Solidarity with all on strike in the UK today

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

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

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 how 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 (IWLM), 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

A swede

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.

Harvesting swedes

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

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 recent 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 star 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 shows the view from a hypothetical (and in practice impossible) nearby space probe. No Earth-bound astronomer would see the planet this way, since from here any extra-solar planet always has a much smaller apparent diameter than its parent star, and can never obscure more than a tiny fraction of its light. (Unless the star were a white dwarf but we won’t go into that.)

Nor should we infer from the graphic that astronomers can train their telescopes on an extrasolar planet and spot the city lights in the manner 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 distinguish artificial light by its characteritic signature of wavelengths.

Vote NO in the Irish referendums

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

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.