In Paris Now

New blog - Now in Paris

2006-08-16T19:04:00.000+01:00

I've now moved to a new blog: http://now-in-paris.blogspot.com

photos/soiree/music/wine

2006-08-07T14:42:00.000+01:00

Sun. 6.8.06 I took some photos along the Seine with my new Lumix .

Later I went to Patricia's (right) soiree again (http://parissoiree.blogspot.com http://www.parissoirees.com ) where Paula Stromberg (centre), Canadian writer, designer, photographer, was giving a talk about the art "pieces" she has done with Caroline Choo, a psychiatrist, specializing in geriatric patients.

The "pieces" included one about Caroline's grandmother and her plans for the elaborate costume she wanted to be buried in, and one based on a young woman who had developed rheumatoid arthritis. This led to some interesting discussion about death, the way the subject tends to be avoided, and the work has had very positive responses - but it seems a pity that tthere's no web site for it.

Later I went with Ariele to the Trois Mailletz (Rue Galande, opposite St. Julien Le Pauvre), which yet again surprised me. A young French guy I've seen there before was playing piano, mainly Chopin etc., but he let another guy play for a while - quite a character, though the guy on the left wasn't too impressed.

French smoking ban delayed

2006-04-23T15:58:00.000+01:00

An unfortunate consequence of De Villepin's defeat over the CPE:

De Villepin avoids clash on smoking

By Martin Arnold in Paris, FT, April 13 2006

"Dominique de Villepin, prime minister, who has seen his popularity hit a record low after his battle over labour reform, asked Xavier Bertrand, health minister, to carry out more evaluations on the impact of a smoking ban after a meeting to finalise plans for a new law.

Mr Bertrand said only last weekend he wanted to go "as fast as possible" to pass a law protecting people from passive smoking at work, in bars and in restaurants.

While the idea of a smoking ban in public places is supported by 80 per cent of French people, it is likely to face fierce opposition from powerful business groups, including tobacconists, restaurateurs and bar owners.

"Once again the government is backing down. It is total confusion," said Claude Evin, an anti-smoking advocate and opposition Socialist deputy.

Mr de Villepin seems to have balked at the risk of introducing a ban so soon after being forced to back down in the face of street protests by millions of students and workers against his youth labour law..."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7c8eab0e-ca8a-11da-852f-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=d4f2ab60-c98e-11d7-81c6-0820abe49a01.html

Correcting journalists

2006-04-21T20:04:00.000+01:00

Comment to the European Tribune site:

Re: FT journalists

I'm the eurotribber who wrote to Simon Briscoe (Statistics Editor at the Financial Times), specifically I referred to the fact that in the Financial Times for 1th April, there were two articles and an editorial which all used the 22% figure (with minor variations) for French youth unemployment, with no qualifications.

The review of his book gave credit to an academic - often unsung heroes who give a lot of free help and advice to journalists and others (I'm an ex-academic):

"I followed up the reference given, and was kindly supplied with recent figures by the source quoted in the book, Monica Threlfall of Loughborough University [ m.threlfall at lboro.ac.uk ].

Youth unemployment 2002

Participation in labour market: UK 62.5%, France 36.9%

Unemployed ratio/population: UK 6.8%, France 7.0%

Unemployed rate/labour force: UK 10.9%, France 18.9%

As Briscoe says, having so many young people in employment [higher education?] is arguably a policy success for France, and a success the UK government is anxious to emulate, with a target of getting 50% (up from the current 40%) of young people into third level education by 2009."

http://plus.maths.org/issue35/reviews/book2/index.html

I also wrote to the BBC, the Guardian and to The Independent's correspondent in France, John Lichfield, about the uncritical use of the 22% figure. No response from the latter. But Ashley Seager, Guardian Economics Editor replied saying:

"I had in fact looked into the issue of French in further education and was informed by several experts that the ILO figures I was quoting adjust for those kinds of things. I also think that if French youth unemployment were genuinely as low as the Briscoe piece claims, the French government would have jumped on those figures long ago. "

I put the latter point to Briscoe, who commented:

"I suspect they either "blindly" took the standard data off the ILO or other website and looked no further or perhaps they needed to portray their situation as a crisis in order to hope to get through an unpopular policy?"

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/4/20/12054/3629

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

2006-04-19T01:53:00.000+01:00

Comment in the This French Life site:

Chisky:
"I am tired of listening to my smug French work colleagues talking about their wonderful social model and deploring "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" and its inequalities."

One can hardly blame them when the US/UK media and blogs are full of smug attacks on the French model.

"... now the new aristocrats of France are the unproductive and lazy state employees with their jobs for life and taxpayer funded pensions that allow retirement at a ridiculously young age."

State employees include teachers, doctors and nurses - are they all "lazy" and "unproductive" ? What is the sensible age to retire ? Aren't a lot of young business people in the UK aiming to make money fast and retire early (some appear on A Place in the Sun); sounds very sensible to me. In the UK, it looks as if people will not be able to retire till 68 - and, given the pensions crisis, some won't be able to retire, is that "ridiculous" or just more employee "flexibility"?

"The young people from immigrant backgrounds cannot get onto the employment ladder but the privileged and spoilt middle class French kids..."

What an objective approach again; are ALL the students and pupils who demonstrated are "privileged" ? and you of course know that they are all "spoilt". What a caricature. They rightly objected to allowing employers to sack people for no reason - would YOU accept that? - within TWO years. Any decent employer doesn't need that long, apart from any other considerations. What they also objected to was the arrogant way Villepin tried to push it through, with no discussion, widely seen as rather stupid.

"I have lived here for fifteen years now and I can tell you that the housing estates around most larger cities are shocking examples of inequality and deprivation much worse than anything in the unashamedly capitalist UK."

And how often did you come back to do your careful survey of British cities ? Did you note this:

"The riots in Oldham, Bradford, Burnley and other cities in Northern England have exposed the enormous amount of anger of Asian youth, in particular, against the oppressive conditions under which they live.

Race discrimination is now one of the most explosive social issues in Britain, for which New Labour has no solution.

In fact their policies have led to a further increase in segregation and isolation of blacks and Asians. In mostly black or Asian areas youth unemployment can be as high as 40%."

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/groups/B&A/perspectives.html

"Most of the kids there would gladly take any job, secure or not. The demagogues of the left have no solutions to propose for them."

Yes, desperation will make people accept almost anything, that doesn't make it OK. Of course the left is only made up of "demagogues" - in your prejudiced world - and when did you do your survey of the French Left's economic ideas ? In fact Villepin is now putting forward alternatives which many of the Left might have suggested, had he asked them.

Paris: top city

2006-04-18T12:42:00.000+01:00

"The City of Light is rated number one out of 200 world cities in [the] recent ... The Cities Book.

The Lonely Planet publication features the most vibrant, diverse and hypnotic cities in the world, as rated by Lonely Planet staff, authors and readers. The standard is set by the City of Light, with other cities claiming reputation by association - beirut is described as the Paris of the Middle East, while Melbourne is billed as the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere."

A Place in the Sun - France, Issue 50

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cities/cities_book.cfm

On the other hand:

Zurich named again best city in the world to live in. A report by Mercer Consulting

10 April 2006: The Swiss cities of Geneva and Zurich offer the best quality of life according to research published by Mercer Consulting in April 2006. Vancouver (Canada) is placed third, followed by Vienna (Austria), Auckland (New Zealand) and Düsseldorf (Germany). Baghdad, not surprisingly, is the lowest ranking city in the survey.

EIU names Vancouver, Melbourne and Vienna as 'best' cities in the world

The analysis is part of Mercer Consulting's annual 'World-wide Quality of Living Survey', covering more than 350 cities. Each city is based on an evaluation of 39 criteria, including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport, and other public services. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, which has an index score of 100."

http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html

Paris comes a mere 33rd, but above London at 39, Barcelona at 43 and New York at 46.
Zurich and Geneva ? ! Evidently the "quality of life" doesn't involve much excitement.

Not the 1968 show ?

2006-04-17T13:51:00.000+01:00

Comment at the This French Life site:

Chris: "Ah yes, the riots! I was here in 1968 when the student riots caused the fall of the then Republic. Then the protest was ideologically driven and for the "benefit" of the "workers" All of it very admirable and Marxist."

All of it ? Some of it was romantic utopianism, with such unmarxist slogans - in graffiti - as: "The beach is under the pavement". Marxists sometimes pick up paving stones in demos, but not in search of a beach.

"The current stuff is about a perceived threat to the status quo! Revolutionary France? Don't make me laugh, any British person that lives here in France knows that there is more spirit of '68 in any UK council estate."

Yes, we've heard this line endlessly from the right-wing press; as if they cared about really radical values.

In fact there were changes after 68 (trades unions were involved), but also before it, and these were often hard-won gains and formed what many are now decrying as unrealistically socialist in a world of capitalist globalization. So, no, the students don't want to see that heritage torn up, they fought to preserve the gains of earlier revolutions. That doesn't make them into reactionaries. We'll have to see whether these students and pupils remain as radical as they are in defense of a somewhat more socialist system than the UK, or whether they end up like some of the '68 bunch:

"As always, the media are looking for a photogenic young revolutionary leader, a modern replica of '68 pinups like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, "Danny the Red." But the teenager who more than anyone is pulling the strings of the schoolyard revolt isn't interested in fame. Karl Stoeckel, 19, could not be further from the romantic, preening revolutionaries of '68. He emerges from his tiny back office in a neat sweater, beige trousers and polished shoes, apologizing for the mess left by his comrades. "The '68 leaders were completely different people," he says. "Maybe they were more romantic. But I would not want to become what they have turned into now. It's a little tragic when you see some of them. They are the greatest capitalists in the world."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1742624,00.html

Supporting Sartre against some French

2006-04-17T00:18:00.000+01:00

A French friend writes: "Was Orwell right about Sartre ? I think so, if we're speaking of the same thing... I vomit Sartre, Orwell was true to hate him."

I replied:

Don't be silly and melodramatic - even if you are French. He certainly doesn't deserve hate.

FF: "I think, his communism was like a varnish on a revoltingly bourgeois code of conduct and general attitude in life. I admire Orwell a lot for his honesty and his truthfulness (is it a correct word to use there?) and his fantastic literary qualities. I would give all Sartre writings for one book by O."

Sartre was sincere in his fight for freedom for others, especially the oppressed; more so as he got older, rather than becoming more right-wing, as so often happens. In this he was quite similar to Orwell. Had he been living now he would have been supporting the students against the CPE and the general erosion of workeres' rights in the name of capitalist "flexibility" (it sounds so innocent - reminds one of ballet dancers).

He may have made mistakes, we all do, but fundamentally he was right about capitalism and western imperialism and had few illusions about the Soviet Union. He just felt the Right could be relied on to constantly criticise it, there was no need for the Left to focus on the SU, which it was often supporting liberation struggles abroad. I used to show students a video of an ex CIA man who'd done propaganda for the CIA in Africa, till he couldn't stand the lying any more. He said: "If you wanted to get rid of a dictator you couldn't come to us [they were US clients and supporters], you COULD go to the Soviets". They could also go to the Cubans, who sent lots of fighters to Angola, where he was working. He wrote propaganda smearing the Cubans, e.g. claiming that they had raped nuns. But he said that it was a lie, though many Western journalists used it; in fact the Cubans were acting very well and he respected them.

It's not even true Sartre was a bad writer, cf.:

"What is not remembered about Sartre is that he was one of the great polemicists of our time and wrote best when he was personally angry."

http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/38980.html

(The following is from the same source) "Quotes from Sartre and Camus:"

'I offer below a few enjoyable quotes from Sartre's "Reply to Camus", which in French reads with the voyeuristic thrill of observing a distant intimacy, like hearing your best friends breaking up in the next room. Sartre constantly addresses Camus as "you, you, you,..." as if it were his version of "J'Accuse." These quotes are "fun" and the reader will get a good flavor of Sartre's side of the argument.

Sartre's "Reply to Albert Camus" is a polemic worth reading if only for its rhetoric of energizing invective.

Sartre tells us that Camus is claiming to be tired of the fight. Sartre replies:

"[I]f I were tired it seems to me that I would feel some shame in saying so There are so many who are wearier. If we are tired, Camus, then let us rest, since we have the means to do so. But let us not hope to shake the world by having it examine our fatigue."

"[T]he only way of helping the enslaved out there is to take sides with those who are here."

Sartre speaks of Camus' relation to history and to Camus secondary relation to his own personality "outside of history", as if Sartre could perform an existential psychoanalysis on Camus, in a way he would later write about Baudelaire, Jean Genet, and Flaubert.

"Your personality, alive and authentic as long as it was nourished by the event, became a mirage. In 1944, it was the future. In 1952, it is the past, and what seems to you the most intolerable injustice, is that all this is inflicted upon you from the outside, and without your having changed. ... Only memories are left for you, and a language which grows more and more abstract. Only half of you lives among us, and you are tempted to withdraw from us altogether, to retreat into some solitude where you can again find the drama which should have been that of man, and which is not even your own any more...."

Sartre continues:

"Just like the little girl who tries the water with her toe, while asking, "Is it hot?" you view history with distrust, you dabble a toe which you pull out very quickly and you ask, "Has it a meaning?" ... And I suppose that if I believed, with you, that History is a pool of filth and blood, I would do as you and look twice before diving in. But suppose that I am in it already, suppose that, from my point of view, even your sulking is proof of your historicity. Suppose one were to reply to you, like Marx,: "History does nothing... It is real and living man who does everything. History is only the activity of man pursuing his own ends.... It is only within historical action that the understanding of history is given. Does history have a meaning? Has it an objective? For me, these are questions which have no meaning. Because History, apart from the man who makes it, is only an abstract and static concept, of which it can neither be said that it has an objective, nor that it has not. And the problem is not to know its objective but to give it one."

With this invective, Sartre could carry the reader with him. What is not remembered about Sartre is that he was one of the great polemicists of our time and wrote best when he was personally angry. Thus the young intellectuals of the time were more likely to read Sartre's side of this argument rather than Camus' side. It was only later, when reacting against Sartre's supposed "communism," his commitment to fighting for the oppressed even if the oppressed used violence, that Camus' clear eyed anti-Stalinism was used as a bludgeon against Sartre's wrestle with the French Communist Party. Sartre could be naive. He could cheer any and all anti-colonial movements on the one hand and cheer Israel as an exemplar of overcoming oppression on the other. But simple ignorance of the history of the time usually prevents most people from understanding the "argument" between Sartre and Camus.

In the end, when Camus died, Sartre showed his grudging, and admiring respect for Camus. The following is a quote from the obituary Sartre wrote for Camus:

"He [Camus] represented in this century, and against History, the present heir of that long line of moralists whose works perhaps constitute what is most original in French letters. His stubborn humanism, narrow and pure, austere and sensual, waged a dubious battle against events of these times. But inversely, through the obstinacy of his refusals, he reaffirmed the existence of moral fact within the heart of our era and against the Machiavellians, against the golden calf of realism." '

http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/38980.html

Higher Education follies

2006-04-15T18:46:00.000+01:00

Finally, after so much staff angst and wasted time, money and forests of paper, the Research Assessment Exercise is going to be killed off; not because it's a stupid process, but because the Treasury wants to save some money. One bit of bureaucracy in Higher Education goes - but there's enough left to strangle creative teaching.

"The RAE is dead - long live metrics"

"On Budget day, academics were stunned to discover that the deeply unpopular Research Assessment Exercise is to be killed off. Lucy Hodges reports."

Independent, 13 April 2006

"... Since the first research assessment exercise in 1989, university departments have lived and died by the RAE. Vice-chancellors have restructured their universities; for example, chemistry at Exeter was closed because it scored only a grade 4."

The obvious criticisms, which should have aborted it long ago, are now being listened to:

"... criticisms are that the RAE rewards research that was done years before because of the five-or-more-year cycle on which it operates, and that it is a ridiculous administrative burden. For the 2008 exercise, 900 academics are expected to spend hundreds of hours on the panels that review research in each subject, quite apart from the work that is carried out on the RAE in each university.

Even more obviously:

"It encourages conservative behaviour because people don't want to take risks," Driscoll says. "It discriminates against interdisciplinary research and it doesn't encourage collaboration. It's a winner-takes-all system. Frankly, the amount we get is so small that it's worth gambling on change."

http://education.independent.co.uk/higher/article357343.ece

Some much time was spent on very detailed research, often on esoteric subjects (I seem to recall reading that the average research paper is read by about 6 people) and then all that time on assessment of that research - when almost no critical thought was expended on the whole damn stupid system.

Lichetnberg said (roughly): "Many a man has devoted his life to something, when a few minutes serious thought would have shown it wasn't worth a tupenny damn."

What is truth? BBC 4, Any Questions

2006-04-15T14:11:00.000+01:00

Email to BBC 4's Any Answers:

The [Any Questions] panel's responses to the question, "What is truth?" were tentative and confused and revealed how even supposedly educated, experienced people are quite clueless about basic philosophical issues. In France philosophy is studied by all pupils, clearly we ought to follow their example.

This is not to say that that the answer is easy; philosophers are still debating it. But what they have established is that the panel's answers are confused and/or mistaken. So truth is not the same as morality (Benn), it is not the same as one's belief (Norris) and it is not a matter of infinite points of view and perpetual doubt (Liddle).

Unfortunately the panel's answers in general tend to unconsciously reflect the recently fashionable ideas of postmodernism with its relativism with regard to truth. I recommend to the panel and listeners the recently published book: "Why Truth Matters", which would help them clarify their ideas about this very important concept.

(Not used but a philosophy lecturer made very similar points)

US: erosion of freedom

2006-04-14T19:04:00.000+01:00

Comment on http://superfrenchie.com:

Greg Says:

“Ted (204): //erosion of freedoms in the US.//

Myth. Name one thing you could do pre-9/11 that you can’t post 9/11, except bring lighters and fireworks on airplanes.”

Which planet have you been on ?

“Over the past few years, ACLU attorneys around the country have provided direct representation to many individuals and organizations targeted for exercising their First Amendment right to criticize the government, including people who participated in numerous rallies and marches to protest the war in Iraq, who were excluded from meaningful participation at public presidential speeches, and who protested at the 2004 Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

“We all want police to protect us from real criminals and terrorists,” Beeson said. “But resources and funds established to fight terrorism should not be misused to target innocent Americans who have done nothing more than speak out or practice their faith. Investigations should be based on actual evidence of wrongdoing.”

In its FOIA requests, the ACLU points to many documented examples of JTTF involvement in the investigation of environmental activists, anti-war protesters, and others who are clearly not terrorists nor involved in terrorist activities, including:

tracking down parents of student peace activists
downloading anti-war action alerts from Catholic Peace Ministries
infiltrating student groups
sending undercover agents to National Lawyers Guild meetings
aggressively questioning Muslims and Arabs on the basis of religion or national origin rather than suspicion of wrongdoing.

These activities are not the only evidence that the FBI is building files on activists. A classified FBI intelligence memorandum disclosed publicly last November revealed that the FBI has actually directed police to target and monitor lawful political demonstrations under the rubric of fighting terrorism.”

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18715prs20041202.html

Iraq: casualties/Fallujah/WP

2006-04-14T18:50:00.000+01:00

Comment re J. Kampfner's article in the Guardian's Comment is Free site
reply to:

Mike1:

"sybarita, posting a Johann Hari article means I am wrong? Johann Hari changed he mind about two years ago - there's nothing new about that. His latest piece on it was quite a shoddy piece of work - he made up a casualty figure that has no scientific basis and repeated the propaganda myth about the US using chemical weapons on civilians. It was a cheap appeal to the Independent newspaper's fan base. Not his finest hour."

Not yours either; it's your reply which is "cheap" and "shoddy."

First it hardly matters WHEN Hari changed his mind, but he did defend it for some time, e.g. from last year

"... Hari said he never believed the official justification of the war that Saddam needed to be disarmed because of the threat posed by his alleged biological and chemical weapons. It was his crimes against humanity that justified the dictator’s overthrow. Acknowledging that there were good grounds for being skeptical about the motives of the US for invading Iraq, Hari is nevertheless certain that Iraq is an immeasurably better place without Saddam Hussein."

08/02/2005 (report of a conference a few weeks before) http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=562

But now that he disagrees with you, any old slur will do. He says: "at least 150,000 Iraqi corpses" - what "scientific basis" do you have for saying he's wrong ? Cf.:

"Estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths is based on a study published in The Lancet medical journal in October 2004. The study concluded that at least 100,000 and as many as 280,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the first 18 months of the occupation.
Oddly, US authorities have questioned the methodology used in this study, but it was the same methodology used by the US Centers for Disease Control to estimate deaths from disease outbreak in third world countries, the same methodology the US and UK have always accepted in the past when counting deaths in Congo or other nations where the American or British military are not directly involved.

We have accepted this study as a reasonable estimate, and we use the study's minimal estimate as our baseline for Iraqi civilian deaths."

And that was in 2004.

It is not a "propaganda myth" that white phosphorus was used on Fallujah; after initial denials it was admitted:

"That's right. Not from Al Jazheera, or Al Arabiya, but the US fucking Army, in their very own publication, from the (WARNING: pdf file) March edition of Field Artillery Magazine in an article entitled "The Fight for Fallujah":

"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

In other words the claim by the US Government that White Phosphorus was used only for illumination at Fallujah had been pre-emptively debunked by the Army. Indeed, the article goes on to make clear that soldiers would have liked to have saved more WP rounds to use for "lethal missions."

However, as Mark Kraft, an emailer to Eric Alterman's blog, Altercation, points out today, the Field Artillery Magazine article fails to inform its audience that

. . . there is no way you can use white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/9/164137/436

So let's have less cheap and shoddy stuff from you.

Reply 2:

Mike1: "You've taken the Lancet's most likely guess, 100,000, and their maximum guess, which they say is as likely as their minimum guess, 8,000, and presented that as if it was the range. That was as dishonest as Hari making up 150,000"

The dishonesty is yours; it's quite obvious that you are going to dismiss any evidence which contradicts your view. When you are clearly shown to be wrong, e.g. about when Hari changed his mind, you just ignore it and move on, hoping that others won't notice. The difference between you and Hari is that while he stubbornly defended the war till at least the beginning of last year, he has enough sense and integrity to admit he was wrong when the evidence becomes overwhelming (like many other former prominent apologists for the war, here and in the US). You just refuse to accept the evidence and pig-headedly try to bluster on. Things like this, re Fallujah: "good work was done", are just contemptible.

Hari said "at least 150,000 corpses" that seems a reasonable estimate in 2006 given the Lancet study in 2004.

"Needless to say, I will not be trusting a survey that was conducted within a country where an intense insurgency has been going on that has a margin of error greater than an opinion poll. The same type of studies conducted on Darfur, showing 400,000 excess deaths, are not trusted by the government or the media either, due to the uncertainty of the situation on the ground. It's also misleading in that it is an *excess deaths* figure rather than a direct civilian casulty rate of war."

It wasn't "misleading" it was made quite clear in the report and the fact is war does have indirect consequences which are lethal. Here is the Economist's conclusions (not exactly a far-left journal) about the Lancet study:

"Statistically, 33 is a relatively small sample (though it is the best that could be obtained by a small number of investigators in a country at war). That is the reason for the large range around the central value of 98,000, and is one reason why that figure might be wrong. (Though if this is the case, the true value is as likely to be larger than 98,000 as it is to be smaller.) It does not, however, mean, as some commentators have argued in response to this study, that figures of 8,000 or 194,000 are as likely as one of 98,000. Quite the contrary. The farther one goes from 98,000, the less likely the figure is.
...

So the discrepancy between the Lancet estimate and the aggregated press reports is not as large as it seems at first. The Lancet figure implies that 60,000 people have been killed by violence, including insurgents, while the aggregated press reports give a figure of 15,000, counting only civilians. Nonetheless, Dr Roberts points out that press reports are a passive-surveillance system. Reporters do not actively go out to many random areas and see if anyone has been killed in a violent attack, but wait for reports to come in. And, Dr Roberts says, passive-surveillance systems tend to undercount mortality. For instance, when he was head of health policy for the International Rescue Committee in the Congo, in 2001, he found that only 7% of meningitis deaths in an outbreak were recorded by the IRC's passive system.

The study is not perfect. But then it does not claim to be. The way forward is to duplicate the Lancet study independently, and at a larger scale. Josef Stalin once claimed that a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths a mere statistic. Such cynicism should not be allowed to prevail, especially in a conflict in which many more lives are at stake. Iraq seems to be a case where more statistics are sorely needed.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3352814

"WP was not used on civilians - it was to shake and bake insurgents in deserted Falluja. It is classed as an incendiary weapon. Falluja had the lowest casualty rate for an urban combat zone of that size in the history of warfare - great work was done."

What a marked contrast; any counter evidence is treated with the utmost scepticism and any excuse is found to reject it, but you readily accept any US propaganda. Firstly it was used knowing that some civilians were likely to be still in Falajuh, and secondly, it is illegal to use it on combatants anyway:

"This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.

The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC last week: "If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence: "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets.

"...But buried in this hogwash is a grave revelation. An assault weapon the marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35% thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65% standard high explosive". They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms". It was used repeatedly: "The expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."

...a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets." It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians."

George Monbiot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1647716,00.html

Please spare us more of your "cheap" and "shoddy" excuses and your contemptible gloating over the deaths in Fallujah.

Reply to Logos

Logos: "Just, what I hope will be the final word on Iraqi civilian casualties which have loomed so large in this debate."

What an arrogant clown.

"1.The numbers, (although any civilian death is a tragedy) were the lowest of any modern war."

What were the numbers ? It was a very short "war" - so hardly comparable with WWII, Vietnam, etc. The question is were the "numbers" at all avoidable or in any way justified?

"2 In a war against terrorists it's almost impossible to distinguish civilians from fighters."

Oh, so that's OK then, kill them all - women, children, old people...

"3 Part of the strategy of terrorists is to embed themselves in civilian areas, in effect using women and children as human shields and using their deaths as propoganda for their cause (ably assisted by their apologists in the West!)."

Oh yes, it's all the fault of these evil "terrorists" who actually fight from where they live - how disgraceful. You really are an idiot.

"So much for the moral high ground of the anti-war brigade on this issue!"

I'm sure you're really glowing with pride over your CBBC level analysis.

AlexHiggins

It seems i was beaten to all of my points by Paul Lambert and Sybarita! Jinx!

Good call, you two - Sybarita, good responses earlier up the thread as well [those above].

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_kampfner/2006/04/kampfner_post.html

Fake lefties' manifesto

2006-04-13T13:05:00.000+01:00

Comment on Norman Geras' article on the "Euston Manifesto" on the Guardian site:

The attitude of Geras and co. is that once the invasion of Iraq took place we should just accept it and move on. How cynical and how convenient that would be for Bush and Blair.

Geras and those of his gang who supported the Iraq War should be admitting they were wrong and apologising, as Johann Hari eventually had the decency to do in the Independent.

Geras and co. oppose those who are "anti-American" - and who might they be ? Of course he's referring to those who are critical of Bush and his gang, and of previous US adminstrations and the major corporations they are linked with. Such critics include Noam Chomsky, is he supposed to be "anti-American" ?

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/norman_geras/2006/04/introducing_the_euston_manifes.html

Later comment in reply to CoeurDeLion (TeteDeBoeuf), who said:

"sybarita (and Mickhall): Norm is a Professor of Politics, and his views on the Iraq war are sincere."

I'm sure they are sincere, more's the pity. When I did philosophy we were not expected to be in awe of titles or reputations, but to think for ourselves. Having worked in academia I am even less inclined to be in awe of professors.

"He also topped the poll for most popular blog..."

So there are a lot of people who share his views and are impressed by academic titles, again, more's the pity

"... and while he owns to being a Marxist, I deeply respect his principles. There are also some serious heavyweights in his "gang"."

Is that why they have turned out to be so wrong about Iraq ? This is not just my opinion, but, by implication, that of Johann Hari and various other former supporters of the war who've had the sense and guts to admit that they were wrong, some of them "heavyweights".

Hari's mea culpa is here.

"History has yet to judge whether the Iraq war was a mistake - whether it was right or wrong is a matter of personal conscience."

See above, and if you still haven't understood what a predictable disaster Iraq now is I'm sorry for you.

"You should have the grace to accept that the hard Left and pacifists do not have a monopoly on sincerity and conscientiousness."

Try reading carefully; I referrred specifically to the cynicism of the line about once the invasion had happened we should just accept it and move on.

"Chomsky is indeed "anti-American" in the same sense that you are." I.e. in NO sense and you're talking nonsense.

Chomsky has tirelessly pointed out the ways in which US governments have failed to live up to the the principles they claim to espouse. He regularly tours the US (as well as abroad) giving talks to packed halls - are all those Americans "anti-American"? A large proportion of the American population voted against Bush and were opposed to the attack on Iraq and today many more think that it was wrong and are critical of Bush and co. Are THEY all "anti-American" too? The "anti-American" label is an absurdity even though it's adopted by - gosh - a professor of history and some "heavyweights".

Italy: Politics of the middle ground

2006-04-12T10:37:00.000+01:00

Response to article by J. Freedland in the Guardian:

As I said in response to Bastion's article, it's also the result of the professionalisation of politics, the spin-doctors, image manipulators and campaign managers using focus groups, etc. The adopt what they think most voters will vote for, they don't try to persuade them to adopt policies they believe in. This results in parties moving to the middle ground, as Blair did and as Cameron is trying to do here. This leads to the close results we saw in US elections and now in Italy. And when both main parties are aiming at the middle ground and so playing down their differences, it's no surprise that the personalities of the leaders become at least one thing that distinguishes the parties from each other.

FT contradicts itself about France

2006-04-11T18:40:00.000+01:00

Letter to the Financial Times:

Sir, today (11.4) you give figures for French youth unemployment of 22.2% on page 1, 23% on page 6 and 22% in an editorial on page 16. However, in your edition of 18.3, you had a short piece by Simon Briscoe, your Statistics Editor, saying:

"FT research suggests that 7.8 per cent of under-25s are out of work in France. This is only slightly above 7.4 per cent in the UK and 6.5 per cent in Germany.

The discrepancy reflects the fact that France has a much smaller youth labour force than other countries because a greater proportion go on to higher education after the age of 16, delaying their entry to the labour market."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1264c1d6-b62c-11da-9cbb-0000779e2340.html

Has your Statistics Editor changed his mind ? If not, why is he being ignored in your paper today ?

French youth unemployment - only 8%

2006-04-10T18:41:00.000+01:00

Yet again we got a false impression of the real level of unemployment of French youth, this time from Channel 4 news, one of the better sources usually, but it said that it was much higher in France than in most European countries. The NYT, discussing the demise of the CPE today, yet again trotted out the old 23% figure.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that most journalists are lazy and follow the herd. Chomsky points out that you can often find the truth in serious business papers, where business people want the facts, and propaganda can be left to the Daily Mail, etc. In the UK it was the Financial Times which pointed out on March 18th that the rate of unemployment amongst French youth, usually quoted as 22%, was actually 7.8%, similar to the UK.

"YOUTH AT WORK By Simon Briscoe Published: March 18 2006

"The proportion of French youths without work is more in line with other countries than suggested by official figures that put French youth unemployment at more than 22 per cent, compared with 11, 12 and 13 per cent in the UK, US and Germany, writes Simon Briscoe, Statistics Editor.

FT research suggests that 7.8 per cent of under-25s are out of work in France. This is only slightly above 7.4 per cent in the UK and 6.5 per cent in Germany.

The discrepancy reflects the fact that France has a much smaller youth labour force than other countries because a greater proportion go on to higher education after the age of 16, delaying their entry to the labour market."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1264c1d6-b62c-11da-9cbb-0000779e2340.html

This was pointed out earlier in Le Monde - but seems to have been widely ignored/missed by UK/US journalists and commentators:

"Less than 8% of French youth unemployed!" by Jerome a Paris Tue Mar 7th,

"I have finally found a graph (courtesy of Le Monde, behind sub. wall) which shows clearly what "youth unemployment" represents.

The above are French statistics for the year 2003-2004, and they go as follows:
60% - at school or university
27% - working (breakdown below)
08% - unemployed
05% - other, not active

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/7/82451/18785

also: http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/23/92717/5265

CPE is history and was bunk

2006-04-10T17:25:00.000+01:00

Good news about the junking of the CPE - Villepin desperately trying to pretend it was just a misunderstanding. The problem was he failed to understand the importance of consultation. These enarques (grads of prestigious admin higher education institution) are not very bright. They are in charge of the education system and what a mess the French higher education system is - we have problems but how about this ?

"Oui, l'université émarge à l'excellence, mais à quel prix ! A la faculté de droit de Nantes, pour 3 400 étudiants inscrits, il n'y a que 150 étudiants en master 2 (bac + 5). Le taux de réussite l'année dernière était le suivant en première année : 68 % pour les titulaires d'un bac scientifique, 52 % pour les bacs littéraires, et seulement 15 % pour les bacs techniques.

La sélection est encore plus impitoyable dans les facultés de lettres, où les étudiants à bac + 4 ou bac + 5 ayant manqué le capes ou l'agrégation se trouvent sans emploi ou dans des emplois ne nécessitant pas un tel niveau d'études. Et on s'étonne que ces étudiants se rebellent les premiers, qu'il y ait mutinerie ; et on feint l'indignation lorsqu'aux sondeurs ils répondent qu'ils aspirent à la fonction publique, au statut protecteur. Les études qu'ils suivent n'ont plus aucun sens. Demain ils mépriseront le savoir qu'on leur dispense, faute pour eux de pouvoir le convertir en un épanouissement dans le travail. Alors nihilisme, alors : "Feu sur la culture !" ; c'est le sentiment qu'on éprouve à les voir bloquer nos universités..."

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-758905,0.html

I got this from a blog by a young woman who is at the Sorbonne, doing philosophy but interested in journalism.

http://francoamericanviews.blogspot.com/

She's worked with John Lichfield of the UK Independent and had an article in it the other day; she seems to share his rather pessimistic, rather right-wing view of France:

http://commonsensewonder.com/?p=416

There's more support for the French and their very active approach to democracy in the comments which are critical of an article in the Guardian by J. Fenby - who makes the usual criticisms of the French.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_fenby/2006/04/the_devaluation_of_the_repibli.html

This one is funny:

DanielDavies April 10, 2006 02:19 PM

"Sadly the Constitution of the Vth Republic of France is unclear on the provisions for what might happen in the event of the French people losing the confidence of Jonathan Fenby. Clearly the French people cannot continue in their current role, but opinions differ as to whether Mr Fenby should rule by diktat until such time as a new French electorate can be assembled, or whether the Constitution obliges an immediate dissolution of the French population pending new elections."

House sold - off to Paris

2006-04-09T00:20:00.000+01:00

My house is sold ! Contracts exchanged last Weds. - but, while it's now legally binding, it still doesn't seem real without the money in my account, so I haven't splashed out on anything yet.

I'm still taking books etc. to the charity shops, but need to speed up, there is still a lot to go.

It will be great to finally move away from this limbo, Sudbury Town, too far from the centre of London, and to move to central Paris, especially if I have as good a time as I did there over Xmas.

Lunch is for the wise

2006-04-06T16:00:00.000+01:00

In a BBC TV programme about French culture, an English guy working as a manager in a French company in Paris said that he'd learned not to schedule meetings around lunch-time. While he would eat a sandwich at his desk, the French insisted on a proper lunch. Another example of the rejection of US/UK erosion of workers' rights, as with the CPE. On Monday there was an article in the Guardian showing that the French (and Italians) are being very sensible - and, rather than criticise them for supposedly refusing to "modernize", we ought to follow their example:

"Take a break from the routine"

Giles Morris finds that the growing trend among UK workers to skimp on their lunch hours can affect both health and performance.

'"Lunch is for wimps." Or so declared Michael Douglas as macho financier Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street. And ever since, it seems, the humble lunch-hour has been under attack.

Recently it was reported that the time spent by the average British worker over lunch has dropped from 23 to a mere 19 minutes, one minute less than our statutory entitlement under European law.

So what's going on? Why don't British workers spend a bit of time over their midday meal? Have we turned into a nation of willing slaves, munching a sandwich while glued to our computer screens because we're so enamoured with our work, or are there other factors at play?

If someone is taking only 19 minutes for lunch, they're working 41 minutes per day for free. Doesn't sound too bad on a daily basis, but over a working year, that adds up to 164 man-hours - a whopping 20.5 working days in total... And not taking a lunch-break has health consequences beyond indigestion. According to Dr Cynthia McVey, senior lecturer in psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University, "research into stress shows that if you don't have a break you get jaded and you can't concentrate. You'll make more errors. You'll think more slowly and worry more than you need to about minor details." Taking time out, says McVey, can sometimes help you to solve a problem. "You walk round the block and come back with a different perspective."
...
Such things are second nature to our European neighbours. Take Italy. Jonathan Keates, author of Italian Journeys and guides to Tuscany and Umbria says that in northern Italy they take two hours for lunch. "This involves going out to restaurants, a works canteen or lunch bars, serving various dishes akin to tapas." A stark contrast to lunchtime in British offices.

"Italians would not eat at their desks," says Keates. "Nobody eats on the hoof in Italy. There isn't that frantic grabbing of a sandwich." Back in the UK, a culture seems to be growing in which taking a lunchbreak is frowned upon. Research by Tickbox.net suggests that one in four workers are worried that taking their full lunch break entitlement will create a negative impression with colleagues or the boss. Almost two-thirds stay in the office for lunch, and 47% eat at their desk...'

Monday April 3, 2006, The Guardian

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=bison+fute&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Workers of the UK - get out to lunch - reclaim all those days - or go on a demo.

Syriana/tourists

2006-04-01T11:32:00.000+01:00

I went to see Syriana on Thursday - very powerful - it makes real what you know abstractly is going on in the world and so it is more shocking than an article in the press. I thought it was a bit unnecessarily difficult to understand - as a lot of people have complained. I think I understood most of it, but often you were shown things happening and then later it was explained why. It wasn't necessary - SOME more explanation could have been given earlier, so that you could focus on what was happening rather than wondering about what you'd just seen. It was all complicated enough with overlapping stories. Apparently the publicity people realised how confusing it was because the press were given far more extensive notes than usual.

Clooney's role was that standard one in so many American films, the aging, experienced guy who doesn't like playing by the official rules and has little respect for his superiors, e.g. Dirty Harry. In this Clooney is warned not to cause trouble at an interview, but, after biting his tongue for a while, can't help telling the youngish black woman some home truths about the situation.

I didn't find it very plausible that, given his experience, he needed advice from an ex-colleague, but it helped with the explanation of what was happening. While Clooney played a less attractive role than many of his films, putting on some weight for it, he was presented as rather heroic, e.g. saying nothing in the torture scene, most people will at least give false information in such circumstances.

But it is great that a film like this is made at all - and in America; it's a powerful criticism of the existing system. All credit to Clooney for using his muscle in the business to help get films like this and "Goodnight and Good Luck" made.

After this I had a meal in Cafe Rouge in Soho, which has French waiters, but I'm afraid the one who greeted me lived up to the stereotype of French arrogance. He said there wasn't a table for one, yet we were standing by two tables for four, one with one guy, the other with a member of staff flipping through magazines! I pointed to the a free place at the member of staff's table and the waiter just wandered off. At the end I didn't leave a tip - and overcame my English tendency not to make a fuss and went up to the counter and in front of another waiter I said to him: "Next time use more imagination when I ask for a table for one, there were six free places there." He just stayed quiet and I walked out, glad I'd spoken out, the wine helped.

Having had a couple of glasses of wine I was into my easily annoyed Englishman mode :-) There was a party of Japanese partly blocking the pavement outside a theatre. I touched one guy's elbow - he was looking at his mobile phone in the middle of the pavement - and said "excuse me". At least he said "sorry" and got out of the way. Further on a group of young Italians was entirely blocking the pavement, so I just pushed through the middle - why should I risk my life walking in the road - some of the girls yelled something in Italian after me - tourists !

Vote Paxman out ?

2006-03-30T11:50:00.000+01:00

My contribution to the blog on BBC Newsnight's site - where they asked if BBC bosses should be elected:

We might be tempted to vote Paxo out, he's getting a bit old bufferish with his sarcastic comments about podcasts: "seems like TV without the pictures to me". That sounds like radio - is that supposed to be an inferior medium? Also his obvious sarcasm about our "invaluable comments" on this site is not appreciated.

Maybe it's time to send him back to somewhere like El Salvador, where he did some valuable reporting - a long time ago. He might appreciate the break from wondering why UK "lying bastards" were lying to him - yet again.

CPE - Villepin losing

2006-03-30T11:40:00.000+01:00

Opposition to CPE grows

"A new survey by pollsters CSA shows that 83% of the French are now opposed to keeping the CPE. 42% of those questioned said they wished “the suspension” of the CPE with “time to find a solution”, 41% supported its withdrawal, just 12% backed Villepins wish to keep it as it is and some 5% could not decide.

Most polls to date have not included the option of suspension, so it not easy to compare these results with previous polls. However, a survey by pollsters LH2 for Liberation, taken from the 17 to March 18, had showed 38% favorable to a modification of the CPE and 35% for an abandonment - to reach a total of 73% of hostile opinions to a maintenance of the CPE in the state. Therefore todays poll can be taken to show that opposition is growing amongst the French.
Other results from the poll show confidence in Dominique de Villepin is falling.

58% consider him too authoritative, compared to 46% previously
41% think him qualified, compared to 52% previously
77% think that he is not listening sufficiently to the French, up 5 points"

March 29th 2006 Posted to France CPE

http://libcom.org/blog/opposition-to-cpe-grows/03/29/2006

"New Labour... a dismal, disappointing embarrassment"

2006-03-29T17:42:00.000+01:00

A verdict on Blair from an insider, Derek Draper, who was a spin doctor for New Labour, now a new father and with a personal interest in the future of education:

"Exactly two weeks ago ... I realised all the cliches were true. When our baby was born the foundations of our life really did change, she is indeed a little bundle of joy and I would happily lay down my life for hers. You do get completely obsessed.

... My old boss Peter Mandelson attacked Labour's education bill rebels last week from his exile in Brussels, asserting that anyone who disagreed with Blair's approach to reform of the public services is a 'Bennite'. I think maybe Peter's mind-numbing EU trade negotiations have befuddled his brain. It is ludicrous - indeed laughable - to apply that label to, among others, Neil Kinnock. When I worked for Peter he had little knowledge of and even less interest in education - or indeed any other domestic policy. It is a similar focus on foreign policy adventurism and spin that have condemned Blair to end his long spell in office with no domestic policy legacy. That he should even now be flailing around tinkering with the education system when he made it his avowed priority over a decade ago tells you all you need to know. New labour is ending as a dismal, disappointing embarrassment."

Evening Standard magazine, 24.3.2006

Cf:

Exams cut by third as stress on pupils soars

"The true level of pressure facing children was laid bare last night as Britain's most senior exams official admitted pupils faced a huge and excessive exam load that had distorted the balance of what was taught in schools.
...
'The assessment load is huge,' Boston said. 'It is far greater than in other countries and not necessary for the purpose. We are pushing for the overall burden of assessment to be reduced.'
...
For many, the announcement could not have come sooner. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the teaching union the NASUWT, said: 'We don't need Ken Boston to tell us the problem; we need Ken Boston to deal with it. We have been raising concerns about the enormous assessment burden on schools for a number of years.'
James Marshall, head of English at the independent Shrewsbury School, said it was a welcome U-turn. 'The obsession with a culture of targets, bite-sized modules and endless re-testing hasn't benefited anyone. I would welcome any reforms that reduce the amount of needless testing in schools.'"

Anushka Asthana, education correspondent, March 26, 2006, The Observer

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1739868,00.html

The Fighting French

2006-03-29T10:02:00.000+01:00

I sent an email to LBC radio station, complaining about Karen ( a member of staff I think), who trotted out the old myth about a search on the web for French victories comes up blank. I asked if they'd ever heard of Napoleon. It took the combined forces of other European countries to defeat him and the French forces.

Then I posted this to www.thisfrenchlife.com about the French and WWII:

'As Janet Flanner (quoted by blogger Maitresse) said: ""Had the young French soldiers fought like rioters against the Germans in June, 1940, Paris might not have fallen".'

Flanner and Maitresse should be ashamed of themselves; this sort of calumny was refuted by the US forces back in 1945, putting right some of their soldiers who'd bought this myth about French failure to fight the Germans:

" No one - least of all the French themselves - will try do deny the enormity of the defeat and the humiliation France suffered in 1940. French military leadership and strategy was tragically inadequate. But this does not mean that the French did not put up a "real fight".

In the six week Battle of France, from May 10 to June 22, 1940, the French lost, in military personnel alone, 260,000 wounded and 108,000 killed. A total of 368,000 casualties in six weeks is not something to pass off lightly.

Yes, the Germans gave the French a terrible beating. But it took the combined strength of the United States, Great Britain, Soviet Russia, Canada, etc., to beat the Germans. It's asking rather a great deal of France to match such strength against hers."

Published in Paris in 1945 by the 'Information & Education Division' of the US Occupation Forces.

http://www.miquelon.org/gripes/78.html

Mothers - the dark side

2006-03-29T08:43:00.000+01:00

Now that mothers' day is over - the dark side, e.g. apparently Sharon Osbourne was so estranged from her mother that she didn't even go to her funeral. One advantage of the Independent's use of celebs (while the Guardian invited tributes to mothers from readers, meaning that they were all positive), was that we got a somewhat more balanced picture, e.g. Janet Street-Porter had a very bad relationship with her mother and hates becoming more like her:

"Reflecting on her upbringing, she reveals “I went a long time thinking my parents had picked the wrong baby and I couldn’t be related to them.”
...
From Janet's first happy memories as a young girl in Fulham, to the darker period when she was a teenager, she begins to face up to the unresolved anger that she still has towards her mother."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/mychildhood_street_porter.shtml

Then, as Jamie Oliver revealed, there are the kind of mothers who never worried about the junk their kids were eating at school because they fed them the same sort of thing at home; some of them have been on BBC TV's "Honey We're Killing the Kids", e.g.:

"...The family think nothing of spending 150 hours in front of the TV each week. And there are plenty of screens to choose from. They have seven TVs and three computers. The children are couch potatoes, watching hours of TV in their bedrooms and rarely leaving the house to get any exercise. They often go to bed after their parents, which leaves them seriously short of sleep and inattentive at school the next day.

All three children are suffering emotionally from their sedentary lifestyle and Kris worries they’ll grow up lacking in confidence and social skills. Michelle and Michael’s smoking means their children are three times more likely to take up the habit themselves and are at an increased risk of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.

Seeing what their children will look like at 40 is a shock for Michelle and Michael. Both girls are already medically overweight thanks to their unhealthy diet of fast food takeaways, fizzy drinks and sweets..."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/tv_and_radio/honey/series2honey_mulholland.shtml

That's the slow way to kill kids, cf.:

Pair jailed over sons' fire deaths

'The parents of two children who died of horrific injuries in a fire while they enjoyed a romantic evening downstairs have been jailed for child cruelty.

Lindsey Miller, 33, and her 29-year-old husband Scott were jailed for two years and 12 months respectively when they appeared at Northampton Crown Court.

Their sons, Nathan and 18-month-old Jeremy, suffered 80% burns in the blaze in the bedroom of their Northampton council house in June 2004. Boisterous Nathan, aged two and a half, is thought to have started the fire at the family home which killed him and his brother.

Sentencing the pair, Judge Richard Bray said they had been "selfish" in locking the boys in their bedroom.

He rejected their claims that their low intelligence was a factor in the boys' deaths, saying they had encouraged or condoned Nathan in playing with matches, showing him off to friends as a "party trick".'

Birmingham Mail

You need a license to drive a car, but anyone can have kids.

Rich French dad & brats on CPE

2006-03-29T08:18:00.000+01:00

A pathetic piece in the Sunday Times (yes, I shouldn't have bought it) on the problems over the CPE in France. Matthew Campbell, who doesn't seem to want to exert himself, basically spoke to one family. The father, Lionel Lambert, is a financial advisor, guess what he thinks of the demonstrations, and, surprise, surprise, his two children agree with him and disagree with the majority of their fellow students: "...Felix Lambert took to the podium [in the Sorbonne] and said he did not agree. The audience erupted in furious booing and whistling." Poor boy (not financially of course). His sister disagrees with the CPE - because she thinks it doesn't go far enough - but then, apart from having Lionel for a father, she's studying economics and management:"What we need in France is a lot more employment flexibility for everybody, not just the young." She obviously sees herself as an employer - we'll see what her views are if she fails to get a job. But then daddy will always bail her out.

The photographer obviously thought we wouldn't gather that the rich brats were students, so he had them hold lots of books ! Unfortunately the books have nothing to do with the subjects they are supposed to be studying; so instead of philosophy books Felix has books on Louis XI and Lyon 1940-44, while Lily the economics student has a book on counter-espionage. So at least the photo is as accurate as the article.

On BBC TV news last night, a journalist from Le Monde, generally in favour of "flexibility" said that even the employers weren't very keen on this new law, as Villepin might have found out if he'd consulted before rushing it through in order to seem to be doing something and be more right-wing than Sarkozy. Now Sarkozy is calling for the suspension of the law and consultation, thus seeming very reasonable (helping repair his reputation after the racaille remark) and wrong-footing Villepin:

"Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held firm, but cracks opened in his conservative government as pressure for him to withdraw the contested measure reached unprecedented heights, with unions, students and the leftist opposition joined in solidarity, and more violence erupting on the streets of Paris.

Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, in a clear break with Villepin, suggested suspending the new type of job contract for youths to allow for negotiations. With the government in crisis, President Jacques Chirac cancelled a trip planned for later in the week to stay in Paris."

more here

Barcelona to boot out boozers

2006-03-28T16:40:00.000+01:00

I went to Barcelona twice in the late 1980s and didn't see a single Brit stag or hen party; sadly things have gone downhill since then:

"Last summer British, German and Dutch tourists invaded Catalonia, outraging the locals with their all-night partying, promiscuity and uncontrolled vomiting in Gothic passageways and Art Nouveau doorsteps. Residents complained they couldn't sleep for the noise and that their streets were filthy with rubbish and bodily fluids."

How disgusting our northern hordes are and it seems that Spanish youth have begun to emulate them, leading to riots in Barcelona Spanish mass binge. Fortunately the Catalonians have had enough:

"... the authorities have banned street-vendors, skateboarders, jugglers, bongo-drummers, DVD sellers, windscreen-cleaners, beggars, graffiti artists, clients soliciting prostitutes in the street, and anyone drinking in public squares, or dressed indecorously, or urinating (or satisfying other "physiological needs") in public."

Good for them, let's hope that they have more luck than many of our cities, and that this sort of crackdown spreads to more of Europe.

Grumpy old man? No, I'm all for a good party and the Spaniards know how to do that without making a disgusting spectacle of themselves, and I hope to join them again at the Seville feria.

Independent, 28.3.2006

Boris "guilty" Benn disappointing

2006-03-26T21:30:00.000+01:00

Following Johann Hari's mea culpa in the Independent for supporting the attack on Iraq (see earlier post), Boris Johnson admitted he'd been wrong to vote for the war (on BBC1's "Question Time" earlier in the week), claiming he'd been misled (read more Boris), and he said he now felt "guilty".

Tony Benn was disappointing for once; he supported Shabina Begum's campaign to be allowed to wear the jilbab to school, and talked about the need to respect other people's religious beliefs. Evidently he wasn't aware that the school had consulted with the local Muslim clerics and had come to agreement with them about an acceptable uniform, and it was at least not at all clear that wearing the jilbab was required by the religion. It seems to be merely an Arab tradition, but not an Indian one. Furthermore it seems that some of the girls at the school don't want some fundamentalist relatives and clerics to be able to pressure them into having to wear it too. The latter point was made clear by the Liberal on the panel, but ignored by the representative of Liberty, who claimed not to understand what harm it could possibly do.

Quote, unquote

2006-03-26T20:26:00.000+01:00

From a programme I don't usually listen to on BBC radio 4: "Quote, unquote"

"If it weren't for quotations, conversations between gentlemen would consist of an endless succession of What-hos."

P.G.Wodehouse

"I went to my doctor and asked him for something for persistent wind. He gave me a kite."

Les Dawson

"There are two rules to comedy: One, always leave them wanting more ..."

"The doctor said the good news was that I was going to have a disease named after me."

"It's just a job; bees make honey, the sun shines, waves pound on the shore and I beat people up."

Muhamed Ali

"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious."

Alan Minter

More from P. G. Wodehouse:

"Madeleine Basset laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh that had got her so disliked by the better element."

"Marriage isn't a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse."

"Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good."

"At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies."

"Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels."

"I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit."

"To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time."

Mums - should rule

2006-03-26T13:07:00.000+01:00

The Guardian goes one better than the Independent and, instead of using minor celebs, it invited readers to send in photos and tributes. Again the altruism of mums came out strongly:

"She's completely selfless, making everyone's life easier and asking nothing for herself."

"She's always laughing! Even though I'm in my 30s Mum still worries about me like she did when I was little, and she is so generous with her time and her love. I would be truly lost without her."

"I am in awe of how selfless she is. I draw all my strength and confidence from her because I know she totally loves me just the way I am."

We should hand power over to mums - not to the few who ape the worst in men, like Thatcher. In a documentary on a gangster turned film-maker in Russia, the only person not intimidated by him was his ex-teacher, a female.

Some appreciation is more basic:

"Her pancakes are extremely good. We love her to bits."

While Charlie, 3, just says: "Biscuits!"

Kermode gets his comeuppance

2006-03-25T19:44:00.000Z

Ah, the pleasure of schadenfreude. It was SO satisfying to see Mark Kermode have to listen to Spike Lee saying how much he admired Michael Moore's F 9/11. Kermode has attacked Moore and F 9/11 at every opportunity in the Guardian and Observer, e.g.:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1249156,00.html

For a fairer account of Moore's problem with Disney, which Kermode refers to, see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1218376,00.html

The Observer's main critic, Philip French, also disagrees with Kermode's pathetic vendetta:

"Few recent Palme d'Or winners have had much impact in the States. But Fahrenheit 9/11 became front-page news when rumours circulated that the Disney organisation, fearful of presidential wrath, planned to suppress it until after the election last November. When released, it rapidly made more than $100 million to become the most successful documentary ever made. Not only that, it managed to get up the nostrils of the American right to such an extent that several anti-Moore documentaries, none of artistic quality or popular appeal, were rushed out with such witty titles as Michael Moore Hates America."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1379754,00.html

Unfortunately for Kermode, he clearly respects Spike Lee, so he cravenly kept quiet on-camera about his true feelings about Moore. When Lee said that he was surprised when, despite, this powerful documentary, Bush "won", Kermode stupidly tried to suggest that this showed that political films have no significant effect, but again kept quiet when Lee pointed out that it's hard to tell what effect a single film is having. Obviously Bush might have got many more votes had it not been been for F 9/11. Let's hope this causes quiff-boy to revise his bigoted views, but I doubt it.

Mums and dads

2006-03-25T00:00:00.000Z

Some nice tributes to mums in the Independent today. Piers Morgan is funny, and lucky to have her still around, still giving unconditional support and a positive, glass half-full attitude:

"My mother is the kind of person who, if I told her I had just committed ten murders, would seek some sort of positive from the news along the lines of: 'Well at least it wasn't 11, darling.'"

Cf. Julian Clary's mum:

"I think it's a shame that everyone doesn't have a mother like mine. Discussing the horrors of an outbreak of bird flu with her recently, I related an account of the 1918 epidemic. 'Apparently you could be right as rain at breakfast and dead by tea-time,' I said. 'At least you can have a nice lunch,' was her reply. Learn to live in the moment."

I was thinking that dads didn't get so much attention, then a weird coincidence; on TV in the other room was Loudon Wainwright, who I had confused with who I now realise is his son, Rufus, of the weird voice. I went in to listen and - what a coincidence - he was singing about being a dad ! (one who'd left wife and kids):

"Being a dad can make you sad, they can break your heart, they just want their mother." !

I can't remember hearing another song about that, and it comes as I'm thinking about the issue. I know rationally that a certain percentage of coincidences must occur, but still ... it is weird. Also what a welcome change from the usual, monotonous, ubiquitous, teen love songs.

In fact this morning I bought "Dadland", a very funny book about being a dad for an ex-student who's just become a father. In it Spike Milligan is quoted talking about his father, who sounds like him:

"He said to me: 'I've never killed a tiger.' I said: 'Why are you telling me?' He said: 'Who else am I going to tell?'"

Near death we live more fully

2006-03-24T23:42:00.000Z

Martha Lane Fox made a fortune from Lastminute.com, then had a very bad car accident (to put it mildly). She's still recovering and is involved in creative projects and with a charity educating girls in Africa. She said:

"I've had a near-death experience. It has highlighted the importance of giving something back."

A British retailing billionaire narrowly survived the recent tsunami - he was diving and it passed over him. He too has reassessed his life and got more involved with charity work.

We all need near-death experiences - regularly.

Cf. "All the men who were in the war, as I was, talk about it as 'the best years of their lives', to use a film title. Horror is not the only thing in war. In war you achieve greatness, you are strong, you are pure, you are simpler. You achieve an amazing detachment. You don't fear death any more. You love danger."

Jean-Pierre Melville. From NFT notes to "Army in the Shadows".

Taking pleasure in small things

2006-03-24T23:37:00.000Z

I took a portable radio to the till in Dixons and was told it was 29.99. I said that the label on the shelf said 19.99. This had happened to me once before at Dixons and I just paid the higher price. I went with the woman to the shelf. She said it was the wrong model number. I pointed out that there was no space or label for a model at 29.99. She spoke to the manager and he told her, somewhat to her surprise, to let me have it for 19.99. Very satisfying.

Even smaller: I'd lost my bread knife and had tried using a carving knife, resulting in some mangled slices. I bought a new one and its efficiency in cleanly cutting even quite thin slices was quite pleasurable.

Not being a sheep: Twice, seeing a long queue in Smiths, going to the back to the free till and paying and walking out past the sheep still queuing at the front - not that I was in a hurry, but...

Failing to learn from history

2006-03-24T12:50:00.000Z

Rumsfeld rambles on:

"The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.

Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/18/112142/656

This from a guy who has clearly lied about the history of this war, cf:

"'It would have been probably October of '02, and the war was March, I think," of the following year, Rumsfeld explains. "I sat down, and I said, 'What are all the things that one has to anticipate could be a problem?' And circulated it and read it to the president - sent it to the president. Gave it to the people in the department, and they planned against those things. And all of the likely and unlikely things that one could imagine are listed there. It was just on the off-chance we'd end up having a conflict. We didn't know at that stage.'

Some might quibble with Rumsfeld's description of the historical moment. At the time he wrote the memo, dated October 15, 2002, Congress had recently voted to give President Bush complete authority to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. A White House spokesman had just confirmed that invasion plans were on Bush's desk - detailed plans, we now know, which Rumsfeld had been shaping and hammering and editing for much of the previous year.

In other words, there was far more than an "off-chance" of conflict. All that remained to be done was for the president to reach his official decision. The train was loaded, its doors were shut, and it was ready to leave the station.

Rumsfeld never pretended there was anything off-chancy about the timing of the memo when he discussed it with Bob Woodward, who wrote about the document in his authoritative history of Iraq war preparations, Plan of Attack. In that account, Rumsfeld portrayed the memo as a warning blast, an attempt to do "everything humanly possible to prepare" Bush for the awful responsibility that had settled onto his presidential shoulders - and his shoulders alone..." [i.e. covering his arse]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110801072.html

Robert Fisk, who has just written a massive history of the Middle East, "The Great War For Civilisation", shows that Rummy is right that "daily headlines" - and US news stories - are unlikely to tell the truth about history, but not for reasons Rummy would accept:

'I thought U.S. reporters no longer trusted the U.S. administration, not after the mythical WMD and the equally mythical connections between Saddam and the international crimes against humanity of 9/11. Of course, I was wrong.

Here are the sources - on pages 1 and 10 for the yarn spun by reporters Josh Meyer and Mark Mazzetti: "U.S. officials said," "said one U.S. Justice Department counter-terrorism official," "Officials ... said," "those officials said," "the officials confirmed," "American officials complained," "the U.S. officials stressed," "U.S. authorities believe," "said one senior U.S. intelligence official," "U.S. officials said," "Jordanian officials ... said" - here, at least is some light relief - "several U.S. officials said," "the U.S. officials said," "American officials said," "officials say," "say U.S. officials," "U.S. officials said," "one U.S. counter-terrorism official said."

I do truly treasure this story. It proves my point that the Los Angeles Times - along with the big East Coast dailies - should all be called U.S. OFFICIALS SAY.'

http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk03232006.html

Fisk points out that had people in power like Rummy actually studied history they would not have created the disaster of Iraq today:

"... this is a story of tragedy and folly and of dark foreboding. It is about the past-made-present, and our ability to copy blindly and to the very letter the lies and follies of our ancestors. It is about that admonition of antiquity: that if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. For Iraq 1917, read Iraq 2003. For Iraq 1920, read Iraq 2004 or 2005.

Repairs of an armored car from No.1 Company in Iraq,
British Royal Air Force, ca. 1923 (IWM HU. 49856, Fagg Collection)

"Yes, we are preparing to give "full sovereignty" to Iraq. That's also what the British falsely claimed more than 80 years ago. Come, then, and confront the looking glass of history, and see what America and Britain will do in the next 12 terrible months in Iraq.

... by September 1919, even journalists were beginning to grasp that Britain's plans for Iraq were founded upon illusions. 'I imagine,' the correspondent for The Times wrote on 23 September, 'that the view held by many English people about Mesopotamia is that the local inhabitants will welcome us because we have saved them from the Turks, and that the country only needs developing to repay a large expenditure of English lives and English money. Neither of these ideals will bear much examination... From the political point of view we are asking the Arab to exchange his pride and independence for a little Western civilisation, the profits of which must be largely absorbed by the expenses of administration.'
...
The British now realised that they had made one big political mistake. They had alienated a major political group in Iraq - the ex-Turkish Iraqi officials and officers. The ranks of the disaffected swelled. For Kufa 1920, read Kufa 2004. For Najaf 1920, read Najaf 2004. For Yazdi, read Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. For Badr, read Muqtada al-Sadr.

In 1920, another insurgency broke out in the area of Fallujah, where Sheikh Dhari killed a British officer, Colonel Leachman, and cut rail traffic between Fallujah and Baghdad. The British advanced towards Fallujah and inflicted "heavy punishment" on the tribe. For Fallujah, of course, read Fallujah. And the location of the heavy punishment? Today it is known as Khan Dari - and it was the scene of the first killing of a US soldier by a roadside bomb in 2003.

In desperation, the British needed "to complete the façade of the Arab government". And so, with Winston Churchill's enthusiastic support, the British gave the throne of Iraq to the Hashemite King Faisal, the son of Sherif Hussein, a consolation prize for the man the French had just thrown out of Damascus. Paris was having no kings in its own mandated territory of Syria.'

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2004/0617iraq1917.htm

Guess who wrote this, and when:

"The people of England have been led in [Iraq] into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our ... record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster."

T. E. Lawrence, in 1920, (I changed Mesopotamia to Iraq and omitted "imperial") and he concluded:

"We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?"

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/1920arabia.htm

What a pity Rummy didn't learn from this. Yes, "Those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it." (not from "antiquity", Fisk, but from Santayana).

As Georgia10 says in The Daily Kos blog, contra Rumsfeld, the history IS being told by bloggers:

"Yet the legacy of this war will include the blogs. The internet has empowered the citizens of this country to preserve facts in the face of a relentless propaganda campaign. Where the administration has sought to cover-up and hide the reality of this conflict, blogs have stepped up to counter their revisionist history. As the scribes of a new millennium, we preserve in pixelated form every folly, every lie, and every death Rumsfeld wishes was overshadowed by false claims of victory. Ultimately, it will be the truth-seekers, on and off the internet, that will shape the legacy of this war as an ill-conceived fraud perpetrated on the American public, as an endless war grossly mismanaged by those who breached the public trust."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/18/112142/656

France, CPE: US and UK views

2006-03-23T10:18:00.000Z

A good piece on the demos in France by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Nickel and Dimed":

March 20, 2006
French Workers Refuse to be “Kleenex”

"Was it only three years ago that some of our puffed up patriots were denouncing the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” too fattened on Camembert to stub out their Galois’s and get down with the war on Iraq? Well, take another look at the folks who invented the word liberté. For more than a week now they’ve been marching, rioting, and burning up cars to preserve a right Americans can only dream of: the right not to be fired at an employer’s whim.

...
Maybe the rioters sense a logical fallacy in the government’s proposal: Fire more people so more people can be hired? What corporations call “flexibility” – the right to dispose of workers at will – is what workers experience as disposability, not to mention insecurity and poverty. The French students who are tossing Molotov cocktails don’t want to become what they call “a Kleenex generation” – used and tossed away when the employer decides he needs a fresh one.

You may recognize in the French government’s reasoning the same arguments Americans hear whenever we raise a timid plea for a higher minimum wage or a halt to the steady erosion of pensions and health benefits: What? – scream the economists who flack for the employing class – if you do anything, anything at all, to offend or discomfit the employers they will respond by churlishly failing to employ you! Unemployment will rise, and you – lacking of course the health care and other benefits provided by the French welfare state – will quickly spiral down into starvation..."

http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2006/03/french_workers_.html

And this from a Brit in France:

"Under this law, anybody can employ anybody else, for any reason, and up until the 2 year anniversary can fire him as well, for any (or no) reason! There are many laws which protect employees, but the vast majority will be put aside, as "not applicable" in view of the new law. Wonderful for employers, who can (and will) propose a hiring and firing every 2 years on a regular basis.

This means that wage increases (on the basis of seniority) will not exist, since seniority is not considered under the new law. The maximum time anyone can be "in seniority" is 2 years! Further educational/promotional course within the Company will be none-existant, since the employee is only employable for 2 years! Any wage increase demand can (and probably will) be terminated by a termination of the contract! What politicians think to be "cunning" is also the fact that certain periods of employment, in certain types of employment contracts do not count towards the increase or indeed payment of any unemployment benefit! Nor do they count for holiday payments, nor for bonuses such as Christmas/holiday payments etc. The deductions made forcibly for pensions and health insurances are accepted by Government as being in force, but don't try being ill for a long time on your 2 year contract, 'cos you'll be fired, and then your pension and sickness payments will take a dive!

Basically it is highly placed politicians saying that they like the idea of all this, it saves money, saves time, and should produce more jobs. They are saying, simply, that they don't know anything at all about their citizens..."

http://www.marquisdugalipot.blogspot.com/

France - reprise of 1968 ?

2006-03-21T11:48:00.000Z

"It's like a reprise of the May 1968 protests. The CRS riot police cruise the
streets of the Latin Quarter in Paris, breaking up groups of protesters, and
storm the Sorbonne where students staged a three-day occupation last week.
Between 51 and 64 of France's 82 universities are now disrupted by the wave of
angry protests."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1733392,00.html

But it's not quite like 1968:

"After November's three weeks of rioting attuned the world's newspaper readers
to government indifference, March's student revolt may be worse than a public
relations nightmare: the press here are already making comparisons to May 1968,
when 10 million workers and students effectively shut down the state for several
weeks. This spring's events mark the first time that the Unions have backed a
popular student movement since 1968.

But this time around, the alliance between workers and students is not fueled by
ideology, but by "précarité" - the insecurity fueled by increasing unemployment.
And this affinity can be extended to a third group: the disillusioned suburban
youth, primarily immigrants and first generation French citizens."

http://dominionpaper.ca/accounts/2006/03/20/parisian_r.html

It is getting serious for the government:

"But one analyst said the government would eventually be forced to bow to the
pressure, which included a fresh poll showing widespread opposition to the CPE.

"It's impossible for the government to hold on now. There were too many people
in the streets ... The government will have to get out of this crisis by
suspending the CPE," said Christophe Barbier, deputy editor of the weekly
L'Express.

"The political cost will be enormous for this defeat. But he (Villepin) would
reap an even bigger political cost governing a country that's blocked in the
event of a general strike," Barbier told Reuters."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1733392,00.html

Public support is growing:

"Some 60 percent of voters want the CPE withdrawn, according to an opinion poll
by the BVA organization for the Depeche du Midi newspaper, in a further sign of
pressure on the government. In answer to a separate question, 69 percent said
the marchers were justified."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060319/ts_nm/france_dc

The government has shot itself in the foot by uniting its opponents:

"... this time it's not the impoverished suburban minorities that French
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called “Rascals,” but the cream of French
society: students of the prestigious Sorbonne university.

"In November, we saw suburban youth, frustrated by the fact that they couldn't
find a job and seemed to have no future, burning cars in the streets. Now, we
see the same sentiments being expressed by university students" said Robert
Gaignon, a union representative with the FSU.

...The government justifies the CPE by explaining that it will make it easier
for youth to find a job. Employers will be less reluctant to hire new workers
for fear that they will be stuck with them, it claims. The students and unions
counter that the contract will create a situation of disposable workers, where
employers will simply get rid of cheap young employees every two years instead
of giving them a raise and taking them on permanently.

... For the French government, things continue to worsen. Its popularity has
dropped 15 per cent in the last two months, according to the Le Monde, with 46
per cent of those surveyed agreeing that it is "too authoritarian."

... The unions are behind the students "for one simple reason" Gaignon said. "If
you introduce an underclass of workers into the job market without the same
guarantees given to everyone else, that weakens the working class as a whole."

For their part, a coalition of unions are threatening a general strike slated
for the 23rd, which could cripple the country's economy.

"Their battle is ours," Gaignon stated matter-of-factly.

The government seems to have inadvertently made things worse for themselves.
Through their actions, two traditionally disparate groups--the immigrant and
français-de-souche youth--have found common ground: the stark reality of facing
a hopeless future, without employment or adequate income.

"In November, I couldn't believe that people would burn down a school for any
reason, but now, faced with my own systematic discrimination, I'm starting to
understand," said Bureau [a student at the Sorbonne].

http://dominionpaper.ca/accounts/2006/03/20/parisian_r.html

Hari admits he was wrong about Iraq

2006-03-20T12:30:00.000Z

Johann Hari does the decent thing and finally admits: "I was wrong, terribly wrong - and the evidence should have been clear all along." Independent, 20 March 2006

Apparently this came after the Independent had a front page showing various pro-war people who'd now recanted - but I missed that edition.

Sometimes Hari starts his column by saying one thing, then reverses it in the second half; but this time it's a very direct admission that he was very wrong.:

"...The lamest defence I could offer – one used by many supporters of the war as they slam into reverse gear – is that I still support the principle of invasion, it’s just the Bush administration screwed it up. But as one anti-war friend snapped at me when I mooted this argument, “Yeah, who would ever have thought that supporting George Bush in the illegal invasion of an Arab country would go wrong?” She’s right: the truth is that there was no pure Platonic ideal of The Perfect Invasion to support, no abstract idea we lent our names to. There was only Bush, with his cluster bombs, depleted uranium, IMF-ed up economic model, bogus rationale and unmistakable stench of petrol, offering his war, his way. (Expecting Tony Blair to use his influence was, it is now clear, a delusion, as he refuses to even frontally condemn the American torture camp at Guantanomo Bay).

The evidence should have been clear to me all along: the Bush administration would produce disaster..."

http://www.johannhari.com/index.php

But on his own site he can't resist indicating that he had admirers who regret his recantation, and he includes, without comment, an example:

"POSTSCRIPT: There's been a collosal [sic TW] response to this article and I'm still picking through the e-mails. Over fifty from Iraqis, of which some mournfully agree, although this e-mail was more typical:

"Your article in the Independent today, 20/3/2006, was really disappointing to all of your admirers. You let them down. You changed your mind and switched from pro-war to join the anti-war campaigners, means that you gave in bowed to the aggressors. So instead of blaming the terrorists for this mass killing in Iraq at the hand of the terrorists, you put the blame on Bush and Blair for liberating Iraqi people from the worst dictator in history. If your new stance is right, then it was wrong to stand up against Hitler in the WW II, because that war caused humanity 55 million casualties. So it was better not oppose the Axis sates. Is that fair? Is this is the justice that we are looking for? If the tyrants were left to do as they like because of the possible revenge from their followers, then our glob will be place for the tyrants only and the whole planet population will be living like sheep.

Abdulkhaliq Hussein"

What an absurd comparison; Hitler attacked other countries, had occupied many and threatened to invade us - a slightly different situation ! Saddam was no real threat, even to his neighbours, and the excuse for war wasn't regime change. He wouldn't even have been a tyrant in his own country if he had not had the support of the West, e.g. in the war with Iran. As ye sow ...

France, CPE and US economic problems

2006-03-15T13:10:00.000Z

My comment at http://superfrenchie.com/?p=600

Well said tcheni, you are a good advertisement for the value of a philosophical education.

A lot of people here seem to assume that the Americans are doing well in comparison with the French, some Americans don't agree:

Unemployment - the horror movie. Bertram Doyle, Mar. 6th

"...The telecom market collapsed, merged, mutated. Independent major market competition – gone. WorldCom and Global Crossing and the RBOC’s, gone. Boom and bust. And in the end, thousands were unemployed, myself among them.

And having seen it all before, I’ve got that feeling again now. But this time, it’s the entire economy. A bit of time and research on the Internet indicates that I’m notalone in this ‘feeling’. Unseen forces. Indecipherable patterns. Nameless dread.

It’s like a horror movie.

Okay, fine. It sounds crazy. But that’s the point. What’s happening to our economy is crazy. Scores of writings and reports show that the ratio of job creation to job loss is skewed to the ‘bottom’, that is, good jobs (minimum $16.00 per hour, full-time, with medical benefits and retirement) are being replaced with bad jobs (pick one: fry cook, barista, cashier). Firing in San Diego, hiring in Bangalore. The deficit is ballooning into the trillions, pension funds are looted, and unsustainable growth and rapacious capitalism are combining to throttle our future in the cradle.

And you, dear reader, are unemployed. Or underemployed. Or ‘anxious employed’, a term that seeks to brand the anxiety and trepidation of workers who’ve survived the last round of job cuts..."

http://www.nickelanddimed.net/

Cf.

Happy New Year, American Dream

By Holly Sklar
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services, December 27, 2005

"The American Dream doesn't need to go on a diet in the new year. It's been shrinking for years.

We are becoming a nation of Scrooge-Marts and outsourcers -- with an increasingly low-wage workforce instead of a growing middle class. Even two-paycheck households are struggling to afford a house, college, health care and retirement.

The American Dream is becoming the American Pipe Dream.

"The vast majority of American workers (70 percent) think 'the American Dream' has been or will be harder for them to financially achieve than it was for their parents' generation," according to the Principal Financial Well-Being Index.

We are living the American Dream in reverse.

The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973, adjusted for inflation, despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone in The Corporate Library survey of 2,000 large companies.

Median household income has fallen an unprecedented five years in a row. It would be even lower, if not for increased household work hours. Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized nations.

We are breaking records we don't want to break. Record numbers of Americans have no health insurance. The share of national income going to wages and salaries is the lowest since 1929.

Middle-class households are a medical crisis, outsourced job or busted pension away from bankruptcy.

..."

http://www.nickelanddimed.net/

see also:

"english language coverage of the young workers’ revolt in France
This blog will have continual updates on the situation in France as events unfold, you can see photos, discuss on our forums and read the background to these events on libcom.org/news."

"tuesday 14th of march - youths riot in paris as highschool students come out in force across france

Yesterday was the students day of action. We were giving updates as and when we recieved them, but this remains just a sample of what happened across France:

today

Photos in of yesterdays Nantes train station blockage.

3.15am

Mobilization of anti-cpe high-schools in Arras [from indymedia lille]:
The high schools in Arras (Robespierre, Molet, Carnot) are blocked tonight. This evening a rumour of a prefectoral decree allowing intervention of the police force circulated. A rumour only no doubt.

1:57am

Map showing university blockages & strikes as they stand. (Greve=strike, Fermeture=closed by university).

midnight:50

Youths rioted against CRS this evening in Paris as the riot police blocked students approaching the Sorbonne. Photos here and here.

midnight:46

A University ampitheatre, packed with well over 700 students has voted to stirke and to blockade the Tréfilerie site of the University of St. Etienne. This has already forced the abandonement of a proposed open day tomorrow. At the Métare site a blockade was also agreed and students will continue to meet daily as long as the struggle continues.

Meanwhile, 200 youths have occupied Jussieu University, also in Paris.

midnight:27

Le Figaro are reporting 4,500 marched in Rennes, 1500 in Clermont Ferrand, up to 5000 in Limoges, nearly 4000 in Lille, 1100 in Caen, 1000-2000 in Le Havre and 2000-4000 in Lille.

11.28pm

First pictures of todays riot near the Sorbonne.
..."

http://www.libcom.org/blog/

Equinox: Beating Bird Flu

2006-03-14T13:10:00.000Z

Last night there was a chilling Channel 4, Equinox programme on Bird Flu. It wasn't just alarmist; it showed the impressive work being done by scientists to understand the virus, which involved looking at tissue samples saved from 1918. The "Spanish Flu" (really bird flu) epidemic then killed up to 100 million worldwide, but up to now there have been very few books or TV documentaries about this, compared with the massive coverage of WWI, which killed far fewer people:

"The world is preparing for a new natural disaster. As the deadly H5N1 bird flu spreads across the planet, scientists fear it could mutate into a human disease. If it evolves the ability to spread from human to human the result could be global devastation.

In an Equinox Special, Channel 4 follows the story of the world’s top flu experts and their race against time to understand the virus, and so prevent a pandemic.

The key to stopping a new flu pandemic could lie buried with the victims of the worst flu disaster in recorded history. As many as 50 million people died in the great Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, itself a bird flu outbreak.

Understanding the 1918 pandemic not only gives a chilling insight into what a modern outbreak could be like, it also provides scientists with the extraordinary possibility of stopping H5N1 before it kills millions of people today. Will they get there in time?

Bird Flu

What do bird flu, everyday flu and pandemic flu have in common? Is there really a new plague on the horizon?

The Spanish Flu of 1918

The flu virus of 1918 killed up to 100 million people worldwide. What made it so lethal? Virologists say it's vital to answer this question if we are to avoid another deadly pandemic."

Channel 4 Monday 13 March at 8pm

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/B/birdflu_equinox/

Astrology

2006-03-10T12:27:00.000Z

Contribution to a discussion in Newsroom-l:

ANon: >The same thing disturbs me about people who know nothing but " dimestore astrology " believing they are " above all that " as bothers me about those who believe political propaganda when they know little or nothing about the subject they are dissing. They don't even realise that their scorn originated from a socio-cultural bias. I am not an astrolger. but Many things ( atoms and germs among others ) are counter-intuitional that are not beneath thought inquiry and research.<

Yes, but the point is that research has provided evidence for those things, therefore it's quite rational, if counter-intuitive, to believe in them.

>And in fact some very serious statistical research is in fact happening ( work of Gaugueluin and Barbault come immediately to mind )<

You mean Gauquelin and his work is irrelevant because it is very specific - about links between planets and career choices - and provides no support for the general horoscopes giving supposed information about your prospects for that day, which is what Jules and Mark were talking about. The latter have been thoroughly studied and the results are as clear and as widely accepted in the scientific community as the evidence for climate change:

"Before 1950 almost no empirical studies of astrology existed. But by 2000 over one hundred empirical studies of astrology had appeared in psychology journals and four hundred in astrology journals, equivalent to about 200 man-years of scientific research. And they keep coming. The findings have been clear and consistent whether obtained by astrologers, by scientists, or by both in collaboration -- astrology has not contributed to human knowledge, it has failed hundreds of tests, it has no acceptable mechanism other than hidden persuaders (see below), and users do not usefully agree on basics such as which zodiac to use or even on what a given birth chart indicates. Today, for the first time in twenty centuries, we can say with some certainty that no, the heavens do not reflect our destiny."

http://www.astrology-and-science.com/

Cf:
"The casting of horoscopes provides a living to thousands of individuals and provides dreams to an infinitely larger number of consumers. ... [But] since the most painstaking studies have shown the inanity of horoscopes, there should be a strong rising up against this exploitation of public credulity"

Guess who said this - Michel Gauquelin, after analysing the horoscopes of 16,000 famous people, Dreams and Illusions of Astrologers 1969.

At best:

'In practical terms a warm and sympathetic astrologer provides low-cost non-threatening therapy that is otherwise hard to come by. You get emotional comfort, spiritual support, and interesting ideas to stimulate self-examination."

and many serious people including my friend Richard Tarnas who wrote ' The Passion of the Western Mind" a learned tome if there ever was one, has actually given conferences about astrology.<

A classic example of the fallacy of argument from authority; this isn't proof unless these conferences included some evidence to support astrology - did they? What was it ?

>One problem with prejudices has always been that they are not recognised as such by the person who holds them.<

You need to show that they are mere prejudices in this case.

>I am not an astrologer but I know there are many kinds of knowledge, aside from the factual or the scientifically verifiable ones such as psychological insights, symbolic and mythological truths and I think it is particularly important for journailsts to keep an open mind about those things they have not personally studied.<

They don't need to have personally studied them, they can use the results of respected authorities in the field in question, and the results are clear (see above).

> Jules was right, that my intention was to cheer him up and I used this tact because I had heard him mention astrology before. Unlike many people, he has never been afraid to espouse a controvertial or unpopular view publically. And he is also right that it has unjustly gotten him into trouble.<

But it's not unpopular and it's not controversial, just clearly false:

"Take sets of birth charts jumbled up with descriptions of their owners. Can astrologers match charts to owners? In astrology books they do it all the time. So we expect the proportion of successful matches to pile up close to 100%. To date a total of 54 studies have made this test using a total of 742 astrologers and 1407 birth charts. Despite these impressive numbers the average success rate was no different from the 50% expected by chance, see figure below. For these astrologers (many of them among the world's best) astrology performed no better than tossing a coin."

http://www.astrology-and-science.com/

Traditional horoscopes, which was what was being discussed, are rubbish, just as are the claims of creationists/intelligent design advocates.

If it cheers Jules up to find a positive horoscope, fine, but don't go accusing those of us who dismiss traditional astrology as bunk of being prejudiced - except prejudiced in favour of rationality and truth, cf.:

"Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency — the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known."

Stephen J. Gould

http://www.randi.org/jr/052402.html

TEDblog/conference

2006-03-02T11:06:00.000Z

There's a Ted blog ! And what a nice place it is (ex-students will recall my emphasis on connections and creativity) - from reports on the recent conference (sounds like a very Californian affair, in a good way :-)):

Sharing TED Moments ...

"Every year, we leave Monterey buzzing about our "TED moments": those magical instances of creativity and connectivity that can happen only at TED. Some are collective experiences: a moment of profound inspiration on stage ripples through the audience, and you can almost see the lightbulbs illuminating over 500 heads. Others are deeply personal ... the kind of "A-ha!" moments that happen when you suddenly connect your own ideas with something far deeper or meet a person who transforms your thinking.
Many bloggers have already shared their TED moments: Bill Liao found his world view changed by Al Gore's wake-up call on climate change. Something clicked for John Maeda during Ken Robinson's talk on education. The normally unflappable Ethan Zuckerman found himself tongue-tied in the presence of Dan Dennett. Bruno Giussani mused over the unceremonious removal of Al Gore's namebadge. And Andrew Anker laughed at himself, with Tipper Gore's help.

For me, three TED Moments in particular stand out: all moments when our collective energy surged ...

The groan of disappointment when Julia Sweeney reached the 18-minute mark in her brilliant one-woman show, "Letting Go of God," and declared, "I'm sorry. I have to stop."
The sharp intake of breath (in a session bearing that name), as Jeff Han breezily manipulated images on his next generation computer interface, shown publicly for the first time at TED.
The spontaneous applause following Hans Rosling's play-by-play explanation of globalization..."

http://tedblog.typepad.com

Ted blogged

Of course there were bloggers there, one of most thorough was Ethan Zuckerman:

"The pace of my blogging of the TED conference made it more or less impossible to point to other bloggers hard at work at the same event. Bruno Giussani also liveblogged the event - he and I spent Saturday lunch comparing our strategies and our relative levels of exhaustion. Next year, maybe we'll be smarter and take turns covering events. If you're looking for comprehensive coverage of the conference, put his posts together with mine, and you'll have pages and pages of in-depth posts.

The official TED blog, put together by June Cohen and others, had an excellent feature - "the day in quotes". "The Lone Ronin" had better seats than I did, and has lots of good photos of the glitterati with their red badges. Ory Okolloh and "My Name is Kate" both offered their favorites of each session. Tom from TrueTalk, Loic Le Meur, kev/null, Renee Blodgett and surely others I'm missing.

Tom Abate, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, highlighted some of his favorite talks from TED and was kind enough to note my three-minute talk on Asian blogs.

Thanks to everyone from TED and all the speakers for four unforgettable days and lots of exciting new ideas to play with."

He presents these stats, which give you an idea of what's involved in blogging a whole conference:

"Summarizing TED"
Filed under: TED2006 — Ethan @ 4:17 pm

Tom Rielly has a very funny, very profane, very politically incorrect summary of the conference. Rather than attempting to replicate his unique performance, replete with armies of barbie dolls, powerpoint slides, and references to a “crade to crade scream bag”, Negroponte’s “One Lapdance per Child” intiative, and satanic messages promoting “The Purpose Driven Life”, I’ll offer my own quantitative summary:

Days I spent at TED: parts of 4
Hours I spent sitting in TED sessions: roughly 22
Posts I’ve put up about TED thus far: 44, including this one
Approximate total words in those posts: 19,000
Approximate words per post: 432
Approximate words written per hour at TED: 864
Approximate number of beers I plan to drink this afternoon: roughly equivalent to the number of Al Gore/Brokeback Mountain jokes Tom just told..."

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?cat=18

Fatuous "Art"/fabulous photos

2006-03-01T16:36:00.000Z

The fatuous red line "Art"

On Robert Elms' show on BBC Radio London (1.3.2006) they tracked down the young woman who had spray-painted a red line on roads from Tottenham Court Road to the Thames. A male friend had phoned in; she was reluctant to talk but finally agreed. It turned out that she was an Artist - oh dear. Asked about the idea behind it she said she didn't want to say because she liked it that people were asking questions and didn't want to stop them by saying what her idea was. How many times do we have to hear this nonsense ? To start with, according to her, it's not just a line but it is the beginning of a shape - which we wouldn't know, so our guessing would be hampered by this lack of information. But, of course, it's absurd to suppose that hearing her idea will stop people asking questions and thinking for themselves. Though what they'll probably think when they do find out is that her idea is about as fatuous as those behind so many bits of "conceptual" "Art".

The fabulous photos of Lennart Nilsson

By contrast we have the beautiful, informative, technically brilliant photographs by Lennart Nilsson of the human body which he began in 1957. His latest book, Life, has incredible images of viruses attacking cells taken with an electron scanning microscope.

See the gallery of photos at Channel 4

How Life Begins - 1965

"In 1957 he began taking pictures with an endoscope, an instrument that can see inside a body cavity, but when Lennart Nilsson presented the rewards of his work to LIFE’s editors several years later, they demanded that witnesses confirm that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing. Finally convinced, they published a cover story in 1965 that went on for 16 pages, and it created a sensation. Then, and over the intervening years, Nilsson’s painstakingly made pictures informed how humanity feels about . . . well, humanity. They also were appropriated for purposes that Nilsson never intended. Nearly as soon as the 1965 portfolio appeared in LIFE, images from it were enlarged by right-to-life activists and pasted to placards."

Digital Journalist

Capturing Birdflu

Now he's working on photographing the birdflu virus:

"I want to describe it in the highest possible sharpness so we can know what it is," Lennart Nilsson said during a phone conversation yesterday. The Swedish photographer has been traveling inside the human body in order to show how it works since 1965, when he published A Child is Born to international acclaim. Using high-powered microscopes, Nilsson has taken pictures of HIV, SARS, and now H5N1, better known as birdflu. You can see those pictures in all of their surreal glory here.

Photography may not seem like a weapon for combatting infectious disease, but Nilsson has been using photo-journalism to help scientists understand the viruses they study for decades. The scientists he is collaborating with at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm want to see inside cells so they can better develop a vaccine.

“It is a simple story in a way,” Nilsson said, “but the problem is to have the instrument.” Nilsson will receive a new Japanese microscope in the next few months that magnifies up to ten billion times, allowing him to go inside cells to show how they are infiltrated.

"To take pictures of it in a new way– of the virus as an invader, to see it in sharp pictures in three dimensions– this is my dream."

Lennart Nilsson, from a conversation with Open Source on 1/16/06

http://www.radioopensource.org/photographing-birdflu

Parisian culture

2006-02-23T17:16:00.000Z

The other day I was listening to a French radio station (hoping to improve my French by osmosis). It's a mainstream station, has football commentaries sometimes, but generally it seemed far more intellectual than most UK stations, with lots of serious discussion of films and books. It reminded me of cafes in Paris during my trip at xmas; I heard a guy telling another about a documentary he was doing, looking back to the time he covered the troubles in Northern Ireland. I just had to go over and speak to him, saying that I had written about it for the Open University and visited with a few students.

Another time there was a group of young American/Latin American academics sitting near me in another cafe on Rue de Rivoli, discussing academic politics - how some people get jobs they don't deserve, etc. One said that he'd recently given a paper called: "Towards an ethics of Latin American literature". Not the kind of chat you tend to hear around Wembley and rarely in central London. I felt like asking why one would need a specific ethics for Latin American lit.; a specific politics maybe, but ethics are usually considered to be pretty universal if they are to be valid - but I let it go. However it was encouraging to be in a culture where this sort of cafe conversation/radio discussion was pretty normal. The tradition of Sartre and De Beauvoir lives on.

USA: Weapons not Welfare

2006-02-22T11:24:00.000Z

" 'The Working Poor' examines the "forgotten America" where "millions live in the shadow of prosperity, in the twilight between poverty and well-being." These are citizens for whom the American Dream is out of reach despite their willingness to work hard. Struggling to simply survive, they live so close to the edge of poverty that a minor obstacle, such as a car breakdown or a temporary illness, can lead to a downward financial spiral that can prove impossible to reverse."

Amazon.com

"Grotesque inequality"

A report in the Observer makes clear the appalling level of poverty and the grotesque inequality in the US, largely ignored by US politicians, not reflected in the entertainment media - laugh along with Friends and other yuppies - rarely reported in US news media with its focus on celebs, sport and crime:

"37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty"

"... Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening.
...
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs.
...
Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.
...

During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty directly was John Edwards... While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent.
...

In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves."

Paul Harris in Kentucky, Sunday February 19, 2006
Observer story

Cf:

'... The percentage of black Americans living in poverty is 24.7, almost twice as high as the overall rate for all races. In predominantly black New Orleans, that disparity translated into those with cars and money, almost all white, fleeing the flood while more than 100,000 car-less blacks were trapped in the flooded city.
...

Academic experts also say the government's figures minimize the true scale of poverty because they are outdated. The formula for the poverty level was set in 1963 on the assumption that one third of the average family's budget was spent on food.

This is no longer true. Housing has become the largest single expense and tens of thousands of the "working poor", the label for those who work at or near the minimum wage, are forced to sleep in cars, trailers, long-term motels or shelters.

U.S. Poverty Worst in Industrialized World

"Every August, we Americans tell ourselves a lie," said David Brady, a Duke University professor who studies poverty.

"The poverty rate was designed to undercount because the government wanted to show progress in the war on poverty.

"Taking everything into account, the real rate is around 18 percent, or 48 million people. Poverty in the United States is more widespread, by far, than in any other industrialised country." '

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-10-5/32984.html

Global warming warnings

2006-02-21T21:04:00.000Z

ITV have a reporter travelling around looking at global warming - and it's alarming:

Nunavut, Canada, February 19 2006
"... This community knows that warming is happening - it just ain't as cold as it used to be.

And they are backed up by the climate experts who tell us the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth - by three or four degrees Celsius in the last 50 years and by a projected seven degrees in the winter by the end of the century.

If that is anywhere near true, we risk passing what the scientists call a tipping point - a point of no return where changes in climate, perhaps catastrophic, start to happen - in this case, temperatures warm enough perhaps to precipitate the melting of the Greenland Ice-cap and that would raise sea levels around the world by seven metres.

It would make the New Orleans flood look like a little local difficulty."

Lawrence McGinty

http://www.itv.com/news/climate_714650.html

Worth following.

Dancing on ice at the Winter Olympics

2006-02-21T19:41:00.000Z

Scottish music again

Last night the theme of Scottish music (see Julie Fowlis post) returned with brother and sister Sinead and John Kerr of Scotland. They were representing Britain in the ice skating dance at the Winter Olympics (of course if they did badly they would be "the Scottish pair").

They did an excellent set of three dances based on traditional Scottish music- just to make it clear that being the British pair does not mean they are English !

I had been impressed by the standard reached by some of the celebs in the TV show, Dancing on Ice (which was getting over 10 million viewers each week - and is a world away from such crap as Celeb Big Brother); but the Olympics contenders showed what incredible levels could be achieved. The Scottish siblings' first lift had Sinead doing a handstand on John's knees ! Here's another one, from another show:

Apparently they have won the British championship twice - but this beautiful sport doesn't get much TV coverage. Instead we get massive overkill of football and hours of soporific snooker and dire darts. They were ranked 11th in the world and hoped to get in the top ten. They just made it, coming 10th, in their first Olympics bid. Look out fro them in Vancouver in 2010. Let's hope we see more of them on TV between then and now.

Improbably perfect Russians

It was won - no surprise - by the Russian couple, Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov, who added the gold medal to two world championships, and this was the third Russian gold so far. They looked almost too perfect, like the replicants, Pris and Roy, in Blade Runner:

"Why Truth Matters"/Julie Fowlis

2006-02-20T18:23:00.000Z

On Sat. afternoon I went in to central London, but it was cold, cloudy and then began to rain, so I went to a Waterstones, Piccadilly, and browsed. Although I'm trying to throw stuff away for the coming move, I keep buying books. Today I bought just one: "Why Truth Matters", a critique of postmodernism, etc.:

"A witty and eloquent debunking, grounded in solid philosophical scholarship, of the 'fashionable nonsense' that pervades modern culture and academia. Truth has always been a central preoccupation of philosophy in all its forms and traditions. However, in the late twentieth century truth became suddenly rather unfashionable. The precedence given to assorted political and ideological agendas, along with the rise of relativism, postmodernism and pseudoscience in academia, led to a decline both of truth as a serious subject, and an intellectual tradition that began with the Enlightenment. "Why Truth Matters" is a timely, incisive and entertaining look at how and why modern thought and culture lost sight of the importance of truth. It is also an eloquent and inspiring argument for restoring truth to its rightful place. Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, editors of the successful butterfliesandwheels website - itself established to 'fight fashionable nonsense' - identify and debunk such nonsense, and the spurious claims made for it, in all its forms."

"Why Truth Matters" at Amazon.co.uk

Julie Fowlis at the Irish Centre

Later that evening I went to the Irish Centre in Hammersmith. It usually has Irish music on Fri and Saturday evenings, but this Sat they had a young Scottish woman, Julie Fowlis, who had just won a BBC competition as the best newcomer in Folk music. She had a lovely voice and the band was good. It was nice to see these young people keeping these old traditions alive and enjoying themselves:

"Can someone singing mostly in Scots Gaelic really make a mark on the music mainstream? Ordinarily you'd say no, but Julie Fowlis from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides sings with such mesmerising beauty and passion, you wouldn't bet against her."
Colin Irwin & Jude Rogers, WORD MAGAZINE, February 2006

"...international interest in her evocative music is intensifying. Fowlis could be the first Scottish Gaelic crossover star in the making"
Peter Culshaw, DAILY TELEGRAPH, February 2006

“Young, gorgeous and inordinately talented….utterly captivated the audience from start to finish”
Sue Wilson, SUNDAY HERALD, January 2006

"Julie is the Winner of the BBC Radio 2 Horizon Award 2006 for best emerging artist.
Julie voted as Gaelic Singer of the Year 2005 at the Scots Trad Music Awards!"

http://www.juliefowlis.com

Some of her songs can be heard here

Philosophy for life - and work

2006-02-18T13:26:00.000Z

More stupidity from New Labour; this time from the Higher Education Minister !

"The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished - it is no longer secure in its instincts."

Friedrich Nietzsche

A. C. Grayling, Professor of philosophy, has to teach him a few elementary lessons:

"Learning about life: What's the point of philosophy? (Discuss)"

"Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, believes there is nothing wrong with students spurning the study of Philosophy. Not so, says AC Grayling. By learning how to think, graduates can become even more valuable to employers"

The Independent, 17 February 2006

"Bill Rammell, the Education minister, said this week that it was no bad thing if students were dropping philosophy and classics in favour of more vocational courses. Here is why he is wrong.

If you train people to drive buses or operate lathes - the vocational option - you get skilled workers who can do particular jobs. But if you teach people to think, and provide them with wide horizons, they can do many things; they can train and retrain in different positions, they can be flexible and adaptable in exporting their mental skills from one job to another, and in general they can provide their employers and the country at large with the advantage of being an educated, and not merely a trained, workforce.
...

We are citizens, lovers, friends, parents, consumers, enjoyers of culture, travellers, and much else besides, as well as (and for many more hours a day than) being employees.

In all these respects, the idea of living a life that is satisfying and flourishing, in which we add value to our relationships and bring thoughtfulness to our civic responsibilities, is to the forefront. And it is these things that a broad liberal education fosters. Central to such an education is an opportunity to think about and debate the great questions that lie at the heart of being human.

This is what philosophy is concerned with, and the astonishing growth in recent years of philosophy A-level studies at schools across the country testifies to the intense interest felt by young people in its questions.
..."

http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article345944.ece

How little things change:

"It is necessary, according to Nietzsche, to contain this historical, scientific and professionalizing tendency in university - a tendency that demands swift teaching, deep enough only to transform individuals into efficient servants. These institutions should turn their attention to the problems of culture, or better, the essential questions posed by the human condition."

http://www.vusst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/nietzscheenglish.htm

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Design Museum/Rawsthorn comment

2006-02-17T15:47:00.000Z

Someone commented on my post about Rawsthorn being fired from the Design Museum, it raises issues worth going into in another post - not that the comment is worth much in itself, no wonder they stayed anon:

Anonymous said:

"Ah there's nothing like the old boys network to get rid of a strong and challenging woman is there?"

It didn't require a network operation, Conran started the Design Museum and put in millions. He seems to have lent over backwards to try to give her a chance (and was one of those who chose her in the first place), but she was, in her own words, too "stroppy" and "stubborn" and, I would say, pig-headed to see sense and try to work with others instead of aggressively imposing her views, cf:

"Before he left, Christopher Frayling tried to negotiate an agreement that would defuse tension with the trustees, who saw themselves deprived of a role in the museum's affairs. As one eyewitness said: 'Meetings had turned into a monologue at which trustees sat listening to Alice talking about her achievements, and refusing to discuss her exhibitions programme.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1318283,00.html

Anon:
"What's the matter men - afraid she might take your fetishised boys toys away in favour of something more relevant to a greater number of people today's world?"

This "feminist" attack ignores the facts; it has nothing to do with "fetishised boys toys". Conran made his first fortune with furniture and household goods and decoration - hardly "boys toys". Few boys enjoy shopping for furniture, cf:

"They [Habitat] have an outlet in Ireland located in Dublin's prime shopping district near Stephen's Green, and its most frequent browsers are aggressive, fashionably dressed young women with black-rimmed glasses and blonde highlights, and timid, pleasant men with a slightly hunted expression that says "Thousands of generations of racial memory of hunting, living and dying have failed to prepare me for the decisions that seem to be important to me now."

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=habitat

Many women in the 60s an 70s were grateful to Conran for making good design affordable:

"Conran's guiding principle was simple: Create intelligently designed products for as large an audience as possible at a price just about anyone could afford. He built a highly successful retail chain and design consultancy on that idea. I was just as impressed with Conran himself when I interviewed him for a story for Women's Wear Daily. [Not exactly a "boys"magazine]"

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/open_edlet.html

Dyson was most opposed to Rawsthorn's changes and resigned. Did he make "boys toys" ? Hardly. Is he a "dinosaur", and an "out-of-touch patriarch"? - hardly. Here's a recent review of one of his vacuum cleaners - from "Hilary Magazine, North America's Most Popular Online Women's Magazine Since 1995", which is full of praise and makes clear his status as a world-class designer:

"We may not blame you if you told us you'd never thought about putting your vacuum on display. We would, however, blame you if you owned a Dyson vacuum and you'd never considered it. The question is not whether this is the best designed vaccum ever made, but whether it is the best designed appliance bar none. And it just may be!
In fact, I think we're in love. With a vacuum, you say? But wait until you hear about these vacuums! Not only are they the most modern and funky design you'll find on just about any appliance, but they suck up dirt and dust like there's no tomorrow!

For their eye-grabbing designs, Dyson has received numerous awards. For technological innovation, they won such awards as the Industrial Design Prize of America, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Prize, the European Design Prize, the Super Good of the Year (Japan), and the L'Etoile de l'Observeur du Design (France). They were even cited as one of Time magazine's "Coolest Inventions". Now, how cool is that!

http://www.hilary.com/reviews/dyson.html

Here is some more praise from women:

"My new neighbour said, "Hmmm, let me loan you my Dyson, that will sort it." She brought it over. I revacuumed my floors. The canister filled to the topand the gaps were empty in the floor boards. OOOOOOerrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!! Suddenly, we noticed the abscence of a smell that we had not noticed before its absence. Right, that was it, we HAD to have a Dyson.

The instructions are pretty dummy proof too as this blonde bimbo easily understood the pictures. The Dyson manuals are all pictorial in colour with BIG pictures. No jargon whatsoever!"

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Dyson_DC05__Review_5449070

Cf.: "After cleaning a friend's house for her after she had her baby and using her brand new Dyson, I was hooked, it had to be a Dyson for me as well." lily7star

So this attempt to present Conran and Dyson as "patriarchs" concerned only with "toys for the boys" is patently absurd.

Anon:

"Alice may be a stubborn and focussed character, but the brief she was given on appointment was to raise the profile of the museum. She has achevied this and more, with her dignity in tact and should be congratulated on standing up against a few dinosaurs who really just want to play happy families with the Ken and Tony.

Surely the visitors should be the people who decide on whether her Directorship was successful, and it looks as though they're all in favour."

Of course one could "raise the profile" by focusing on celebs' bedrooms, and doubtless this would bring in more visitors. Anon sounds like the kind of person who would approve the news that the London Planeterium is going to close down and become another place for celeb worship. The point is not just to get more visitors, but to get more visitors for serious design, linked to the manufacturing process (the original aim of the museum as set up by Conran), not flower-arranging or trendy shoes.

Anon:
"God forbid the Design museum returns to its former archaic engingeering driven boys school."

There's nothing "archaic" about engineering; the kind of design it should focus on is that done by Jonathon Ive, yes, a male, but designing the kind of engineering which won him the prize of designer of the year recently (Rawsthorn one of the judges) for his work with Apple. The Macs and ipods designed by him are widely used by females, not just by boys. Conran and Dyson would be happy with a focus on this kind of product - so should any intelligent female. The point is not just to increase numbers - an exhibition of porn mags would do that - but to increase the number of visitors coming for design like Ive's. This might even lead to more people like him (a Brit) working here and not in America.

Another school meals scandal

2006-02-17T11:08:00.000Z

New Labour makes you sick - again. Having made a big fuss in public about supporting Jamie Oliver's campaign to improve school meals, behind the scenes they allow the food corporations to regain influence:

"... The School Food Trust has only just been established and it is supposed to help schools make the change to healthier eating. Given Kelly's promises, however, its composition is surprising: there are no nutritionists among its 16 members, nor is there anyone representing teachers, parents' groups or health charities. Only two members belong to charities working in schools.

In fact, the largest group represented on the trust is private and local-authority caterers. The government, in other words, has devolved responsibility for improving catering in schools to the very organisations responsible for serving up food condemned as "a scandal" by the Education Secretary herself.
...
The identity of the chair of this subcommittee may also come as a surprise. He is Paul Kelly, corporate affairs director of Compass Group plc, which is not only the largest food-service company in the world but also, incidentally, one of the biggest names in school catering and the vending-machine business.
...
The industry is pushing choice - always a seductive word for new Labour. But the danger is that the commercial version of choice, if it is not challenged forcefully now, will debase the whole healthy- eating initiative in schools and rob Ruth Kelly's sweeping promises of last year of much of their value for children.

Joe Harvey sums up the position: 'The major multinationals are in the business of delivering profits for the companies and dividends to shareholders. We in education and health are in the business of giving children the best possible nutrition. It's a simple divide. Don't let the companies undermine this opportunity.' "

Katharine Quarmby, New Statesman, Monday 20th February 2006

http://www.newstatesman.com/Economy/200602200019

"Long Way Round"

2006-02-15T01:51:00.000Z

The inspiring programme which I came across while channel-hopping (Feb 14th) was "Long Way Round". This is part of a series on Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman motorcycling 20,000 miles, taking them through Europe, Russia, Mongolia, Alaska, New York and back to London where they began three months earlier. This was the last episode (I'd also caught a couple of others by accident too) where they completed their ride through the US to New York.

"99% of people were friendly and generous"

Ewan said that he hoped their trip would be inspiring and so often we were put off doing things by thinking "what if...?" But it was the what ifs that made life interesting. He also said that they had found that 99% of people they'd met had been friendly and generous (not really surprising except in our cynical culture) and they agreed that it had been a life-changing experience. In the previous programme he'd said that once back in the US he'd got calls from his agent, but now multi-million dollar films didn't seem that significant.

I think I'll buy the DVD set - you don't get too many positive, inspiring and funny documentary series, cf.:

"In an era where any given day the television listings will offer 12 different reality shows about unpleasant people doing idiotic things for selfish reasons, it's easy to forget the joys of the old-school adventure documentary — the sort where reasonably prepared and intelligent folks go to exotic locales and have interesting experiences that we can enjoy vicariously. Like Long Way Round (2004), which followed actor Ewan McGregor and his pal Charley Boorman on their utterly insane attempt to take a 20,000 mile motorcycle trip from London to New York City. ring an avid love of motorcycles.

http://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/l/longwayround.q.shtml

See amazon.co.uk for the special edition with extra episodes, and lots of rave reviews, e.g:

"So incredibly, butt-clenchingly good!!!"

January 31, 2006 Reviewer: Michael Sleggs from Cirencester, England

"I bought this dvd with prospects of doing my own bit of traveling in my gap year next year. I'm here to tell you.. this dvd is the greatest traveling dvd ever made.. it's the best show ever made. Charley Boorman, Ewan Mcgregor and crew provide so much great entertainment with the right amount of humour and drama to keep you hooked.. after watching this.. my mind has been made up.. Ewan Mcgregor, and Charley Boorman can do no wrong! There's also other funny characters, such as Claudio who provides most of the camera work for the show. This is the best money I have ever spent on a dvd and I've bought a lot of dvds. I recently bought the Michael Palin Travel dvd boxset, which I guess is a bit more informative.. but I much much prefer Long Way Round as it is funnier, cooler, and just, well, incredible. The only thing that could make this dvd any better is if it were longer than ten hours.. not to say I felt cheated in the slightest.. just to say that it was soo much fun to watch I would love to see more.. GO BUY IT NOW!!

"Outfoxed"

2006-02-15T01:23:00.000Z

Browsing through TV channels tonight brought two lucky finds, one depressing, the other inspiring.

ITV4 was showing "Outfoxed"; an excellent critique, but what it showed was very depressing, especially as Fox news is still pouring out its garbage and many Americans are still watching it and believe its absurd claim: "Professional journalism - fair and balanced". As the film showed this claim is laughable - but some argue like this (from last summer):

"Of course Fox News is biased just as CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and every other news outlet. Most are biased to the liberal side, so what is wrong with Fox News being biased to the Conservative side?"
Posted by: Tom on August 29, 2005

Some others put him right, e.g.:

"Tom, you don't understand, because you're caught in the spin-machine.
CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS have a right-wing slant when compared to any reliable news source.
Faux News is ultra-right wing propaganda. There's no other word for it.

But CNN looks suspiciously like Faux-Lite when watched in other parts of the world.

But really, that's the purpose of Faux, and the trick that's been used to slant the US into its current rush towards corporatism.
The 'balance' is between far-right wing and ultra right-wing. And you're see-sawing on the edge of a cliff."
Posted by: Kat on August 29, 2005

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/big-bad-billy-o-is-at-it-_b_6379.html

Newshounds/McCarthyism resurrected

At least there is now the Newshounds site: "We watch Fox so you don't have to". This shows that the Fox gang are still at it. One sickening item is about ex-marxist now neo-con David Horowitz (pal of that other turncoat, C. Hitchens) who is trying to bring back the McCarthy era ("Goodnight and Good Luck" came to cinemas here Feb 14th! hooray!) to the universities:

"February 14, 2006
Hannity & Colmes Launches New Witch Hunt Against University Professors
FOX News has a new weapon in its crusade to divide and polarize America during a time of war: a new book by admitted traitor [http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Horowitz_%28ex-Marxist%29 ], David Horowitz, about the 101 most dangerous university professors in America. Hannity & Colmes not only showcased this latest hate-manifesto from the non-student who formed “Students for Academic Freedom,” the show will crucify a different professor from the book each night this week. And it’s not even published by a News Corp subsidiary."

"...Horowitz told Colmes it didn’t matter if the professors were liberal or conservative, the important thing was not to be “indoctrinating students” in the classrooms. But I’ll bet that every target on H&C this week, if not every professor named in the book, just happens to be liberal."

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/02/14/
hannity_colmes_launches_new_witch_hunt_against_university_professors.php#more

Selling obesity in France

2006-02-14T18:10:00.000Z

France Battles a Problem That Grows and Grows: Fat

By ELAINE SCIOLINO January 25, 2006

"...
While adult obesity is rising about 6 percent annually, among children the national rate of growth is 17 percent. At that rate, the French could be - quelle horreur - as fat as Americans by 2020. (More than 65 percent of the population in the United States is considered overweight or obese.)

Just a few years ago, obesity in France was a subject relegated to morning television talk shows and women's magazines. Now the issue has become political.

When Jean-Marie Le Guen, a doctor and Socialist member of Parliament, began introducing bills on how to stop what he calls France's "epidemic," some of his colleagues dismissed him as a radical fringe nuisance. Now he is considered a pioneer.

"It used to be little talked about, and when it was, it was the domain of women complaining that they had put on a little weight," said Dr. Le Guen, who has written a book, "Obesity: The New French Sickness." The sickness, he predicted, will be "one of the important themes" of the Socialists in the campaign for president next year.
...
Obesity kills

With its universal health care coverage, the French government is also interested in cutting medical costs associated with obesity and diabetes. A recent advertising campaign by the National Collective of Associations of the Obese, an educational and lobbying organization, shows a markedly obese nude woman under the headline "Obesity Kills." (An estimated 55,000 people in France die of obesity-related illnesses every year.)

Some of the reasons for the increase in obesity are those that plague the United States and much of Europe: the lure of fast food and prepared foods, the ubiquity of unhealthy snacks and sedentary lives.

McDonald's is more profitable in France than anywhere else in Europe. Sales have increased 42 percent over the past five years. Some 1.2 million French, or 2 percent of the population, eat there every day.
...
Findus, the frozen food giant best known for its breaded, frozen fish filets, filmed French people eating over a period of time and was shocked by the results.

Contrary to the myth that the French spend hours sitting around the table savoring small portions of several courses, the films showed them eating in front of their television sets, while on the telephone and even alone. In fact, the average French meal, which 25 years ago lasted 88 minutes, is just 38 minutes today..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/international/europe/25obese.html

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

2006-02-12T14:04:00.000Z

I fought apathy, laziness and that pessimism Trevor Eve confessed to and went into central London on Sat., despite the cold and long tube journey. I walked down from Piccadilly to the South Bank, which is more attractive these days. Even garish lighting on the National Theatre is better than the bare concrete - like a Nazi bunker. Amazing how architects persuaded themselves to believe the idea that brutalism is best. But then many can convince ourselves that robbing the poor to pay the already grossly rich is OK, cf the book I bought in the Foyles there:

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" which I'd read about in the Guardian:

'A hit man repents'

'John Perkins didn't wield a gun - he wasn't even a paid-up CIA agent - but he did have nefarious ways of making countries around the world bend to the will of the US. Until, he tells Gary Younge, his conscience got the better of him and he looked for other ways to change the world

'On November 24 2002, Lucio Gutierrez swept to power in Ecuador's presidential election. It was a momentous victory for the populist, leftwing leader who had pledged support for the poor indigenous Indians in a country where 60% live in poverty.
The way John Perkins tells it, within a week Gutierrez had a visitor. "An economic hit man walked into his office and said, 'Congratulations, Mr President, I just want you to know that over here I've got a couple of hundred million dollars for you and your family if you cooperate with your Uncle Sam and our oil companies. And over here I have a man with a gun in his hand and a bullet with your name on it.'"

'Within two months of his election, Gutierrez had apparently made his choice. Implementing a swingeing austerity programme that attacked the very livelihoods of the people who elected him, he raised fuel prices by more than 35% and froze public sector workers' salaries for a year.'

Guardian

A credible whistle-blower

If you've read Chomsky it won't tell you anything new about the capitalist systemn, and the US in particular, but it does provide an insight into how it operated in some specific cases and is powerful evidence since it comes from an insider. Of course there have been the usual attempts to rubbish the book and attack the man, John Perkins. But Gary Younge was quite persuaded in his interview with Perkins:

'It wouldn't be the first time a powerful country such as the US has gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve its power. Tales of German and Italian nationals (to name but a few) being picked up on the street by the CIA and whisked to third countries where they are tortured, interrogated and then released months later without charge, beggar belief. But they are true. On the other hand, this wouldn't be the first time a good argument and compelling story has been embellished for effect. There is simply no way of knowing.

Softly spoken and articulate, Perkins does not talk like a braggart. You don't get the impression that he's looking for the dramatic and self-serving response to a question.

"The overall scheme is not a conspiracy," he says. "The corporatocracy is ourselves - we make it happen - which, of course, is why most of us find it difficult to stand up and oppose it. Conspiracy means doing something illegal by definition. The overall scheme is not. But within the overall schemes there are plenty of conspiracies going on."

Unlike most men of his age and generation, corporate, anticorporate or otherwise, Perkins listens and engages. In short, he is very believable...'

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/
story/0,,1696661,00.html

'9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing.'

See also the interview with Amy Goodman for how it relates to 9/11 and why there is hostility towards the West:

'AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you didn't write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to bribe you, or who -- what are the bribes you accepted?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the nineties not to write the book.

AMY GOODMAN: From?

JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company.

AMY GOODMAN: Which one?

JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn't -- Stoner-Webster. Legally speaking it wasn't a bribe, it was -- I was being paid as a consultant.
...
JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world.'

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

Labour loss - more schadenfreude

2006-02-10T17:09:00.000Z

It's sad that I should feel happy about the Labour loss in Dunfermline; I welcome it because it damages Blair. Yet a few moments ago on the radio the arrogant twit was talking about pressing on with what he wants to do regardless, e.g. new terrorism laws, including "glorifying terrorism". What price free speech - who are terrorists? ANC ? Sandinistas ? The Stern gang ? This law would probably apply to Chomsky, should he give more talks here. Blair's education "reforms" allow further privatization of schools (BT and Bill Gates might get in on the act) - and already allow the teaching of creationism/"intelligent design" - not that this worries Christian Blair.

'BT and Microsoft join businesses hoping to run Blair's trust schools'

By Richard Garner and Ben Russell, Published: 10 February 2006

'What do Microsoft, EMI, King's College and the Catholic Education Service have in common? They have all expressed their interest in government plans for a network of independently run "trust" schools.
...
'Last night, Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders which represents school heads called on ministers to draw up a code of conduct for school business partners.

He also called for a "blacklist" of inappropriate firms. "You wouldn't want a tobacco company to become a partner in running a school or companies that promoted unhealthy eating," he said. "Also, you would not want some very, very narrowly based religious sect [does this mean that a merely very narrowly based religious sect would be OK?].

"The lunatics must not be put in charge of the asylum".'

http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article344495.ece

Amen.

Health/listing what one likes

2006-02-10T16:39:00.000Z

Visit to the doctor yesterday; the female Asian doctor was very pleased that my blood pressure is down to 82/120 ! - my blood test - all fine; maybe cut down even more on fat, but nothing significant. I've even lost a few pounds - must have been all that walking in Paris (see post on exercise/death/bistros).

"Borrowed" a S. Times magazine from the waiting room; well it was an old one, I'd started reading it, and I'm glad I still get so interested in a range of things, health-related in this case:

"Optimism is a wonderful quality, but not one I naturally possess. The youngest of our three children, George is my benchmark in this. He's 11, and has this fantastic positivity... My take tends to be, "Well this is probably not going to work out, but I'll give it a go anyway." How I admire those who start from a different vantage point...

In recent months I've lost two very close friends, and just two months apart from each other, one of them 50 and the other 51. By anybody's count, they were way too young to die ... I've always operated on the belief that you get just one shot on this earth, never consciously wasting time and always trying to make the most of the moment. Their passing reinforced my belief in that strategy ..."

"Trevor Eve, 54, actor" Times magazine, 8.10.2005

In the same issue, Robert Crampton says that he and some friends were on a train and complaining about some aspects of their weekend:

"... around about Kettering, someone suggested that instead of all this bitching, it would make us better people if we compiled a list of what we did like."

He ends up, after a long list, by saying: "I really like doing this, even though it is often, I assure you, harder than it may sometimes look."

Give it a try. Here are some of mine, in no particular order:

Sitting on a sunny beach having a good meal and listening to the sea (see photo at top of this blog), Noam Chomsky, talking to attractive, intelligent women (we're talking about mere likes here), feeling just drunk enough to chat to anyone while still being able to do so intelligently, maps and Google's Earth, new, weird ideas in science, driving on empty roads on a sunny day (ie. probably somewhere in France), taking photos in a new place and feeling very alert, being complimented (for anything), laughing, QI, seeing people I dislike getting their comeuppance, i.e. schadenfreude (cf. post on Rawsthorn kicked out of the Design Museum), winning arguments (we're not talking about what we're PROUD of), learning new things, feeling fit (there is time, I hope), the internet (so much that it works against fitness - cf TV), creating anything (must get away from TV more), finding and making connections, intellectual and social ...

Grey matter unravels dark matter

2006-02-10T11:39:00.000Z

I watched Horizon last night, more mind-blowing ideas and fantastic feats of imagination, calculation and dogged research. One team has had no positive results for 18 years, but they are in for the long haul because what they are investigating are the most fundamental things about the universe - and much of it seemed to be missing !

Even more recent research has weighed our galaxy (don't ask me how) and found that, contrary to what was believed until only months ago, the Milky Way is the biggest galaxy in the the "local universe".

It makes you kinda proud - Springsteen should write a new song: "Born in the Milky Way ! Born in the Milky Way !..."

"Most of Our Universe Is Missing"

"Horizon discovers that 96% of the universe is missing. Only a tiny 4% of the universe is made of stuff we understand. Some scientists claim they know what the rest is, but others insist that nothing's missing at all, and that the real problem is far, far worse. They say that Newton, gravity and science itself is wrong, and needs to be re-written.

Dark matter, dark energy and variable gravity are put under the spotlight, as the world's leading cosmologists attempt to explain the biggest problem in science today."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/horizon/

Since the programme was made there has been progress, and, as so often with science, the results of observation have led to a radical rethink. It seems dark matter is travelling much faster and is therefore much hotter than theorists thought:

"Dark matter comes out of the cold"
By Jonathan Amos, BBC News science reporter

"Astronomers have for the first time put some real numbers on the physical characteristics of dark matter. This strange material that dominates the Universe but which is invisible to current telescope technology is one of the great enigmas of modern science.

That it exists is one of the few things on which researchers have been certain.

But now an Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, team has at last been able to place limits on how it is packed in space and measure its "temperature".

"It's the first clue of what this stuff might be," said Professor Gerry Gilmore. "For the first time ever, we're actually dealing with its physics," he told the BBC News website.

Science understands a great deal about what it terms baryonic matter - the "normal" matter which makes up the stars, planets and people - but it has struggled to comprehend the main material from which the cosmos is constructed.

"Magic volume"

Astronomers cannot detect dark matter directly because it emits no light or radiation.

Its presence, though, can be inferred from the way galaxies rotate: their stars move so fast they would fly apart if they were not being held together by the gravitational attraction of some unseen material.

Such observations have established this dark material makes up about 80-85% of the Universe that is matter.
...

Now, the Cambridge team has provided new information with its detailed study of 12 dwarf galaxies that skirt the edge of our own Milky Way. Using the biggest telescopes in the world, including the Very Large Telescope facility in Chile, the group has made detailed 3D maps of the galaxies, using the movement of their stars to "trace" the impression of the dark matter among them and weigh it very precisely.

With the aid of 7,000 separate measurements, the researchers have been able to establish that the galaxies contain about 400 times the amount of dark matter as they do normal matter.

"The distribution of dark matter bears no relationship to anything you will have read in the literature up to now," explained Professor Gilmore.
...

"It comes in a 'magic volume' which happens to correspond to an amount which is 30 million times the mass of the Sun.

"It looks like you cannot ever pack it smaller than about 300 parsecs - 1,000 light-years; this stuff will not let you. That tells you a speed actually - about 9km/s - at which the dark matter particles are moving because they are moving too fast to be compressed into a smaller scale.

"These are the first properties other than existence that we've been able determine."

Knowledge advance

The speed is a big surprise. Current theory had predicted dark matter particles would be extremely cold, moving at a few millimetres per second; but these observations prove the particles must actually be quite warm (in cosmic terms) at 10,000 degrees.
...

Weighing our galaxy

The Cambridge efforts have produced an additional, independent result: the detailed study of the dwarf galaxies has allowed the scientists to weigh our own galaxy more precisely than ever before.

"It turns out the Milky Way is more massive than we thought," said Professor Gilmore.

"It now looks as though the Milky Way is the biggest galaxy in the local Universe, bigger even than Andromeda. It was thought until just a few months ago that it was the other way around."
..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4679220.stm

For more on dark matter see;

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dark_matter.html

Evasive Serb, loud Americans and obnoxious Brits

2006-02-09T17:48:00.000Z

The other day I went with a friend to a talk on the future of Serbia in central London. My friend had been to Bosnia as a freelance journalist years ago, and got wounded, and I had gone to Serbia with a student from there in 1994. While the speaker's English was very good, he had this habit of repeating words, sometimes 5 or 6 times. But he was also very vague and as evasive as Blair can be and we were both left puzzled by his response to my friend's question. I was feeling a bit dozy from the free wine and left early. My friend stayed on to get some young woman's phone number; purely for professional reasons he assured me.

We wandered towards Tottenham Court Road looking for a restaurant, and came across one in Cleveland Street, Terra (?), which had a very nice Brazilian waitress, Tania. I was in a good, chatty mood and we got talking visiting Latin America and maybe doing a Che tour. But not on motorbike, I had my motorbike period as a student, though the huge trip almost round the world by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Sheen looks like an amazing experience - but they were so glad to get on to the good roads in America after muddy ruts in Mongolia. Tania promised to give me some contacts for Sao Paulo.

Loud Americans

I remarked on the couple at the other end of the restaurant and how loudly the American woman was talking. Why do many Americans talk so loudly in public? This is not just my prejudice; an American friend said in an email to me: "the plane was full of the worst type of American tourists. Loud, annoying..."

Cf.:
"I went to a comedy club and a martini bar last Saturday with a few people obviously all from The Loud Family. But you couldn't hear them that much if you stuck your entire head in the glass. The worst is going to Europe and realizing how loud and crass Americans are. No wonder the French hate us." Iggy

http://talk.livedaily.com/archive/index.php/t-67952.html

"You'll probably recognise a few old faces from the Trafalgar in here [The North Pole pub, Greenwich, London], it seems this is where they get new jobs when they're sick of dealing with loud Americans day in day out."

http://www.itchylondon.co.uk/venues/549.html

Here they are spoiling a Cancun hotel for a Scot - AND his "lovely" American friends:

"I can't fault the hotel for anything, our only complaint was a large number of obnoxious and rude Americans who have no concept of anyone else but themselves!!! ( That said we did meet some lovely Americans who found their countrymen every bit as annoying as ourselves!!!)"

http://cancun-hotels.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g150807-d286104-r4049635-Hotel_Riu_Cancun-Cancun_Yucatan_Peninsula.html

and here's some more of them ruining le Vieux Bistro in Paris:

"This was my third visit to this restaurant. This year, 2005, however, things have changed. The staff has gone from elderly and courteous to young and rude. We were put in the back room which was filled with loud Americans ..."

http://travel.yahoo.com/p-reviews-2775582-prod-travelguide-action-read-ratings_and_reviews-i

Obnoxious Brits

However, we Brits can hardly complain:

"Of course, when Britain had an Empire, Loud Brits were the scourge of the clubs and stations. Aristocratic chinless wonders braying at the tops of their horsey voices made us "ordinary people" cringe."

http://www.whatpc.co.uk/itweek/comment/2086225/phones-shout

Today it's worse, some British young people behave appallingly here and abroad:

"...the annual spectacle of young British holiday makers in Europe displaying their legendary propensity for getting drunk. They seem unmoved by Europe’s longer opening hours to moderate their native approach towards drinking which may best be described as drink-as-much-as-you-can-as-fast-as-you-can-and–then-knock-over-everything- in-sight-that-moves-until-you-pass-out-in-a-drunken-stupor.

http://www.civitas.org.uk/blog/archives/2005/08/why_it_is_in_th.html

A Brit girl describes the start of her holiday in Ibiza:

"We all got very, very drunk that first night. [We] met these two blokes ... and ended up chatting to them for the rest of the night. The last thing V remembers if falling through our room's door, and the last thing I remember was being held out the window while I was being sick, as S held my hair back."

Tania, the waitress, explained that the the couple had had three bottles wine between them and I have to admit I get loud when I've been drinking. When we left, my friend, who, behind a facade of aggressive sarcasm, is quite sensitive, said: "I suppose you're going to say something sarcastic." As we got to the door I turned to the couple and said: "We enjoyed your conversation almost as much as you did." The guy seemed unsure how to respond, but, to her credit the American woman laughed - loudly - which relieved him of the need to assert his masculinity.

For an amusing commentary on some loud Americans at the Miss Universe contest in Thailand by a young Thai woman, who seems to have had an American education, see:

http://lynnkiangsoontra.blogspot.com/2005/06/miss-universe-2005.html

For a civilised American's reflections on his compatriots' behaviour, see:

http://www.indepundit.com/archive2/2005/07/live8_blogging.html

Design Museum gets rid of "stroppy" Rawsthorn

2006-02-08T21:15:00.000Z

"Alice Rawsthorn Resigns From The Design Museum"

Oh joy, what schadenfreude !

"Rawsthorn was forced to resign by the museum's trustees. The move followed a disagreement with founder, Sir Terence Conran, over the future of the institution. Sir Terence supported plans to overhaul the museum and link it to a new government-funded Centre of Excellence for Creativity and Innovation. Rawsthorn did not, fearing that the museum's unique and special character as well as its independence, would be lost."

http://www.creativematch.co.uk/viewNews/?91998

What a nerve, it had already been lost due to her; she changed it from a museum focused on trying to show and explain serious design and industrial proceses to a place that also looked at style in shoes and flower-arranging. She was a regular on Robert Elms' show on Radio London, where she frequently tried to put him down with her supposedly superior taste in art and design.

"Dyson [of vacuum cleaner fame] left after the other trustees refused to back his attempts to rein in Rawsthorn and her determination, as he saw it, to pursue a programme pitched more at Constance Spry and the readers of Wallpaper than Walter Gropius and vacuum cleaners. The last straw for Dyson was Rawsthorn's exhibition about flower arranging. As she saw it, Constance Spry provided a genuine insight into domestic life in the 1950s. Dyson didn't agree and the fact that it was Rawsthorn's replacement for a show Conran had set his heart on, and which she had cancelled, didn't exactly help matters.
...

"Design, he said, was about serious, technical things, not shallow styling. It should be about turbo fan jet engines and body scanners, not football boots, frocks and hats - an emphasis that was, 'ruining the museum's reputation and betraying its purpose. It's become a style showcase, instead of upholding its mission to encourage serious design, of the manufactured object.'
...

"Before he left, Christopher Frayling tried to negotiate an agreement that would defuse tension with the trustees, who saw themselves deprived of a role in the museum's affairs. As one eyewitness said: 'Meetings had turned into a monologue at which trustees sat listening to Alice talking about her achievements, and refusing to discuss her exhibitions programme.'
Frayling believed a compromise had been reached, but when the proposal was put to Rawsthorn in writing, though she claims to have accepted it, she did so in such a way that a number of trustees believed that she had rejected it. 'If Terence had wanted a sycophant in the role [of director], he absolutely wouldn't have chosen me, because he knew how stroppy and stubborn I can be,' Rawsthorn said in a newspaper interview in happier times."

Thank goodness the "happy" times are over and the "stroppy" bitch has been kicked out.

[Conran said] " 'I try to explain to her that you are the director, but you are not here for ever. We have to see that the museum has a future after you. I cannot be involved if it goes on like this. I admire her dedication; the visitor numbers are up, it is more popular, but there is too much tinsel. I am sure James [Dyson] could be persuaded to come back if these matters were resolved. But she can't bring herself to say sorry.' "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1318283,00.html

"A proposed £50m relocation and expansion project, to be completed by 2012, would not mean the death of the museum or a merger, a spokeswoman said

'We have discussed the Cox report with George Cox and are supportive of his recommendations. We believe that the new Design Museum can fulfil a significant part of his recommendations but believe that it needs to be an independent institution run as a museum and true to its roots and mission - if it is to be the world's leading museum of design.'"

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article343399.ece

Parisian intellectuals: Human, all too human

2006-02-08T20:52:00.000Z

The guests on BBC radio 4's Midweek programme included ARIELLE DOMBASLE:

"Arielle Dombasle is the American born singer and actress, who's appeared in TV
series including Miami Vice. She grew up in Mexico, where her grandfather was
the French Ambassador, and she now lives is France, with her husband the
philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy."

Dombasie claimed to be a "free spirit", but not only is she married to BHL, as
he is generally known in France, but it seems that he has managed to convince
her that "he is always right" - at least about politics.

BHL came to fame as one of the "New Philosophers" in France:

"... The New Philosophers (French nouveaux philosophes) were a group of French
philosophers (for example, André Glucksmann and Bernard Henri-Lévy) who appeared
in the early 1970s, as critics of the previously-fashionable philosophers, which
would include the post-structuralists, and their own former ideas, which in most
cases were Maoist. The mark of the new philosophers was to cast a general doubt
on the tendency to argue from 'the left' ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Philosophers

But more recently he has written a quite admiring biography of Sartre, very much
a philosopher of the left, AND a sympathetic study of the US, whose governments
Sartre regularly attacked.

But then some see him as an attention-seeking and rather vain celeb:

"Lévy has, as his fellow intellectual Pierre Bourdieu once put it, an
'immoderate taste' for television studios, and his ubiquity has become something
of a joke. Lévy is a bestselling writer, philosopher, political campaigner,
pundit and luscious-locked superstud in France; but perhaps his greatest
facility is for fame itself. At any given moment, he might be seen on the cover
of Paris Match magazine, in the windows of numerous bookshops, and on several
chat shows simultaneously. He and his glamorous wife, the indomitably pouty
actress Arielle Dombasle, are the gossip columns' favourite couple.

"...Lévy's reputation for narcissism is unparalleled in his home country, and
he's not unaware of the fact. The headline of one article about him coined the
immortal dictum, 'God is dead but my hair is perfect'. He has been known to say
that the discovery of a new shade of grey leaves him 'ecstatic', and that people
who vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen cannot buy Philippe Starck furniture or Yohji
Yamamoto clothes (as if their aesthetic taste were their greatest offence)."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,977498,00.html

This has led to him being cream-pied by Noël Godin "a Belgian writer, critic,
actor and notorious cream pie flinger or ‘entarteur’. Godin gained global
attention in 1998 when his group ambushed Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in Brussels,
pelting the software magnate with pies. Godin claims his goal has long been to
‘entarte’ as many people like Gates as possible - people he feels are
particularly self-important and lacking a sense of humor. ... A regular target
is French philosopher, socialite and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy. Levy, married to
the beautiful actress Arielle Dombasle, is known to wear white shirts unbuttoned
almost to his navel and to hold forth on political issues with intense gravitas.
After one attack, in 1994, an enraged Levy was filmed standing over Godin
snarling 'Get up, or I'll kick your head in'."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noël_Godin

Not exactly the coolest or most philosophical response.

But, to be British and hence fair:

"Lévy drew people's attention to Serb concentration camps in Bosnia, tried to
rescue Afghan rebel leader Ahmed Shah Massoud just before his death, was sent by
the French government on a fact-finding mission last year to see how Afganistan
might be reconstructed, and now runs a newspaper there that promotes 'moderate
Islam'. He founded an anti-racist group to empower Arab and black people in
France, and warned of the dangerous recent rise of Jean Marie Le Pen. He is
taken very seriously in very high places."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,977498,00.html

But the Observer decided to give the article the headline: "Je suis un superstar".

When he was interviewed about his book on America, the interviewer noted that he
had had many mistresses, following the example of his new-found hero, Sartre.
Incredibly (to an Anglo-Saxon like me) he chose to describe his experience of
America in terms that hardly helped his reputation as a serious intellectual :

"Still, he’s not going to move here. This is, after all, a man with many
mistresses, and this country is just one of them. But, in the end, what did he
like best about the U.S.?

'Everything, my dear. I will tell you. Sometimes in your private life you have a
mistress you love, love being with. You spend time to time in a grand hotel,
with good room service, great champagne, and you separate—and when you are
really in love with her, you inevitably think, Could I wake up with her, near
her every morning? And then you try it. This is exactly what I did in America.
America was a great mistress. I had a great fuck with America. It was like a
weekend in the Hotel du Cap.' "

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/15546/index1.html

But it is not only Sartre's example that he is following, Camus too was a great
womaniser:

"In December 1959, Camus' womanising reached its apotheosis. On the 29th, he
wrote to his mistress announcing that he would shortly be returning to Paris
from Lourmarin, where he had spent the summer with his wife and children: 'This
frightful separation will at least have made us feel more than ever the constant
need we have for each other.' On the next day he wrote: 'Just to let you know I
am arriving on Tuesday by car. I am so happy at the idea of seeing you again
that I am laughing as I write.' A day later, he wrote: 'See you Tuesday, my
dear, I'm kissing you already and bless you from the bottom of my heart.' There
was yet another letter setting up a date in New York.

Apart from the unremitting ardour, there was one thing remarkable about these
letters: they were all to different women. The first was to Mi, a young painter;
the second to Catherine Sellers, an actress; the third to Maria Casares, an
internationally famous actress with whom he had a liaison for 16 years; and the
fourth was to an American, Patricia Blake.

When, over a period of five years, Olivier Todd got access to all of these
letters [for his book: "ALBERT CAMUS: A Life"], he faced a dilemma. Copyright of
all Camus' letters is invested in his literary executor - his daughter,
Catherine. 'It is one thing for children to know their father was a womaniser,'
Todd says, 'but quite another to show them proof.'

There was one letter written, to an 'Yvonne' with whom he was having a
passionate affair, on the eve of his marriage: 'I'm probably going to waste my
life,' he wrote. 'I mean I am going to marry F' 'That was Catherine's mother,'
says Todd. But Catherine Camus raised no objections."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,96450,00.html

After all, this was France, and people are judged for their work rather than their affairs:

"... there are a great many readers for whom Camus has not dated, and their
number seems to grow, not diminish. Whatever their standards of art, many seem
willing to judge Camus on his own terms, not as a philosopher or even a novelist
in the usual meaning of the term, but, in his words, as an "artist who creates
myths."

http://citypages.com/databank/18/890/article3998.asp

It helps when the writer becomes something of a myth himself, and when he dies
relatively young and dramatically:

"Camus kept none of these planned rendezvous [with the four women]. Driving back
to Paris with his publisher and friend Michel Gallimard, their car hit a tree
and he was killed instantly. He was 46."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,96450,00.html

But the sexual exploits of this earlier intellectual super-star had serious
consequences for others, e.g. his wife:

"The Fall (1956) is the confession of a celebrated Parisian lawyer brought to
crisis when he fails to come to the aid of a drowning woman. The 'drowning
woman' was Camus' second wife, Francine, who had a mental breakdown. As mother
of his two children, Camus decided it would be more appropriate if her
relationship with him was that of 'a sister', allowing him erotic freedom
[Sartre gave a more philosophical excuse to De Beauvoir; i.e. that they had a
"necessary" relationship, while his affairs were merely "contingent"]. For years
she appeared to go along with this but then she cracked. Todd says that Francine
said to her husband: 'You owed me that book,' and Camus had agreed.

http://citypages.com/databank/18/890/article3998.asp

Philosophical fun - ding

2006-02-08T10:25:00.000Z

"Socratic Irony"

"In March the Philosophy Department at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania moved to a new address: Third Floor, Hemlock Hall, Mansfield University. The Chair of Philosophy, Professor Robert Timko, says he is unsure whether this is irony or an indication of the future."

"Let Me Through, I’m an Ontologist!"

"An impressive $18.8 million award has been made by the US National Institute of Health to enable the development of a National Center for Biomedical Ontology. In philosophy, ontology is the study of what things exist. The relevance here is that computers and clinicians are sometimes unable to collate different sorts of medical information effectively, as different branches of medicine use different – but sometimes overlapping – concepts..."

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue53/53news.htm

Spared The Blood And Gore

2006-02-07T11:01:00.000Z

"More recently [Al Gore] set up a London-based ethical investment company with a former Goldman Sachs director, David Blood (disappointingly rejecting the opportunity to call it Blood and Gore...)."

It's good to see that Al Gore is now getting a lot of attention and respect; good guys don't always finish last:

"Celebrity took an unusually nerdy form at this year's Sundance Film Festival. The man everyone wanted to meet, talk to and be seen with wasn't a film star or daring new director. It was a politician, who is in his sixth year of retirement and more famous for what he didn't achieve than for what he did. Al Gore has been to Sundance before, but never as a leading man.
...

'He was the celeb of the week,' says the Village Voice's Amy Taubin, 'both in terms of reporting about him and people reporting to each other. They were all saying, "He's so amusing. Why wasn't he more like that when he was running?"

But we're not spared the frightening truth about global warming

... it's riveting largely because of the conviction and energy with which Gore delivers the presentation that is its backbone. Since his defeat by some hanging chads and the US Supreme Court in 2000, Gore has been touring the country and the world, giving a passionate, expertly documented multimedia presentation on global warming, in halls and on campuses, mainly to invited audiences. This campaign is personal and impassioned."

Personal tragedies caused him question what he was doing (as so often happens - we ought to learn from others' experience and do this anyway) and made him focus on what was really important to him:

"Gore talks personally and candidly about events that have shaped his life, among them his son Albert's near death at the age of six.

... the experience made Gore question what he wanted to do with the rest of his life and led to his writing Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, a meticulous review of what he calls these days the planetary emergency. It is often said to be the best book written by a serving politician. In the film, he talks, too, about his sister, who died of lung cancer ('that's not one of the ways you want to die,' he says in a voiceover) [French people in particular, please note]."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1702168,00.html

A beautiful style for a shocking book

From a review of his book on Amazon:

When I signed up for a required ecology class at my college, I never expected to have this book as the only textbook for the class... I even remember mentioning loudly, much to the amusement of the other students, that I had to read a book written by a man who doesn't move his head and can't dance. I sat down to read the first assigned reading and was pleasantly amazed. The book isn't boring at all. Al Gore has a beautiful, flowing writing style. I managed to read an entire required book without a sign of fatigue or distraction. It even had pictures to keep my thoughts from straying. I am not ashamed to say that I enjoyed this book. I really mean it. Even if you are not into the environment, at least read it to be shocked by a book that defied many of my preconcieved notions about the man."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0618056645/qid=1139418705/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_0_3/026-2531562-7978019

Those immoral extroverts are taking over

2006-02-06T14:54:00.000Z

Last night on BBC3 there was a programme about comedian and author Jenny Eclair, who is an archetypal extrovert, always showing off wanting to be the centre of attention. She said that if she couldn't perform before an audience any more she'd go mad.

"In My Childhood, Jenny explores the key events and circumstances that have moulded her into one of the UK’s funniest females.

Jenny Eclair was the first female comedian to win the prestigious Perrier award at the Edinburgh Festival, but her life hasn't always been a bundle of laughs...

... Returning to Berlin, where the family lived for three years, she recalls her first happy memories at primary school in Germany. But St Anne’s, Blackpool, reminds her of college days, when she developed anorexia."

Her older sister and younger brother recall that she was always seeking attention and it's little surprise that she became one of the few female stand-up comedians. Her extrovert behaviour was amusing to her friends (though when, at 9, she read a friend's diary, the friend had written: "She's not as well liked as she thinks she is"), but it became a big problem for her family:

"Sarah [her older sister] was a straight-A student, whereas Jenny was the class clown, always performing for the other students. Years of sibling rivalry were to follow."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/mychildhood_jennyeclair.shtml

Extroverts are dangerous

I also happened to be reading "The Motivated Mind" by Raj Persaud (recommended, unlike Freudian fabrications, this is based on massive reading of recent research in psychology) where he notes that extroverts tend to be favoured even at work and this is reinforced by the dominance of extroverts in the media:

"... it is so obvious that companies are now looking for extroverts that psychologists who write career advice guides routinely include advice on how to cheat in personality tests that are increasingly employed to weed out 'undesirable' personalities, like introverts. These psychologists strongly suggest that applicants should 'recognize that a display of too much introversion, a desire for reflection, or sensitivity is to be avoided'.

The current preoccupation with selecting extroverts in the workplace could be a mistake because it runs counter to one of the most well-established facts about introverts - they are what psychologists term more 'task-oriented' than extroverts. This basically means that they get on with the job at hand rather than being constantly distracted by the need to 'connect' - i.e., chat - with fellow employees.

... But most worrying of all, we may now have entered a vicious upward spiral of extroversion because we live in a new media age where extrovert media like television dominate. Not many introverts are going to be given their own TV series to host - so extroversion as a value now dominates our society.

...Yet... introverts are more aware when their behaviour drops below the standards they set for themselves. Extroverts tend not to be so bothered when this happens because they don't introspect as much - they are too much concerned with the impression they are creating in others. Extroverts are much more prone to immoral behaviour, breaking rules and laws. This could explain the decline in standards in public and private life we now see everywhere."

pp. 360-2

This was true in Jenny Eclair's case: "As a child, Jenny was very close to her older, sensible sister Sarah, but their relationship took a dramatic turn when Jenny became a teenager, and discovered underage drinking. 'I suppose I had a reckless streak in me,' she confesses." She sought the attention of boys and seems to have had a lot of sex at a young age.

Now people like her go on Big Brother and aspire to become celebrities, whether or not they have any talent, and so many young people now want to become famous but without the trouble of having to learn or achieve anything to really justify it, cf. the decline in those going into the sciences.

As Persaud comments:

"It could well be that our politicians, public figures and a whole generation could in fact profoundly benefit from a dash more introspection and a little less sociability." p.362

France is best

2006-02-06T10:20:00.000Z

It's encouraging to see one's chose of place to live endorsed so strongly; France comes out top in the latest Quality of Life Index published by International Living. This will come as something of a blow to some US jingoists, because this organization cannot be seen as biased twoards Europe, let alone towards France, and it's certainly not anti-American. In fact the US has come out top in their annual Index for the last 21 years !

2006 Quality of Life Index internationalliving.com

"And the winner is…France. The loser? Iraq. No explanation necessary for the latter, but regular readers to these pages may be surprised to see France taking top honors in our annual Quality of Life Index this year. It's the first time this country has risen to first place. More than that, though, it's the first time in 21 years that any country other than the United States has come out tops in our Index. This year, the United States drops from the top spot to sixth position.

Why the United States has fallen

The United States falls from the top position it held in this Index for 21 years in a row, to take sixth place this year. Although its score hasn't dropped dramatically (its final score last year was 86, compared with 82 this year), a few points are worth making.

Its economic performance over the past year has slowed slightly, and this is reflected in our Index (it gets an Economy score of 90 this year, compared with its 92 rating last year).

... More than the current economic uncertainties, though, it is the ongoing and increasing infringements of personal freedoms in this country that account primarily for its fall from first place in our Index. While other First World countries receive the top score of 100 in our Freedom category, the U.S. gets but 92 points.

The United States remains, inarguably, the world's most convenient place to live. But, we argue, and our Survey this year maintains, that convenience is not the most important factor in determining any country's quality of life.

The world's best place to live? But France?

Well, yes…France. Good climate, unspoiled countryside, world-competitive infrastructure, plus the best health care in the world, according to the World Health Organization's (www.who.org) recent study

The culture is top-notch. UNESCO has named 30 World Heritage Sites in this country (by comparison, Italy, with 40, has the most cultural and heritage sites in the world). And its capital, Paris, is arguably the world's most beautiful and romantic city on earth. France sees in excess of 70 million overseas visitors each year, making it the world's favorite destination.

And, while no one would confuse France for a bargain destination, living here needn't cost the earth. France scores 65 in our Cost of Living category, and, outside Paris, the cost of living can be relatively inexpensive."

But they have no illusions about France; they are aware of problems:

A different way of doing business

"... France scores sixth highest in our Index in the Economy category. Nightmarish bureaucracy, endless vacations, strictly regimented weekly business hours, workers who go on strike at the drop of a béret, a tax burden that accounts for 45% of GDP ... French ways are not the same as American ways. Yet, somehow, France survives, and the economy is on the up. Although it may be hard to believe the next time you're stranded at Charles de Gaulle airport because the baggage handlers are again en greve, this is the country that introduced the word "entrepreneur'' into the English language.

The world's fourth-largest exporter, France has a per-capita GNP of $26,300, and inflation stands at just 2.2%. The French economy has a lot going for it-including ultra-modern transport and communications systems...competitive energy costs...and a AAA credit rating.

As well as exports such as perfumes, cosmetics, top-quality wines, and gourmet foods, the country's traditional muscle lies in engineering and transportation. Some engineering talent has recently been lured into the glitzy world of web ventures, but the metal-bashing industries still attract top graduates.

The country now has 4,000 international corporations, accounting for 26% of French jobs, 33% of investment, and 36% of exports in the country's manufacturing sector.

Embedded at the strategic heart of the European Union, France exports almost twice as much as the United States in terms of GDP.

Major U.S. companies, such as Disney, IBM, Motorola, and Ford, have French addresses. In total, almost 2,000 North American firms have their European headquarters on French soil.

Add to all this that excellent infrastructure I mentioned already, and you can understand why we'd name France the world's best place to live. For more information on life in this country, e-mail our office in Paris at: France@InternationalLiving.com."

http://www.internationalliving.com/qol06

In another section, on advice about moving:

Learn French

"...This is the most important piece of advice I can possibly give you. If you don't speak any French, take classes to learn some. If you already speak some French, take classes to learn some more. While Paris can be enjoyed on the surface with a vocabulary of about 10 words, living here and living well requires comfort with the language.

And speaking French will earn you new friends. IL [International Living] staffers in Paris say that most of their French friendships started with a conversation about why they speak fluent French…which turned into coffee, then dinner, then invitations to birthday parties and evenings out to meet their friends. None of this would be possible without a command, albeit imperfect, of their language.

Read up

And while you're learning the finer points of the past subjunctive tense, do some reading to learn about Paris--and if you're interested, French culture, history, geography, and philosophy. Your French friends will have studied these topics in depth during their schooling and will make discrete references to them during ordinary conversation. A good base of knowledge will keep you in the loop.

In addition to Polly Platt's classic cultural study French or Foe, one book I recently read and enjoyed was The Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne. It's an excellent overview of the history of the city from the Roman era to the present and an entertaining read."

http://www.internationalliving.com/html/expatriate_confessions.html

Sartre - Paris riots

2006-02-02T13:02:00.000Z

BBC Radio 4 continued with readings from Rowley's "Tete a Tete" and again Sartre doesn't come out of it very well. He seems to have had affairs with the nearest women wherever he went, thus he had an affair with a female guide for his group in the US, and with his Russian and Japanese translators. While De Beauvoir devoured books on the countries, Sartre preferred to get to know the culture through intimate personal contact. His Russian translator objected to being treated like the embodiment of Soviet woman, she wanted to appreciated as herself. She was also dismissive of his refusal of the Nobel prize partly because it had been given to Pasternak for political reasons (he was anti-communist) and not Shokolov. But she regarded Shokolov as a mere government lackey and she said that Sartre was ridiculed in the Soviet Union over this.

However, once again it's not black and white; Sartre did valuable work in pointing out the violence inherent in the capitalist system, some of it not dramatic, but systemic oppression:

Aronson: This leads us to the unresolved dimension of the Sartre-Camus conflict, the aspect of it that is still very much with us today and needs addressing. The other half of the story is Sartre's equally compelling insight into systemic violence. Sartre understood deeply the violences built into capitalism and colonialism, which he found no less appalling than Camus found revolutionary violence. He illuminated, as no one else has, the everyday structured violence of oppressive social relations, the violence that comes to be depersonalized and experienced as "the way things are."

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.1/aronson_postel.htm

Paris rioters - the danger of assumptions

Hence the revival of interest in him, cf. previous post, and his ideas are clearly of relevance to the recent riots in Paris, and I think Sartre would have been in sympathy with them. He was on the side of the students in May 1968. The recent Paris riots also featured on BBC Radio 4 on thursday:

"Three months on from the riots which tore through the heart of France, Paul Henley hears worrying evidence that anger and resentment remain in the suburbs."

Significantly, Henley himself was a victim of media coverage, which led him to make false assumptions about the young men involved:

'The task of meeting and interviewing young people from the Paris suburbs who had been involved in the infamous riots had struck me as a difficult one.

I had imagined several days of hanging around grim housing estates trying to work my way into the confidence of defensive, jaded and probably monosyllabic youths.

What actually happened proves the importance in this business of not making assumptions.

I contacted a youth worker, Mohamed Mizane, who is based in the housing projects of Montreuil, which saw some of the worst violence.

'... A small crowd of teenagers - all of them from north and west African families - filed in, shook my hand and said they would like to talk about the riots.

I began by apologising for my rather dodgy French, saying I hoped they would understand me nonetheless.

The response was like that of a class of polite English public school boys: "Bah, non... not at all, your French is much better than our English," and so on.

"The riots were just a way of getting ourselves heard," said one 19-year-old, "even if it wasn't the best way.

"We burned cars, litter bins and all that stuff... and suddenly the politicians and everybody else took notice of us."

"This is a difficult place to live," said a black youth who insisted on taking my microphone and holding it end-down against his mouth, like a rapper.

"When you watch your brothers - five or six of them - trying to get a job and getting nowhere, you wonder what the point is.

"Everyone's on the dole here, and nobody sees any way of getting out."'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/4671340.stm

The role of design

The report also dealt with the role of urban design; one architect had been able to redesign some of the estates to make them less inhuman and in these there had been no riots. Cf.:

'These districts have sporadically gone up in flames before, attracting public and political attention for a brief span, and then reverting to normal life out of most peoples' sight and mind.

Former President François Mitterrand once publicly sympathized with the inhabitants of the projects, wondering aloud in 1990, while he was still in office, "What can a young person hope for, born in a soulless neighborhood, living in an ugly building surrounded by ugliness, grey walls in grey surroundings for a grey life, surrounded by a society that prefers to avert its eyes and get involved only when it is time to get angry and to stop people from doing things?"'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1107/p01s01-woeu.html

Sartre, De Beauvoir - hypocrites, heroes, both ?

2006-01-31T18:52:00.000Z

The French/Paris connections continue, and, as so often, I explored the issues online and this led to a far more complex post than originally intended.

On BBC Radio 4 this morning:

"Tete a Tete: Eleanor Bron reads from Hazel Rowley's biography of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. 2/5. De Beauvoir introduces Sartre to Olga Kosakiewicz."

De Beauvoir was initially repulsed by Sartre's appearance, but came to be infatuated with his mind, which happened to many women (they are another species :-) ).

Sartre and De Beauvoir at university in 1929

In 1934 Sartre went to Germany, but was frustrated because his German was not very good; he wasn't so much worried about the problem of reading difficult texts like Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit", but rather that he couldn't chat up women so well. He said: "Stripped of my weapon I was feeling quite idiotic, and didn't dare to try anything, so I had to fall back on a French woman," the wife of one of his colleagues.

De Beauvoir said that she'd never been bored when with Sartre and that he was interested in everything, e.g. he introduced her to cowboy films (which Wittgenstein liked too; they helped him stop thinking), and American pulp fiction (apparently his mother had encouraged these interests, as a relaxation from the more intellectual input from Sartre's grandfather - though Sartre seems to have downplayed the latter). However, though he was in Germany during the period of Hitler and the Nazis, he took little interest in politics, focusing instead on the abstractions of Husserl and Heidegger.

Sartre and De Beauvoir in 1940, the year the Germans occupied Paris

As a youth he had written - absurdly, and ignoring history: "Anyone who is not famous at 28 must renounce glory forever." At 29 he was still unknown, and went on to prove his youthful self wrong.

The book (Tete a Tete) brought out the ways in which even the greatest intellects can be made into such fools (and worse) by their body's desires. Thus he was madly jealous when Olga, one of De Beauvoir's students (and with whom she had a relationship), had a relationship with one of his protégés:

Olga, Nelson Algren (American writer, with whom Beauvoir had an affair), De Beauvoir

"Sartre became infatuated with Olga and spent two years attempting to seduce her. He failed, but in 1937 he met her sister, Wanda, also beautiful, and even more at sea, and he managed, after two more years, to sleep with her. The day of his triumph, he left her lying in bed, “all pure and tragic, declaring herself tired and having hated me for a good forty-five minutes,” in order to rush out to a café and write Beauvoir with the news."

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/050926crbo_books

Meanwhile De Beauvoir had an affair with Sartre's protégé Bost.

Later the chance connections with Paris continued when I read an interview with Natascha McElhone in today's Guardian, and come across this:

"The director James Ivory was casting Surviving Picasso. Athony Hopkins was playing the artist, but the part of Francoise Gilot, the young student who bore two children for Picasso and endured a turbulent decade with him, was the real lead, as well as the perspective through which the picture was filtered.

...she fell in love with an old friend, the reconstructive surgeon Martin Kelly, married him in Provence and moved to Paris, where she fell pregnant. 'We lived in a tiny flat among the rooftops. It was wonderful.'"

McElhone interview

The womaniser

Like Picasso, whom he knew, Sartre was a great womaniser, but I hadn't realised, till I did a search on Google to check some things in the broadcast, the extent to which he failed to live up to his philosophical writing about living authentically and choosing freely but ethically. I don't think many people think of that as involving exploiting rather young, insecure women, aided by de Beauvoir, and then writing letters to each other expressing contempt for the victims:

"Three years after Sartre’s death, Beauvoir published a collection of his letters to her, in which he described in detail his activities in bed, but she edited them to conceal identities. She died in 1986; in 1990, her executrix, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, published Beauvoir’s “Letters to Sartre.” These were unedited—“Is it not, by now, preferable to tell all in order to tell the truth?” Le Bon de Beauvoir wrote in the preface—and they shocked many people. The revelation was not the promiscuity; it was the hypocrisy. In interviews, Beauvoir had flatly denied having had sexual relations with women; in the letters, she regularly described, for Sartre, her nights in bed with women. The most appalling discovery, for many readers, was what “telling each other everything” really meant. The correspondence was filled with catty and disparaging remarks about the people Beauvoir and Sartre were either sleeping with or trying to sleep with, even though, when they were with those people, they radiated interest and affection. Sartre, in particular, was always speaking to women of his love and devotion, his inability to live without them—every banality of popular romance. Words constituted his principal means of seduction: his physical approaches were on the order of groping in restaurants and grabbing kisses in taxis. With the publication of “Letters to Sartre,” it was clear that, privately, he and Beauvoir held most of the people in their lives in varying degrees of contempt. They enjoyed, especially, recounting to each other the lies they were telling."

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/050926crbo_books

A man of his time

I'm not a saint, who is, but I haven't sunk that low. But one musn't be too pious; even Sartre was a man of his time (as he tried to show in Flaubert's case, at great length, in his final, uncompleted work) and the womanising was quite common, especially in artistic-intellectual circles, adultery more accepted amongst married French people, and even arranged marriages were still common amongst the middle and upper classes, which affected De Beauvoir's best friend:

"As a student, Zaza met and fell in love with Maurice Merleau-Ponty [who went on to become a major philosopher]. Unfortunately for the two lovers, Mr. Le Coin had already arranged a marriage for his daughter. Zaza’s parents demanded that she never see Merleau-Ponty or Simone again, as they deemed both to be corrupting influences. Elizabeth Le Coin died of encephalitis in 1929.

Simone wrote of Zaza’s short life several times. For de Beauvoir, the death of her friend revealed how unreasonable French social order was and how unfair life could be."

http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/beauvoir.shtml

Intellectual heroes of our time

Michael Dirda also argues against being too condemnatory:

"So the verdict is clear: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were . . . human. They behaved badly sometimes, made mistakes and inadvertently harmed those they claimed to love. And yet I find it hard to judge them as harshly as I suspect some other readers will. A Frenchman who liked pretty girls, an intellectual woman who was lonely for physical love -- Just appalling! Utter depravity! Those existentialists always were in league with the devil.
Sometimes even philosophers and moralists fail to live up to their own highest ideals. But does that negate the importance of their public example or the value of their writing?
...
Fundamentally, Sartre pursued as pure an intellectual life as one could ask -- he worked like a demon, gave away his money faster than he earned it, helped and supported those he loved, and tirelessly contributed to, or contested with, the literature, politics and philosophy of his time. For 50 years, he and Beauvoir campaigned on every front to free the human spirit from its mind-forged manacles. In what really matters now, Sartre was certainly right -- we should lead our own lives and not those that society wants us to lead. (Asked why the government didn't arrest the philosopher after Sartre made inflammatory statements during the Algerian War, Charles de Gaulle answered: "You do not imprison Voltaire.") And Beauvoir was obviously right too -- women have been demeaned as the "second sex," and had she not spearheaded the "Manifesto of the 343," abortion might have remained illegal in France for years to come.

...for freshness and charm, Beauvoir's most appealing books remain her memoirs The Prime of Life and The Force of Circumstance -- gossipy, artful (Rowley reminds us that they subtly distort her past with Sartre) and almost as good as Boswell on Samuel Johnson and his circle. In a long reading life, few hours have ever rivaled the weekend I spent, alone in my tiny room in Marseille or with a coffee in a nearby café, devouring the fat Livre de Poche editions of those two books.

...Yes, at times this amazing couple may have been all too human, but for me, and for many others, they nonetheless remain intellectual heroes of our time."

"We'll drink to that !" S and B in 1974

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301640.html

Sartre's views:

THINKING: 'It would be better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh'

GOD: 'I do not believe in God... But in the internment camp, I learnt to believe in men'

CRITICS: 'Critics are people who have had no luck in life, and at the point of despair, found a little quiet job as the caretaker of a cemetery...'

The Sartre revival

'Scott Mclemee, who recently chaired an academic symposium on Sartre in the US, said: "If Sartre's legacy once seemed a casualty of the Cold War, it grows ever more pertinent to the way we live now. The arguments over systemic violence, emancipatory struggle, and terrorism that dominated much of his work have now come back into view as matters of interest well beyond the community of Sartre scholars."'

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article226073.ece

"It is the stuff of legend. And the hunger for that legend today is unmistakable. It has been a long time since any thinker left so large a mark on an age as did Sartre. The first sign of a revival came three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of his death, when the mediagenic French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy published a best-selling book, recently translated into English as Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century (Polity Press).

... In a neat inversion of the stereotypes about French radicalism and American conservatism, some younger scholars in the United States are emphatic about Sartre's continuing importance as a revolutionary theorist. "If you had dropped Being and Nothingness into my lap, I don't think that would have lead me to work on Sartre," says Neil Roberts, a graduate student in political science at the University of Chicago, who delivered a paper at the society's conference at Purdue. "I came to Sartre through an interest in Caribbean and African thinkers, including Frantz Fanon," says Mr. Roberts. "What got my attention wasn't just his introduction to Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, but his study of Patrice Lumumba." Both essays appear in a recently translated collection of Sartre's essays, Colonialism and Neocolonialism (Routledge, 2001)."

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i13/13a01001.htm

Exercise/death on the pavement/Paris bistros

2006-01-30T17:15:00.000Z

Sunday lived up to its name, so I decided to get out earlier than usual and get some exercise. Fortunately I didn't leave about ten minutes earlier, because this was on my route, with ambulance and police still there:

It was lucky that it was a Sunday morning; this is Wembley High Street, which is usually packed with people.

The photo was taken about two hours later, after I'd got back from my walk to Wembley market. On the bus I saw that the car was still there. So when I got home, I got my camera and walked back - when it's sunny even this extra effort seems quite pleasant. Then walked home - having had more exercise than intended and another example of why one should...

always carry a camera !

Exercise - the Paris connection, advice from an American

"The French Paradox Resolved"

"The idea of a French Paradox is virtually a tautology. In a thousand different ways the French declare along with Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. And the contradiction which most annoys the calory-conscious Anglo-Saxon is the apparent ability to stow away large quantities of butter, cheese, eggs and fatty meats and still maintain a remarkably low incidence of heart disease.

...some investigators are now suggesting that the determining historical factor has actually been exercise. Exercise?! Don't be ridiculous. It's got to be something you can buy across the counter - that's the American Way!

Whatever the experts may finally conclude, I've arrived at my own solution. Two separate weeks, with a week off in between, I've eaten myself silly in Paris - a grand total of nineteen serious lunches and dinners. At the end of each week I came home, climbed on the scales, and discovered that I'd put on exactly one pound. That's right, one pound. After a couple of days, without any particularly effort, it went away. [My third trip a couple of months later, for ten days, added two pounds, but they came off with equal ease.]

I could write a book, itemizing the ingredients of the foods I'd eaten and sorting them into revolutionary new categories, such as monofolics, bifolics and trifolics. (The words don't mean anything; I just made them up.) But if I were to be honest, I'd have to admit that my method was, in every sense, pedestrian. I walked. Everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but a total of between four and six hours a day.
...
It was tiring the first couple of days, but I got used to it. And Paris is such a wonderful city to walk in! Not always beautiful, but always fascinating. Inside the peripherique there are few areas that are actually dangerous - at least I didn't discover any the hard way.
...

Simple, isn't it? It'll work a treat in Paris, and once you get back home to Orange County, all you have to do is totally alter your entire way of life. Throw away the TV remote control. Pull the plug on your freezer and shop for food every day - real food that comes in bags, not boxes. Leave the gas-guzzler in the garage and walk that dusty mile to the mall along a highway screaming with traffic - no sidewalk, just the dirt along the edge, not even a track, because nobody ever walks there - until a police car picks you up, takes you to the station and grills you for hours about your suspicious behavior.

And if they don't lock you up in the loony bin you can try it again tomorrow."

http://www.whitings-writings.com/parbishome.htm

In London, as in Paris, we have pavements, which we happily use with cars and huge lorries zooming past, sometimes a few inches away and we don't give it a thought, especially when there are heavy metal railings seeming to offer us some protection - but ...

... it makes you think: carpe diem and eat well while you can.

Paris bistros

Whiting's article is linked to a set of very interesting reviews of bistros in Paris:

http://www.whitings-writings.com/parbisindex.htm

with some very honest criticisms of some bistros and praise of others, including some cheap, relatively unknown places, e.g.:

"Why is this preeminent exemplar of artistic and gastronomic history [Polidor, 41 rue Monseur-le-Prince, 6th] denied a mention in most of the guides? Not a word in Gault-Millau or Michelin of course, though the latter gives three crossed forks/spoons to the 18th century literary café Le Procope, now swallowed up by the Flo Group and regurgitated as a trappe de touriste."

http://www.whitings-writings.com/bistro_reviews/old_and_new.htm

British sang-froid

2006-01-29T11:16:00.000Z

I do like British understatement. On BBC Radio 4, World at One, Nick Clarke, a reporter who had been away in hospital, sent a reply to listeners who had wished him well. He said he'd had a large tumour and this had meant that he'd had to have one leg amputated up to the hip: "So a pretty miserable Xmas." - as if the in-laws had been a bit boring!

Then there's children's unsentimental curiosity; his kids had asked what had happened to the leg. Had it been put in a bin, was the bin big enough? !

He reported that a doctor had said to him: "'Look, how many legs do you need to be a radio presenter?' - I took his point."

I remember hearing about soldiers' black humour during the Falkland's War, possibly apocryphal, during an artillery bombardment, one called out: "I've lost my leg!" One of his pals said: "No you haven't; it's over here." It might be an update of this:

'In 1815, on the eve of Waterloo, Wellington extended Paget's command so as to include the whole of the allied cavalry and horse artillery. He covered the retirement of the allies from Quatre Bras to Waterloo on 17 June, and on 18 June led the cavalry charge of the British centre, which checked and in part routed D'Erlon's corps d'armée (see Waterloo campaign). One of the last cannon shots fired hit Paget in the leg, necessitating amputation. According to anecdote, he was close to Wellington when his leg was hit, and exclaimed, "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!" -- to which Wellington replied, "By God, sir, so you have!"'

Paris Metro - Romance and good advice

2006-01-26T17:34:00.000Z

Romance of the Metro

Abbesses, photo by Ted Welch
More reminders of Paris ! While driving back from shopping this afternoon, I turned on the radio and on BBC Radio 4 a story was being read: "Channel 17". I was about to switch it off as I found the middle-class tones and attitudes a bit irritating. But then I realised that it was set in Paris, and the narrator said what I had thought while there, i.e. the names of many of the Metro stations sound so evocative and Romantic: Barbes Rochechouart; Sevres-Babylone; Arts et Metiers; Michel-Ange Auteuil; Porte des Lilas; etc. Somehow London tube station names don't tend to have the same ring: Bank; Wapping; Euston; Holborn; Goodge Street, etc.

An efficient system too

Not only is it Romantic, but it's a very efficient system, here's praise from Jim, an American, and advice, particularly for his fellow Americans:

Using Paris's great public transit system

"The Bottom Line You will go crazy driving a car in Paris. Avoid traffic vortices and motorist's madness by riding one of the world's best public transit systems. Millions do it every day.

For many Americans, a typical vacation consists of flying somewhere, picking up a rental car at the airport, and using it as the basic means of local transportation. If you value your sanity, you must not do this when you visit Paris. As a typical American driver, you'll be way out of your league [unless your name is Jason Bourne, see my blog entry on The Bourne Identity]. You'll face excellent but impatient and aggressive drivers, many narrow and one-way streets, streets whose names change every half mile, tiny and dim traffic lights and nearly invisible street name signs, few lane markings, chaotic traffic circles, bizarre "traffic vortices" that seem to make it impossible for you to reach your destination even when you know exactly how to get there, and a dearth of parking among the worst in the world.

You could take taxis everywhere, but they're relatively expensive, not always easy to come by, and you wouldn't get to mix with Parisians and other tourists.

RATP

Fortunately, Paris has one of the world's best urban and regional transportation systems, and it's managed by an organization called RATP (English speakers often find this amusing, but the French pronounce it uh-rah-tay-pay). RATP (you can call it "rat pee") runs an extensive, highly integrated, and efficient network of metro (M) lines (this is a subway or underground system), city center to suburb rail lines (RER), daytime and evening buses (BUS), late night busses (Noctambus), trams (T), buses to de Gaulle and Orly airports, a funicular on Montparnasse, and a few other specialized services.

Using this system, you can go just about anywhere you choose in Paris proper or the Ile-de-France region.
...

Don't be Alarmed, But...

There are pickpockets in the metro, as well as around every significant tourist destination. I have been pickpocketed myself, brought down by professional predators like an antelope on the Sarengeti, as my partner put it, but I'll never stop riding the metro. Stay alert, watch your companion's back, keep your true valuables under your clothes, not in your pockets. You are most vulnerable when you are tired, as when you first arrive and are lugging your suitcases. Beware of anyone trying to distract you, as by dropping something on or near you. That's it. You may be pickpocketed in the Paris metro, but you won't be knifed or shot. That's the good news."

The page has lots of useful advice about the Metro, buses, etc. and Jim has also provided some other very useful pages of advice linked from this page:

http://www.epinions.com/content_1183621252

Science, hope and a long, connected life

2006-01-25T14:02:00.000Z

Last night there was the first of a new BBC series examining alternative medicine. The first programme was about acupuncture and was a model of intelligent programme making; not only was the presenter attractive (always a plus), she was intelligent and informed: Kathy Sykes, a professor of physics, no less. The programme had drama, e.g. open-heart surgery with the patient conscious and anaesthetised by acupuncture. It was also a very good demonstration of the scientific method and the importance of keeping an open mind, but also examining things critically.

"There’s magic, mystery and the healing power of hope. Then there’s science. And never the twain shall meet, unless you’re Professor Kathy Sykes, whose odyssey through the controversial world of complementary medicine has converted her to the cause at a crucial point in her life.

Sykes is best known as the glamorous face of physics on BBC Two’s Rough Science, performing scratch experiments in far-off rugged zones such as Death Valley, Arizona. But she has ventured on to rockier ground for her new BBC television series Alternative Medicine: The Evidence, which explores the scientific no-man’s land between mainstream medicine and three popular but oft-derided therapies: spiritual healing, acupuncture and herbalism."

The programme on acupuncture brought together this 2,000 year old therapy, and the very latest scanner, which showed that the with genuine acupuncture the pain area of the brain is "deactivated."

"more space in my life, to be and breathe, rather than just to do"

The Paris connection - for me - comes from what she had to say about the effect of making the programmes on her own life; a Chinese doctor had told her that she thinks to much - i.e. is a bit of a workaholic, which she admits. Thus it connects with why I want to live in France, in a more sybaritic way, probably Paris for a while at least:

'... her most recent encounter with mainstream medicine, witnessing her father’s progress through the system, reinforced her conviction about the crucial role that hope plays in health. “Early on, one doctor said to him: ‘Three things could happen: you can stay the same, you can get better or you can get worse.’ My heart sank. Researching the series changed the way that I approached his illness.

“Before Dad started chemotherapy, we thought he was going to die. He didn’t have any hope. Then finally there was a diagnosis and the chemo began. Gradually, over weeks, he has got stronger. It was like a miracle that he had come back to us. He has his hope back, he’s in a wheelchair and he can write.”

Sykes is careful to leaven her enthusiasm with a spot of objectivity, adding: “It’s possible that he would have recovered like that anyway, but having the programme side-by-side with the value of hope has had a real influence on me.”

That influence extends to convincing her to change her own approach to life. She’s a slinky 39 but also a classic, quivering over-achiever. "I’m a sickly thing. I eat loads of fruit and veg and I love good food, but I work my socks off and then I get ill. I’ve known for years that I was not living in a sustainable way but recently I have tried to do something about it. I decided to spend half an hour doing nothing every day, just letting my thoughts drift. It’s where the creativity is. So this series has come at a good time. I’m going to carry on trying to make more space in my life, to be and breathe, rather than just to do." '

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8125-2000371,00.html

So often it takes something like the loss or near loss of someone close to remind us to look up from the daily grind and ask ourselves what is really important to us. I was lucky (as she is) to have work which I loved doing and know was worthwhile; but it did get a bit obsessive. Fortunately I was able to take advantage of the long holidays, which is harder for academics to do these days.

Paris showed me that in the right place I could have a much fuller, more satisfying life, where days did not slip by as one watched TV. Of course it was partly because it was novel, but it was so much easier to make new social connections there, which scientific research shows is likely to lead not just to a better life, but also a longer one:

Connected People Live Longer

"A massive study of 4,725 randomly selected residents of Alameda County in California found that those with the fewest close friends, relatives and social connections had mortality rates that were two to three times higher than those with high levels of social connectedness. Also, life expectancy tables show a difference of nine years between people with very poor social connections and those with very good ones."

https://secure.localweb.com/attitudefactor/socialties.htm

Paris: Romantics/Bourne Identity

2006-01-22T12:55:00.000Z

Reminders of Paris on TV in one night: "The Romantics" and "The Bourne Identity", interestingly linked by that dominant idea in modern culture, individualism, as well as the individual's opposition to oppressive sytems. It's good to see this emphasis on themes I used to focus on in my lectures.

The Romantics
Sat 21 Jan

"David Tennant, David Threlfall and Dudley Sutton feature in the cast for this new series written and presented by acclaimed novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd. The English Romantic poets from Blake, through to Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Keats were at the forefront of a movement between 1760 and 1830 which would re-draw the political map of Europe and North America, expand the limits of the human imagination and radically impact the way people see the world today.

Episode one [ much of it set in Paris] charts the development of the French Revolution and the birth of the individual in modern society.
...
The French philosopher Denis Diderot, played by Jason Watkins, insisted that men must reason for themselves. His friend, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, played by David Tennant, said that civilisation had corrupted mankind to free themselves, men must listen to their emotions. Rousseau's writings gave birth to a fresh hope for a new world of liberty, equality and fraternity. These ideas would fuel the greatest social upheaval in history - the French Revolution."

Peter Ackroyd points out how many of the (largely unquestioned) assumptions we have about art, artists and the importance of the individual were established in this period:

"THE IMAGE OF THE POET, and the writer, and the artist, is firmly fixed in the public imagination. They represent all the values to which we most loyally adhere; they are deemed to embody the imperatives of sincerity and spontaneity, of integrity and dedication. Above all, they must be original.

...The great triumph, however, lies in the spontaneous expression of feeling. They must be somehow apart, an observer rather than a participant. They may be in society — but not necessarily of it. Of course a writer is allowed, indeed encouraged, to have social and political opinions. He or she is permitted to speak out against the abuses of the day, and to write novels or poems that are relevant to the needs of the age. But a premium is placed upon personal observation and knowledge; if possible, the writer ought to write out of personal experience. Above all he or she must “express” that experience in eloquent and memorable ways. As a result there is an endless temptation to write ethnic novels, or gay novels, in implicit honour of the personality of the author.

Writers have been, and can still become, popular — almost celebrities — in a culture hag-ridden by the notion of celebrity. That is why they are allowed their foibles — drugs or drink (in modest enough quantities) are permissible. They do not necessarily need to support conventions. Their lives may be deemed wretched, or lonely, but that is part of the price of their genius. Suffering is beneficial. Genius is a word often employed. A genius is above the normal laws of society. He has a unique imaginative message that he may or may not care to impart. A writer is, in any case, a person of note. He or she has a duty to take himself or herself very seriously indeed.
...

These are all commonplaces, implicit in most discussions of what is now termed “creative writing”. They are not necessarily misguided but they are provisional and temporary. They have been learnt by several generations of readers and teachers, to the extent that they now pass as received wisdom. But they spring from a very particular phase of our cultural history. They are emanations of what we now call “the Romantic age”.

Romantics - Ackroyd

The Bourne Identity

Much of the film is set in Paris, including a pretty spectacular car chase, the hero driving a mini (appropriate for an individual against the system). But it is not just a simple-minded thriller set in pretty locations, as some critics claim.

While the Ludlum book which the film was based on was published in 1980, Tom Flynn relates it to post-9/11 America. While I don't agree with his acceptance of postmodernist claims that the notion of the self is SO different today, I do find his political analysis valid:

Post 9/11 – America as World Redeemer

"... Let us revolve back upon the question asked in the opening paragraph: Why was this film released in 2002? Perhaps the film's exploration of identity is befitting of a post-9/11 America identity crisis. Some in this country are exploring behind the façade of America's historical national identity, that of world redeemer. Analogous to Bourne's identity crisis in his amnesia, America has many possible identities to audition in post-9/11. Yet our current administration seems to have fallen back on that one identity of assurance - the world redeemer identity (others may call this imperialist), that top drawer identity, which is wrapped in the tattered flags of patriotism. As the Bush administration pontificates in the language of Ares and Athena about invading Iraq while comfortably cloaked in the myth of America as world redeemer, others want to shatter the monocular vision of us versus them that the world redeemer identity thinly disguises.

Remember that Jason Bourne, an assassin before his rebirth, possessed a singular self-assured sense of his Self not unlike the self-righteous willingness of America's present administration assuredness of knowing right from wrong that alienates other nations around the globe. While 9/11 had the potential to redress America's posture with the rest of the world, it seems we still stand unconvincingly in a guise of world redeemer and militantly chomping at the bit for a fight, like the one-dimensional aspect of Ares, the warrior.
...

The Separate Fates of the Hero and the Redeemer

"Jason Bourne, in his postmodern, post re-birth condition, finds some degree of resolution by the end of the film. He kills the central authority figure who was his controller [ he doesn't, he's killed by yet another assassin sent by the system to cover up this failure] he locates his love interest and the two are reacquainted with one another after some absence. Through his fumbling about with the combination lock to his identity, he discovers that the Ares warrior archetype no longer suits him except in the form of self-defense. He makes a hero's journey that parallels Joseph Campbell's expression of the classical hero's journey..."

Tom Flynn

Flynn

Paris: bars not clubs

2006-01-17T14:10:00.000Z

From Chris Car, parisblog.org

"Bars replacing the Night Club scene?
Is it possible? Red Light would probably say 'no'. But Figaro magazine has recently suggested that the Paris night life is changing thanks to the 'portable' and the fact that nightlife people have decided that they want to sit in a corner and talk - rather than be deafened by ultra decibles [sic].
The fact is - it's hard to pick someone up if you can't even talk therefore the night crowd is spending more times in bars (like Le Baron) The cell phone or portable is making for a much for [sic] nomadic evening. Finally, bars don't have humbling door men that exclude people from entering if you're not wearing the right pair of shoes."

It makes a LOT of sense and one wonders that it took so long for people to realise the obvious advantages.

Not so sure about this:

"The bottom line is spending less money..." another very good reason

"... and going places with your 'tribe' meaning the people that do the same things you do or are interested in the same things. Hmm sounds like conformity to me - i.e. boring."

Well that depends on how interesting and varied your friends are, and being with them doesn't rule out meeting new people. But we shouldn't underestimate how important friends are:

"Zaretsky's new study is further demonstration that social interaction and social networks affect people's health and longevity more than the genes they inherit. He found, as did previous Scandinavian studies, that longevity has a heritability of only 20-30 percent. This means that genetics contributes little to how long we live - our social environment and general lifestyle are much more important."

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/06/09_twins.shtml

French culture and British camaraderie

2006-01-15T11:02:00.000Z

Jason Burke, The Observer's European correspondent:

Why do my friends despise me?

"... I have spent much of the last six months in Paris writing a book. It was pretty much as you would imagine. I have got up late, read over the previous day's efforts, strolled by the Seine with proofs under my arm and sat in the sun on benches gnawing the end of my red pen. Jean-Pierre at the bistro 100 metres from my front door knows I'll be in around 10am looking for Le Figaro, a creme and a tartine with jam; Jimmy (actually Jamal, but no matter) in the cafe opposite will expect me around 4pm for a final espresso. When inspiration lacked (often), I took myself off to one of the smaller galleries or the lively bars along the rue Oberkampf."

Not surprisingly this generated some envy amongst friends and colleagues and some typically British acerbity:

"Sadly, I have now sent in the manuscript, so these halcyon days are over. But I want to thank my friends and colleagues, often appraised of my daily routine by email, who have been so supportive. I am sure, having read thus far, you would share their generous sentiments, and I want to say how grateful I am for the constant reminders I have had of the fluidity and infinite variety of the Anglo-Saxon language. Of those messages of encouragement that are printable, perhaps my favourite is: 'Have I ever told you how much I despise you?' You have now."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,16488,1681430,00.html

Paris - last night

2006-01-14T19:39:00.000Z

Monday 9th Jan

The talk on photography at Patricia's soiree inspired me to take even more photos than usual on Monday, helped by the very good weather. But I tried to take more of the kind of thing she omits, modern French life, adopting a more documentary approach.

I felt I was getting into a routine (warned about in my talk at Patricia's the week before) by returning to the usual places for my last night on Monday. But I had been exploring the Left Bank for about five hours in the afternoon, so went back to my favourites in the evening and had a really good time again.

Henrietta, the very accomplished Dutch pianist, was playing again and waved when I came in (the "Cheers" effect). Later, as she left, she asked me how my talk had gone at Patricia's (too long and complicated - old habits die hard). There was a new, older guy singing opera - just for the love of it.

I was a bit annoyed at two young guys who came in rather noisily. I thought they were Italians, but they turned out to be Brazilians and the noisiest quietened down and listened appreciatively to the older guy and applauded loudly - and later he sang too, with a lot of Brazilian-style body movement and gestures.

Then a young blond (a Russian, I think) came in with her child in a buggy ! - and seemed to have had a bit too much to drink already. She really got into the music and was amused when I took pics of her and the child, which was just learning to walk and tottered/crawled around the bar. The two young guys played with the child then moved to her table. She then made my night by inviting me to join them and seemed quite put out when I declined - there wasn't really enough room - and she said to the two guys: "Le monsieur est si elegant." ! They didn't seem to agree :-)

The cast of characters in that bar ! - an old lady with one eye, wearing a fur coat and with a cigarette holder; a guy with beard, trilby hat and scarf looking like an opera singer; the tall doorman; the pretty young blonde barmaid; the petite, dark waitresses; another old, tall, ex pro-opera singer (I think) - a baritone, elegantly dressed - Toulouse Lautrec would love it ! I imagine it gets a lot of tourists later in the year, but for now it was mostly locals and regulars.

Then I went on to the Caveau de la Huchette - again - and apologized to Ignacio, the barman, for not bringing any women this time. Then an attractive blonde woman came and ordered a drink next to me and stayed there, so I felt it my duty to talk to her. It turned out that she was one of the singers - a trio of women in bright berets and silver ties. She comes from Amsterdam but has lived in Paris for 20 years and said she didn't know if she was Dutch or French and liked my suggestion that she was a citizen of the world. Unfortunately my ego was deflated as one of her friends introduced her to a young guy and she moved away.

Back downstairs a couple gave a fantastic display of dancing - just beautiful to watch - like top athletes or tennis players, the guy very inventive and graceful and the girl matching his moves wonderfully.

Then the three women did their second set, very good - and a big jazz band - all this for a mere 10 euros - and drinks at reasonable prices - I love the place.

The rest of the photos:
Trois Mailletz
Huchette

Soiree/Felicia's birthday

2006-01-12T23:04:00.000Z

Sunday 8th Jan.

To another of Patricia's soirees, where an American woman gave a talk on photography - in Paris and Provence. The photos were very good, but all rather pretty, tourist images of France; there were no photos of bars for example, a rather typical aspect of French life - well, that's my excuse why so many of my photos are taken in bars (see below).

Soon after I arrived Patricia noted that I was quite shy at first in a group; which surprised her after my interventions in the discussion at the soiree about Ansari's film on child labour, and my extrovert man-about-town attitude when taking her and Kathy to the Trois Mailltez, etc. This time I got talking to an extrovert New Yorker, who works as a design consultant, which enables her to live in NY and Paris. But her good fortune had been interrupted by a serious personal loss recently, which had made her, like me, determined to carpe diem. But that doesn't mean a sybaritic life, shallowly interpreted; there is intellectual pleasure too and (slipping back into lecturer mode) I recommended my current reading, Steven Johnson's "Mind Wide Open", as well as Chomsky's "Understanding Power" (sadly, like so many Americans, she wasn't familiar with his work, due to the neglect of his work by the mainstream US media). I also chatted briefly to Mike, a Canadian guy, who'd gone to school in England, and was bright and amusing in a rather British, self-deprecating way. I also made sure to get Barney Kirchhoff's card, a reservoir of knowledge about Paris.

After the talk, two American women, Lyle and Felicia, came over and said that Patricia had told them that I could tell them about places they could go on to - already I am the expert here on the local night-life ! Being an English gent - and aspiring bon viveur - I offered to take them.
We went to the usual places - to Trois Mailletz piano bar, where they played Happy Birthday for Felicia and brought her a little cake with a candle at midnight, when her birthday started - she was almost in tears.

Then she was embarrassed when Lyle seriously asked what language they spoke in the UK ! - as she couldn't understand many of them there, though she could understand me. But then many accents are so strong that we Brits have problems understanding people from some areas; so her confusion is understandable.

Dancing in the aisles at Caveau de la Huchette

Then we looked in at the Caveau des Oubliettes where there was a good jazz trio, but it was rather crowded, so we went on, a mere hundred metres or so, to Caveau de la Huchette. I think they had a nice time. Some of the people jiving were quite impressive. Then Lyle got Ignacio - the barman, who's now my pal :-) - to take photos of the three of us and then I took one of him with them, more quickly, and Ignacio said: "Il est professionel" - fortunately it came out OK.

Cannes

2006-01-12T14:38:00.000Z

After the New Year in Paris I went down to Cannes for a few days. The weather was lovely for the first two days, so I was able to eat outside on the beach (see the photo in the title bar above, taken Jan. 5th). I met up with Monique, the mother of one of my ex-students and her partner Lionel, who introduced me to a friend, Sylvie. We all had a pleasant evening in an old restaurant I had spotted in a sort of mini-Montmartre area. There was some live music and a lot of chansons sung by Charles Asnavour on the hi-fi - a very French evening (and I had to speak French all evening, so a bit tiring too).

On my last day in Cannes, I had a trip to Antibes with Sylvie, where we found a lovely bar, with art exhibitions and a view of the sea.

We left it late to get back to Cannes and I missed my train, but luckily it was no problem. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was another train in about an hour and I was just issued with another ticket - no extra - I don't think this would happen in the UK. It might even have been a good thing, as the later train had plenty of empty seats, so I wasn't irritated by people on mobiles, etc. In fact I was quite disciplined and finished my book - "Mind Wide Open", how neuroscience shows Freud was wrong - of course - Steven Johnson, recommended.

This took four hours. I then rewarded myself by going to the bar where I chatted to the conducter and barman, who were a bit bored as there were so few people. The conductor had lived in the US for a while, and spoke English well, but I forced myself to get some more French practice. The barman had lived near Bournemouth for a while, and quite liked some aspects of British culture, pubs, etc. It was reassuring that they thought my French was OK and that I should have little problem if I moved to France.

I arrived back in Paris at about 11 pm, checked into my hotel and then had a late omelette in Cafe Phare at Bastille - where cafe philos started.

NYEve/Montmartre

2006-01-12T13:02:00.000Z

New Year's Eve

Patricia gave me the phone number of Mike, another expat, who was having a NYE party. He had too many people, but, as they were mainly women, he let me in - 40 euros and a bottle of champagne. It was rather crowded and somehow I just couldn't get in the mood. The food was good and plentiful, but I just had some lamb. I'd told Kathy about it, and, since she knew him, she managed to get in too and I chatted to her for some of the time. I chatted to Bertrand, who works on satellites, and told him about my talk at Patricia's - despite that, he turned up for it.

I also chatted to Gabrielle Garz, who was wearing a very brightly coloured dress, rather cheering in the Jan. gloom.

She had studied science, but now she is a painter. She showed me some of her abstract paintings, some based on natural forms. I suggested she might do more distinctive work if she used science as the basis for her ideas, especially as she'd studied it. She said that a dealer had said there were a lot of works like hers, and a friend had made a similar suggestion to mine - so she wasn't put out.

Gabrielle's site

S. (my ex) had also made a last minute decision to come to Paris, just over New Year in her case. We met at a favourite place, the garden bar in Studio 28, Rue Tholoze, Monmartre; the cinema where Bunuel and Dali had shown their films in the 1920s and where they'd met the cultural elite of the time, Picasso, etc. The cinema was attacked by a Right wing mob.

We wandered around, S. turning down some restaurants as being too quiet. So we tried Rue des Abbesses and seemd to run out of choices, mostly crowded bars. We ended up at Le Relais Gascon, also very crowded. We narrowly avoided a row about where to sit, then it got even more crowded, people queing inside and out - and all those nice, empty restaurants just up the road.

Earlier in my trip I had done my own tour of Montmartre, checking out a couple of piano bars on Rue Norvins.

Then I walked down to Rue des Martyrs and checked out Caveau des Arts for the first time.

There was no show in the cellar bar, but the bar was full of boho types and a young guy, who looked about 15, who was belting out classic songs in a very professional way.

Paris Xmas/New Year 2005-6

2006-01-11T22:25:00.000Z

Just before Xmas I decided to go to Paris - carpe diem - it turned out to be a very good decision - possibly life changing, since I'm now thinking of moving to Paris rather than Montpellier, at least for some time.

Last time I came to Paris I found, thanks to the wonders of the internet, two American ex-pats who hold soirees/parties. I went to the Jim Haynes' one last year. This year Patricia was having one on Xmas day. It was SO much more fun than many of my xmases; nice turkey meal and wine; an English woman sculptor, Pre-Raphaelite looks, red hair, did an apple crumble - all this for a donation of 25 euros.

The hostess had Aslam Ansari talk about a film he made about child labour, mainly in Pakistan. He didn't have a lot to say, and I got into lecturing mode a bit :-) talking about the recent popularity of documentaries like Supersize Me and Michael Moore's docs, also about the new possibilities of making docs cheaply, using the new digital technology. I have to say it was good for my ego, a couple of women afterwards said they'd found what I said interesting :-) Then Patricia asked if I'd like to give the talk next Sun. ! Actually not SUCH a big compliment, since it means she doesn't have to look around for anyone else.

Trois Mailletz bar, Paris

I stayed on talking to her and Kathy, another American woman, and I mentioned how I like to stroll around at night and check out interesting bars, e.g. an old favourite of mine which I went to on Xmas eve, Le Trois Mailletz, on the left bank, just across from Notre Dame. The guys who built ND are said to have drunk there. It has a large cellar bar where they have late night cabaret. Upstairs. Henrietta, a Dutch woman plays the piano very well, and a wide variety, from opera to pop numbers. A young Japanese woman sang opera arias VERY well, and also, Jim, an older Scottish guy, a retired pro opera singer, a great showman, who wandered around the room singing to people. He has a very powerful voice for a relatively small guy and a good sense of humour. There was also another French male singer, who must also have been a pro. What a great night !

Patricia said that she knew the place, but had never been inside, and said it's not so easy for a woman to wander into bars on her own. So I offered to take her, then Kathy said she'd like to go too. So I agreed to take them both on Tues. I went back on Monday to check that there will be music and it won't be empty early in the week. I shouldn't have worried, it was very lively again, and I got talking to Jim, the Scottish singer, Pauline, his New Zealander girlfriend and to the Henrietta, the Dutch pianist. Unfortunately he and Pauline are returning to home in Folkstone today, but there will be a female singer. We might go to the cabaret, but I think it will be too late for Kathy, it doesn't start till 11.30.

I then went on to Caveau de la Huchette where Leah Kline was singing with Bert De Kort and the Intenational Jazz All Stars. When I arrived it was the break so I stayed upstairs in the bar. Then a woman came and ordered a drink beside me and coughed - I said: "It's all these French smokers". She said she just had a cold - and she was Leah Kline ! We got chatting and it turned out she'd possibly like some help with her web site and I suggested she start a blog. I also poured scorn on the guy who was going to do some illustrations for her poems, but with an Arty approach, i.e. they'd have nothing to do with her poems !

Leah Kline at Caveau de la Huchette
www.leahkline.com
Leah's blog set up by me.

Trois Mailletz/authenticity

2006-01-11T20:28:00.000Z

Tues. 27th Dec

I took Patricia to the Trois Mailletz on Tues., Kathy couldn't make it. It was fairly empty but that meant less noise and a choice of tables - on the left, just inside the door - good view of the pianist/singer and less smoke.

I was developing my talk for Patricia's soiree in my head; it's was to be about authenticity - after all this is the Paris of Sartre and Camus.

But there will be a media angle, relating it to Ansari's talk of the week before; it will be about authentically documenting life (objectivity, NOT balance, etc.) and living a life worth documenting, i.e. living authentically. The latter involves taking a certain amount of risk and leaving oneself open to experience, like coming to Paris at Xmas. The hostess was quite entertained by some of my stories about what's happened to me on my various trips abroad, so I thought I'd build them into it, rather than making it too academic.

It will also involve the value and danger of habituation; we can adapt to almost anything, people had good and bad days even in concentration camps. But we do tend to stick with old habits (sensible from a survival point of view, if they've worked they probably will go on working). I remember reading that after about 30, MOST people don't try new things.