DUFF & NONSENSE!

Oh no, Shorty reaches for Reacher!

Tell me it ain't so!  Or (he wrote desperately as he searched for Americanisms), you cannot be serious!  Hollywood - what a bunch of shmucks!

Yes, alright, I know, it's an even more confusing opening than usual for one of my posts but I am shocked, shocked I tell you!  Finally, Hollywood has got round to making a film of my hero and the hero of every other middle-aged - OK, old-aged - man in the Anglosphere - Jack Reacher.  These books featuring a 6'-5", ex-military cop, who bums round America carrying nothing but a folding toothbrush and wielding two fists and a pair of size 12 boots with which he slaughters countless dozens, nay, scores of baddies are to be filmed and will star - wait for it - titchy Tom Cruise!  Switching from American to Estuary English - you're 'avin' a laugh, ain'tcha?

Quite apart from his size, Cruise is in danger, when I die, of inheriting my title as the world's worst actor.  I have only seen him act well in one film when he played a villain.  Lee Child, an Englishman, is the author of these boks which sell by the gazillion, and seems pleased enough with the casting but given the money he's going to earn (and good luck to him) he is wise not to demur.  Steve Oney in The WSJ wonders if Hollywood is simply not producing men of John Wayne proportions any more:

Casting, however, was the main stumbling block. Reacher's size is central both to his ability to prevail in violent encounters—he has a propensity for taking on gangs of thick-necked thugs—and to his self-concept. "To be born tall was to win life's lottery," Mr. Child writes in "61 Hours," a 2010 Reacher novel.

"Subliminally," Mr. Child observes, "everybody was saying, 'Find the biggest guy we can find,' which in Hollywood is not very big. Actors just aren't big guys."

It's perfectly obvious, and therefore quite beyond Hollywood, that with such a well-known and beloved character whose huge physical proportions are integral to his character that they should have found an unknown actor.  But of course, with 'schmillions' riding on the outcome nobody dared take the risk.  All a great pity but I shall still go and see it and if Mr. Cruise defies the auguries and makes a good fist of it, then I shall eat my words - and as they are floating in the Blogosphere it won't be too difficult!

 

Is there anybody there? asks 'the Kraut'

But first, a terrific poem which came back to me through the ages from my long-lost school days provoked by the recent words of 'the Kraut':

'IS there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.
And a bird flew up out of the turret,	5
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill	10
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight	15
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.	20
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even	25
Louder, and lifted his head:—
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake	30
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,	35
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

I love that poem - how could I have forgotten it for so long? Anyway, on to 'the Kraut' who had some fascinating ruminations in The WaPo last week.  He asks one of those simple but deadly questions, "Are we alone in the universe?"  He was prompted to this by the, probably undue, excitement in cosmological circles (or should that be 'ellipses?) at the discovery of some planet-like objects circling suns in much the same way as our tired, battered, old planet does.  Instantly this raises the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe.  "Is there anybody there?" we mutter, and answer comes there none!

As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy — a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence.

That silence is maddening. Not just because it compounds our feeling of cosmic isolation, but because it makes no sense. As we inevitably find more and more exo-planets where intelligent life can exist, why have we found no evidence — no signals, no radio waves — that intelligent life does exist?

The silence, as they say, is deafening!  And perplexing.

It’s called the Fermi Paradox, after the great physicist who once asked, “Where is everybody?” Or as was once elaborated: “All our logic, all our anti- isocentrism, assures us that we are not unique — that they must be there. And yet we do not see them.”

'The Kraut' quotes something called The Drake Equation (1961) which seeks to enumerate how many advanced civilisations there must be in just our galaxy alone.  Apparently if you add in the information gained from modern satellite sources the number should be very great indeed.  And yet ... and yet ... despite all our signals sent out at the speed of light and our monitoring devices which could pick up the sound of an alien's fart from a zillion miles away - there is nothing, just the vast, endless emptiness of nothing.

Personally, I am not too unhappy because I always reckon that people - or beings, if you like - are nearly always trouble in the end and are therefore best avoided!  But 'the Kraut', being 'the Kraut', has an even gloomier explanation:

Carl Sagan (among others) thought that the answer is to be found, tragically, in the final variable: the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves.

In other words, this silent universe is conveying not a flattering lesson about our uniqueness but a tragic story about our destiny. It is telling us that intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe — an endowment not just ultimately fatal but, on the scale of cosmic time, nearly instantly so.

He lists the many man-made possibilities available to those madmen who, seeking a salvation in an after-world, would be happy to pull the trigger and bring about 'apocalypse now'.  But then, in a startling and original piece of thinking, he points to the only thing likely to save us - politics!

Rather than despair, however, let’s put the most hopeful face on the cosmic silence and on humanity’s own short, already baleful history with its new Promethean powers: Intelligence is a capacity so godlike, so protean that it must be contained and disciplined. This is the work of politics — understood as the ordering of society and the regulation of power to permit human flourishing while simultaneously restraining the most Hobbesian human instincts.

There could be no greater irony: For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don’t get politics right, everything else risks extinction.

We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics — in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations — is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it.

Good man, 'the Kraut', he makes you think.

 

Should Clegg be nicked for receiving?

I ask the question because if some East End gang leader was in receipt of stolen money he would surely have his collar felt.  Of course, he might plead ignorance of the fact that the money was stolen when he received it but if, having been appraised of the fact, he then hung on to it, it would surely risk a visit from the Plod.  I see no difference between my scenario and that of the all too real 'il-Lib-non-Dems'.  True, I don't think Clegg was capo di tutti capi at the time the dosh was handed over but he is now and the responsibility is his.  But even if he refuses at least he could tell that wizened old prune, Vince Cable, to shut up with his non-stop cranky, waspish attacks on so-called 'City slickers and greedy bankers'.  According to The Telegraph, this is the statement issued by this gang of corrupt money-launderers:

"The Electoral Commission inquiry in 2009 found that the party accepted the donation in good faith, and were in no way at fault.

"It cleared the party of all wrongdoing and accepted that at the time of the donation, Michael Brown was a permitted donor.

"There is no indication that the Electoral Commission will revise its opinion in this matter but any arrest abroad should lead to his extradition to the UK."

Notice, not a word about the people, the victims of crime, from whom the money was stolen.  In the stinking septic tank of politics some turds float effortlessly to the top.

 

America, oh, America!

Sometimes my ignorance appalls me.  I don't expect to know everything about everything, nor even a little about everything, but occasionally (well, quite often, actually) I stumble into the wide open space of total ignorance on a subject about which I really ought to know something.  This confessional has been prompted by an excellent book to which I referred in an earlier post, David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.  For an amateur, general interest 'student' I have a fairly good knowledge of WWII but it all ends at 1945.  There-after, up until, say, the last 25 years, I know nothing.  Not that I 'know' that much of these recent years either because until the history books are written none of us do but I actually lived through the late '40s to the early '60s and it is all a blank.  However, Mr. Halberstam's book is putting that right but only at teh cost to me of a series of constant shocks.  I am only halfway through and already I am sitting in my armchair, shaking my head, unsure whether to laugh or cry, and instead plaintively wailing "America, oh, America!"

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".  America had won a world war defeating, with a little help from her friends, two powerful enemies on opposite sides of the globe.  The decidely dodgy Roosevelt was dead and to everyone's surprise a farmer turned (failed) haberdasher with no college degree became president.  Harry Truman belied his background because he was both shrewd and tough.  He was also, by Washingtonian standards, dead straight.  He ordered that the priority for the nation was to ensure the future prosperity and safety of war-shattered Europe.  This displeased many parts of the Republican party and the American public who were under two baleful influences.  First, the Anglophobia of middle-America which was determined to return to the isolationism they preferred before those wily Brits tricked them, for a second time, into a war they didn't want.  Secondly, and even more malignantly, the China lobby, led by the smooth, corrupt and corrupting Chinese ambassador, Wellington Koo, and a bevy of Chiang Kai-shek's American-based relatives, plus the almost mad, fanatical campaigns of Henry Luce, the publisher of the then influential Time and Life magazines.  Truman and Acheson, his Secretary of State, plus a coterie of smart young men in the State Department known as the 'China Gang', knew that all was lost in China and that it was only a matter of time before the communists took over ... and yet ... and yet ... under the pressure of constant and virulent attacks led by Luce the administration was forced to keep supporting the insupportable Chiang and his rotten-to-the-core regime.

That America did this once is, I suppose, forgivable but to do it twice, as they did later in Vietnam, is not!  As I write those words, believe me, I am all too aware of the fact that we Brits are now fighting the Third Afghan War which is proving as unwinnable as the previous two - is that stupid or what?   Anyway, in the late '40s, with Chiang (and his gold) now esconced in Formosa (Taiwan) the stage was set in 1950 for the two madmen in North and South Korea to wage war with each other.  Here, entering stage right with his villainous demeanor, comes General Douglas MacArthur, a man verging on clinical insanity.  I intend to write more on him later.  In the meantime, again, I can only mutter with genuine emotion, "America, oh, America!"

 

God bless Anna Raccoon's bad temper!

I will not attempt to paraphrase Ms. Raccoon's hissy-fit brought about by her watching - silly girl! - Newsnight with Paxo, the Fat Black Clown (see two posts below), Paddick the Pansy Policeman, and, God help her, Charlie Falconer, the cronies' crony of choice.   They were discussing the Lawrence case and, as usual, Ms. Raccoon, despite her grumpiness, writes more sense on the subject than I have read anywhere else.  In addition, you can enjoy my e-pal, Julia M, in the comments.  Julia could fence for Britain in the 'Olympics using foil, epee, sabre - or broadsword!  Go read:

http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/newsshite-with-paxo/#comments

And now, a subject of abiding interest to me - tits!

When you think about it - and let's face it, chaps, when do we ever not think about it - tits are an odd part of a woman's anatomy to arouse as much sexual interest as they do.  I mean, we don't get turned on by shoulder blades or elbows.  I suspect that that old fraud, Freud, had a theory for it but we can leave that to him and his fellow yo-yo players whilst us chaps just go on enjoying the sight and, when we are lucky, the feel of a woman's breasts.  I raise this delicate subject not out of my usual pruriance but because you simply cannot escape the subject on the news these days.

Apparently, chaps, and I know you will find this hard to believe, some women try to pull a fast one on us men by inserting glutinous globs of jelly into their breasts to make them bigger.  I know, I know, the sheer deceit is absolutely shocking!  I heard of one young woman who, silly, foolish girl, said it was no different to us chaps sticking a pair of rolled up socks in our Y-fronts when we all know that is totally different.

Anyway, and to be more serious, it is possible that some of these implants are leaking and may cause serious medical problems for the ladies concerned.  At this point we enter a tricky area of medical and financial ethics.  The women concerned paid a considerable amount of their own money to have this procedure in the first place but now there is talk of them asking for the NHS to put it right at the taxpayers' expence (or my expense as I prefer to think of it).  Obviously my first reaction is to refuse but then the tricky ethics begin to crop up.  Should the NHS refuse to put right the medical damage caused by people's stupidity?  Should 'fatties' be refused treatment for diabetes?  Should drunk drivers be refused medical attention when they crash their cars?  Even more important, in fact, crucially important, should old men, who should know better, but who step across a bouncy mattress after changing a light bulb and then miss their footing on the stool and crash to earth pulling and straining every ligament and tendon in their body, such that, even after three months they are still in agony - but bravely borne, mind you - expect treatment for the NHS?  I think I can give that one a resounding 'YES'!

So I suppose, those silly, naughty ladies who tried to fool us chaps must be treated with the same care.  If any of you live locally, I am available for consultations!

ADDITIONAL:  As sex has reared its ugly head and perhaps some of you chaps, and even some of the ladies, might be sexually aroused, please pop over to the blog of my e-pal, A K Haart, who has, via the words of Marcus Aurelius, the equivalent of a bucket of cold water!

 

I fully support the fat, black clown!

I do realise, of course, that my title to this post is 'fat-ist', 'black-ist' and 'clown-ist' but I must do my duty and tell the truth because there are some people, the very young, the deaf and the blind, the illiterate, sundry race relations 'experts' and most 'loonies', who will be unaware of the fact that one of the stupidest MPs in parliament - and that's a pretty fierce competition - is Ms. Diane Abbott.

As you can see, she is fat and she is black and today she used the idiots favourite communication method - Twitter for Twits - to say something clownish.  Various other 'stoopids', mostly from the Tory Party (not too difficult to find them there), have begun to leap up and down like Dervishes on dope saying that she's "racist" and she should resign.  (Sorry, that was very Dervish-ist'.)

She should not!  I defend to the, er, well, not quite 'death', her right to say really stupid things - because it says so much about her and as she seeks high office to rule over me then I want to know what she thinks, or at least, what passes for thinking in her 'grunt-futtock' mind.  If all these wretched Language Commissars have their way we will have even less idea of exactly how monumentally stupid most of our leaders are.

So come on, Diane, the unthinking man's Goddess, tell us the way it really is.  You're quite safe because I am standing behind you, er, even if no-one can see me.

Incidentally, her description of 'whites dividing and ruling' is entirely correct except, of course, on those odd occasions where we simply shot anyone who failed to be divided and ruled.  However, where her ineffable stupidity showed itself was in the notion that this sort of behavious was limited to whites.  Has this stupid woman ever been to Africa?

 

Sports report from a Hot Air Fanatic

Courtesy of m' Lord Bishop Hill comes this 'headline' from a HAF sports reporter referring to yesterday's Shlock-Horror result in which, for once, 'Fergie' did not look as though he had swallowed a wasp but an entire nest of them:

Newcastle did not beat Manchester United today, because the long term trend is for Manchester United to beat Newcastle.

Exactly, and in football as in climate who could argue with that?!

Gravedigger 2 - my finest performance!

I think I can honestly say that my performance as Grave Digger Two (the imbeciles who edit the Arden Shakespeare refer to this crucial character as "Other"!) who plays such an important part in that play about some gloomy Dane who keeps moaning and groaning and interfering with the flow of the plot when all the audience are waiting for is the Gravedigger scene.  Of course, usually it is Grave Digger One who gets all the laughs because the bastard actor gets more lines.  However, in my production I think I turned the tables nicely with a performance of which many people said they had never seen the like, before or since!

To achieve this translucent reading of a deeply complex character required me to engage in the Stanislavski method in which, darlings, I had to try and live the role.  Hence, I made use of my neighbouring churchyard and here, in this truly historic photo of a master at work, you see me deeply engrossed in teasing out the precise meaning of a very important and witty riposte to a question posed to me by Grave Digger One:

One: What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

Two (or ME, as I like to think of him):  The gallows-maker, for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

Oh, how they laughed!  And then that bloody prince barged back in again and I had to exit - but I could feel, darlings, really feel, the groans of anguish from the audience as I departed.

 

Oh, alright then!  The truth is that this is a sneaky shot of me taken by a neighbour as I took a tea-break during one of my grass-cutting sessions.

 

Am I right to be worried about the Stephen Lawrence trial?

There are two main aspects of this whole sorry business which worry me.  First, is the fact that these two men, Norris and Dobson, were the 'victims' (I use the word with care) of the decision taken under the influence of a liberal-led outcry in which the ancient law of no double jeapardy was set aside for crimes of violence.  Indeed, as I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong) not only were the two men aquitted when they stood trial years ago in a private case brought by the Lawrence family, but their aquittals then had to be set aside at a later date in order for them to be charged last year.

Double jeapardy is, or should be, a cherished part of a civic society in that it provides the authorities with one chance, and one chance only, to charge people with a crime and attempt to prove their guilt.  The fact that it was the whipped-up emotions of this specific case which brought about the change in an ancient practice worries me even more.  However, I do see that there is one good argument in its favour.  The rate of advance in forensic science is such that it is possible for more and more cases to be re-examined in retrospect and for hard evidence to be produced and I can see that there is an injustice if that has to be ignored.

The other factor which worries me about this particular case is that it draws my attention, once again, to this invented offence of 'racially aggravated crime'.  Were I, an elderly, white, male Englishman to be 'offed' by some thug I would be severely displeased if, as I looked down from my cloud in heaven (sorry, what was that?), my perp drew a shorter sentence than the perp in Court Two who bumped off a black or brown victim.  Where-in lies the difference?

In fact there is a third thing which worries me about this whole Lawrence case and that is the way in which it has been coloured (pun intended) by colour prejudice, and I do not just mean white on black.  It has, at times, almost amounted to hysteria and that is no setting for the conduct of legal proceedings and a fair trial.

Tell me I'm wrong and put my mind to rest.

Oh, sorry, one other thing.  Why hasn't the Black Police Officers' Association been had up by the Race Relations Board?

 

 

Ban all cars - NOW!

According to Guns.com (via IHTM), 'over there', cars are killing more people by accident than guns.  Surely it can only be a matter of time before the Archbishop of Canterbury, or some equally dim, dumb daftie calls upon the government to ban all cars.  I should add that suicides by gun rose - but then the suicide rate as a whole rose during the year in question.

 

 

As we watch the bodies of murder victims piling ever higher in this country - I have lost count of how many people were butcherred in December - it is worth noting that 'over there' more and more States are authorising their citizens to own and carry concealed weapons.  The results are beginning to show:

 

 

Time for us to insist on the right to bear arms, I suggest.

 

Sex, when sex wasn't really allowed!

Not the least of my many grumps concerning this modern world is the fact that in an age where 'anything goes' on screen or stage, nothing is actually sexy anymore.  I am immensely grateful to my e-pal Kevin who (inadvertantly, as it happened) pointed me towards this clip on the Paco Enterprises blog.  I provide you with the link because I fear my attempts to embed this YouTube film may prove to be a disaster.  Whatever, do watch - and listen - because this really is sexy!  Good background music, too, and, almost unbelievably, you can hear every word the actors deliver - deliberately slowly - with absolute clarity.  I never saw the film but in those days I was probably too young to be allowed in!

  

 

Grrrrrrrrh!

 

ADDITIONAL:  For the fascinating but ultimately tragic life of Evelyn Keyes do read her Wiki entry.  And who the hell remembers Scarlett O'Hara's sister?!

And this is Brad Dexter's Wiki entry - he was one of the Magnificent Seven but I'm blowed if I can remember him.

 

Misbehavin' models and the stern Austrian!

I have been meaning for some time to draw your attention to an excellent post (and interesting comments thread) emanating from Cafe Hayek and it's proprietor, Don Boudreaux.  In it, he quotes a passage from Friedrich Hayek's acceptance speech on being presented with the Nobel Prize for Economics.  In it, Hayek drew attention to the dangers when what I call 'technologists' attempt to use the tools of real scientists working in the fields of physics and chemistry and apply them to human activities, in this case, economics.  He warns especially of the use, or misuse, of mathematical modeling, beloved of so many macro-economists whose prognostications have proved so wrong, so often.  However, I would stretch Hayek's warning further to include the 'technologists' attempting to forecast global climate by means of mathematical models which so far have proven to be almost totally useless.  So, in this extract I have added to Hayek's reference to "economists" the words "global climate technologists":

"It seems to me that this failure of the economists [global climate technologists] to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences – an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error.  It is an approach which has come to be described as the “scientistic” attitude – an attitude which, as I defined it some thirty years ago, ‘is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed’”

Hmmn!  "Scientistic", ugly word but then it sums up an ugly attitude.

 

Well, if I was as ugly as that . . .

. . . then I suppose I, too, would have become an apologist, Marxist historian if only to emulate the tactics of the even uglier Jean Paul Sartre who was thus, from his, er, distinguished intellectual heights, able to remove the knickers from some equally ugly but awfully willing and grateful, female, Marxist students - the old goat!

Mr. Eric Hobsbawm (he is probably 'Professor' or at least 'Doctor' but I refuse to use his misbegotten titles) is, according to Richard North at EU Referendum:

He is a Marxist and was a long-standing member of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain and the associated Communist Party Historians Group. As such, he has been (and still is) an apologist for one of the most vile regimes this earth has ever spawned, openly justifying a system responsible for the death of 15-20 million people (at the very least), and denying the extent of its crimes against humanity.

Now I am not one to criticise 'Her Maj', not least because my forthcoming knighthood might be placed in jeapardy - sorry, did I just say something funny? - but her decision to appoint this despicable, old Stalin arse-licker as a Companion of Honour was a dreadful mistake.  I am delighted, via Wiki, to quote my old e-pal, Oliver Kamm, who has, alas, long since disappeared behind Rupe's paywall at The Times:

 "Hobsbawm has rarely missed an opportunity even after communism’s demise to obfuscate its record".

In addition, Kamm reminded us that:

In 1994, [Hobsbawm] answered "yes" in a BBC interview to the question, "What (your view) comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?"

What can Her Majesty have been thinking of to award this dreadful, ugly, old Stalinist with a high honour?  Even more important, why on earth didn't she ask me for my opinion?

 

Should Judge 'Cocklecarrot' Munby be locked up for his good?

I love this internet-thingie!  For me, it's like a random searchlight which wanders hither and thither, usually illustrating the tedious detritus of life but occasionally fixing on an arcane detail nearly always ignored by the MSM but of profound importance.  So let's hear it for (I believe 'the cousins' call it 'a shout out' to) Sam Smith at the Anna Raccoon site.  In his post, he explains the intricacies of the law governing the behaviour of (mainly) local authorities in their conduct to those so severely disabled that it is necessary to deprive them of their liberty.  It is formulated under the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards Act (DoLSA) which is essential to safeguard the rights of those so deprived of their liberty even if, because of their condition, they are unable to do it for themselves.

However, as Sam Smith informs us in his fascinating article, there has been a case recently brought by a recalcitrant council in which they have sought to avoid the safeguards set down in the proper procedures.  It is fair to say, as Mr. Smith does, that the drafting of the law under the last Labour government and its civil servants is hugely and mostly unnecessarily complex and makes it hard going for anyone to pursue.  However, this particular dispute came up before the Appeals Court and Lord Justice 'Cocklecarrot' Munby was the bewigged prat learned justice who wrote the judgment.

There was no dispute that the man concerned, given his severe mental disability, needed to be deprived of his liberty for his own sake.  However, 'Cocklecarrot' Munby in his judgment went further according to Mr. Smith:

The essence of the judgement appears to be that where a person is so disabled that they need care and support, that care and support cannot be a deprivation of liberty. The comparator is not a [normal] ‘man or woman on the Clapham omnibus’ but ‘the kind of lives that people like X would normally expect to lead’ (pgh 97).

The circular nature of this argument requires clear highlighting. The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards are the process required by law to determine whether someone lacks mental capacity and it is in their best interests to be deprived of their liberty. The point is – if you like – to prove they are as disabled as Munby LJ suggests and allow the finding to be challenged. However what the Court of Appeal has now added is in effect that if those conditions are met then there is no deprivation of liberty and therefore no safeguards need be used. [My emphasis].

Apparently, 'Cocklecarrot' Munby has something of a reputation.  Sir Nicholas Mostyn, formerly a QC but now a judge, himself, had such a 'high' opinion of Lord Justice Munby that when his favourite pedigree sow gave birth to seven piglets he named them: James, Munby, Self-regarding, Pompous, Publicity, Seeking, and Pillock.  Courtesy of The Daily Mail here is a picture of them:

  

 

Not a bad likeness, I reckon!

 

 

The swots begin to realise they are dumb and dumber!

Actually, my title is not only unkind but also a tad misleading if it leaves you with the impression that I am somehow anti-science and scientists.  I am frequently anti-technologists, particularly when they manifest themselves in quasi-scientific speculations like global climate and neo-Darwinism; but I have genuine, almost open-mouthed admiration for real scientists, particularly those grappling with the mysteries on the far horizons of our knowledge.  Some of them, like the late Richard Feynman, are almost heroes in my imagination. 

Even so, regular readers will already know of my firm belief in disbelief, otherwise known as agnosticism, and my shivering delight in rich examples of irony.  Reading a recent article in Harper's Magazine by Alan P. Lightman, I was able to hug myself with delight at receiving a double helping of both!  Lightman, a considerable polymath, himself, reminds us of the incredible achievements of physicists during the 20th century.  I suppose it began in 1900 with Max Planck and his almost accidental discovery of the peculiar behaviour of electrons.  From that moment on it was the scientific equivalent of Renaissance travellers discovering America - a huge undiscovered continent filled with delights, riches and dangers.  In they rushed, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Feynman and many, many more.  At last, was the general feeling, we've almost cracked it, soon, very soon, there will be no more mysteries! 

“Back in the 1970s and 1980s,” says Alan Guth, “the feeling was that we were so smart, we almost had everything figured out.” What physicists had figured out were very accurate theories of three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong nuclear force that binds atomic nuclei together, the weak force that is responsible for some forms of radioactive decay, and the electromagnetic force between electrically charged particles. And there were prospects for merging the theory known as quantum physics with Einstein’s theory of the fourth force, gravity, and thus pulling all of them into the fold of what physicists called the Theory of Everything, or the Final Theory.

It just needed one more shove, but unfortunately, it was like shoving on the end of a piece of string.  Indeed, in their efforts to reach this final Theory of Everything they had to use what they called 'string theory', the implications of which are mind-bending.

In essence (and you need to read Lightman's essay to double-check my errors of omission and/or commission), they discovered that for life to exist at all, as it manifestly does on this planet, several critical criteria at the moment of the 'Big Bang' had to be within very tight and specific limits.  Too much, or too little, of this, or of that, and life would not have been able to develop.  And yet it did!  Looking back at this peculiar, one almost might say, contrived, state of affairs at the very beginning of the universe, there is a severe temptation to suggest that God is a sort of master chef adding a pinch of this, or slightly less of that, in order to ensure the flavour of the stew is just right!  In other words, the sheer exactness of conditions at the very instant of the 'Big Bang' might lead a physicist to mutter, sotto voce, if he has his eye on a Nobel prize, the dread words - Intelligent Design!

Recoiling in horror, the swots have been forced into ever more complex hypotheses to explain away this awkward set of circumstances.  One theory currently in vogue in some quarters is the idea of  a 'multiverse', that is, the notion of an almost infinite number of universes all of which are different.  Thus, we can all relax and forget about the amazing set of circs which has allowed life to exist in this universe because given a 'multiverse' of almost infinite proportions it was bound to happen somewhere, sometime.  I have to say that smacks of desperation, to me.  H0wever, I leave it to you to read Mr. Lightman's fascinating article and make up your own minds.  In the meantime, I will, after shifting my buttocks to obtain what comfort I can, remain sitting firmly on this fence.

 

Consider Korea!

Go on, just for a few minutes, I have!  Well, I have had to because I am in the process of reading David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.  I am only partly in to it but already I can recommend it highly not just as an excellent introduction to a forgotten war but also for they way it sets both the war and its principle actors in a historical setting.  I confess now that I know virtually nothing of this war despite having lived through it as a child.  The only totally useless piece of knowledge I have is that Michael Caine served up the very sharp end of it as a private in the Royal Fusiliers which has always served to make me view him with some respect.  However, back to Korea ...

One might say, 'alas, poor Korea, the Belgium of south east Asia'.  It has, just like Belgium, been seen as strategically important by various great powers in the near vicinity - China, Japan and - I needed nudging to remember of this - Russia with whom it shares a common frontier!  Hence it has been constantly marched through and conquered by whomsoever was strongest at any particular time.  The Japanese quite literally colonised the place from around the beginning of the 20th century until they lost the war in 1945.  Any of those Left-wing dafties who constantly inveigh against British colonisation should read up on how it was done Japanese-style.  Horrific does not do it justice!  There was resistance of sorts and two men became leaders in exile.  One was Kim Il Sung who was pushed out northwards into the waiting arms of Stalin's politbureau.  Not that he needed pushing because he was a fanatical Communist and nationalist whose only aim in life was to re-unite his country which had been divided by Russia and America along the 38th parallel.  In the south, Syngman Rhee, another fanatical nationalist ended up in the USA where he devoted himself to ingrationating himself into American political circles before his return to South Korea where his aim, like his North Korean counterpart, was to unite the country.  Both these men achieved their political positions in 1945 at the end of WWII.

Hovering  over this potential powder-keg with a slow-burning fuse was Gen. McArthur, the 'Grand Panjandrum' of Japan who, with rather surprising intelligence, was guiding that country from the Deity-worshiping traditions of its former era into a modern democracy.  His knowledge of, and/or interest in, the two Koreas and the highly dangerous and mounting pressures there was virtually nil.  Even more disgraceful was his nonchalent disregard of the blindingly obvious run-down condition of his own American troops who had long since lost their equipment and war-ready status of 1945.  In this book, Halberstam devotes some time filling in a portrait of McArthur, his loathsome, stupid father and, even worse, his ghastly mother.  It is both fascinating and repellant.

All of this is doubly interesting given that our TV screens have been filled recently with images of what can only be described as the Orwellian society that has developed in North Korea.  Have you ever, even compared to the old Soviet thugs, seen such a collection of hideously ugly, dessicated. old mass-murderers as those North Korean generals and apparatchiks lined up during the recent funeral of their 'Dear Leader'?  I do just hope that the American leadership is more engaged with the dreadful possibilites in Korea than they were back in 1950.

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam

 

I might as well start the year in the way I intend to continue - grumpy!

I wish to bring to your attention two minor but utterly useless items of contemporary life.  First of all - bloody, bloody fireworks!  God, how boring can something that expensive be?  Huge amounts of (our) dosh spent to leave the truly moronic gazing open-mouthed like a bunch of poor benighted natives seeing a white man for the first time.  And then they gush and gawp and are amazed at . . . what, exactly?  A series of coloured explosions.  Big deal!  They could have just placed huge buckets filled with money and simply set light to them, it amounts to the same thing.  Have these people, and, I regret to say, I include some of my friends here, never heard of the 'bread and circuses' trick in which canny, conniving politicians use our money to put on an extravaganza to keep what passes for our minds off the harsh realities of what their stupidity and cupidity have wrought?  Bah!  Humbug!

The second waste of time and effort I wish to grump about are Viennese waltzes.  At the moment, I guess like some of you, I am listening in on an occasional basis to Classic FM as they spend the holiday weekend working their way through the top 300 pieces of music voted for by their listeners over the last 16 years.  It serves to remind me of music I have forgotten and that I really, really must buy in the new year.  And then, suddenly, I have a dollop of ghastly, over-sweet, Viennese strudel in the form of a Strauss waltz pressed upon me - my dears, simply too ghastly!  Yes, yes, I understand that it all works beautifully in a ballroom with brilliant chandeliers filled with elegant people in evening dress, but in my attic as I sit here in my jim-jams nursing an incipient headache, it will not do, it simply will not do!  And who the hell votes for such musical sachertorte?  I mean, are there people who actually  sit down together in the evening and become very excited at the chance to replay their CDs of Viennese waltzes?  Well, yes, there probably are and most of them probably spent last night freezing their butts off in London watching fireworks!