denglsforfun

Dengl 44 What Iranian Missiles? The heated edges of Rings of Fire*

2012-02-03T01:11:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw the third instalment of BBC2's fine series on Russia and America - depicting some very knotty matters at the cutting edges of the encounter between two massive systems of tradition embodied in statehood.
Unavailable at present to US viewers, via iPlayer, surely this will soon be available to US viewers widespread?

I was (as previously) impressed by the US front line negotiators (Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell) and also maintained my improving view of Bush. Rice & Powell appear to have done everything they could (to draw freedom's ring tighter round a diminishing 'Greater' Russia) though the impression emerged that Bush's hands were weighed down by 'backroom boy policy makers' who bid for more than they perhaps could get, given the toughness of Putin and the needs and sensibilities of NATO members such as Germany, France.

I dont know if the programme makers had discussed whether to give any space to one or two symbolic elements
which, perhaps Umberto Eco might have woven into the narrative - one: there we saw the sculpted head of American son Winston Churchill in the picture just behind Bush at the White House - an 'ideology reminder' to the President ...another was the presence of George Brown (how are the mighty fallen!) on Bush's right hand at a summit declaration ...
a third was the event of a women's beach volleyball match at Beijing which in the words of a website:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/13/content_9267520.htm

".... was of symbolic significance due to the conflict between the two neighbors. Georgia began military action against South Ossetia's forces last week in an attempt to re-establish control over the region. In response, Russian troops moved into the region to fight the Georgian forces."

Do I remember rightly that Georgia's team was hugely helped by the presence of two players of Brazilian birth very recently given Georgian citizenship ...?
Might political considerations have played an unseen part in the drama enacted on the sands of Beijing playing fields?

Putin went to talk with Bush, in Maine, in (I think ) 2007 - not long after the 2006 Tear Drop monument** had been unveiled (in Bayonne, NJ). Might it have been opportune for the powers to have drawn on that earlier symbolic gesture?

Questions for Programe 4 (next week) include: Putin said in (2007?) Iranian missiles were a joke; has Russia been helping Iran to get on with its missile development? And right now standing by Iran's ally Assad of Syria? Why? With what risks? Is Obama as firm an exponent of liberty for free countries, as evidently was Bush? Will any symbolically important contests emerge at the London Olympics?

*title of an article by me, in the US journal Conflict, 1986.
** http://www.snopes.com/rumors/tributes/teardrop.asp

Dengl 43 Two Thoughts for 2012

2011-12-28T14:20:00.000-08:00

Eligibility for Voting in a Referendum on Scottish Independence

Should Scottish expatriates – and others with Scottish roots, family and or jobs be eligible to vote in a referendum on Scottish independence? What about the other inhabitants of the United Kingdom who live outside Scotland, whose Union will be affected? Should they all be entitled to vote?
The refurbished National Museum in Edinburgh has an installation which tells visitors that there are five million people in Scotland, but also 25 million of Scottish descent in other countries. One such person is David Cameron, whose father is from Aberdeen and who would prefer the Union to stay. Another is Sir Sean Connery, who says he will remain outside Scotland until it achieves independence.
There is much to be said for both parties having a say – in this case, Scottish and non-Scottish members of the United Kingdom. As a Londoner with two Scottish grandchildren and family in Glasgow, I wonder if I might claim entitlement to vote.

Scope for an “International Yad VaShem” to honour those who opposed genocide

An elderly woman had written to the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/opinion/honoring-all-who-saved-jews.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
that a heroic Tunisian man had saved her and many of her family from Nazi threats (elsewhere leading to extinction). Her plea to Yad VaShem the Israeli institution which decides on a definitive honured status of “Righteous Gentile” for those who saved Jews from the Nazis, had her request for recognition for Khaled Abdul Wahab.
This led me to think of a need for an inistitution of wider application, rejected:

Is there an internationalised (or even, heaven help us on a smaller scale a Euro) version of Yad VaShem which would honour those who acted in this way anywhere else? No shortage of heroes and heroines of such episodes since WWII – including those who saved gypsies, gays, who knows what others from systematic attempts to erase their group...?
the Nobel outfit with money attached seems the wrong base ...
There must be many unsung hero(in)es to be recognised – in Tibet, Burma, the Balkans, Cambodia ...?? even shias rescuing sunnis and vice versa ...(in the face of lethal inter-communal aggression ...) and there are certainly many instances in "the Indian subcontinent" (including Sri Lanka).

Dengl 42 Lord Melvyn Bragg Speaks About the King James Bible

2011-10-16T05:17:00.000-07:00

I was lucky to have been sent a ticket to attend a talk by Lord (Melvyn) Bragg - novelist and well known broadcaster on cultural matters, over several decades; the event took place in the Nave of Westminster Abbey and one could reflect on (or absorb) one's surroundings if all else failed. Behind Bragg was a reredos (Victorian?) with a memorial to Isaac Newton amongst others.

Unfortunately, for a famous and highly feted talker, Bragg left me behind on much of what he had to say. He was near a mike, and I was even nearer a small loudspeaker AND wore my hearing aids. Volume was not the difficulty; diction was.
Bragg was so enthusiastic about his topic that he talked fast; and not just fast at an even speed - interspersing fast and slow as his whim required - but not the whim of the listener. On three occasions he took a swig of water - bending down (out of mike range) talking into a large tumbler - before resuming refreshed. Important observations missed - and attention transferred to irrelevancies.
I have asked speakers at courses I run (including student questioners) many times to try and help - all to no avail.
That is perhaps because most people I ask are still lucky enough to hear well.
but wait -
thanks to the blessings of walkmen and ipods, a wide age band will arrive sooner at the situation I am now describing. I wont be there to savour their feelings - but I can imagine them.

Now - what did Bragg SAY - since I did hear about 40% of what he said?

He spent a good time on the antecedents of KJB - particularly the great figure of William Tyndale. Tyndale produced the right words - many or most of which are monosyllables - which Bragg said contributed to the rhythm,, comprehensibility and impact of Tyndale's English. Presently, England was blessed with Shakespeare - who thrived in the rhetorical culture so enriched by Tyndale. Soon after, when Elizabeth died the Scottish King James VIth became King in London and set up the great project of creating a definitive translation of the Bible into English.
Bragg is a man of the book (perhaps more so than of the microphone) and spoke of the literary qualities of the KJB. There were statistics - so many phrases introduced into the language - but though he is a fellow of the Royal Society (a scientific institution) - he did not approach the text and its influences in a scientific manner. By this I suggest that he could ask certain questions and look for evidence with which to answer them; some such questions are 'positive' ones - does KJB DO X,Y,Z; others are negative ones - does KJB NOT achieve a,b,c, or some other translation achieve it better?
For example - were there translations into other European vernaculars and if so, did they weave together with their countries' histories in ways which were more, equally or less potent than did the KJB in English (for the Anglophone world)?
When the KJB was followed by a Revised version in 1880 did that renew the mission of those who worked with the KJB - or did that mission miss the strength of the now challenged edition? Lord Bragg spoke a good deal about the long campaigns to eradicate slavery and argued (I think, persuasively) that the KJB gave particular strength to the campaigners (and, to the slaves some of whom came across the text)? But would this impact have been greater with a different translation from King James's committee? Or with one of those to come, subsequently?
There is no way to answer that directly - but there may have been certain passages which impeded the great thrust of moral rectitude that came to the fore in Anglophone society - how may KJB have influenced attitudes towards minorities - such as witches, homosexuals, Jews? Lord Bragg did not (I think) have much if anything to say about any 'downside' to the KJB.
This was, after all, an occasion to celebrate its strengths - but one final assertion of Bragg's remains to be worked out: he pointed out that James' son Charles, like his father, believed in what was called the Divine Right of Kings - a doctrine that authority passed directly into the earthly sovereign (at coronation) from the Divinity; Lord Bragg seemed to indicate that this view was reinforced by a reading of texts in KJB. A powerful text, however, is found in First Chronicles Chapter 29 v 11 onwards in which the young King David explicitly disavows a human refraction of Divine authority - the spectacular difference from the behaviour of Pharaohs and Ceasars (and in a small version, of early Stuart Kings) is surely not supported, but repudiated in a KJB text (which is, incidentally, more resonant and moving than are later translations). Not that it can be diluted either, in later texts - but KJB was probably not a thoroughgoing support for quasi-divine regal behaviour.

One can remember these things when walking down Whitehall, past where Charles I had his head cut off, and past Westminster Hall, fronted with the statue of the regicide Cromwell (who also used the KJB).

Dengl 41 Decarboning Scotland?

2011-10-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

I went (26 Sept 2011) to a meeting at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, addressed by a very clear and skilful speaker - Lord Adair Turner - whose report has just been published, on how to achieve a carbon minimised Scotland.

The study shows a very impressive chart consisting of three graphs, one labelled CO2 going zig zag - over 500,000 YEARS, next one, shows Methane zig zags - exactly parallel over the same time span; and the third one shows temperatures (as best estimated - thereby hangs a tale, surely, in this day of hyperactive neutrons - but I was a good boy and didnt ask a question about that) with zig zags exactly parallel. With due deference to the correlation-is-not-causation (BUT...) proviso, the rest of the talk went on about how to cut CO2 emissions.
In question time I asked - what about methane - might a campaign against that prove equally effective, and if so, how? Might it take the pressures off trying to reduce various accustomed carbon uses that produce CO2? He replied that the methane problem is still, currently, smaller; However, landflll has been reduced by half over the last few years (without explaining what happens to the displaced substances, elsewhere - our London "compostable waste" goes to council silos where no doubt it rots to methane - unanswered questions there ...) and he suggested we (the globe - that's you, and us) are not in disaster mode on that score, yet. But it was the beasties and their digestions that are a particular problem. USA, Argentina, even Scotland, all far away. He didn't think that experiments dosing cattle diets with something, yet, promised much. Best not to raise too much dairy.

In answering someone else's question "what about China" he suggested that on his visits there he had been impressed by their conscientious awareness of the problem and intention to do something about it. However, on his visits to the US he was horrified at the substantial 'denialist' camp (threatening to swamp the AlGoreniks). He said the commercial lobbies had made this headway, and it was harmful.
HOWEVER
He said that the US is still the world's great powerhouse of ideas and invention, emerging from the nexus of business/universities, and he hoped that something miraculous would emerge therefrom.

I think a further question, nobody had time to ask - is: are not the Chinese officials just more successful dissemblers? - the US more open and candid?

The Noble Lord closed with the famous "Layard graph" showing how when a certain GNP level has been reached, per country, there is not much if any gain in well-being. Therefore, as we (UK) have reached that point, it wont hurt us to cut back on (carbon costly) growth mania.
The flipside of that, which I put to him in chat at the reception afterwards, was to focus on those clusters of countries as yet UNDER the magical layard cusp - might they not prefer to pump themselves up any which way, likely to be quite carbon-careless.. .?.. he admitted - yes.

Finally, I also asked him why the cinderella in the evening's story had been nuclear - virtually unmentioned - and what about Thorium? He was good enough to say straight away that he didnt know about thorium.
Well now ...
Fore someone chairing a project of this sort, and saying he had 'read all the papers' (about some other technical question) - is this slightly worrying?
A tall man at his right elbow began to explain ....but too late to affect the published report ...

... woven through all this are questions of "how do you persuade the public" and "with WHAT story do you set out to persuade the public?"
also, interesting questions emerged, of how one gets the 'administrative machine' to think and act with its focus on the future rather than the past; sadly no time to discuss those matters.

time for me to go home and I left on my carbon clean bicycle....

Dengl 34 FairTube - GO!

2011-08-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

By the way - what IS a dengl - this is; and to see a bit more, see Dengl No 1 - which I repeated at Dengl No 12 ...)

so - here is Dengl 34 ....

Here's how someone becomes a zillionaire
Remember – you heard it here, first (written from Hong Kong, to a friend, 27 July 2011)

It's to do with replacing YouTube - that works on some hairshirt freeby model that the internet is g-ds gift to society and all the world’s best minds will freely contribute unlimited content and ... (basically,
providence will pay for pie in the sky …)

But then, Wikipaedia started advertising and begging for money donations and ...

why not "get real" - take a leaf out of the banana (and coffee etc) world - and go fairtrade?

Thus FAIRTUBE

FAIRTUBE (copyright JMW etc all that codswallop) works like iTunes etc and collects a negligible payment for each click-in.
It pays a rewarding proportion to the uploader of original material (nothing to pirated videos of commercial concerts etc).
This way genuine uploaders get some pocket money (in extreme cases, a good deal more) - all the elephants painting pictures, crazy kids and animals, domestic performances of music etc . In fact, look at example 3 in the linked website ….

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php

… downloaders have to pay - but given the mega-mass scale of the overall operation, relatively very little indeed - eg I would pay 10p to see a Korean kid genius playing Recuerdos de El Alhambra on the guitar - you give the kid 6 p and keep 4 p ...(to run and develop the operation)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDKB694kYtI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDKB694kYtI

no adverts pop ups etc - just plain product; fortunately Murdoch - and others - have been slowly persuading the public that one should indeed pay for product - albeit not the amounts copied from a past technomeny - we knew why we had to pay $1 for a paper when it was paper - but that's no reason why one should be screwed for $1 when it is digital and much more cheaply distributed ...
still, people are learning that it is honest - FAIR - to pay creators for content.
So – why not harvest all round – with the organiser and distributor of FAIRTUBE making a perfectly reasonable reward for their trouble

Dengl 33 Thoughts on The Sins or Dangers of Information Greed

2011-08-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

Dengl 33 Thoughts on The Sins or Dangers of Information Greed

Travelling in Hong Kong I read a piece from the Guardian, on the Murdochs' performance at the Commons, which appeared in the South China Morning Post. The Public Relations advisors did a skilful job of positioning the Murdochs between the Scylla of incompetence and the Charybdis of sentient guilt; and even Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to have slithered off the former hook with a quasi-apology in the Commons. Since the misdemeanours for which News International is responsible and which are now being redressed go back several years, it becomes a time for a wider and deeper refurbishment of practices in print (in the UK, at least, there are supposed to be institutions that discourage malpractice in broadcasting – and nobody knows clearly who might be able to keep noses clean on the internet; some do not want to try, others, do). We want to be clearer about how and what information may be properly obtained, and then published.

Whatever mechanisms arise to take stock and re-set the compass, in the UK – or even elsewhere, they may well look further than merely at News International. Time magazine reports: “As part of the public inquiry into the News of the World scandal, Lord Justice Levenson has the authority to call media editors, proprietors and politicians to give evidence under oath. The terms of reference call on him to examine the "culture, practices and ethics of the press," including their relationship with police and the contacts between national newspapers and politicians”.
There is said to be one other ex-tabloid editor, who escaped a charge of profitable insider dealing by claiming a similarly narrow middle ground of ignorance, whose behaviour should also be judged. (I gather, since writing this, that an article on this has appeared in the UK press).

The safety of landlines compared with the internet: just a technical question?
At least two further questions arise that insightful reporting should now explore: first, what proportion of hacked calls were on landlines, and thus are these more secure than mobiles? and: should we usefully find a new label by which to refer to what was done to the inbox of the murdered Millie Dowler; we need to recognise and label such "active eavesdropping" an 'active hacking', or 're-stacking' perhaps, to distinguish a more intense from a lesser crime (as murder exceeds manslaughter).

On the first point, above, are mobiles particularly hackable? This seems to be implied in at least one report - and that also gives links to several previous ones. It has evidently been acknowledged over two or three years, that mobiles are particularly hackable. Look at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13013577

It is clear that "hacking" (eavesdropping) has been widespread in the UK, and only the most negligent business and/or public person or body worldwide would assume that such misdemeanour was merely a British failing. It is possible though, that in certain circumstances (such as where the security services would be helped in crime detection or prevention) the public would accept, even welcome hacking. What are such circumstances and where are the lines to be drawn?

A longer-shot conjecture - if it is the case that hordes of people have been sold mobiles which are highly hackable (but were not told that this MAY happen by crooks, or journalists (not the same thing?) and certainly, systematically by the ISPs on behalf of advertisers – are there grounds for a truly massive class action, brought by hackees - and indeed anyone who has a non-secure mobile - against the manufacturers or the vendors?

Scope and (in)acceptability of Hacking and some consequences
A teenager hacks the computer systems of the Pentagon. This is a threat to security (and a disgrace, for those who set up the internal data systems) and the teenager is punished. A newspaper approves the actions of a few people who leak the internal affairs of political institutions, defence organizations and the like; other newspapers do not challenge the one that has given a platform to such leaks – they all enjoy discussing the ‘secrets’. The same newspaper runs a moral crusade against its larger rival, which hacks the instruments of celebrities – right up to the members of the Royal Family in the UK. Where are lines to be drawn, how and why, over what sort of hacking is a good or a bad thing in society?

If celebrities try to suppress press intrusion, by legal injunctions, once they have thus called upon the legal system to act not only on their behalf, but as an example of desirable restraint, should they then be required to go through with their move to have the law act on their behalf, with whatever its mechanisms are, and somehow be discouraged from being bought out by the alleged miscreant, who thus short circuits the Law, with the power of money (and greed on the part of allegedly injured parties) in a way that is not available to poorer people?

Finally, where a celebrity who has tried to avoid publicity through injunctions (to prevent information acquired by hacking, being published) is then by-passed by an avalanche of disclosure, how can third parties (usually children of the celebrity) be protected from the distress and even damage produced by the publicity? Might it be necessary to enforce injunctions – with considerable penalties for infraction – allowing celebrities to “get away with it” if they do have vulnerable children (or other such “third parties”) first in the firing line, to protect them?

Hong Kong 21 July 2011

DENGL 32 BEWARE TRASHICACY

2011-06-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

Trashicacy Ahoy!

I have come across the exquisite pleonasm ‘competency’; I can’t say where, I can’t say when, I hadn’t the presence of mind to note it down. It joins pomposities such as ‘residency’ (something that geniuses take up) and ‘presidency’ (something from which incompetents are torn down). Such are the verbal treasures we are enjoined to tolerate, even enjoy, by those who celebrate the evolution of language along with the erosion of quality in the accessible English educational system. Luckily, we are told (and see, those of us who live in North West London

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7027768/england-their-england.thtml) that rich Russians are riding to the rescue, buying into the model of Wodehousian culture which will need but a small cadre of professionals to sustain. Thus far (I presume) the preparatory school teachers who still know their whos from their whoms, remain mostly English; one can imagine the day, though, when they will no longer be available but have to be replaced by experts trained in elite Chinese colleges. This picture of (upper) middle class England maintained as a theme park has been drawn by the author Julian Barnes (England,England).

Not only are Russians (and other oil drenched Midases) drawn to enjoy the island they see as safe, and intriguingly quixotic, but in one tiny instance Americans come to experience “study abroad” in a context that is historically distinguished, sufficiently different from what they know (?) at home, without being too threatening, and possibly worth storing on the mantelshelf of memory. One such course is “Media in UK” during which some effort is made to disentangle what may be meant by various deployments of the word “media” – which proves to be an extraordinarily plastic term. This course has been told that the European Union (or experts who serve it, who have survived numerous planning meetings in agreeable locations – carbonoxious plane flights, lavish dinners after the deadly business sessions – I know, I used to attend such things) has decided that all member nations should deliver, by December 2011, an audit of the degree in their country of something they call “media literacy”. This has been labelled in various ways,

( the most widely adopted definition of media literacy is “… the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages in a variety of forms (Livingstone, 2004, p.5).
Already in 1992 US media educators and activists established a definition for the media literate person as one who should be able to access, analyze, evaluate and produce print and electronic media ( Kubey, 2005) and the UK’s OFCOM uses the same definition )

though it may be challenged that the term “media” has not itself been defined, and ‘literacy’ has been deployed in way that can be called metaphorically illiterate. All this might be discounted as a mere piece of academic entertainment – except that the jamboree is to be paid for by “EU funds” (that is, taxes drawn from those EU countries who can afford them).
Moreover, the audit is to be repeated in 2014 and every three years thereafter.

I have offered suggestions on sensible ways in which to deploy the terms media and literacy);

(I confess I can not see how to insert a link to my paper which is available from me on request - mallory.wober@gmail.com)

but here I alert my friends to a danger I can foresee – which is that a new category of “competency” will presently be devised which may be called “trashicacy”. I realised this last night as I strove to put the remains of a large cardboard box into an outdoor container intended to accommodate paper and card, only to find there plastic bags full of plastic bottles and drinks cans. In the borough where I live this is not (yet) a punishable offence – but one reads that elsewhere it is, so the sanctions may soon ‘come home’. The competent citizen will in future have to analyse and dispose of rubbish of a variety of forms, in prescribed ways. Rubbish is too English a word to live as a metaphor in a bureologism, so trash will have to do the job. The -acy ending is parallel in a thoughtless kind of way with its appearance in (media liter)acy and I have proposed an intermediate –ic- not because it scans better, but for the overtones of tragedy it introduces.

So – I give to the world, a new word – and to the Eurocrats, a new ticket to conferential holidays justified under the banner of promoting the environment and better citizenship in a glorious future – trashicacy. You have been warned.

Dengl 31 Olympics Logo 2011

2011-03-03T02:45:00.000-08:00

I have been alerted to a rumpus in Logistan - and it takes a form I had not suspected would arise ....

Zionism, or Nazism in symbols and the new Olympic Logo
A site offering anti-zionist sentiments suggests that the olympic logo evokes the word ZION;
the argument is ad hominem and if one prefers, racist, suggesting that the company which made this glaring error, Wolff Olins, is operated by Jews, who have hijacked the occasion.
I say that the logo offered (and which should have been turned down by the non-Jewish Lord Coe) more resembles the jagged SS emblem - in effect it is NAZI rather than zionist.
Whatever was in (what passes for) the minds of Wolff and Olins, they have certainly pulled a nasty, fast and costly one on the organisers;
but that is not because they are Jews - I suggest that had they been more centrally guided by Jewish principles they would NOT have offered this design - they have offered it because they are not sufficiently Jewish - ie prudent and conscientious. However, look at:

http://engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/topic/178188-london-olympics-2012-or-zion-logo-controversy-explained/

and from a website based, I believe, in New Delhi ...

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8331041-london-2012-olympics-logo-controversy

Psychological Conjectures on the Connotations of the 2012 Olympics Logo
When this logo was first aired, I thought this it was ripe for trouble.
I focused on the plenitude of CORNERS throughout the diagram and the corresponding banishment of CURVES =
and, I bore in mind notions I had had published long ago, suggesting that curves connect better with or even lead to a (musical) rhythmic structure of 3 x time - even engaging different parts of the brain than are engaged when the visual designation is jagged and conjures a musical rhythmic structure of 2 or of 4 time - and these are experienceable without engaging any "higher centres", with reference to the two-time body motions of breathing (in-out), walking (left right) and marching ....

in effect, a curvaceous logo aspires (neurologically, even) "higher" while a jagged logo operates below this level;

I am not in a position to generate survey data on the current Olympics logo (and or though it is noteworthy that a google search does not readily point to
data-based assessments of its "meaning").

It may not be too late, even close as we are to the event itself, to inform ourselves better as to how (and if possible, why) people perceive the logo in the way they do, and if and whether their perceptions of the Olympics themselves are coloured at all by the "flavour" of the logo. One might even hope that the designers themselves had even a modicum of empirical data to show that their logo was "creatively" perceived by those who see it.

(my experience in the story of the iTC logo (see the attachment) - also sold by Wolff Olins in the early 1990s - suggests that they can or do do without empirical underpinning of their design(s). I therefore guess that they may not have any such evidence on the Olympic design).

A new study might show that the logo is benign - even positive. One would then withdraw one's concerns, above.
I would be willing to bet on something less simply positive, however.

Dengl 30 Sports Hysteria

2010-12-19T11:25:00.000-08:00

I would like tv reports to play down the hysteria that follows intermittent successes - wicket taken, goal scored - otherwise, next thing would be batsmen hugging and kissing every time someone scores a boundary; and what about the goalie? why does he not get a snogfest (sometimes with acrobatics) for a noble save?
- it is just remotely possible that the BBC might agree (if under strong and sustained pressure) to return to a more restrained style of sports depiction - but cricket is all on sky now - and there is no control on them ...
- I suspect that it might be better for players to contain their energy after a success; go back to the play and direct the energy into subsequent performance; a cricket captain might usefully advise an incoming batsman to look at it this way - that the bowler and fielders who have just taken a wicket need a little while to regain their aggression - it is not necessary to comport oneself as a rabbit and think oneself into failure ....likewise, a soccer side encouraged to think this way might more likely strike back very soon after letting in a goal - realising that their opponents may be deluded for a short time by bliss ...of course, a poor manager may not realise this and allow his side to tailspin after an initial setback.
Whatever the psyche of the sport players, I suspect it is corrosive for viewers - and players - to have short term rejoicings reinforced.
By the way, have sports writers (in their excessive and vapid legions) given choreographical labels to the various antics performed - high fives we know - but the knee slide? the Voluntary Abu Ghraib (where players lie upon each other in a starfish configuration) - the Man Mountain (where they jump upon each other, standing - and do we know whether this brings on back injuries?)

Dengl 29 MYTE-ology

2010-08-26T03:52:00.000-07:00

My wife Bea has bought a book called Green Cleaning - by Margaret Briggs and VIvian Head.

This is very keen on soda bicarb and lemon and one or two other things... I agree - good.

I cant resist quoting from a paragraph:

"Over the years soda and potash were defined as both natural and artificial products and as vegetable and mineral. Imagine playing the old favourite '20 Questions' with the ancestors - it was hard enough trying to define substances as animal,vegetable or mineral as a science game with primary school children, but at least they have a better understanding of materials through the National Curriculum. Another nugget of information that might corner your imagination for a split second: it wasn't until the beginning of the 19th century that Sir Humphrey Davy decomposed both alkalis and called them sodium and potassium, which are really Latinized versions of soda and potash".

No doubt curriculum is a latinised version of something or other in newly nuggetised English - defined to "corner your imagination" (a latinised version of image - and - ation?) - well - only for a split second ...(a latinised version of secondary - as in education - which is itself a latinised version of - eh! an expression of amazement - dook - an expression of social stratification and -tion - (pronounce shun) an expression of dont spend too long with this boring stuff when you can be texting your friends with the whortleberry under the desk ...

... and soon those who have ascended this ladder of knowledge, skill and competence (the National Curriculum of England & Wales?) are going to throw purse power at the university teaching - if and when they arrive to experience it ...

maybe our grandchildren should aim at enrolling in a Scottish or a Chinese University

the book (partly) redeems itself with a proposal for a:

Dry Shampoo
Sprinkle one teaspoon of oatmeal and one of bicarbonate of soda on your head. Massage in for a few minutes*, then comb or brush out. Again, warm air will help to get rid of residue.
(this presumably means wave the electric hair dryer about - one of society's most wasteful devices, I would have thought) ...
(I can see this being marketed as a Fringe Hair experience during the Festival ...)
*the patience required to continue for 5 minutes of this is much more expected than the split seconds available for nuggets inside the skull ...

MYTE is of course Etym backwards, and the ology tacks on for the ride ....

Dengle No 28 Broadcasting Research in a Surbiton Kitchen

2010-07-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

Discovery and Significance of Weekly Reach

“Weekly Reach” means the percentage of the population who are served, at some point during a week, by a broadcast channel or station.

In 1975, audience measurement was mostly a matter of a ‘snapshot count’. The BBC ran a Daily Survey – this asked a nationwide sample “what did you see yesterday” and identified the proportion of a population who had seen each programme listed. ITV ran a “TV Ratings” system replete with falsehood; it measured the proportion of “homes” in which “the set”, being switched on supposedly denoted “homes viewing”. Later, at least partly in response to repeated criticism from the IBA (and its research department – ie, me) the “homes rating” was multiplied by a figure supposed to represent the number of people in a room for that time of day, to give the number supposed to have watched a programme.

In the 1980s commercial television measurement introduced keypads on which each individual (supposedly) pressed a button to show when they entered or left the room; this, with the data from the set meter, gave a better estimate of those who might have seen a programme.

In both cases, of the BBC’s audience research method and that of the commercial system, the focus was on the programme or the time slot – and the size of its audience. The focus was not on the individual viewer, what he or she thought, or felt, or did cumulatively over a day or over a week. During the 1980s the Commercial system of audience measurement was accepted by the BBC (with the – deeply unscientific – quid pro quo that the results of Appreciation measurement – still carried out – would be suppressed). This Broadcasters’ Audience Measurement system was adapted to be able to state how many of a sample will have been present for at least a ‘quorum segment’ of a broadcaster’s provision, during a week; but the system was still (and in the 2010s remains) not focused on individuals.

In 1975 the IBA had been running a weekly diary system whereby those who said they had seen a programme gave it a mark for how much they had Appreciated it. In so doing, they indicated they had seen the programme. As the diary ran for a week it was relatively easy to find who had seen at least one programme on a given channel during that week. This figure, of “weekly reach” – first calculated by hand after data entry on spread sheet on a kitchen table in Surbiton with the whole of a week’s diaries (some 500 in the sample – I well remember doing it) – was gradually recognised within the industry as being of some interest.

In subsequent decades – even over 30 years later – Weekly Reach has become a litmus test of the value of a broadcaster’s contribution. Weekly Reach can be calculated across the population represented at large, or amongst a segment of it (by sex, age, class or whatever social criterion). I argued (in pieces published occasionally since the 1990s) that the test of effective Public Service Broadcasting is a Reach as near universal as possible (probably across more than one channel) combined with a high level of average appreciation, for services delivering the widest possible range of programme genres and approaches – over a broadcasting schedule cycle – ie: a week.

Dengl 28 Obama as Shylock?

2010-06-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Obama As Shylock?
The USA - in the form of the President or Congress or some other institution - is seeking to exact a substantial payment out of BP as compensation for damage inflicted on US animals/beaches/people. This arises from a mishap (we shouldnt misuse the word 'accident') in non territorial waters over which I dont see that the US has any more jurisdiction than does Cuba ...) from an installation which, one is given to believe, was accepted in place by a US regulatory authority (Minerals and Mining something or other...). One can see how cross they are, and one can accept that they do want compensation. BP has ceded that it WILL pay some huge amount.

In doing this, it is said that there will be substantial effects on UK - and indeed on US share values and prosperity. It might be useful, then, to consider how to mitigate the HARM which will be passed along or spread, while alleviating the damage and suffering imposed on US individuals and society.

It also raises the matter of whether reparations in this case will be the catalyst for reparations in other similar cases which may have passed by without any such recognition or restitution, thus far. To my non-professional mind there are the cases of:

a US ship spilling oil on Breton and Norman beaches some years ago
EXXON's Valdez spilling oil on Canadian shores as well as Alaskan ones
Union Carbide's killing of Indian citizens in Bhopal, and of subsequent attributable physiological birth defects
The US military's detritus of explosives and chemicals which, over the years and after the cessation of wars which we may agree were politically justified, have maimed very many people in Asia

Somewhat more subtly, the President's advocacy may be shown to have accomplished two goals - one of earning restitution for victims of the Caribbean oil spill - and that is good; but the other (and perhaps NOT unavoidable) consequence is to depress BP share values with loss to those whose pensions are paid partly out of the dividends therefrom. In this latter function might there be a CLASS ACTION against the President for his ill judged advocacy - in bundling the two consequences together? (Hence the allusion to Shylock, above ...who wanted his pound of flesh, imagining it could be delivered without loss of blood and injury to its human source...) ...
Britain might also consider an action against the President for repeatedly referring to the company by a false name ("British" Petroleum) ((I agree, it was a surprise to me, too, before I learned about "Beyond"* ...but Obama should have known better ...)) thus engendering commercial and trading difficulties for other British concerns..
Of course, we might prefer NOT to explore or take such actions, but this might best occur in a less heated context.

How does one SAY such things - to any useful effect?

* I would have advised BP to employ Beyonce in some publicity, to help sidestep perception of the "British" referent, towards the "Beyond" concept ...
above all, I would have advised BP to anticipate and minimise its risks to a much more convincing extent ...
I would have advised BP, very soon after the explosion, to employ visibly American contractors to try and remedy the situation

Dengl 28 Reflections on the UK ELection 2010

2010-05-12T23:39:00.000-07:00

To The Times 7 May
In the uncertain situation facing the nation towards the resolution of this Election, Her Majesty can play a constructive role.
She is not expected to tell party leaders what they might best do, but she can ask pertinent questions.
If Gordon Brown exercises his right to suggest to HM that he can form an administration, she might ask him these questions:
do you intend, as a principled measure, to work first towards the stabilisation and boosting of the economy?
Will you need the help of the Liberal Democrats to succeed in this task?
Will you then introduce some form of Proportional Representation?
Given that you did not introduce that, before the Election, when you had a large majority which would have helped to achieve
such a measure, are you sure that the British public would then see this as a move of high principle?
If Her Majesty does pose some such questions, it might be appropriate for them (and the replies) to be published.

Yours sincerely,

To The Times 9 May
It seems to have received little attention that in England, where there were local elections alongside the national one, there was a swing to Labour. Where I live, Labour have recaptured the council. The implication to my mind is that there may not have been a "real swing back to Labour" but that, had voters turned out in the last local election in the same proportion in which they did now, at the general election (and coincidentally, voting for local councillors), there would have been a larger proportion voting for labour last time.
Prompting a greater turnout for local elections would be a good thing, and thought needs to be given now as to how to achieve this - as we can not rely every time on a parallel polling exercise with the general election.

To The Times 11 May
Gordon Brown: One further Courageous Step Required
Ed Balls is quoted by the BBC as saying (about Labour's procedures towards finding a new party leader) : "It's an important day. But we will take the time we need to take to make sure we get this right."

This is outrageous and unacceptable. It is not for the Labour party to "take the time we need" when it is the nation that needs - and indeed our allies need - that we have a valid government as soon as possible. The first priority is to tackle the national debt; voting reform comes later. Brown blocks progress through the convention that he runs the government until he has the courage to go to Her Majesty and say he can not do it any longer. He has told us, the people, he can not do so; he should now go and formally tell Her Majesty and it is for her to call upon someone else to try and form an administration.

To The Times 13 May
Merits of the Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition
At least one experienced analyst of the press and politics, Roy Greenslade, has forecast (yesterday) that several influential newspapers will now give Mr Clegg and his team a very hard time, reinforcing the notion of division rather than of working together.
It may be useful though to look at some potentially very useful elements of this coalition, ones which will appeal to the same section of the press which Greenslade says will be alienated and hostile.
One possible development is that, when in Government at Westminster, Mr Clegg and his supporters will come to value this central British institution and understand and even support why so many others want to repatriate powers from Brussels.
The other is that a significant number of MPs from Scotland are now in Westminster Government, rather than what would have been the case had a "blue" England been attempting to rule the United Kingdom manifestly alienating the "red" Scots. To a considerable extent now, the Scots are joined with the Welsh, English and Northern Irish in a project to make the best of this great United Kingdom. I hope the press will realise and celebrate this.

DENGL 27 xpropriation of the boat race?

2010-04-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

I thought the 2010 boat race was poorly photographed for television

modern "technology" (the term should be subdivided - into technomena - the cameras/hardware etc themselves - and the technology - the knowledge of how to deploy these thingies) was not harnessed to give us a result any better than I recall in 1953, or whenever, with tiny screens but better reporting; the chap in the helicopter (or was it a balloon? seemed to forget his zoom lens much of the time; too much was shown close up of Oxford in the first 5 minutes - leaving out an account of the competitor; not enough integration with the commentator to explain where apparent leads of one boat were illusions of camera angle ...)

at the end there was far too much indulgence in heroising the contestants and then the winners and the neglect of the losers was perhaps not a matter just of decency and tact, as of not finding the time, aside from the wallowing in hugging and kissing and spraying each other with a noble French made bubbly wine - what will we have next - smashing guitars? ...; in boat races of yore I seem to recall a three cheers given by the winning boat - did I miss it this time because of my poor attention, or was it not shown - or did it not happen? (contrast international rugby, where the hosts applaud in the visitors to the dressing room ...)

I know I am hard of hearing and it may have been my fault not to have noticed, but I do not recall being told that this was an exceptionally fast or slow or just an average speeded race - and whatever that may have entailed for having crews made of 28 stone foreigners, and how their performance compared with others in the past, in similar weather or tidal conditions and contested by mere homegrown undergraduates;

also, there was too much xplicit display of what must be the xposor of the occasion - and what happened to my assumption that the BBC anyway was not keen to admit product placement as a form of advertising - ??!!

So, maybe I was one of the few people who, this morning, took to googlestan to xplore who or what may be Xchanging (a group of excaped convicts? a Chinese state about to seceded?) - and incredibly, the first few links I pressed gave me a blank page with some incomprehensible statement along the lines that some Directory (??!!??) had withdrawn access - so WHAT is the point of sponsoring such an international broadcasting event ...) and then, there was the giant vulgar bit of tin the winner was expected to brandish (was that a product of Britain's "vibrant" design culture? - or do we have to have in all sporting events some 'lifting of silverware' - perhaps sponsored by RentaJug?

thank heavens any royal figure kept away from tarnishing themselves with this shoddy scene

What is going to happen with televising the Olympic "Games"?

Eventually, I went to a website which gave me a message I produce below. (I point, in that document, to...):

Procurement services - what is this? buying weapons for dodgy emirates or somali pirates? finding "escorts" for overpaid footballers or eastern potentates?

Immigration services - what is this? finding business courses for punjabi villagers to attend in East Preston or constituencies where a few extra Labour voters might be appreciated by that party, in an other wise close cut race?

Various verticals - what is this? Are some verticals less vertical than others? my imagination fails me ...

We are usefully reminded that London is in the UK ...

and this is what the BBC has found itself internationally advertising, on the back of the Boat Race (I quote) .............

Xchanging plc (Xchanging) is a UK based industry specific processing services provider. The company is principally engaged in offering procurement services, integrated HR and payroll services, and immigration services to its clients present across various nations. In addition, it offers resourcing services, and managed recruitment services to its customers. Further, the company is engaged in offering procure to pay (P2P) accounting services and hosting services to a variety of customers across various verticals. Xchanging has its operations across 9 nations and customers in around 47 countries. Some of the company’s key clients include Citibank, Deutsche bank, Tech Mahindra, Wal-Mart, Cintas, American Express, Southwest.com, Lloyds, illium insurance, etc. The company has its headquarters located at London in the UK.

The company reported revenues of (British Pounds) GBP 557.76 million during the fiscal year ended December 2008, an increase of 19.14% over 2007. The operating profit of the company was GBP 46.46 million during the fiscal year 2008, an increase of 50.10% over 2007. The net profit of the company was GBP 29.16 million during the fiscal year 2008, an increase of 90.11% over 2007.

well, they made money evidently, until 2008 - but this site at least (for all the accounting wizardry they profess) doesn't indicate how they may have weathered the storms of 2009? - or did they perhaps contribute to creating them?)

Dengl 26 A Use for So-Called Space Travel: The Geostationary Parasol

2009-07-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

Mary Wakefield has written a "boys toys" encomium about space traffic.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/5186153/the-space-age-isnt-over-it-hasnt-yet-begun.thtml

It is, for the most part, unconvincing. I am sure the views for Richard Branson's 3, 000 millionaire travellers will be amazing and their after dinner conversations on return much enhanced; but they will in no manner be "new astronauts" (astro means a star and they will not have gone significantly nearer any stars than I will have done; we should have a further contempt for the term 'cosmonaut', as nobody, even if they venture to Mars, will have been anywhere near the cosmos which begins at the nearest star - is that Alpha Centauri - four light years away ...). Many of the recently developed applications of spacecraft have been useful, though we could have managed without and quite probably spent the money better on earth.

There are at least two potentially earth-saving applications for which we do have to reach out into the solar system. One, which Wakefield does mention, though without discussing it enough, is the need for a giant device which will not just detect a possible cometary collision with earth, but actually somehow ward it off.

A second device which Wakefield also mentions, but without identifying how it might best be used, consists of panels to collect solar energy and in her version beam it back to earth. She does not say where the beam will fall, whether it may do significant damage on the way, or whether the track of the beam will be precisely controllable, and how the energy will be collected, but no doubt these difficulties can be overcome.

Surely, though, what would be useful, if we are not yet wholly convinced by the non-global-warming lobby, is a means by which to cast large shadows, in a controlled manner, upon earth; a Geostationary Parasol. The object would be to lessen the warming which we have stumbled into by reducing earth's reflective heat loss. I have no knowledge of astrophysics but my question is, whether a huge solar panel much further away from the moon (and thus closer to the sun? – but thereby casting a wider shadow), and between sun and earth like an eclipse, could be constructed to collect enough solar energy to transform into stabilising propulsion for itself, while casting a substantial cooling shadow on earth.

Who would finance and build such a device? Who would control its shade? These challenges in socio political "engineering" are perhaps as intractable as the engineering ones involved in setting forth and physically controlling such a device. I do not believe we should hope that such truly useful applications will arise serendipitously on the back of funfairs in the sky.

Dengl 25 New Circenses

2009-07-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

I was very pleased to have had the opportunity to attend a seminar yesterday, on the Internet. (It was at the House of Commons Grand Committee Room!).
I fear I ended among a minority who, by show of hands at the end, indicated we did not see it as a democratic panacea. I thanked the organiser, saying:

I am (not hugely) hard of hearing and sport an aid in one ear; however, I sat just next to an air conditioner vent (most welcome on that boiling day, especially after I had cycled 5 miles warmly to be present) and the wretched aid magnified the whirr of the air vent's motor making it very difficult to hear some panel speakers. Quite clearly, Grant Shaps, MP (one of the speakers) needs no microphone and I heard him well. Would that all speakers (I am not commenting about content) spoke as clearly as he did. It was next to impossible to hear most of the questions from the floor. I realise that many people have acute hearing but this is not so common among the older generation and fairly soon we will be joined by a mass of recruits who will have damaged their hearing by immersion in what is now termed "music" in clubs or via ipods etc. When that blessed day comes, it will be more usual for panel events to emphasise to speakers that they MUST talk into their microphones (and that, not too closely) and not, however intimate it makes the event seem, talk aside to their neighbours (Paul Staines, famous as a "blogger" Guido Fawkes, http://order-order.com/ did this); also, it would help if the chairman or person who is asked a question repeated (also to verify that s/he had taken it on board validly) what the question was. As things are, people like me have to try and work out what the question was, by inference from the heard-part of the answers given.

It was very instructive - negatively for me, I fear - to have the screen at the front carrying the "twitters" (is this london's substitute, now that all the sparrows have gone, for a beguiling, let alone an instructive discourse - I might well prefer to have the sparrows back instead) . This could be held to be distracting from the discussion among the "speakers" . It would be instructive to see a content analysis of the twits (is that the right word?) including such categories as: memorable poetic/haiku ..sharply pointed information, sharply pointed question, sharply pointed opinion ... all the way down to ... dispensable rubbish (sometimes insulting). I fear that a substantial proportion I saw on the screen were of the last category - they constitute not just clutter but damaging distraction from the development of some meaningful and informed public discourse.

In all, I am very graeful for the chance to have been there, and not a little concerned that even among what must have been quite an elite group of informed people there is a strong tendency to conflate the ideas of demotic with democratic. I was reminded of my idea of what some gladiators must have felt, in the colosseum, on seeing a forest of downward thumbs, that these people probably do not know what they are doing ...

Dengl 25 CEBOS - those who use Facebook (and other "social" networks)

2009-06-28T01:01:00.000-07:00

I seem to have become frivolous in my old age - last week I made more than one silly suggestion at the Atomic Energy Plant near Edinburgh (for example, that they get a candy company to create "Torness Rock" - sugar versions of nuclear reactor fuel rods, shot through with a slogan such as "uranium not carbon" - or some such -
and now, I have another suggestion: I think that it would be good to have a new word to label the new generation of acolytes in the networkian creed; following the aesthetically atrocious neologism 'blogger' (and the tongue-in-cheek derivative dengl deployed here) I suggest it would work to have the term CEBO (plural, of course cebos) to refer to those who develop much of their social identity from faCEBOok. I'm afraid I am not really a cebo. Indeed, I dont use this dengl place as some social site I have to revisit and update, trading comments with all kinds of worthy people, but as a private store where I just occasionally put something of what occurs to me.

Dengl 24 From Mau Mau to Iran and On?

2009-06-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a (small - but quite likely important) task for African historians

I have not seen the matter discussed elsewhere, not has it been given much space where it has been touched upon, in the Spectator.
The episode I am thinking of involves what happened to President Obama's step-grandfather. Barack says his s-grandmother reported the man was tortured by the British.
This has evidently marred Obama's relations with the UK - and perhaps deterred firmer actions by western "powers" (or, should we be called "feebles"?); but it also has implications for Obama's failure to do anything (admittedly, he was only a candidate at the time, but I wrote to him and thought that if he wished to intervene in the post-"election" carnage in Kenya he could strengthen his Presidential claims) .... about the options for resolution of the un-democratic power grab there.
If the western nations condoned this - the next election could have been corrupted. No doubt it would have been, anyway, but rascal Mugabe had the "co-option" model of so-called resolution validated for him, by western democracies that accepted the Kenya debacle. Something similar happened in Madagascar.
And now, Iran.
Surely, these things are connected.

Here's the Spectator "discussion" - as far (back) as it goes. I think there is much to be said for Veronica Bellers' retrospections. However, maybe "proper" African historians could achieve a firmer clarification?

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/the-week/3702708/part_3/letters.thtml

"Obama's grandfather

Sir: Andrew Roberts is correct to doubt Mr Obama's step-grandmother's allegation that Obama Sr was tortured during the Mau Mau emergency. The President's grandfather was a member of the Luo tribe, which remained firmly loyal to the British administration. He would have faced the ire of the elders if he had tried to join the Mau Mau, members of which were drawn from the Kikuyu tribe. The Luo and Kikuyu disliked each other intensely.

My father was provincial commissioner in Nyanza - the province where the Luo reside - at the time of the emergency, until 1957. He spent his time visiting the locations in the province to offer support and he let it be known that his door was always open to anyone who had concerns. He was much liked by all races".

Veronica Bellers (née Williams)
By email

If the British DID torture Obama snr, this may put the O family in sympathy with the Mau Mau uprising and more likely to support the Kikuyu establishment case now - thus compromising a stance pro democracy.
If the British did not torture O. snr, some pressure to clarify the Kenya election - on behalf of the Luos would have been a more realistic option for US and UK combined

I dont know where the next election in a dictatorial country will be, but the case is getting firmer for entrenched dictators to present the results how it suits them, then relax in the reassurance of a supine west ...

Peter Black AM: Inappropriate comment of the day

2009-05-21T01:10:00.000-07:00

Peter Black AM: Inappropriate comment of the day
My first ever Liberal vote was cast in the 1950s and I have felt - and shown - support in various ways even until now - not on every cause I may say - but I'd like to know why the flapping bird has three effective feathers in its RIGHT wing but only two in its Left; I suppose in flight it would go round in circles (anticlockwise - or some might say, leftwards?). Is this what all Lib Dems want the active logo to convey?
I am sending the remarks elsewhere, on facebook's refusal to recognise Welsh locations, to a group of Americans shortly to visit Wales, to educate them. I also write to cricketing authorities and journalists to correctly name the England & Wales (Test) cricket team!

Peter Black AM: Inappropriate comment of the day

2009-05-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

Peter Black AM: Inappropriate comment of the day
Beaaring in mind what happened to the regicides who had Charles executed (even if the victim list was slimmed down to 9 from an original 40, I think) I hope there will be no eventual recriminations against today's removers of the head. As said somewhere in the website, it is the unfortunate person who, not the post itself that is being removed - precisely because parliament and the people want the post to continue and to do so effectively.

Dengl 23 Word Inflationisation: Does Complexity Cloud Colour?

2009-01-29T04:54:00.000-08:00

There is now a disease, I think, inflecting the English language worldwide; how about making a list of aggravated words - see the pattern:

burglar burgled burgling burgle all surely concise?
but no - people prefer to write burglarise
from which they then get burglarised wait for: burglarisator

I reckon it can be carried further burglarisation
and burglarisationise
and eventually burglarisationisated

am I burgling on too much?

Very often seen nowadays is the hyper-professionalised "word" (it's longer - therefore thought to carry more clout - like those mediaeval broadswords the fighter could hardly lift); here's
incentivise (from incentive - like motive
from which we get incentivisation from incentivise - and "motivise"
no we used to be content with motivate and motivation (not motivisation)

imagine reading a job advert for a new Head of a Bank
it might include: "you will be incentivised by ..."
a massive salary quite out of proportion to the good you might do,
though auguring (augurisating? augurisationising?) the scale of harm
which you might achieve ...
Such adverts exist; I've seen them.

This cancerous growth in the word-system should surely be arrested (arrestivisated?).
First, the situation has to be comprehensively diagnosed and many examples assembled.

Do any other hyper-inflationisated words thumping around the cosmos and eventually being stored in an amazingly ungreen hypercooled cave owned by Google in Colorado (I think they are relocationisating to Alaska to save electricity costs?) occur to you?

M

BURGLARY IN FLORIDA

When southern Florida resident Nathan Radlich's house was burglarized
recently, thieves ignored his wide screen plasma TV, his VCR, and even
left his Rolex watch. What they did take, however, was 'a generic white
cardboard box filled with a grayish-white powder.' (That's the
way the police report described it.)
A spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale police said, 'that it looked similar to
high grade cocaine and they'd probably thought they'd hit
the big time.' Later, Nathan stood in front of numerous TV cameras and
pleaded with the burglars: 'Please return the cremated remains of my sister,
Gertrude. She died three years ago.'
The next morning, the bullet-riddled corpse of a local drug dealer known as
Hoochie Pevens* was found on Nathan's doorstep. The cardboard box was there
too; about half of Gertrude's ashes remained
Scotch taped to the box was this note which said: Hoochie sold us the bogus
blow, so we wasted Hoochie. Sorry we snorted your sister. No hard feelings.
Have a nice day.
And you thought California was the land of fruits and nuts!

*no novelist could have had the temerity or ingenuity to invent such a name - therefore this story must be true

Dengl 22 New York Times runs proposal for Peace between Israel and Palestinians

2009-01-29T04:46:00.000-08:00

If not now: when?
I was sent this article. It suggests to Israeli "hardliners" that the prospect of a secure half-cake today, is better than a whole cake in the unforseeable future, with a great deal of indigestion on the way. I might be tempted, if I was in Israel as the "midliner" I reckon myeslf to be, to go for the half-and-now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28friedman.html?emc=eta1

In the first century BCE, Babylonian born Hillel (later known as Hillel the Elder) migrated to the Land of Israel to study and worked as a woodcutter, eventually becoming the most influential force in Jewish life. Hillel is said to have lived in such great poverty that he was sometimes unable to pay the admission fee to study Torah, and because of him that fee was abolished. He was known for his kindness, gentleness, concern for humanity. One of his most famous sayings, recorded in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, a tractate of the Mishnah), is
"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?"
The Hillel organization, a network of Jewish college student organizations, is named for him. Hillel and his descendants established academies of learning and were the leaders of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel for several centuries. The Hillel dynasty ended with the death of Hillel II in 365 CE.

Dengl 21 Regulated Society and Monarchy

2008-12-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

The Republic of India has just put up with the latest of a series of violent affronts to its peace and propriety. It appears th at reports of the incident tended to be from members of the elite upper/middle classes, upset with threats to their elite way of life; less was said about the poor who perished.

Discussing with a friend, the nature of press and broadcast coverage of the Bombay invasion, and further background matters in India, I was told the following ....

.... the wealhy middle classes in India do often have both personal home guards - at least one of whom will accompany any member of the family venturing out, even if it's only to buy milk; have whole armouries of weapons within the home. Indeed, I visited the homes of such people and a favourite was to have what seemed like modern wood panelling wihin the home. Only they would know where the spring releases were for certain panels which opened to reveal sub-machine guns, rifles, grenades, pistols, semi-automatics and ammunition galore. They all had cameras all over the place feeding images on to a centralised computer system, so in the event there was any attack upon the house they could tune in to any section of the house and grounds. Many of the homes employed not only two or three guards at the gatehouse 23-hrs a day but also one to specifically guard the roof by night (the latter mostly in urban areas where they deemed people might come across from neighbouring buildings). How or why should those people be crying out for protection from the government? Perhaps their arms are unregistered so they cry out in the hope of gaining a legitimacy for their weaponry?
.....

to which I commented:

good heavens!
is there any track record indicating how many times such provisions have come in useful?
whom do they fear? dacoits? tax inspectors?
in how many countries does this kind of thing go on?
where are the blessed places where it is not (yet) necessary?

IF UK keeps its nose clean, then it may be that this continues as one of the "hidden" reasons why rich non-UKers want to bring their money here ...
(occasionally)
we don't really offer much else in terms of manufacturing xmas toys, mid-range electronics, usefully carbon neutral ways of delivering energy or motion ....

...but although London is in many ways a terrible mess, one can still buy a nice old fashioned copy of Wind in the Willows (printed in Singapore or somewhere far away) and newer legends (something post-Potter) spring up to add to them ...

... there is also an "industry" of recycling UK soap opera sets - one can now occupy someone called Norah Batty's house (not a real person, but a TV character) in Yorkshire

Another 'export' we could offer (no charge) is that of a spare Prince; would Prince Harry see fit to stand for Monarch of Australia? Elective monarchy was the system in early (pun not intended) Saxon England, and in mediaval Poland (lots of websites to look at...) - the Doggies of Venice were (sort of) elected monarchs as is the Pope - it's not a bad system (and looking at the monsters who occupy "popularly elected" ? presidential positions - Mugabe anyone? Bush? - it could hardly be worse...)

could Australia take to a 'refreshed' monarchy? - I wouldn't be surprised ...
... the idea needs to be positively reported (little chance, since the corps of journalists seem to t hink that viewing the world is much the same as ruling it, and resent glamorous interlopers ...)

...might it do well for India to find a "super-Rajah"?
(where, is a problem we could disentangle ...just give me the nod and I
will provide suggestions)
Pakistan would prefer a Caliph I've no doubt - which would stand in the way of a re-union of the subcontinent ...from the Bhutto dynasty?

er - North Korea seems to have a de facto monarchy - lets not drag in that example ...let alone the American tendencies to consider repeating Bushes, Kennedys, ...

... I wonder what the results might be of an international poll exploring degree of respect for Heads of State in - a range of a few score countries ...

Gallup does these things ....any other agencies? might one find a way of doing it on the internet? publishing results would make quite a good article or doc programme ..

Dengl 20 Tymobyl Cwm?

2008-07-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Tate Modern has opened an exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly (in calling up the website, my google page wanted to be sure I wasnt really after Wombling) - no - but CyTwombly certainly presents a challenge to anagrammers - I failed on my own to make anything coherent in English, and the first website I went to also failed, even with dropping one, or even two - or is that three - of the letters in his improbable name*. Maybe it is not his real name but was born as a handful of pasta letters he took out of a packet and artfully threw them on a glue-based surface ...
coincidentally, I have just received a copy of Kings Parade, a six monthly periodical designed to make me feel good about (and cough up a legacy in my will to) my old college; and that prints a charming picture of Frances Morris who graduated in 1978 in Art History. She is quoted as saying of herself that she was "a rather strident and opinionated person who smoked a pipe and wore women's land army breeches". Many of us change our ways after undergraduatehood, and(?)/but(?) Morris is now "Curator of Tate Modern where, as Head of Collections, International Art, she is in charge of acquisitions for the collection of modern and contemporary art from all over the world".
*might (Pseudo)Welsh accept something like: Tymobly Cwm ?

the Evening Standard gave the assembly a five star mark:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/artexhibition-20646808-details/Cy+Twombly:+Cycles+&+Seasons/artexhibitionReview.do?reviewId=23496933

the spectator, also offered a lot of praise from its art critic

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/arts/797131/traces-of-self.thtml

yet the Spectator chose to follow its eulogy of twombly with an article from someone who writes seldom, as he is a sculptor who expresses himself that way. Alexander Stoddart has made a much larger than life statue of Adam Smith, unveiled on Independence Day in Edinburgh's High Street.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/arts/797141/how-the-west-was-won.thtml

Stoddart is uncharacteristically articulate and choate for a visual artist. We can see exactly what he represents in his monument to Adam Smith. I can see exactly what he says in his reflections on what he calls modernism, in various arts (I think there might be some challenge to those he includes, whom others might like to categorise as postModern .... - but that's a minor matter, alongside the very cogent and serious case Stoddart makes).

In a crucial paragraph he puts it this way:

The Left, early in the last century, failed to secure direct revolution in the West, so another tactic was adopted — to dismantle the institutions of the Occident in a long, piecemeal slog. The focus fell on the arts, and this explains why the high music and visual arts of today are so startlingly different from anything you might encounter in undeconstructed times. Where the family, say, was singled out as a sinister and coercive societal institution, so certain artistic forms likewise became suspect: the tune; the rhyme; the moulding; the plinth. Today they are half-heartedly trying to reconstruct the family; but the cultural institutions are proving harder to patch up and this can be attributed to something in the artistic forms of traditionalism that the newly barbarised human being deeply dreads. The Modernism of the last century has forged a sub-sensibility, where man is engineered to be a healthy kind of ignoramus — a Superman — unneedful of the analgesic mercies that art of the old sort delivered into the veins of suffering humanity. The pain is the gain — so let’s write poems that are merely chopped prose, boil our testicles to win the Turner prize, build houses that look like washing machines for living in and, if we make statues at all, make sure they are bolted down at pavement level, so we can ‘interact’ with them (usually with some vomit on a Saturday night).

We may expect a lot of people to have been bruised by him, and to hit back. I'm with Stoddart. Good for him and his work and good for the case he has spoken out.

Dengl 19 Will Suicides Prompt A Tighter Rein on Broadcast Violence?

2008-03-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

Effects of Contents of Broadcasting (and press?)

A number of fields exist in which concerned observers have alleged that what is shown influences what is done.
Some of these fields or areas include:
violence breeds violence
violence breeds fear
violence and other victim displays breed homophobic,
mysogynistic or other harmful attitudes (and behaviour)
paedophilic examples prompt imitation
lifestyle displays (swearing, taking drugs, overeating ...) prompt
imitation
suicide (in fiction and in fact) prompts imitation

In most of these areas there is a body of research.
Most of these bodies of research contain more studies that suggest imitation occurs, than which fail to show this.
Virtually no studies are reported which show that the posited harmful examples lead to varieties of reflective, positive behaviour.
The exception in the above list appears to be the contention that violence shown, breeds fear (and in somse cases it was alleged in the USA, breeds prejudice).

Three possible interpretatons of this situation are possible:
the general weight of evidence supports the phenomenon of imitation
therefore let society do something
the existence of some 'neutral' or inconclusive studies undermines any
conclusion being drawn from those which suggest imitation occurs
therefore, nothing need be done
none of the effects-indicating studies are wholly watertight (the
general predicament of social science)
therefore, nothing need be done

The American discourse weighing in the direction of harm following problematic display runs into the barrier of the First Amendment to the Constitution which appears to be interpreted to refer to protect 'freedom' (of utterance - rather than from effect) for every form of expression - even those outside the normal political discourse, which it may have been the Amendment's first concern to protect.

The UK discourse (without a first amendment) to some extent is influenced by the American one. A professional zeitgeist probably reflects this caution - partly perhaps to keep UK and US interpretations of what needs to be done, in terms of precautions or even of prevention, in parallel.

A recent spate of suicides - mostly amongst teenagers - in South Wales has led to concern and a piece has appeared in The Psychologist monthly, attributed to the BPS' psychology journalist Christian Jarrett. He quotes a less equivocal judgement from an Oxford scientist, in the area of suicide imitation (see below).

http://www.bps.org.uk/publications/thepsychologist/extras/pages$/2008/
suicide-the-media-and-prevention.cfm

The report, necessarily brief, does not distinguish between various "media" (press and broadcasting by inference being lumped together). Some of these message systems are (still ?) regulated, and the extent of influence attributable to each message system may well thus be different. There may also be interactions between message systems.

"Society"appears to be unwilling to tolerate suicide and willing to act on the evidence that it may be influenced by what is shown or said.
Society seems unwilling to tolerate racist attitudes and behaviour and regulates content of mass message systems which may encourage such things.
Society is perhaps less willing to act on similar kinds of evidence with regard to some of the other (violent) dangers above.
It is possible that regulatory response to the dangers of suicide from imitation will influence tighter requirements with regard to other sources of possible malign influence. It is also possible that the 'guilt' of tighter regulation vis a vis suicide will be accompanied with a laxer treatment of other matters. It is thirdly possible that what is done about suicide may have no influence on what is done about other matters.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Music can help people recover from stroke

2008-03-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

Dengl 18 BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Music can help people recover from stroke
first - an abstract of a new study then, my comment:
______________
Given its power to move us, perhaps it's no surprise that a great deal of
research has focused on whether or not music can help people with depression
or anxiety. Now researchers in Finland have asked whether music can benefit
people recovering from stroke. Their study is notable for its sound
methodological quality, and the results are promising: music does indeed
appear to make a difference to patients' cognitive recovery.

Soon after their hospitalisation, 60 stroke patients were allocated randomly
to one of three groups. Those in the music group were provided with a
portable CD player and asked to listen to their favourite music for at least
an hour a day for two months. Patients in the audio book group spent at
least an hour a day for two months listening to audio books of their
choosing. A final control group were not given a listening task.

Compared to the patients who listened to audio books and the control
patients, the patients who listened to music daily showed superior
performance when tested three months and six months later on measures of
verbal memory and focused attention. Crucially, the psychologists who
performed these neuropsychological assessments were unaware of which groups
the patients had been in - making this a single-blind, randomised,
controlled trial. The music and audio book patients also showed reduced
depression and confusion compared with the control patients.

Teppo Sarkamo and colleagues who conducted the research said that music may
exert these benefits by virtue of its wide-ranging impact on brain activity.
Neuroimaging studies have shown that listening to music "naturally recruits
bilateral temporal, frontal and parietal neural circuits underlying multiple
forms of attention, working memory, semantic and syntactic processing, and
imagery," the researchers said. By contrast, the brain activity triggered by
speech without music is less extensive and more focused on the
language-dominant hemisphere (usually the left).

The new finding is consistent with research on animals showing that a
stimulating environment can speed recovery after stroke. Yet the researchers
noted with regret that many stroke patients are left in their rooms without
much stimulation or interaction. "We suggest that everyday music listening
during early stroke recovery offers a valuable addition to the patients'
care," they concluded.
__________________

my comment:

I guess the patients were aged (at least) over 65, and that their preferred music was in the realm of classical or older popular music which was structurally similar to classical music (some slower tempi, some use of triple time)
It is important to specify what music these people did listen to - and even to an analyse, within the music-receiving group, who did best with what.Of course, the location of the stroke and the propensity to benefit from music will likely also be a part of the outcome. One may (sadly) forecast that as the decades march on, music preferences will be for rock-and-later popular music (less use of slower tempi, virtually no triple time). I tentatively forecast (hypothesise) that this will be less useful - regardless of the fact that it is familiar and preferred - in stroke recovery. I have written elsewhere why triple time is so important to more complex mentation (references on request).

Dengl 17 Evil is not, was not, nor ever will be banal

2008-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

Yet another article or deployment of this deficient term (in the Monthly The Psychologist - January 2008) perhaps adds to the damage the phrase may already have done. The frisson evoked by the formula may emerge from the contradiction in our minds and experience between two notions: one is that evil - the word and the 'thing' itself is bad and potent - loaded highly on two of the three great dimensions of meaning; banal on the other hand is neither evaluatively nor potently extreme. So how, people think, can evil be banal? And if evil is somehow indeed banal - maybe it is not all that evil (in the old sense) as, some investigators seem to say, anybody can, in conducive situations, accomplish evil. Maybe we should learn to live with it.
The solution to the conundrum would have been with us had Hannah Arendt written a phrase to convey that the source or perpetrator of evil may be banal - rather than the evil itself being so. There are some engaging features of prejudice in her perception - for example, that a small, soft spoken man might not contain or inflict evil - but not all perpetrators must be large (ugly) bellowing ogres.
Haslam and Reicher (Psychologist January 2008
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=21&editionID=155&ArticleID=1291) do, however, in the substance of their article effectively dismiss the apparent paradox - "the true horror of Eichmann and his like is not that their actions were blind ... they saw clearly what they did, and believed it to be the right thing to do". They may have been "blind to" evil itself, or unable to realise and then avoid its essence in their actions. Evil never was, is or will be banal; Hannah Arendt was very misleading in coining such a term; and the evidence by which we can empirically (as well as semeiologically) reject the notion has very helpfully been shown to us.

Dengl 16 What Now for Trafalgar Square - Update on Dengle 11

2008-01-14T14:56:00.001-08:00

Problems on a Plinth : The Case of Trafalgar Square

Jackie Wullschlager (Jan 12.13, Financial Times) writes perceptively about the six candidates for a piece on the Fourth Plinth to follow the current non-descript occupant, some 18 months hence. Yet her article is not convincing. A general point should be made before we come to assess the six competitors; this is that the square is essentially a construct rooted in the 19th century; as such the plinth ‘needs’ to be occupied by someone or something which will meaningfully stand for the way in which that century ended, and turned towards the twentieth. Overall, it is shocking that two out of six entrants are considered by her to be “embarrassingly slight” and “conceptually feeble” – judgements with which I agree. This sounds like a criticism of the committee which devised the short list, though Wullschlager does not deal with this implication.
Yinka Shonibare has proposed a “replica” (albeit with batik sails) of Nelson’s Victory, in a giant glass bottle. This indeed has ‘charm and humour’ but raises at least three questions which are not answered. One concerns the properties of materials – can a glass bottle be made of that size? Has Shonibare convinced his judges that he knows the materials can be wrought to deliver his proposal? Secondly, I doubt that the batik sails are an effective ‘symbol of African identity and independence’ – such material originates in Netherlands-controlled East Indies and could be said to represent the colonial trade, however much it is certainly well liked and imaginatively used in West Africa. Thirdly, Shonibare’s argument is weak, that the boat reflects “the story of multiculturalism” – it represents a victory for insular Britain, even if it is later decked out in some semblance of rejoicing in colourful artefacts. Though Wullschlager passes Shonibare by, I would favour his piece from among the six options.
Deller’s stark trashed car may be genuinely shocking – but more in the sense of representing an unconvincing state of the arts today than in saying anything helpful about Trafalgar Square. Though the Square is indeed a site for current anti-war demonstrations these have little connection with the place’s essential history.
Antony Gormley’s idea of an empty plinth inspires Wullschlager to a densely misty passage which might well (though I am not the one to send it there) deserve a place in Pseud’s Corner. She should have mentioned that when a giant wooden chair was put up in Hampstead Heath it became a seat for young copulators, and I suspect that would be copied on the Plinth – unless there was ‘24/7’ policing – not what one wants for a memorable piece of ‘public art’.
Wullschlager therefore chooses Anish Kapoor’s coloured mirrors. More purple prose follows (“concept is .. privileged over individual vision … asserts art’s formal qualities and its capacity, as eternal as the sky, for transcendence’). Maybe this is true, whatever it means, but it has little convincingly to do with the essentials of Trafalgar Square.
I therefore continue to support my notion that a standing figure should be commissioned, of Mary Kingsley, the end-of-the-century explorer in space and in ideas, who had a strong impact on how the western world thought about and acted upon the societies which had been imperialised, and who soon died as a martyr in South Africa.

2008-01-14T14:56:00.000-08:00

Problems on a Plinth : The Case of Trafalgar Square

Jackie Wullschlager (Jan 12.13)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f046f266-bfe0-11dc-8052-0000779fd2ac.html
writes perceptively about the six candidates for a piece on the Fourth Plinth to follow the current non-descript occupant, some 18 months hence. Yet her article is not convincing. A general point should be made before we come to assess the six competitors (who have been chosen by a committee within the ambit of the Greater London Authority; they have put forward in January, their idea of how they would replace the current structure on the Plinth). The general point is that the square is essentially a construct, of public space, vistas, and iconic statues, rooted in the 19th century; as such the plinth ‘needs’ to be occupied by someone or something which will meaningfully stand for the way in which that century ended, and turned towards the twentieth.
Overall, it is shocking that two out of six entrants are considered by the Financial Times' Art critic to be “embarrassingly slight” and “conceptually feeble” – judgements with which I agree. This sounds like a criticism not just of the artists bu also of the committee which devised the short list.
Yinka Shonibare has proposed a “replica” (albeit with batik sails) of Nelson’s Victory, in a giant glass bottle. This indeed has ‘charm and humour’ but raises at least three questions which are not answered. One concerns the properties of materials – can a glass bottle be made of that size? Will it have to be welded or b lon? Will it have to be in plastic? Has Shonibare convinced his judges that he knows the materials can be wrought to deliver his proposal? Secondly, I doubt that the batik sails are an effective "symbol of African identity and independence" – such material originates in Netherlands-controlled East Indies and could be said to represent the colonial trade, however much it is certainly well liked and imaginatively used in West Africa. Thirdly, Shonibare’s argument is weak, that the boat reflects “the story of multiculturalism” – it represents a victory for insular Britain, even if it is later decked out in some semblance of rejoicing in colourful artefacts. Though Wullschlager passes Shonibare by, I would favour his piece from among the six options.
Deller’s stark trashed car may be genuinely shocking – but more in the sense of representing an unconvincing state of the arts today than in saying anything helpful about Trafalgar Square. Though the Square is indeed a site for current anti-war demonstrations these have little connection with the place’s particular history.
Antony Gormley’s idea of an empty plinth inspires Wullschlager to a densely misty passage which might well (though I am not the one to send it there) deserve a place in Pseud’s Corner. She should have mentioned that when a giant wooden chair was put up in Hampstead Heath it became an exalted seat for young copulators, and I suspect that would be copied on the Plinth – unless there was ‘24/7’ policing – not what one wants for a memorable piece of ‘public art’.
Wullschlager therefore chooses Anish Kapoor’s coloured mirrors. More purple prose follows (“concept is .. privileged over individual vision … asserts art’s formal qualities and its capacity, as eternal as the sky, for transcendence’). Maybe this is true, whatever it means, but it has little convincingly to do with the essentials of Trafalgar Square.
I therefore continue to support my notion that a standing figure should be commissioned, of Mary Kingsley, the end-of-the-century explorer in space and in ideas, who had a strong impact on how the western world thought about and acted upon the societies which had been imperialised, and who soon died as a martyr in South Africa.

Dengl 15 Some Road Safety Conundra

2007-12-21T04:32:00.000-08:00

If and when we creatures from below Hadrian's Pale enter true Lothistan we find a drivescape which is both puzzling, threatening and distracting - puzzling because nowhere (out of towns) does it say what a speed limit may be, in the jurisdiction one has entered (not do locals, upon enquiry, seem to know - or to let on if they do ...), threatening because there seem to be either actual speed cameras at very many points along the way, or the semblance of cameras (boxes with diagonal stripes - though these may carry feed for local zebras ...), and distracting because all the attention thus focused on photo-options takes one's mind away from other aspects of the road scene, let alone the marvellous countryside, AND there is the Chief of the Lothians Police Forces instructing his minions to remove the pencils from behind their ears and write letters to brave people who have ventured north, demanding payment for driving at supposedly illegal speeds (though vehicles protected with little blue signs with a diagonal cross are able, evidently, to go as fast as they please). And, of course, there are many jurisdictions south of the Pale where things are as bad - some even more stringent.

Now, I have come across an article which first of all helps one feel less guilty about driving, or at least wanting to drive sensibly, on whichever side of Hadrian's Pale one inhabits. It may also help change how the roads are run - though don't summon up too much hope - there are entrenched interests, not least those of the makers and installers of speed cameras, and the ways in which central (even Lothian?) government funds trickle into even-more-local administration coffers without being 'ring fenced ...'; then, there are the latter-day Savanarolists who would have us all in brown robes spun out of echt all-bran, with the remains of any body-heat evaporating from our tonsured tops, and nasty metal and electrical machinery abandoned - somewhere - possibly joining the tens of millions of television and radio sets which are due for dumping when the digital age dawns upon us....(these might be stacked up neatly within the giant cubes soon to be redundant, too, at Torness, Orford Ness and similar places)

I am only a learner in this world and am pursuing the website(s) advertised in the articles I attach, for a start.
www.safespeed.org.uk
If you are interested, there is a great deal more via Mr Smith's website .....

Dengl 14 Recognising Christmas and the Sabbath

2007-12-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

My cousin Zaki Cooper has a piece in the Guardian (see link below) in their series Face To Faith, in which he very ably and correctly points out that "some of the staunchest supporters of Christmas come from other religions". Writing as an orthodox Jew, he is supported in at least one of several comments shown by the Guardian, from a Muslim.

A parallel scenario is the depressing error made by John Major's govt - mainly to oblige Sainsburys was it? - to allow widespread shopping on Sundays - in effect this "blanked out" public recognition of the rest day as such - that is a secularisation of the "public realm" and a dissipation of the human right to rest, which has been a great loss to a humane culture in England and Wales - I am not sure how these things are symbolised in Scotland - it is worth finding out!. And, as Don Giovanni's Jeeves Leporello pointed out "Ma - in Northern Irelandia (or however they say that in Italian - thirteen thousand (Santas)
here are a few of them ....lined the walls of the city - looks like a load of ketchup ...
who supplied the costumes?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/uk_enl_1197214026/html/1.stm

this link shows how the Guardian ran Zaki's piece, and also lets you see the modest pile of rather unimpressive comments which followed ....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2224160,00.html

Dengl 13 No Blasphemy in the Sudan

2007-12-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

The British teacher Gillian Gibbons has accepted a pardon to emerge from jail in the Sudan. A pardon implies that she had been guilty of something - in this case not just misnaming a teddy bear, but doing so in a blasphemous way. Monotheistic religions presumably define blasphemy as insulting the Divinity. Islam should not agree, therefore, that to disparage Christ is to blaspheme (Islam has indeed inscribed this distinction on the Dome of the Rock : "... God, ... hath not taken unto Himself a son, and ... hath no partner in the Sovereignty"). To accept that insulting the Prophet Mohammed (whom we respect - but who Islam declares in this inscription can not be a 'partner in the Sovereignty') amounts to blasphemy is to imply that a human being, Mohammed, is a part of or 'partner to' to the Almighty - and that is itself surely a blasphemous thought.
Ideally, Mrs Gibbons would have argued that, in Islamic terms, she had not committed any blasphemy; we can understand, though, that she used a formula to escape cruel chastisement (we can not accept calling it punishment - which must be defined as a retribution for a valid crime). Ironically, all those party to the "pardon", the Sudanese authorities and the British, have covertly committed a blasphemy, though not in the way originally headlined.

Dengl 1 uptaded Explaining The Word Dengl

2007-12-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

The first Dengl in history was number 1 in this list - and tries to explain the meaning of the word ...

it said:

Nowadays, with the lack of awareness of the history of a word, plus a certain amount of carefree creativity – we have new words boiled down from parts of two, to one – thus web log becomes the supremely inelegant blog - not a word which a sensitive person (Veper?) might wish to use. Similarly, these examples of “Mad English” or of Bad English could be called Denglishes – or just Dengls.
Party Conferences may become Tycons;
Sensitive Person(s) might be Vepers;
(mind you, so would insensitive persons)
tax incentives (are there such things?) would be Axinces; ....
Solar eclipses would be Larecls

keep going!!!

I'll perhaps put up some more examples - what about suggestions?

Dengl 11 A Statue of Mary Kingsley for Trafalgar Square

2007-11-30T03:57:00.001-08:00

A Statue on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth The Case for Mary Kingsley

What Trafalgar Square Monuments Mean
Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Aboukir Bay at the very start of the century, prompted a French force under Napoleon to leave Egypt. British influence now more easily brought India under British (rather than French) control. Nelson’s later victory at Trafalgar gave the square his Column and its name.
King George IV was the King at the time when Trafalgar Square was established. He represents the ‘ups and downs’ of the monarchy which, like it or not, was a medium for the tangled web of British identity, evolving over the century.
Two generals, Napier and Havelock won successes which did much to establish British rule in India. Like it or not, this was a major element in creating Britain’s relationship with the Indian subcontinent – and this is why so many of our citizens hail from there, and why the Mayor has felt it useful to establish offices there.
Britain’s relationship with Africa is represented in the square by South Africa House. Lord Malloch Brown stated, in a speech at the Royal Africa Society that there are now approximately a million people of African origin in Britain. English is now the world language which helps these diverse peoples to communicate.
The end of the century is not symbolised with any major figure – but we can redeem this;
we can have a statue of a woman, Mary Kingsley; and her achievements complete the 19th century in a way which relates it to the United Kingdom in which we now live.

Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley was a Londoner. In 1892, shortly after her parents died, Kingsley had not travelled abroad. She set out to … explore … the lesser known reaches of Africa. She wanted to continue her father’s “study of early religion and law”. Mary Kingsley's two journeys … were remarkable for being undertaken, alone, by a sheltered, middle-class, Victorian spinster in her thirties without any knowledge of African languages or French, or much money. On her first trip … she was referred to a new "French book of phrases in common use in Dahomey". The opening sentence of the book was "Help, I am drowning" followed by "Get up, you lazy scamps!". This was shortly followed by the question "Why has not this man been buried?" and its expected answer "It is fetish that has killed him, and he must lie here exposed with nothing on him until only the bones remain". On her second trip Kingsley explored up river from Lambaréné by canoe, reaching parts of the "Great Forest" not yet seen by a European. She collected insect, shell, plant, reptile, and fish specimens for the British Museum, as well as studying the culture and religion of the resident Fans.
…. On return to England in 1895, Mary Kingsley …. began work on writing her book Travels in West Africa. She also began a series of lectures based on her explorations and discoveries - she had returned with over a hundred species of fauna, including three previously unknown fish that were subsequently named after her. Her first lecture to the students and staff of a London medical school was entitled "African Therapeutics from a Witch Doctor's Point of View." Although she had planned to return to West Africa soon, she became so popular as a guest lecturer that she had to postpone her next trip.
Kingsley's first book, Travels in West Africa is a masterpiece of understatement - she … had travelled in West Africa wearing the same clothes that she habitually wore in England: long, black, trailing skirts, tight waists, high collars, and a small fur cap. These same clothes saved her life when she fell into a game pit, the many petticoats protecting her from being impaled on the stakes below. Later that same day, returning to her moored canoe, she found a hippopotamus standing over it and "scratched him behind the ear with my umbrella [until] we parted on good terms".
The first book was a best seller, and she immediately set about writing a second …. West African Studies was published, again by Macmillan, in 1899. At the same time, Kingsley became more active in various campaigns against colonial intervention in Africa. As a result of her extensive travels she had concluded that West Africa was much better served by the various traders … than the various groups of missionaries and settlers who typically had the ear of European governments. ….. Kingsley was quite influential, with direct access to the Colonial Office, and British colonial policy after 1890 showed a greater concern for retaining African social institutions. …
In 1899 … she was plunged into the thick of the recently declared Anglo-Boer War. She immediately went to the Army's Principal Medical Officer and offered her services … he suggested she try nursing Boer prisoners at a nearby camp in Simon's Town. Undeterred by an outbreak of typhoid and dysentery, Kingsley took up the post. She … drank wine instead of water, in an attempt to avoid the contagion. But she failed, and on 3 June 1900 at the age of 37 she died of enteric fever. At her request, she was buried at sea.

Mary Kingsley’s achievements included that she:
- influenced people in Britain to know more about and to respect African cultures
influenced other campaigners (such as E.D.Morel whose efforts were crucial in
bringing down King Leopold’s terrible oppression of the Congo.
see:

http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa011002a.htm

and

http://www.aboutbritain.com/TrafalgarSquare.htm

and

http://www.royalafricansociety.org/

Dengl 10 A Day With the Voice of the Listener & Viewer

2007-11-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

I went to the Annual Conference (2007) which was very informative.
I'm sure everyone else there has enough in their heads and needs not have any more from me - but I have put down a few reflections - largely so I do not forget the session myself .... and maybe someone will find something intriguing if you stumble across these remarks here ….
(I tried to put these thoughts into questions, but was unable to catch the right eyes, to b e called upon to do so).

Sir Michael Lyons Chairman of the BBC Trust
I thought he came over very well - working his way admirably into his role;
however
- Despite much talk about quality and about value - for money, or as Prof
Sylvia Harvey put it so well* - value for the audience - there was no sign
of a set of measures which might help describe let alone define quality.
- He said the Trust will answer anyone who approaches it - and has done
so to a personal letter I sent him before he entered his job; fine. But
a package of research materials on attempts to ‘quantify quality’, that I also delivered for the Trust's research staff has not been acknowledged to me, let alone any comment offered which might indicate that such materials are of any value or not ...
* http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/media/staff/1357.asp

The research that they do that is NOT SYSTEMATICALLY REPRESENTATIVE may be useful, but unless it is reflected quite closely in systematically representative studies, can be quite misleading;
the research that they do that IS systematically representative may also be misleading - if it takes the form of asking people what they would like to see or not see ... (I take an elitist view – people do not fully ‘know our own minds’)
The Trust should be more open with the public and drive for a discourse based on what people think of programmes and services (publishing the BBC's measurements of Appreciation), rather than on one of supposed measurement of (viewing) behaviour, which animates the commercial discourse.

- I disagreed with his analysis that the Trust is not a regulator - as he sets out its goals, it very much resembles the IBA of old; if the Trust is not a regulator (and the board of management is not that either - that leaves Ofcom as a (potential) regulator - and that has been notoriously negligent of such a role - and erratic in applying its punishment(s);
- I doubt very much if the public realise or would agree that Ofcom is the regulator for the BBC; if it is, someone had better start telling the public sooner rather than later - and maybe also be telling Ofcom ....
- The Trust should acknowledge that it is the regulator, that its Chairman is the Chairman of the Trust and not of the BBC (which doesn’t need a Chairman - it has enough internal executive top-weight - and one might dowell to read the remarks of Professor Roy Greenslade in the Standard the day before this session: *
- The Trust should sooner rather than later (as Ofcom did when it wanted a structural amendment to its Act) ask for the Charter to be amended so that the Trust is financed from a first slice off the licence revenue and not from any procedure which lets it be paid for via or by the BBC. This will enhance the Trust's line of direct accountability to the licence payers.
*http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23423465-details/So+what+is+the+point+of+these+five+non-execs+sitting+on+BBC+board/article.do

Nathalie Schwarz (C4 Radio project)
She spoke enthusiastically about all the projects she wants to lead into a brave new future. I would have liked to have asked her if C4 has any Revenue Targets, and Revenue Forecasts for these new enterprises. There will no doubt be some good things which emerge - but whether it will be worth the effort of over-stocking the (radio) shelves already loaded with unheard wares, with a destabilising effect on existing services, remains to be seen.

The Digital Future - the Option Out
Good luck to Whitehaven - it is not necessarily a pointer to what may happen in different localities. A few people, he said, "did not convert" (yet?) - but another view (their view?) may be that they DID convert - to Life Without Television. I suspect that slightly more than handfuls will be joining LWT, elsewhere. I may indeed be one of them. I will then do without paying the licence fee - and the government may then want to retrieve the title of the Broadcasting Licence (or re-deploy a subsidiary Radio licence) as I will most likely want to be listening to "radio" direct, or via the computer.
The technical people in the audience did much to undermine the speakers - implying that it is by no means to be taken as read that DAB radio, or television will guarantee better technical quality everywhere - rather the opposite; it may be more expensive to make television for digital transmission - which cost will detract from money to spend on better efforts (Michael Darlow).

Quality in the Middle Ground
Michael Goldfarb* from America made a very interesting point - that it would be
good to have the quality of the mainstream centre conserved (or enhanced); his remark implied that there are rarer excellent materials (and who knows how much dross) neither of which should mainly pre-occupy policy wonks and structural designers.
* http://www.vet.co.uk/en/beyond/more_case_studies/michael_goldfarb

Dengl 9 Blurring Time

2007-11-23T04:49:00.000-08:00

I can't remember with whom (or several people) I talked about the wretched historic present in which tv presenters (yes, it is often they who are at the fore of some gadarene gaggle ...) blur the thinking and experience of their viewers (and listeners).
It's not just the notion that one might transport people of today into an imagined past, by using the present tense to describe events that took place long ago, but the possibility that as people are not taught 'grammar' (nasty oppressive stuff) in schools, those without should not be put at a disadvantage in comparison with those who flaunt their superior knowledge and abilities ...OR, it may be that television commentary 'leads' the way towards a much less inflected language (when, one day, nouns, verbs and adjectives, will all merge into each other, tenses will be abolished - and maybe the tediously complex vocabulary exploited by some, such as the show-off Shakespeare, who used many scores of thousands of different words, could be replaced by the terse lexicon with which great writers like Racine (who is said to have made do with a vocabulary of well under ten thousand words) succeeded ...

I had not thought I would very soon be reminded that it is not just the present being enfolded into the past, but the future being enfolded into the present that I might choose to worry about. A recent job advertisement I saw - quoted below - reminds me that it is very common in 'human resources' prose to confuse skills that people do actually possess here and now, with ones they might one day acquire ... I could imagine an interview at which, without any evidence of having the required skills referred to, now, I resorted to charging the employer (to be) that it would be their responsibility to train me to acquire such skills, as implied in the terms of their advertisement ....

here is the example ... (I am sure you will come across many others)

_____________________________

Director of XX

XX is a member-led grassroots organisation aiming to ...... promote community cohesion and to act as a model of best practice.

The organisation is looking for its first Director to drive forward a programme of meetings, events, and publications, building partnerships and establishing XX as an independent and sustainable organisation.

You will be (sic) a good communicator, have an understanding of inter faith work, a strong track record of working at senior levels with public and voluntary sectors, and attracting support for funders and government in politically sensitive environments. The Director will need to be able to work under pressure, combining imagination with good management practice.
.....
Closing date for applications is 5pm on Wednesday 5th December 2007.
We intend to hold interviews in London Sunday 6th January 2008.
|_______________________

A more complex time-blur is found in a letter to The Psychologist (vol.20 No 11, p 664) in which the writer reports "In 1897 W.H.R.Rivers would be appointed Lecturer in ...Cambridge" - while there is no doubt that he WAS appointed.

I wonder how widespread time-blurring now is; whether it is becoming more common; whether we will ever (in English) return to a time when a 'time-line' from the past through to the future will be described with precision - and I wonder whether a 'post-modern' type of justification is now taking over, implying that "old linear time" is an illusion of the modernist phase in science and philosophy and can be dispensed with. Maybe in certain realms of poetry, drama and fiction time-blurring is a welcome device - but perhaps not in non-fiction?

Dengl 8 Hem Ing Way beats Roth?

2007-11-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

I think the following came from one of the many places in which psychology writer Christian Jarrett tells members of the British Psychological Society about recent studies ... I have a point to add ...

he begins:

The write advice, put simply

EVIDENCE adduced by psychological researcher Daniel M. Oppenheimer of Princeton University in New Jersey suggests that utilisation of unnecessarily elongated verbal expressions could have the consequence of their writer being perceived as less intelligent by readers.
Oppenheimer asked undergraduates to look at university application letters, half of which he had manipulated by replacing every noun, verb and adjective with its longest synonym from the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus (retaining linguistic sense and grammatical structure). Students who saw the modified letters were less likely to say that they would have admitted the author to university than were the students who saw an unaltered application letter.
Oppenheimer also presented a second set of undergraduate volunteers with student dissertation abstracts, half of which he had altered by replacing every word of nine or more letters with its second shortest synonym from the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus. Here, students judged the authors of the simplified passages to be more clever than the authors of the unaltered passages.
These effects also extended to an author’s font selection. For example, participants viewed the authors of text written in italicised Juice font to be of lower intelligence than did participants who saw identical wording written in Times New Roman.
Oppenheimer commented: ‘The continuing popularity amongst students of using big words and attractive font styles may be due* to the fact that they may not realise these techniques could backfire.’ He suggested: ‘One thing seems certain: write as simply as possible and it’s more likely you’ll be thought of as intelligent.’
The findings will be published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology**.

______________________________

one of the very first articles I ever had published (in the Architects' Journal, back in the '60s!) suggested that the American Forces (according to what we were invited to believe, in the war movies of the time) were making a mistake in having their servicemen (yes, I can say that, there seemed to have ben no active servicewomen then - and if they had been there they may not have been so silly) used to shout out "neg ative; neg ative" - or "affirm ative"
what, I asked, if commotion or interference lost the first syllable or two?
all that the receiver would hear would be - ative'

why not have their service people repeat the essential syllable - if they have the luxury of three to go over the air and say
NO NO NO or YES YES YES ?

I think the answer is that this makes the speaker sound like a person; the aggravated latin makes the speaker sound more like a (non-killing) robot
however, for accurate comprehension the personal seems likely to be better

so, not only would one be judged more clever for speaking simply - one WOULD BE more clever for doing so!

*"Students still like using long words and fancy fonts, though these may not be the best ways" ....
** er - would "Useful Psychology" do? Isn't "cognitive" woven into the meaning of the "psych -" syllable? (an argument I urged on the B PS - as we see, unsuccessfully, when they institutionalised the term "cognitive psychology"

Dengl 7 Fly The Standard in London

2007-11-01T02:07:00.000-07:00

I have found at least three truly sterling articles in the Standard of 31 Oct (and haven't finished reading the issue yet) –
First, Dovkants, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Keith+Dovkants+on+Steve+Moxon&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
tells the story of one Steve Moxon who publicised inadequacies in government agencies’ counting methods and found it difficult to get a higher profile for his material ….

Next, Valentine Low writes: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23418882-details/The+people+who+rebuilt+St+Pancras/article.do
which is about the laborious and artistic reconstruction of St Pancras Station

and
Lebrecht - http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/071031-NL-angel.html
this is about “Songs for my Father” and I will say no more about this here – you need to read the piece – and probably buy the record ….

and for such as these I will continue to buy the paper. I urge that those who merely pick up a freesheet and let that suffice are doing our city a disfavour - such people should realise that each such acceptance of an ostensibly "free" gift is really to connive in an attempt to kill what is in very many ways a paper of great quality and utility to the capital. Free gives an impression of adding to things - picking up a 'minus'sheet is really a subtraction from the future wellbeing of the capital. Thank you Standard and keep going!

Dengl 6 Muslim Moves to Find Common Cause with Christendom

2007-10-31T12:04:00.000-07:00

After a trip abroad I have been catching up with The Spectator and was most interested to read Piers Paul Read's piece (25 October: "The Muslims' letter to the Pope is not all it seems").

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100012117&docId=l:690305803&start=22

Read quotes the letter as saying that "Islam is not against (Christians) as long as they do not wage war against Muslims"... and he goes on to exonerate Christians of any such charge. He does not mention that the war which many Muslim readers would think this referred to arose with the appearance of Israel in what is considered the territory of Islam - from the early British support via the Balfour Declaration - to the more recent aid to Israel from the USA. A large proportion of westerners, many of whom are Christians, do not see this as an anti-Muslim war; a large proportion of Muslims, do.

Read refers to a "historic enmity between the two religions" but argues that very important moves have been made to put this in the past. Read welcomes Islam's "veneration of Jesus and Mary". However a fact little known in the west is that on the inside of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are Arabic inscriptions which set out essential theological differences between the faiths. Excerpts from these writings (not difficult to find by websearch via google) include:

The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of God, and His Word which He conveyed unto Mary, ....So believe in God and His messengers, and say not 'Three'.... . Far be it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son...... It befitteth not (the Majesty of) God that He should take unto Himself a son. ..... Say: He is God, the One! God, the eternally Besought of all! He begetteth not nor was begotten. .... Praise be to God, Who hath not taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty,

These standpoints suggest that Islam is much closer to Judaism than to Christianity. If ecumenial progress is being worked upon this is an excellent thing and one hopes that not just two faiths but three will carry on with efforts to understand each other and inhabit this planet without conflict.

Dengl 5 Oct 31 Word Quirks in Politics

2007-10-31T02:12:00.000-07:00

I imagine it will not have escaped the notice of some LibDems - let alone others - whose heartbeats - or hearts beat - or beet? close to the centre of Europe that one leadership contender is Mr Huhne.
No doubt an excellent man, but if he ever gets in a flap, or gets cooped up in some political corner, let alone falls off his perch, it will be realised that his name - notwithstanding the final e - means chicken in German - will LibDemChickens come home to roost?

I wonder what the comedians and cartoonists will make of this.... the mischievous part of me looks forward to finding out ...

on a more serious note, the quirks of language can be killers -
a British comedienne (should I have to say comedian - I am not sure which she would prefer) has invented - a prizewinning - character called Cockface (try the link) - maybe she will run with this one ...

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2012264275

Dengl 4 Top Guns Under Fire – BBC’s Rolling Heads

2007-10-31T02:11:00.000-07:00

An incisive article by Ray Snoddy (Independent, 8 October 2007) reports that a BBC executive has lost his job following a report by ex-BBC executive Will Wyatt. The report details what happened when an Independent programme-making company (from whom BBC and other broadcasters buy programmes) made it seem that HM the Queen had walked out of a ‘photo shoot’ in a huff. This was inappropriate in at least three ways. One, which has been mentioned, is that the reported incident was untrue – the misdemeanour would have been one whomever the victim of misreporting had been. Another, which has also been mentioned, is that when the BBC – or other broadcaster buys in a programme there is more chance that crucial details of veracity – or other elements of quality – will go unchecked. A third consideration – which has not been mentioned as far as I can tell, anywhere, is that the BBC operates under a Royal Charter; surely in this case it should be particularly considerate of the monarch and how she is represented. Quite possibly some senior broadcasters behave as though either Polly Toynbee or Germaine Greer are the part-time monarchs, but if they check the charter they will find this is not so. Accordingly respect is due to the real monarch.
Leading from the second consideration above, the BBC recently broadcast an important documentary ([rime time, over one hour, no interruptions for adverts) on the history of Britain’s nuclear bomb making endeavour to reach collaborative status with the USA. I watched this through, carefully, and considered it as good as it could be, given the constraints of its length – a book can say vastly more – as I have tried to show in my study: http://www.amazon.com/Television-Nuclear-Power-Communication-Information/dp/0893916765. In particular, I watched the credits and – rarely it seems these days – it was the BBC itself which had made this item. Correspondingly, there was less chance for error in what was a very politically sensitive programme. This is a lesson the BBC evidently knows, even though it may not practice it often enough.

Dengl 3 How to have Two Top Lives (in London anyway)

2007-10-31T02:10:00.000-07:00

The Evening Standard in London gave away in mid-October a booklet listing “The 1000 London’s Most Influential People 2007” http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/influential.do/. The introduction also declares that “London is the world’s most influential city”. Maybe – this depends on how one measures such things – but as we will see, systematic analysis is not the name of London’s (or the Standard’s) current game. Influence should be measurable in terms not just of current impact worldwide but also guessable in terms of anticipated impact in the future.
Looking through the 22 walks of life listed in the Contents (24 walks of life on the outside cover) one soon notices that a person in one section appears again elsewhere (Sebastian Lord Coe, for example, and James Purnell Gordon Brown’s new man in the Department of Culture media and Sport). This may mean that there are not actually 1000 names in the whole booklet. Never mind – this is the least important drawback in what is in many ways a valuable and interesting exercise.
My main sadness is that there is no section on Science. Yes, Education is there, and Health, but no specific section for Science. This is connected with the weakness in outlook which emphasises energy, charisma, heaps of bounding current success, but which partly neglects the intellectual foundation on which durability depends.
The Contents list starts with “new media” (itself a dubious term), goes on with retail, and ends with television & radio and finally “Social London”. This is a markedly upper class collection whose recognition or impact fifty years on may well be fading out of sight. Daily we read of street stabbings by teenage members of “gangs” – are these not a prominent part of “social London” with a huge impact on how many people live now – and possibly on the future evolution of the capital?
In the section on ‘literary life’ we lead with J.K.Rowling who may or may not be considered a Londoner, since she lives in Edinburgh, and Jamie Byng, an Edinburgh publisher; also borrowed is Chimamanda Adichie who lives in America. These are not quintessential Londoners surely, but also listed is Charlotte Mendelson – the topic of a separate Dengl.

Dengl2: On The Death Of Diana Princess of Wales

2007-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

When the news of the death of Diana Princess of Wales was given out, everyone remembered where they were when they first heard of the tragedy – just as happened 34 years earlier when President John F.Kennedy was assassinated. The two deaths were remarkable in another way – as Magnus Linklater the Times’ columnist has pointed out, in both cases stories, myths and legends sprang up as to the causes of such trauma. The ‘official’ accounts of who killed Kennedy and of Diana’s car crash were not universally accepted – dark doubts were expanded into tales, some extravagant but some simple, as to hidden and in many stories, nefarious motives and actions.

In 1965 I was in Nigeria and on one occasion driving from Lagos to Benin. The road mostly went through thick forest and I gave a hitch to a young Nigerian; two hundred miles gave much time for conversation. We talked about Kennedy and the young man asked me if I believed the official account – he emphatically did not. He declared that the then Vice President Lyndon Johnson was responsible – he had arranged a secret assassination. Why? What evidence had my companion?
(Evidence is our bedrock criterion in western ‘modern’ scientific, print literate cultures, to help us explain events).
My companion’s evidence (he might not have used that term) was that Johnson had the most powerful motive to do such a deed. He would get the Presidency.

I was in Nigeria as a social psychologist attached to Ibadan University and this conversation served as a prompt and an example to asking more about how people in many Nigerian (and other West African) cultures respond to the blows of what we call fate. In many cases they did (maybe still do) consult a diviner and that person (like a consultant Conan Doyle) looked for the motivational patterns around the event: who might want an event to happen? How might they prompt it to happen? If and when there is a plausible tale along these lines, the diviner (in his or her role as social healer) might suggest either a negotiation (or something more drastic …). The pattern, however, is that enquiry is more like a piece of playwriting than what happens in a laboratory. So, in this man’s mind, Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the death of Kennedy.

Where does this take us with Diana? I did not ever expect that (some) patterns of social explanation found in Nigeria might be found similarly in Egypt. I know next to nothing about Egyptian society. Yet perhaps that is true and that ways of thinking in village cultures are strong enough to be found in later generations now living in towns – among people who are perfectly literate and in many other ways thorough members of a modern “scientifically habituated” society.

So we find Mohammad Fayed’s early thoughts on his son’s death (and that of Diana) were that he, with she, had been murdered. He further inferred the person most likely (in his view) to gain from such a deed – and blamed Prince Philip. The scenario of the burdensome current inquest may therefore be a contest between “western” scientifically-based ways of thought and exploring causes and effects, and more antiquated pre-modern ways of such thought. We are seeing something like what happened in the enquiries into Galileo’s assertions about the moon going round the earth and the earth round the sun. Galileo may have lost that dispute in the short term – most reckon he won in the end. The jury in the "Diana (and Dodi) inquest" are likely, as people educated in modern society, not to see things Fayed's way; but we shall see.

Dengl 1 I explain my title

2007-10-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, with the lack of awareness of the history of a word, plus a certain amount of carefree creativity – we have new words boiled down from parts of two, to one – thus web log becomes the supremely inelegant blog - not a word which a sensitive person (Veper?) might wish to use. Similarly, these examples of “Mad English” or of Bad English could be called Denglishes – or just Dengls.
Party Conferences may become Tycons;
Sensitive Person(s) might be Vepers;
(mind you, so would insensitive persons)
tax incentives (are there such things?) would be Axinces; ....
Solar eclipses would be Larecls

keep going!!!

I'll perhaps put up some more examples - what about suggestions?