Talking of head colds, which is better: paracetamol or ibruprofen?
And is one's preference determined rationally, emotionally or superstitiously?
Monday, February 08, 2010
A bug's life, John Gray, homunculus
Nasty headcold, poisons everything. This is a bugs’ planet; always has been. We are but their latest and temporary vehicles; no arts, no letters, no society… Sorry, came over a bit John Gray there. I’ve been dipping into Straw Dogs lately, perhaps the most highbrow toilet book on the market, trying to remember what I thought about it. I’ve remembered now: Gray is brilliant at gutting popular truisms, but then often makes an unjustifiably strong claim himself. This creates an unusual effect: you read through each passage, many of which contain wonderful, pithily-expressed insights, nodding and thinking "hmmm, too true, too true… ooh he’s got us there… Egad! Touché Mr Gray…" but then at the end the overwhelming feeling is one of profound suspicion.
For one example relevant to the bugs' life point above, Gray slashes at the western notion of the coherent Self, arguing that a Taoist-style flow of impressions, experiences and contingencies is a truer representation of reality. But then he asserts, boldly and unequivocally, that the Self is an illusion. Well this may be true, but then it may not. It may be that we are simply not very good at recalling and ordering things clearly, leaving the impression of an incoherent flow of impressions, experiences and contingencies, and this is the illusion. And there may be countless other explanations and interpretations, each consistent with some sort of Self. And if there is no coherent Self, how come we are able to look back on our lives with such bitterness, resentment and regret, John Gray? There are many such over-confident assertions in the book – some much more obvious than this one. Might write about it later in the week.
That said, at times like this one feels there is something in his final, final conclusion – the purpose of our lives is just to see. With a poisonous headcold one yearns for nothing so much as to be a lonely goatherd, healthy and free of the bugs in the clean wild elements, watching the sun circle and the white snow turn red as strawberries in the summertime.
For one example relevant to the bugs' life point above, Gray slashes at the western notion of the coherent Self, arguing that a Taoist-style flow of impressions, experiences and contingencies is a truer representation of reality. But then he asserts, boldly and unequivocally, that the Self is an illusion. Well this may be true, but then it may not. It may be that we are simply not very good at recalling and ordering things clearly, leaving the impression of an incoherent flow of impressions, experiences and contingencies, and this is the illusion. And there may be countless other explanations and interpretations, each consistent with some sort of Self. And if there is no coherent Self, how come we are able to look back on our lives with such bitterness, resentment and regret, John Gray? There are many such over-confident assertions in the book – some much more obvious than this one. Might write about it later in the week.
That said, at times like this one feels there is something in his final, final conclusion – the purpose of our lives is just to see. With a poisonous headcold one yearns for nothing so much as to be a lonely goatherd, healthy and free of the bugs in the clean wild elements, watching the sun circle and the white snow turn red as strawberries in the summertime.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Paul McCartney's brain
What must it have been like, I wondered recently, to have had Paul McCartney’s brain in the 1960s? Every few days you’d wake up, perhaps sit at a piano, waggle your head a bit, say ‘Wa-hey!’ and your brain would produce a tune for you. Sometimes it might be something like Rocky Raccoon or Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, but then on other days it might be something like Yesterday or Let it Be.
Being a music lover devoid of musical talent, I have always regarded with awe and jealousy those rare people who can write memorable melodies. Not just Paul McCartney or Brian Wilson or Mozart or Handel, but anyone who can pen something everyone can whistle. Like the great atheist Bjorn from Abba. Or Noel Gallagher. Or even Pete Waterman, why not. It seems a mysterious witchcraft: the ability to arrange a limited number of notes in a particular, original sequence and rhythm so that hearers can easily and with pleasure repeat that sequence whenever they wish (or sometimes, with great irritation when they don’t wish).
Clearly it is an innate gift afforded to very few. Ringo Starr in some amusing interview told how he would try to write songs but when he presented them to the rest of the Beatles they would inform him that he had unintentionally ripped off a popular tune of the day, and he would say “Oh yeah.”
We can confidently and unhesitatingly dismiss the ‘Outliers’ theory of that audacious charlatan and peddler of the obvious or empty Malcolm Gladwell, whereby he posits that the Beatles’ genius can be explained by the 10,000 hours of practice they had in Hamburg nightclubs. This is clearly nonsense.
First, there are countless thousands of jobbing musicians who put in the hours but never write a Penny Lane or indeed a tune a tenth as good as the most innocuous Beatles album track.
Second, the gift nearly always declines with years rather than improving.eg. Paul McCartney’s brain in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Generally speaking most bands’ debut albums contain their best tunes, and those artists with longevity (Dylan, Springsteen, Waits, Cave etc) rely on other qualities in their later years, ie. songcraft. Noel Gallagher had never even been in a band when his Muse provided him with all the melodies for the first two Oasis albums. It deserted him immediately afterwards, well before he had put in the 10,000 hours.
Third, Malcolm Gladwell has very silly hair.
Q.E.D.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Marian Beer - A Life
It is common knowledge that obituaries are written in advance, in case the worthy in question pops his or her clogs unexpectedly. Apropos of nothing, Think of England’s Chief Correspondent Neil Hacksworth emails me this obit he has been preparing - with an eye on the Telegraph though he'd settle for the Observer, worst case scenario - for the well-known academic Marian Beer.
The life of...Marian Beer
Marian Beer, who died this week aged 90, was Professor of Classical Greek Studies at Cambridge University and one of Britain’s best known academics. Noted for her outspoken, ‘wickedly subversive’ views on everything from Spartan culture to mass murder, she invariably delivered her unorthodox opinions with a roguish smile and a twinkle in the eye.
Esmeralda Marian Beer, an only child, was born in Shrewsbury on 2 January 1956. Her parents, both teachers, encouraged her academically but Beer’s early ambitions were thespian in nature. She often took the ‘male’ lead in productions at her all-female school and even penned her own plays, which she later described as “wild romances, lots of singing, very bloody.” It was while playing the title role in Aeschylus' Agamemnon that Beer discovered the interest in Ancient Greek culture that was to determine the course of her life.
She read Classics at Newnham College, receiving an MA, and remained at Cambridge for her PHD. While an undergraduate, Beer retained an extra-curricular interest in drama; writing and producing several experimental plays including Groper Train, Hooray for The Cornet Player! and Cnut’s End. Some of these productions attracted wider attention in the theatre world, with one in particular – a dystopian piece imagining a future in which the working classes are ‘harvested’ for fertility clinics – being adapted for the West End by Trevor Nunn. Sadly, Sperm, Egg and Chips was a critical and commercial failure, and a disillusioned Beer threw herself full-time into the academic life.
From 1980 to 1984 Beer lectured in Classics at Durham. She returned to Cambridge in 1985 as only the second female lecturer in the Classics faculty and her seminal work, The Decline, Fall, Slight Recovery and Fall Again, This Time Decisive, of Sparta was published the same year. Beer made her mark on Cambridge life with a radical, iconoclastic approach to the Classics but increasingly it was her political activism that was putting her in the public eye. A natural protester by temperament and with a rigid moral sense, she was involved in various social and political campaigns throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
Beer particularly loathed the injustice of relative poverty and was believed to be one of the instigators of the ‘mercy kidnappings’ that took place between 2004 and 2006, in which a group of masked individuals calling themselves the Relativistas assisted the relative poor of the USA by seizing wealthy Americans from their homes and smuggling them over the Mexican border, thus slightly reducing the financial gap between the top 30% of earners and the median income group.
Beer’s theory of the ‘guilty victim’ had actually been developed in the early 1980s (and was a major influence on Martin Amis’s idea of a ‘murderee’ in his 1989 novel London Fields). Initially controversial, the theory had gained widespread acceptance by the time of Beer’s death. Just three days after the 9/11 attacks Beer penned What Goes Around, a controversial article for the New Statesman which argued that the mass murders were more than justified by the history of US foreign policy. The article met with a hostile reaction, but Beer set out on an exhaustive campaign to convince dissenters of her interpretation and before long nearly everybody she knew pretty much agreed with her.
Beer was on the 7/7 Memorial Committee which commissioned a statue of the four 2005 London bombers in Tavistock Square, after it was proven that all 56 of the people killed that day had it coming to them. Her 2008 investigation into the Harold Shipman murders, meanwhile, showed that most of the 218 elderly deceased had voted Tory and that one or two were possibly even a bit racist. Tragically, Shipman’s exoneration came too late, since he had hanged himself in his cell in 2004.
Marian Beer’s frequent media appearances kept her in the public consciousness well after her retirement from academic life. She regularly took the Complication Chair on the Radio 4 discussion show You Say Potato, I Say Starchy, Tuberous Crop from the Perennial Solanum Tuberosum of the Solanaceae Family, and her musical selections in a memorable appearance on Desert Island Discs consisted of F**k tha Police by NWA and seven different live versions of the Muggsy Spanier standard Pamela’s Theme. She said of Spanier: “Muggsy was a kindred spirit, I see myself in him: a fighter, a creator, a one-off. In many ways he was the cornet player’s cornet player, and perhaps I’ll be remembered as the Cambridge academic’s Cambridge academic.”
Esmeralda Marian Beer, academic and activist, died on 3 February 2046. She leaves behind her husband Sebastian Hoare, three children, a trail of destruction and four grandchildren.
The life of...Marian Beer
Marian Beer, who died this week aged 90, was Professor of Classical Greek Studies at Cambridge University and one of Britain’s best known academics. Noted for her outspoken, ‘wickedly subversive’ views on everything from Spartan culture to mass murder, she invariably delivered her unorthodox opinions with a roguish smile and a twinkle in the eye.
Esmeralda Marian Beer, an only child, was born in Shrewsbury on 2 January 1956. Her parents, both teachers, encouraged her academically but Beer’s early ambitions were thespian in nature. She often took the ‘male’ lead in productions at her all-female school and even penned her own plays, which she later described as “wild romances, lots of singing, very bloody.” It was while playing the title role in Aeschylus' Agamemnon that Beer discovered the interest in Ancient Greek culture that was to determine the course of her life.
She read Classics at Newnham College, receiving an MA, and remained at Cambridge for her PHD. While an undergraduate, Beer retained an extra-curricular interest in drama; writing and producing several experimental plays including Groper Train, Hooray for The Cornet Player! and Cnut’s End. Some of these productions attracted wider attention in the theatre world, with one in particular – a dystopian piece imagining a future in which the working classes are ‘harvested’ for fertility clinics – being adapted for the West End by Trevor Nunn. Sadly, Sperm, Egg and Chips was a critical and commercial failure, and a disillusioned Beer threw herself full-time into the academic life.
From 1980 to 1984 Beer lectured in Classics at Durham. She returned to Cambridge in 1985 as only the second female lecturer in the Classics faculty and her seminal work, The Decline, Fall, Slight Recovery and Fall Again, This Time Decisive, of Sparta was published the same year. Beer made her mark on Cambridge life with a radical, iconoclastic approach to the Classics but increasingly it was her political activism that was putting her in the public eye. A natural protester by temperament and with a rigid moral sense, she was involved in various social and political campaigns throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
Beer particularly loathed the injustice of relative poverty and was believed to be one of the instigators of the ‘mercy kidnappings’ that took place between 2004 and 2006, in which a group of masked individuals calling themselves the Relativistas assisted the relative poor of the USA by seizing wealthy Americans from their homes and smuggling them over the Mexican border, thus slightly reducing the financial gap between the top 30% of earners and the median income group.
Beer’s theory of the ‘guilty victim’ had actually been developed in the early 1980s (and was a major influence on Martin Amis’s idea of a ‘murderee’ in his 1989 novel London Fields). Initially controversial, the theory had gained widespread acceptance by the time of Beer’s death. Just three days after the 9/11 attacks Beer penned What Goes Around, a controversial article for the New Statesman which argued that the mass murders were more than justified by the history of US foreign policy. The article met with a hostile reaction, but Beer set out on an exhaustive campaign to convince dissenters of her interpretation and before long nearly everybody she knew pretty much agreed with her.
Beer was on the 7/7 Memorial Committee which commissioned a statue of the four 2005 London bombers in Tavistock Square, after it was proven that all 56 of the people killed that day had it coming to them. Her 2008 investigation into the Harold Shipman murders, meanwhile, showed that most of the 218 elderly deceased had voted Tory and that one or two were possibly even a bit racist. Tragically, Shipman’s exoneration came too late, since he had hanged himself in his cell in 2004.
Marian Beer’s frequent media appearances kept her in the public consciousness well after her retirement from academic life. She regularly took the Complication Chair on the Radio 4 discussion show You Say Potato, I Say Starchy, Tuberous Crop from the Perennial Solanum Tuberosum of the Solanaceae Family, and her musical selections in a memorable appearance on Desert Island Discs consisted of F**k tha Police by NWA and seven different live versions of the Muggsy Spanier standard Pamela’s Theme. She said of Spanier: “Muggsy was a kindred spirit, I see myself in him: a fighter, a creator, a one-off. In many ways he was the cornet player’s cornet player, and perhaps I’ll be remembered as the Cambridge academic’s Cambridge academic.”
Esmeralda Marian Beer, academic and activist, died on 3 February 2046. She leaves behind her husband Sebastian Hoare, three children, a trail of destruction and four grandchildren.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
A motto for our times
Via the New Psalmanazar I find a devastating apothegm from Peter De Vries. I have never read De Vries before so I immediately sent off for Slouching towards Kalamazoo.
Who of us so complexly entangled in our common human blah blah blah can plumb the innermost recesses of another’s and so forth and so on?
Henceforth will my life be guided by this maxim.
Who of us so complexly entangled in our common human blah blah blah can plumb the innermost recesses of another’s and so forth and so on?
Henceforth will my life be guided by this maxim.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
A can of worms
...would it be opening one of the aforementioned, I wonder, if I were to ask about the possible relationship between 'natural law' and, ahem, 'evolutionary psychology'?
It did occur to me...
...that if we really wanted to increase the diversity of the Catholic Church, we should be forcing them to take on a few non-gays in senior positions…
Monday, February 01, 2010
Mary Beard 2: Wicked subversion and the donnish mind
Mary Beard has, I believe, visited the post below. My statistics machine – a Blötzmannometer attached to the computer via a pneumatic funnel and borrowed from Frank Key – shows that someone at Cambridge University has landed there by googling “Mary Beard desert island discs” and Beard’s own blog suggests an impatient, insecure desire for internet validation:
People have sent such great emails…Of course I recognise that only people who liked what you are said are likely to email or post directly. So far not a single email from a colleague (oh dear). And there have been a couple of blogs about 9/11 and about my crap choice of music, But all in all I reckon I've come out just about ahead.
In return I’ve left an abridged version of the post on her A Don’s Life blog. As a critique of her 9/11 views it will of course be nothing she hasn’t heard a thousand times before – usually in more violent tones - so I’m not expecting a reply. The fact that Beard still feels happy to profess these views despite an awareness of the offence she causes is worth pondering. Possibly it is the result of too many years in the unreality of academia, or maybe it is just that people like this are drawn to academia. Anyway, the Don’s life is one of constant argument and opinion in a protected environment. You say something to make a splash and expect disagreement. Beard’s self-image includes being “wickedly subversive”. Presumably she feels that her statements about 9/11 are just a continuation of the wicked subversion she brings to the received wisdom about Ancient Rome.
But there is ‘wickedly subversive’ as in “wink wink ooh isn’t she just wicked” and then there is “wickedly subversive’ as in “evil and perverse”. Perhaps Beard is simply too densely donnish to tell the difference. On Desert Island Discs she used as jutification the claim that ‘most people she talked to’ felt similarly. Given that she hangs out with dons and students, this might even be all too true.
Her notorious article used the standard 'roosting chickens' device of expressing unconvincing sympathy for the 9/11 victims and then introducing her theory about how they deserved it with the word ‘but’…
The horror of the tragedy was enormously intensified by the ringside seats we were offered through telephone answering machines and text-messages. But…
The ‘But’ is the bit I don’t understand. Surely, to a human in the real world, everything said before the ‘But’ suffices. When considering an atrocity such as 9/11 it is not required of you to add a ‘But’ and a theory. I cannot fathom Beard’s way of thinking: the density and the sheer gall.
People have sent such great emails…Of course I recognise that only people who liked what you are said are likely to email or post directly. So far not a single email from a colleague (oh dear). And there have been a couple of blogs about 9/11 and about my crap choice of music, But all in all I reckon I've come out just about ahead.
In return I’ve left an abridged version of the post on her A Don’s Life blog. As a critique of her 9/11 views it will of course be nothing she hasn’t heard a thousand times before – usually in more violent tones - so I’m not expecting a reply. The fact that Beard still feels happy to profess these views despite an awareness of the offence she causes is worth pondering. Possibly it is the result of too many years in the unreality of academia, or maybe it is just that people like this are drawn to academia. Anyway, the Don’s life is one of constant argument and opinion in a protected environment. You say something to make a splash and expect disagreement. Beard’s self-image includes being “wickedly subversive”. Presumably she feels that her statements about 9/11 are just a continuation of the wicked subversion she brings to the received wisdom about Ancient Rome.
But there is ‘wickedly subversive’ as in “wink wink ooh isn’t she just wicked” and then there is “wickedly subversive’ as in “evil and perverse”. Perhaps Beard is simply too densely donnish to tell the difference. On Desert Island Discs she used as jutification the claim that ‘most people she talked to’ felt similarly. Given that she hangs out with dons and students, this might even be all too true.
Her notorious article used the standard 'roosting chickens' device of expressing unconvincing sympathy for the 9/11 victims and then introducing her theory about how they deserved it with the word ‘but’…
The horror of the tragedy was enormously intensified by the ringside seats we were offered through telephone answering machines and text-messages. But…
The ‘But’ is the bit I don’t understand. Surely, to a human in the real world, everything said before the ‘But’ suffices. When considering an atrocity such as 9/11 it is not required of you to add a ‘But’ and a theory. I cannot fathom Beard’s way of thinking: the density and the sheer gall.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Mary Beard, historians and evil
Not often that someone provokes me to swear at Desert Island Discs, but Mary Beard, the Cambridge Professor of Classics, managed it today by repeating her views on the 9/11 terrorist attacks (In case you need reminding, she was the one who wrote: This wasn’t just the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. ..World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price).
A couple of things have become increasingly clear to me in recent years:
First, that academia is where society puts its idiots in an attempt to minimise the harm they can do.
Second, that professional historians are not, as they usually think they are, better qualified than the rest of us to pronounce on current affairs because they see them ‘in context’. I do hate it when historians, usually Starkey or Schama, come on telly to talk about Gordon Brown and say, with a dismissive wave, that “of course we’ve been through all this before in Henry VIII’s day” (or whenever their specialism happens to be). In fact, all they are doing is what everyone else does: giving their personal opinion. They interpret both the contemporary and the selected historical narratives to fit their purpose. (In this case, Beard compares US ‘imperialism’ with the Roman Empire, her specialism.)
Beard’s original “article” – which, amongst worse offences, puts the word “terrorists” in scare quotes - was written just three days after the 9/11 attacks and published a few weeks later. Pressed on it now, it seems that Beard believes the worst that can be said of it is that her timing was a bit tactless. But the evil of her views, now so banally and gently expressed, only becomes more vivid with the years, as the excuse of a thoughtless knee-jerk reaction has passed. She did not take the opportunity to acknowledge that the targets and the victims of the 9/11 attacks were not US “imperialists” or Government policymakers, but civilians and the families they left behind. Ongoing, nearly all of the victims of Al Qaeda terrorism (or “terrorism” as Beard would have it) are Muslim civilians.
The worst commentariat reactions to 9/11 – namely conspiracy theorising and the Mary Beard/Ward Churchill school of leftist cant – continue to appal and provoke swearing at the radio nearly a decade on.
If someone consistently says evil things, is the fact that they really believe themselves morally right an excuse? Is stupidity an excuse? On balance, probably not, at least in this case. Beard’s statements are unequivocally evil – certainly as evil, in their way, as Pat Robertson’s views on Haiti. Given that she’s still professing them, I think we can reasonably say that Mary Beard is in a particular way evil, and in a more general way stupid.
A couple of things have become increasingly clear to me in recent years:
First, that academia is where society puts its idiots in an attempt to minimise the harm they can do.
Second, that professional historians are not, as they usually think they are, better qualified than the rest of us to pronounce on current affairs because they see them ‘in context’. I do hate it when historians, usually Starkey or Schama, come on telly to talk about Gordon Brown and say, with a dismissive wave, that “of course we’ve been through all this before in Henry VIII’s day” (or whenever their specialism happens to be). In fact, all they are doing is what everyone else does: giving their personal opinion. They interpret both the contemporary and the selected historical narratives to fit their purpose. (In this case, Beard compares US ‘imperialism’ with the Roman Empire, her specialism.)
Beard’s original “article” – which, amongst worse offences, puts the word “terrorists” in scare quotes - was written just three days after the 9/11 attacks and published a few weeks later. Pressed on it now, it seems that Beard believes the worst that can be said of it is that her timing was a bit tactless. But the evil of her views, now so banally and gently expressed, only becomes more vivid with the years, as the excuse of a thoughtless knee-jerk reaction has passed. She did not take the opportunity to acknowledge that the targets and the victims of the 9/11 attacks were not US “imperialists” or Government policymakers, but civilians and the families they left behind. Ongoing, nearly all of the victims of Al Qaeda terrorism (or “terrorism” as Beard would have it) are Muslim civilians.
The worst commentariat reactions to 9/11 – namely conspiracy theorising and the Mary Beard/Ward Churchill school of leftist cant – continue to appal and provoke swearing at the radio nearly a decade on.
If someone consistently says evil things, is the fact that they really believe themselves morally right an excuse? Is stupidity an excuse? On balance, probably not, at least in this case. Beard’s statements are unequivocally evil – certainly as evil, in their way, as Pat Robertson’s views on Haiti. Given that she’s still professing them, I think we can reasonably say that Mary Beard is in a particular way evil, and in a more general way stupid.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Oh for God's sake...
Further to the post below, George Pitcher’s evisceration of Dickie's rant alerts me to something I didn’t notice on first reading: Richard Dawkins’s atheistic fundraiser Non-Believers Giving Aid.
The website of which states: When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans...It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations.
Because of course when donating to charity the main thing is to ensure that you also strike a blow against religion.
The website of which states: When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans...It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations.
Because of course when donating to charity the main thing is to ensure that you also strike a blow against religion.
Bump and grind with Dickie Dawkins, you whited sepulchres!
This is a salutary lesson about why you should never write comment pieces for the Times while frothing in a righteous rage.
Here, Richard! Lend us your brain, I'm building an idiot.
Here, Richard! Lend us your brain, I'm building an idiot.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Refugees of Relative Poverty
Yesterday a study showed that the “gap between rich and poor in the UK is wider now than 40 years ago”. Furthermore, Peter B sends me this New York Times article by Bob Herbert, which includes the following extraordinary statistic:
In 2008, a startling 91.6 million people — more than 30 percent of the entire U.S. population — fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, which is a meager $21,834 for a family of four.
Less than 200%! Startling indeed. Relative Poverty is devastating the western world. Think of England sent its roving reporter Neil Hacksworth to the Mexican-US border…
----
Mexico steps up border security as millions flee relative poverty
by Neil Hacksworth
Close to the nation's busiest highway border crossing, from San Diego County to Tijuana, a border fence cuts across a park and a beach before stretching into the surf of the Pacific Ocean. This is the westernmost edge of the demarcation line in Mexico’s war against unauthorised immigration, and we are heading into a militarised zone.
On the US side of the fence, stretching back into Californian wastelands as far as the eye can see, is a chaotic automobile township - a temporary citadel of winnebagos, motor homes, campervans, bus conversions. Even SUVs with reclining seats, which people use for makeshift beds. It is five o’clock in the afternoon. Men gather round gas barbecues and swig from cans of Bud. We pass a middle-aged woman, overweight and squeezed into a deckchair; she is reading a paperback and I see a tear roll down her left check. The heat is oppressive and the air is shrill with the cries of children throwing footballs and Nintendo DS consoles. There is no education for children here except the school of hard knocks, and no laws govern them save the harsh law of the jungle. These are the kids that the US left behind and that Mexico doesn’t want.
Every night 1,800 American men, women and children will attempt to cross the border illegally. Every night, one of them will be shot and killed. These are the Refugees of Relative Poverty.
Tipping point
For years, ordinary American citizens, concerned at the widening gulf between the income of the average US family and that of the richest 1% of the population, have been crossing the border into Mexico in search of a more egalitarian lifestyle. But what was once a trickle has become a flood, and the Mexican authorities which at one time turned a blind eye or even actively encouraged the uneconomic migrants have tightened up the borders and are now taking a very hard line. As we draw near to the fence with our cameras, a Mexican border patrol truck appears atop the hill, to our rear. A man gets out and watches us through binoculars. He carries a semi-automatic weapon.
But what caused this mass exodus, which every day threatens to turn into a humanitarian crisis? What led to the emptying of the once-thriving suburbs of San Diego, San Francisco and of the towns and cities all across America? It is widely accepted that the tipping point was a seminal op-ed in the New York Times by journalist Bob Herbert, in which he revealed the shattering statistic that almost 30% of American families earned less than double the official federal poverty line. The news spread like wildfire across the online social networks of the country and the protests and riots that followed are well documented. Suddenly, America had woken up.
Many of the refugees I speak to at the border crossing confirm this. “It was like the scales fell from my eyes,” says Hank Schweinberger, who has brought his family all the way from Denver in an RV which he paid for by selling virtually all of his possessions, including a brand new TiVo HD DVR system. “As soon as I read that [article by Bob Herbert] I got out my calculator. I found that even if I worked until I was 500 years old, I still wouldn’t earn 80% of the income of earners in the first four percentiles in the country. I showed my wife the calculations….Yeah we wept a little, then we got angry. Then we decided to just get out.”
Global phenomenon
Hank Schweinberger is an angry, desperate man. He’s not alone. Hank’s story echoes not just across America, but throughout the developed world. The UK is second only to the US when poverty is calculated not in any normally understood sense but by taking the median income for a couple with two children and creating a ranking of those up to the age of 17 who live in households with earnings of less than 50% of that total.
Consequently, the expansion of the EU and the granting of free movement across member states in May 2004 saw a dramatic economic migration, as hundreds of thousands of Britons poured into Poland and other former Soviet states, where relative poverty is significantly lower.
Official figures indicate that 656,395 Britons were accepted into the Polish welfare system between 1 May 2004 and 30 June 2007. However, this figure is only indicative; unofficial estimates of British nationals in Poland are much higher. Before the Iron Curtain came down, western populations had lived in ignorance of the extent of their relative poverty compared to its almost total absence in the communist states. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unprecedented access to information and to esoteric definitions of what constitutes ‘wealth’ meant that governments could no longer conceal the relative truth.
But behind the theories lie real tragedies. In 2003 the governments of Cuba and the US both blamed each other for the apparent deaths of 25 Americans believed drowned while trying to get to Cuba on a makeshift yacht.
For the children
We say our goodbyes to Hank and his young, beautiful, frightened family: just one more family amongst hundreds of thousands. Soon, perhaps, millions. We start heading back, away from the ocean and the fence, along the road in the darkness. Hank’s parting words resonate in my mind. “Ultimately, this isn’t about me or my wife. We had to think about our children, and the kind of future they’re going to have. We don’t want our kids growing up in a world where potentially they could earn less than 500% of the earnings of the sixtieth percentile of earners. We’re just in search of a more coterminous life.”
We drive on. Suddenly, there are trucks across the road with bright lights pointed at us, so bright that, for a moment, we can't see. As we approach, slowly, guards lounge on the fenders. Not a word is uttered. We pass by and are swallowed up by the night.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Martin Amis, pauses, gender
Jon Hotten notes the medialand rumblings that foretell the release of a new Martin Amis novel (The Pregnant Widow - great title) and observes that Mart is “a member of the last generation capable of talking in fully-formed sentences. There are no, 'I was like, you know...'s” .
This is true, though I suspect that Amis manages this largely by leaving the spaces between clauses - which other interviewees would fill with “you know”s or “ummm”s or other tics- as silent pauses. This is a good knack to have since it gives the impression of gravitas, but then talking in fully formed sentences is very, very difficult and even pausing requires self-discipline and nerve.
I’ve never quite worked out how smart Mart is. Certainly he views himself as a Thinker but he often seems to be carried well out of his intellectual depth on the sails of his own verbosity, eg. recently on Muslims.
(While writing this I’ve just remembered that in the first incarnation of the blog I attempted a homage to the Martin Amis style with this piece on American teeth. Reading back, it’s not quite as bad as I thought it might be but three years ago does seem like another lifetime, proving once again that blogtime flies even faster than real time).
But I greatly admire Amis’s gift for getting to the nub of a thing, for expressing a viewpoint, often controversial, in a single, memorable, highly convincing phrase. There was a striking example in his Sunday Times interview this week, especially given the release of another high-profile book in which Natasha Walter u-turns in despair at the fate of feminism.
Note the Amis Pause before the (emboldened) profundity:
“I know women now full of regret at just not worrying about [having babies] until it really was too late,” he says. “Three or four friends, who would have been very good mothers, but…” He pauses. “The sex revolution wasn’t a bad thing. In fact it was a cornucopia of opportunity. But it is a massive project to rethink an entire gender, and behaving like men was the only model women had. It was never in their interests to be like that. The sex wasn’t in their nature.”
This is true, though I suspect that Amis manages this largely by leaving the spaces between clauses - which other interviewees would fill with “you know”s or “ummm”s or other tics- as silent pauses. This is a good knack to have since it gives the impression of gravitas, but then talking in fully formed sentences is very, very difficult and even pausing requires self-discipline and nerve.
I’ve never quite worked out how smart Mart is. Certainly he views himself as a Thinker but he often seems to be carried well out of his intellectual depth on the sails of his own verbosity, eg. recently on Muslims.
(While writing this I’ve just remembered that in the first incarnation of the blog I attempted a homage to the Martin Amis style with this piece on American teeth. Reading back, it’s not quite as bad as I thought it might be but three years ago does seem like another lifetime, proving once again that blogtime flies even faster than real time).
But I greatly admire Amis’s gift for getting to the nub of a thing, for expressing a viewpoint, often controversial, in a single, memorable, highly convincing phrase. There was a striking example in his Sunday Times interview this week, especially given the release of another high-profile book in which Natasha Walter u-turns in despair at the fate of feminism.
Note the Amis Pause before the (emboldened) profundity:
“I know women now full of regret at just not worrying about [having babies] until it really was too late,” he says. “Three or four friends, who would have been very good mothers, but…” He pauses. “The sex revolution wasn’t a bad thing. In fact it was a cornucopia of opportunity. But it is a massive project to rethink an entire gender, and behaving like men was the only model women had. It was never in their interests to be like that. The sex wasn’t in their nature.”
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Are IT departments rational?
The company which owns mine recently recruited another member of IT staff, making the department five strong. They’re all male and they dwell in the darkest recess of their building – the IT dungeon – from whence they exert dark and terrible influence over the rest of the business. The directors are frightened of them. At board meetings I have occasionally made comments about “the tail wagging the dog”, which have invariably been greeted much as the Yard’s remarks about science and morals were on Dinner with Portillo.
As I see it, an ideal IT department would:
1) introduce systems to serve the needs of the business, which are sufficiently effective to have a net benefit on profitability when the cost of the system (including the IT staff) is taken into account
2) train staff and maintain, secure and troubleshoot on those systems
Whereas in reality what happens is:
1) the business decides it wants to do something, consults the IT department and then, having heard their lengthy and baffling objections, compromises on what it wants to do for the convenience of the IT department
2) the IT department regularly ‘upgrades’ systems for esoteric IT reasons, as opposed to obvious business reasons, requiring users to retrain and creating endless new troubleshooting opportunities
The frequency of (2) not only justifies the existence of the current IT department, it requires it to regularly expand. Each of its members is, I imagine, on a pretty hefty salary – significantly heftier for example than a ‘low-skilled’ admin worker of the kind that used to populate businesses that relied on less ‘efficient’ manual or paper-based systems.
I appreciate there’s another element here, which is that as suppliers, customers etc upgrade their systems, so the pressure is on everyone else in the chain. But what drives this? Is it business efficiency, or marketing by IT suppliers, or IT departments themselves?
So the question is: does anyone have a view – or indeed is there any research out there – on whether the inexorable rise of IT has actually benefited the average business, or would we have been better off, from a cost/benefit point of view, had we stopped when we invented the fax machine and the photocopier?
As I see it, an ideal IT department would:
1) introduce systems to serve the needs of the business, which are sufficiently effective to have a net benefit on profitability when the cost of the system (including the IT staff) is taken into account
2) train staff and maintain, secure and troubleshoot on those systems
Whereas in reality what happens is:
1) the business decides it wants to do something, consults the IT department and then, having heard their lengthy and baffling objections, compromises on what it wants to do for the convenience of the IT department
2) the IT department regularly ‘upgrades’ systems for esoteric IT reasons, as opposed to obvious business reasons, requiring users to retrain and creating endless new troubleshooting opportunities
The frequency of (2) not only justifies the existence of the current IT department, it requires it to regularly expand. Each of its members is, I imagine, on a pretty hefty salary – significantly heftier for example than a ‘low-skilled’ admin worker of the kind that used to populate businesses that relied on less ‘efficient’ manual or paper-based systems.
I appreciate there’s another element here, which is that as suppliers, customers etc upgrade their systems, so the pressure is on everyone else in the chain. But what drives this? Is it business efficiency, or marketing by IT suppliers, or IT departments themselves?
So the question is: does anyone have a view – or indeed is there any research out there – on whether the inexorable rise of IT has actually benefited the average business, or would we have been better off, from a cost/benefit point of view, had we stopped when we invented the fax machine and the photocopier?
Tea Chests
Was passing through Whitehall again on Saturday, just had to take a picture of my favourite A-board.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sunday, Harbourside
Sunday was the finest day of the year thus far, almost coatless weather in the sunshine though with a lip-cracking wind out of shelter. Bristol’s Harbourside, regenerated impressively in the last decade, is a schizophrenic locale: hellish binge-drinking epicentre on Saturday night; on Sunday afternoons a laid-back hangout for middle-class moochers and buggy-pushers like me. We prefer the Dr Jekyll version these days. Met up with old friends for a pint and a really excellent lunch at Bordeaux Quay. The sprogs behaved, more or less. I haven’t been so chilled in months. Brit Jnr struggled tinily in one of these trendy wooden highchairs reminiscent of the thing they use to wheel Hannibal Lecter around; our friends’ toddler looked out the window and made insightful observations about the boats.
The Matthew – a reconstruction of the ship which John Cabot took to America in 1497 – was open gratis to the public so we clambered about in that for a bit and then walked across Millennium Square and around Canon’s Marsh amidst the clattering skateboarders. How old is too old for wheel-based toys? I would say fourteen, but obviously many disagree. Skateboarders are like pigeons in that they inevitably accumulate in any large flagstoned space but I think that both pests add acceptable colour so long as they don’t reach plague proportion.
On the sunlit cobbles outside the Arnolfini Gallery the venerable wit Barry Cryer was holding court. We noted his presence but didn’t join the little semi-circle of admirers. I like Barry Cryer but am instinctively disinclined to approach celebrities because I assume, often wrongly no doubt, that they want to be left alone; and anyway I find the status issues awkward. Cryer sported a colourful scarf and waved a cigar in a flamboyant manner; in fact he looked a bit like an old queen, which as far as I know he isn’t.
We headed back to the cars as the light began to fade. Come to the Harbourside on a sunny Sunday for Bristol at its relaxed best. From here to Friday night the place gradually declines into its puking, fighting Mr Hyde form but you've got to take the rough with the smooth, haven't you?
The Matthew – a reconstruction of the ship which John Cabot took to America in 1497 – was open gratis to the public so we clambered about in that for a bit and then walked across Millennium Square and around Canon’s Marsh amidst the clattering skateboarders. How old is too old for wheel-based toys? I would say fourteen, but obviously many disagree. Skateboarders are like pigeons in that they inevitably accumulate in any large flagstoned space but I think that both pests add acceptable colour so long as they don’t reach plague proportion.
On the sunlit cobbles outside the Arnolfini Gallery the venerable wit Barry Cryer was holding court. We noted his presence but didn’t join the little semi-circle of admirers. I like Barry Cryer but am instinctively disinclined to approach celebrities because I assume, often wrongly no doubt, that they want to be left alone; and anyway I find the status issues awkward. Cryer sported a colourful scarf and waved a cigar in a flamboyant manner; in fact he looked a bit like an old queen, which as far as I know he isn’t.
We headed back to the cars as the light began to fade. Come to the Harbourside on a sunny Sunday for Bristol at its relaxed best. From here to Friday night the place gradually declines into its puking, fighting Mr Hyde form but you've got to take the rough with the smooth, haven't you?
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