Saturday, April 07, 2007

[Христос воскресе!] Воистину воскресе!

For Saturday evening:

Missale Romanum [not the complete text]:
Exultet iam angelica turba caelorum:exultent divina mysteria:et pro tanti Regis victoria tuba insonet salutaris. Gaudeat et tellus tantis irradiata fulgoribus:et, aeterni Regis splendore illustrata,totius orbis se sentiat amisisse caliginem.

Laetetur et mater Ecclesia,tanti luminis adornata fulgoribus:et magnis populorum vocibus haec aula resultet. Quapropter astantes vos, fratres carissimi,ad tam miram huius sancti luminis claritatem,una mecum, quaeso,Dei omnipotentis misericordiam invocate.

Ut, qui me non meis meritisintra Levitarum numerum dignatus est aggregare,luminis sui claritatem infundens,cerei huius laudem implere perficiat. Flammas eius lucifer matutinus inveniat:Ille, inquam, lucifer, qui nescit occasum:Christus Filius tuus,qui, regressus ab inferis, humano generi serenus illuxit,et vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
May peace find you this day, tomorrow and henceforth every day.

For Sunday morning:

Послание Патриарха Московского и Всея Руси Алексия II

к верующим:

"От всего сердца поздравляю вас, возлюбленные архипастыри, отцы, братья и сестры, с праздником Светлого Христова Воскресения! Шлю пасхальные приветствия всем православным христианам, сущим "от конец даже до конец вселенныя".

Спешу разделить радость Святой Пасхи с каждым, кто исповедует Христа Воскресшего, и со всеми людьми, жить среди которых судил нам Господь. Радость, мир, благодатную помощь Свою в добрых делах да дарует всем вам, дорогие мои, Восставший из гроба Спаситель мира!"

Христос воскресе! Воистину воскресе Христос! Jesus the Christ is Risen!

From the Missale Romanum:

The power of this holy night dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy; it casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride. Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth and man is reconciled with God! Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

To all out there, have a peaceful night and rest assured all good things will come to those with good hearts. This blog now signs off until tomorrow.

[blogfocus saturday] motley crew

1 The Wife in the North shows why she's attracted a large readership in a short space in time:

It was a bad day and the reason I know there is a God is because I have lost the car keys. Usually my husband loses the car keys. And after everything I said about him persistently letting the car run out of petrol. All I spend when that happens is time and an impressive amount of bad language. Replacing the car keys is going to cost more than £1,200. (I should actually say "car key" because obviously we do not have a spare. Why would we have a spare? It is not like we are ever going to lose it. )

It is going to cost this huge amount of money because you have to reprogramme the car's "brain" and "send away". Who knew the car had a brain? I find the fact that the car has a brain almost as worrying as the fact mine is missing along with the car key. I would so love to blame the children.

2 Dr. Michelle Tempest asks if the spindoctors have spun the doctors:

It has been said that doctors are not very politically savvy as professional group. However, when the government announced their ‘Modernising Medical Careers review result’ exactly 24 hours before the long Easter weekend, I heard many doctors asking about 'a good day to bury bad news' and 'the political theory of spin'. After all, the day before a long weekend is inevitably extra busy in any job; and especially so in hospitals, as patients get reviewed prior to a bank holiday. News releases about work have a tendency to lose impetus as people relax with family over the long weekend.

3 I just had to include my old friend the Flying Rodent once again:

It's one of the most commonly asked questions in modern politics, but one that is worth revisiting often - whatever happened to the Lift? While the nation has changed radically due to globalisation, privatisation and streamlined capitalism, the Lift has been unable to advance. It remains trapped, capable of rising and falling, but never of going forward.

The problem is plain to see - the Lift lacks inclusiveness, with little room for manoeuvre within its narrow confines. One could wait expectantly for decades for an innovative suggestion, but the Lift has nothing to offer but the same simplistic formulations that it has offered since Attlee was a boy.

4 Heather Yaxley shows that PC afflicts even her own PR profession:

Watson highlights the problem of promoting best practice examples of public relations by including measures of advertising value equivalent

[AVE, for the uninitiated involves calculating the worth of editorial coverage generated in PR campaigns against the cost to buy it as advertising - plus usually a factor multiplier to reflect editorial’s greater credibility.]

It is a ridiculous measure since the worth of advertising isn’t what you pay for it, but whether it delivers any enquiries, sales or other measurable outcome. Surely then assessment of editorial coverage should also be outcome-related.

5 Colin Campbell addresses that most terrible of afflictions and the particular Australia conditions conducive to it:

We have friends here in Australia, who have cancers dug out of their bodies regularly after a youth of sun over exposure. Australians are generally very cautious about this. Our kids always wear sunscreen and hats. Even on overcast days, the ozone rating can be extreme. I used to be more keen to get a tan when I was in Scotland. Now I don't care so much.

6 Just quietly, I don't fancy getting on the wrong side of Trixy. Here she finally lets loose on an iniquitous anomaly over the same issue of cancer and how it's addressed:

Anyway, Cllr Gavin Ayling left a comment saying: Maybe we should wait for the result before slinging mud at the party who was doing the employing? Maybe ... And I didn't write another word about it.

However, now that I know that the Tories have lost their case and the cancer suffering lady in question, who has been told by doctors that she does not have long to live, has been awarded J40,000 damages for her unfair dismissal, the other side have to pay costs.

So, especially in light of how the Tories rubbed their hands with glee in the case of the UKIP being blackmailed by a man with plastic knees, who completely made the story up, I am going to do the same to the Tories.

7 The Select Society's Cleanthes touches on the Iran Hostage Crisis:

If we trust the other guy, then [we] can reach an agreement about who is in the wrong and why. In which case, you aren’t offering concessions - you are making amends. If you don’t and you can’t, the concessions are meaningless and may even be counterproductive.

We will not increase our stock of trust with the Iranians however this dispute is resolved. We can only increase our stock of trust in other dealings with them that are not forced upon us as a result of a dispute. In the context of avoiding a war between the UK and Iran, the work has to be done elsewhere.

8 Which leaves Wolfie to add one final comment about said conflict:

So another round of the Great Game draws to a close but the good news is that in this round nobody got hurt and its a win-win situation, unless you are an Iranian dreaming of regime change of course.

So Happy Easter everyone and enjoy the holiday break.

May I add my own best wishes to you for a lovely last half of the break.

[business lunacy] cautionary tales [2]

How not to run a business.

The Dismaying Dilemma of the Diminishing Doughnut


His name was Gerlach. I remember him well.

He’d taken over the general goods/fast food store on the waterfront at the beachside resort which picked up the holidaying and camping crowd coming down from the city, especially in the evening when families and lovers went strolling along the promenade.

Under the previous owners, we had, up one end of the long, rectangular shop, three absolute winners – by the glass shop window on the left, a long conveyor belt doughnut machine which children insisted their parents stop by, watch, then come in and buy from. In the centre were the best fish ’n chips, prepared by a bevy of gorgeous gals and to the right was awkward me, tending the hamburger conveyor belt.

You might have seen these machines – meat patties, eggs, tomato and so on on the top tier, each in its own little metal pan, bun halves on the lower. Customers would stand and watch their own personal burgers coming to fruition. Our little trick with the regulars was to look left and right to see the owner wasn’t watching, then slip a little extra into the pans. Naturally, it had all been costed beforehand.

Another of our tricks was to crack an egg in each hand simultaneously, then break them into the pans without touching the contents and without bits of shell.

But the fish was the real winner. There was a local chap who came in late at night and did all the filleting and crumbing and those fish were out of the bay that evening. Naturally, the chippy girls did a roaring trade, plus we were just a little dearer than most, which had a reverse psychological effect. Those were the good ole days.

Then Gerlach came and bought the business.

First to be hit was the doughnut machine. He had a mechanic in to adjust the nozzle which dropped the dough into the conveyor – made it narrower, in other words. Less doughnut.

Customers commented.

Next he turned to the chippies and told them to put in less chips with each serve, then introduced a scoop which made the process girl-proof. I was castigated for giving too much in my corner and being wasteful. Then he sacked the doughnut girl and the chippie girls were reduced to two, one having to double up with the doughnuts.

Next the girl was instructed to sugar and cinnamonize one side only. Then the cinnamon was dropped. Sales halved. The girl was getting peeved about having to run both sections, she got uppity about it with Gerlach and stormed out.

Next the fish changed. It really did. No longer crumbed and battered, it was now thinly battered and of a lesser quality. Seems that the old chap, the local, had told Gerlach where he could put the proverbial filleting knife and had also stormed out, spreading the word round the local community.

Gerlach retreated into his shell and a sullen tone came over the shop. Girls at the other end started working to regulation, chewing gum on the job and getting sacked and the worst sort replaced them, the ‘whadda-U-want’ type. The shop fell away and there was still half the summer to go.

At this point, due to our disobedience, we still had some custom and a travelling poultry vendor took it into her head that she liked the service I’d given and she gave me a whole frozen turkey. What was a young man to do with a whole frozen turkey?

I consulted my father who came over to Gerlach with me and asked if we could store it in the freezer for a few days until my father returned to the city to work.

‘No.’

‘Pardon?’

‘No. Not unless you share half of it with me,’ was Gerlach’s reply. My father used somewhat intemperate language, to which Gerlach replied, possibly within his rights, ‘You only got that turkey on account of my business. Half is mine.’

We were forced to acquiesce.

The last straw was when the doughnut machine was switched off on the grounds of using too much power and was only to be switched on if there were more than three customers wanting doughnuts. This meant they’d need to wait 15 minutes for the coagulated yellow scum to warm up to 80% optimum to ‘sort of’ make doughnuts from dough which had sat in the funnel half the day.

The shop closed near the end of summer.

[true history] not some milksop concoction

[A] report funded by the Department for Education and Skills said:

‘Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned. Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.’

This is the multi-cultural do-goodism which has a noble basis but an impossible implementation. Let's face it, any normal, reasonable citizen is going to be friendly, rather than antagonistic to another person he meets.

Would you seriously refuse to shake a black man's hand or talk to a Chinese?

However, there is a simple principle involved here. Britain is Britain, with a Judaeo-Christian tradition and that's that. Therefore, schools should reflect that, using the texts which have been built up over the centuries, warts and all. It's our true history. How can I put it more simply?

It happened.

Therefore, no amount of revisionist rewriting to make it more feminine, homosexual or ethnic friendly is going to alter one jot of what happened. Christmas is Christmas, Easter is Easter and that's that. If we want to celebrate Ramadan or Hanukah in schools, which we did when I was teaching, then these were additional celebrations.

Additional.

What they in no way comprised was some sort of hotch-potch winterval construction with neither basis nor authenticity beyond the vaguely altruistic feeling of school teachers. This lukewarm all-inclusive nonsense is total balderdash.

Particularly when it is not all-inclusive at all but very strongly excludes the Christian tradition and pushes homosexuality as equal in status and value to the norm. This is a serious case of induced curricular imbalance.

As a former head, parents from overseas sent their children to our school [and many others, of course] precisely because we were British and that image they had in their minds had absolutely zero to do with some sort of Brito-Nigerian-Jamaican-Feministic-Homosexual Federation.

I mean - seriously, what is this insanity? Do you really think people visit, seeking some watered-down pseudo-post-modernist Britain?

Yes, be accepting of other ethnicities and by so doing, show the heights our own has reached.

Yes, frown sternly at those who would vilify others but don't damn well try to legislate for it.

Yes, realize there will be homosexuals who have their own lives but don't shove it down our throats or our children's.

Yes, get a bit of reason, a bit of common sense back into what's going on in schools and classrooms.

For goodness sake, let's wake up from this madness and honour our roots, our achievements and create a future which honours our past but looks forward at the same time.

[human energy] most powerful force known to man

Margaret Thatcher famously said:

There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women and there are families. [October 31st, 1987, Woman's Own]

If that is so, then there is a great deal of simple cleverness behind the exhortation to:

# 'love your fellow man' and to

#
'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.

Clearly that's an impossible task for the bulk of us but there is a compromise position which works:

# If every person, when he or she goes out for the day, decides to do just one act of kindness that day to someone neither family nor friend, the exponential power behind that would transform society.

#
If every person would forgive another just once in the week, rather than pursuing a dispute or a point-scoring exercise, the energy and nerve savings would be astronomical.

#
If every person would select the issues on which he or she'll fight to the death, rather than fight every little slight and every little injustice done to him or her, the mental health benefits would be enormous. In my eyes, this is the real philosophy behind 'turn the other cheek'.

Very simple, very do-able and look at the alternative:

Long running, protracted disputes which become old grievances, which inevitably lead to bitterness, poor health and a jaundiced view of humanity and sap the very life out of us and age us before our time.

Better the first idea.

[blogfocus] the idea behind it

The name: it needed to be snappy and to reflect the purpose.

The purpose: to present a paragraph from:

# as wide a range of blogs as possible;

# themed as much as possible;

# mixing known and unknown blogs in a pleasing combination;

The scope: from all over the world, not necessarily Britblog nor Scottish Blog but from everywhere.

Political philosophy: absolutely none, except that the entries must be interesting in themselves, thought proking or both.

Frequency: strangely, when it was twice a week, it took four times as long. This was because a combination of Blogger, my system and my low RAM meant that the post template baulked when the links exceeded 10 and the formatting was done more than twice. Soemtimes the whole post had to be redone.

With the new 3 times a week format, it actually reduces the amount of overall time in the week on Blogfocus by about 40%.

When: it appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings, usually around early evening, British time.

Limitations: Obviously there are limitations when one man gathers and collates. I'm always on the lookout for the fresh and quirky, which is the idea behind my own blog and so the Blogfocus fails to be a serious political tome or a home-handywoman's guide. It falls somewhere in between.

Growth: the readership depends on:

# the range of blogs presented and people who view it;

# people who link to it;

# my e-mailing people about it.

E-mailing: this was taking up more and more time, time I should have been visiting people's blogs instead, given limits to overall net time. On the other hand, people liked being individually e-mailed [I never bulk mail] and were more likely to link me, so it's a no win situation. I have to find a solution to this.

Request: to link the Focus. Of course. Only through this will people know about Blogfocus and the range of blogs will expand. When Chris Dillow, Westminster Wisdom, Mr Eugenides, Devil's Kitchen and other good souls link, the number of blogs exponentially increases.

Regrets: few. Maybe that Tim Worstall rarely mentions the Blogfocus.

What's the point? We all surf other blogs but first we must know about them. There are many community schemes going and Blogfocus is just one which expands your blogbase in a less onerous way.

[charlton heston] vale, quiet man of passion


Charlton Heston has died and there's a nice tribute over at Nunyaa's place:

Heston was certainly one of the 'old school' of actors who gave perfection to his chosen craft of acting and provided countless hours of enjoyment. Charlton Heston maintained his style and dignity until his passing Saturday night and will be missed by many fans around the world.

Amen to that. He was one of the best and combined with Robert Aldrich in Twilight's Last Gleaming, a nice commentary on the true state of affairs in the U.S., he was superlative - tailor made for the role with his quiet passion.

One of my favourites of all time. Here's an interesting little psychological profile of him.

Friday, April 06, 2007

[crucifixion] from a medical point of view


You might like to visit my other site and read about a progressive account of what really happens during a crucifixion. A bit gruesome and yet appropriate for winding up this day.

[fawkes on tv] grievous error hurt us all

Regarding the recent meeting of the MSM and the blogosphere on the MSM's home turf, Oliver Kamm said:

I know nothing of the pseudonymous Mr Fawkes, but I'm deeply sceptical of the value of political blogs and hostile to the whole medium of blogging. (I argued the point here and here.) Mr Fawkes's film is in my view ludicrous self-promotion, the vapidity of whose message is emphasised by the absurd affectation of its author's wishing to be anonymous and to be filmed only in darkness.

I've had a long association with Oliver now [in blogging terms] but I respectfully disagree that all bloggers can be tarred with the same brush. I don't consider this, nor this, to be unresearched and undefendable.

Nor do I think this, with this follower, ill researched nor the conclusions rashly drawn.

Devil's Kitchen commented on Guido's performance thusly:

Yes, Guido was hammered rather; however, I think that this is partially down to the medium. Writing allows a far longer reaction time and thus it can be easier to defend oneself. There's another aspect too; although Guido has his beliefs, his blog doesn't necessarily reflect them.

Look at it this way; I write very long posts, during the course of which I almost always reaffirm some aspect of my political ideas … Guido doesn't write in this way … it does mean that they are not so practised when faced with a spontaneous argument.

Trouble is, Guido had to be on a hiding to nothing to take on a rabid Michael White who was clearly out to show up the blogosphere. A scandal mongering blog is no match for researched 'assault' questions - the questioner is always going to have the advantage in this situation.

What I feel Guido has done, through both his ego and his ludicrous and long-ago-exploded anonymity on television, which it was wrong to do, is to allow the blogosphere to be tarred with the same brush, which sets us all back somewhat in the public estimation, including for the estimable Iain Dale.

To Guido's credit, he's been circumspect and has posted his take on the matter.

Further comment here and here.

GRIEVOUS ERROR OF MY OWN: Neojacobin was the one I should have attributed much of the data to and I even used some of his phraseology. Sorry, Courtney. don't know what happened.

[scandal] woman flaunts sexuality

Eva Green, who has absolutely nothing to do with this post

Good ... now all I wanted to remind you of was the History Quiz below. Don't forget to try it, readers.

[chocolate easter] of protests and rank hypocrisy

Heather Yaxley's chick and egg is cool, n'est ce pas?

Liz asks what the problem is with the chocolate Jesus. Why anyone would find that offensive. He was a man and therefore he had Crown Jewels, which happened to be on display. All they've done is have a little joke - funnin', as people [speaking generally here] who can't appreciate jokes might put it.

I ask how you'd feel [again speaking generally] if your own mother were portrayed in chocolate in all her naked glory, with her gynaecological aspects clearly defined? And not just any mother - your own. Different story, isn't it?

So why is this any different? The Son of Man means a lot to a rapidly dwindling and yet devout number of people around the world and the hypocrisy of the humanists chuckling at a gross act of disrespect and telling those of us who believe that we should be more tolerant, gets up my nose. I'd really love to portray someone dear to you having sex with a dog or whatever and then I can just laugh it off and say to you, "Oh don't be so sensitive. It's just a bit of fun.'

I don't give a toss about the actual chocolate Jesus. The original is a Big Boy and can probably cope with the slight. No, it's the rank hypocrisy of those telling others not to be so sensitive that grates - the rank hypocrisy of the godless. Which leads us to the Mohammed cartoons.

Were the Mohammed cartoons sexual in nature? No, they were political. So then - portray Jesus with a Terry Gilliam visage vehemently spreading the word or in some kind of levitating, lamb-shaped Popemobile, whilst addressing the masses - something political, rather than physiological.

But that wouldn't do the trick, would it? No, the point of the exercise was to entice people to mock the man Himself, through what is already a pagan hijacking of the Easter message. Two for the price of one, so to speak. If the minds of such people were rooms in a house, then you'd see some pretty grotesque furniture inside there.

So look at my own post on Friedrich Hayek and Martin Kelly, where the illustrations relate to Martin's text. That's mocking. Yes but is it grossly offensive? Is it pornographic? That's your decision.

Having said all that, the question of the devotees of Christianity remains:

My own best friend here, [who became a Christian via a different path to me - we're both women loving, unChristian Christians, so to speak, who enjoy a drop or two], tells a story about a coffee shop in the US which was fairly dire.

There's something not quite right about the so-called 'fundamentalist' Christians which is … well … off-putting. I can't identify it fully but I'll give it a shot:

For a start, there seems to be a certain mental set in the first place - either a stern, unbending outlook or else a sort of teenage girl totality to the mindset which either goes all bad or swings round and goes all good.

Christianity is, as it's founder said, primarily for gathering lost sheep and so there's a certain gratitude for what has been done for you. If you haven't taken this step, you'll never know the euphoria of it. A huge weight is taken off your shoulders and out of your soul. It's simply so.

The trouble comes when a certain naïve bonhomie deviates into fanaticism, as on the Planet Krikkit. The blindness to other points of view negates the message itself. There's a very simple test of this. Do the actions of the protesters turn the average person towards or against becoming a Christian?

And I think that was the idea. The other side knew what would provoke the fundamentalists and show them up in a bad light, therefore furthering the work of deviating people away from the essential message of common sense in our modus operandus in life. The keepers of the gate are so fearsome, none dare enter to hear the message.

There's little doubt that a battle is being fought for hearts and minds just now and so far, the humanists seem to be in the box seat. But the game's not over till the fat lady sings, guys.

By the way, be careful this easter - it's also grand climax and sacrificial victims are being sought for a bit of good ole bloodletting. You never know - you might meet your local mayor there behind that cowl.

[business lunacy] cautionary tales [1]

How not to run a business.

The Case of the Christian Coffee Shop


This one is set in Sioux City, Iowa, on the campus of Morningside College.

My friend Viktor and his wife were on the academic staff and at lunchtimes, there was the most delightful little café in the grounds, called Java, run by a sprightly lady in her mid-60s, named Polly.


Perhaps you can envisage it – cosy little place on two levels, all turned wood and chintz, offering the freshest ground coffee, chunky soups, sandwiches and salads, all served with a big smile and a personal greeting as you walked through the door.

On the second level was a quieter area for browsing through 2nd hand books and taking them to a table to read, whilst sipping on the syrup.
Viktor and Daniella swore by the shop, as did the bulk of the campus, particularly the English department. Now I need to be quite accurate as to developments, as this names names.

For some reason, the shop was sold to Susie, a Southern Baptist Revivalist [I’m not sure what she was doing in the tri-state area] and husband.

And grown son.

And baby.


A huge ‘smiley’ of Susie now greeted you at the door and
an electric piano had appeared in the corner, just inside the door. The coffee was served to the dulcet tones of Susie belting out one or other great revivalist hit, sometimes with family members joining the chorus, the baby puking in time in her arms whilst the food was being prepared and visitors encouraged to sing along.

Viktor and Daniella did not immediately shake the dust from their sandals but made a pact to visit every so often to chart the decay, as it were.

It was an uphill task.

There
now appeared to be out-of-town strangers lounging about the shop and when the proprietors were not about, which was quite often, one or other would slouch behind the counter and fill the food orders of the rapidly dwindling clientele.

The English department particularly gave it a miss but even students, who could generally be relied upon to tolerate a certain degree of non-hygiene, now they too gave it away.

Our heroes gritted their teeth and continued to visit sporadically, taking only the self-serve half ’n half coffees from the dispenser and perching gingerly on chairs, having first brushed the dust away.


Enter – the son. They sold the business to him. A young man in his early 20s and described as inept though nice enough in a ‘sloppy kindaway’.

First sign was the greasy table of coffee dispensers – now empty most of the time. This necessitated asking at the counter and this day V&D asked for 'half ’n half", which is American code for some sort of coffee manifestation.

'Oh,' mumbled the son and went over to the fridge, took out an unopened carton and opened it. It had gone completely off.
‘My dad left it here,’ was the mitigation. ‘It wasn’t my doing. Pitch it!’

And with that, he did.


At this point in the story, I’m wondering why the two brave souls even contemplated going there again but it seems they did. This time there were computer games in one corner and two dirty socks below it on the floor.


D&V clapped hands over mouths and ran for the last time.

It later became a Mexican fast food outlet, roundly shunned by the whole campus. The owner simply can’t understand why.

[poor kate] media claws into her

Clearly I don't know much about who's "in" and who's passe and I don't understand why everyone's down on Kate Middleton. Is the average blogger down on her because the media also is? And how did that come about? What did she do which was so wrong?

She's now dropped a complaint against the Mirror that printed a picture of her walking to work, accompanied by a caption suggesting "stoney-faced Kate" was about to scold William after he was pictured with other women in nightclubs. Richard Wallace said: "We got it wrong and we sincerely regret that."

What's with this "stoney-faced Kate" jibe, after having cameras pushed into her face? The media really are animals, the way they behave or so it seems to me. Then again, am I just as bad, running the photo to the left?

And what is it with Kate Middleton? Is William bored with her? Is she possessive? Is she dowdy? Does she just hate publicity?

I read her as a private person who is more or less pro-William but who got off to a bad start with the media and now their claws are into her.

Someone enlighten me please.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

[economists] the new high priests of society

To this post on the cause of the ills of society, the irrepressible Martin Kelly replies:

1] Economics, or more particularly an over-emphasis on the gross selfishness peddled by the faintly diabolical Friedrich von Hayek and rehashed by James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock and others into 'public choice', bears a very significant proportion of the blame.

2] The UK was lost the day Thatcher took out a volume of Hayek, slapped it down on the table and thundered: 'This is what we believe'. That was the United Kingdom's real 'Year Zero'; the point where the elites made it clear that all that was old and good about us would be smashed and that we would be remade according to the vision of a foreigner. It was if Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the previous 1,000 years of history had ceased to exist.

3] It's perhaps no coincidence that the decline of religion and its associated values has seen the rise of economics as a secular religion whose priests believe they can answer all human problems with some back of the fag packet calculus, McEquations, and very liberal usage of the word 'If'. They are slavishly doctrinaire in their adherence to the true faith, and regard all who oppose their beliefs and teachings as heretics.

I go with Point 3 and to some extent Point 1. How about you?

[history quiz] how many of these ten can you get

Who is this person?

1] Inclined to favour Matilda, Countess of Anjou, this man was arrested at St Albans, he acquiesced, was set free, gathered a force, took Cambridge, the abbey at Ramsay was sacked and then this man withdrew to the fens, in preparation for a long siege.

2] Schiller, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Twain, Shaw, and Brecht, have created works about her, and depictions of her continue to be prevalent in film, television, and song. She had visions, became a heroine at 17 and died at 19, on a trumped up charge.

3] He surrounded himself with all the luxuries and the external grandeur of an Eastern monarch, and his government prospered. He entered into an alliance with Hiram I, king of Tyre; the first half of his reign was better - in the second, he fell into idol worship.

4] When 19, he opened his own tailor shop; an unsophisticated, pugnacious but honest man without oratorical and political skills, he did more for the power of the presidency against congress than any before or since. Ross voted him not guilty.

5] Reporter, columnist and editor for Baltimore's Sun papers, he was especially well-known in the 1920s for his witty and insightful commentaries on the wretchedness of humanity. He edited The Smart Set and American Mercury.

6] Of Scottish descent, he became Russian Minister of War in 1810 and his cold, determined and scientific approach probably saved his army from early destruction at the hands of a full-strength Grande Armee. Other commanders did not like his caution.

7] A dutch exotic dancer, she was also adept at ballet and tried her hand at intrigue but the French were not impressed with he efforts. Apocryphal story of her once wearing only a fur coat and boots, her myth finally caught up with her.

8] Considered by many historians as the world's first multi-genius, he was revered in the ancient world as a poet, philosopher, physician, and astronomer. But he is best remembered as the creator of the first pyramid, the step pyramid and for two recent movies.

9] Raised in Tulsa, Clapton is perhaps his greatest fan, has influenced Dire Straits, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Deep Purple, the Allman Brothers, Johnny Cash, The Band, Santana, Captain Beefheart, and Bryan Ferry. Widespread Panic covered him not so long ago; he remains cantankerous and yet laid back in the extreme.

10] Played the clavier at three and composed his first piece at five; the Pope conferred knighthood on him early. He wrote on an official form regarding his salary: "Too much for what I accomplish, and too little for what I could accomplish."

Answers here.

[dilemma] the broken down car

I put this to a group of young ladies today:

In a nutshell, there's a dilemma wherein a man and his wife see another man whose car has broken down by the side of the road.

The husband reasons that it would be dangerous and time consuming to stop, with no likely benefit as they'd never see him again but that they could well come to harm if they did stop. and anyway, who was to say they'd be competent to render assistance?

His wife disagrees. She says that not only would he lose her respect but G-d would make a note of it for later reference. Not to mention living with hmself in the future. To stop and help, on the other hand, could well become cumulative, as the man would no doubt do something similar when it's his turn.

One girl reasoned that there'd be no immediate effect but the good feeling would brush off on all three, which would impact further down the track, e.g. the boss would give his workers an easier time the next day and so on.

I asked one young man and he reasoned: "That's his problem, buying an unreliable car."

[copperplate] the handwriting of choice

Practise the lettering. It will become easier as you go on.

Nowhere is the dearth of appropriate values in modern life more visible than in handwriting. The almost manic rush of modern living plus the dire straits in which the education system finds itself, have conspired to all but eliminate the standard script which our parents used and which is now only taught in a handful of independent schools.

The internet hasn't helped either.

It's dismaying to hear and read people today call something 'calligraphy' which was, after all, just standard writing four and a half decades ago.

Here is a fragment from an interesting history of the writing form:

Copperplate evolved in the earliest part of the 18th century due to a need for an efficient commercial hand in England. The "secretary hand" (a cursive variety of Gothic minuscule), the "mixed hand", and the more elegant Italian cancellaresca testeggiata had given way to something plainer and more practical. Two varieties of a new "copperplate" style became common: "round hand," the bolder of the two, was considered appropriate for business use, and "Italian," a lighter and narrower form, was considered the ladies' hand.

There is no mystery to the writing.

Firstly, it needs a double ended nib [pictured]. Ballpoints are, quite frankly, an abomination and militate against decent writing.

The theory is that every time the nib is slightly pressed, the pointed ends come apart and the line is thick. As this is a progressive pressing and lightening, the effect is a thick line with graduated ends - pleasing to the eye.

All up strokes and flourishes are made by lessening the pressure on the nib, the ends come together and the line is therefore thinner until it finally peters out. This is the 'mystery of calligraphy' - no mystery at all. Ballpoints or any other form of pen which do not allow the thick/thin alternation are therefore anathema.

Felt tips can be all right in some situations.

So why isn't everyone writing this way?

1] It's not taught any more. In the 1970s, it was deemed too messy [children got ink on the hands], too difficult to learn - it took discipline, a word not in vogue in the 1970s.

2] A new form of writing, called 'cursive', was introduced. The theory went that it was traumatic to the child's mind to go from print letters to joined print letters then suddenly to copperplate. This was the era of phonics as well but that's another story.

3] The 'cursive' abomination, meant as a transitional form of writing until late childhood, actually became the norm and no one wanted to move up to the old script, beautiful as it was. Life was too short to write carefully and neatly. There were things to do, no time to pause. Thus the form almost died.

Interestingly, when I came over to the former Soviet Union, I taught some children the copperplate, expecting to be met with fierce resistance, as is the norm in the west. They took to it like ducks to water and it's true - the two styles are very similar, even if one is in Latin characters and the other in Cyrillic.

This is a fascinating history in itself.

So what's the point? Well it's not just for lovers of beauty in all things. It really does open doors for you. People see your handwritten note or signature and realize you had a good education, maybe even classical. You feel good in yourself as you see beauty flow from your pen and not just some scratchy spider scrawl.

And the good thing is that, with the refinements in the pens these days, the messiness has gone, the blotting paper and the whole paraphernalia is not needed and it's as easy as keeping a pen in your inside top pocket. It certainly impresses when you whip out this pen to append your signature to some document or other.

As for receiving a letter through the mail from someone who has taken the time to write to you this way, it gives a very warm glow, you'd possibly agree.