01 December 2004
Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Two adjacent editorials in today's torygraph show just how rotten things have become under Nu Labour. The first one discusses crime - concentrating on the death of John Monckton in Chelsea (also commented on at Samizdata by his neighbour Perry de Haviland) and on the attack on a 71 year old priest. The writer could have chosen Ozzy Osbourne or hundreds of others while making his point which is that:
Nevertheless, there is a deeply disturbing trend towards the increasing use of lethal violence in crimes against property.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that we have become too tolerant of crime against property. Increasingly, police regard burglary and car theft as an economic nuisance, offences for which they will offer only a docket number for an insurance claim, plus the dubious benefits of counselling. They are reluctant to answer a ringing burglar alarm or investigate a broken window.
Prevention of burglary has, in effect, been privatised and responsibility for deterrence has been passed to the manufacturers of burglar alarm systems, paid for by householders who realise how vulnerable they have become in the absence of a visible police presence in so many parts of the country.
The distinction between property crime, which increasingly is tolerated, and violent crime, which in theory is not, is a false one. High general levels of crime lead inevitably to rising levels of violent crime. If a burglar feels he can invade a person's home with virtual impunity, it is then a small step for him to use violence against the householder should he be disturbed or challenged.
Burglary in Britain is an extremely low risk activity. The chances of getting caught are low, the chances of prosecution are lower and the chance of facing an angry armed householder lower still. If, by some lucky chance, the householder does in fact injure the burglar, the burglar will probably be able to sue for compensation from the householder. Meanwhile as the editorial states, the Home office pushes for gimmicks and crackdowns which cause aggravation to the lawabiding while failing to stop crime in against people or property. Exactly how does mandatory possession of an ID card deter a burglar? All it does is add additional hassle to every one and a new crime - failing to keep the ID card current, fine £1000 or go to jail.
Then there is the state of the state. The second editorial, and the related opinion piece from Oliver Letwin, talks about the astounding growth in bureaucracy and bureaucrats under Labour. As the editorial starts:
Spare a thought today for the paper boys and girls. Wednesday is the worst day of their week, because they have to struggle up the nation's garden paths, bent double under the weight of the Guardian's public sector job supplement. They know that there is such a thing as Society - it is usually more than 100 pages long.
Oliver Letwin does a simple trawl through the Grauniad's job pages for the last five months to unearth the fact that, since the Chancellor said he would reduce the civil service, more than 4,000 jobs have been advertised for a total wage bill of £157,865,784 (i.e. average salary £35-40,000). Worse, as Tim Worstall illustrated recently, these jobs are neither productive nor efficient. Under Labour the UK has indeed moved to the heart of Europe with the same bureaucratic brainlessness and resulting toxic tax burden. Unfortunately the heart seems to be ripe for heart attack unless there is a major operation to remove the fat clogging the system. Just as Britain (and Europe's) population are becoming ever more obese so is its government. We need an Atkins diet for government concentrating on useful things like crime prevention by catching criminals rather than blowing our taxes on "teenage pregnancy coordinators" or transportation websites or conker awareness campaigns.
01 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
The Corner on NRO blog had a reader yesterday who says this:
A friend in Atlanta: "Derb---The worst, or best, example of parody tone deafness that I've encountered are the Dutch. They have absolutely no concept of irony or sarcasm as humor. They always asked why I said something if I did not really mean it. To them, humor is very much a 'Three Stooges' type affair. Slip on a banana...hilarious, clever play on words...huh?
"This trait might also be shared by other Germanic/Scandinavian folks - I don't know. I just know the Dutch's sense of humor is nowhere near as sophisticated and clever as Anglo humor. No sense of idle chit chat either. Hell is being in a social environment with gorgeous Dutch girls who speak perfect English but it is not possible to engage in light, flirtatious banter...what a waste. After two years of talking past each other, I could not wait to get out of de Nederland."
Ok so that's nice - generally I thought it was the Prussians who had their sense of humour gland surgically removed at birth - but what the hell, Dutch, Germans, Prussians its all the same really, and maybe it has a slight basis in truth. I happen to have met quite a few Dutch people with an excellent sense of humour - including one who explained the Dutch problem to me as follows:
You see there are two sorts of Dutch people. Half of them, they take the sense of humour gland from and the other half get a second one implanted. The problem is working out in advance which one you are talking to before you tell a joke.
Still its not exactly an important thing so I was just going to let it pass, but then today I see that Zacht Ei demonstrates an excellent grasp of irony or sarcasm:
On the 6th of November, I wrote this item about a survey by a Dutch newspaper.
Today, a kind reader pointed out the existence of this article to me. Just scroll down a bit.
I guess I should be happy, since I'm writing this blog in English to improve my fluency in written English, so one day I would be able to get my stuff published in American and British outlets. Well, mission accomplished. Thing is, I always imagined my name would be there, too
QNED. Hypothesis disproven. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 (€150)
01 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
The Pinko Feminist Hellcat has an interesting essay on divorce and something called a covenant marriage, which Id never heard of until reading her essay (although now that I look at it, it seems like the feministe also mentioned them recently).
Anyway I'm going to sort of agree and disagree with the PFH on this issue. Where I agree is in the beginning:
...In fact, I think divorce is a good thing.
This really gets up the nose of those folks who give us such scintillating social commentary as "No one bothers trying anymore" when the subject of divorce comes up. Because, you know, it's just so darn easy to get a divorce. Untangling yourself from your spouse, working out finances (and in many cases, custody and/or visitation), and moving on is just so. . .so. . easy.
Problem is, for some marriages, it is not only easier, it is preferable, and I am sick to death of hearing about how people just don't take marriage seriously anymore, how people just give up, and how horrible and awful divorce is.
Divorce is horrible and awful unless you're the one stuck in a miserable or abusive marriage. Frankly, I'd be just fine with things if the divorce rate hit ninety percent. I don't care.
Where I think I disagree is the following:
You want to cut down on divorce? How about making it really difficult for people to marry? Now that's obscene.
Look, right now, any man and woman who are both single, pay a small fee, take a blood test, and get a marriage licence. It's easy. I could get married to any willing random guy this week if I wanted to. We have reality TV shows that end in marriage. Hello, Bachelor/Bachelorette? Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire? (Now there was a fairy tale ending. Ahem.) Who Wants to Marry My Dad? I don't see any of the anti-gay marriage folks running about and screeching about Armageddon, about the chiiiildreeen, or about the evils of this decadence. Nope.
I think it would in fact be good to make it harder to get married for all the reasons listed up earlier about why divorce is not as simple and straight forward as people claim. I think we should work on making it as easy as possible to get a divorce amd considerably harder to get married. Oh I also agree with the PFH that there's is nothing wrong with gay marriage and I'm maybe going to go a bit further and state that I see nothing intrinsically wrong with polygamy, polyandry either. The reason for this is that I think many people have failed to grasp the obligations that marriage (should) imply - and sex on demand is not what I'm talking about here.
The historical reason for getting married was to bring up children. Despite the fact that I'm been married 8 years and we still haven't had any kids, and despite the fact that I, as noted above, agree with the concept of gay marriage, I think that the production of the next generation should be the main reason for getting hitched. Why? because a marriage that expects to last until its children have flown the nest has to last 20 years or more. Thats a BIG commitment folks. To people who get married aged 21 or so that means that they have to expect to be married for the entire time they have been alive so far and that implied duration is one reason why I want to see marriage harder to enter. People planning on getting married should be making plans for a life together that lasts that long and those plans should include dealing with the bad times as well as the good.
I'm not a practising christian but the Anglican 1662 prayer book - if you ignore the god and fornication references - says pretty much exactly that in the introduction to the marriage service. Finally - and again as the prayer book says - Marriage involves sharing everything and respecting your spouse:
WITH this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow...
Marriage should concentrate on the responsibilities not the rights. If you look at marriage as being a lifelong commitment then to looking after your spouse (and offspring) then maybe you won't jump into marriage so fast.
It seems to me that one way to reduce marriage would be to make that last part literally true. Title to 50% of all assets owned by one party to the marriage would be legally transfered to the other at the marriage and the same would remain so with any new income until death - forget divorce - death, and that doesn't mean death of the partner that means death of the provider. In other words if a man marries a woman then from that day forth she or her estate if she dies first gets 50% of his income. Of course the same would apply in reverse.
Perhaps more subtly one could modify that so that at marriage there would be a legal requirement to create an agreement for division of assets, future income and the custody and support of any children in the event of divorce. In other words you would legally require plans to exit the marriage at the start of the marriage. It might also be worthwhile requiring the couple to put in escrow the money required to pay all legal fees for separation. Then if the couple decide to divorce all they have to do is for either one of them to go the judge (or whomever) and sign the piece of paper and as with a will a kind of probate would occur. The agreement would require both parties to sign at marriage but only one to sign at divorce.
If the default position for a standard heterosexual marriage with no prenuptial contract were that the woman got all the existing assets, 50% of the man's income and an additional 10% for every child then you might see a significant reduction in people getting married and a significantly greater commitment when they did. Such a one-sided standard contract would tend to inspire thought of an alternative nuptial contract that would also be eternally binding and which could not be renegotiated after marriage without some stiff penalty, which is precisely what I would like to see.
I.e. if there were no alternative agreement when Albert married Betty then from that day forward Betty's bank account would get 50% of Albert's salary (and vice versa). If Albert and Betty divorce and Albert wants to remarry he has to do so while surviving on 50% of his salary and 50% of Betty's salary. If Betty has been a stay at home mum then her salary is 0 and so if Albert's second wife (Cathy) is a trophy wife he now has to support his expensive trophy wife on 50% of his salary. And if Cathy wants a divorce then he would then automaticaly be paying another 25% of his salary to Cathy leaving him with 25% of his salary in perpetuity. Do you think that might discourage remarriage by middle aged men to dumb blondes?
Finally it seems to me that a process which required (like buying a timeshare) a mandated cooling off period would be good - I just think that in order to put Las Vegas wedding chapels out of business the waiting period should be required between the engagement and the marriage.
This may all sound rather old fashioned - but it seems to me that it would make divorce easier and marriage harder and it might actually make for greater fidelity in marriage too. In fact since what it does is weight things so that both parties know what is at stake if they split and makes the splitting relatively painless it means that if you think your partner is likely to want to split you have to be nice to them. This is a marriage where you have to trust your partner and inspire trust.
Now what this would not do directly at least is address the segment of the population that procreates without the benefit of marriage and it could well increase the number of children born to single mothers. It would create significant misery amongst people who profit from the business of marriage (or divorce). It would more than likely increase the average tax burden because less people would get married and therefore pool their incomes. There are undoubtedly some other drawbacks that I haven't thought of.
I doubt that it would ever either be agreed to by anyone so this is strictly hypothetical. With respect to the abusive husband thing, one way to help women get a bit more respect and men to be a bit more committed to marriage would be to allow any woman one no-fault no-prosecution spousal murder. Kill one husband, fine. He probably deserved it. Kill a second husband and its you who has the problems lady. OK so its a nuclear option but it would provide considerable incentive for men to behave properly and, possibly more importantly, it would make the man think twice before deciding to get married - if marriage means you are literally entrusting your life to a woman who could suffer from depression, PMS etc etc then you'd better be sure that a) you love her and b) she loves you.
In fact you could probably cut out most rape by extending the concept such that any female may kill any one male with whom she has had sex. Of course if she's gang-raped then the single get out of jail free card isn't going to work, but the chances are fairly high that the gang will rape multiple women so they can share the burden.
03 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
03 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
03 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
03 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
04 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
The Hugh Hewitt "Reread books" question made me realise that I've read a lot of books, and in fact I have reread almost all of them. The real question is whether I have reread them enough times to have significant sections committed to memory or not. Anyway I thought it might be fun to pass on some of my opinions of the books I read and reread, whether or not they have actually been committed to memory or not.
Some ground rules: It is fair to say that I am not going to review a book I didn't like. Even if I come across as harsh that does not indicate that I did not like the book, just that I think it could have been better. The vast majority of books I review will be SF/Fantasy and, if recently written, probably published by Baen. There is no message in that either except that Baen publishes the sort of books I like.
Published by Baen books, October 2004 - ISBN: 0-7434-8845-8
This book turned up as a surpise NY Times bestseller and there is good reason for this. The book is a veritable dark chocolate truffle of a story. Bittersweet but distinctly moreish. And better than a chololate truffle you can reread it and find new reasons to like it.
The book is set in John Ringo's Posleen Universe and contains some of the characters of his previous works in the series. The heroine, Cally O'Neal, was last encounted as an incredibly cute but deadly 13 year old. This book is about events some 40 years later. In that time the Posleen threat to Earth has been drastically reduced - there are feral Posleen but no god-kings, technically aware or not - and the Human elements of the Fleet and Fleet-Strike are occupied in cleaning up other Posleen inhabited worlds to make them safe for colonization by Humans or one of the other species in the Galactic Federation. However just because the overt threat has been controlled doesn't mean that humanity is entering a golden age without problems, the covert threat - the Darhel who run the Galactic Federation - are still both active and generally doing their best to keep Humanity under some sort of control.
Cally has been working for the secretive anti-Darhel Bane Sidhe for the entire time between the end of Hells Faire and the start of this book. She has become one of their star assasins, killing those humans that seem to be excessively keen on the Darhel and others who deserve it. Because of the rejuvenation medicines she has spent most of that time looking like a cute 20 something girl, with occasional changes to help her make covert insertions, and, just as with Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, she has apparently exchanged eternal youthfulness for a stunted, crippled soul. She has a bare handful of friends, and those were people she got to know 40 years ago, but no other relationships. She has boytoys for one night stands but seems incapable of finding, indeed even starting the search for, a soulmate. This book is partly a love story about how the ice maiden finds a worthy swain and what happens next.
This is one of a number of books that I've read recently which discusses the issue of different speeds of aging and the tensions between the short-lived and the long-lived. Although the tensions themselves aren't a major part of the narrative the effect of prolonged youthful life on the human soul is definitely one of the big drivers behind the problem with Cally. After all a "normal" human would have slowed down and aged in 40 years, whereas Cally has remained essentially at her physical peak and therefore capable of continuing her soul destroying work. The catalyst is that Fleet has become aware that they have been penetrated by a subversive organization. Of course they have no idea of the existence of the Bane Sidhe, let alone why they might be interested in spiying on the Fleet. Meanwhile the Bane Sidhe are also uncomfortably aware that someone is leaking information to the Darhel and the Fleet. The Fleet operation to try and track down their leaks is therefore penetrated by both Cally and a Fleet intelligence operative who is trying to track down the Bane Sidhe infiltrator.
There are plenty of amusing details, such as artificially intelligent PDAs with a personality even more lugubrious than Marvin the Paranoid Android's and a sexually harrassing General who really believes in paperwork, as the story builds to its climax. The question is not whether Cally will get laid, she does - frequently, but whether she and her soulmate will resolve their mutual attractions or even admit them to themselves let alone each other. The fact that they both think of the other as being both the enemy and much much younger does not help either to admit their feelings. In parts it's a bit like a Shakespearian comedy with the reader able to see what is hidden to the protagonists, but unlike Shakespeare the authors seem constitutionally incapble of creating an ending of "They lived happily together ever after". Explaining what happens would ruin the book for the reader but it is well worth reading the last few chapters a second or third time to figure out what actually happens....
Permalink
05 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
There are many things I like about living on the French Riviera, but it has to be said that I rarely visit the coastal towns, I did today and was reminded why I don't like them.
The Riviera HHH had a run in Antibes. It was a most enjoyable run on the whole. A bit urban perhaps, but compensated for by some magnificent views of scenary (and at this time of year I'm talking about the views of the Alps not the, ahem, mobile scenery that makes the beaches so easy on the male eye during summer) and so on.
We ran around quite a lot of the port and admired the yachts. They inspired guesses about just how many zillions of €uros are in fact afloat in the Port Vauban, no one came up with a good answer other than "if you have to ask you can't afford even one of them". The Fort Carré at the far end of the port - the castle in the background of the photo to the left - was duly ran around at various levels, although it probably doesn't impress everyone it is a remarkable example of 17th fortifications and extremely well preserved.
And then we came back through the middle of "Vieux Antibes". There is something ever so slightly tacky about having a "Marché de Noël" complete with Santa, masses of fake snow and ersatz Germanic huts in a Mediterranean seaside resort, but Christmas is tacky everywhere and one is at least spared the joys of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and Slade playing as background musack. Still this is surely just quibbling - I have no doubt that all 2 of my readers from colder climes are saying "stop whining" about now. Indeed it is just that, a minor complaint to help set the mood for what really irritates me.
The fact that on a cool December day the most prominent smell down certain alleys is rotten dog turd pretty much explains why, despite the magnificent scenery, historic buildings etc. etc., I tend to avoid the coast. Somehow the smell sums up the worst of life on the Riviera. It is the feet of clay beneath the glitz and glamour of B-list celebrities, Russian mafiosibusinessmen and other shady characters. It is an odd contrast between the visual pleasures of the picturesque coastal towns and the olfactory displeasures. In my more idle moments I wonder if this could just be the reason that Grasse remains the centre of the perfum business. Somehow I suspect the French Riviera is not so satisfying to the blind...
07 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
It looks like the financial wizards at ENRON made a big mistake. For some reason they decided to work in the corporate USA, which has laws about dodgy accounting, rather than working in the EU comission where the law seems to be that complaining about fraud and corruption is what should be punished.
Marta Andreason, the former EU auditor who misunderstood her role and actually tried to audit the EU, and then publicly explained the problems she had discovered, has an excellent article in the Times. (Via EURSOC)
You know just maybe Kofi's UNSCAM is not as bad as we thought, after all that was just about the misdirection of some of a $21 Billion set of trades, the EU is unabled to accurately track some €95 Billion ($130 Billion). As she says later in the article, in any normal enterprise an inability to audit 95% of your budget would be cause for alarm, indeed you'd tend to either institute reforms yourself once you discovered it or have those reforms enforced on you by external regulators. Of course in theis case there are no external regulators because it's the government itself that is corrupt - and most of its employees understand who pays their salaries. In this case however the prefered solutions appears to be
Could we perhaps ask those nice UKIP people to ask a few questions in Parliament because it seems like no one else is willing to do so.
In addition to the usual ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam, two other tags would seem to apply: "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" and, one I just made up, "choragus carminem seligit" (he who pays the piper calls the tune).
08 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
09 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
09 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Norm Geras - normally a highly rational soul - has a post about the iniquity of half the worlds 2.8Billion workers living on low wages which is economically plain wrong:
Half the world's 2.8bn workers are trapped in jobs that leave them and their families struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, with little prospect of escape from grinding poverty, the International Labour Organisation said yesterday.
In its latest world employment report, the ILO says an estimated 1.4bn workers - a record number - live on less than $2 a day, while 550m live on less than $1 a day.
Unfortunately he utterly fails to grasp the key point that the $2 goes a lot further in some places than others:
Two dollars is an approximate equivalent of what I paid for the copy of the Financial Times in which I first read this. We are the world...
Imagine trying to explain to visitors from a future world - or just people from another world - in which such facts about our world do not obtain, how so many of the people of our world manage to persuade themselves that this is a tolerable state of affairs.
$2 may not buy you more than a couple of tins of baked beans in the UK, the rest of the EU or other developed nations but it will go a lot further elsewhere. This is true for other major currencies too. Otherwise either Americans would all be 30% poorer than they were 2-3 years ago when €1=$0.80 or Europeans have all had a 50% payrise. In fact despite the wild fluctuations (and fluc you americans too as the joke goes), in local currency terms neiother Europeans nor Americans have noticed much difference in relative cost of living despite the massive recent appreciation of the Euro compared to the Dollar.
There are of course many iniquities in developing nations but the fact that the average worker in those nations couldn't afford a holiday in New York (or London or Tokyo) if he saved up his salary for years is not one of them.
The important question is not the wage in dollars it is the purchasing power of that wage, and the amenities that are available for purchase. The big problem with shanty towns is that often electrical power, fresh water and sewerage are, like cucumber sandwiches in Oscar Wilde's play, unobtainable "even for ready money". Likewise the main problem with wages is how many hours mus be worked to provide the worker (and dependant family) with food, clothing and housing. Once we have got to the point where the average worked has a significant proportion of his wage available for luxuries we can worry about where he can spend them.
(link via Harry's Place)
Permalink
10 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
10 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
11 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Last week I started reviewing books that I like. I debated writing a review of any number of books from my favourite modern authors but decided to go for a slight change of pace. Hence this week's review is of a book first published over a century ago.
One advantage of reviewing a book written 100+ years ago is that it is available electronically from all sorts of places including the magnificent archive of works at Newcastle University in Australia. If you want it in printed form and don't have the leisure to hunt for it in second hand book stores then there are many editions available as well.
The Day's Work is a collection of 12 short stories (one split into two parts) that is quintessential Kipling in what PG Wodehouse would call his "mid season form". There are stories about India, about ships, about America, about animals and about England. Although somewhat random, in my view, they do combine to make a very satisfying whole and it is good to read them from start to finish. Of course one benefit of a collection of short stories is that there is no need to read them in order and no harm done if one is skipped because it is boring.
I first read The Day's Work as an inky schoolboy a little more than two decades ago, although one of the stories - The Maltese Cat - I read considerably earlier as my mother has a nice illustrated children's edition of it. I can quote significant chinks of it by heart and opening it at random I can immediately place the story and remember what happens next, but despite that I can still enjoy re-reading it and I do. Anyway enough of the overview lets get down to the individual tales.
The Bridge-Builders
The Bridge Builders describes the construction of a large rail and road bridge across the mighty river Ganges. It is a story of two halves with the first part being a fascinating look at some of the best of the British Empire, the engineers who built the Infrastructure of India that has lasted until this day. This is Kipling describing some of his beloved "Sons of Martha", the capable men who do not
...preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s days may be long in the land.
The second half is a fantasy, given the excuse of an opium dose and a flood, the engineer encounters upon an island downstream of the bridge the gods of India, including the great Mother Gunga(Ganges). It is an allegory about progress and what in modern times we would call "Westernization" or "Globalization" and with none ot the Political Correctess of these times it is nu surprise that Kipling, the imperialist, lets his white men and their works prevail.
A Walking Delegate
This story takes, as background, the time that Kipling spent in Vermont, but it is really a story of how revolutionaries seek to conceal their true goals. The story is one of those wherein Kipling assumes that animals can talk and concerns some horses on his farm and has wonderful characterization, accents and all, which could be stereotypes but somehow manage to rise above such hack imagery. It is a tale that can be read simply as an animal story but on rereading the deeper message comes through.
The Ship that Found Herself
This is another story with anthropomorphisms. In this case it is the separate parts of a cargo ship which is making its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic. In this case the moral drawn is how the sum can be greater than the parts and hence how cooperation is important for all. I have no doubt that a critic who disliked Kipling would say that it illustrates his view that people whoild know their class and station in life and stick to it but I think that would be unfair as an alternative moral is that everyone is important even the least amongst us.
The Tomb of his Ancestors
This is a tale of the start of the career of an officer in an Indian regiment who comes from a family who has sent generations over to serve (and whether or not modern theorists would agree Kipling certainly believe it was service) in a particular region of India. At one level it is condescending towards the "natives" and their superstitions, but in other respects it is an example of progress and how a failure to communicate can set back even the best intended aid. One suspects that the coalition soldiers in Iraq would sympathise a lot with this story.
The Devil and the Deep Sea
This is a humourous story about a British ship whose captain (and owner) have rather slippery morals. It also depicts, again, the labours of the "Sons of Martha". There is no hidden message or subtext that I can think of, just fun and light humour.
William the Conqueror - Part I and Part II
For reasons which I do not understand this story is broken into two chapters. There is no point whatsoever is only reading one of them. This is effectively a romance set in the background of famine relief works in Southern India, but it is also, I think, a timeless story about how expats live. Of course expats who are also rulers are different to expats who just work abroad but the description of the British community in N India is not that different from expat communities I have seen in Japan, California or the Riviera. It is also one of the rarer Kipling tales where the heroine is about as capable as anyone else. Indeed his introductory portrait of Miss Martyn is an absolute gem:
...Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India four years ago to keep house for her brother, who, as every one knew, had borrowed the money to pay for her passage, and that she ought, as all the world said, to have married at once. In stead of this, she had refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty years her senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department. This, too, was common property. She had “stayed down three hot weathers,” as the saying is, because her brother was in debt and could not afford the expense of her keep at even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was white as bone, and in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size of a shilling—the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a “Bagdad date.” This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly eats into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out.
None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years. Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of thieves on her brother’s camp; had seen justice administered, with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors; had entirely fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told; and had wound up her experiences by six weeks of typhoid fever, during which her head had been shaved and hoped to keep her twenty-third birthday that September. It is conceivable that the aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—even after they had proposed to her and been rejected.
In some ways William is the archetype of the heroine in much Science Fiction - the original "Boy Scout with Breasts" as unkind reviewers have described many Heinlein heroines - but William never forgets her femininity nor do the men surrounding her. The romance is highly amusing in that neither of the principles is willing to admit that they fancy each other, yet that mutual attraction is evident to all from the boss to the starving children they are trying to help. What can one say but Barbara Cartland would have begged to have written this tale.
·007
More anthropomorphism here. This time it is American railway locomotives. The story is of the first few days out on the rails of the newly constructed ·007. It is a story of how modesty and a willingness to prevent teasing and bullying pays off but it is also an appreciation, as indeed is most of the book, of the "Sons of Martha" and their tools. It illustrates all the work that goes on in the background to make civilization function correctly and, in its light hearted tone, makes its points without belabouring them. I suspect that today's elites could usefully have a Kipling to explain to them how the fabric of our society is maintained.
The Maltese Cat
Still more anthropomorphism, in this case the description of a polo match through the eyes of the ponies of the underdog team. Yet, as with so much else, it has deeper moments, such as the classic explanation of why spectators add to the pressure. It also has some amusing one-liners including this great putdown to a social climber:
‘Let’s see,’ said a soft, golden-coloured Arab, who had been playing very badly the day before, to the Maltese Cat, ‘didn’t we meet in Abdul Rahman’s stable in Bombay four seasons ago? I won the Paikpattan Cup next season, you may remember.’
‘Not me,’ said the Maltese Cat politely. ‘I was at Malta then, pulling a vegetable cart. I don’t race. I play the game.’
‘Bread upon the Waters’
Another tale of the North Atlantic. In this case it is a story about how one shipping firm deliberately uses its wiles and a bit of inside knowledge to put a rival out of business. This is one of the few tales which suffers from its era because much of the tale revolves around money and I estimate that things are now between a hundred and a thousand times more expensive now than then. It can be a surprise to discover that an senior engineer earns just £15 or £20 a month or that £25,000 was a small fortune then. However the tale itself is in many ways soemthing that still applies, it shows that cutting corners with safety and other sharp practices are as old as the hills and illustrates nicely the cleft stick underlings can find themselves in when their bosses indulge in the same. Finally it is yet another example of Kipling explaining how the fabric of society is maintained.
An Error in the Fourth Dimension
This is a story of how even rich men can come a cropper. It also looks like it was the inspiration for one or more of PG Wodehouse's Blandings tales yet the two authors cover the problems of rich Americans in England in totally different fashion. It is also light-hearted, indeed amusing, and shows only too well how the smallest of cultural misunderstandings is sufficient to drive home the difference in culture between the two sides of the Atlantic. Surprisingly I suspect it has considerable resonance today, or at least it certainly would have had just a decade or two ago, and even if in the fullness of time England and America move away from the cultures described here no doubt the same gulfs will be visible elsewhere - perhaps between the new SiliconValley millionaires and their old money rivals up in San Fancisco or Marin county.
My Sunday at Home
Another story of an American in England. In this case though the tale is that of an hilarious misunderstanding when a doctor attempts to cure a patient who is in fact perfectly healthy but drunk. Perhaps my least favourite story in the book but still amusing.
The Brushwood Boy
Another romance, and, as with William, something else as well. In this case it is almost Science Fiction in that the hero and heroine know each other through dreams before they meet each other properly in person. There is much more to it, such as the absolutely magnificent descriptions of life through the eyes of a child
‘I am not afraid, truly,’ said the boy, wriggling in despair; ‘but why don’t you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as Provostoforiel?’
Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept in his presence without apology. Georgie understood that he was the most important grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his rebuke with flatteries. This grown-up did not seem to like it, but he collapsed, and Georgie lay back in his seat, silent and enraptured.
and the classic description of the problems of innocent acts being misinterpreted by the devious:
...the small-minded—yea, men who Cottar believed would never do ‘things no fellow can do’—imputed motives mean and circuitous to actions that he had not spent a thought upon; and he tasted injustice, and it made him very sick.
All in all this story is a great finale to a wonderful book. So go read it!
13 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
15 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Firstly, via the Marmot's Hole, is this long background article about how capitalism has spread bottom up in North Korea and how, essentially, the Stalinist state controls are mostly gone. As he says, READ THE WHOLE THING.
Of course the problem with reading the above and thus feeling ever so slightly optimisitic about North Korea is that you then read the news and see that N Korea is threatening "to declare war" on Japan. The background to this is that, as some people may know, N Korea has over the years abducted many Japanese nationals in order to force them to train their spies. Recently N Korea returned some bones purported to be of one of these abductees, Megumi Yokoto. Unfortunately for N Korea, DNA analysis appears to show that these are not her bones and not surprisingly Japan is rather peeved and threatening to stop shipping food aid. It may also consider other sanctions.
N Korea, rather like a chap in a Victorian book about school boys, "burn[s] not with remorse or regret but with shame and violent indignation." because it has been caught fibbing again and of course it seeks to shift the blame as fast as it can. Many people are rather worried about the likely repercussions but it seems to me that in the longer term Japan will be better served by being resolute and, since a large proportion of the Japanese population is outraged at this latest trick, giving in would also carry a shorter term political price too. In some ways this reminds me of the events a few years back when the US caught N Korea utterly in breach of its "food for no nukes" agreements and, although the US does seem to be warning Japan to be cautious, I don't think the US will be too concerned if the Japanese try and push this some more. It could even be that the US is hoping to let Tokyo take on the role of "Bad Cop" for a while.
The danger for the Koreas is that the outside powers have totally lost patience with N Korea's continual bad faith and are no longer particularly interested in pandering to the regime. The likely result is that N Korean trade, such as it is, is likely to suffer even more - Japan could easily close its ports to N Korean registered ships and thereby significantly impact N Korean trade - and aid is likely to also decrease. The problem for the North is that Bush is now securely reelected in America, has Iraq mostly under control, and therefore is able to turn its attention to other members of the "Axis of Evil". It had seemed to me that up until this latest mess, N Korea was doing its best to split the US from its allies in very way possible. Now however it has managed, probably by mistake, to get the US and Japan firmly allied against it and this means that it is going to find it a lot harder to make its usual claim that everything is the fault of those bullying Americans.
This means that N Korea will depend on its pals in the South more and more, as well as the support of Beijing. I suspect that N Korea will attempt to get S Korea to make up all the aid not sent by Japan, the US etc. by some comibnation of threats and promises. The Roh government will probably bend over as usual but I predict that in a year or so the North will again do something utterly stupid and this time the insulted nation will be S Korea. What happens after that depends rather heavily on the S Korean political situation but I suspect that fraternal sympathy for their Northern relatives will become steadily shorter amongst more and more S Koreans. Alternatively the North could antagonise China somehow, how is not clear but I suspect the result will be similar as the N Korean government suddenly realises that it has run out of people willing to see it survive. It would not at all surprise me if the US doesn't somehow point out to the soldiers and generaly in N Korea that they (and their families) are far more likely to survive a coup against their leadership than a war against the US plus S Korea (plus Japan). What happens whan is unclear but I'm expecting some sort of endgame well before the next US elections.
15 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
17 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
17 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Published by Baen Books - Papberback ISBN 0-671-57885-5 and hardback ISBN 0-671-57827-8
A Civil Campaign is near the end of Lois' Vorkosigan series and thus one might think it would be better to read some or all of the earlier ones first. Actually Lois does a good job of making each book stand reasonably well on its own. In this case although I suspect that reading the immediately previous book (Komarr) might make some sense, I do not believe it to be necessary and from personal experience I can say that I was hooked on this book without having read the other earlier books in the series.
The description of this book in the back cover blurb as "A comedy of biology and manners" is entirely apt. This is the book where Lord Miles Vorkosigan, Lois' short but hyperactive hero, finally starts to settle down or at least try to. The problem is that he has learned from approximately age 2 that in order to compensate for his physical disabilities it is a good idea to manipulate his fellows by various forms of mental judo and of course, as eny fule kno, manipulation is emphatically NOT the way to win the heart of your lady. Matters are not exactly helped by the fact that said lady is recently widowed from a husband who was a scumbag and the fact that while Miles wishes to respect his love's desire for soem months of reflection before re-entering the lists of love his fellow Vor males (who outnumber Vor females by a significant amount) are less willing to let such an eligable potential mate hang around.
This is just the main plot, there are plenty of sub plots which cover other problems that are likely to occur when genetic engineering is just that - engineering. For example we have the problems of inheritance and the definition of the heir and parenthood when GE can produce children by cloning and can let people change sex and, moving away from the human sphere, there is the problem of artificially created species and the age old conflict between untility and beauty. All in all, while there are numerous potential couples the Wodehousian imperative that as many eligable ladies and gentlemen as possible successfully hook up with their soulmate means that romance is never far from the scene even when things seem to be going horribly wrong.
The book is strongly reminiscent of both Wodehouse at his Blandings or Wooster best and Dorothy L Sayer's Wimsey books, particularly Gaudy Night, and there are echoes back to 19th century romances such as the works of Jane Austen. But while romance is certainly a large part of the book it also appeals on many layers. As with any good SF work it has some philosophical underpinnings that make the reader think. In this case there are two, the aforementioned effects of Genetic Engineering and, as with much of the Vorkosigan oeuvre, the meaning of personal honour and integrity. This latter area is the subject of numerous epigrams such as "Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself." and "the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn." In the current age where the concept of a man's word being his bond seems to be considered hopelessly naive it is refreshing to read of a possible future where, for some people at least, these concepts are rather more important.
However the Wodehouse elements are also readily at hand with numerous quips and bon mots as well as what I believe to be one of the funniest scenes in SF - Miles' dinner party from hell. Describing it is impossible but reading it without laughing out loud is equally challenging, it is an object illustration that "the best laid schemes of mice and men gang oft agley" not to mention Lois' favourite story telling technique - what is the worst possible thing that could happen to my heroes next?
Finally if anyone, particularly any male, needs guidance on how to write a grovelling apology to his beloved this book contains a template as well as some basic principles. I've never yet needed such high octane grovelling but if (when?) I do cause a certain cooling of affection with my wife I shall be sure to use this book as a guide for how to re-establish relations.
18 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
19 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Through the usual pottering around looking at this and that I have discovered an excellent column in the Grauniad which is dedicated to the crap science that shows up in British newspapers. It has been added to my blogroll on the right (in the news section) and looks well worth a weekly visit.
This week they announced their awards for 2004. The result is both a tragic llustration of the sad state of scientific knowledge and sidesplittingly funny. Just a short teaser or two
Firstly the prize categories
And secondly the winner in the "Least Plausible Cosmetics Claim" category, which was not surprisingly one of the more hotly contested categories.
[T]he winner was a hair-straightening treatment by Bioionic, called Ionic Hair Retexturizing: "Water molecules are broken down to a fraction of their previous size ... diminutive enough to penetrate through the cuticle, and eventually into the core of each hair". Shrinking molecules caused some concern among the physicists at the ceremony, since IHR was available just 200 yards away, and the only other groups who have managed to create superdense quark-gluon plasma used a relativistic heavy ion collider. The prospect of such equipment being used by hairdressers was deemed worthy of further investigation.
Share & Enjoy
(I have spent some of the weekend listening to the original BBC Radio Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ... and now have the Sirius Cybernetic Corporations product jingle on the brain)
19 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Tim Worstall has had an email exchange with a certain humourous columnist at the Indescribablyboring. At the end he notes to his surprise
For the first time in my life I actually have a view, an opinion, shared by a columnist in The Independent.
I admit that I would generally share Tim's shock at sharing a point of view with someone at the Indescribablyboring, however there is onenotable exception. One Indescribablyboring columnist is a certain Johann Hari, a gentlemen speaks and writes much good sense on the subject of Islamofascism, Iraq and the like as well as having very sound opinions on "alternative medicine" and snobby Left wingers.
Share & Enjoy
(I have spent some of the weekend listening to the original BBC Radio Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ... and now have the Sirius Cybernetic Corporations product jingle on the brain)
19 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
As one of the many folks who is extremely sceptical of the EU (possibly the logo is a minor hint), I can certainly see the attractiveness of this position. I do however seriously doubt that the EU in the form which its current leaders believe it is in now will survive until 2015 or whenever Tirkey is expected to join. The EU simply has too many problems to last another 10 years without some serious changes. The question of course is whether these changes will be beneficial to either the EU itself or the rest of the world or not.
20 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
A sarcastic person (who me?) would suggest that in fact the US is indeed recognising the potential of the EU, as a do nothing talking shop unable to do anything on its own. The EU's coddling of dictators, its blasé acceptance of corruption, and its hypocritical attitude to the US seem to be rather odd attributes for an ally in the advancement of liberty. The fact that the EU and its mooted constitution is mostly a step back from liberty is just the icing on the cake.
20 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
20 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
30 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
31 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
31 December 2004 Blog Home : December 2004 : Permalink
Stephen Pollard is complaining, with some reason, about the horribleness of the enforced jollity of New Year's Eve parties. Well Stephen, maybe I have an alternative to going to bed early with a cup of horlicks... visit Japan, where New Year (Shogatsu) is the equivalent of Christmas elsewhere and where seeing inthe new year is a dignified visit to the local shrine or temple (kind of a midnight mass for shintoists or buddhists) plus a family toast or two.
The Shinto bit
the scroll adjacent to the Buddhist thingy.
