history. This means his credentials for writing the book have been questioned by his numerous critics. A questioner asked if it was a risky enterprise, being a non-specialist. He had many hesitations, he said. “I tried to get collaborators, but they were afraid.”

Every schoolchild in Israel is taught the Jews were exiled in AD 70, known as the Second Exile. So he went to the university library looking for books on this event. He found none. He was shocked! He challenged Jewish history specialists about this. “Oh, we never said it happened” was their reply. This he says was when he decided to write his book.

If there was no exile, what happened to the population? It mainly stayed put, he says. David ben Gurion who became the first Prime Minister of Israel after leading Israel to victory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (see postscript), knew this. He said the Arab peasants are the descendents of the ancient Jews. Indeed this was the Zionist consensus up till 1929. they wanted to include the Arabs in their project. Blood was the issue. “Folkish nationalism” he called it.

The Land of Israel

A questioner asked about the expression Eretz Yisrael, which was used by Zionists in 1930’s up to the Jordan. It’s an expression I've often heard but never fully understood. Prof Sands said that in the Bible the expression just meant the Northern Kingdom, that is, Israel but not Judea, it doesn’t include Jerusalem. But the Promised Land, that’s another thing, that meant half of the Middle East, it included Babylon. I've a feeling that Zionists wouldn’t allow any distinction between Eretz Yisrael and the Promised Land. The trouble is you're wading in controversy all the time. You feel you’ld like a clear definition first, and then get down to the controversy, but it just doesn’t happen that way.

Shlomo Sand’s first language is Hebrew, he says he's not comfortable speaking English but he is too modest. I commented that Hebrew is a unique enterprise, it must be the only example in history of a dead language successfully revived. He corrected me, it’s not a revived language, that’s an impossibility, it’s an invented language. I was about to say that must still qualify as a uniquely successful enterprise, but at this point he got distracted, probably he was bored of talking to me!

Postscript re David ben Gurion:

He is the one who is supposed to have said (in 1956): "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country ... There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it is simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army."

Regarding the Arab peasants being the descendents of the ancient Jews, Prof Sands told me afterwards it’s not as simple as that; there's been so much mixing.

References and links

The genetics study was "Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry" in the American Journal of Human Genetics 03 June 2010

Jewish intellectuals and Palestinian liberation, review in International Socialism 7 January 10)
Shlomo Sand: an enemy of the Jewish people?, review in Observer 17 January 2010
Google books reviews

Critical reviews
Review by Simon Schama in Financial Times, November 13 2009
Review by Patricia Cohen in New York Times, November 2009

"I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy"

2011-05-08T19:17:00.010+01:00

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Last Monday this quote went viral, attributed to Martin Luther King. The attribution is only half right. It seems that “I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy” are the words of an 24-year old American English teacher currently working in Japan, by the name of Jessica Dovey, who posted these words on Facebook (or somewhere).

Other than the first sentence, the rest of the quote is indeed Martin Luther King, from page 53 of his 1963 collection of sermons entitled Strength to Love.

It’s in a chapter entitled “Loving Your Enemies”, which includes the paragraph:-

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says 'Love your enemies', he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

A note regarding Jessica’s own words "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy”. The words may not be Martin Luther King's, but the thought is. In the same book, he wrote this about the drowning of Pharaoh’s soldiers in the crossing of the Red Sea as related in Exodus:-

“The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being.”

A final point. Jessica Dovey is not to blame for the viral misattribution of the whole quote to MLK. In her original post, the attribution was correct. My guess is that someone else retweeted it and, in the mistaken belief they were correcting an error, moved the position of the quote marks.

Source : a Stanford University blog.

More on Islam and evolution

2011-05-03T16:46:00.004+01:00

On Sunday, when I wrote about Dr Usama Hasan having to retract his statements supporting evolution, I ought to have mentioned Inayat Bunglawala of Muslims 4 UK.

Inayat Bunglawala was interviewed in the same piece on the Today programme, urging that space be allowed for a debate as to whether there is more than one valid interpretation of the Koranic account of the creation of Adam. Is it really necessary for a Muslim to believe Adam was fashioned literally from clay he asks? Surely this can be interpreted in a less literal sense, consistent with the known facts of science.

Inayat Bunglawala has taken on the dreadful Harun Yahya whom I listened to in Cork. Here are a couple of links to his writing on the Guardian website:

in a head to head debate with Harun Yahya about evolution and the origins of life from a Muslim perspective
and, in the light of news that Usama Hasan has found it necessary to retract his statements supporting the theory of evolution, arguing that Islam must engage with science, not deny it

By the way, on Thursday 5th, BBC's In Our Time discusses the origins and early development of Sharia law. I wonder will they get as far as Rowan Williams being quoted three years ago saying the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable". He was much derided for this at the time but I think he meant only on a voluntary arbitration basis.

Proved wrong! Legal after all!

2011-05-03T13:41:00.001+01:00

United Nations

Yesterday, the UN Security Council agreed a rare statement in which it hailed the death of bin Laden – rare insofar as it may be unprecedented for the Security Council to hail the death of any person.

Highlighting Al-Qaeda’s atrocities, the council said it "welcomes the news on May 1, 2011 that Osama bin Laden will never again be able to perpetrate such acts of terrorism."

"The Security Council recognises this critical development and other accomplishments made in the fight against terrorism and urges all states to remain vigilant and intensify their efforts in the fight against terrorism."

The council also called for increased cooperation among countries to urgently "bring to justice the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of terrorist attacks."

Full text in UN press release.

So I'm proved wrong!

It’s legal after all! My understanding of international law is that if the UN Security Council says it’s legal, then it’s legal. A bit like ancient empires where the emperor's word was law.

For the past 24 hours I've been likening the US action to a gangland murder. Police? You're joking aren’t you? We'll do it our way!

One last thought – what does the expression "bring to justice" mean in this sentence: "bring to justice the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of terrorist attacks"?

Does it mean justice in the Texan sense? As when George W Bush vowed to bring the terrorists to justice or justice to the terrorists? Seems so.

First thoughts on hearing the bin Laden news this morning

2011-05-02T11:50:00.000+01:00

"Justice has been done," Barack Obama said as he reported the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

But Obama is a lawyer. He full well knows justice is for courts of law to dispense.

A major victory in the war on terror all the same. Which he inherited from Bush. But therein lies the problem. Is war here used in the figurative sense as in the (notably unsuccessful) war on drugs? Or in the literal sense, where the laws of war apply. War in the legal sense can only occur between states. al-Qaeda isn't a state. Terror even less so. You might as well declare war on tanks or on landmines. Some might say it would be better to declare war on tanks or landmines.

And it’s not actually much of a victory, for as Robert Fisk points out, bin Laden for several years has been no more than a figurehead. So actually it’s a revenge killing.

Still, maybe these are not the thought’s uppermost in Obama’s mind right now. He’ll be happy hearing them chanting “USA! USA!” outside his windows.

One last thought. This burial at sea business. If that bit is true, I trust for America’s sake they gave him a decent Muslim burial, with a recognised imam officiating.

Muslim academic forced to retract evolution claim. But why?

2011-05-01T10:19:00.006+01:00

Dr Usama Hasan

Here's something that’s been on my mind since I heard a piece on the BBC Today programme on 12th March.

Dr Usama Hasan was vice-chairman and imam at the Masjid al-Tawhid mosque in Leyton, East London, where he delivered a lecture entitled "Islam and the theory of evolution", outlining why Darwin's theory and Islam were in harmony. He expressed his argument in The Guardian a couple of years earlier.

In January leaflets appeared threatening Dr Hasan’s life. Overseas Muslim scholars issued fatwas denouncing him. All this intimidated Dr Hasan, who feared his house would be firebombed. He felt obliged to issue a humiliating statement which read: "I seek Allah's forgiveness for my mistakes and apologise for any offence caused."

In the BBC interview, he thought a literal interpretation of the Koran could impoverish its message. The BBC’s Robert Piggott put it to him that it could also undermine Islam’s standing in liberal Western countries such as the UK.

“The answer to that has to be yes” he says. He's argued that evolution is not incompatible with the Koran, but he's had to retract that statement. There's an impasse between what religious scholars say and what scientists say. Yes it’s damaging that I'm forced into a retraction, he says, certainly in the West it’s seen that way. Yes he's certainly been intimated by these threats and fatwas.

It’s worth listening to Dr Hasan’s quietly spoken words. Here's a 45-second clip from the Today broadcast.

To read the full story, see “Muslim academic forced to retract evolution claim” on the First Post website. (To reach the story, you'll need to scroll down one screen's worth.)

Three years ago I wrote about an anti-evolution rant by a Muslim scholar that I listened to in Cork. It was Harun Yahya, mentioned by Dr Hasan in his Guardian article. I was appalled at the lack of dissent from the student audience. Nonetheless, at the time, I filed it away somewhere between nuisance and oddity. But the Usama Hasan episode shows it’s more serious than that.

The big question is why?

The explanation usually offered for this antipathy to science is that it's a reaction to colonialism. This argument is well expressed by Wasim Maziak in an essay “Science in the Arab World: Vision of Glories Beyond”

He says science was caught in the cross-fire between anti-colonialism and modernity. “Subconsciously for many Arabs, modern science's ties to the West, to rationalism, and to natural materialism gave it the flavour of enmity. And because science cannot be practiced nowadays without close collaboration with Western academic institutions, research has become, in the minds of many Arabs, a suspicious activity and yet another potential gateway for Western incursion.”

This state of affairs has been exacerbated by the dictatorships which since de-colonisation have dominated so many Arab countries. Science needs an atmosphere in which competing ideas can jostle each other. Authoritarian regimes instil subservience to orthodoxy. Science can't flourish in such an environment. As a consequence there has been no-one to speak up for science and act as a counterweight to the religious fundamentalists.

Well it’s an explanation but I don’t find it a very satisfying one. “You may think you're good at science and technology but we’re not playing your game”. A more dignified riposte would be “Oi! Think you're good at science? Think again, we were there first!”

Two more things need to be said. Antipathy to science is also widespread amongst the Tea Party and in the US bible belt. There too they resent colonialism. In this instance, from the liberal Washington élite. The other is that anti-science is far from a universal attitude in the Arab or Muslim world. The BBC report said that opinion at the East London mosque was finely balanced.

A prominent advocate for a new Muslim science is Jim al Khalili, an Iraqi-born physicist and historian of science, who has written the story of the scientific achievements of the medieval scholars of the golden age of the Islamic Empire between the 8th and 15th centuries.

No surprise. I was misled

2011-04-29T11:22:00.005+01:00

Ah well silly me I allowed my imagination to run away with me. Just the same old royal wedding stuff.

Strip the subsidies from nuclear power

2011-04-29T00:30:00.001+01:00

The Financial Times on April 25 in an editorial headed “Time to revive, not kill, the nuclear age” advocated reviving nuclear power, whilst bemoaning that this is going to be another bad week for the nuclear industry. On top of the continuing radioactive releases from the Fukushima plant, the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster is providing anti-nuclear campaigners with a rallying call, the editorial regretted.

In a reader’s letter, Dr Yousaf Mahmood Butt of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics retorted thus:-

I would, perhaps, support your viewpoint if the nuclear industry could revive itself without massive government subsidies.

In the US – the biggest user of nuclear power – the industry receives huge ongoing insurance bail-outs under the 1957 Price-Anderson Act. This outdated legislation limits the liability of the nuclear industry in the event of a major nuclear accident and artificially cheapens the price it pays for insurance. As a result, nuclear-derived power itself is artificially cheap, one reason that it continues to displace renewable in the not-so-free-market.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reports that many nuclear suppliers have said that “without Price-Anderson coverage, they would not participate in the nuclear industry”. If an industry that has benefited from massive government research and development and other subsidies for more than five decades, and which creates staggering unresolved waste disposal problems, raises proliferation issues, and poses serious risks to human health, cannot survive without government support then, perhaps, it ought not to survive.

Applause. But also uneasiness. And my uneasiness is that by expressing the argument in this way you pander to an underlying assumption that energy ought to be provided by a free market. The complaint raised is that governments by subsidising nuclear are interfering with this free market. I actually make no complaint about governments subsiding cleaner energy. Let them distort the market I say. The point is that the subsidies ought to be redirected to renewables, and to energy efficiency, and to reducing energy use.

Royal wedding - what surprise is in store?

2011-04-28T14:31:00.003+01:00

Last night on BBC television, the BBC's royal correspondent (Nicholas Witchell I think) said we should all be ready for a surprise. Maybe he used the word wow factor, I'm not sure. So he knows something. What? Two possibilities present themselves. One is that Kate Middleton will upstage Sweden’s Princess Victoria by parading up the aisle with William, and will thus abolish at a stroke the repugnant tradition of the bride being given away. That’s unlikely. To be fair this is a much bigger ask in Britain than it was in Sweden where the giving away tradition is not actually embedded. I've discussed last year’s Swedish controversy about this.

Wedding scene from Ang Lee’s Sense and
Sensibility. Emma Thompson as Elinor

The other possibility is she won't wear white. Ang Lee’s 1995 film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which ends with a double wedding, has both sisters in their colourful finery; and I found out from Bath’s fashion museum the other week that the first white wedding dress in their collection is 1828. The commentary said it’s unknown exactly when and why white became obligatory but it was thought to be around that time, that is to say roughly 15 years after Austen wrote the novel.

So having assured everyone that you’ve got to be joking if you think I'm going to be watching the royal wedding, I might just have a peep at the entrance ceremony to see if I'm right about either of these outlandish suggestions.

As a final comment, I notice people in Ireland tend to refer to the forthcoming event as “the royal wedding”. Even RTÉ presenters and correspondents do so. Which some find annoying, and rightly so in my opinion, as the correct phrase would be “the British royal wedding”.

Lowry Lynch and King Midas - how related?

2011-04-23T09:34:00.005+01:00

Last weekend Cork Astronomy Club went to Bath. At dinner on Friday night someone asked me for a party piece and after the customary show of reluctance I told the story of Midas the King has asses ears, which was greeted, when I had finished, with a chorus of “Lowry Lynch!”

The story of Lowry Lynch goes like this. King Lowry Lynch (or more correctly Labroid Lorca) had horse's ears, something he was concerned to keep quiet. To cover the horses ears he grew his hair long, and had it cut once a year. The barber, who was chosen by lot, was immediately put to death. A widow, hearing that her only son had been chosen to cut the king's hair, begged the king not to kill him. He agreed, so long as the barber kept his secret.

The burden of the secret was so heavy that the barber fell ill. A druid advised him to go to a crossroads and tell his secret to the first tree he came to, and he would be relieved of his burden and be well again. He told the secret to a large willow. Soon afterwards, Craiftine, the court poet and harper, chanced to break his harp, and needed a new one. Now it happens that the best tree for making a harp is a willow. And of what willow tree was the new harp made? Why, of the very tree the barber had told his secret to.

Whenever Craiftine played it, the harp sang "Lowry Lynch has horse's ears". Lowry Lynch repented of all the barbers he had put to death, and admitted his secret.

By way of comparison, you can find my own telling of Midas the King has asses ears in my collection of stories for children.

Clearly the two tales are essentially the same. I should like to find out the precise relationship. Was the story of Lowry Lynch, the horses ears and the harp written by someone who was familiar with Greek myths, and if so when? Or are the stories two instances of a folktale, and are other instances known?

For example the Cinderella tale appears in the folklore of many cultures. I believe the earliest recorded version comes from China, written down in the middle of the ninth century of the Common Era, but probably already familiar to readers before that. It has a magical fish in place of a fairry godmother, and a golden shoe. I read somewhere (though I can't find the reference now) that in one Chinese version of the tale the two ugly sisters are forced to dance themselves to death wearing iron shoes on hot coals.

References : a history of the Cinderella tale

Lowry Lynch in Answers.com.

I thought I had read the bit about the ugly sisters dancing on hot coals in the Opie book (image) but I've just glanced through my copy and I can't find it, so maybe I saw it somewhere else.

I muse on the post-Roman history of the Roman baths at Bath

2011-04-20T18:26:00.008+01:00

Three fascinated hours in the Roman Baths museum at Bath with Cork Astronomy Club last weekend. Most surprising fact: the baths have a continuous history long before the Romans, and ever since. I had always imagined that they were rediscovered in the 18th century just in time for Jane Austen to visit the Pump Room. But there's a crucial fact that I was previously unaware of. The baths are built on top of a hot spring. So whereas most Roman baths were built in a city and fed by an aqueduct, uniquely at Bath, the city was built round the baths. The hot spring still springs (if that's what a spring does). You can see the water bubbling up!

Tourists amuse themselves photographing each other beside the great bath

A diminutive tourist helps erode Roman paving enclosing
a Roman lead pipe

Which brings me to the acorns. Our tour bus guide showed us these carved stone acorns with which the Georgian Bath architect John Wood decorated the parapet of The Circus:-

At The Circus acorns decorate the parapet recalling
the pigs that led Prince Bladud to the hot spring in 800 BC

They recall a herd of acorn-eating pigs which Prince Bladud found wallowing in steaming hot mud. He observed that the pigs went in scabby and came out clean. So Prince Bladud leapt in and was instantly cured of leprosy, and began the story of Bath and its baths. Prince Bladud, the tour guide told us, lived 800 BC. But a book I bought in the museum shop says that the story was probably invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century.

Nonetheless, it’s certain that long before the Romans arrived and built the baths, the local Celtic tribes knew and venerated the hot springs, which pumped hot water up, year after unceasing year, mineral rich, and miraculous. A diagramme in the museum showed the geological fault up through which the warm water is forced. But neither the Celts nor the Romans knew this. To them the hot springs were magic and the work of gods.

An interpretation board explains how hot water (red) deep
in the earth’s crust is forced up at pressure through a fault
directly underneath the Roman baths and temple complex

Evidence of Celtic shrines has been found, where they worshipped a deity known as Sul. The local tribe minted coins depicting ships. So they will have traded with the Romans who will have doubtless known, even before they invaded, about the hot springs, which are unique in Europe (other than Iceland).

The Romans were diplomatic enough to name the place Aquae Sulis, The Waters of Sul, even though they built a temple and dedicated it to their own goddess Minerva.

The baths have been restored to their layout in the Roman period. But the hot spring had been in continuous use for thousands of years before the Romans. And also, so far as I can tell, continuously ever since.

The building that the Romans erected around the spring was truly spectacular. Thers's no roof now so you have to imagine it, and there's a diagramme to help you do this. Aquae Sulis was pretty much at the edge of the empire and many people who came to it will have never seen anything else like it, before or since.

This diagramme helps visitors visualise the enormous high roof

By the time of the baths' final extension in the 4th century the complex included a temple, at least five hot and cold baths, sweat rooms and cold rooms, and a jacuzzi into which hot water directly from the spring was forced under pressure through a lead pipe. It’s that jacuzzi where they think the sick came to be healed. As well as the physical heat, the people will have experienced the spiritual warmth of the goddess who they believed had sent the magical water.

The Jacuzzi - sorry it's such a dull photo. Sitting on the stone seat you would have been pretty much completely immersed and it's thought this was where the sick came to be healed.

How did attitudes change when Christianity arrived? Was the temple of Minerva converted to a church? Was the hot spring still regarded as holy? I didn’t get any information on these questions.

And the best bit - after the Romans

We now come on to the part of the history that interests me most.

What happened when the Romans left? Continuity and discontinuity in history. The great bath, sacred spring and temple fell to ruin, and as the drainage system disintegrated, the area returned to marsh. But when? Before Britain became independent of the empire in 410? Not till the Battle of Dyrham in 577 when Bath came under Saxon rule? The Saxons called the place Hat Bathu, hot bath, so what does this tell us? Was the massive vaulted roof still intact when the Saxons arrived? More questions that I didn't get answers to.

There's a theory that an earthquake sometime between 410 and 676 shattered the Roman structures.

In 1090 two new baths were begun by Bishop Villula who was impressed with the hot springs’ therapeutic powers. A century before that, my book mentions Benedictine monks “living by the hot springs”. And in 1106 a King’s Bath was built. A 12th century chronicle describes “a receptacle beautifully constructed with chambered arches. These form baths in the middle of the city, warm and wholesome and charming. Sick persons from all over England resort thither to bathe in these healing waters, and the fit also, to see these wonderful burstings out of warm water and to bathe in them.”

In 1452 Thomas Calder wrote : “what can be more wonderful or more blessed than this provision by which all men, high and low, rich and poor, receive cure of all their maladies”.

Three years before that an Act or Parliament banned nude bathing. Vice and licentiousness huh!

I skip over the rest of the history, the 18th century, Jane Austen, and all that. To learn more I recommend the inestimable Wikipedia. The official Roman Baths website is a bit disappointing.

In my teenage years I lived a few miles away in Bristol. I remember visiting the baths once, only once, and I don't recall they made much of an impression. What a waste!

I see Stonehenge. Also a manky handbag

2011-04-20T13:22:00.002+01:00

Cork Astronomy Club on tour. That’s our bus at the bottom. You may think we went to Florence but no that’s not the Ponte Vecchio it’s the Pulteney Bridge in Bath, England. We saw the Roman baths and Stonehenge amongst other places and I have things to say about both; but I need to get my thoughts and my photos in order first. Oh, and I almost forgot. The William and Caroline Herschel Astronomy Museum, which was our reason for going to Bath in the first place.

Most surprising fact about the Roman bath: it has a continuous history long before the Romans, and ever since. I had always imagined that it was rediscovered in the 18th century just in time for Jane Austen to visit the Pump Room. And Stonehenge – wow! Neolithic farming must have been hugely productive if they could spare the labour to build something so huge and essentially pointless.

Mankiest exhibit in Bath: included in this display of 19th century handbags at the costume museum, centre, is one decorated with shiny green beetle wings from India. Ugh!

Lead books - maybe a hoax after all

2011-04-19T21:08:00.003+01:00

Unintelligent forgery?

Lead books! Ha! Have we been had for fools? See my earlier post (4th April) on a find said to be the earliest ever Christian documents, predating even the letters of St Paul.

Who ever heard of lead books anyway? And the first Christians - or so I've always been led to believe - lived in daily expectation of the second coming; so why would they write books at all, never mind lead ones? The major discovery of Christian history indeed!

These doubts occurred to me the day after I wrote that piece. And now the thought that the lead books are fakes receives reinforcement by Peter Thonemann, lecturer in ancient history at Oxford University, who has staked his career on them being forgeries and no more than 50 years old.

He says the text on one of the bronze tablets (they are not all lead it seems) makes no sense in its own right, but has been extracted unintelligently from another longer text on display in the Archaeological Museum in Amman. By someone who knows so little Greek that he confuses the Greek letters lamda (L) and alpha (A).

Thonemann likens one of the inscriptions to "t to be that is the question wheth".

This comes from a blog by Daniel O. McClellan, an historian of early Christianity. Thanks to Noggin for calling it to my attention

Why you should avoid airline tea but coffee is okay

2011-04-19T14:08:00.001+01:00

To make tea, the water needs to be near to 100 C. But on a plane water boils at too low a temperature, so you'll never get a decent brew.

It's because although airline cabins are pressurised, the pressure is significantly below normal sea-level atmospheric pressure. And it's the ambient pressure that determines the temperature at which water boils. At normal sea-level atmospheric pressure, it's 100 C. At lower pressures, the boiling point is lower.

It follows that you should make a better cup of tea in fine weather (high pressure) than in a storm (low pressure). Has anyone actually noticed this? I haven't, but now the thought has occurred to me, I intend to check.

And it presumably means that in Tibet, too, tea is a bit substandard. Which is a shame. For I remember a book I had when I was little which said that tea is a traditional drink for Tibetans, and it’s taken with rancid butter.

The low boiling point of water on board an aircraft should pose less of a problem when you're brewing coffee, which is best made with water at 95 C.

There’s a vital figure missing from the foregoing, namely at what temperature water does in fact boil on a normal airliner. Sadly I can't supply this. You’ll need to read In-flight Science, by Brian Clegg, Icon Books, £12.99, reviewed in New Scientist on 9th April.

Unsettled by Monbiot’s support for nuclear power

2011-04-12T19:05:00.006+01:00

George Monbiot started this round on 21st March with a Guardian article “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power”, unleashing a deluge of criticism from anti-nuclear campaigners. See my earlier post.

And on 30th March, he debated the anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, who has spent decades warning of the medical hazards posed by nuclear technologies. She is the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Dr. Helen Caldicott

The debate (styled "Prescription for Survival") was hosted by the left-wing US radio station Democracy Now! You can listen to the debate (26 minutes incl intro).

Monbiot's espousal of nuclear energy and his dismissal of radiation risks is unsettling to me. Were anyone else to say these things I should contemptuously disregard them. You will hear Helen Caldicott indignantly rebutting Monbiot on radiation but he is unrepentant.

He's written about the encounter on his personal blog . He says the green movement, which he vigorously indentifies himself with, has misled the world about the dangers of radiation. A great wrong has been done and we must put it right he claims.

On his Guardian environment blog he has written a longer piece decrying the double standards of green opponents of nuclear energy.

James Lovelock

Monbiot is in the same camp as James (“the maverick environmentalist”) Lovelock, who has offered British Nuclear Fuels Ltd his back garden to bury radioactive waste in. Here's a profile.

Lovelock is passionate about climate change. “We have to understand” he said in a 2006 lecture “that the catastrophe threatened by global heating is far worse than any war, famine, or plague in living memory; worse even than global nuclear war. Much of the lush and comfortable Earth we now enjoy is about to become a hot and barren desert.” In the same lecture he says : “Therefore, except where electricity is powered by abundant water flow or geophysical heat, there is no safe alternative to nuclear energy.”

If you want to follow this topic some more, here is an Economist debate staged over 5 days, finishing tomorrow. The motion is “This house believes that the world would be better off without nuclear power".

Tues 12th April - Global Day of Action on Military Spending

2011-04-07T21:48:00.002+01:00

Some events and links

London :-

Welfare or Warfare public meeting

Friends House, Euston Rd

Speakers:-
Husna Ahmed, Faith Regen Foundation
John Hilary, War on Want
Kate Hudson, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Vijay Mehta, Uniting for Peace
Stuart Parkinson, Scientists for Global Responsibility

Leeds :-

Leeds Metropolitan University: Dr Steve Schofield on The true cost of UK military spending, 7pm

Dublin :-

Picket outside Irish Dept of Defence and the Irish Dept.of Enterprise Trade & Employment. Contact: Roger Cole

Campaign Against the Arms Trade :-

Ideas for building a huge international call for change

Worldwide events listing :-

http://demilitarize.org/action-events/

MPs slam UK arms exports

2011-04-07T21:47:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday the UK Parliament published an unusually critical report from MPs on UK arms exports, especially to the Middle East and North Africa.

The story appears on the Parliament website. So far I haven't seen anything about it in the media.

The report states:

"Both the present Government and its predecessor misjudged the risk that arms approved for export to certain authoritarian countries in North Africa and the Middle East might be used for internal repression"

I've seen the following comment on a mailing list I subscribe to:

It appears that the committee is unaware that the major intended purpose of these arms is for internal repression, and that this is in the economic interests of both the authoritarian rulers in this region and the owners of the UK's large corporations.

All the dictators in the Middle East and North Africa were put in place by the rich countries of the West, or have been supported by the West. Their assigned role is to sell the raw materials of their country to the West at low prices, and in return they get to keep the money for themselves personally. They necessarily also have the role of keeping their populations under control - if a real democracy ever was established in this region then the dictators would get nothing. The democratic government could set a much higher price on the raw materials and the returns would be spent on projects of benefit to the whole population. The West's corporations would not be able to make huge profits based on raw materials bought at artificially low prices, and would probably risk collapse.

So there is a huge 'economic incentive' (or greed, if you like) on the part of the West's rich corporations to keep the dictators armed and in power - not just the profits on the arms sales.