Ephemeral Isle

 

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Monday

2 May 2005

Exploding Toads

This is the point where the world tips over into the absolutely bizarre.  In Hamburg, Germany authorities are stymied by what has become known as the Pond of Death, where the local toads have been exploding all over the place without so much as a by your leave.  Apparently hundreds of the creatures have been seen crawling out of the water, making an odd squeaking noise, and then detonating with a violence that sends amphibian entrails flying in all directions.  No one seems to know why this is happening or why only toads are affected, but I suspect that this is just the tip of the ice berg and that we're going to be seeing some sort of Quatermass scenario involving extraterrestrial invasions in the near future. 

Exploding toads today, exploding elephants tomorrow; mark my words.

Tuesday

3 May 2005

Progress Marches On!

In what has got to be the most poorly thought through piece of product design in history, a Spanish company has unveiled a washing machine that forces men to take their turn at doing the laundry.

For those of you who have been avoiding Old Europe lately, Spain is one of the most male dominated societies on the continent-- a fact I can attest to from personal experience.  When my wife and I arrived in  Madrid on our honeymoon a few years ago, we dragged ourselves into our hotel lobby after a seventeen hour flight only to discover that our reservations had been lost.  That is seventeen hours in coach, by the way, which explains why my left knee was one ball of throbbing pain and why my reaction to the news that we had nowhere to sleep was to slump into a chair in a state of utter exhaustion and resignation.  My wife, she being made of sterner stuff, tried to argue with the manager, but for all her American assertiveness she might as well have been a whisper on the wind.  He literally neither heard nor saw her.   It was only when I managed to find a last reserve of strength hidden behind my spleen and ask the manager in my appalling Spanish if he could recommend another hotel that we managed to rouse him into anything resembling action. 

Of course, my experience of relations between the Spanish sexes is somewhat limited, as the hotel that the manager recommended us to had a honeymoon suite that consisted of a Spartan room with a carpet-less floor and twin camp beds made of light-grade iron and foam rubber mattresses less than an inch thick.  The capacious balcony should have made up for this, but unfortunately it merely gave us an excellent view of the street below that informed us that our hotel was situated between the local drug dealer and a brothel.  It is not surprising, therefore, that we checked out of said hotel at two AM and flew to Amsterdam.

At any rate, the new socialist government in Madrid has decreed that traditional machismo is now verboten and all aspects of Spanish culture that do not conform to the doctrine of the true faith of modern feminism are to be extinguished forthwith.

My wife, who regards herself as a feminist of the more attenuated strain, reacted to this dictat with "Phiff!  Yeah, right!"

But that didn't stop one Pep Torres of the DeBuenaTinta design group from designing a washing machine that  will doubtless have the blessings of that valiant stalwart in the war against Islamofascism, the prime minister Senor Zapatero. 

Senor Torres's machine has a fingerprint identification sensor in the "on" button that makes it impossible for it to be activated by the same person twice running.   The theory is that with such a machine, it will force the lazy husband to get off the coach and run his fair share of the laundry.  You may have already seen the obvious flaw here.  Just because you need alternate persons to activate the machine doesn't mean that you need alternate persons to load  and unload it, which is where the real work is.  Senor Torres acknowledges this and says that future versions of the washing machine will have fingerprint identification door handles as well to avoid sneaky shirking.

Sorry, but that isn't the design flaw that I had in mind.  In fact, in order for this politically correct machine to work, you actually have to install one first, and unless Senor Zapatero intends to force people to buy them under penalty of five years imprisonment, I see a distinct uphill battle here.  And even if your odd Spaniard is frightened enough of his wife to buy one of these, I'm sure that most who do will fall back on the traditional male survival strategy of utter domestic incompetence to get out of doing his turns.  Nothing spells "No, Honey, don't go near the machine; I don't want all my jumpers to shrink again, thank you" like a thumb-fingered husband.

On the other hand, my wife, always the most perceptive in our family, pointed out that most men would simply opt for staying smelly.  As an ex-bachelor I must admit that she has a point there.

And in case you're wondering, the Szondy family does its bit for the local economy and farms its laundry out as a rule.

Wednesday

4 May 2005

Not Much Going On

This is one of those irritating times when I seem to be trapped in the horse latitudes of writing.  I had a solid topic yesterday, I know what I'm going to be writing about tomorrow, but as for today, I'm in the doldrums waiting for the winds of topicality to fill my sails. 

I had thought to write about the new addition to Zen, as faithful readers will know is the name for my computer network.  Even though I have something like four computers, two palmtops, and the odd number of peripherals linked into Zen, the one thing I've been lacking until now has been a reliable backup memory.  Until now I've been using the oldest and slowest computer in the network as backup, but by the very nature of Moore's Law this means that the computer with the smallest memory is doing the backup work and so only the most vital files are duplicated.  And even then, I'm such a distrustful so and so that I end up using stopgaps like a flash memory fob as the backup for this website. 

That changed last Saturday when I finally broke down and bought a networkable external hard drive with 120 Gig of memory.  I didn't have much choice.  It was on clearance and had a whacking great rebate, so it was the retail version of holding a gun to my head and saying "buy it."

Anyway, it was plug and play, which means that I spent all of Sunday hooking it into the Zen (easy enough) and then loading its drivers on to all the computers only to find myself fighting against security programmes, firewalls, and all sorts of arcane minutiae that stood between me having a full-blown backup drive and not a little silver box with a couple of blinking lights on it. 

Eventually, after a great deal of running about and finally with me and the main laptop sitting on the floor in front of the PC I was able to fiddle the lot into agreeing to settle into cybernetic co-existence without my having to exercise the nuclear option of calling tech support.

I'd like to say that this was the point when I could sit back with a pale ale and the sense of a job well done, but I still had to shift the vital files from the PC and the Main laptop (Zen 3000 and Zen 5000, as they're known in these parts) to the backup.  That took a lot of clicking and waiting-- not to mention the fact that this is one very polite backup system that requires each computer in turn to ask permission of the last to hand over read-write access. 

You'd think that at the end of all this my life would be running much smoother, wouldn't you?  I thought so too, but I still have an automatic backup programme that refuses to install properly and my hope of clearing up memory on the main laptop is still a pipedream because I still don't trust the new backup drive.   Odds are that I'll be shifting the secondary files to the Zen 3000 and the primaries to the backup while keeping only the primaries on the Zen 5000, but that will come when I actually trust this intruding piece of machinery.  As to what the other two computers are going to do, I'll think of something.

Another thing I was going to write about is the new Doctor Who episode, which aired tonight.  It was the new Dalek episode and I was really looking forward to it, but I forgot that there's a delay with the North American transmissions and tonight's was actually World War Three.  Not bad, but not the best (Iraq campaign digs and all that) and not what I'd want to waste page real estate on.  Besides, I'd been playing the new Dalek online game  in preparation (purely in the spirit of research, mind) and I'd no inclination to shift gears at the last moment.   I'd only got to level three, after all.

I suppose I could have gone on about the recent UN conference on nuclear non-proliferation, but Kofi Annan damage control is all so sordid.

No, I think I'll just leave it as is.  Sorry there was nothing to say, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.  Or the donut sinks.  Or whatever. 

Thursday

5 May 2005

Election Day

It's another election day (seems like we've been having a lot of these lately since Saddam got nicked) and it is once again time for the people to make their voices heard.  As with the recent American elections, the one in Britain today revolves around a raft of issues.  Some of these are trivial, some will determine Britain's continued existence as a sovereign state and a free people.  But regardless of whether you back the manifestos of Labour, Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats, remember that all of this takes place against the backdrop of war.

By war, I don't mean the Iraq campaign.  That is just one theatre in a conflict as widespread and as potentially devastating as the Cold War nearly was for the world.  Nor does it have anything to do with intelligence reports about WMDs, or whether Tony Blair spun the argument for going to war against Saddam, or any of the other sideshows that have to do with a decision that was taken over two years ago and is now academic.  By war I mean the continued threat that we face from Islamofacist fanatics who still wish to see us all (Christian, Jew, Hindu, Atheist, and moderate Muslim) dead or enslaved. 

It is a real war and not the thing of rhetoric. 

True, we have had incredible success of late.  Saddam is in gaol,  terrorist attacks against the West have been largely unsuccessful, elections in Iraq were a dramatic turning point, the people of Lebanon forced the Syrians out of their country, Libya has given up its nuclear weapons programmes, the likes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia have made reformist noises, Pakistan has been remarkably cooperative lately, terrorist attacks in Iraq have proven more damaging to the attackers than the Coalition, and we've even picked up Al Qaeda's number three man. 

But we are still a long way from victory and things could still go horribly wrong. We still face the threat of Iran and North Korea becoming nuclear arms suppliers to those maniacs, of the flowering democracy movements faltering, and of a self-absorbed Europe losing its stomach for the fight and sinking to a morass of demographic suicide.  It's even more ironic and disturbing that as Al Qaeda loses support in the Middle East, its base has begun to shift to the disgruntled immigrant populations of Europe.  It's like chasing Hitler out of Germany and discovering that the Wehrmacht had set up bases in Croydon. 

In other words, there are still those who dearly wish to see London turned into a radioactive ruin, and they are not all farting aliens out of Doctor Who.  They are very real enemies with a proven taste for bombings, beheadings, and murdering children.   Shortening the hospital waiting lists doesn't count for much when the casualty wards are clogged with nerve gas victims.

So, when you cast your vote today, and you most certainly should, bear that in mind.  Whether you're a Tory, Labourite, or Liberal Democrat, be sure your vote is one that will cause the terrorists to react with dismay.

Or you can just chuck it all and join me in voting Monster Raving Loony Party. 

Friday

6 May 2005

Labour Wins

The returns are in and the Labour party has held on to power for an historic third term, albeit with a reduced majority.  Though it's no surprise to anyone except the wildly optimistic, I won't pretend that I'm pleased with the result.  After eight years of Mr. Blair I can't say that he's an unknown quantity who will act better than my expectations.  He is, however, a basically decent and intelligent man and I can hope that his better and more sensible qualities will prevail.

On the other hand, I doubt if he'll get much of a chance.  Many in his own party and in the media loath him and the blow that the Labour majority has taken may well herald Mr. Blair's early retirement, which means we face the prospect of Gordon Brown in No. 10.  Given what I know about Mr. Brown, I have the terrible fear that 2009 will be a replay of 1979 and that we will see another Winter of Discontent with the added insult of the Royal Navy being reduced to two duck punts and a lido ring. 

I can only say congratulations to the winners and pray that I am wrong about the future. 

Monday

9 May 2005

Exterminate!

In an attempt counter mounting casualties and defections, Iraqi terrorist groups widen their recruitment of foreign fighters.

Mother's Day + 1

And now, as a special feature, we are pleased to present the latest creation of Miss Emma Szondy, age 2 ¾, entitled For Mama on Mother's Day.

Tuesday

10 May 2005

Surviving Mother's Day

I have discovered that perhaps the most dangerous holiday on the calendar is, without a doubt, Mother's Day.  Normally, one would think that a spring Sunday set aside in honour of motherhood would be the pleasantest, indeed even the most sentimental of days, but beneath that greeting card veneer of joy and familial tranquillity lurks a heart of darkness only to be rivalled by Opening Day at Lord's.

The events of this year's Mother's Day were partially my fault.  The traditional start of Mother's Day is for the mother in question to be awakened at what seems like the crack of dawn by tiny cheerful voices and being presented in bed with a breakfast tray heaping with half-cooked pancakes, coffee which has been prepared by dumping the grounds into the tea pot and then adding lukewarm water, overdone bacon, burnt toast, a small vase containing a flower of precarious height and size, and a hand-made card that makes the entire meal seem like a feast in Valhalla.  If the children of the house are too young to fulfil this task it is up to the husband to step into the breech and prepare the breakfast-- preferably with more skill and an understanding of the workings of the French press.  The hand-made card is optional.

Being well aware of this, I had intended to get up before my wife and prepare her a proper breakfast tray, but at 5:30 AM our daughter Emma woke me up with her usual pre-dawn demand to be tucked back in and presented with a bottle of soy milk.  I heard the familiar cry only to be puzzled by the fact that it suddenly stopped and in the silence I went to investigate.  It turned out that before retiring I'd filled her bottle and in a fit of absent mindedness I'd left it on the short bookcase next to Emma's bed.  My daughter had woken up, given voice, seen the bottle sitting within easy reach, and had decided to cut out the middle man; leaving me with nothing more to do than to rearrange her duvet, kiss her on the forehead, and go back to my own bed.

An hour later, I awoke from a fitful dream involving brass window clasps and an express train.  I thought that I had to do something.  What it was, I wasn't sure, but I suddenly recalled that Emma had actually got her own bottle.   It couldn't have been that.  Then I remembered that it was Sunday and that I'd probably thought it was Monday in my bleary waking.  Satisfied that it was a mistake, I went back to sleep. 

I awoke three and a half hours later to a wife who was markedly unsympathetic when I staggered into the kitchen hunting for the kettle and mentioning  that I'd not having had my tea yet.   This was followed by the cold observation that a) I had forgotten Mother's Day and b) though I'd restocked the refrigerator with beer last night, I had failed to do the same in regard to the diet soda.  If you have never shared a house with a woman for whom, as stand in for your child, you have overlooked Mother's Day breakfast and subsequently been caught out in favouring hop-based beverages over low-calorie carbonated drinks (without caffeine), then you have not experienced what the words "in the dog house" truly imply.

Still, even the strongest feelings mellow over time and all was, more or less, forgiven by the time we set out that afternoon for a Mother's Day barbeque at a friend's house where the food was excellent, the wine flowed easily, and the company light and congenial, allowing my family to attend its first proper social function in months rather than simply popping a head in before rushing off on some errand or emergency.

Now, the peculiar thing about our circle of friends is that we are closely involved in the theatre and if there is one thing that is nearly impossible to do it is raising young children and treading the boards, so the active thespian community tends to be concentrated amongst the childless; i.e. the young, the single, and the statistically homosexual.  My wife and I are among the exception, as I am a writer and she is more in the directing and production side of things these days, but on the whole it makes for things like a Mother's Day barbeque turning out rather odd with about twenty people in attendance and only two mothers amongst the lot; my wife and our hostess. 

On the plus side, this made it relatively easy to keep an eye on the only two children present and for each of them to have a constantly rotating variety of playmates.  This is a particularly good thing, since you average toddler has energy reserves that would put a nuclear aircraft carrier to shame.  

Of course, this constant attention is not enough to counter my daughter's unerring ability to send toys and various other items into inaccessible regions and it was only a matter of time before she managed to pot a football under a hedge and into the rough.  Since it was my daughter who'd done the deed, I decided that it was only fair that I go to retrieve the ball, so I hopped over the fence and made my way through the underbrush keeping a sharp eye out for the brambles.  Unfortunately, it was at this point that what I thought was a gentle slope covered in scrub to be in reality a sharp cliff  with a drop of, I estimated, half a mile and I was forced to go hand over hand clutching at the stouter parts of a rhododendron bush until I could reach the imperilled football, which rested in a bough of very sharp holly.  Asking myself what would W. G. Grace do in similar circumstances, I got as firm a grip as I could manage on the rhododendron with one hand while with the other I grasped at the wet, slippery leather of the offending sphere.  Somehow I gained a purchase and lifted the ball from the pointed leaves in a moment which on reflection was less dramatic than it seemed at the time.   Having won the prize, I tossed it back through the hole in the hedge with light-hearted scream for someone to for God's sake catch the damn thing before it rolled back  and knocked me off my perch, sending me plummeting to my doom.

Or words to that effect.

In light of all of this, I intend to spend Father's Day in some suitable bunker with a bottle of brandy and a portable DVD player of Ray Harryhausen films.

One can't be too careful.

Wednesday

11 May 2005

Dalek

TV executives hate me.  They spend millions of dollars producing all sorts of edgy, trendy programmes to entice and entrance me and I don't give a toss for hardly any of it.  In fact, if American network television programming is the virtual common of the Western world, then I am the 21^st century version of a hermit. 

It's not that I don't watch television.  I do, though almost all modern fare is of no interest to me whatsoever.  I far prefer DVD collections of Danger Man to surrealistic series about depression era carnivals; trendy comedies about the angst of wealthy, vain, self-indulgent sexually promiscuous housewives, New York career women, or plastic surgeons; "innovative" soap operas about the angst of plane crash survivors; dramas about the angst of twentysomething spies with family troubles;  "reality" shows about the angst of exhibitionists; endless profiles about the angst of being a celebrity; medical shows that depict all casualty wards as battlefield triage platforms and put me off ever going to hospital; medical shows that treat all hospitals as staffed by smart-ass doctors with the sexual maturity of a rather slow fourteen-year old and put me off ever seeking any medical treatment ever again; or anything with a final "reflective" scene backed up with a thoughtful guitar score that should, frankly, be banned by law.

It's little wonder that when I go to parties and people start talking about Desperate Anatomy, Grey's Housewives, CSI: Traffic Squad or Will & Order I just make polite noises until I can change the subject to window-box ant farms or kangaroo stretching for the under fives.  It's either that or admit that the only two programmes that I follow with any loyalty are Doctor Who and Justice League Unlimited. 

Which brings me to today's topic.

Tonight was the long-awaited Dalek episode of the new Doctor Who series.  Okay, it actually aired on the Beeb over a week ago, but I can't afford to have pirate DVDs airlifted in and have to make do with the Canadian cable broadcasts, so pardon the tardiness of my remarks. 

I'd quite been looking forward to tonight.  Okay, I'd been jumping up and down with anticipation in a way I hadn't done since Christmas 1967.  I'd even prepared for Der Tag by watching both of the Technicolor Peter Cushing Dalek movies as a sort of refresher course on the murderous pepper pots. 

I was not disappointed, nor did I expect to be.  The new series has done an excellent job updating Doctor Who without losing what made the original version work so well.  The producers have managed to make the Doctor and his companion Rose have a relationship without it descending into the predictably sexual, which would make no sense with the Doctor, and they have managed to produce a story arc which is clearly a new beginning for the saga without abandoning the rich past that Doctor Who draws upon.  They even manage to instil the stories with a sense of wonder, which isn't easy in a genre that was tapped out thirty years ago and is now mired in convention and cliché.  They also understand that Doctor Who works best with small, claustrophobic stories which hint at greater terrors just beyond the edge of the television screen; a formula that marked the series at its height during the Tom Baker years in the 1970s. 

That said, the current Dalek episode will certainly stand as one of the high points in Doctor Who history.  The Doctor and Rose land in a secret underground museum owned by a power-crazed American tycoon who collects alien artefacts and they discover to their horror that the prize of his collection is a functioning, though damaged Dalek.  Said Dalek, on recognising its archenemy, tricks Rose into helping it to repair itself so it can escape, exterminate the Doctor, and then wipe out the human race. 

The episode is both exciting as we watch the Dalek battle paramilitary troops with capabilities that the old BBC series never had the budget for and poignant  as we learn the Doctor and the Dalek are the sole survivors of the final war between the Daleks and the Time Lords.  The Dalek is still the same ruthless killing machine that cannot be reasoned with of old and yet we get to see the Dalek come to a sympathetic end that doesn't fall back on the there-are-no-enemies-only-misunderstood-friends cop out that Star Trek is notorious for.  Instead, we see the loyal Dalek soldier cast adrift without orders and therefore without purpose, while the Doctor in his efforts to destroy the Dalek realises that he has started to become that which he hates. 

And we learn that Daleks can climb stairs.  How cool is that?

Thursday

12 May 2005

Naughty Robot Happenings

Scientists at Cornell University have taken another run at violating the laws of God and man by creating a robot capable of self-replication. 

No, it isn't like the illustration above showing one mechanical man screwing the head on another.  In fact, as robots go, the Cornell "molecubes," as they are called aren't so much robots as alarmingly phallic stacks of beige plastic cubes containing computer chips,  electromagnets, and motors so that the stacks can twist, bend, and pick up more of the cubes and make another little stack that, apparently, constitutes another robot. 

And that is about it, really.  No stealing government secrets.  No exotic assassinations.  No overrunning the world with hordes of replicas bent on supplanting man as the dominant species.  All in all, a bit of a damp squib as mad experiments go.

Far more interesting is the other robot developed by Cornell.  It's a social worker robot that pays uninvited and unwelcome visits to the first  robot shortly after it replicates and hands out helpful pamphlets entitled "Know Your Baby," "The Basics of Child Care," "We Can Take Away Your Offspring at Any Time and Don't Think We Won't," and other presumptive, yet insultingly topics for the new parent.

Friday

13 May 2005

Great Moments in Fatherhood

"See, Daddy?  Any argument that attempts to demonstrate the non-existence of reason or to reduce it to a purely mechanistic operation is inherently self-contradictory and therefore invalid because it negates a priori the foundations of any epistemological system upon which it bases itself."

Monday

16 May 2005

Don't Panic

I came across a rather interesting tidbit of information in Douglas Adam's foreword to the omnibus edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quintilogy (or trilogy in five parts, as it is often called).  In it, he says that the title of the first volume came to him when he was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck in 1971.  And so began the remarkable career that brought the late Mr. Adams worldwide fame and fortune as writer, thinker, and prophet unto the masses of the pangalactic gargleblaster.

This puzzled me, as I too had lain drunk in a field in Innsbruck, albeit in 1981, but this has yet to pay off any dividends for me whatsoever.  Of course, Adams had on his person a battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe, whereas I had a battered copy of Let's Go Europe on my person.  Perhaps it is the fact that Let's Go Galaxy is a rather inferior title explains why my Innsbruck adventure proved so fruitless.  So it is from small beginnings great events may arise.  From mighty oaks do tiny acorns grow, as they say.

The reason why I was reading said foreword to said omnibus was that my wife and I had finally found a free evening, a sitter, and thereby an opportunity to go to see the cinematic incarnation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I can understand why some people found HG2G disappointing.  Aside from the fact that many of the more rabid fans had expectations that nothing this side of the return of the great prophet Zarquon would satisfy, you have to approach any film version of the story with the understanding that there is no way you can cram even a fraction of Adams's idea-rich absurdity into less than two hours of a medium that is almost entirely visual.  In other words, not all the jokes are going to get in, what is there will be structured differently, and you have to expect some new stuff to keep the cinematic translation fresh. 

And okay, yes, I agree with the critics that  the character of Zaphod Beeblebrox is not well-rounded, but what do they expect?  When they defined "shallow" they had Zaphod firmly in mind.

The look of the film is beautiful, from the breath-taking planet-building factory floor of Megrathera to the starship Heart of Gold, which looks as good as the Vogons are disgusting.  And I came away from the film admitting that a shovel that hits you in the face every time you have an idea is an extremely effective deterrent.  We also get a chance to see the Vogon homeworld of Vogsphere, though I expect that only British audiences will really appreciate the Vogon bureaucracy jokes.  Americans would never sit still for so much frustrating paper pushing and where the British bureaucracy is born of muddling and unthinking incompetence, the Continental version is designed to be deliberately mystifying, obstructive, and sinister.

Did I mention that we also learn that Marvin the Paranoid Android is actually the most powerful weapon in the Universe?

The casting is spot on.  Martin Freeman was an excellent choice as everyman Arthur Dent. Sam Rockwell has the unenviable task of separating his Zaphod Beeblebrox from Mark Wing-Davey's definitive performance, and Zooey Deschanel has a much more flesh-out version of Trillian, who is in a romantic triangle with Arthur and Zaphod-- although any triangle with Zaphod's ego  in it is more like a square.  Of course, Stephen Fry was perfect as the Book and Bill Nighy gave a brilliant performance as Slartibartfast, though no matter how good a performance Alan Rickman gave as Marvin it never had a chance against Stephen Moore's original lugubrious perfection.

But the real surprise was Mos Def as Ford Prefect.  When I heard that the rap singer had landed the part, I thought, oh, great, another boilerplate hip black American performance, but Def's Ford was surprisingly well acted and he makes his character downright weird.  His American accent even makes a good set up for a joke.

Even though this was a new interpretation of HG2G, the director still had room for a wink to the previous incarnations with cameos by Simon Jones (the original Arthur Dent) and the Marvin robot from the BBC television series can be seen in a queue on Vogsphere. 

And, fittingly, the final shot of the story is of the Heart of Gold turning into the face of Douglas Adams, whose tragically early death robbed him of seeing his project come to fruition.

But thanks to him, at least we know how important it is to know where your towel is.

Tuesday

17 May 2005

The History of Media Responsibility

The Sepoy Mutiny, 1857

"Of course it's true!  Newsweek said the cartridges were greased with pig fat!"

Wednesday

18 May 2005

Great Moments in Amusement Park History

It is agreed that the remarkable unpopularity of the "Drowned Rat" was due to the omission of window glass in its cars. 

Thursday

19 May 2005

Come Back, Ernie Pyle

We're not saying it absolutely happened, but we can't say it absolutely didn't happen either.

Mark Whitaker

Newsweek Editor

& Journalism

Ethics Expert

I've been wanting to comment on the recent Newsweek debacle, but I'm having a bit of trouble on that front.  It's one of those stories that I start out on thinking that I'll have lots to comment on, only to discover that the whole thing has become an Internet firestorm and by the time I've collected my points everyone else has pretty much exhausted what I was going to say. 

I'm not surprised that this incident has caused so much outrage.  It isn't just a matter of a fraudulent story about prisoner abuse by the US military, it was a falsehood that resulted in the death of some twenty people, the injury of a hundred more, and a dreadful setback in the war against the terrorists.  Worse, it was an utterly pointless story that served no one's interests in publishing except those of our enemies.

In many ways, this is the worst in a long string of scandals to hit the mainstream media and is one that may very well force them to take a hard look in the mirror, though I'm not holding my breath over that one.  More telling than the white heat from the right side of the aisle is the response from the left that included:

•  An insincere retraction by the editors of Newsweek.
•  Half-hearted apologetics by their supporters.
• Attacks on those involved for being insufficiently left-wing. 
• Hostile questioning of the Whitehouse spokesman that implied that any criticism of the press is equal to suppression and which confused press freedom with press power.
• And over all of this has been the old Fake But Accurate defence which says that even if the Newsweek's story was false, the allegation must be true because... well... because the US military is so evil, don't you know. 

But what I think is most significant is the preferred mainstream media sentiment reflected by this Seattle PI editorial that seems to regard the scandal as being about the improper use of anonymous sources.

No, sorry, messieurs editors; It was about irresponsible journalism.  It was about handing our enemies a weapon to use against us and to alienate our friends.   We have been in open combat with a load of murderous barbarians for nearly four years and you still refuse to accept that this is a time of war and that if you play by the rules of peacetime "gotcha" politics you are going to get people killed. 

To quote Dennis Prager (via the New Criterion):

If an American interrogator of Japanese prisoners desecrated the most sacred Japanese symbols during World War II, it is inconceivable that any American media would have published this information. While American news media were just as interested in scoops in 1944 as they are now, they also had a belief that when America was at war, publishing information injurious to America and especially to its troops was unthinkable.

But that was sixty years ago and the mainstream media of today morphed from a news service into a political party back in 1968.  A free press is vital to a democracy, but a party posing as journalism with a monopoly on information is as dangerous as any Ministry of Propaganda.  For some thirty years the monopoly that the American media has enjoyed has ill served both the republic and the world as it pushed its own agenda. 

I want to be fair in my opinions of the media.  I have my own inclinations, but I have no desire to take the easy road and give into them.  It is rather hard, however, when you see press scandal after press scandal where every "poor source," "lapse in judgment," "rush to press," "bad egg,"  rationale for trading self-censorship for access to dictatorships or publishing baseless accusations of US soldiers or ignoring of positive stories out of the war, and every other canard and excuse always breaks far to the left into the anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-war camp.  

This is especially hard when I see a minor, yet dreadfully harmful rumour like the Newsweek story pushed into the light under the banner of the Public's Right to Know and Damn the Consequences from a media that openly refuses to repeat broadcasts of people jumping out of the Twin Towers for fear it will inflame people's passions (i.e. remind them what they're fighting for), will not broadcast footage of the beheadings of hostages (i.e. show these murderers for the animals they are), and doesn't even have the moral courage to call terrorists terrorists. 

Meanwhile, an isolated case of real abuse (not torture, but abuse) such as Abu Ghraib, which the military came down on like a hammer and told the world about months before the press "broke" the story is harped on incessantly as if it threw the horrors of the Lubianka into the shadows.

I am constantly told that I cannot question the patriotism of the press (note I said question, not deny), but when the choice is between that and gross criminal negligence, then I don't see what I can do. 

Can I question their patriotism now?

Friday

20 May 2005

When in Doubt, Shift the Blame

As a follow up to the Newsweek scandal, I notice that a line of defence is beginning to emerge on the left which boils down to, "Don't blame us, blame the Muslims."

The argument is that the ones responsible for the deaths and injuries sparked by the Newsweek Koran desecration story are the Islamists who exploited the incident towards their own murderous ends, that the hypersensitivity of some Muslims in regard to the Koran is unreasonable, and a free press cannot be expected to gag itself just because of the prospect of setting off some lunatics on a killing spree.

Fair enough, but disingenuous given that we have been lectured for years by a hypersensitive media that we must "understand" the Islamists and about the importance at all costs of not inflaming the "Arab street."   Indeed, the whole point of the Newsweek piece was to show what a load of insensitive, self-defeating yahoos the US military are when it comes to Islam.  But now that the media have been caught out as the real yahoos in the scene they say they shouldn't be held to account by their own standard.

The corollary argument is that Islamists don't need an excuse to indulge in riot and mayhem and that the Newsweek story isn't nearly as bad as the wild stories of abuse put out by freed Guantanimo inmates, Arab television propaganda, Al Qaeda dispatches, terrorist web sites, and Islamist sermons calling for conquering the world and killing all Jews.  The Islamists have been spouting anti-Christian and anti-Semitic hatred with an undercurrent of telling sexual fantasies since before the West was paying attention, while in comparison the Newsweek piece is actually fairly mild, so why should Newsweek be singled out for censure? 

The reason is very simple-- if you open your eyes.  Just because Al Jazeera is spouting enemy propaganda does not make it all right for Newsweek to do their dirty work for them.  It's called aiding and abetting the enemy and if this were 1942 the Newsweek editors would certainly have been fired by now and would probably be facing gaol.

But that, unfortunately, was a more enlightened time.

Note:

My wife and I are taking the weekend off to celebrate our anniversary, so I'll be back on Tuesday.

Tuesday

24 May 2005

Weekends Have a Price

I had a marvellous weekend, so naturally I am now paying for it in spades.    My wife and I have had our first chance in four years  to celebrate our anniversary properly, so we dropped off Emma to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa while we took the ferry to Orcas Island for a bit of driving through the woods and farms and a lot of hanging around the hotel room doing a whole lot of Internet-free nothing.  For those of you without a two-and-three-quarter-year old, this may sound deadly dull, but to us it was a little slice of heaven. 

In fact, it was a perfect holiday if you exclude our run-in with a waitress who regarded customers as an imposition on her valuable time and had completely forgotten about our drinks and my main course.  Yes, it must be a common sight in restaurants for one person to order a full meal with nothing to wash it down with while her dinner companion intends to just sit and watch. 

Small wonder we opted instead for walking out and raiding the local deli so we could picnic in our room while watching a DVD of Shaun of the Dead.

I did, however, refrain from cranking the stereo and  standing on the balcony in the all together to air guitar  the Team America: World Police theme, "America, F*** Yeah!"

We're saving that for our next trip to France.

Yes, things were next to idyllic and then we returned to the mainland and picked up Emma.  She'd had a whale of a time with her grandparents and had a chance to spend a lot time with her grandpa, whom she adores.  She was also well and truly cheesed off at her parents, who had left her for two nights and she was making no bones about it.  When she first saw us it was all "Daddy!"  "Mama!"  and cuddles for two minutes followed by an entire evening of sulks during which her answer to every question was "No!"

"Did you miss Mama and Daddy?"

"No!"

"Did you have fun this weekend?"

"No!"

"Did you play with Kate the dog?"

"No!"

"Would you like fruit leather?"

"No!"

"Would you like a late model convertible with the full package of accessories?"

"No!"

I intend to remind her of that one later in life.

The worst part was when we tried to go to bed and discovered that Emma was having none of it.  She intended to camp out with her new princess sleeping bag in the living room and expected Mama and Daddy to stay where she could keep an eye on us.  Apparently, she figured we were going to skip town the moment her back was turned.  The upshot was that we ended up taking it in turns sleeping on the floor or in the armchair until Emma was so well and truly crashed out that we could drag ourselves off to bed.

This did not help me when I woke up this morning and discovered that the aches and upset stomach I'd been suffering all weekend was not due to a bad night's sleep on Thursday followed by too much wine on the first night of our trip on Friday.   It turns out that I was, in fact, developing a grade-A case of the flu and that both my wife and Emma had a mild touch of it as well.  This is just the thing to start off a week which is fraught with deadline work so I could not fob it all off in favour of crashing out in a Nyquil-induced coma.  Instead, it was my usual twelve hour plus day in a state of low-grade fever and loose bowels punctuated by episodes involving a collapsing wife and a cranky Emma with yours truly having the occasional luxury of passing out on the bed for five minutes. 

It's all God's little way of telling me to learn to live in the moment and appreciate my holidays.

Wednesday

25 May 2005

The Criswell Defence

My friend, you have seen this incident, based on sworn testimony.  Can you prove that it didn't happen?

Criswell

Psychic & Logician

Apparently the mainstream media are taking their cues from Ed Wood these days.  That's the only charitable explanation for Newsweek's retraction of its retraction (on Al Jazeera no less!) with their Washington DC bureau chief Daniel Klaidman saying,

We are neutral on whether any form of Koran desecration took place.

That's an interesting take on being caught out rushing to press with a story that soon proved to be not only entirely baseless, but on reflection not even possible (ever try flushing a 900 page book down an federally-mandated environmentally friendly toilet lately?).  That's the sort of defence we expect from the National Enquirer or News of the World; not from a supposedly professional news magazine.  Stay tuned as Newsweek comes to the logical conclusion of this line of thinking and ends up confronting President Bush over such hot-button issues as Roswell, Bigfoot, Area 51, and whether or not the celebrity du jour has breast implants.

Carrying the Enemy's Water

Ah, well, at least it's better than this piece of bog roll fodder from the Seattle PI.  I once had a liking for David Horsey.  He has a sharp wit and an artistic style that conveys character with great economy, but lately he's been drifting more and more into the Ted Rall school of paranoia.  For a long time I could shrug off his portrayals of Christians as frothing puritans and of conservatives in general as microcephalic yahoos as the product of the sort of hyperbole that is found in the basic toolkit of any editorial cartoonist, but when he falsely depicts American soldiers as bullet-headed goons who routinely torture and murder Muslims, that is going over the line into enemy propaganda. 

I set the bar fairly low for western journalists.  I don't care if they're whether or not they hate the military, despise the  British and Americans, or even oppose fighting the terrorists on general principles.  But in a time of war is it too much to at least expect them to be on our side?

Thursday

26 May 2005

Family is a Sharing Thing

One of the bonuses of travel is the opportunity to be exposed to new things, such as pathogens.  As mentioned on Tuesday, I had brought home from our trip to Orcas Island a neat little case of influenza-- or so I thought.  It didn't seem like much at the time; just a mild dose made slightly more miserable by a long journey and a poor night's sleep.  Nothing I hadn't experienced before, I thought, and since I hadn't any outside appointments on Monday I didn't see any reason why I couldn't just knock back some Dayquil, put the kettle on,  wrap up warm in my jammies and dressing gown, and put in a full day's work in front of the computer. 

There actually were two reasons why not. 

The first is that it is an incredibly stupid thing to try to bull one's way through an illness.  Trying to avoid losing one day's work is a sure guarantee of spending two extra days on one's back.  Pounding away at the keyboard for twelve hours on Monday with little food and great deal of alternating tea left me feeling like a wet rag that had been firmly abused by a rugby squad made up of Welsh cape buffalos, if there were such a thing, and after I uploaded the Tuesday column that evening I dragged myself off to bed determined to sleep the flu away.

The second reason was that I did not, in fact have the flu.  All that night I was not only gripped by fever, chills, and various agues, but my throat felt as though it was twenty feet wide and had been massaged with golf cleats.  Do you know how often one involuntarily swallows every minute?  I do and I shot wide awake every time I did so in the belief that I'd just swallowed a red-hot wood rasp soaked in lemon juice.  This was not helped by the fact that Emma seemed to be having an equally trying night.  Fortunately, my wife realised that I was in no state to deal with this development and took the duty upon herself, but between the crying and my wife getting up every five minutes to comfort her, I could tell not none of us were getting any rest that night.

The next morning my wife made an appointment for my daughter and I to see our doctor.  Personally, I thought she was just being overly cautious, but I didn't say anything, because even though I thought it was a bit of fuss over my having the flu, I knew that in Emma's case it was either the doctor or risk another flying visit to Casualty due to a visit from the Asthma Fairy.

Turned out it wasn't a load of fuss.  I didn't have flu, I had strep throat.  The doctor didn't even bother to check Emma for it.  He just figured that if I had it, then we should both go on the antibiotics.

The upshot was that my sleep-deprived wife had the two of us on the casualty list.  This was not helped by the fact that I'd pushed myself so hard the day before that when we got home from the doctor I hadn't enough strength to pull the skin off a rice pudding-- which was a pity, because with my throat rice pudding was about all I could eat.  I spent the rest of the day propped up in bed where I alternated between reading and passing out of consciousness.

Antibiotics being the wonders they are, by this morning Emma and I were fully on the mend, but sod's law being what it is, my wife has now come down with strep and so we are tonight one big happy family comparing symptoms and sharing our repasts of amoxicillin.

Not quite the same as sing songs around the campfire, but I'm sure there's a heart-warming lesson in there is one digs deep enough and squints really hard at it in an oblique light.

Friday

27 May 2005

A Vote for Irony

On 29 May the French go to the polls to vote on whether or not to accept the new European Union constitution; perhaps the most bloated, incomprehensible, and flat-out crapulent document ever to have seen the light of day with the possible exception of some of Robert A. Heinlein's later novels.

Thirty years ago, the old EEC made some sort of sense.  Chaining  France and Germany  together economically so that they couldn't start another war was a brilliant idea and using this as the nucleus for a continental trading bloc seemed a logical extension.  I still say to this day that Britain joining in was a mistake that has cost us far more than we'll ever get out of it, but being in annoys the hell out of the French, so that probably balances things out on the whole. 

That, however, was in the '70s.

Today, the horrible mixture of a load of aging Soixante Huitard socialists, power-crazed Eurocrats, and a Franco-welsh rarebit dream of creating a new empire paid for by Germany and with the rest of Europe queuing up to be ruled by Paris via Brussels without a shot being fired already seems daft enough without throwing in a dog's breakfast of a constitution that's the size of a Berlin telephone directory and about as interesting a read.

This frightening document would strip the member nations of what is left of their sovereignty in exchange for rule by an elite that is even less accountable and more corrupt than many golf club secretaries.  This would be bad enough, but unlike most constitutions that lay out the divisions of government, explain the workings of the legislature, and mark the limits of state power, the Eurocrats regard that sort of thing as just piddling little details that distract from the real business of the constitution, which is to stop time dead in its tracks, to set the failing welfare state into stone, and to make any alteration of current EU policies virtually impossible while removing all power of national governments to decide on anything for themselves beyond what brand of loo paper to put in the Commons lavatory-- if that even. 

That's what makes Sunday's French referendum so delightful. The country that the elite saw as the natural leader of the Euroempire must ask the people to approve the constitution and with perfect irony the people are very likely set to say Non.   Some are doing it because they fear loss of jobs to cheap labour, others a loss of French identity,  others the greater encroachment of British economics, others creeping socialism, and still others receding socialism.  Regardless of the purported reason, they all have in common that the voters took a swig of the EU brand of Vichy water and they didn't like the taste no matter how hard the pro-constitution lot tried to market the label.  It didn't help that part of the campaign was telling the voters that they needed to vote Yes because they couldn't be trusted not to let their bloodthirsty impulses spark off another Holocaust any day now if they weren't locked into EU approved manacles post haste. 

And Chirac acts all surprised when the No vote keeps polling ahead. 

Frankly, I plan to spend Sunday in front of the telly with a large bucket of popcorn and lots of beer.  This will be too good to miss.

Monday

30 May 2005

Happy Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day in the States, so here's wishing you a happy holiday and a fond thank you to those who served in the armed forces.

EU Constitution is French Toast!

2005 is becoming the year of fresh air at the polls with the French referendum on the EU constitution resulting in a resounding Non with 55% of the vote going against ratification. 

It does the heart good to see free Frenchmen standing up to their masters and tell them what they can do with their damn phone book.  The Anglosphere and the French may never see eye to eye on most things (we can't even agree on why we hate the constitution), but when the French people say that they want to live according to their own ways and not be dictated to by the Euroelite and that fossil Chirac, one can't help but wave the tricolour and shout "Vive le France!"

Now we'll see whether or not the Eurocrats actually pay attention to the will of the people, or if they'll fall back on their old plan of "heads we win, tails we go again."  I suspect that with the likes of Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg and holder of the EU Presidency saying things like,  "If it is a 'Yes' we carry on; if it is a 'No' we carry on,"  I don't think we're out of the woods yet-- especially if this is anything to  go by.

Next Up: The Netherlands

Roll on Wednesday!

Taking the Waters

Last Friday it was reported that Chirac et al had pretty much given up hope of winning Sunday's referendum and had resigned themselves to defeat.  I don't know why I was surprised by the news, given the French government's default position for over a century.

Tuesday

31 May 2005

Paris in Turmoil

In the BBC report on the French referendum there was this little gem of wishful thinking disguised as a sub-headline:

France in Turmoil

Even though there was nothing in the text under the sub-headline referring to anything like turmoil anywhere outside of the despondent Oui camp.

To be fair, however, I must admit that my sources indicate that the atmosphere of tension is so thick in Paris that you can cut it with a cheese knife.  You can see the despair in the smiling faces of young couples as they stroll along the Champs Elysees.  Fear radiates from the taut hands of the old man lounging at a sidewalk cafe sipping cognac in the shade as he reads the newspaper.  Uncertainty hangs like a cloud over the knots of laughing children as they gambol in the parks.  There is a dirge in every note of the carefree accordion music that wafts through the boulevards.  And the unrelenting sense of crisis is a physical presence as sweaty workmen by the roadside slap one another on the back and burst into song while downing litres of vin ordinaire between bites of enormous sandwiches. 

When, when will the Euroelite save these poor people from the machinations of a lunatic fringe that makes up a mere 60% of the electorate?*

Mark Steyn has some choice words on this subject.

Blair on the Hook

Whatever the impact of the French and looming Dutch referenda on the peoples of Europe, it has certainly put the wind up the nightshirts of the Euroestablishment which backed the Oui vote as a unified bloc.  Now we have Tony Blair straddling the line helplessly as he is faced with taking up the rotating EU presidency and the job of dealing with the "crisis" while at the same time trying to find some way to use the Eurodefeat as an excuse for cancelling the British referendum, which is certain to be a contest between those in Britain who hate the EU and those who really, really hate the EU. 

That puts him on the very pointy horns of a dilemma in which he must, do everything he can to rescue the europroject, yet on the other he must face a British public who hate the EU even more than the French who dreamed of dominating it.

Either way it looks like the smell of toasted Tony is in the offing.

Lebanon Update

Meanwhile, back in the Levant, the Lebanese are going to the polls for the first time in a generation without their former Syrian masters breathing down the back of their necks and the early returns show the anti-Syrian alliance sweeping the boards.   Democracy still has a way to go in the aftermath of the Cedar Revolution, but after so much tyranny every breath of freedom helps. 

Horsey Play

In yesterday's edition the Seattle Post Intelligencer (intelligent as a post) responded to the nationwide outrage sparked by David Horsey's editorial cartoon that depicted Amrican soldiers as a load of subhuman murderers. 

No, sorry, but it wasn't an apology for libelling the armed forces, nor was it an endorsement of Horsey's charges (although the man himself descended from on high long enough say, "I am not making this stuff up," )

No, but repeating someone else's paranoid ravings doesn't make them true.  While there have been cases of abuse in the US military and, yes,  even of murder (though these occur in every war and in this one the incidents have been far fewer and responded to with a much sterner hand than in any other war in history), that is a far, far cry from saying that the Americans as policy operate torture chambers where "towel heads" are murdered as a matter of routine.

As is typical of the mainstream media, the PI doesn't address the real reasons for the anger the Horsey's cartoon prompted, but rather hides behind the self-serving argument that the whole thing is a learning experience and an opportunity for debating things like,

One side has always argued that dissent makes this country stronger, while the other has claimed we should rally around our leaders and the military (sometimes even being willing to jail those who cannot agree).

The false choice here is breathtaking.  The question regarding Horsey's allegations is not a choice between those who dissent and those who would bang them up in gaol.  It is about a supposed professional who hurls baseless accusations against the armed forces of his own country in time of war-- allegations that serve no one's interests except those of our enemies and which are identical to the worst of enemy propaganda.

When a major metropolitan newspaper thinks the only alternatives are between dissent and blind loyalty under penalty of the lock up, and can't tell the difference between an editorial statement and and propaganda aiding those who wish to kill or enslave us, then it is no wonder that the mainstream press is sliding into oblivion. 

And as for sparking "debate," what sort of prompting is it when the more left-wing of Seattle's two major newspaper with a readership that is (if the polls and letters page is any indication) to the far left even by Seattle standards throws out a red-meat cartoon that most of their subscribers would nod sagely over and murmur, "Too true; sadly too true."  That's like National Review goading their readers by asserting that the Soviet Union was a murderous dictatorship.

If Horsey et al really wanted to start a debate over the tension between freedom and sedition, they should have published a cartoon which libelled all anti-war activists as willing traitors cheering the murder of their fellow citizens.  They wouldn't do that, of course, because that would be unfair even though some anti-war protestors have advocated exactly that and the evidence isn't even contestable. 

"But you can't condemn the lot because of a few bad apples," the PI would say. 

Unless they're your own soldiers, apparently.

Ephemeral Isle

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