Just another false alarm...

Politics Karaoke

2006-12-05T04:20:00.000-05:00

These are great:

Watch George Bush doing U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday"...

...and Tony Blair with The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

Wasting Time

2006-11-14T20:09:00.000-05:00

For more, go here.

Celebrity Look-alikes

2006-11-07T18:16:00.000-05:00

A lot of dating sites, and irritating people, ask you who you look like, usually intending someone famous. Now you can give those people a definite, if perhaps unconvincing, answer with the site My Heritage. Give them a picture and they'll tell you who you look like; but it seems to be pretty dependent on what expression you're wearing in your photo, as I got different answers with a couple of different ones. But now I can at least honestly say that I've been told I look like Tony Curtis and Christian Slater. Whether that's a good thing or not, I'm not sure...

Cheers

2006-11-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

A large number of the Americans I know, and (apparently following them) some other international students, end most of their e-mails with "cheers" before signing their name. I've never heard it used as meaning anything other than 'thanks' or (something like) 'drink up', before coming here. I don't really see how it could have any meaning outside of those usages, and particularly not in this context. So if anyone reading this does use it like this, could you perhaps explain when you started doing it, and why/what it means?

Cheers.

How Many of Me?

2006-10-30T22:18:00.000-05:00

Hurray! Here is an utterly frivolous use for the (US) census!

I now know that I'm the first living person with my name to enter the country. A pioneer at last. That is, unless we're just census-avoiders...

NJ Equal Rights

2006-10-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

The New Jersey supreme court today ruled that the state legislature must introduce a bill giving gay couples equal rights with straight couples. This is great news.

However, they have not specified whether these rights should take the form of marriage or civil partnerships. Less good. Now three of the legislators - Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Wilfredo Caraballo, Assemblyman Brian Stack and Assemblyman Reed Gusciora - are putting forward a bill for full marriage equality. So we'll see what happens.

Here's this from a Garden State Equality communique:

"As the late Lt. Laurel Hester and too many other cases across New Jersey have shown, half-steps short of marriage -- like New Jersey's domestic-partnership law and also civil union laws -- don't work in the real world. Hospitals and other employers have told domestic-partnered couples across New Jersey: We don't care what the domestic partnership law says. You're not married.

That's why it wouldn't matter if the legislature added all the rights in the world to the current law without calling it marriage. Marriage is the only currency of commitment the real world universally understands and accepts."

So Garden State Equality will be running a commercial for the proposal, a rally of same-sex couples will be held tonight in Montclair, and many other events will be happening state-wide as the legislation gets discussed.

A poll has revealed that New-Jerseyans favour full marriage equality by 59-39 percent.

Nunc hic aut numquam...

2006-10-24T11:58:00.000-04:00

"The legend of Elvis Presley lives for ever, and it's of course very important to sing Elvis Presley's songs in the Latin language, because Latin is the eternal language"

The Finns go straight to the heart of things here.

Alternative Source Citations

2006-10-18T00:47:00.000-04:00

For the academics among you, there's no longer any excuse for not knowing how to cite body art, magic 8-balls and toilet graffiti. And if you were wondering how to cite wise words from your alien encounter, you can do that too.

Robot Sex: For The Ugly And Socially Awkward

2006-10-09T22:30:00.000-04:00

"To the ugly and socially awkward: How sad that you are so repulsive to
people around you that no one wants to be your friend or lifetime
companion. We won't make it up to you by being your friend or your marriage
partner--we have our own freedom of association to exercise--but you can
console yourself in your miserable loneliness by consuming these material
goods that we, the beautiful and charming ones, will provide. And who
knows? Maybe you won't be such a loser in love once potential dates see how
rich you are." - Elizabeth Anderson

This is the letter that Anderson imagines being written to those chosen for material compensation on some "luck egalitarian" schemes. (It is, incidentally, also my favourite single paragraph in any of the contemporary equality literature in political theory). She argues that their discussions of who should be compensated and how in an egalitarian society imply the kind of patronising mentality depicted here.

But how far is it from how people really think? Just replace "how rich you are" with "how much you've learnt courtesy of Robosex", and you get a sense of why David Levy thinks sex robots will be both popular and useful.

First, he makes great claims for what these robots will be able to do:

Scientists have already developed artificial skin sufficiently sensitive to distinguish between a gentle caress and firm pressure; and the complementary capability - an artificial finger that can apply sensuous strokes. There is also research into silicone-based and similar types of materials used in the RealDoll and rival products, materials that provide for the user a measure of simulation of coupling with a human sex partner. Then add one or more of the specifically sexual electronic technologies that are already available, such as those employed for the benefit of women in the Thrillhammer, the Sybian, or the hugely popular vibrators that pleasure so many millions of customers; or the male equivalents - vibrating penis rings. The combination of these technologies and others will enable robots to deliver sexually awesome experiences.

Then, knocking back claims that people wouldn't want to use them for embarrassment, he says "I hope and believe that one of the great benefits of sexual robots will be their ability to teach lovemaking skills, so that men who do feel inadequate will be able to take unlimited lessons".

But its real target market soon becomes clear:

...What I am convinced of is that robot sex will become the only sexual outlet for a few sectors of the population: the misfits, the very shy, the sexually inadequate and uneducable...

So there you go: robot sex will redeem the marginalised, teaching them new skills in order to gain re-entry into mainstream society, and consoling those who just can't learn with a "sexually awesome experience", human-contact-free!

Anderson follows on her imagined compensation letters with a question: "Could a self-respecting citizen fail to be insulted by such messages?" The case of robot sex, however, brings to light a perhaps unexpected response - "We might be insulted, but that doesn't mean we won't keep the free gift..."

Atlantic City

2006-10-09T21:44:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I took up an opportunity that was advertised to the graduates as "Trip to the Jersey shore!". Of course, I'd heard of Atlantic City, but since the place name wasn't included in the notice (maybe to get more people to come), I was picturing a nice day by the sea, with a book, and maybe some snarking at Germans colonising the beach. This being the gambling capital of the East coast, though, I was very wrong.

We arrived into the bus depot outside Caesar's casino and were given $17 to spend there. Naturally, most of the slot machines I found wouldn't accept under five dollars, so that money was gone pretty quickly, and after one good win of $50, I ended up $60 out of pocket. Not as bad as most who go there, I reckon, but not good with payday not for another week.

So, knowing I now had forty bucks to last me another week, I spent the rest of the day wandering around and seeing what the town had to offer other than gambling. The answer being "not a whole lot". The boardwalk, which runs the length of the beach between the sea and the casinos, is a nice promenade, with strange little boardwalk-buggy rides for hire every few paces. At least, it's a nice walk on the casino side, but if you go North a bit from Caesar's, you soon reach the other side, with 99 cent shops abounding, ferocious seagulls diving into near misses with your head, and everywhere signs saying "Cash for Gold", "Dinero por oro".

Having earlier passed expensive jewellery shops, I began to get a sense of a cycle to A.C. life, at least for its busloads of visitors. If you arrive in the morning, when most of the people in the casinos are pensioners and disabled war veterans, you can spend a lot of money and make a little back before lunch, smoking away in the one place left where it's legal now in Jersey. Then perhaps you feel guilty for leaving your partner at home, looking after those hungry kids, and buy her a bit of jewellery with your winnings.

For lunch, you grab a nice enough meal, before heading back in, losing what little you'd gained and deciding "if I could just have one more bet, I know I'd make that money back!" So away you go, getting your cash for gold on the nice necklace you bought earlier, and head back inside. Everything dies, though (baby, that's a fact), and with all your hope and money gone, you head back on the last bus, maybe stopping to grab a cheap hotdog and some 99 cent watch on the other side of the main drag before you go - "at least she'll see I bought her something..."

Okay, so maybe this little tale was something I thought up to pass the time while I was there, losing my own money, but A.C. may well be the most depressing town I've ever seen, and I've spent time in Medway, so that's saying something.

I ended up my day there sitting on the almost deserted black-grey beach, struggling to breathe the polluted air, and reading "Deliver Me From Nowhere" by Tennessee Jones, a collection of stories with titles from Springsteen's "Nebraska" album, including 'Atlantic City', the story of a couple who take everything they have from the bank in their home town, before going to the A.C., gambling it all away and throwing themselves off the pier. And that sounded about right.

The town sign should read "Welcome to Atlantic City, the fag end of the world".

Which Jane Austen Character Are You?

2006-10-09T21:39:00.000-04:00

Which Jane Austen Character Are You?

You are Eliza Bennett from Pride and Prejudice! Yay, you! Perhaps the brightest and best character in all of English literature, you are intelligent, lively, lovely-- in short, you are the best of company. Your only foibles are that you stick with your first impressions... and your family is quite intolerable.
Take this quiz!

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Well, clearly that's me... But I'm sure I'm much more intolerable than the rest of my family.
[Via Chris]

No scents! No pastels! No scurvy!

2006-09-21T10:09:00.000-04:00

A bit late for "International Talk Like A Pirate Day", but this is a wonderful idea. It's Blackbeard Brand Rugged Tampons, "A product you can trust from a name you can't".

Beast watch

2006-09-18T19:46:00.000-04:00

One thing I've found particularly hard in adjusting to a new country is getting used to the presence of real wildlife. As a particularly nervous city kid, I've always been terrified of most animals and insects, so I've not been particularly happy sharing my space with thousands of squirrels, including black ones (native to Princeton); having rabid raccoons going through the bins at night; watching wild deer narrowly escape a bus-mown death; walking by what was reportedly a praying mantis on the pavement in front of me etc.

Okay, so there is some wildlife in England, but I've always felt pretty safe from it in Birmingham and central Oxford. Apparently, though I was wrong to feel that way. Little did I know when I lived there how narrowly I'd missed a close encounter of the wallaby kind...

A Different Person

2006-09-14T10:04:00.000-04:00

I've just started taking undergraduate Latin classes, with a view to using it for research purposes in a couple of years. Being surrounded by high-achieving American undergraduates is both sociologically interesting and amusing in a number of ways.

The best moment today came when one student, asked what the English second person plural was, confidently answered "Y'all".

A Boy Named Sarah

2006-09-10T09:15:00.000-04:00

About 10 months ago I had my hair cut very short, and since then it's mostly fluctuated between chaemo-patient (as someone here put it), fascist (as I think most of my English friends put it) and crew-cut. A number of memorable moments of gender mis- or re-identification have occurred since then, my favourites including the comments "you could be a boxer with a chest like that, sir" during some close measurements for a suit-fitting, and "I really think women are the future... You and I are on the way out" from a man at a party, where the rest of the group were girls.

For the most part, these moments have become a routine part of my life, and something I usually quite enjoy, their unpredictability being the only hard part. But something about the differences between England and America - possibly just a mere fact of accent - seems to have removed the power of the normal tip-offs that I might be, at least biologically, female. Whereas at home the mistaken impressions were usually corrected with great embarrassment later on when I spoke more clearly, or allowed my chest to show more prominently, here that corrective seems to be largely absent. "Oh, he's just English..."

Even my name on my ID card - and my long hair in that - doesn't change things here. Cashing travellers' cheques at the bank yesterday, two of the tellers discussed options about bank accounts for me - "he'd get a $250 bonus with his first payslip on that account", "yeah, but he doesn't have a social security number yet..." And after this, one of them looked at my passport for a long time to write down some details, before handing it back with a 'here you go, sir'. Another time, I'd just been ID'd in a bar when I got into a chat with a Brazilian man who talked all night about sports, because he thought I must do a lot of tough ones with a physique like mine (you see, only women are fat - men are built)

None of this seems to be a problem in a university town on the East coast, but if I ever leave here my life may rapidly head into Boys Don't Cry territory. And one thing that still scares me about living in this country - people here carry guns...

American Fare

2006-09-09T02:36:00.000-04:00

Another fun part of international orientation was being treated to an "American fare" lunch. This happened on Thursday, where, after several hours of talks, we were taken to experience American junk food. Candy floss (cotton candy), baguettes (Hoagies), popcorn, pizza, snow cones and ice cream were all served up to us with a handy explanation of what they were and their place in American culture. Some extracts:

"Eating cotton candy is only part of the fun; watching it being made fascinates children and adults alike."

"What is a typical pizza topping in your country?" (Bird's custard, naturally...)

"Australians and New Zealanders are among the the leading ice cream consumers per capita in the world. The UK is among the lowest consumers of ice cream" (I can't imagine why...)

The sessions have been quite fun in many ways, though, and the stereotyping certainly runs in all directions. Thanks to arriving in the country with no furniture and very few possessions of any kind, I've been a regular passenger of New Jersey Transit's buses to Walmart (I know, I know) and the massive grocery store Wegman's. In the West Windsor Wegman's you can find a large international food section, giving us pad thai noodles, Caribbean peas and rice, spring rolls, curries and, delightfully, 'European food'. In this grouping there were included things like strudel, malt loaf and a number of other items, but the English representatives certainly held their own - Bird's custard (hence my comment above), Heinz spaghetti hoops and Worcestershire sauce. Needless to say, any yearning I might have had for those items is fully abated...

You may not know this, but...

2006-09-09T02:05:00.000-04:00

After a very long break in regular posting, this blog has relocated from England to Princeton, New Jersey, and its author is now officially an international graduate student. In my capacity as such, I am being taught about American culture. So today I received the answer to that burning question, "Who is an American?", with a handy checklist of points.

Americans, apparently, are characterised by their individualism, their punctuality(!), their emphasis on "doing rather than being" (we may go down the pub to meet people; they go hiking), their egalitarianism, the prominent role they give to women, and their friendliness and openness. The last bit came with a warning - Americans may say hello and ask you how you are, but you should not mistake this for a deep friendship.

Thus my personal crusade in the Global War on Terror now comes with a handy guide for spotting those un-/anti-American bastards who are ruining it for the rest of us. Being late for a meeting always seemed so innocent before, but now I know better. No real American would ever do that.

Even better, I can now make "American friendships". This is, of course, another dangerous area, full of pitfalls which could leave me isolated for years to come. My future American friends will apparently be put off if I begin on any topic other than the traffic or the weather - these are the safe subjects. If my new American buddy is amenable, I may, after a suitable period of time, begin discussing common interests and so on, but anything more personal than that will come only very gradually. So, for instance, the conversation I had this evening which touched on the sexuality of tree-hugging (tree-humping) will probably render me a social outcast for the remainder of my time here. (Actually, that may be fair enough...)

And, armed with all this useful information, I continue on into the unknown...

Christian Fisting

2006-06-20T18:05:00.000-04:00

This is great fun:

"My love thrust his hand through the opening, and my feelings were stirred for him." (Song of Solomon 5:2-4)

Did you know that "a Christian couple can use fisting to build trust and intimacy between them, as well as strengthening their relationship with the Lord"?

Indeed, it's an act of faith:

"...Before attempting fisting, a Christian husband and wife should pray together and ask for divine guidance. The husband should ask that God guide his hand and work through him, and for the skill and patience to fist his wife correctly and maximize her pleasure. The wife should pray for openness and readiness to receive God’s love and grace in the form of her husband’s hand.

Both should treat the act of fisting as a divine spiritual mystery to be entered into with reverence and awe, especially the husband. In another spiritual interpretation of fisting, as he inserts his hand into his wife’s vagina, a man is symbolically re-enacting the moment of truth following Christ’s resurrection from the tomb, when Doubting Thomas touches the wounds in the Savior’s flesh: Then He said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and observe My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Don't be an unbeliever, but a believer.” (John 20:27) Thomas’ doubt would not be satisfied until he physically felt the wounds in Christ’s body and penetrated His flesh with his hand. Likewise, the spiritual and sexual power of fisting cannot be known unless experienced physically. "

Quirky

2006-03-30T16:14:00.000-05:00

I just passed by a kid wearing a t-shirt saying "Come on feel the Illinoise." Americans are great.

Protests In India Over Gay Arrests

2006-01-12T19:40:00.000-05:00

From Reuters, with some relevant background links added:

"NEW DELHI - Gay activists held a rare and noisy protest in the Indian capital on Thursday demanding the release of four men arrested for homosexuality and running an online gay club.
Homosexuality is banned in India under a 19th century law but is prevalent undercover. About two dozen gay men and women and their supporters gathered outside the New Delhi guesthouse of the northern Uttar Pradesh state which ordered the arrest of the four last week. The protesters from the largely closeted gay community waved banners and placards which read: "My sexuality, My right," "Queer and Proud," and "I am a man. I love a man. That's my only crime."

"The entire case is fabricated," said Guam Bhang, a gay rights activist. "None of the men were having public sex. They have been arrested simply because they are homosexual." Human rights and anti-AIDS groups have slammed the arrests saying such discrimination will hurt the fight against HIV/AIDS.

"Criminalization of people most at risk of HIV infection may increase stigma and discrimination, ultimately fuelling the AIDS epidemic," UNAIDS India coordinator Denis Braun told Reuters. India has 5.1 million people with HIV/AIDS, the second largest number after South Africa. New York-based Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh, protesting against the arrests.

"Lucknow police have a shameful record of harassing gay men as well as non-governmental organizations that work with them," said Human Rights Watch
official Scott Long in a statement. In a similar incident in 2001, Long said, police in Lucknow raided the offices of two non-government organizations working on HIV/AIDS prevention and arrested four staff. They were accused of running a gay sex racket. An outcry by activists led to their release after a month.

India's gay community is trying to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding homosexuality in a nation where public hugging or kissing among heterosexuals invites angry stares and lewd comments. "I am queer and I know how difficult it is," said Pramado Menon. "We have to hide our lives." In the past year, three lesbian couples have hit the headlines as they struggled to stay together despite public pressure for them to split up.

Although activists have been pressing for the scrapping of the anti-homosexuality law, the government said last year society was not ready to accept legalized homosexual behavior."

New Year's Resolutions

2005-12-31T19:34:00.000-05:00

I won't be posting much in the forthcoming year at all, but I'll take an official pause for the while as I prepare to relocate back to Oxford. So this is a last post for a while.

I never seriously make resolutions, but this year I vaguely intend to do the following:

Read all the books I was given for Christmas for once (unfortunately, this includes the Rights of War and Peace - only £16.99 in Borders! - so this resolution may end up like those ones about giving up chocolate... it also includes trashy Japanese horror novels for a lighter touch, though).
Also reading - start working through Aquinas' Summa Theologica.
Go out drinking more often with people I like but don't see much.
Spend less on pointless forms of gambling (admittedly, this one was precipitated by being ID'd in a supermarket for a lottery ticket a couple of weeks ago. I can handle someone thinking I'm under eighteen - just about - but under sixteen?)
Finish my degree. Of course, I remember making this one last year...

Feel free to post any resolutions you may have made yourself. A happy new year to everyone. May it prove better than the last, on whatever scale you choose.

Springer Banned

2005-12-15T19:26:00.000-05:00

Most people probably know about this already, but I'd missed it somehow. Both Sainsbury's and Woolworths have withdrawn Jerry Springer: The Opera from their stores in response to complaints from Christian Voice-type bigots. Sainsbury's is beginning to say that it was planning to withdraw the DVD anyway due to poor sales, but that sounds like crap to me.

There are Pledgebank pledges to do with this here, here and here. For the more standard complaint strategy, you can go here for Sainsbury's and here for Woolworths.

Exciting news!

2005-12-09T20:02:00.000-05:00

This is officially the 'shittest website in the world'. Thank you Google!

Throwing money at a problem

2005-12-09T19:39:00.000-05:00

Okay, so David Cameron has obviously spooked the government more than they'd care to admit. Labour members have had two mailings in one week on the subject. Obviously Ian McCartney, with the first of them, didn't convince people to donate enough to fend off the new threat. So now we have Jo Brand writing to us to tell us to donate 6 times in one e-mail, because a 'hard-hitting' comedienne will obviously drive the message home:

Hello,

I'm Jo, a Labour supporter and you may have seen me on telly. Have you noticed the big news this week?

David Cameron (Dave to his friends), an old Etonian distantly related to the Queen, has been elected leader of the Conservative Party.

At last, it has dawned on Tory members that they need to be in touch with the reality of the modern world and the lives of the majority of British people!

As his first step, Dave is bringing back that icon of the new century William Hague to the front bench.

Biting satire...

And that's about as funny as it gets. The rest of the e-mail just points out what should be obvious to anyone, which is that behind the flashy modern veneer David Cameron is just the usual Tory scum. He's been pro-hunting, pro-privatisation, against maternity leave and against NHS spending increases. Well, none of that is terribly surprising. What's both surprising and annoying is that we're supposed to think that putting more money into the party is a good response to these facts.

Strangely, I don't think that it takes a lot of money to show that however young and flashy David Cameron is, he's still an arsehole. Surely all it takes is to remind people that he is, after all, a Tory. No, what we need is for the Labour party leadership to wake up and realise that with the Tories playing Blair's game, the net effect of 'charismatic leadership' is zero, and we should finally get back to making some vaguely left wing policies by which we could be distinguished from the Conservatives.

Of course, what will more likely happen is that the style game and the "Punch and Judy politics" will be notched up even further, while both sides cry out against it. After all, what could be better spin than denouncing spin?

Let them sing it for you

2005-12-04T16:58:00.000-05:00

This is great. You type in any words of your choice, and the programme will "sing" them for you, by taking them from songs already in its database. I decided to try some real lyrics, using "heaven knows I'm miserable now", which wonderfully includes both Fred Astaire and Chris Isaak singing in their version. "Let's spend the night together" also sounds quite fun and familiar...

In some ways this is even more fun than the wonderful Music Genome Project, but not as useful, since the MGP has actually introduced me to a lot of new bands, and made me realise how much I like twisted folk music (and apparently almost any music from Portland, OR).

Siblings and civil partnerships

2005-12-04T12:36:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the day when same-sex couples will be able to register for civil partnership in England for the first time (with the first ceremonies happening on the 21st December). Under the terms of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, certain groups of people aren't allowed to become partners. The prohibitions listed are pretty much the same as for marriage, so that you can't get partnershipped to your (adoptive) child, (adoptive) parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, half-sibling, parent's sibling or sibling's child. All the prohibitions are listed here.

Leaving aside the parental and grandparental relationships, where there are pretty good arguments to be made concerning power differences and all that sort of thing, I wonder what justification there can be for forbidding sibling incest in civil partnerships. I'm assuming here that 'it's disgusting' isn't a good enough basis for legal prohibition, and wouldn't be even if every single person in the country thought this.

The issue's murky enough when it comes to heterosexual incest, since it seems easy enough to avoid, or at least calculate, the risk of birth defects in the offspring of incestuous relationships. But when there's no question (at least with present technology) of the relationship producing offspring, as with gay couples, what argument can there be for prohibition, other than a misguided notion of equality with heterosexuals - equality which gays aren't really being granted anyway?

What kind of lesbian are you?

2005-11-22T16:12:00.002-05:00

You're a Granola Dyke!
You're pretty into politics and you've got the vegan (or at least vegetarian) thing going on...maybe. You're often perceived as nerdy, but you don't care: you know all these meat heads will be working for you someday. You're probably an independent culture loving feminist and this shows through what you read, watch, wear, buy, eat, and listen to. You're the new grrrl for the 21st century, baby!

Which Lesbian Stereotype Are You?

Well, that's fairly close. I'd rather be a recruiter though.

Feel free to post your results in the comments box - all the better if you're not actually a lesbian...

Fake Gay News

2005-11-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

There's a new website out which is devoted to giving us all the fake gay news, all the time - "because real gay news is too damn depressing". And so we learn that Planet Out is hoping to set up the first gay country ; gay actor Shane Simmons has taken a step up from playing Sassy Gay Friend #3 and Sassy Gay Clerk to playing Sassy Gay Waiter; and a book has been published helping celebrities not to come out.

Prompted by that mention of a gay country to searching for news about the Gay Kingdom I blogged about last year, I also found the Lesbian & Gay Country Music Association, based in Seattle. Excellent!

How to pick up chicks

2005-11-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

If you're into taking advice from magazines or 'scientific studies', then apparently you could do worse than asking for sex directly from a woman. Okay, so you won't exactly do well, but you're more likely to succeed than if you tell her that heaven must be missing an angel. However, it seems the way to go is slightly more subtle:

"...talk your way into their hearts by saying, ‘It's hot today, isn't it? It's the best weather when you're training for a marathon'... Another winner, the researchers found, was to steer the conversation towards music and say: ‘The Moonlight Sonata or, to give it its true name, Sonata quasi una fantasia. A fittingly beautiful piece for a beautiful lady."

Now I find these lines pretty disgusting, and can't imagine any natural situation in which they would be fitting, but I probably would be rather charmed if someone came up to me in the winter snow and said the first, or in a rock club and delivered the latter. Perhaps that's just my taste for twisted humour... (The humour of incongruity, no less...)

The study found that the best lines display some combination of athleticism, education, culture and wit, and an ability to be in control of situations. So maybe the way to pick up women is to quote a bit of Blackadder - "Am I pleased to see you, or did I just a put a canoe in my pocket? Oh hang on, it's a canoe, because I'm on my university water sports team and like to be ready at all times - fancy a shag?"

Bentham's Forgotten Work

2005-11-06T12:16:00.000-05:00

[Via Lorna] I always said Bentham was great (well, not always, but ever since reading this); and now sci-fi fans will have to agree with his latest work, written from beyond the grave. Yes, it's Doctor Who: The Early Years.

Transgender Warrior

2005-11-01T21:47:00.000-05:00

It looks like Leslie Feinberg may be about to begin a blog. There's nothing posted there yet, but I'll put it on the sidebar anyway, because Feinberg is generally a very interesting and important writer and activist (both queer and socialist). It should be something to look forward to.

Buffy, MA

2005-11-01T17:04:00.000-05:00

I was sitting in a pub this afternoon reading when I spotted a leaflet advertising an MA in "Gothic Studies" at UCE. It's preamble runs as follows:

"Gothic has been one of the most vibrant areas of Anglo-American cultural life during the past fifteen years, and this is beginning to be reflected in university study. An interesting aspect of modern Gothic, which links it to the broader trends of postmodernism, is the critical and historical self-consciousness it demonstrates, so that Buffy The Vampire Slayer, for example, barely conceals its psychoanalytical subtext and references the rise of internet culture."

You'll need a university degree to do this course, but it doesn't matter what degree, apparently. It would certainly be a talking point in job interviews if you had a BA in chemical engineering and an MA in Buffy studies...

Education and the libido

2005-10-27T11:21:00.000-04:00

A new study from Canada has reported that university education correlates with low sex drive for women. 48% of university-educated women experienced low sex drives compared to 31% of other women. I can only say that this doesn't reflect the experiences of most of the university women I know, almost all of whom are sexually active and happily so. Maybe it's a Canadian thing.

Or maybe they just got the wrong gender. In contrast with the general male stereotype of completely insatiable sexual appetites, I know a number of men who have no love lives to speak of, happily discuss becoming hermits and all that sort of thing. But perhaps I just attract dysfunctional men, since a scary number of them also have a history of turning the girlfriends they've had gay (or boyfriends straight).

LibraryThing

2005-10-27T10:55:00.000-04:00

[Via Kieran Healy] This LibraryThing that's going round is great, and helped pass the insomniac time last night very nicely. The main use I reckon I'll put my catalogue to at the moment is as something to access from a public library or internet phone box when I'm tempted to buy anything new, since at the moment I keep buying books I already own, on the assumption that it's better to own them twice than not at all. But it would be even more useful as a tool to sort books out between university and home, and hopefully in the future between two countries. Good stuff.

The Tears - London - October 25th

2005-10-26T22:46:00.000-04:00

Straining finances in order to see two gigs in one week, I went down to the Hammersmith Palais with a Clash song in my head on Tuesday. And it was very much worth it.

I've seen The Tears play eight times in 10 and a half months, and insane as that sounds, it's nothing compared to some of the fans I've met at those gigs. The band is one of those that built up a real groupie culture over time, maintaining the same winning combination of beautiful, Bowie-like singer and musical guitar genius that made Suede so good ten years ago and has kept so many people hanging on ever since. But a lot of us go to all those gigs for more personal reasons, and for me it's been my way to escape during the worst points of this awful year. These are the songs that saved your life, as Morrisey would say. The beautiful music from the stage, the noise down at the barrier, the hours waiting in line with all the other crazy drunken fuck-ups - it all goes into the experience and makes these trips more than just more gigs.

This show was particularly good, and the band obviously put a lot into what will be their last show in England for many months. It all had something of a reunion feel to it, with one song dedicated to all the fans who'd been following them around for the past year. The performances were all tight and energetic, with Brett on absolutely top form throughout, jumping into the pit with the audience at a few points, and getting a good number singing along for the first time since they began touring last December. Bernard Butler was quiet and angry, but equally storming on his guitar, with some of the best solos on the album songs that I've heard yet. He took to kicking things at every given opportunity, showering the drummer Mako with water, and nearly hitting the bouncer next to me with his flying mike stand. But, true to his sweet personality underneath, he then came over and apologised. As for the music, b-sides and new songs were mixed in with the standard stuff, shaking the set up quite a bit, and boding well for any new album that might come along.

The band's so beset with bad luck - mainly due to the shittest record company in the world, Independiente - that that second album might never come, but Europe After The Rain and "Berlin" had all the classic appeal of any of their very best songs from the Suede era. No one's really been able to say that The Tears' music is "better than Dog Man Star" yet, but these new songs, together with the way they perform the older ones now, suggest they could easily have that title soon. Really beautiful stuff, and I'll miss seeing them, as I doubt I'll get to any more gigs now even if they do release another album.

Damien Jurado - Leicester - October 24th

2005-10-26T21:55:00.000-04:00

I went to see Damien Jurado at The Charlotte in Leicester on Monday, getting soaked through on my way down there, so that I was pretty pissed off with the world by the time the gig began. But this is actually a pretty good way to be when you're listening to twisted folk music. Tales of drowning lovers and insane brothers then just mix in with your mood.

Because Jurado's not much known in England we got the dubious treat of three support acts, but these all went by quite speedily. Pacific Ocean Fire were first on and obviously a local band, with cheering supporters all present and correct. Their sound is fairly standard alt.country - Whiskeytown, Uncle Tupelo and all that crowd being natural influences, though they could probably name any of dozens of others. It was competent, enjoyable, and I found a couple of the songs really impressive. They don't have their own style yet, but that'll probably come with time as they were all fairly young. But why must English singers put on American accents?

Loose Salute were up next, and absolutely godawful. I've since seen lots of positive reviews for this group online, but I can only say the reviewers must have been paid. It was middle of the road pub rock, tinged with Americana, and fronted by the demon seed of Gwen Stefani and some hillbilly trailer trash. The band were fine enough actually, and the music decent if dull, but the woman singer was really, really embarrassing. Every once in a while during she'd started awkwardly swinging her hips in a 'provocative' style, and I swear there could be no more effective cure for homosexuality. I still feel scarred by the memory of it.

Dolorean were therefore welcome relief, and very good. The singer was suffering from long tour syndrome, with a bad cold and sore throat, and he apologised for his voice in advance. But this just meant that he sounded like Ryan Adams on a good night - nothing much obviously wrong. The music was folky and dark - quite close to Jurado's own style - and the band were very tight. Lyrics touched on wrongdoing, dead loves, eternal hellfire and the like, and continued to confirm my feeling that deceptively quiet folk music is where the twisted heart of country came to die. "Hannibal, MO", a number about a failed joint suicide and the family that wants to chase the narrator down, finished the set in a nicely dark and thrashy way. I bought one of their albums after the gig, "Not Exotic", and I'd recommend it to anyone who can get a hold of it, and who likes that sort of thing.

The band then returned, minus singer, to form Damien Jurado's backing group. He came across as very shy between songs, and kept thanking the audience for making the journey out, as if he couldn't believe anyone would want to see him. Though he doesn't have the greatest stage presence, he's still a very good performer, and just hearing his music live was enough for me, as I've been half in love with his albums for about four or five years now. From my biased point of view he could therefore do little wrong, and he did a fine set, with a good mix of new songs and old classics (mostly from the beautiful Rehearsals For Departure album), solo guitar and full band. His voice was occasionally lost in the louder numbers, like "Great Today", but since grunge folk is mainly mood music anyway, that didn't matter too much.

Overall it was a great show, and I'd recommend seeing either Jurado or Dolorean (I think they occasionally call themselves Dolo-rado in combination) to anyone who gets the chance, even if they have to stand around for hours in the rain beforehand.

Archive Films

2005-10-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

[Via Andy] I'd always treated Archive.org as just a useful tool for finding old websites, but now I've discovered its excellent collection of '50s US "Social Guidance" propaganda films. Each one is about ten minutes long, and they're mostly of great comedy value.

Are you popular? is one of the best, with great writing. What makes Caroline popular? "Is it because she likes girls and boys equally?" Yes, bisexuality is the key to true popularity. Parking in cars with boys is life's big no no, and you should never talk more than five minutes on the phone. But a popular girl should bake food for her boyfriend. Perhaps then "they'll bring another couple home with them... that would be fun!"

Office Courtesy and Office Etiquette are two great films, both about how to tame your personality and become a submissive secretary. Office Courtesy is particularly fun for the nightmare scenario, where the bad secretary discovers that the woman being so terribly rude in her dream is in fact herself. Office Etiquette is more amusing if you run your own lesbian sub training school narrative through it. Or so I found...

Another one that's fun to keep a juvenile background commentary running on is The Outsider. "Susan, Susan Jane... What makes you so different?" At points in the film I was crying out things like "she's green!", "she's only got one leg!", "she's a drag queen!" etc.

Good stuff.

Anniversary

2005-10-23T06:11:00.000-04:00

On this day thirty years ago, Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, was given a general discharge after publicly declaring his homosexuality. When he died nine years later, aged 44, he was buried at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. His tombstone reads: "A gay Vietnam Veteran... they gave me a medal for killing two men & a discharge for loving one."

Morris and Magdalen

2005-10-21T19:04:00.000-04:00

Chris Bertram's unearthing of a bit of William Morris' political stuff on equality reminded me of this piece, which I read a few months back, about the destruction of Magdalen Bridge in Oxford:

It may well be thought that the mere words, `the destruction of Magdalen Bridge' would go at once to the heart of any one who knows Oxford well; that any one who has lived there either as gownsman or townsman... would be eager to protest against such a strange piece of barbarism...

Amusingly, he goes on to say that the committee he's representing think that "no serious inconvenience to the public is caused by the present structure, the traffic across Magdalen Bridge being usually but small".

Anyone know whether they did knock down the old bridge? I can't find much about it online, at least not from a very brief search. What's there at the moment certainly isn't unusually attractive...

Google 2084

2005-10-21T18:13:00.000-04:00

(by Randy Siegel)

Babbling Day

2005-10-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

October 21st is a good day to murmur unintelligibly. I can't actually find any reason online for why it's Babbling Day today. But I did discover the word "blatherskite" - a babbling, foolish person. And, as a typically rude Brummie, I shall be using it to insult people as much as possible.

Equality Exchange

2005-10-19T14:52:00.000-04:00

[Via Robert] Equality Exchange seems to be a good place to go for anyone interested in egalitarianism debates in political theory. It lists pretty much every article in this area which has been published semi-recently, as well as holding its own copies of some unpublished stuff. Frightening to see just how many articles there are, and just how few of them seem to have escaped the pro/anti-Rawls straitjacket. But good nevertheless.

Beccaria and Criminal Insanity

2005-10-17T17:41:00.000-04:00

I took Beccaria's book On Crimes and Punishments on holiday with me last week, and while reading it came across the section "Asylums", which I expected to deal with criminal insanity. But it only looks at places of asylum, such as churches, arguing that there should be nowhere outside the law, or running under its own laws (a Hobbesian thought) within a state. No mention of madness here, nor indeed is there any at any other point in the book, which is strange, since madness would be an interesting problem in a discussion of punishment even that far back, and as I'll discuss here, it's a particular problem with regard to the penal reforms Beccaria wished to introduce.

Beccaria argued that punishment should be "public, speedy, necessary, the minimum possible in the given circumstances, proportionate to the crime, and determined by the law". The very existence of insane asylums runs counter to all these principles. The "punishment" is not public, because those declared criminally insane are denied public trials, and placed behind locked doors without the public being made aware of it. It is not speedy, because it often takes a long time to prove insanity, removing the (Humean) connection between act and consequence that Beccaria wants to use to deter others. It is not necessary, as Althusser argues quite rightly in his autobiography, since acute episodes (such as the one in which he killed his wife) tend not to last very long, and are generally curable. Yet institutionalisation after a criminal act is often permanent, or at least very long lasting, going beyond what's necessary to punish a person, and thus also beyond "the minimum possible in the given circumstances", and the proportionate.

And punishment in the form of institutionalisation is not determined by the law, which is what's really important. Those placed in mental institutions, whether as a result of crimes or not, are being kept in confinement by private individuals rather than by the law, and are under the constant rule of those individuals in place of the rule of law. For Beccaria, such places should not exist, for exactly the same reasons that political asylums should not exist.

Now the argument here could go either way. A humane person like Beccaria might argue that this sort of confinement cannot be justified, and that the person declared not to have committed a crime by reason of insanity, should be allowed to go free (perhaps once treated). But much more persuasive on Beccarian principles is the argument that because asylums are outside the law, the person judged insane should be judged by the laws in the same way as any other criminal. Moreover, since the crime exists regardless of the state of mind of its perpetrator, not to punish it like any other crime is to remove the deterrent to others, in whose minds the possibility of an insanity plea is planted (this is a crap argument, actually, since in reality the insanity plea is only used in something like 1% of all criminal cases, 60-70% of which aren't murder cases, and in which it's only successful a quarter of the time - but nevertheless, it's a theoretically powerful argument). All the other points about speed, proportionately and publicity etc. equally suggest that the act should be treated in the same way as it would be were the perpetrator in full health.

Perhaps this is the reason why Beccaria didn't mention insanity. The same humane instincts which drive him to set forth his principles, in order to protect people from unjust punishment, seem to be the ones which most justify punishing those whose state seems to suggest that they cannot deserve it. If this is right, then Beccaria may well have recognised just how important madness is in any discussion of punishment, and in his realisation he may also have become aware that any discussion of it in his book could undermine his whole purpose in putting forth a humane philosophy of punishment. For it is in this discussion that those who would be reactionary can find new paths for their tyranny, removing it from the realm of intentions to the realm of acts.

This is the problem of any act-based morality. Beccaria is as concerned as Locke, Bayle and Rousseau before him to save people free from tyranny over their thoughts. For example, he argues with regard to suicide that "punishing it beforehand is to punish men's will and not their actions, which would be to control the intentions, a part of a man utterly free from the reign of human laws" (84). But in doing this, he has at the same time subjected us to the possibility of a tyranny over our actions. Those who perform no wrong action are saved, but those whose thoughts would mitigate the consequences of their actions are to the same extent condemned. And of course this problem is one which faces act-utilitarians (the only kind worth the name) right down to the present day.

Blogging Break

2005-10-06T17:42:00.000-04:00

I'm off down to sunny Devon for a week, so there'll be a break in posting here until next Friday. But I will be back, and I'll try to keep up the recent semi-regular posting when I return. In the meantime, take a look at the sites on my blogroll for a variety of views on politics, film, music, queerness and many other things.

See you soon.

Friendly Warning

2005-10-06T07:46:00.000-04:00

Cinema-goers, avoid arriving early to films this month! Why? Because if you don't, you'll be treated to six minutes of screaming and wailing, accompanied by a piss-poor Romeo & Juliet take-off, courtesy of H&M's &denim collection. If it wasn't for the music, actually, I'd say it was a must-see advert, just because it is so awful, but the singing tips it over the edge into the "completely unbearable" category.

The first time we saw this Lorna and I sat in the cinema laughing our heads off, because we thought that an advert this long and melodramatic had to be intentionally funny. But no one else was laughing. And H&M's website tells us:

“There's enough comedy in advertising today. And jeans are not about laughs, jeans are love and soul and tears. That's what we're trying to emphasize with this tragic and beautiful Romeo & Juliet story.” The film was filmed by H&M Red Room and renowned director/photographer David LaChapelle. It will run in cinemas worldwide, but the company refuses to reveal the ending but did say: “Every pair of &denim jeans is the start of another true denim love story.”

Hmm. You can just tell that somewhere in H&M's marketing department there's a highly sarcastic individual who's almost ready to cry because no one else realised they were joking before the company put this to print...

PornSunday

2005-10-03T18:23:00.000-04:00

[Via Richard] Next Sunday is National PornSunday in the States, and it's an event that's spreading internationally to England and several other countries. But rather than being a celebration of pornography - as the name would suggest - it's an event organised by the churches, trying to wean people off porn, with PG-13 rated services talking about its temptations and the problems of addiction.

But why not make it an international day of porn discussion from every point of view? One of my more interesting nights at university was spent with about 5-10 other women, sitting in a small room in St John's College, Oxford, watching two porn films, drinking wine and attempting to discuss what we were watching intelligently (without laughing). We were talking specifically about what line feminists should take towards porn, looking at how porn films portray women and how they treat their actresses. But the conversation often wandered off-topic onto more detailed aspects of the films we were watching, and there are many other discussions to be had about these forms of entertainment.

The world would definitely be a bit more fun if we had designated days where everyone sat down and watched porn together without feeling guilty about it. People in England especially would gain from taking a more mature approach to sex by tackling it head-on. And hell, why make it more mature? After all, pornography films are certainly a more reliable source of comedy than any Carry On flick.

Post Secret

2005-10-02T18:34:00.000-04:00

[Via Clover] Though there's been an article about it in The Observer, I'd never heard about this site before. It's a project that was started by Frank Warren in 2004, when he distributed postcards in his local area which read:

"You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession or childhood humiliation. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative."

The response was much more enthusiastic and sustained than he'd expected, and some of the postcards he receives each week are displayed on the website. Mostly it's a very sad experience reading this sort of thing, but a couple were quite funny too, like this one (also a link to the site):

Go take a look. It's updated every week, and there's a book coming out soon too.

Bill For First Lady!

2005-10-01T06:40:00.000-04:00

A bunch of Democrats have kicked off their campaign to get Hillary Clinton to stand for President in 2008. Taking a new line, though, and pre-empting Republicans who'd joke about Bill as First Lady, they've decided to do it themselves.

They've created their own First Lady Bill talking doll, which kicks Republican ass, while saying things like: "Round the White House Hillary wore the pants. Now I'm wearing the dress!" and "My bikini line - waxed or shaved? Don't ask, don't tell!".

They've also made a couple of videos: "Men's Room?" and "Boxers, Briefs or Thongs?"

Yes, they're white trash

2005-10-01T05:57:00.000-04:00

It looks like the New York Times has just discovered the Chav. [Via Brad, whose comments section is amusingly full of other Americans still trying to work out exactly what they are].

Relatedly, I just discovered Chav Scum's letters section. Here's a fun one:

From: Christina "mcgarryclan"
ave ya nt gt nefin else 2 do dan insult peeps eh? ow wud u lyk it if peeps made a web site bot u? n y u labelin us? we aint a can of beans or nufin. u need 2 gt ur issues srtd owt b4 u insult us ppl. yeh?

Diabetes Stories

2005-09-30T18:45:00.000-04:00

The website for the project my mother's been working on for the past two years was launched today. It contains recordings and transcripts of 50 interviews she conducted with diabetes patients of all ages across the UK. It's pretty good, whether or not you're interested in the subject matter.

The idea behind the project, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, was to try to get a picture of patients' experiences from the beginning of the last century, when diabetes was mostly a death sentence, up to now, when researchers are hoping to find a cure. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds, but of course it is mostly intended for those with a prior interest in diabetes, whether patients/families or researchers. I thought I'd do my filial duty and give it a link anyway, though.

How to sleep with Morrissey

2005-09-29T12:10:00.000-04:00

Urban Outfitters have designed some bed linen to suit Smiths and Morrissey fans everywhere, as well as anyone else feeling particularly hopeless about their love life. The sheets (a horribly cheery pink colour) have written on them "Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me", which is, incidentally, the song from which this blog took its name:

"Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm"

Ring of Fire

2005-09-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

The Johnny Cash musical has arrived, and it's heading to Broadway. The director has said that the show will neither feature a Johnny Cash character, nor a story trying to artificially weave the songs together. I'm not sure what else it could be - a tribute concert? A group of people constantly calling to a JC character located somewhere off stage? I guess it could be quite fun if it were a completely independent play which just happened to feature characters fanatical about Cash, playing him at random moments between arguments etc.

Anyway, most of these tribute musicals are complete rubbish - Mamma Mia, We Will Rock You etc. But we'll have to wait and see with this one, I guess, as there probably aren't so many English people who would want to see it...

Question

2005-09-23T18:38:00.000-04:00

Has any human ever been killed by a sheep?

Much needed parody

2005-09-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

Can be found here [Via Katryn]

The shrinks weigh in on same-sex marriage

2005-09-20T15:19:00.001-04:00

The American Psychiatric Association's board of trustees voted in July to take a position in favour of same-sex civil marriages - a controversial decision which has been defended by the APA's president in Psychiatric News:

Many studies have now established that marriage is associated with clear benefits, including better mental and physical health. It is a stabilizing force in our society that enables individuals to make public their commitment to each other and receive acceptance and support from others. Further, research indicates that same-sex partners have the same capacity to form long-term relationships as do heterosexual individuals. To deny this recognition increases the stigma and related distress often experienced by gay and lesbian individuals in other facets of community life...

...Marriage by gay and lesbian partners arouses irrational prejudice and fear, but as psychiatrists, we must take a stand on issues that have a clear impact on the mental health of our patients and of persons in the community at large. As an organization, we seek also to promote human rights and freedom from discrimination. Psychiatry leads the way for the rest of medicine on this important issue.

The APA's full position statement can be read here.

While it's good that they've taken an egalitarian stand for those queers who buy into that sort of thing, I'm annoyed by the assertion that marriage "is a stabilizing force in our society". Sure, if you mean the stability imposed by a straitjacket. A psychiatric association should be able to recognise the suffering that can be inflicted by cultural pressures such as the marriage norm. The fact that many, if not a majority, of people want to get married says nothing about how beneficial this institution really is. It just shows how little people are able to conceive of other arrangements as ideal, even now. We're encouraged to see promiscuity as a blight on society, and relationships involving more than two people as a freak show. Even if you've conformed and settled into a two-person, long-term bond, your relationship isn't valid until you've signed the right forms and made it a threesome with the law.

Although I genuinely do believe that all people should be given the same choices in life, I'm even more convinced that these choices will be severely limited if they're merely equalised. The more freedom we have to marry, the less we have not to marry; and quite contrary to what conservatives claim, it is for this reason that the legalisation of gay marriage would actually strengthen this hallowed institution.

This doesn't mean gay marriage shouldn't be legalised, though. After all, the struggle which I'm discussing really isn't a gay struggle at all, but one existing between those who can be happy in society's straitjackets, and those who cannot. The reason for my ambivalence concerning gay marriage is that if it does get the go-ahead, there'll be a lot less of us to make that struggle. And perhaps at heart I'm a opportunist, because I'd rather have people fighting on my side through necessity than have no one fight at all.

Arrr!

2005-09-19T14:36:00.000-04:00

On a more fun note, it's that time of year again: Talk Like A Pirate Day!

In honour of this occasion, apart from speaking all pirate-like, you can take the pirate personality test, discover your pirate name, and even translate your piratical mutterings into German!

Feminist Party Feud

2005-09-19T10:52:00.000-04:00

This is quite interesting:

A controversial new feminist party that advocates "queer" rights and marriages involving two or more people is threatening to implode in a mess of bitter catfighting just a week after it announced its intention to contest next year's government elections in Sweden.

Last week, two founders of Feministiskt Initiativ (Feminist Initiative), the country's first feminist party, walked out after a series of angry clashes over its political direction... [One of them] said she felt "conned" by the way the party had moved away from its initial promise of being a broad church, and accused the leadership of being much worse than the patriarchal organisations it seeks to overthrow...

...According to a survey conducted by The Gothenburg Post and polling organisation Sifo before the row, at least 10% of the Swedish electorate said they would consider voting for the radical new party at the election. But the popularity of Feminist Initiative - which is anti-monarchy, in favour of a six-hour working day and considered outlawing words like "male" and "female" at one of its controversially closed, academic-style meetings - is being undermined by accusations that members who do not share a specific, radical attitude towards gender issues are being intimidated. [One of the women who resigned] claimed Rosenberg, 47, who has also been criticised for her haughty attitude to the Church, had said that Feminist Initiative could not tolerate "any bloody old-wives politics"...

Launched in April, Feminist Initiative have been patronised by some as the "radical feminist Spice Girls", while others have been likened them to a women's coffee club. One paper last week accused them of damaging gender relations, while elsewhere they have been branded them "a matriarchal dictatorship"... But Expressen journalist Britta Svensson said Feminist Initiative raised important issues that the male-dominated parties don't dare to touch, such as why women dominate those pensioned-off early by their employers. "Part of the media reporting of FI doesn't look like media analysis," she said, "but witchhunting."

Always hard to know how accurate reporting is of this sort of thing, as this article says, but I hope the Feminist Initiative does resolve these issues, as it would be interesting to see how such a movement fares at election time...

The struggles of sexual liberalism

2005-09-19T10:13:00.000-04:00

After prompting from several friends, I've been beginning to work my way through the novels of Michel Houellebecq. I might comment on them more when I've finished them all, but I thought I'd just note down this nice quote from his first book, Whatever (crap title translation from "Extension du domain de la lutte"). The narrator is musing on his co-worker's unsuccessful sex life:

"...in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization... It's what's known as the law of the market. In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their bed mate. In a totally liberal econmic system certain people accumulate considerable fortunes; others stagnate in unemployment and misery. In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude. Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society"

As the French title makes clear, this passage seems to be the very heart of the book, and it's an interesting bit to think about. It reminded me of a passage in Civilisation and its Discontents where Freud is arguing that destroying private property wouldn't solve the problems of civilisation, as he thinks the communists argue it would, because the sexual prerogative, and the differentiation that comes with it, would remain, and with it man's natural aggressive instinct.

Perhaps the problem is that even with complete freedom in the economic and sexual spheres these inequalities and struggles would recreate themselves; or perhaps it's just that this "freedom" isn't worth the name when it merely serves to gloss over and perpetuate the differences already created by the workings of our (bourgeois) civilisation.

Have your say on Citizens' Day!

2005-09-15T21:22:00.000-04:00

This is Birmingham City Council's cheerful slogan for Citizens' Day on 18th October. The Council's planning to set up a "Talking Tent" in Centenary Square that day, where people can tell councillors if they:

connect with our community
recognise our concerns
appreciate our history
understand where we're coming from
meet our needs

This all sounds fine enough - a bit too watered-down multiculturalist for me, but not too objectionable. Unfortunately, that's just the official poster. The language in which the council is discussing this more generally quickly degenerates into pretty dire Business Speak:

"We want... to give senior managers, officers and representatives of the City Council, the opportunity to observe, listen and learn from those who they might not have the opportunity to engage with, in the normal course of events... [The event] is also intended to support a corporate approach to consultation, which fosters imaginative modes of engagement and consultation to reach as broader [sic] range of people and communities as possible." (my italics)

So in practice Citizens' Day becomes something more like Patronising The Public Day. These managers and councillors represent - and presumably live in - a very large city, in which most income groups, races, religions, sexualities etc. are pretty well-represented (in numbers, anyway). Surely they should have tried to "engage with" these people before now? Or at least, this engagement shouldn't be seen as something so unusual as to deserve pigeonholing into its own day.

As for "imaginative modes of engagement and consultation", I'm currently having horrible visions of a balding middle-aged councillor coming out with a toe-curlingly bad "Representation Rap" at some point in the day. So I just hope that for once my imagination is more cruel than the Council...

Pride & Prejudice

2005-09-14T18:49:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of seeing this new film in an early preview tonight. It was a pleasure, and I hadn't been entirely sure that it would be, so I'm in a pretty good mood now. I never saw the 1995 TV series, so I've no comparisons to make, but I thought that Keira Knightley made an excellent Lizzie Bennett, while Matthew MacFadyen really warms in the role of Mr. Darcy as the film progresses. Judi Dench is commanding, as usual, if not particularly remarkable as Lady Catherine De Bourgh, and Tom Hollander makes an excellent Mr. Collins.

In its favour as a book adaptation was that it took pretty much complete control of us as we watched it. It wasn't until I was discussing it with my family in the car on the way home that I remembered all the pieces of plot and scenes from the book which are missing here. Some of these are more important than others - trivially, I found it interesting that in the film Lizzie's character is a genuinely bad pianist, where in the book her playing seemed to have a sort of 'unpolished charm'. More importantly, there's very little of Wickham or Georgiana, and much less of Mr. Bingley's sister than might be expected.

The film really emphasises the comic aspects of the novel, and in cutting down some of the romantic angst of the original it also manages to be one of the fastest paced period films I've ever seen. This works to make it all the more enjoyable and recommendable to people who don't usually like that sort of thing. It had me laughing out loud in several places, and Knightley (true to director's orders, according to one interview) manages to avoid sultry period-pouting throughout. In fact, she manages to carry off all the different emotions of Lizzie Bennett with such subtlety and variety of expression that I've had to completely abandon my earlier opinion of here as being merely the new Winona Ryder - someone to replace the worn-out model post-shoplifting disgrace. Knightley really is much better than that - she's everything Ryder seemed to be in Heathers, yet spectacularly failed to be thereafter. And hopefully she'll be doing much more very soon.

One annoying thing - Jane Austen has this terrible power to leave people talking in affected Austenesque tones after they've seen any adaptation of her works. (She's like Shakespeare in that - I lost count of the number of annoying people trying to sound like they were in Romeo & Juliet back in 1996). Unfortunately I'm not immune to this sort of thing, which means that the return of my regional accent, which had been gradually making a comeback after three years lying dormant in Oxford, may be held back a bit longer. So it'll probably be quite a while yet before anyone hears me saying "Oroit bab?" "Yeah, bostin'!"

Philosophical humour

2005-09-05T12:42:00.000-04:00

Spurred into looking for philosophical theories of humour by a comment Chris made in the post below, I instead found several pages of philosophy-related humour. These are all fairly geeky, but I enjoyed them anyway. Here's some of the bits that made me laugh:

Proofs that P:

I know that P is true because I teach it to my undergraduates. Therefore P. [John Searle]

It would be nice to have a deductive argument that p from self- evident premises. Unfortunately I am unable to provide one. So I will have to rest content with the following intuitive considerations in its support: p. [Rawls]

Someday someone might discover that P, and I want to get the credit. Therefore P. [Colin McGinn]

The argument for not-P has seven steps, and I'm way too old for that. Therefore P. [John Searle (again)]

Definitions:

Substance - an accident waiting to happen
Substance abuse - medieval philosophy
Thing-in-itself - marked by a condition of extreme ontological shyness
Polis - abandoned city north of the Republic
Praxis - how do you get to Polis? praxis, praxis, praxis...

Causes of death for the philosophers

Augustine: Hippo
Bentham: Fell off his stilts
Berkeley: Divine neglect
Hegel: Gave up the Geist
Kant: Found the means to his own end
Plato: Caved in
Rawls: Unveiled
Rousseau: Contract job
Vico: Recycled

And finally, it's philosophical porn movies.

How to abuse logical analysis...

2005-09-05T07:23:00.000-04:00

Found the following in an article I was reading this morning ("Persons, Animals and Ourselves" By P F Snowdon):

"Why is [the ex-parrot sketch in Monty Python] so funny? The explanation... is that the predicate-modifer 'ex-' forms a new predicate, when concatenated to a predicate F, which counts as true of an item i, at a time just in case i was F but is no longer F at this time. Abiding predicates cannot sensible be modified in this way; nothing ever is an ex-F, where F is an abiding predicate... The humour of the remark... lies in this logical incongruity."

Because "ahahahahaha - oh, the logical incongruity!" was exactly what we were all thinking when we watched that sketch...

The "Third World" in New Orleans...

2005-09-02T18:52:00.000-04:00

I made the mistake of watching ITV news today, and was treated to several different reports with pictures of suffering people and devastation, all of which described New Orleans as being like a 'Third World/developing country'. And I couldn't help bu think - 'Is that because everyone in those photos is black?' It seems to be black people in these communities who have been worst affected, true - and there's no surprise there - but there are plenty of white people on these films. They're just not treated as The Other quite yet... (In one report, the narrator even said that the scene "would shame even a Third World country". Because of course these countries are damn proud of devastation in general, right?)

The only people actually interviewed on these films were white, and this allowed them to show off their signs saying they'd shoot looters and spout off about the government. Meanwhile, the only voice black people had was when they were seen crying for help from the Convention Center and screaming in hysterics en masse. None of these people were giving their story. So - people being denied their individuality in crisis? Yep, maybe that does sound like a developing country after all...

The Debunking White community on livejournal has pulled up a much more blatant example of racism, though, quite shocking even when you expect this kind of thing. Captions accompanying AP photos on Yahoo News show the difference between those who "loot" and those "find" is basically reducible to the colour of your skin. Interestingly, the latter photo - shown on the DW link - has now been removed by Yahoo: "To our readers: This photo was removed from Yahoo! News at the request of AFP. Yahoo! News statement on photo language controversy."

So at least there are some people out there pulling the news services up on these things. But it;s obviously not enough.

Not there yet...

2005-09-01T18:31:00.000-04:00

The Birmingham Post reported today that David Miliband - that Blairite sell-out of a son to Ralph Miliband - thinks Birmingham is still failing to reach the "premier league" of European cities:

“Britain’s cities were once a by-word for decline and depopulation but, in the past 20 years, business is better, quality of life is better, services are better. However, the European premier league for cities has very high standards, and we have got to ask ourselves what gets Britain’s cities to the top of the premier league.”

He goes on to say:

“The Birmingham renaissance happened rather earlier than in other British cities. The commitment to arts and culture put Birmingham on the map – but you can’t live by culture alone.”

This, of course, must be why Birmingham seems intent on destroying anything remotely cultural it has to offer (other than the CBSO and the Birmingham Royal Ballet - and if those weren't named after the place, they'd probably go too) closing down jazz venues in favour of strip clubs, making every cinema a multiplex clone, letting theatre shows get shut down thanks to ignorant intolerant bastards etc. And what do we have in place of culture? Shopping. Hurray! Because having three HMVs instead of two, and a massive Selfridges selling things no one wants to buy, is just bound to show people how important we are.

Anyway, Miliband has suggested, following the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry (which naturally has the customer's interests at heart), that the way to get Birmingham into the Premier League of cities (where is this league? who sponsors it?) is for the city to have an elected mayor. Because copying London is of course just the way to prove that Birmingham's a vibrant and interesting city in its own right...

Charity giveaway

2005-08-24T09:06:00.000-04:00

The First Post is running a giveaway - the Charity (from their shortlist) which receives the most votes on its website will receive £10,000. You can vote for your favourite charity of the ones listed here by clicking on the red box which says "Help a charity win "£10,000". It's quick and free.

All the charities are good, so it's a matter of personal preference, of course, but I recommend the Terrence Higgins Trust (partly because I'm using a computer in one of their offices now). The charity does amazing work, helping people live with HIV and preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections through its promotional and campaigning work, as well as running local groups helping sex workers stay healthy and get new work. STI infection rates are on the rise again, so now is a particularly good time to be supporting their work.

Kafka On The Shore

2005-08-13T08:38:00.000-04:00

I've just finished Murakami's latest (translated) book. Yesterday, while I was sitting on a bench outside the National Film Theatre café in London, reading away (I'd meant to see a film, but got so gripped by the book that I didn't bother), I suddenly realised that the person next to me was reading the same book. I've never really read much fashionable literature, so nothing like that's ever happened to me before. I suppose I'd get it a lot if I read Harry Potter. I wanted to ask this man if he was enjoying it, and I smiled at him briefly, but I didn't have the nerve to strike up a conversation.

Kafka On The Shore alternates different narratives which eventually intertwine, without completely combining, much like one of his previous books The Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World. In one of these (the only first person narrative here, which is unusual for Murakami) Kafka Tamura begins by informing the reader "On my fifteenth birthday, I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library". This he proceeds to do, getting involved with Oedipal prophecies, 30 year old love stories and WWII soldiers along the way. Meanwhile, Satoru Nakata, an old man whose bizarre accident as a child left him able to talk to cats but unable to read or do much else, finds himself journeying for his own reasons, rains of fish and leeches accompanying him along the way. Much else happens, but since I'd recommend the book, I won't bother ruining it for anyone here.

I know a lot of other Murakami fans have been disappointed by Kafka, and it's certainly not his best book, but in terms of its scope it had the makings - at least for the first half or so - of a great classic for him. Perhaps that's why people were disappointed, since it doesn't end that way. But I'm used to being slightly disappointed with Murakami endings now. I forget books very quickly, but I'm pretty sure that even The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - easily his best book - had a slightly irritating conclusion. It's as if Murakami, having created all these incredible worlds, has no idea how to return them to a conclusion in line with what we expect in this world.

As a result, I never expect to be entirely satisfied with his books anymore, but they're all the more enjoyable for that. This one was a particular breath of fresh air, because for once it didn't feature the stock types which fill too much of his work - a middle-aged self-unreflective muso male obsessing about a nubile and precocious teenage girl. There is a sexy young woman, but she doesn't feature highly, and though the consciousness of some of the main protagonists occasionally borders on the middle-aged muso, he steers clear of it for the most part. Instead, we get a lot of sex - more than usual I think - featuring some fairly controversial scenes and at one point a particularly memorable Hegelian prostitute.

Murakami's always very good at slipping in details which show how well read and cultured he is, in all sorts of different areas, and these are usually things which enrich his work. This time around these references were more philosophical than usual, and while the Communist lorry driver is great fun, and that prostitute entertaining, occasionally these became a bit jarring, the ideas touched on too superficially to be worth it. Something that certainly works as a recommendation for Kafka, though, is that it left me wanting to go to the library and find several of the other books and CDs it mentions. It's just a shame I've no Murakami left to read, though at least he's one of the few authors I like who's not dead, and thus permanently unproductive. Even if Philip Gabriel isn't the best translator in the world, though, I hope he gives us some more soon. I could learn Japanese and save him the effort, of course, but I think that would take longer...

Genre-crossing classics

2005-08-10T18:00:00.000-04:00

I don't always enjoy the game in I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue where one song is sung to the tune of another, but one recently aired episode hit on a true classic: The Smiths' "Girlfriend In A Coma" done to the tune of "Tiptoe Through The Tulips". There's something about the true music hall fervour with which Tony Hawks sings 'Do yooooo... really think she'll pull through?' which is really magic. It left me picturing him wearing a top hat and holding a cane in both hands, while strolling across a stage and smiling evilly; an image both delightful and slightly terrifying. If anyone wants to hear a copy of this, drop me a note and I'll send it to you...

Not quite the same, but I've also always enjoyed songs covered in new genres, particularly country-style covers. One of my favourites in this category is The Gourds' cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" - country music never previously sounded quite this low down and dirty - but thanks to Lorna, I've also just discovered Hayseed Dixie's fun bluegrass cover of Motorhead's "The Ace of Spades". Fiddles and banjos run wild... It looks like Hayseed Dixie devotes itself to this kind of thing in general, so the band may be one to watch out for for all those "rockgrass" fans out there (and I know you are many). Another, more alt.country, classic is M Ward's lounge piano/acoustic guitar version of Bowie's "Let's Dance". Truly beautiful.

I've written here before about how much I like Cat Power's folky, chorus-less cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", but for truly bizarre genre-crossing Stones covers no one can beat industrial band Laibach (whose catchphrase might as well be 'exploring the fascist undertones of pop music'), who did an entire album of covers of "Sympathy For The Devil", some of which sound truly diabolical. Nevertheless, given the right inspiration, making a very different song your own seems to be a pretty good bet if you must do cover songs...

Legs eleven, bigotry heaven

2005-08-09T08:46:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's white liberal bingo! How many of these boxes can you tick off? [Via Lorna]

Conventional?

2005-08-08T19:04:00.000-04:00

I was very amused to see that someone found my site today by searching for a "conventionally attractive lesbian". Sorry to disappoint you!

Committed To Waiting?

2005-08-08T18:46:00.000-04:00

I've just discovered Wait Wear, the committed Christian's way to proclaim their commitment to pre-marital abstinence. Except that, if they brought some of the items this site sells, there wouldn't be much left to wait for. Unless it's a Christian thing to be a tease: "Well, you've got me wearing nothing but my briefs, but sorry honey - No Vows, No Sex! Hahahahaha!"

A press link from the website also says: ""Whether you are a teen, young adult, single parent or born again virgin; Wait Wear will help serve as a reminder to the commitment you have made to remain celibate until marriage". Single parent? No one told me Mary had come back to Earth just to buy underwear...

Love In Action

2005-08-05T22:38:00.000-04:00

A minor but perhaps significant step forward. John Evans, a founding member of one of the earliest gay conversion groups, Love In Action, has written a public letter to say that it doesn't work. He discusses personal tragedies involving supposed conversions, as well as the large number of leaders and early members of such groups who have come to realise that they will always be gay.

Well, we knew all that already, but it's important, because it's keeping up a focus on this particular group - Love In Action - which is already under investigation for its methods (if not its principles), thanks to the supporters of a teenager who was sent to one of its camps early this summer. If LIA can come to stand for all such "ex-gay" groups, then an increasing number of well-meaning people will realise what crap they are, and maybe one day they'll disappear entirely, and religious groups will find other ways to deal with their LGB members - hopefully ways which are more humane.

Hell and Damnation

2005-08-05T13:46:00.000-04:00

Searching for reviews of the film Damnation (Karhozàt) by Hungarian director Béla Tarr, I discovered instead Damnation University in Hell, Michigan. DamU offers degrees in the school of hard knocks (awarded for showing "remarkable feats of retrograde prognostication"), the school of television ("possession of a hyper-developed right thumb from years of flicking"), the college of labor relations ("creating a camaraderie among your employees based on fear") and the college of agriculture ("talking to plants, waiting for a response, and nodding knowingly when you hear it") among others.

Now that's the sort of prestigious institution I really want a degree from...

Census 2011: Important

2005-08-02T11:39:00.000-04:00

The consultation document for the 2011 census is currently circulating, and at present the position of those running the census is that sexual orientation is among "those topics where there is insufficient evidence of user demand to justify inclusion in the 2011 UK census." From section 3.5 of the consultation document:

"A user requirement for information on sexual orientation has been identified. The Census is not seen currently as an appropriate vehicle for collecting this information. This is due to the compulsory nature of the Census and issues of confidentiality, disclosure and accuracy together with possible non-response effects. It is possible, however, that information about sexual orientation could be collected in other surveys."

It is vital that sexual orientation be included in the census, from an equality perspective as well as from the perspective of HIV and broader health planning. We now have civil partnership registration beginning in December, employment equality regulations in the workplace and a forthcoming Single Equalities Act. To have all this, and yet still be effectively invisible as a proportion of the population, is insane. The Single Equalities Act in particular will legislate "against discriminatory behaviour in the provision of goods, facilities and services for LGB people". What's the point if there are no reliable statistics available to assess what goods, facilities and services LGB(T) people need?

Moreover, it's annoying because it's encouraging people to think that it's okay to be ashamed of being queer; that, unlike the vast majority of other defining characteristics, sexuality is one which truly should remain in the bedroom and not in the streets. There is no other 'survey' which has the reach of the census; however much it affected response-rate, the responses a sexual orientation question would receive would provide a set of statistics otherwise completely unavailable.

Anyway, there's something we can do about this, but we only have a few days:

Responses to the survey can be made using the form found here (for 'Organisation' I think it's permissible to write 'none' if you don't represent any LGBT group) and should be sent to the following e-mail address: Censustopics@ons.gsi.gov.uk. The questions on the form are a little odd, but Annex A at the bottom of the consultation document gives help on how to answer them, and please feel free to contact me for suggestions too. But basically it's worth just repeating forcefully the need - for whatever reasons you think most compelling - for sexual orientation to be including in the 2011 census (1) for improved service, and particularly health service, provision (2) as essential demographic data, useful for academic and other research (3) for its interest with regard to the spread of LGB population across different geographical areas, age, ethnic groups and genders.

Please pass on this information and call for responses. We only have until Friday this week (5th August). In particular, pass on the information to any relevant organisations you know. One of the problems, and the reason there has been so little 'demand' is that a lot of the smaller relevant groups still haven't heard anything about this.

In A Dark Time

2005-08-01T22:23:00.000-04:00

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke, author of this angsty poem and some others which are less so, died 1st August 1963. I missed this by a day, but then I've been distracted. It must be nice to be dead if you're famous, because then people celebrate you twice a year. I'd hate to die on my birthday.

UPDARE: And there's another poem here, kindly copied out by Gorky.

Tap your heels three times...

2005-08-01T22:03:00.000-04:00

Thinking of Dorothy, as the tornado-hit people of Birmingham have been doing a lot, lacking any other comparison, I was led into a conversation with a friend about the ending of The Wizard of Oz. Given those shoes, and the power to go wherever you wanted by saying 'There's no place like "X"', who would really, knowingly, choose to go back to Kansas? Even without the whole extended family being pretty rubbish thing? Surely it would be preferable to say 'There's no place like Disneyland' or some such...

But then, given that there's more than one Disneyland, sci-fi consistency issues arise. We decided for amusement's sake that Dorothy would be split, so that there would now be clone Dorothys, each inhabiting one of these places sharing a name. Of course, this led us to decide that the best claim to make would be 'There's no place like McDonalds!' But then, what would become of this clone army of small girls in blue dresses with all those annoying little dogs? Would some of them go wild and become hookers, while others tried to rescue them from the moral degradation of their new lifestyle? What happens when clones meet? Now, that would be a whole new film...

Tornado!

2005-07-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

We're not in Kansas anymore...

Most of these pictures are of my High Street in Kings Heath, Birmingham, while the leafier ones are of a road near mine where two trees fell into a house and car. The tornado itself came through my back garden, but didn't damage more than a few branches.

Kings Heath is really eerie tonight, with no cars around but loads of people walking about in groups just looking at the damage together - frankly, it's more entertaining than anything else that ever goes on around here. It feels quite odd having all this happen within five minutes of my house, but - because I always miss these things - I was out in town at the time, so didn't see any of it.

Of Poisons and Penguins

2005-07-27T21:04:00.001-04:00

Having been disturbed by the sheer number of profiles on dating site Gaydargirls which respond to the question "Favourite Author?" with variations on "Don't read much" (where's an intellectual dating site when you need one?) I was at last motivated to end my own four month hiatus from reading this week, picking up two excellent books I've had on the go for ages.

The Name of The Rose, by Umberto Eco, is easily one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read and is the better known of the two, so I won't say much about it. But a warning - avoid Eco's later Reflections on The Name of The Rose. Mostly composed of thoughts about the process of novel-writing, it added very little to a novel which really stands alone perfectly well. For the most part, Reflections just left me grating my teeth at Eco's constant references to "the most ingenuous reader", which made it abundantly clear that he'd rather his book had been read by no one but university professors trained in semiotics and medieval history. A real pity, since the original book, while consciously intellectual, manages to betray very little of the author's apparent elitism, and is much the better for it. There's not much that can beat reading about two groups of senior monks resorting to fists and name-calling in a discussion of whether Jesus Christ owned the clothes he stood up in, or a sex scene entirely composed of quotes from divine scripture.

Penguin Lost, by Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov, came out last year and is the sequel to Death and The Penguin. Nicely bizarre throughout, and often quite dark, both books are well worth reading, preferably without the 18 month gap between them that I had. The first book left Victor, a writer of obituaries for people who aren't yet dead, escaping a Mafia world he'd unwittingly and unwillingly entered into, by sailing away on a boat to the Antarctic which had been intended for his ailing penguin friend Misha, whom Victor had earlier liberated from a bankrupt Kiev zoo. Feeling guilty for this, Victory returns in the sequel, and spends 180 or so of 260 pages trying to find Misha, along the way becoming a speechwriter for a Ukrainian politician; having an affair with a dead friend's Muscovite-Korean wife; journeying to Chechnya, where he cremates the bodies of men from both sides of the war; and finally taking a team of disabled arm wrestlers to international stardom in Croatia.

This sequel isn't as well written as Death and The Penguin, but it speeds along nicely, and provides interesting reflections on Ukrainian society and politics, laced with Catch-22 style cynical humour (mostly revolving around the corrupt electioneering of Victor's boss Andrey Pavlovich) and with just enough of Misha to make fans of the first book happy.

Generally good stuff, and I'd recommend both Eco and Kurkov as holiday reading, and a good escape from god-awful wizards and barely-written crap about the Mona Lisa.

Go look

2005-07-26T09:17:00.000-04:00

There's a good and angry post from Lenin here about Jean Charles de Menezes, and all the rubbish people who are otherwise often intelligent are spreading about him and the circumstances of his shooting at the moment. I don't endorse the IDF comparisons, but otherwise I think Lenin's absolutely spot-on here. The number of people floating around the blog world at the moment who are willing to turn apologist for this vile murder is truly frightening.

Bisexual men, awake!

2005-07-25T16:54:00.000-04:00

This story has been going round for a while now. According to a study conducted by the psychology department at Northwestern University, bisexual men don't exist. Self-styled bisexual men who were shown erotic films of both men and women under test conditions were found to be aroused only by one gender, 75% by men and 25% by women. Dr. Bailey, who was conducting the test, concluded that the majority of bisexual men must therefore be gay and not want to admit it for some reason, while the other straight men think of bisexuality as a "badge of honour".

An obvious point of criticism here is that the study only used a very small sample - 33 "bisexual" men - yet Bailey thinks this is enough to make his claims. But more importantly, even if the results obtained were proven to hold over a much larger sample, Bailey has no basis for drawing the conclusions that he does - that these men are either in denial or trying to be cool - since the only stimulus he uses is cinematic porn; he has made no attempt to examine properly-embodied human interaction, in which erotic stimulation can be much more subtle.

Procedural quibbles aside, Bailey's study is more fundamentally flawed for the reason that it ignores sexuality surrounding transgenderism. The attraction that many men and women feel for people whose gender is specifically ambiguous would belie any claims that they must be attracted solely to one gender. Actually, I've never met any men who've been attracted to someone transgendered, so I can't ask them whether they're only attracted to such people (which would reinforce Bailey's findings, but on a broader scale), but from the experience I have of women in these relationships it seems very unlikely, and I'd say that any study which ignores the range of human sexuality beyond three constrictive categories is invalid from the very start.

On the other hand, maybe it's true. I don't know whether I have any bisexual male readers (or indeed any male bisexual acquaintances, since all the men I know are either terminally single or in presumably monogamous long-term relationships (boring folk)) but if I do, you must defend yourselves - you're being studied out of existence!

Clouds, clouds everywhere, nor anything to eat

2005-07-24T11:51:00.000-04:00

Rory links to a site devoted entirely to the subject of airline meals. Slightly disturbing, it's a really dedicated effort, including descriptions and pictures of historic airline meals dating back to the 1950s. It's also quite useful for anyone with special dietary requirements today, as it tells you what sort of rubbish the airlines might palm off on you. I'm certainly pretty sick of being told, despite ordering a vegan meal when I booked tickets, that they have nothing to offer me but fruit. Next time this happens I'm just going to demand that they liquor me up instead.

All bleeding eventually stops

2005-07-22T13:44:00.000-04:00

On this day:

In 1886, in San Francisco, a brewery workers' union which had formed among mostly socialist German workers to resist the prevailing 16-18 hour workday, won its battle. Breweries gave in to union demands for free beer, the closed shop, freedom to live anywhere for brewery workers (who had, until now, typically lived in the brewery itself), a 10-hour day, six-day week, & a board of arbitration.
In 1918 lightning killed 504 sheep in Utah's Wasatch National Park.
In 1967, poet & socialist Carl Sandburg, 89, dies, Flat Rock, North Carolina; and Jimi Hendrix quits as The Monkees' opening act(!).
In 1979 Little Richard speaks at a revival meeting in North Richmond, California. He warns the congregation about the evils of rock & roll music & declares, "If God can save an old homosexual like me, he can save anybody."

All from the excellent Daily Bleed, "A calendar of events your mom & pop forgot to tell you about..."

Murderous Thoughts

2005-07-13T15:49:00.000-04:00

Dave, commenting on Radio 4's Great Philosophers poll, argues that while followers of Marx - who won - have been responsible for countlesss deaths, followers of Hume have not been responsible for any. Now, leaving aside the fact that people who devote themselves to philosophy of any sort are often unhinged in other ways, I think Dave's wrong. After all, Hume wrote a couple of highly influential treatises on suicide, in which he was far from wholly condemning the act. Not many other really influential people have come out on the side of (at least rational) suicide. And since suicide is equally killing, there must be a good few deaths we can notch up to Hume's name...

However, it would certainly be interesting to compile a list of thinkers according to their murderous impact. Marx, Jesus...

New Pledgebank pledge

2005-07-09T18:23:00.000-04:00

I will at the earliest opportunity, assemble in London in a public demonstration of respect to the victims of the July 7 atrocity, defiance of the murderers who carried it out and solidarity with the people of London

That is, of course, if I can (be bothered to) get down to London that day.

Pledge here.

Birmingham Evacuation

2005-07-09T17:52:00.000-04:00

Well, that was fun. Though I already knew bits of the centre were being cordoned off when I set out for work this evening (I work at a nightclub), I'd heard about places being cordoned off all over town after hoax calls in the past couple of days, so I wasn't too bothered. But then I reached the road leading up to work, and found myself confronted with police cars and hundreds of people walking the other way, including all the club's staff. Loudspeakers from all the police cars were telling us to walk away from the centre, and that there had been a number of controlled explosions.

People who'd already been drinking suggested everybody go to the local park and keep on partying. So it seems that while Londoners are 'stoical', Brummies are pure hedonists. And we'll have to wait and see whether these 'credible threats' really amount to anything...

The Mating Rituals Of Slugs

2005-07-07T21:13:00.000-04:00

And moving on to the bizarre, file this under 'things you never wanted to find out when you can't sleep':

"...During courtship, two slugs will circle each other, often for hours, with both partners engaged in ritualized bouts of lunging, nipping, and sideswiping with their tails. The two slugs may also display their disproportionately large sex organs. The great gray garden slug's penis is nearly half its total body length...

...Now the slugs must disengage -- a challenge for two animals so amply endowed and thoroughly covered in sticky mucus. After long bouts of writhing and pulling, the pair may resort to what scientists call apophallation."

Need an illustration of this wonderful process? Of course you do. And a video of its denouement? Naturally.

It's like slowing down to watch a car crash...

London

2005-07-07T20:47:00.000-04:00

I don't really have anything to say about what happened yesterday that others haven't said already and better. I figured that most of the people I know in London would already have too many people trying to contact them, so I've opted for the 'I guess I'll find out if they got hurt eventually' route. But there are some good posts over at John B's, and, since Michael's discussing the indomitable British spirit, I thought I'd add this picture, made by jslayeruk, which Lorna sent to me earlier:

And this quote: "It's hard to panic the British. They've dealt with the Blitz, the IRA, the Silurians, the Zarbi, the Daleks, the Cybermen..."

America's Best Christian

2005-07-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

I've belatedly discovered the wonderful site of Betty Bowers - "Love The Sinner - Hate Their Clothes!" Particularly fun is her analysis of Bush's girly boy tendencies. He is, apparently, quite fabulous.

Birthdays

2005-06-28T01:07:00.000-04:00

It's Jean-Jacques Rousseau's birthday today. He'd be 293. Since studying Rousseau I've often wished I'd been born a day earlier to share that birthday. As it is, it's my birthday tomorrow, and I turn 21. It's something of an anti-climax, since I've made no plans except to travel down to Oxford and London to see who I can find bumming around, but I've never much liked birthdays anyway, and it'll be good to leave behind youth and Birmingham at the same time, even if only to return to both a few days later.

The day itself aside, 21 feels like much more of a milestone than 18, something which I didn't expect. There's certainly cause enough to reflect as well as to celebrate. At 18 I was just looking forward to university, without much thought to the future. Now, that future's much less certain, and it's good to think about things. With a drink or two, of course.

Vegetarianism and religion

2005-06-27T22:40:00.000-04:00

Adam is arguing over at The Weblog that vegetarianism is like a religion. Seeing eating rules as being central to the material side of religion, he argues that vegetarianism qualifies on this front, since its adherents will frequently claim that they cannot eat something, rather than merely expressing a strong preference against it.

Well, there's a non-ethical point here. The 'can't' involved for many people - when they use 'can't', since most vegetarians I know do tend to say that they 'won't' rather than 'can't' eat meat - is a hint that eating meat and fish will actually make them physically ill. Going long enough without these foods tends to change the metabolism so that we can no longer cope with them. I know that, having never eaten more than a mouthful or two of meat, doing so makes me quite sick. That has nothing to do with religion; though I imagine those who have avoided certain foods for religious reasons might face the same problems.

More important, though, in arguing that vegetarianism very poorly resembles 'religion', is the fact that the reasoning behind the vegetarian 'can't' is very different from the religious 'can't'. Within a religious context those who concentrate on dietary restrictions do seem less 'liberated'. Focussing on Romans 14, as he does: a limited diet - perhaps of the sort which deems certain foods unclean - is something to be accommodated in the name of peace, but not something to be encouraged, since it could be harmful to the peace and community which we try to seek with one another. As he suggests, it puts out the host if a guest will not eat what is on the table, and damaging the peace we hold with one another is more important than observing some trivial point of doctrine.

Religious dietary restrictions seem to involve maintaining a superiority over the unenlightened in material matters, while true freedom should involve liberation exactly from such worldviews, in which worldly, fleeting distinction is sought rather than the cultivation of the soul (something which can at least partly be achieved through true community with one another).

Nonreligious vegetarianism, by contrast, isn't about this kind of material distinction from other humans. Indeed, if it's religious at all, it taps into the communalist, egalitarian vein in Christian thinking, in that it discourages us from thinking that we might have property in other creatures such that we can simply use them for our own purposes. Given human tendencies to seek superiority and advantage wherever we can, allowing this sense of superiority to have free rein in one realm can hardly work to reduce the comparisons we seek to draw between each other in others. Vegetarianism encourages humility with regard to the world we have before us.

By seeking to understand the suffering of even the 'least' of animals, we can better understand each other's sufferings; by eating only what even the poorest could afford, we reduce distinctions between rich and poor nations and communities; by treating the world's resources as something to be properly managed for future generations, rather than wasted in the way that meat-production does now, we will at the same time be better able to feed ourselves in the present (someone in the comments thread to Adam's post called it "Moby's argument"). Through vegetarianism in general we can come to develop a certain respect for the world and for one another.

The ethical vegetarian is not religious, in the sense of being merely restrictive. If vegetarianism resembles a religion at all, then it does so much more broadly than this. The Christian who argues that the vegetarian is 'weak' (Paul) for being less flexible in accepting hospitality is thinking too narrowly. Maintaining a diet is never as important as the relationships we have with one another, as Paul argues in Romans. Yet equally, the manners of hospitality and are less important than maintaining a longer-term community with one another and with the world around us, something with which vegetarianism is eminently concerned. Most vegetarians can strike the balance - faced with no alternative, we'd eat meat to live, but frankly a dinner party isn't a situation where there's no alternative, and it's lazy to pretend that it is.

Hmm...

2005-06-27T01:30:00.000-04:00

Like Alan Johnson over at Norm's, I love many things associated with America and could go on at length about them.

But, in response to his post, I must point out: Joni Mitchell's Canadian (even if that album does sound very Californian...)

The New Hanky Code

2005-06-25T00:12:00.000-04:00

Well, some said it was bound to happen... The Pink Paper has reported that the proliferation of coloured charity wristbands has led to some treating them as a new hanky code.

Teenagers have been using the wristbands to suggest their sexual preferences, and a majority of those wearing the wristbands (of those surveyed in Wales and the West Country) claimed that the colour is more important to them than the charity the wristband represents. Around 60 percent of 16-19 year olds said that the bands' colours signalled sexual preferences and relationship availability (which, it must be said, is a bit tamer than the old code).

Here's the colours, for those who want to size people up:

Red: Available for sex
White: Attached
Purple/Turquoise: Gay
Pink: Straight female
Blue: Straight male
Pink and blue together: Bisexual
Yellow: Lost virginity
Black: Recently separated.

Also, in trying to find an internet source for this story, I came across something much more bizarre: The Christian Hanky Code. So be careful - looking at the codes it seems that those rent boys might actually just be pro-lifers...

Wish-list

2005-06-23T17:30:00.000-04:00

Well, this may be a particular expensive and/or lazy solution to the problem of taking notes from books which refuse to stay open, but I still think it's an excellent idea. Still, might be a bit weird if it's the only thing I ask for for my 21st birthday...

Nice is different than good

2005-06-22T11:43:00.000-04:00

I've been wondering for a while now whether the construction 'different than' is simply what's correct in American usage, as opposed to our 'different from'. Can anyone help on this?

When I was listening to Sondheim's "Into The Woods" many years ago, I thought that the use of 'different than' was an indication of the naivety of the two characters who used it at the stage in the musical - Little Red Ridinghood and Jack (of Beanstalk fame). But more recently, reading a lot of American academic literature, I've noticed it everywhere. The natural British thing to do would be to assume that this is an American thing, and that the Americans are wrong, but I'm willing to reserve judgement on that just to clarify the issue.

(And yes, I am a complete geek).

Which Theologian Are You?

2005-06-22T11:23:00.000-04:00

You scored as Jürgen Moltmann. The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about.

Which theologian are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

I also came pretty high on Martin Luther, Paul Tillich and Charles Finney. Which makes me part reformist, part Pelagian, part existentialist. The quiz doesn't give an Aquinas option, which is a pity, and perhaps less surprisingly, not much room for Marxist orthodoxy.

Music meme

2005-06-22T10:51:00.000-04:00

To complement the book one, Norm's passed this along to me:

1. The total volume of music on my pc: About 1000 songs. A combination of favourites I want as many copies of as possible, and songs too embarrassing to have in a physical collection.

2. Songs playing right now: Franz Ferdinand - "Michael" (upping my quota of controversial gay songs. Though it's only really controversial amongst their self-appointed moral majority teeny bopper fans).

3. Last album I bought: The Tears - "Here Come The Tears". (Very good album, worth owning, only a tenner - go on, go on, go on...)

4. Five songs I've been listening to a lot: The Decemberists - "Legionnaire's Lament" ("I am on reprieve, lacking my joie de vivre"), Lucinda Williams - "Greenville" (with lovely harmonies by Emmylou Harris; I'm going to see LW soon in London" ("in nobody's eyes but mine" - a debt to Morrissey there, I think), Johnny Cash - "Daddy Sang Bass" (trying to sing along to all three pitches in this, with a female vocal range, is quite amusing), The Tears - "Autograph" (Bernard Butler unashamedly rips off Johnny Marr - great stuff).

5. Passing this along to: No one, for once, but here's an open invitation to everyone to take it up.

A plastic panacea for the problems of our populace

2005-06-15T22:15:00.000-04:00

[Via The Current Outlook] This animation is easily the funniest thing to come from the No2ID lobby so far. Gilbert & Sullivan crossed with cartoon dogs and political satire. Excellent.

Don't you know that you're Toksvig?

2005-06-15T19:09:00.000-04:00

I never thought of Sandi Toksvig as someone who inspires great devotion, but there's a fansite which proves me wrong. It even allows you to make your own Toks-wigs, and frame your photos with them...

Book meme

2005-06-07T08:26:00.000-04:00

John B's tagged me with this one:

1) Total number of books I've owned: At the moment I have about 550, but I've just chucked out nearly 200 books I owned as a kid. That was made necessary thanks to a childhood spent trawling round bookshops and telling my parents that buying fifty books for £1 was a good thing, even if they were all rubbish (they were all rubbish).

2) The last book I bought: Milton's political writings, for a fiver from Birmingham university students guild. I'm collecting all the books in this series - Cambridge texts in the history of political thought - but pretty slowly. My 21st birthday should bring in a few more, though.

3) The last book I read: I haven't finished a book in ages, as I've not got much concentration, so it was probably volume one of Marx's Capital back in March/April. But I've got about five on the go at the moment - Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, Augustine's Confessions, Fo's Can't Pay, Won't Pay!, volume one of Goethe's Faust and Hardt & Negri's Multitude. Whether I'll finish any of these is another matter, though Dario Fo is very fun indeed.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): A book of Primo Levi's collected poetry (in translation). I bought it in a very bad patch in my teens, and it's kept me going ever since. The Outsiders by SE Hinton - I reread it about twenty times between the ages of 9 and 13, and wished I was a flick knife-owning boy in a black leather jacket too (I've since owned both, but not exactly managed the image). Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman, which was the only text I ever enjoyed studying in English lessons, and I still think it's a very good, very moving play. Capital itself, because reading it through properly, and thinking about it from a particular perspective, has altered my outlook on life in many ways recently (Francis Wheen has a nice, short piece about it in Norm's blog). And CS Lewis - all of the Narnia stories, but in particular The Last Battle, which is another one that's meant a lot to me since I was very young.

5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs: Michael, Chris B, Norm, Kat and Chris K, assuming they've not done it already.

Comments

2005-06-06T17:37:00.000-04:00

I've been having problems with enetation for ages, so I've moved to Blogger comments, but I'm having trouble getting the template right. In the absence of any suggestions, I'll leave it like this, though I know it looks odd.

Cooking disasters

2005-06-06T13:22:00.000-04:00

A post at Crooked Timber about the dangers of cooking with empty Teflon pans reminds me of when I was 16, and I forgot to add any water to the rice I was cooking, leaving it dry heating for 15 minutes. The results of this were something very closely resembling tar and a completely unusable saucepan. The fumes coming from that were probably deadly for birds too...