More walking photos

Oops… forgot the landscape.

These boots are made for walking… again

Two of us Map Twats went walking up Caer Caradoc this weekend: good cheese, steep hills and a brilliant hill-fort. I've stuck photos on Flickr, but here's a taster.

Happy Birthday, old man (2)

Friday night saw a party for Mike Cunningham's 50th birthday party, held at the rather wonderful Café Maxsim's in Wolverhampton. For those of you who don't know Mr. C, he's a dry, witty politics lecturer, an inveterate author of witty letters to the Guardian, and (on the debit side), a Crystal Palace fan. Photos here

Death is in my sights today

Firstly this week, sympathies to Demented Demon (he's a nice chap, despite the monicker). His grandfather died alone in hospital recently, and on when the death certificate appeared did it become clear that he'd died of C. difficile.

It's a times like this when some really good poetry might help; when the rationalities are simply too cold. I suggested Tennyson's In Memoriam, though perhaps some Larkin or Hardy might suffice. Above all, my favourite poem about young men coping with death is 'Poem', by Simon Armitage,

Simon Armitage, ‘Poem’.

Frank O’Hara was open on the desk

but I went straight for the directory.

Nick was out, Joey was engaged, Jim was

just making coffee and why didn’t I

come over. I had Astrud Gilberto

singing ‘Bim Bom’ on my Sony Walkman

and the sun was drying the damp slates on

the rooftops. I walked in without ringing

and he still wasn’t dressed or shaved when we

topped up the coffee with his old man’s scotch

(it was only half ten but what the hell)

and took the newspapers into the porch.

Talking Heads were on the radio. I

was just about to mention the football

when he said, ‘Look, will you help me clear her

wardrobe out?’ I said, ‘Sure Jim, anything’.

Recommendations?

A new pleasure

What could be finer than sitting in my office, eating pheasant and champagne paté with a spoon? Shame it isn't a wood-panelled, book-lined study overlooking a river and a quad, but still. 'I always take a glass of champagne at eleven'.

O Brave New World

I blogged recently about a Digital Media lecture on social networking I went to - and asked for your responses to the new social formations promised by the information age. One of the participants has certainly responded to our suggestions that social-networking trains us to surrender personal information to any authority, commercial and public: the gentleman behind Unluckydip.com is closing down many of his accounts.

If you're bothered, matey, read this: 'Facebook users unwittingly reveal details' and this: 'Mobiles could spell the end of privacy': basically, Google et al. are tempting you to run location-sensitive applications - so that they (and whoever is tapping in to your account) and all the world's advertisers, know where you are for the rest of your life.

On the other hand, if you think technology can be fun, you'd be right. You can now use free Guardian APIs to do odd stuff, and one fan has tracked the history and characteristics of swearing in the Guardian. According to the graph, 'wank' is much underused. To the comment boards!

Damn…

I've just been to my colleague Rosie's lecture on the Victorians. As usual, it's a high point of the year for its breadth and vision. And so, I ended up slipping back into the office to buy The Victorian Vision, because she ended with a great quote from said book.

Nomenclature

My carefully worded complaint to management about the silent exclusion of all the humanities subjects from our new name was noted in much the same way that the Milky Way will react to the arrival of the Voyager probes (if they're going that way).

Anonymous friends responded in their own ways:

BCU: Performance, Media and English

Birmingham: College of Art and Law

De Montfort: Faculty of Humanities

Gloucestershire: Department of Humanities

Keele: School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Leicester: Faculty of Arts

Warwick: Faculty of Arts

Worcester: Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts

Wolverhampton: School of Law, Social Sciences, and Communications

Doubleplus good. He pushed the picture out of his mind. Humanities were a false memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally.

Orion? At this time of year?

Dan got quite shirty with me a few months ago when I misidentified a constellation. Now, serendipitously, xkcd has immortalised the exchange:

I stand corrected

Rosetta, who has started blogging at 90 and has clearly had a fascinating life, has bought over 400 hundred books this year! She's also a cartographer, and thus qualifies as an honorary member of our walking gang, the Map Twats (Caer Caradoc this Saturday: it has a hill fort and may have been the site of Caractacus's final defeat by the Romans). Book-buying clearly is competitive, at least in our corner of the web. We salute you! Cool dress, by the way.

Panoramic view from Caer Caradoc.

Dear Cynical Ben

Book-buying isn't a competitive sport. So leaving comments about your 157 purchases this year (does your wife know?) is unkind - and I don't have lots of 10p library sales round here. Now I'm feeling inadequate. Thanks, mate. Now I've got to go into town and buy 50-odd books to salve the hurt.

I live in the first circle

Not of Hell. Though in Dante's Inferno, I'd be in good company because this is where all the Greek and Arabic philosophers dwell - all those who haven't sinned but weren't Christian and therefore can't be saved. Saladin's there, as are the Hebrew figures from the Old Testament and of course, unbaptized babies.

No, apparently I qualify for the first circle of bookbuyers who are saving publishers from the worst of the economic crash. According to the Literary Review, for which my parents gave me a subscription for Christmas,

First-circle book buyers are stubborn in their habits. The largest proportion of them are women over thirty, and they are the chief sustainers of the fiction market. On average, first-circle readers buy up to twenty books a year, and if there is a twenty-first or a twenty-second that takes their fancy, they will buy that too. If they really like a book they buy multiple copies of it to give as presents.

Now apart from being a woman (and let's face it, life takes us to strange places so let's not rule it out yet), I fit most of this bill. I've bought a lot of copies of Thoreau's Walden for people in my time, I'm over 30 (hard to believe, looking at my angelic, youthful complexion) and I buy … oh, more than 20 per year. It's 105 so far this year which is just over one per day, not including books bought for other people.

So OK, you could, as Laura has done, describe this as a disease, or an addiction (thanks Neal), but I prefer to see it as a) doing my economic and literary duty and b) saving the environment by insulating my hovel. They make me happy too. Except for the ones which depress me (pretty much anything on politics and the environment: we are clearly all going to die slowly, miserable and avoidably because we'd all rather stick our fingers in our ears, shout la-la-la and then drive our SUVs to the airport for a weekend break - if that's you, kill yourself. I mean that, you selfish, evil, poisoning bastards).

Next Hill North

is a site dedicated to exploring social issues such as community cohesion, notions of multiculturalism and diversity and will provide insights, research and training to those on the frontline of local politics, social provision and governance. Their first report, by Mike Waite and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, examines the perceived crisis in multiculturalism, and proposes ways to recuperate harmonious, diverse local societies, and is an important intervention in the debate about how we regenerate communities split by discord and suspicion.

Now the day is over…

Today was sort of successful: I didn't buy any books - though I did receive one, James Naughtie's The Accidental American, a biography of Blair. Thanks (and Happy Birthday) to Sarah, who spotted it in a library sale. Happy Birthday to Mark too!

Meanwhile in London, police were only allowing protestors to leave if they identified themselves and allowed themselves to be photographed. This just isn't legal. The police don't have the right to demand identification unless you've committed a crime. Photography seems to be a grey area, but why should innocent people go on a database unless they've committed an offence?

Know your rights!

A holier approach to moral disease

As endorsed by Pharyngula

Join the sisterhood

My dear sister Maura has sent me this article which claims that having a sister leads to better mental health, increased motivation, more friends and a richer social life. I have four sisters and a brother, yet the voices in my head are telling me not believe it.

All I ever wanted as a child was peace and quiet to read books. Come to think of it, that's all I want now. What's your experience? Certainly my sisters were often at war and some still have complicated relationships with each other.

I can't recall the verbatim quote, and I'm not at home, but Jessica Mitford was asked if having sisters helped with life's obstacles. Her reply was 'But sisters are life's obstacles', or something very similar.

Mind your language

I'm really not doing well today. I've already ranted to this senior apparatchik about the name of the school and now I've forced her to apologise for and stop using the phrase 'loony left'. It's so contemptuous - and cedes all the political ground left of Pinochet.

I may soon have a more hands-on media experience: selling The Big Issue.

Names are important

Those of you who know me professionally will be aware that I teach English Literature and Media Studies (and various other things on the side). So I'm in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences.

Except that I'm not. Now I'm in the School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications. Does this make me feel valued, loved and secure? It bloody doesn't. Does it make me feel that the Executive is a) incompetent and b) contemptuous of a large proportion of the school's activities? It bloody does.

What really angers me (and my colleagues here on the PGCE are using the phrase 'red mist' about me) is that Law, Social Sciences and Communications doesn't cover: English Lit, History, Politics, War Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, European Studies, Cultural Studies, Languages, Women's Studies, American Studies and only reductively, obliquely covers Linguistics, English Language, PR, Media Studies, Cultural Studies. Not only does this list cover more than half our degree courses, it covers way more than half of our students. Grrrr.

Deepest joy

PGCE today - and we have a chance to interrogate the architects of the new, utterly dumbed-down own-goal new teaching and school reorganisation. Battery power only this morning so may have to abandon Plashing Vole.

I'm not feeling happy - the word for the morning is 'patronised'.

I've had a couple of gin slings

Ben rightly points out the essential silliness of today's protests because he's a democrat. I accept this, but would like to suggest that it's a start: I posted this in his comments but cross-post for your delectation.

Tie-die and slogans don't equal effective protest. But the argument is usually: wear a suit, get elected, then we'll take you seriously. But the syndicalists made the point that engagement with the system of established values blunts the legitimate objection to the system. Sometimes, violence is legitimate. Not the kind of pathetic protest we saw today, but the kind of serious, sustained resistance which the Tolpuddle martyrs, the Diggers, the Fifth Monarchists, the Peasants Revolt, the Monmouth Revolt, the '45, the Rebecca Riots, the Luddites, the Victorians who made early Peelers wear leather collars, the suffragists (just to cite British examples because it would be too easy to mention Irish and other ones) indulged in. One of the things I really respect about the English, Welsh, Scots etc. is that the people used to know how to resist. You cut Charles II's head off and ran plenty of other despots out of town, then forgot about it. Stop accepting that protest has to be 'legitimate': what does that mean? Who defines legitimacy? The American revolutionaries saw themselves as British patriots resisting illegitimate state control, and the police force nothing more than the armed wing of the upper classes for a couple of centuries ( and again during the miners' strike).

Slogans, witty placards and a few smashed windows won't bring about the revolution: it will delay it because it lets off steam. Serious, organised and sustained violence will, as it did in Kenya, Ireland, the 13 colonies, Poland, France, Italy, Cuba and many other countries. The problem with Britain is that the people were trained to legitimise the state because its power was trained on others (marginal groups, foreigners) to the extent that the British (or English, Welsh and Scots) forgot that power resides with them. Goverments rule by assumed consent - time to withdraw it. Today's protests were schoolyard histrionics - the lessons from history are that serious weaponry and strategic plans are required if you want to achieve serious change. Unless, of course, people just want a softer version of the status quo.

Thwarted

I was going to do lots more work, but got turfed out for a fire alarm. Now I just have to go for a drink for Laura's birthday.

The G20 demonstrations seem to have turned into the traditional police riot. Monbiot sums it up but most other accounts seem to tally.

Oops, I Did It Again

Oops. I went out to buy a birthday card and accidentally bought 4 more books: Ackroyd's retelling of The Canterbury Tales, Mark Steel's What's Going On?, Mark Radcliffe's Thank You For The Days (I interviewed him once - what an incredibly decent, kind man) and Madresfield: The Real Brideshead, because I know the area and quite like some of Waugh's work.

Meanwhile, while I buy books and write essays on blended learning, my heart's in London, where comrades are expending their energy in ineffectual but fun ways.

My liver hurts

Voles are usually quite abstemious, but this week I went out for dinner on Sunday (Japanese in Brum, on my own), Thai on Monday (Henriette's last day working in the department), Vietnamese with my sister in Birmingham yesterday (skilled but jobless? Join VSO, for whom she codes), tonight's Laura's birthday drinks, tomorrow might just be free as Sarah's birthday drink is during the day while I'm doing a PGCE session, then there's another birthday surprise dinner for someone else on Friday. It's almost like I have a social life! Happy birthday too to Kate, who isn't in Wolves any longer (lucky git).

Is the worm turning?

I've always thought that the UK has been a puppet/client state of the US, since 1945. However, according to Seymour Hersh, David Miliband and the head of MI6 visited Syria without permission from the Americans. This really is a shocker. Reagan of course invaded the former British territory of Grenada without mentioning it to his friend Thatcher, but the British haven't done anything without clearing it with Uncle Sam since Suez, which was a disaster.

The way Hersh tells it, Cheney was furious. How dare the Brits use their initiative?

Sorry Cynical Ben

He doesn't like it when I do this because he thinks blogs should feature the author's original thoughts. Isn't that sweet? I'm posting this strip because I've done exactly this, frequently.

He gets readers

I'm always pleased when 35 people read my blog in a day (actually, 35 views doesn't mean 35 unique visitors). Imagine my jealousy: Pharyngula got 2, 296, 911 visitors last month. That's more than 35 a day, English students!

Note to self - it's not a competition.

All readers, please comment

I just helped out with a Digital Media lecture on social networking sites, which was fascinating. We talked about the various ways SNSs can be conceptualised, their relationship to the public sphere, and the notions of SNSs as loci for performativity.

So: please leave a note on this post (anonymously if you wish) saying whether I a) know you in person, b) consider yourselves my friend, acquaintance, colleague, stalker or other and c) whether you think there's any difference between being an online 'friend' and an offline/real-life friend. Just out of interest.

I realised during this lecture too how many SNSs of which I'm a member. While rejecting Facebook, I'm on three fencing forums including the main British Fencing one, Librarything, Flickr, Academia.edu and several others.

Begorrah! We're all doomed

Its solutions are desperately rightwing, but this article's description of Ireland's capitalist-induced depression is shocking. Thanks to Maura for mailing it to me.

Twitter - a further warning

Anonymous left me a link to this sketch about the dangers of Twitter. It's spot on.

A warning to us all

Are you addicted to or dependent on The Internet? If so, you need to watch South Park's take on the Information Age and its effects:

http://allsp.com/l.php?id=e173

I watched this on the internet, ironically. Thanks to Mark for sending it to me.

Books and e-books

Authors in particular and theorists of the media are wondering what's going to happen to the printed word and authorial rights in the Information Age - especially as Google are digitising every book without permission from publishers and authors.

One of my favourite authors thinks she's cracked it. Gwyneth Jones is a literary, feminist, science fiction writer (she's up there with the top writers alive today, regardless of genre). She's releasing re-edited, director's cut-style versions of her books as PDFs on her website for free. She leaves a decent length of time for the physical books to sell, so has the best of both worlds.

Books won't die: you can hand them around, scribble on them, drop them, use them anywhere without power etc etc - but e-versions have their place, something she clearly recognises. What's really interesting is that it rebalances the relationship between author, publisher and public. We perhaps don't realise how many stages a book goes through, with the publisher making huge changes to make a text profitable - sometimes against and author's interests, sometimes providing valuable guidance and advice. Jones's approach makes the e-book a complementary exercise while providing her with the opportunity to present her texts the way she feels they should be. Now we just need an enthusiastic PhD student to compare the two versions…

Jacqui Smith

I posted this as a comment over at Demented Demon's site, but thought it worth dumping it here too.

It's all rather hilarious, but shouldn't be a news story. They're not to my taste, but these films are legal, and presumably he's missing his hard-working wife. It seems that they have a TV/phone/internet bundled package, so it's easy to see how the payment would have slipped through. I'd have a lot more respect for the couple if they'd stood on the steps, said sorry for accidentally putting the £10 on expenses and ignored the howling of the faux-moralists. 'It's either Chav Lez Action 12 or harrassing the cleaner', he could have said…

What is annoying me is that the News International tabloids are screaming loudest - the organisation which includes the satellite and Pay TV service subscribed to by the Smiths. The same goes for the Express, which is owned by a pornographer but which takes a highly moralistic stance in its pages. So clearly it's OK to make and sell porn, but not to watch it.

I think the story is a sign of the media's desperate hysteria. They've decided to lynch the government, Labour MPs and all politicians (in that order) and are prepared to exaggerate any little thing, aided by judicious bribery of partisan civil servants. What an aid to the public sphere the tabloids are.

On Ms. Smith: I've no strong feelings about her either way (except that as a cabinet minister in this government she's clearly a class traitor), but I think some boring ministers are pretty much what we need. Do we want the Boris Johnsons, Alan Clarks, Tom Dribergs, Ron Browns etc in government? They might be good fun for the papers but there's more to government than entertainment.

Ships that sink in the night

In an earlier post, I joked about meeting a Radio 4-loving single girl at the airport. Well, when the plane came in to land at Stansted, the Polish young woman next to me noticed my abject terror (is this an attractive feature?) and we chatted until we'd collected our bags 20-odd minutes later (I didn't even pun). We exchanged names and talked about what we do, shook hands and said goodbye. Did I give her my number? Of course not. The very idea makes me sweat.

Decompressing from my trip was very strange. For four days, I lived in a bubble. I'd never met virtually all of the children on the trip, and we were placed in a strange relationship in an alien city. Over those days, I learned all their names, picked up on their personalities (who needs coaching, who doesn't, who's loud, who's quiet, how they respond to winning and losing), and spoke to very few other people. We explored this new city together (within limits) until parts of it became familiar, coped with victory and defeat - then dispersed again over a period of ten minutes, back to our ordinary lives. It was as though the trip hadn't happened: only my England shell suit says it did.

After four days of listening, talking, warning, entertaining, encouraging, advising, I was alone again, looking forward to a couple of days of my own company. The coach from Stansted (5 horrible hours) gave me time to listen mostly to downbeat music (Mazzy Star, Tindersticks, John Adams) and relax - until I hammered on the door for half an hour trying to wake my housemates after discovering I'd lost my keys.

Sunday was the day for buying birthday presents in Birmingham. I have to confess to purchasing a few little presents for me too. Largely, you'll be hugely unsurprised to learn, books. Then, finding myself outside St. Philip's Cathedral at 3.30, I went to Evensong. I know, I know, atheist Catholics shouldn't indulge, but the music's good, though I didn't realize I was letting myself in for more than an hour and a sermon (interrupted by the regulation drunk nutter). The sermon was kind of interesting: beautifully delivered and thought-provoking until he decided to reference Jade Goody and Murphy's Law in the course of his disquisition on Britain's pseudo-Christian culture. Let's be clear: fiction is written to make a specific point. It's constructed. It doesn't, therefore, prove general cultural truths for extrapolation.

After that - off to Wagamama for a solitary meal and read of the Guardian while being elbowed by beautiful couples. And so (as Pepys said, though not at 5), to bed.

Save our Nerds

All subcultures are appropriated, hollowed out and reoriented for the purposes of capitalism. This is just true - and Dick Hebdige wrote about it a long time ago. But I guess we don't care about it much when it's somebody else's subculture. I got it around 1992-1993, when Indie became Britpop and a world was lost. Other may feel that Topshop selling metal band t-shirts to townies was pretty insulting. Now this guy feels it's been done to nerds. True - but so late: I'd guess Weird Science started the rot in 1985. The Big Bang Theory is simply the coup de grace.

Footnotes from history

One of the cultural things we did in Wroclaw was to visit the Panorama. Inside a fairly bold concrete building was a huge (15 metres high, 120 metre long) painting, cunningly blended with a real foreground. The subject was a battle near Wroclaw (Raclawicka) between Russia and the Polish rebels, led by Kozciuszko (pretty much the only battle the Poles won against anybody for several hundred years - and they lost the war). I'd heard of him in relation to the American War of Independence but didn't know anything about his fight for a free Poland. He was a cool guy and we should all hail him!

But this panorama had a fascinating history which was rather glossed over. Painted in the 1890s, it was stored by the Soviet regime for years after WWII, before being finally put on display in 1985. I can understand why the Russian-dominated USSR/allies wouldn't want to encourage Poles to visit a display of nationalist, anti-Russian pride. What I'd like to know more about is the decision-making process leading to the reversal of this policy. Poland was under martial law from 1981-1983 following the deviationist-nationalist activites of Solidarity. Was the decision to display the panorama a concession to Polish nationalists to placate them, or did it signify recognition in government circles that to survive they needed to disassociate themselves from the USSR?

Read all about it

Sppof Financial Times for the G20 meeting: also handed out in print this week. Genius

Normal service is resumed

Ho hum, back in the office, with a PGCE day to look forward to tomorrow. Lots of work to do for that in this month. I need to go swimming today too - all that standing around eating delicious pierogi, and zupa gulaszka, and kabanos etc etc hasn't done my waistline any good at all.

At least I was greeted with two books in the post: Jessica Mitford's The Making of a Muckraker and The American Way of Death - wonderful, spiky books. I also bought a couple of books yesterday: Adam Roberts' alternative steampunk history Swiftly and John Burrow's magisterial A History of Histories. I only went out to buy birthday presents for other people!

So sleepy

I'm utterly exhausted. It was boys' epee today, and they all did brilliantly in a very high standard competition, so congratulations to you all. I've put more photos (of fencers, and of Stalinist tower blocks in moody black clouds) here.

I am rather missing the Guardian and Radio 4 now. Oh, and sleep.

Tomorrow is Poets Day

Standing for: Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday. This is the new phrase I have learned from my esteemed colleagues on the fencing trip.

I like Poland

I like their food, their friendliness and the way they fence. More photos here (link fixed) though they probably aren't that interesting if you don't know what a parry-riposte is (like most epeeists). Little in-joke there.

Well done to all the girls (and their supportive male 'buddies'). Congratulations especially to Miranda Stratford, who won her event convincingly.

How to embarrass cool kids No. 1

Sing along to St. Etienne in a Polish supermarket.

Welcome to Wroclaw

Well, here we are - I got a coach at midnight and haven't stopped since then (it's 3 p.m. Polish time). As usual, flight was slightly less pleasant than dysentery at a funeral, but the fencing kids seem quite happy.

Wroclaw is beautiful in its own way, a semi-gentrified old town (looking deeply Hanseatic in places), ringed by brutalist postwar blocks. The food's good, and the locals appear not to mind being swamped by 35 swaggering kids all wearing England tracksuits. I have one too, though it's XL and therefore more like being wrapped in a parachute and landing badly. It felt a bit weird showing my Irish passport, wearing an England tracksuit, clutching a (reactionary but fascinating) book called Britons, by Linda Colley.

More pictures will appear here as I take them.

Sounds fair…

My first university was overwhelmingly white - but Bangor University is in North Wales, which has virtually no ethnic minorities other than English. Still there was a fairly substantial non-white cohort. My current employer, Wolverhampton Uni, must have one of the most diverse student populations in the country, both from British-born students and international ones - it's one of the institution's strengths, though I'm never quite sure how well the different groups mix.

In any case, we're much more welcoming than certain universities - these figures are so shocking that it can't simply be written off as a problem with school-level education of black children:

Across all years and subjects, Oxford's student population of 20,000 has around 380 students from a black background, including mixed race, of whom just 175 out of 11,900 are undergraduates.

Cambridge is no better. Perhaps it's partly explained by the greater poverty in minority groups: 40% of Cambridge and Oxford students went to private schools, despite only 7% of children attending such schools. Mmmm…egalitarian

That's all, folks!

Probably for a couple of days, anyway: I'm off to Poland tonight as part of the England Youth Fencing team management. Should be a lot of fun.

Engage!

Kirk's chair - now available in replica for $2,717. My birthday is in July: make it so (and yes, I know that's from a subsequent, and inferior, branch of Star Trek.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Some absolute genius has sneaked paintings of a naked Taoiseach onto the walls of the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National Gallery of Ireland, presumably as a satirical comment on the economic crisis (photo from Slugger). Wot larks!

Thanks to Laura, who's just sent me the Guardian version: apparently there's a 'police hunt' going on. I'd love to know what the criminal offence is. Aggravated donation of satirical artwork? Painting with intent to amuse? Hanging's too good for them (oh my aching sides)!

Burning down the house

Devender Ghai is in court today seeking to establish whether open-air cremation is legal in this country (maybe so - but burial is better, environmentally speaking). However, it gives me a chance to mention a real lost hero of radical Wales (and Britain).

Dr William Price (link doesn't get near his polymathic qualities) was one of those ferociously intelligent, charismatic individuals who didn't seek fame or power on the national stage (his books were mostly banned), nor did he use his powers for personal gain, though these days he'd be charging massive sums to people like Cherie Blair. Instead, he mixed his medical skills (he was an early anti-smoking zealot) with self-proclaimed druidic powers. He was an environmentalist, a vegetarian, nudist, free-love enthusiast who named his son Iesu Grist (hope you English-speakers can work that out). When the boy died at 5 months old, Price cremated him and took his day in court, leading to the eventual legalisation of cremation. Price himself was cremated in real Welsh style: on top of two tons of coal (not too long after fathering a child at 92 years old).

Simulate that

Last week, my colleague William proposed that the vocalisations human make at the point de crise (for the Map Twats, the vinegar strokes) are a perfect example of Baudrillardian simulation: learned, inherited, imbibed from popular culture or other people.

Lying awake last night, trying to read (some Jonathan Culler, if you must), I learned that my neighbour barks like a dog. Make of that what you will.

Man hands on misery to man

Sylvia Plath's and Ted Hughes's son, Nicholas, has killed himself. We don't know the complexities of his life, but he couldn't have had the best of starts - mother killed herself when he was one year old. This seems to sum it up:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin, 'This Be The Verse'.

Today I cut my toenails

Am I really boring, or are you lot not bothered by the stuff I find terrifying (economic collapse, environmental destruction…)? I notice that items such as fridge use and other frivolous comments attract responses, whereas the big stuff doesn't.

Is this a feature of blogging that I'm missing? Is blogging a more personal or lightweight medium than I think? Have a look at the ones I read regularly and see what you think.

More books

Jessica Mitford's The Trial of Dr Spock… - in which lots of old square guys realized that the Vietnam War was a bad idea and joined the long-hairs on the street, got themselves arrested then put on a great performance in court.

Also: Bonnie Prince Billy's Beware. Feels a bit weird to buy it on CD as I've got the previous twelve on lovely vinyl.

Jade Goody… her legacy

I'm slightly saddened by the death of Jade Goody - as saddened as I was by Diana's death: someone I didn't know, don't respect and don't otherwise care about dying young. I'm angry because I switched on the news yesterday to hear the words 'The Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury led the tributes to Jade Goody…'.

This is a political, moral and journalistic failure. We're all going to die - it's not a special achievement. Such figures should be too busy to express and opinion about a citizen they don't know, and WHAT TRIBUTE COULD POSSIBLY BE PAID? Goody was emblematic of a failed social and educational system, and as such should spur us on to make this country a kinder, gentler place - but she achieved nothing other than to highlight these failings.

It's a journalistic failure because the press shouldn't be wasting the prime minister's time with this rubbish - it's an attempt to catch him looking out of touch. Meanwhile his advisers will have prepared a response to make him look in touch. Neither side cares about this unfortunate woman.

Work and play and work and play and work and play

Well, it's been a busy few days - and it's going to be busier this week because I'm off to Poland with the England Youth Fencing Team for Challenge Wratislavia 2009 - a coach at midnight tomorrow, check-in at 4.00 for the flight, then four days of happy children's voices ringing in my ears. Don't worry - free wi-fi at the hotel means I'll try to find time for blogging.

Last week:

Books bought: 18. 12 of those (which annoyingly aren't showing up on the Librarything feed to the left) are Neal's fault for arranging to meet me in a bookshop. Most were more Left Book Club editions (I collect them), and one was signed by William Rust, one of the most Stalinist of the British Communist Party's upper echelons. The Morning Star is still published in William Rust House.

Films acted in: 2

Parties attended: 3

Fencing sessions attended: 2

Dark corners hung around in at parties: 3

Games of table football lost to Deep Space Nine-quoting female student: 1

Lectures and seminars delivered with panache: some

Self-inflicted nose-bleeds at parties: 1

Octopus eaten: 1 (not on my own).

Shirts etc. ironed: 14

Stoke City and Ireland victories: 2

Sophisticated Radio 4-loving single women impressed by any of the above: 0

Angela's clashes

In my ongoing personal battle to save the economy single-handed, I've just received this classic 70s poster of the wonderful Angela Davis, and will take it to the framers tomorrow. Thanks again to Left on the Shelf - for all your commie-lovin' book and ephemera needs.

So farewell then, Christian Science Monitor

For all their faults, newspapers are essential to the public sphere. In between stories about Jade Goody, how tomatoes/whatever give/cure cancer and topless women, they provide an arena for debate, they inform us and they hold our lords and masters to account.

Britain has a healthy newspaper-reading public. Despite the slumps in circulation, they sell in the millions every day. Not so in the US, which has a narrowly corporate media industry and very few national papers (basically the troubled New York Times and USA Today - which is rubbish). So it's very depressing to read that the Christian Science Monitor is about to move to web-only publication (except for a weekly print digest which I suspect won't last long). Despite its dubious (contradictory?) name and nutty origins, it was a fine, independent publication which really cared about foreign affairs, unlike virtually every US outlet, and produced top quality journalism.

We're in trouble when the most powerful country in the world is populated by people who don't want to know what's going on elsewhere. When I was in Arkansas in 2001, the only world news I could find was a slot called 'The Global Minute', which lasted less than a minute and didn't quite manage to encapsulate the complexity of world affairs.

I'll miss the CSM, and I think that we're all poorer for the rash of US newspaper closures. An informed public is a more outward-looking, liberal public. Yes, the CSM will exist online, but it will become one more site in a billion, looking no more authoritative than any ranting git with some web skills. Furthermore, the web is great at pinpointing individual bits you decide to search for: a newspaper is a great expanse of paper you can browse through, while drinking tea and munching toast. You can rip bits out, circle things, wave it madly at whomsoever has the misfortune to be around you. Newspapers ROCK!

I just need to get this off my chest

Barclays Bank, which is negotiating with the government for the taxpayer to insure their insanely risky investments, is a serial tax evader. Worse than that, it has an arm which specialises in shifting money around the world with the sole purpose of making money out of the taxpayer - about £1 billion pounds a year. The Guardian, despite having some dubious links to certain financial bodies, has been uncovering Barclays' web of deceitful trades, which the Inland Revenue haven't got the resources to follow.

This is what one financier said of Barclays' scheme, in the Financial Times:

I will say it was absolutely breathtaking, extraordinary. The depth of deceit, connivance and deliberate, artificial avoidance stunned me. The intricacy and artificiality of the scheme deeply was absolutely evident, as was the fact that the knew exactly what they were doing and why: to get money from one point in London to another without paying tax, via about 10 offshore companies. Simple, deliberate outcome, clearly stated, with the exact names of who was doing this, and no other purpose.

Until now I have been a supporter of the finance industry - I work with people there regularly and respect many of them, and greatly enjoy the Financial Times and other financial papers.

However this has shone a light on something for me, and made me certain that these people belong in jail, and companies like Barclays deserve to be bankrupt. They have robbed everyone of us,every single person who pays tax or who will ever pay tax in this country (and other countries!), through both the bailouts and schemes such as this.

Barclays' response is to ban publication of, and linking to, the leaked internal documents which revealed how they steal from us while begging for our help. So let's give a big hand to Wikileaks, which makes sure that leaked documents are never lost for good. You don't have to read them, just understand that this kind of activity is the Web's version of public service. The Guardian, like many companies which pay tax without trying to cheat, has a big office in London and responsibilities to employees and readers: it can't publish and be damned if the courts (yet again, acting solely for the powerful against the public interest) issue an injunction. Wikileaks, ironically, is like the dubious corporations who hide offshore (Walkers Crisps: a Swiss company now), and can post information out of reach of local courts.

These people are thieves. The Department of Work and Pensions is currently running an Orwellian campaign against benefit cheats who 'rob' the rest of us by falsely claiming the dole, or whatever. Fair enough - though living on £50 per week isn't exactly the same as having a Bond-villain style hideout. How about we conduct a similar campaign of persecution against these financiers? They steal far more than all the benefit cheats put together.

Some of their activities are illegal, and rely on the connivance of offshore states (Britain, ironically, encourages this behaviour onshore and offshore), and the poverty of the Inland Revenue - which sold its office to an offshore company which thus avoided tax. I can't express how angry this stuff makes me. I know all my friends think that I'm a boring old wanker for getting wound up by this, but it's important. These bankers and lawyers like their Chelsea mansions and airports and golf courses and private schools and all the other trimmings that makes life in Britain fantastic for the rich, but they're engaged in a concerted plot to make live worse for the rest of us: tax pays for roads and schools and infrastructure and child benefit and the NHS and pensions and clean air and universities and street lights and the police and the ambulance services and the firemen and the coastguard and so many things, so these bastards are stealing the high life and leaving us naive morons to pay for everything.

I have an enjoyable job and I'm paid fairly well (for now - half my contract expires in September), but I'll never be rich. There are, however, small ways in which I could get some tax back, quite legally. I don't do it. I believe that governments (even these gimps) are a good way to improve the lives of the citizens as a whole and it's our duty to contribute (which doesn't mean we shouldn't scream blue murder when it's wasted, as with Trident and ID cards). We have responsibilities to each other: my taxes pay for a binman's heart operation and his children's education and his taxes pay my salary. Everyone's a winner in the long term, which is why these tax-avoiding scum are thieving from us in exactly the same way as the benefit cheat: rich men have their bins emptied by the council the same as the rest of us. Their cleaners claim child benefit and their heart attack will be treated by an NHS nurse.

How's this for an idea? Ban non-domiciled or tax-avoiding executives from using public services. No bins emptied. Turned away from A+E. No road travel. No TV or radio. No calling the police, fire brigade or ambulance. No calling the council when the neighbours have a noisy party… we could wreck their lives until they're shamed into paying up.

Let's start with Lord Rothermere. He owns the Daily Mail, which hates governments but also hates foreigners and tax cheats. He lives in a massive, tasteless, reactionary, £50m mansion in Wiltshire which wasn't big enough so he's added another couple of wings to the building you see here.

Apparently, however, Donhead St. Andrew in Wiltshire is a foreign country. It must be because Private Eye (discussed here) has discovered that Rothermere is, for tax purposes, 'non-domiciled' and therefore doesn't pay UK tax on his £800m (inherited) fortune because his father lived in Paris. The Inland Revenue decided that this blatant theft wasn't worth investigating.

I must go for a little lie-down now.

First party down, two to go

A birthday party for Laure was held at my house yesterday - 50 French, Polish and assorted Euro-students crowded into a Victorian terrace to drink Lambrini (how could you?) and dance to an astonishing range of Eurovision-cheese. Despite feeling like the ghost of Christmas past, I did chat to a very interesting Slovakian and drank fine real ales, but thankfully didn't witness any of my students behaving in ways of which their parents wouldn't approve. Then just about bedtime for old people, they all trooped off to The Planet, Wolverhampton's scuzziest rock club.

I particularly enjoyed this conversation:

Her: I know your face… I really know your face from somewhere.

Me: I teach you… when you turn up.

Her: Oh. Oh yeah.

Tonight there's another party - mostly postgrads - which will involve huge amounts of quality Spanish food… mmmmm chorizo. Then tomorrow morning I'm acting in my second film of the week, a promo for the university. I apparently will be playing a lecturer. Hope I can fake it. After that, a day's break before yet another party - for a computational linguist of my acquaintance. My poor liver.

Satan runs Windows, God uses a Mac

Through the mighty power of Paypal and a voice synthesizer, you can now automate your prayer schedule: send your credit card details and your prayer needs, and Information Age Prayer will actually do the praying for you by running your request through a computer. I really hope this is a scam… still, should save the devout a lot of time and wear on their trouser knees (h/t Pharyngula).

This is a simulation

Huge swathes of Baudrillard today - I enjoy his work, but the students are getting restless. Some understand him, some don't and won't, however much we try. Potlatch, symbolic exchange, simulacra and hyperreality are tough concepts - but education isn't about providing nice chunks of digestible fare: it's about provoking students to explore the ways we conceptualise existence, even if - especially if - it leaves you defamiliarised and nervous.

Is Lewis Hamilton black?

I only ask because he's moved to Switzerland. The largest party after the last election is the SVP, the Swiss People's Party. They're a charming bunch of racists who want to deport pretty much everybody.

Except Lewis. Now this could be because they consider him not black, but green - the colour of money. Perhaps they only dislike poor black people.

I presume that as an intelligent man of the world (despite being a despicable tax-evader), Lewis Hamilton knows the political state of affairs in Switzerland. Surely he's seen, from the back of his limo, variations of this SVP poster.

Which makes me think that Lewis doesn't consider himself black - otherwise he wouldn't feel welcome in Switzerland. The only aspect I can see that makes his presence acceptable to both is money - the universal lubricant which turns both parties into hypocrites: Lewis prefers living with racists to paying his fair share of tax, and the racists prefer living with rich black men rather than running their economy on egalitarian lines. Nobody comes out of this looking good.

Next up: Dutch band U2 and their creative approach to tax-dodging and charity… and don't get me started on Liberia. Half the world's shipping fleet is registered there to avoid paying crew properly and cheat on taxes but beg the big nations to help their piracy problem. I say - leave it to the Liberian navy on the basis that the shipping owners have paid their money and taken their choices.

The hectic pace of the suave lecturer-about-town

Another full day. Fencing last night was brutally effective, so I'm feeling the bruises. Today I'm reading lots of third-year project work, and other student writing, going to a seminar on Foucault, PR and concepts of professionalism, then teaching, then coaching, then home for my housemate's 25th birthday party, complete with DJ. As they're all sophisticated continental types, the DJ will go on until 6 a.m - and I have to teach tomorrow. Oh dear, I sound like a tired old man. There's a party for other sophisticated continental types tomorrow as well…

In case you aren't convinced

… that Jessica (Decca) Mitford was the best of the lot: she started a Running-Away fund from an early age, and used it to go to Spain with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew. She had Leadbelly to stay, as well as many of the Black Panthers. She tried to give her share of an inherited island to the Communist Party (largely, I suspect, to annoy her sisters). J K Rowling named her daughter after Jessica - a great role model.

Boulot métro dodo 2

I spent the morning being interviewed about fencing and pretending to give a lesson, for a student's publicity film. I'm not one of the world's top 10 lookers, or indeed top 50 billion, and I hadn't shaved because I'm fencing tonight and shaved skin + sweat + mobile mask = severe rash and pain. Still it was interesting to see the techniques behind interviewing and filming, and I got to plug my sport for two hours (to be condensed into a 2.5 minute film).

After that - on to a departmental meeting lasting two hours during which we try to work out how to provide a rounded, specialist, interesting curriculum within the new parameters set by management. Answers on a postcard. Finally, I'm off fencing in shrewsbury tonight, including a few bouts with a Singaporean international sabreur before she heads off to Belfast for the Junior World Championships in a couple of weeks. It's my worst weapon so I'll settle for still having the same number of limbs in the morning as I do now.

A few words of wisdom

I'm no fan of hippies, and this track is musically lacking, but the points need to be made over and over again.

Welcome, lost leader

Cynical Ben has honoured us with his presence in Wolverhampton, and seems to believe that it's not the most vibrant, beautiful city on earth. Is he right? Perhaps - though it's a bit cheeky for a man from Cheslyn Hay.

We celebrated his apotheosis with cheese, moules mariniére and fine wine, as though we were sophisticated, suave young gentlemen, instead of a bunch of assorted wastrels doing little other than waiting for death - and where better to embrace our common mortality than Whitmore Reans, where a violent demise edges closer the longer we stay? When I arrived in this benighted burg almost 10 years ago, I knew only that my cell was located there. Imagine my joy at the railway station when I picked up the local Depress and Scar (also known as the Express and Swastika for its 'robust' views) and saw the screaming headline 'Crack and Guns Haul in Whitmore Reans'. I can't find that story online, but here's some more lazy journalism about the area.

Does anybody fancy a meeting of Wolverhampton bloggers? Cynical Ben went to one for Mancunians and had a great time - though they were very sophisticated types from all accounts.

The Spirit of St. Patrick

Despite the best efforts of the Pioneers, this is the true meaning of St. Pat's. Thanks to Emma for working out how to transfer them from a mobile phone.

Moment of reckoning

I'm currently undertaking the herculean task of scanning in Module Evaluation Forms so that my PGCE tutors can see what my students think of my teaching. It's very trusting of them: I could just select the positive ones and nobody would be any the wiser. However, I'm not doing that - very few are wholly negative but I'm including them to arrive at a representative spread.

It's illuminating in a way: some people think the module was highly organised and others that it was disorganised! Most people think I'm friendly, and a few are even persuaded that poetry is worth knowing a little about. Vindication!

Dark waves wash over me

It's becoming quite a depressing week: bad class yesterday, evidence of grade inflation, management machinations are reducing the space for creative and flexible subjects, meetings are springing up all over, I was told a disgusting anecdote about a student's trip to a zoo and there's no end in sight.

Still, another book turned up in the post today. Ritzer's The McDonaldization of Society - it summarises what's happening to this place perfectly.

Help me out?

My first-year students invited me to join them 'gay clubbing'. I can't work out whether that's homophobic, obscurely mocking me, or a genuine invitation (gracefully declined). Is gay clubbing like seal clubbing?

Happy St. Patrick's day, by the way.

We're definitely doomed

Monbiot says so, and I think he's right. It'll take a few generations, and the poor, hungry masses who haven't contributed to the disaster at all will perish first. There's always a higher piece of ground for those who can afford it. I intend to learn Norwegian and follow the snow line in my remaining years.

I've never been one of those people who moan about aging, but now I positively embrace it - life is going to get progressively more unpleasant but hopefully I'll be dead before we're all huddled together in refugee camps. What's really annoying is that I haven't even indulged in the kind of short-termist hedonism that's caused all this. I've flown fewer than 15 times in my 33 years, don't drive, snort imported (or local) coke, each much meat etc. etc. What's depressing is that most people don't care - presumably because the effects are exported to distant countries occupied by poor, brown people.

Urge to kill… falling

My spirits are lifted by Rebecca's link to an automatic conference paper abstract generator - which actually works for poor quality papers. Try it out here.

Also, my hardback copy of Watchmen has arrived - I read it years ago and though I should probably get my own. With it came a book which may not be plugged into the popular zeitgeist so much but is going to be educational and fun: Chris Mullin's parliamentary/ministerial diaries, A View From the Foothills. Mullin is one of those quietly independent, witty backbench MPs who devote their lives to improving those of their constituents and others without seeking power or fame. When power is dangled in front of him, it's an illusion: ministerial office was largely a waste of time and energy for him.

Thanks, by the way, to the staff of Waterstone's in Wolverhampton and Birmingham (posh New Street branch). The young woman behind the till in Wolves bantered knowledgeably and wittily about David Peace's Yorkshire novels (I bought GB84 for Phil). The Birmingham branch exchanged my misprinted copy of Team of Rivals without a quibble after Penguin's refusal to take responsibility for their own texts. See - even corporate behemoths can do well. I hope the staff I talked to are well-paid and unionised.

I didn't sign up to be a primary school teacher

What a thoroughly depressing teaching session - a great lecture from William drowned out by what sounded like a kindergarten class dropped into a zoo's snake-pit. Some of the class are getting to the end of their tethers, frustrated by the extremely vocal minority (some of whom manage to talk all the way through without removing their headphones, then walk out early glaring at the lecturer)…

I almost forgot. I went to my Union's AGM and branch meeting today. I'm not convinced about the tactical strengths of the wider UCU (we went on strike and folded immediately in the first week of its existence - that'll show management who they're dealing with), but the Wolves branches are packed with feisty and dedicated activists. And now I'm one of them - yes, I've added a union committee to my portfolio of stuff to stop me reading. This is how the revolution ends, not with a bang but with a meeting…

If you aren't already in one, join a union. Better 'them and us' than 'them and you'.

We are doomed

To recover from the St Pat's festivities, we ate Vietnamese food, sat in the Wellington with pints of real ale and read newspapers, then went to Star City for the premiere of The Age of Stupid. What a brilliant place for a green film: a palace of excess and consumption located next to Spaghetti Junction, a place with so much contempt for the environment that they have no information available about how to get there by public transport.

If you haven't heard about it, it's an important film about climate change. Chances are you're either entirely indifferent or bored with the subject. You shouldn't be. You should watch the film and leave with a sense of utter, utter dread, alleviated by a glimmer of hope that we can do something about it before 2015 - after that, we all get to live in a post-apocalyptic Kevin Costner film, and nobody wants that.

Actually, the film's not that good. It makes a lot of important points but makes them badly. The boo-hiss guy is a low-cost airline director, but it's a shame that they couldn't use a Western one, such as Ryanair's O'Leary. Instead, they pick an Indian as though it's poor Asian countries which have got us all into trouble. The nuclear potato is avoided utterly and the clumsy post-fall flashback structure has been done a million times in cheap SF. Pete Postlethwaite's pretty good though.

The strength is the movement that's growing out of Age of Stupid. The live Q and A beamed direct from Leicester Square was interesting, primarily for Ed Miliband's discomfiture. He had the last laugh though - every time they begged him not to build Kingsnorth, he stressed the need to experiment with CCS, clearly meaning 'I'm building it, and CCS might happen in 30 years time so piss off' while hoping that the greens would think 'Ah, he understands why coal's bad'.

Begorrah

It's been some weekend. On Saturday, the Map Twats went to Stafford and bought artisan cakes and ale, and oatcakes (proper Staffordshire ones mind, not those crunchy Scottish things), then went for a glorious walk on Cannock Chase, avoiding the doggers and visiting a barrow near the delighfully-named Milford. A quick pizza-break at Dan and Georgie's then on to Brewood for real ale to celebrate Phil's birthday, having witnessed some classic street theatre - teenagers being actually frog-marched by the scruffs of their necks for a secluded beating.

Come Sunday and it's off to Brum for St. Patrick's Day parading (not restricted to our Orange brethren). I went with Emma (from Limerick) and Neal. It was everything I hoped (and remembered from last year): ramshackle charm, as though the event was organised by Father Ted. The floats were all on loan from construction companies, reinforcing the preception that the Irish in Britain are all navvies. The music rarely strayed from the Dubliners' Greatest Hits, though some pipe bands were pretty good (silence greeted the West Midlands Police pipe band, unsurprisingly).

Best of all, the participants were a random collection of people who wanted to be in a parade. I didn't notice anything distinctively Irish about the stream of Volkswagen camper vans (Volk Music, anyone) or tractors, one featuring a stunt driver dressed as a priest. I did appreciate the irony of the Abstinence Pioneers of the Sacred Heart marching on St. Patrick's Day (though looking back, their banner didn't specify from what they were abstaining.

I loved it. Despite a sea of people waving and wearing the usual tat, there was a complete absence of irony or glamour. When the Celtic Tiger is officially declared extinct, we'll be left with the authenticity of red-faced men wearing Mayo or Galway GAA tops straining to control serious beer bellies, women dressed in dowdy, comfortable clothing and smoking furiously, all suspicious of glamour, style, fashion, and the activities of the jet-setting élite which has taken over the country. Celia Ahern, the Smurfit billions and U2 (tax-evading scum) can go feck themselves. This is the real Ireland (perfect illustration to follow when Emma sends me the photo I took on her mobile).

Reading makes you moral

I can't really speak for my students, but I thought that Friday's Commonwealth/Restoration seminar went rather well. We discussed Areopagitica in the context of The Satanic Verses and Geert Wilders's Fitna (as expected, my Dutch students were very relaxed about such things), then looked at Bacon on the productive but destabilising social effects of single men, and all sorts of other things.

As a fan of reading, I'd like to draw your attention to these words:

…books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them… he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself…

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice [this is Mark's defence] is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

(John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644)

Teaching and reading

I've spent the morning mainlining Civil War texts - no room in the curriculum for pamphlets, Ranters, Diggers, Levellers etc but Milton, Bacon, Pepys, Donne and Lovelace aren't bad - remains to be seen how well the kids take it, but I do despair at how we can summarise one of the most intellectually fascinating periods of history in 2 hours… It has reminded me how much fun all this stuff is.

There's always one who lets the side down.

Cynical Ben's been meeting other bloggers. Off-line! In real life! Ben, you're breaking the code of the nerd. Blogging is a substitute for a fulfilling, happy life, not a part of it. Shame on you with your wife, and social events, and long weekends in the nation's capital. For shame!

Those wonderful Mitford gels

Right now I'm reading Mary Lovell's The Mitford Girls and not enjoying it much. I've an interest in the Mitfords - Jessica (Decca) is a hero of mine, and the rest of the brood are an object lesson in the iniquities of the aristocracy. Unfortunately, Lovell's book is essentially a long paean of praise to poor misunderstood Diana (unrepentant Fascist, friend of Goebbels, wife of Mosley etc), an elegy for Unity (personal friend of Hitler etc. etc.) and an attempt to paint Decca as a liar and fantasist because she was a Communist (who lived most of her life in rough Oakland, California, fighting for the poor and black population). Lovell, it seems, divides the world between those who hunt (good) and those who don't (rotters).

Yeah, computational linguists, it's about time you got yours

I know very many computation linguists. They live a live of unbridled hedonism and indulgence. Gold-plated PCs, jacuzzi in the corner of the office, funding coming out of their ears.

Late, but a point worth making.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe (can't remember which volume), Adams makes the point that humanity thinks it's the most advanced race on earth because it possesses nuclear weapons, amongst a bunch of other stupid developments. The dolphins think they're the most advanced species precisely because humans have nuclear weapons etc. etc.

The dolphins are right. Santino the Swedish Chimpanzee has demonstrated that humans aren't the only animals with the ability to plan for the future - an ability which proves an amazing level of abstract reasoning function. While the zoo was closed, Santino was making and storing rocks ready to bombard visitors. When the zoo closed for the winter, he didn't bother making them because he knew they wouldn't be needed.

Clearly, Santino didn't like being entertainment, and found a way to make his point consistently and clearly. What have humans done for Santino? Set him free? Provided secluded accommodation? Urgently re-written our animal experimentation laws to take into account the fact that lab chimps must spend their evenings in mortal dread of the next morning's torture?

No. Humans cut Santino's nuts off. That'll show him. Bet he didn't foresee that, despite his future-planning capability.

Well it's goodbye from him…

I'm off to the bright lights of Loughborough this afternoon, for a UK School Games Welfare meeting… deepest of joys.

I get readers: welcome Congressman Campbell

No sooner do I point out the fundamental evil of Ayn Rand and name Congressman John Campbell as a culprit, when up pops a House of Congress computer on the stat porn, aimed directly at that entry. Shouldn't you have more to do? Or do you have minions charged with searching the world for references to you? Well, I hope you've learned something. Anyone else finding this: Campbell is the past, discredited, extinct. Overthrow him!