Did you want fries with that?

This rocks.

The Very Reverend Colin Slee

What a great man.  I disagreed with his politics and some of his ecclesiastical views, but when he would pick my daughter up and examine her Sunday school drawings and take the time to talk to us, it didn't matter. His sermons were things you remembered and his sense of humour was infectious.

Easter Sunday last before the service he admonished the congregation that the year prior there had been too many adults taking chocolate eggs, so this year it would be children only.  Then he decided mid-service that everyone was leaving immediately after the service for a Zimbabwe demo in the Strand and that the eggs would be given out at Communion.  I grabbed A and took her up with me and we both went to our knees at the bench.  The Dean came along and put his hand on A's head and gave her the blessing, and then pressed the wafer into my hand, intoning "The Body of Christ".  A, who is always hungry, leaned over to me and asked, "Daddy, what are you eating?  Is that a biscuit?"

She got her eggs. And she got her hugs from the Dean.  And we all had a lovely time.  And he will be missed greatly.

Oh...oh, I see...

We don't know everything then!

Okay, I'll Play

I can't believe people are pleased that they have read 12 of these books.  I really can't believe that a plagiarising little tosser like Dan Brown is on here and Bulgakov is not!

Here's my go...

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here:


I have read 69, and number 6 is an ongoing project....

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (what do you take me for )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - read some, but not others...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ('scuse me??)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( I mean REALLY!)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (the man has interns write his effing books, FFS)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (YES, ALL OF IT)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (this, and no Faulkner?)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Difficult Decisions

 

 The Beatles catalogue is out today on iTunes.  This brings me some sense of joy in that this is the music that I grew up with.  I bought my first Beatles album, which was the first Beatles album when I was just old enough to buy things.

My dad used to rage incessantly about how awful they were and what a bad influence, what with the hair and screaming girls and all.  You should hear him now! "You know, I think I may have misjudged those boys."

I was physically restrained from going to a Beatles concert in the Lynchian nightmare that was my childhood hometown, just as they became 'something'.  I don't think I have ever gotten over it, actually.

The most surprising thing, if it is surprising, is how...well...unrevolutionary much of their music is when you hear it now.  It's just good music. It's nice. It makes you feel good.

I think A Hard Day's Night and Help are two fine Richard Lester films with fantastic music and a pretty funny script, the both of them.

But here is where rock meets hard place.  I could see myself queueing up on iTunes to download the whole shedload and helping Lennon and Harrison, and maybe even that tired old manque´ Starkey get through their dottage.

But a penny for that smug, tiresome McCartney fellow?  With that nasty brown wig?  Bad taste in women? 

I have to think about this, maybe for a while.

R.I.P. Dino de Laurentis

Have you ever seen any of these films?  Blue Velvet, La Strada, Barbarella, Serpico, Conan the Barbarian, Ragtime, The Serpent's Egg, King Kong, Flash Gordon, Dune, The Shootist?

Dino de Laurentis died today, and yes he made some really crappy films, but he made some brilliant ones too that probably would never have been made if somebody as 'wacko' as him had not been around.

Whoosh!

And what do we make of this?

Not much to make of it really, other than 'Cool!', but I continue to marvel at the potty-mouthed Dawkins crowd who are so, so lacking in a sense of wonder.

I have had it suggested that this doesn't look at all like a black hole going 'whammo', and I wouldn't know myself, but that it could be 'God's fingerprint'.  Hmmm.  Don't know about that either, but it does make me think about Ed Emberley and then I really do go HMMMM. 

Cruelty can be fun

America's progressive, intellectual elite takes umbrage...

When's the last time you heard a British artist....

Do a cover of a classic like this...

Sing this in the shower if you dare....

Is that the best you can do...?

Embedding is disabled on this YouTube clip from CBS News in the US, but watching it I felt a sense of utter revulsion. Who *is* this greaseball Axelrod? How did he get into a position of responsibility like he has today? What is he, chief of staff to the freaking President of the United States or something? He looks like he needs a good scrub to begin with...but the dry, sticky mouth shite at the end of this cringe-making exercise in the dismantling of a once-promising presidency...is utterly...you know, I was going to use a word like 'devastating' but the real word(s) for this are 'second rate', 'cheap', 'tawdry' and 'shit-stained'. How did these little arse-wipes get into office. How, FFS!!

Call for Mr Cameron...

Paging Mr Osborne! Hell - oooo!

James Madison writing in Federalist 62 (1788):

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

Okay, okay....

So I got a little light-headed and had a little fantasy about a 'tea party' movement happening in Britain - as noted below. Daniel Hannan I respect and he says 'no'.

I get his point, but....hope springs eternal, as they say...

Bang Bang

Some pink fringe for a Monday...now to find Paint it Black...

Follow the money...

That is what I always say to my warmist friends. Several of them have made the effort and changed their view. Doesn't take a 'hard sell'.

I repeat the following intact from the estimable James Delingpole:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

Anthony Watts describes it thus:

This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

It’s so utterly damning that I’m going to run it in full without further comment. (H/T GWPF, Richard Brearley).

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.< 5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council. 6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition. APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization? I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question. I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends. Hal Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

You Think You're Angry!

We are still a little 'warm' ourselves...from last year

Coming Soon to a Country Near You...

A 'Tea Party' will be coming to Britain soon, I believe, and it won't be Gordon Brown or 'Red Ed' who delivers it, it will be our very own version of Barack Obama...one Mr Cameron

What Is Important

I have a child who is five and in state school. My partner and I are continually dismayed by the lack of education, not of the pupils, but the teachers. Last year, on the eve of a school trip, a note was posted on the classroom door reminding parents that the children should bring a 'pact lunch'. Every communication from the class has equally appalling standards of spelling and grammar. We live in despair.

The estimable His Grace has the story of a remarkable woman who has stepped forward to speak out about the state of modern education here and here and here. The Telegraph has more.

This is Katharine Birbalsingh,and I want my child educated by someone who thinks like her...what a fantastic woman:

Brilliant!

One of the rare occasions when the grin on my face when reading something from the Guardian isn't homicidal and Joker-like....

A Little Perspective, Please

I have, in my lifetime, seen the civilised world overrun by the Russians, the Saudis and the Japanese (well, they DID buy up all the good golf courses with money they didn't have). Now it is the Chinese, the Indians and the Brazilians that will put us in our place.

It is true that all three have burgeoning economies, driven by Western consumption of plastic crap and cheap clothes in the case of China, oil exports in the case of Brazil and call centres in the case of India. It is also true that Brazil is home to a population beset by bone-crushing poverty, that China cuts the kidneys out of the politically inconvenient when it is not using them for slave labour and India can't organise a piss-up in a brewery.

The little matter surrounding India's complete and total inability to manage the upcoming Commonwealth Games points up the fatuousness of the argument that India is on track to displace the UK and Western Europe, and the US for that matter, in economic dominance.  Could there possibly be a headline more unfortunate than this?:

Trained monkeys guard athletes at Commonwealth Games

The highly intelligent primates have been patrolling stadiums and accommodation blocks to scare off other wildlife including wild monkeys, dogs and even snakes.

Handlers from miles around the Indian capital have been drafted in to patrol the athletes’ village as the final preparations are made for the games.

Some teams threatened to boycott the competition after complaining that the accommodation was inhabitable and overrun with animals.

One shocked South African competitor even discovered a deadly cobra snake in his room.

Heavy monsoon rains have caused flooding near the Games Village causing many snakes to seek refuge.

Commonwealth Games organisers have also been particularly concerned buy the arrival of packs of wild monkeys which have been creating a nuisance around the venues by stealing food and attacking humans

No, really.  Seriously.

Half of the population still live in mud huts. Half of all the produce grown in India rots before it ever gets to market because of their inability to organise a road network or a functioning transportation system.  In a move so filled with poetry that it moves me to tears of hysterical laughter, Indians bought Jaguar.  You remember Jaguar.  The car.

Get real.

UPDATE:  Oh, dear!  Can it get worse?  Yes. Yes it can!!   Sheila Dikshit launches 'Ho Ho' tourist buses

Why I Voted Green...(h/t Iain Dale)

This is absolutely hilarious...

If The Smiths Were Ukranian...

Actually, on second thought it doesn't bear thinking about.  But the music is interesting.



(h/t Lucie)

You're Not Wearing THAT Are You?

I have always admired the erudition and analytic skills of His Grace, the disembodied spirit of Archbishop Cranmer, only recently returned from the blogging wilderness.

His latest tour de force, however - The Pope in Westminster Abbey – the finest ecclesiastical gag ever? - is an eyebrow-arching look into the slightly creepy sartorial shenanigans that went into Pope Benedict's recent visit to Westminster Abbey.

Not since...oh....CherylColeStyle.com has anyone had so much fun dressing up!

WTF??!!?

Last year I paid £263 for my comprehensive auto insurance policy.  I have - touch wood - never had an accident, a traffic citation or made a claim after seven years.  I am also in a highly desirable 'demographic' for insurers.

So how have the venal little f*ckers in the insurance industry rewarded me for my earnestness and clean-living?  By almost trebling my effing rate for this year to £729, that's how.

When I called the insurer to point out to them that 'there must be some mistake' they very glibly informed me that there was no mistake and that they were using the same protuberant device on all drivers - sans lubricant!  After a quick recitation of my famous 'customer service' speech, I put the phone down and tried to find out what the bleedin' heck was going on.

Okay, look, I know it's the Guardian but at least they have an explanation....

...there has also been a big rise in organised fraud, where criminal gangs work to systematically defraud insurers. The most common way of doing this is via a "cash for crash" scam, where criminals stage accidents, typically at roundabouts, by slamming their brakes on suddenly causing the car behind to crash into them. The fraudsters then claim for the cost of repair or replacement of their vehicle on the innocent driver's insurance.

Yes, that's right.  Bulgarians.  I know it doesn't say Bulgarians but that is because it is the Guardian.  It's Bulgarians.  Freaking Bulgarians, and we get the treatment!

Is this an immigration issue?  Possibly, but not really.  Is this yet another example of a state that finds it easier to allow an industry to bully and bludgeon the innocent rather than solve a criminal problem that will require getting tough with unpleasant people (yes, the insurance people too!)?  Most assuredly.

Nick Cave Goes All Squiggly

Nothing beats moral equivocation when it's got a nice tune!

It's Been Coming For Some Time...

Former Vice President Walter Mondale has had a lot to say this week about comparisons between Jimmy Carter - once regarded as America's worst ever modern president - and the man who has made Carter look positively statesman-like, Barack Obama.

With all fairness to Mr Mondale, it's not like no one saw this coming, oh, two-and-something years ago.  But come it did.

Like a lot of things though, this could be much more entertaining set to music. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the delightful Shirley Bassey:



(As an aside, it is unfortunate that the current Vice President, Uncle Fester-impersonator Joe Biden, could not give equal cover to Mondale in the personality department. Biden can only make Mondale look sane, but that was never Mondale's problem. Mondale is still a bore. Biden, however, could make Francis Bacon's housecat look sane.)

The Dead Zone

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal:

The political status quo, whatever good it did at times over the past 50 years, has arrived at a dead zone. The status quo—a vast, aging network of appropriators, Beltway enablers, bloodless public unions and private-sector pilot fish—budgeted the federal government, California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois and other states to the brink of effective bankruptcy.

The Obama administration is the dismaying, logical end-point of decades of public spending, a Gargantua that now threatens to smother everything else in the American economy. Velma Hart's confronting Barack Obama at that town-hall meeting Monday about the stalled economy—"I'm waiting, sir, I'm waiting"—may have been the central moment in what is happening now. It was the parable of the Emperor's New Clothes: He isn't wearing anything at all!

The torpid political world, the ancien regime, has put the nation at long-term risk. It is killing America's ability to revive from this punishing recession and compete with fast-running nations like China, India, Brazil and South Korea.

What the tea party and independent voters sympathetic to it are about is giving the United States the tools to compete again in the big global game. It starts with Stop-the-Spending. To the Democrats now demonizing the tea party and its candidates, those three words mean Armageddon, the end of their game.

Wes Pruden Nails It

To the mast...right about here

The European Project as a Criminal Enterprise

Did we not already know that the colleagues in Brussels were dodgy? Yes, I believe we did...http://is.gd/dTvVd

Neanderthals Walk Among Us!

Thanks to the BBC for this stunning revelation: "Many people alive today possess some Neanderthal ancestry, according to a landmark scientific study."

You don't say! Amazing. Apparently, some of them are French. Many of them take the same train as I do each morning.