Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
Jane's Blogosphere: blogtrack for Natalie Solent. 
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Saturday, July 20, 2002
Hiya, Instapundies. If you've ended up here it means my permalinks are broken. The cryonics post you seek is headed "Not a sparrow falls..." and was released to a hushed and waiting world at 11.37am on Wednesday July 17. And here's a worthwhile trick that I learned from the Professor's FAQ page: "While I'm at it, a surprisingly large number of people don't know how to use the "find in page" feature that most browsers have. Control-F, or clicking on "Edit" and selecting "find" will let you search for an individual word on a page. It's very useful, but I'm amazed how many people don't know about it." History? No call for it in America either. Billy Beck of No Treason (the site that made a blogger of Libertarian Alliance Forum fighter ace Tim Starr, which is a bit like being the steam drill that, in a happier end to the old song, finally got John Henry's endorsement on TV) sent me this article by Christopher Hitchens about the decline in history teaching in the US. I don't know exactly how far our Hitch had come in his progress from Left wing gadfly to whatever-he-is-now when he wrote it, and that ignorance adds to the interest. The usual stats documenting the awful void between modern ears are spiced up by facts I didn't know. How's this for a new take on an alternative world where the American Revolution had never happened:
"Anticipating the victorious outcome of the Seven Years' War, the British disputed about which French colony they should annex. The choice narrowed to Guadeloupe, rich in spices, and Canada, rich in space .... The pro-Canada forces were better organized and financed. But the pro-Guadeloupe lobby made a telling point on the eve of its defeat. If we take Canada, it argued in a finely written polemic, then the ambitious American colonists will no longer require our protection from France. Indeed, they already manifest the stirrings of an independence movement ... Within two decades of this debate, the Tory loyalists of His Majesty King George (Part III) were scuttling to sanctuary over the Canadian border."Hitchens goes on to say that even indifferent students wake up when asked to consider what would have happened if the British had chosen Guadeloupe. Canada French, America British, and English cuisine the best in the world? Friday, July 19, 2002
And if you still can't get enough of me... I rant away some more over at Samizdata. Read this old post of mine if you want to know what's going on. 75k. I'm over the moon. Thank you Guardianoids and all other loyal fans of Na-ta-lee the Sabre-toothed Beast of the Blogs. May I just mention to the former group of honoured visitors that the centre pages of the Guardian are graced today by an absolutely splendid column? Stuff the £1,000, it's true. Look, I undertake to demonstrate my independence by making the effort to insult those few of the judges I haven't insulted already (Er, sorry Ev, I know I owe you everything), but seriously, every word of this Guardian column is pure gold. What Spain could teach us about island grabbing. Y'know this is one cool blog I have here. Just admiring it. Still cool. Gotta check again, has it got any less cool while I wasn't looking. No, still doing fine. Truth in advertising. James M. Capozzola, who runs The Rittenhouse Review also has a site called ||| trr ||| which he bills as being the humorous counterpart to the main site. (I just lost my vertical-line keyboard virginity.) With me so far? Now I like a bit of humour, so I take a look and I see this: "English Bulldogs are friendly, kind, loving, loyal, strong, tenacious, and comical -- sources of endless entertainment.The funny bit is that for a whole minute I thought it was a satirical comment on the English character, using our national emblem as an icon. The references to mixed ancestry, quietness, tubbiness, amiable dopiness, hypochondria, and, I am afraid, snoring, burping and farting are all spot-on. Only the bit about friendly and sloppy greetings being offered to intruders - our state-induced passivity towards criminals may be deplorable, but no one I know goes so far as to offer any visiting drug-crazed knifemen a welcoming snog - alerted me to the fact that it's talking about a real dog. I know, I know, I can't have been reading very carefully, but it's Mr Capozolla's own fault for putting a serious announcement in the humour section. Anyway, she's for real, she's canine not human, she's housetrained and lovable, and she needs a home somewhere within reach of Texas. Take a look if you think you might be able to help.
UPDATE: Mr Capozolla charmingly adds, "It's too bad I didn't say anything about dentition. That would have fit in quite well. (I'm sure you know British teeth are often the subject of derision over here.)" Oh, really? I could go off this chap, you know. But the sweet picture of Mildred the bulldog very nearly mollified me. Then I got the next e-mail. "And the constant, relentless shedding. I don't know if that's a British trait." Sure, it is. You could knit a jumper from the stuff that Natalie the Gorilla Woman leaves behind wherever she goes. Any other nice comments, you railway-toothed Yank? "My question is why do almost all Bulldogs hate rain? I would have thought they would be used to it by now." Expert Opinion. Constitutional Law professor Eugene Volokh is quoted by the seriously famous Larry Elder in a column about whether the words "under God" should or should not be included in the US Pledge of Allegiance. Yep, that Eugene Volokh.* A blogger. One of our boys. You know how Tim Blair is always saying that all the idiocies are coalescing into one vast ball of pus? Looks like all the righteous thinkers like Elder and Volokh are coalescing into one vast antibody. *As opposed to all the thousands of other Eugene Volokhs you keep meeting everywhere. Here's a sweet but pointless article by Simon Tisdall. He feels sad that it took the IRA thirty years to apologise. He wishes the Israelis and the Palestinians could be nicer to each other right now, but even if they can't manage that quite yet he just knows that one day we will all look back on this and laugh. Group hug! Group hug! The crimes and folly of mankind. Hokiepundit, studying in Britain, was shocked at British ignorance of history. Earlier he said that his friends looked blank when he mentioned the Kingdom of Mercia. I'm saddened too, but not shocked. The history of Britain came close to being a forbidden subject in the schools over the last few years. First, they stirred up history, geography, economics and social studies (especially social studies) in a big undifferentiated stew called "humanities" and let it bubble away with a peppering of half-remembered Marxism. Any scrap of history still identifiable as such after that process was fished out and grilled to a frazzle under beams of white liberal self-hatred. (I think even Estelle Morris has spoken about going into a school and seeing displays on the walls celebrating every culture but the native one.) And if that wasn't enough, you had to pass a frigging exam on how the stew was cooked before you could eat a bite. History at GCSE level largely ignored facts and concentrated on getting the wee bairns to ape the methods of grown-up historians. A primary teacher once ran the multiple choice section of a GCSE history exam intended for 16 year-olds past her class of bright eleven year-olds. She coached them in logical inference, distinguishing primary from secondary sources, and so on, but taught them nothing whatsoever about the period they were meant to be studying. They did fine. Logic is a fine thing, but if you want an exam in it, call it "Logic" not "history". Iain Murray is right to note that the public gobble up popular history on TV because they have been starved of it in school. The Guardian includes me in its list of favourite weblogs. But "broadly right wing news and views"? Woweee, that got the hits coming. Not. Note to printer: delete and insert: "Insanely anarcho-capitalist, gun totin', drug liberalisin', no-decent-europhile-is-safe-in-bed news and views, plus sewing." Thank you. Or they could employ the slogan I used to describe my blog when putting myself forward to the Guardian: "Greece to Peter Briffa's Rome." Which brings me rather neatly to the Guardian's weblog competition. Sorry Junius, sorry Kolkata Libertarian, sorry me, but it is the necessary and manifest destiny of Public Interest to win this one. The thought of the man who greeted Guardian readers with these inspiring words: "So, to all the social workers, school teachers, trades unionists and child molesters who make up their readership, a big hello! Stop worrying about globalisation, the rising tide of racism in western society, and the vexed issue of everything, and just relax why don't you, it's the weekend."- getting a grand of Guardian money has an appeal that surmounts all divisions of caste or opinion. Anita Roddick, a woman famously in touch with her inner shaman, has, I know, already set her heart on Briffa for the Big One. Thursday, July 18, 2002
Calloo, callay, it finally published. Now I can get rid of the errors, omissions and duplicate paragraphs that have been bugging me all day. If you type http://paulwright.blogspot.com/ you get "Tanstaafl." But if you type http://tanstaafl.blogspot.com/ you get "Tanstaafl." Clear? Tanstaafl only appears to have one post, though. Sad. Never mind, Tanstaafl has loads!
I was stopped short by the reference to "the British Generals that used Australians as shock troops in World War One", with particular mention of Gallipoli. This isn't a campaign I know much about, but around six years ago I recall reading what turned out to be a very controversial article in either the Spectator or the Economist saying that this belief was an Australian nationalist myth. I have not found the article on Google, and, I repeat, I have read little else about the subject, and of course I am not impartial. Despite all these caveats, it is true that many readers will be surprised to learn that there were many more British soldiers killed at Gallipoli than Australian. I was. This Anzacs.org website gives the total figures for those killed, broken down by nationality as: British (including Irish) 29, 134I did not find any mention of comparative casualty rates. It may well be that the Australians and New Zealanders had a higher proportion killed than the British, but even so those 29,000 give the lie to the idea that the British sat back and did nothing. The same website goes on to publish the following FAQ: I don't think it diminishes the Anzacs' memory in any way to point this out. Their dauntless courage was acknowledged by all who saw it. In Dante's Hell (Niven and Pournelle's version) flatterers were condemned to have excrement pour out of their mouths, and and the violent had to stand in a lake of boiling blood. What crime would condemn one to forever press "publish" in Blogger, and watch that stupid page picture eternally form and reform, knowing all the time that it wouldn't work?
Whatever it is, I'M SORRY! I can't seem to link to Jim Henley's "Unqualified Offerings." It can be found at: http://www.highclearing.com Motives of Palestinian Collaborators/ Resisters. Jim Henley writes, "Indeed, money is NOT the sole motivation of a lot of Palestinian informers. They are also, in many cases, being blackmailed by Shin Bet. The hook can be anything from sex to petty crime. (See this, among other sources.) Agent recruitment is not a gentlemen's game anywhere in the world."
True. I was going to add a similar note of realism to my earlier post, but the moment passed. I suspect that once one has been drawn in to a spy network for whatever reason (or mixture of reasons), the fact that death is the penalty for discovery will breed loyalty to the network itself, and perhaps eventually loyalty to its cause. Northern Ireland has given us examples in both directions.
A curate's egg of an article by Hugo Young concerning the proposed changes to the justice system. Gosh, he does like the word "libertarian", doesn't he? Pity he calls Roy Jenkins one. I'd say that Jenkins started the tilt to towards the poor, sad, misunderstood criminals that, inevitably, caused the reaction in favour of illiberal measures now. Jenkins wasn't above shameless manipulating of public fear of crime for his own ends, either. If you let me get started on him and the firearms laws you'd be here for a long session. Getting back to Hugo Young, he describes the European Human Rights Act as "driven forward by the inescapable demands of history." Mistah Young he one foolish old Marxist. Don't he know that is mighty bad juju! The personifications of concepts such as History and Society really prefer to sleep unmolested on the Albert Memorial. The last time incautious mortals awoke the personification of History, she demonstrated that she had room in her capacious dustbin for them.
Even so, Young makes some good points about Labour's history and culture, and he is alert to the great danger facing British justice when he says, "But an insinuating needle can destroy the fabric of the system just as well." Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio reprise. Captain Heinrichs speaks out on doctrine: "From an Anabaptist point of view, such disagreement in doctrine should be discussed only after much personal prayer and meditation, and then only in private with other members of the congregation. Public expressions of doctrinal disagreement is to be reserved for genuinely serious matters of faith, (ala 95 Theses, which Mr Oneill's plaint falls far short of). His petulance should have remained under cover, perhaps to be discussed in the backroom, with his dearest friends, after several pints of Guinness (certified brewed in Dublin, of course). How can I sound more snarky? Please advise."Don't worry. You're doing just fine. :-) Wednesday, July 17, 2002
The "Palestinian Resistance" you don't hear about. Read about them in an article by Larry Henry in The American Prowler. (Weird name for a journal. "Prowler" round here means a criminal on the lookout for opportunities.) Link via The Corner. Sigh. The direct link doesn't work. Click The Corner.
Larry Henry exaggerates. Surely most of these "collaborators" work for money rather than for their convictions. But I say that the man whose convictions allow him to take money in secret to prevent atrocities is better than the man whose convictions demand that he commit atrocities.
"Not a sparrow falls..." Serious discussion of whether cryonics is incompatible with Christianity, or belief in an immortal soul generally, from A Voyage to Arcturus and Rand Simberg (Thanks to England's Sword for the steer.) No, I have no plans to go for the popsicle option myself; it's a bad bet and simply does not appeal to me. Yes, those contemplating cryo-storage should first make their peace with God - as all men should at all times, but particularly if you are rich, scared of death and terminally ill. But for all that I do not see that there is any logical incompatibility between life extension, which is just a bigger dose of the artificial means nearly all of us use to extend and protect life, and a belief in judgement after death. As Ecclesiastes says, however long you live you will be dead a lot longer.
Nor do I see a watertight moral dividing line between the hope for longer life and the hope of being physically brought back from the dead. The argument that electric shocks can restore to health those who would have been considered "dead" a few decades ago is true, but I shall ignore it as a distraction. Let's assume that you are dead dead, like hamburger. If you are destined to be non-supernaturally brought back to life (temporarily, before finally dying again), God knows about it. He sees it happening from His standpoint outside time in the same way as He sees you at your computer now. Rand Simberg's picture of there being a storage facility for the "pending" souls is amusingly literal, but has the right idea. Don't worry. God won't be caught napping.
A few cryonicists also entertain the hope of literal immortality perhaps in the form of stored information slipping through the Big Crunch wormhole into the next universe, and the one after that and so on. This is incompatible with Christianity, but since it is statistically certain (think about it) that something'll kill 'em before eternity ends, let's not get in a stew about it. Only micro-blogging today. It's Sports Day. Oh, can I make a date with you all for about this time in the year 2012? By that time my offspring will be, I trust, all grown up, loaded with achievements and equipped with stratospheric levels of self-esteem. I will then feel free to tell some very funny stories about the egg and spoon race back in 2002. Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Letter to Iran. I heartily wish that the Algerian fundamentalists had not had their election victory stolen from them by the army. Reports of the two-sided cruelty of the civil war raging there put me in mind of the Thirty Years War in Europe. Or of a cockfight. The fundamentalists are not, to put it mildly, my favourite people, and the regime they would have instituted would have been as repressive and obscurantist as the Iranian regime has been. Such a regime would have itself murdered thousands, as Iran's did. It would have hedged and lied and manoeuvred to avoid being thrown out when its time was clearly up, as Iran's regime is doing now. Yet Iran's fate is likely to be happier than Algeria's. No ideas go in or out of Algeria. The Iranians are looking forward, and outwards.
This open letter expresses solidarity and hope without presuming to lay down the law to the Iranian people. I like that. Why not read it and pass it on? (Or don't, if you don't want to! John Weidner was the sort of kid who sometimes preferred to finish his book rather than be dragged off to participate, and has added a little note to the effect that no one need feel pressured. But hey, it's voluntary, so why not?) Daniel Johnson says all that needs saying about the extra government cash for schools. I have a particular hatred for "initiatives". Anyone else remember the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) of ten years ago? I scarcely do, and I taught the thing. I hit my head against the wall a few times and some mental pictures swirled up from the murk: the swanky TVEI centre full of exciting electronic goodies, and the teachers' course on film editing - quite fun, that, though I never used it for teaching. I also remember that the pupils had to share textbooks in my science class. That's a real pain, especially if sharers work at different paces, and it means that you can't give them homework from the textbook. The cost of my film course would have paid for the textbooks many times over, but of course that wasn't allowed. The Guardian's Zimbabwe correspondent was actually acquitted of false reporting. But he still has to leave the country. Libertarian Samizdata has mutated into Samizdata.net and is now to be found at http://www.samizdata.net/blog Monday, July 15, 2002
I shouldn't. I really shouldn't. Shouldn't what? Shouldn't quote the text of the Papal Bull Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio right next to Brendan O'Neill's trumpet blast against the monstrous regiment of bloggers. The juxtaposition is so unfair. So disproportionate. Such an ignoble fusion of the sacred and the profane. So trivial a use of a dreadful chapter of history. So - so - so irresistible... "Since the duty of the Apostolic Office has been divinely entrusted to Us, although We are unworthy of it, the general care of the flock of the Lord is upon Us, and thence, for the sake of the faithful custody and healthy direction of it, in the manner of a vigilant pastor, to carefully watch and attentively provide so that those who in this age, sins demanding, relying upon their own prudence, rise up against the discipline of the orthodox faith, more knowledgeably and perniciously than usual, and by perverting the meaning of the Sacred Scriptures with superstitions and false innovations, contrive to tear the unity of the Catholic Church and the seamless robe of the Lord asunder, must be thrown out of the sheepfold of Christ, lest they continue a magisterium of error, who despise to be disciples of the truth."It was that phrase error-prone that set me off. The voices made me do it. (Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio was promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1559 and provided for "The renewal of whatever judgments and punishments promulgated against heretics and schismatics in whatever manner whatsoever; and the imposition of other punishments on prelates and princes of whatever degree and dignity who are guilty of heretical or schismatic perversity.")
Bite the hand that funds you. Neil Dodds clarifies the status of the EU Observer: The EU Observer isn't an official EU magazine, but is the organ of the EU parliament's Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities. The group includes a couple of members of the UK Independence Party (small anti-Euro grouping) and several members of France's Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions party, along with a couple more I've never heard of. Members of the European Parliament often join loose groupings when they share common interests. Amid all the anti-Spanish schadenfreude about Morocco's invasion of the disputed island of Perejil I haven't seen anyone saying that it is probable that Morocco was specifically emboldened by Jack Straw. But it seems clear to me. What better time for them? Morocco sees the British government aching to surrender a British enclave on the tip of Spain. All parties, except those irritating Gibraltarians, seem to agree that this pimple on the smooth chin of a modern European state has to be sqeezed and quick. "Righty-ho," the Moroccans think, "just how het-up can the Spaniards get if we start a little tidying up of our own borders? Not quite ready to take Cueta yet, but let's just establish which way history's going." |