The Quiet Road

Apologies for the lack of posting, but there’s coursework afoot. The M.Phil is conferred (or not) entirely on the basis of the final thesis, but we’re also required to write a couple of short essays (2-3,000 words) and one of them is due this week.

Originally I decided simply to tackle the default topic, “The Existential Critique of Freud” and wrote a couple of thousand words of deeply uninspiring dross on the subject. I had two major problems with the topic; firstly, I’ve not read nearly enough Freud yet to be capable of making my own critique of his work, so how can I really judge someone else’s with confidence? Secondly, it felt too much like commentating on an activity rather than engaging in it… explaining the views of others rather than expressing my own.

So, irritated by the thought of submitting a lifeless piece of writing, I began casting around for an alternative essay topic. The idea of tackling one of Freud’s short but controversial papers appealed to me, and as luck would have it we started reading just such a paper in our Metapsychology Seminars; Psycho-analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) (more commonly known as ‘The Schreber Case History’). It’s a remarkable paper that — within the course of 80 pages — succeeds in showing Freud at his brilliant best and his infuriating worst.

But it was a can of worms. My essay title, “Sigmund Freud and the Case History of Schreber” (I’m considering giving Conan-Doyle-esque titles to all my academic work) could easily stretch to a book. Probably not a real page-turner, I grant you, but a book nonetheless. Trying to limit the scope of my research became next to impossible simply because of how interesting and, frankly, bizarre the case is. For instance, we learn from Freud’s paper that the subject of his analysis (Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber) had an extremely authoritarian father. But a bit of research unearths the fact that Schreber’s father so opposed masturbation that he “sought to invent a mechanical device which would prevent it in adolescents”.

None of us get to have a perfect childhood. But imagine growing up in that house!

Anyway Schreber’s sister suffered from hysteria, his elder brother committed suicide, but he himself appeared to have escaped whatever weirdness went on in his childhood. He was a successful lawyer, happily married, apparently well-liked by those who met him, and by his early forties succeeded in being appointed to the bench and was serving as a judge. He had active interests in the world around him, read extensively, attended cultural events. Dr. D.P. Schreber was outwardly (and by his own account, so far as he was aware, inwardly) the epitome of a well-rounded, civilised man.

In his early 40s however he had a nervous breakdown* and was diagnosed with Severe Hypochondria. Sounds to me like he was suffering from stress and nervous exhaustion and there’s nothing particularly unusual about that. He recovered after a few months and returned to work, picking up where he left off, and eventually getting appointed Senate President of Dresden (the highest legal position in his district). His marriage remained happy and he and his wife appear to have been devoted to one another. So far, so good. Then comes the interesting bit.

Upon receiving his promotion to Senate President, Dr. Schreber went completely bonkers**.

He spent the next nine years in institutions where he turned his mind to the problem of his own insanity. This is what takes the case beyond the mundane; Dr. Schreber was a highly intelligent, well-read and erudite man whose sharp mind had in no way been dulled by his madness. He wrote a detailed and explicit account of his delusions, hallucinations and the intricate “personal mythology” he wove in order to explain them as a coherent system rather than the chaotic insanity they appeared to be. He then edited this together with a selection of the medical and diagnostic notes that had been made by his doctors and published his Memoirs of a Nerve Patient.

And it’s mad. Utterly, breath-takingly mad.

So yeah, I’ve been trying to whittle this thesis-sized project down to something resembling an essay. And I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t have chosen a slightly less controversial and considerably less weird paper of Freud’s to produce my first piece of coursework on. But I’ll let you be the judge of that when I’m finally finished (I’ll put up a link to it when it’s done). And with that, I shall sign off and return to my essay.

So Windows Vista, eh? What’s that all about?

My computer died a few weeks ago and between being skint and being busy so as to be a bit less skint, I’ve only recently gotten round to buying and setting up a new one. For the past ten years or thereabouts, I’ve tended to buy my computer in kit form. And my PC evolved steadily rather than ever getting replaced wholesale. So I’d buy a new motherboard and processor when the old ones died or could no longer handle the increasing demands of modern software (Adobe, I’m looking at you here). Over the years I’ve seen hard-drives go from being measured in MB to being measured in the hundreds of GBs. CPUs have struggled from 286 to 386 to 486 and then — the big leap — to pentium and beyond. My new one is a Core 2 Quad. It’s approximately 68.4 gazillion times faster than the fastest chip available just fifteen seconds ago. In about 3 and a half minutes it’ll be superseded. It will be largely obsolete by the end of the week.

I’m enjoying being cutting edge while it lasts.

Anyways, I decided this time to go with a pre-built system. I can no longer be arsed with the faffing about when the bloody thing breaks down. I’ve got a three year warranty, so if something goes wrong, I just have to phone them and they’ll have it collected and repaired at no cost or hassle to me.

It arrived with Windows Vista preinstalled and I figured I’d give it a whirl, secure in the knowledge that I can always reinstall my old copy of XP. And the verdict after a couple of weeks use…? It’s a bit shit actually.

Don’t get me wrong. It has many many redeeming features and some bits and pieces that make it worth sticking with. In fact I shan’t be returning to XP. I’ve gotten used to the enhanced file system with its breadcrumb navigation and ubiquitous search, both of which I’d seriously miss if I went back to XP. The new Taskbar and Start Menu really work well, and the User Access Control isn’t nearly as annoying as I’d been led to believe. I’ve not even bothered turning it off (which is perfectly possible) as it isn’t all that intrusive once you’ve done your initial set-up and software install. The Last.fm plugin for Media Player requires authentication each and every time I start up the program. But I can live with that.

The ‘aero’ display is pretty, and the live thumbnails of minimised windows in the taskbar is a useful feature. The sidebar is lovely but has a serious lack of plugins and widgets. You’d think Microsoft would have concentrated on having a wide selection of excellent little applications to plug into the sidebar. Instead there’s absolutely sod-all. Even the ability to “minimise” Media Player onto the Sidebar doesn’t exist. I’m using it as a repository for RSS feeds, but in truth I’m turning it off more and more often because I already have netvibes.com for that. An opportunity wasted.

The Windows Update process (with which I’ve had difficulties in the past) is streamlined and far less intrusive. In fact Vista does a pretty good job of tucking most of the actual workings of the Operating System further out of sight than ever before. As a bit of a tinkerer, and someone who knows their way around Windows better than most, I can find this a bit patronising or frustrating at times. But there’s no question that it’s a good thing in general. And all the options and controls are still there, you just have to dig a bit farther than before.

All of which makes a nice selection of interface enhancements and a worthy overhaul of the file system (it’s not the all new WinFS of legend, but as far as the actual user experience goes, it may as well be). But at what cost?

Well, aside from the financial one (it’ll always be a lot cheaper with a new PC; hence my decision to avail of that discount and get it now) the big cost is stability. Vista has been out for quite a while now, but there are still issues with some of the drivers. Despite having the latest Creative Soundcard, the latest version of Windows and the latest Creative drivers, it still seems to be a flip of a coin as to whether I’ll have sound on any given start-up. Or else I’ll have sound, but the Windows Sound Console will tell me that I have 5.1 Speakers (true) while the Creative Sound Console will insist I have 2.1 stereo speakers. And any changes to the settings can result in the system crashing, or more often, two of my five speakers stop working altogether.

Vista also seems to crash occasionally when it goes into power-save mode (if I wander away for my PC for more than 10 minutes), which is a right pain in the arse. XP never did that.

Worst of all though, are the plain old “random crashes”. They’d almost become a thing of the past with XP SP2. In fact, I remember very few random crashes once I’d upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. But here they are again with Vista. I might have Photoshop or Dreamweaver open and I’ll fire up a browser. 49 times out of 50… no problem. But every now and then the PC will throw a complete fit and lock up on me. In just two weeks of Vista use I’ve probably lost an hour’s work due to the OS dying while I had files open. That’s a waaaay higher rate than with XP.

Overall though, Vista has sucked me in. The file system alone is worth the cost of entry. And XP would seem very limiting in that sense were I to return to it. Aside from that though…? It’s all a bit underwhelming. A bit, “is that it?” So if you’re thinking about upgrading, can I suggest you hold off until Microsoft release a Service Pack? You’ll like the enhancements, but it’s probably worth waiting until the OS is more stable before you get them.

Right. Well first up I’ve just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. Previous upgrades have gone very smoothly, but this one was a bit of a nightmare (there was a brief moment when I thought the database backup hadn’t gone to plan and I’d lost all the comments… quite stressful really). Anyways, I think it’s sorted now, but I’d obviously be grateful if you let me know of any bugs or problems that you notice.

You shouldn’t see any changes on the site (all the interesting stuff is behind the scenes) and my initial impression of the upgrade isn’t all that favourable to be honest… it’s all well and good, more responsive, bits and pieces of AJAX here and there and what have you, but the ‘HTML’ button has disappeared from the rich text editor. This used to allow a separate window to be opened into which you could type raw HTML (paragraph tags and all). They’ve now substituted that for a new “code view” that’s like some bastardised halfway house between rich text editing and HTML. Some tags show up, but others don’t. Very silly and very very annoying. All the same, it would now be a serious pain in the arse to downgrade, so I’ll soldier on for a few days and see if I get used to the new editor. If not, I’ll take on that arse pain as a learning experience.

There also seem to be some quite serious problems with the various pop-ups within the rich text editor (link and image inserts and the like). Leastways in Firefox. So yeah, I’d think long and hard about upgrading past version 2.0.x if I were you. This new 2.1.x malarkey seems like a step backwards to me (the running autosave is the reason I upgraded, and should cut down on posts lost to browser crashes, but I don’t know if it outweighs the problems). But hey, maybe it’ll grow on me.

And now to cast an eye over the headlines…

Blair’s delight

First up is the fascinating news (fascinating if you’re a fricking idiot that is) that “Friends of Prince Harry have denied reports that he will quit the Army if he is not allowed to serve in Iraq.” In fact I only read the story to snigger at the obligatory quote claiming that it’s “important that Harry [is] treated as much as possible like an ordinary soldier”. All the contradictions of royalty rolled into one tiny phrase. He must treated as an ordinary soldier… an ordinary person. But of course, he isn’t. He’s royal. I still find it mind-boggling that any modern nation can tolerate royalty. What a load of bollocks.

But the story contained an unexpected treat. A statement from Tony Blair that paints him as an even more monstrously detached and absurd figure than I’d thought possible. Apparently the lunatic has revealed to journalists that he’d be “delighted” if one of his kids wanted to serve in Iraq. Er… what!? I’m not a parent, but I’m fairly certain that you’d have to be some kind of freak to be “delighted” that a child of yours wanted to significantly increase their risk of having their limbs blown off by a roadside bomb. I can — just about — understand a parent who claims to be “proud” that their child donned a uniform and went to a place where people were willing to kill themselves in order to hurt people wearing that uniform.

But delighted? For feck’s sake, what an idiotic remark!

But did he leave a tip?

Via Gyrus comes the unsettling news that diners in a London restaurant were recently subjected to a display of self-mutilation that indicates either a very serious mental illness or an equally serious dedication to Flanaganesque performance art. I suspect the former.

The poor guy wandered into a Zizzi pizza restaurant, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and proceeded to stab himself repeatedly with it. He also cut off his penis (which surgeons were later unable to reattach).

Now, I’ve been in some very dark places in my life. Which is OK. It makes the brighter places that much better. I can empathise with most self-destructive behaviour because, knowing how dark the world can be, I understand those who seek extreme ways to escape that darkness. My closest friend for many years commit suicide during the 90s and although it was a terrible and traumatic time for all those who knew him, and despite the fact that I was angry with him for a long time afterwards, I nonetheless understood his action even while disagreeing with it.

But to commit a public act of such extreme self-mutilation goes far beyond mere self-hate. It reveals a multi-layered psychosis, producing an act of aggression aimed as much at the involuntary witnesses as at the psychotic himself. It’s a very deliberate act of destruction against The Other. And in this case The Other is everyone. Including The Self. Oppositional dualism has a lot to answer for.

Colony Collapse Disorder and misattributed quotes

Some time ago I read an article on the BBC news website which opens with the statement that “All over America, beekeepers are opening up their hives in preparation for the spring pollination season, only to find that their bees are dead or have disappeared.” Now this phenomenon appears to have crossed the Atlantic and beekeepers in Somerset are worried that it has hit them.

I’ve read several theories as to why this could be happening (from climate change to an as-yet unidentified chemical pollutant to mobile phone masts to GM pollen) but whatever the reason, it’s very very bad news. As every schoolchild is aware, bees are a very important (if not the most important) mechanism for pollinating plants. And not just pretty flowers… our food-crops are largely bee-pollinated. It’s this fact that (via David Byrne) led Einstein to remark…

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

It’s certainly a scary thought. But, after a bit of digging, it appears that actually it wasn’t Einstein’s. There’s no record of him saying anything of the sort, and indeed the more I analyse the quote, the less it sounds like Einstein. He often spoke about the apparent unpredictability of complex systems (unpredictable not because of any lack of causality, but because the mechanisms of causality in most complex systems are so many and often so convoluted as to make prediction impossible in practice) and would be unlikely to make such a simplistic series of links as can be found in the second sentence of that quote.

He was also certainly smart enough to know that bees are not the only mechanism of pollination.

But that doesn’t make the massive decrease in the bee population any less worrying. As I mentioned; the vast majority of our food crops are indeed pollinated by bees and anything that significantly reduces their numbers will almost certainly result in a significant reduction in crop yields.

My own theory doesn’t lay the blame on any single factor. It’s my honest belief that human industry is degrading the ability of our planet to sustain life in a myriad of ways. A massive confluence of causes — GM crops, mobile phone masts, climate change and chemical pollutants (plus about a thousand others) — are having unpredictable effects. And I doubt very many of those effects are going to be welcome.

Forgive this trivial rant, but I really hate the use of the word “forums” as the plural of forum. I mean, come on folks, “fora” is a great word! Yet you get weird looks for using it, as though celebrating the richness, beauty and plain weirdness of language was something to look down upon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not someone who strives to preserve anachronism for its own sake, but replacing something pleasing and a little unusual with something dull and familiar seems to me an entirely legitimate thing to oppose (leastways during the replacement process… afterwards what’s the point? You just get the weird looks). There are those, of course, who defend the word “forums” for those very reasons… it’s familiar, it’s easy, it’s uncomplicated, they say.

Bah! May as well be O’Brien extolling the virtues of Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

And the principles of Newspeak are one hundred percent applicable in the forums / fora case. By stripping ‘fora’ from our language, we have narrowed, very slightly, the paths tread by our consciousness. Whenever I heard or used the word “fora” it sparked several instantaneous thought-images every single time. The only word like it that we hear from time to time is “flora”. Which, to me anyway, calls to mind the phrase ‘flora and fauna’. On top of that, the slight oddness of the word forces my mind to consider it as a word. I’m immediately thinking about language itself and its lovely quirks. I’m also transported momentarily to Christian Brothers Latin classes and then further back to ancient Rome.

This all happens in an instant of course, and passes as I hear or use the next words. But for that instant there’s a myriad possibilities to be explored and considered. That doesn’t happen when I read or use the word “forums”. I don’t think of flowers, or of the magnificence of language, or of ancient Rome. All of which – of course – is explained at the end of Orwell’s novel…

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted for once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words […] Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

George Orwell – The Principles of Newspeak

All the same, exposure to the internet has dulled my objection to “forums”. Indeed, now I find myself using it. Occasionally with a slight sense of regret… and the regret will itself call to mind an echo of those pleasing thought-images. But usually just as a matter of routine. Those moments of regret will become fewer and eventually disappear altogether. Because once a word like “forums” has become the de facto standard, attempting to resist it by using the now anachronistic “fora” just makes you look a bit of a twit.

So this is not a call for a return of “fora”. Instead it’s a warning, lest this tendency to boil the English language down to some homogeneous convenient mulch continue further. Resist it, dear reader.

No, not a new buddy-cop movie starring Jim Belushi and Chevy Chase. Instead it’s two blog memes. Well, not quite. Well, kind of. They both arrive from Justin over at Chicken Yoghurt who — despite his protestations — appears to enjoy blog memes as much as any 14-year-old Livejournalist. The fact that I’m running with these memes does not, of course, make any similar comment about me.

Honest.

First up, nice chap that he is, Justin has bestowed a ‘thogger‘ upon me. This means — apparently — that I write a “thought-provoking” blog. Which is about as much as any blogger can ask for. I don’t make any such claims about myself (at least not in public), but Justin’s is a consistently excellent political blog that has certainly got me thinking on plenty of occasions. So, given the source, I shall gracefully accept the award. Apparently it now falls upon me to pass on the award, and nominate five blogs that I consider thought-provoking in some way. Chicken Yoghurt’s already got one, so I’ll omit him from my official list.

• Bristling Badger.
• Dreamflesh.
• Biroco Journal.
• Smokewriting.
• David Byrne’s Journal.

If you can’t find something to provoke thought via each of those links, then I humbly suggest that you may well be incapable of it in the first place. Perhaps you’d be better off watching TV.

It was four years ago today…

Justin follows up that list with another (originally kicked off over at Bloggerheads). It is — almost unbelievably — the fourth anniversary of the US/UK invasion of Iraq. Actually it’s the fourth anniversary of the eve of war (Jeff Wayne, where are you now?) and Justin was wondering: “what did you post on 20 March, 2003? (Or on as near to the day as possible)… Doesn’t have to be a blog entry; it could easily be in usenet or in a forum.”

Using the Way Back Machine, I discovered that the first entry on my old blog wasn’t until early May 2003, and I can’t seem to get the site to drag up the blog from norlonto.net, where I posted prior to that. But I did discover — on the U-Know! web forum — a post discussing the run up to the Iraq war and why I felt that the Peace Movement in the west was wrong-headed in its approach, though right in its aims.

And I still feel the same. My essential point was that rather than expending time and energy protesting against the war, it would be far more effective to focus that same effort on eliminating the demand for those resources over which wars are fought. I know there are many who believe that the Iraq war was about WMD or humanitarian intervention to bring about regime-change. I believe it was about oil. And it seems clear to me that reducing our demand for oil would consequently reduce the likelihood of us invading oil-rich nations. This would have a greater practical effect than demanding our politicians stop supplying us with the oil we also demand.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s a vivid image and worth repeating… I recall attending the big anti-war demonstration in London during the run up to the invasion. From hundreds of coaches at Hyde Park, I saw many thousands of protesters disembark carrying “No Blood For Oil” banners. As the samba band struggled to be heard over the idling of so many diesel engines I realised that there was a very serious disconnect at work. People clearly believed — as did I — that the war was about oil. Yet they didn’t seem to grasp the fact that Tony Blair and Dubya Bush weren’t going to personally burn all that oil themselves… that our representatives were responding very directly to the demands of their oil-consuming constituents.

Around the same time, myself and Merrick co-wrote an article to express this.

I was over at Chicken Yoghurt just now (reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated I’m happy to say) and discovered, via this post, one of the strangest videos ever to grace YouTube… A World Without America. I had to watch it a second time to confirm that the first hadn’t been an acid flashback. It’s so absurd in fact, that I’m at something of a loss as to how to interpret it. As a pro-American statement it fails so miserably as to come across as a badly-executed self-parody. But as a satirical look at political propaganda in general, it commits the cardinal error of being literally unbelievable. We already live in a world where energy companies talk about tackling climate change by increasing fossil fuel use (honestly!). So it takes an especially bad writer to produce satire so over-the-top as to seem silly rather than scathing.

Employing the device of short fictional news reports, the video presents a quick glimpse at an alternative recent history of… wait for it… a world without America. Literally. The world map has an extra ocean where the USA should be. It’s clearly aimed at two audiences. Firstly (though perhaps incidentally) it’s aimed that those of us who would describe ourselves politically as anti-American, and who — by virtue of our opposition to what we see as an aggressive foreign policy carried out by an extremist administration with only tenuous legitimacy — clearly want nothing more than to wipe an entire nation completely off the map, and live in a world where all the little children have polio (seriously… watch the video). Secondly and most importantly, it’s aimed at those who support America’s self-selected role in the modern world but who maybe get a little concerned that all this talk of A Perpetual State of War sounds a wee bit dodgy. It does this by assuring them that if it wasn’t for America (and by implication, America as it presently exists) then we’d all be commies, either living in perpetual fear of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons, or dying of polio.

After the news reports, the video continues by flashing up a list of — what I can only suppose are — America’s greatest achievements. I was bemused to see “The liberation of the Falklands” listed along with “the bra”, “Elvis Presley”, “the motor-car”, “a democratic Nicaragua” (no, really) and “31% of global wealth”.

That last one is perhaps the most revealing of all. It tells you a lot about a person or organistion if they actively celebrate the expropriation of almost a third of global resources by less than 5% of the global population. A World Without America is a video celebrating, amongst other things, greed.

This should surprise nobody however, as A World Without America is produced by 18 Doughty Street… the online propaganda unit of the British Conservative Party. That’s not how they pitch themselves it goes without saying. Indeed, if it wasn’t for some recent intra-blog warfare, the fact that 18 Doughty Street is edited and financed by people with close ties to the Tory Party (including a prospective London mayoral candidate) wouldn’t be common knowledge.

Basically… and at the risk of blogging about blogging, 18 Doughty Street did an exposé on a NuLabor think tank which was using a legal loophole to register itself as a charity and get all manner of interesting tax benefits. Legal, but pretty damn unethical I think you’ll agree. Chalk one up to 18 Doughty Street, right? Well, no. It turns out that the person responsible for the video — a Mr. Iain Dale — was himself involved with a tory think tank. Guess what? Uh-huh… they use the same legal loophole. If all of that seems a bit vague, it’s because this all happened during my recent 2-month break from blogging and I can’t be arsed to go back and read every single post on the issue (there are many).

Anyways, the details are irrelevant. The relevant point here is that 18 Doughty Street is Tory public relations. Luckily for the rest of us, it’s run by a bunch of not-very bright people who seem to know even less about P.R. (no budding Edward Bernays is didactic doughty Dale) than they do about politics. And that’s not (just) me being insulting, it’s by their own admission. Well, the bit about not knowing much about politics. In a recent email, Iain Dale claimed not to know what the word “nihilism” meant. This is despite using the word himself in a prior broadcast. Now, I don’t know about you dear reader, but if you run a serious website under the tagline “Politics For Adults”, I’d like to think you have a rudimentary grasp of political theory. Perhaps I expect too much.

But back to A World Without America. It’s shoddy and it’s insulting and it’s as far from “Politics for Adults” as it is possible to get. I have no doubt that you could find a handful of people who describe themselves as anti-American and who genuinely seek a world without America. The trouble is; those people are lunatics. Serious people who consider themselves anti-American have a view that’s a little more nuanced than that. And if 18 Doughty Street wants to engage in politics for adults, then I suggest they put their money where their mouth is and address the anti-Americanism of rational adults, and not that of the lunatics.

I love America. I adore New York and wish I could visit my American cousins more often. And that’s literal cousins by the way. Like many Irish families, we spread a bit further west than Galway. I lived for a year in Chicago. And as for listing the praiseworthy achievements of Americans… believe me, I could go on for a lot longer than 18 Doughty Street’s strange little list. Though admittedly Elvis would be on mine too.

But in political terms, I describe myself as anti-American. I oppose the self-selected role America plays in the world. If it wants to play global policeman, then I have news for it… everyone in the world has to vote in US elections. Otherwise it’s a global tyrant. You can’t have it both ways. The people of Iraq did not elect George Bush. They had no representation in the political forces that decided to reshape their nation four years ago. That’s textbook totalitarianism.

And I oppose totalitarianism. I’m not claiming that the actions of despots can never have positive consequences (though in the case of Iraq, I would suggest that they have not). But I am suggesting that — excepting in clear cases of self-defence (anyone who tries to claim that the invasion of Iraq was self-defence should not expect a polite response from this writer) — the use of military force should be illegal, and should be considered a crime against humanity. I believe that militarism inevitably leads to despotism. And that to celebrate the role played by America in the modern world is to celebrate despotism and greed. Philosophically speaking, that’s halfway down the road to geniune nihilism, Iain.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
– Albert Einstein

Mine too Albert.

Ummmm, first I’d like to pose a quick question of style, dear patient reader. Do you think it’s better for a blogger to write three or four short posts, each about a specific topic or news item or whatever; OR, one longer piece incorporating all? Y’see, my natural tendency is to write vaguely chatty meandering posts that take in a few issues… sometimes giving them their own sub-heading, sometimes just allowing them to run into one another and do their own thing. It’s how I think… probably has something to do with spending the 90s trying to be both a philosopher and an industrial engineer. And I’ve noticed that I’m very much in the minority on this approach to blogging. Most go down the several shorter posts road. While that clearly makes a blog easier to reference and arguably more useful as a source of information (as far as a blog can be), it’s just not the way I write.

All the same, if a huge majority of my readership (say… three or more) felt that shorter, punchier posts might make this a groovier place, then I’d certainly give it some consideration.

Which doesn’t mean I’d change my style of course. A part of me would indeed consider it, but there’s also a part of me that would think, “oh, who gives a rat’s arse what they think?” And I’m not entirely sure which part of me would win that battle.

All of which is a characteristically verbose introduction to another, ooh look! a collection of links and a paragraph about why each of them is noteworthy post. Dig.

First up is Steve Bell’s most recent “Dr. John” Reid cartoon. What I find both chilling and very funny (don’t you love art that inspires wildly conflicting emotions?) is the fact that the cartoon merely depicts Reid along with a caption that accurately sums up his position on freedom of speech. It’s phrased wickedly, of course, but it’s basically no more than a bald statement of fact. Lovely.

Then we have the news that a US Air Force pilot has been demoted / forced to resign because she posed naked for Playboy. Of course, anyone who knows me will immediately realise that I’m only drawing attention to this story because it allows me to quote Apocalypse Now in context… not that you really need a justification for quoting The Now whether in or out of context. All the same, who can read that story and not hear the voice of Kurtz…

Can you think of anything more ridiculous than an organisation that trains its members to more effectively murder people, getting squeamish when one of them flashes a bit of flesh?

But I wouldn’t want to think all the best stuff is happening in the mainstream media. Cos it ain’t. You never ever get lines like, “It illustates more eloquently than my analysis ever could just how utterly fucking deluded Mr Bond is.” in the mainstream media. And the world is a poorer place because of it. Read Merrick’s short but sweet piece over at Bristling Badger; have faith in the market.

Meanwhile, on the ever-readable journal of David Byrne is one of the best bits of writing I’ve read online for quite a while; Free Will, Part 2: Support Our Troops. I have to wonder though… is he dropping by and nicking my ideas…

Oi David! That’s my Masters Thesis… back off mate! Or at least wait until I’ve been accepted onto the course.

Although I’m no longer a Londoner, some my friends are. I still take a great interest in the goings-on of London, and still have a bit of a soft spot for Ken Livingstone despite his conversion from Red to Reddish-Purple. Without a doubt, one of the best things Ken did was to start the process of forcing car owners to pay for some of the damage they do. For this reason, reports of the Congestion Charge being a failure should be vigorously exposed as the blatant lies they are whenever they appear. For more on this, head over to Pigdogfucker and read Lies, damn lies, and the Congestion Charge.

And in brief…

• On Everday Apocalypticism over at Smokewriting… “the sense of having participated in an apocalypse which one failed to notice”. What a splendid turn of phrase. Rochenko’s post tackles some of the the same themes that David W. Kidner explores in Nature & Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity (I imagine. I only started reading Kidner’s book today having been delayed by a pressing need to re-read Nineteen Eighty-Four).
• At Random Speak, L has discovered one of the most startling statues I’ve seen in a long time in Another Post on Odd Art. It’s difficult to believe the sculptor didn’t know exactly what he was doing.
• Via Perfect I discovered this long but excellent essay by Jonathan Lethem; The Ecstasy of Influence. Well worth a read for anyone interested in the creative process and how it relates to the expropriation, rearrangement, remixing and fusion of pre-existing ideas. The first novel I wrote contained two chapters which were entirely composed of cut-up and rearranged Jorge Luis Borges stories… done the old-fashioned way too, enlarged in a photocopier and physically cut up and pasted onto card… none of yer fancy software solutions. So Lethem is very much preaching to the choir with me, but a fascinating piece nonetheless.
• Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has this to say in his latest post… “This blog is now taking a break. I don’t know how long that break will be but hopefully it won’t be a permanent one.” This is sad news indeed and displeases me enormously. No doubt the chap has his reasons. But it’s still bad news and his voice will be missed. There’s a whole Serious To-Do going on in the UK political blog scene right now with threats of legal action being made left, right and centre. Well, mostly ‘right’ actually. I’ve avoided the subject but may well weigh-in with a suitably inappropriate comment or two in the near future that’ll offend absolutely everyone involved and see me vilified and attacked with sharp lawyers.