Little overnight trip with Anne, F and U (B in her respite care place).

The Euro Space Centre has a great playground but is as yet a little advanced for F. We’ll come back when he’s eight or thereabouts.

Stayed at the nice family-friendly Hotel de Luxembourg in St Hubert.

Went this morning through the fog to Bouillon Castle. Absolutely superb, with birds of prey (real) on display.

Back home by way of Redu, Belgium’s answer to Hay on Wye.

Right, enough computing for now.

7) The Distant Past, by William Trevor.

Set of short stories by this Protestant writer from rural County Cork, mainly depressing tales about Protestants in rural County Cork (you should write about what you know, as Anne always says). Reminded me how glad I am to have moved away from Belfast. But easy reading.

6) The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson

I have been a fan of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books for as long as I can remember being able to read, an enthusiasm which once contributed to a minor diplomatic embarrassment. This, however, is one of her novels for adults. Though to say it’s a novel is perhaps stretching it a bit; it’s more a series of vignettes about the relationship between Sophia, whose age is never made clear but is I guess between seven and eleven, and her grandmother, living on one of the islands in the Gulf of Finland with Sophia’s father (her mother is dead). The island and its neighbourhood are described with fascinating accuracy; so too are Sophia and her grandmother – no romanticised, misty-eyed view here of either childhood or old age. A beautiful book.

My grandfather was born in 1880, the seventh of nine sons, four of whom lived long enough to serve in the first world war, and all four survived it (though one of them by less than a year). Last summer I found a letter he’d written an old friend, presumably his former regimental chaplain, from the Holy Land in January 1918, when he would have been 37, the same age that I am now. (I never met him; he dropped dead at Mass one day in 1949, his 20-year-old son standing beside him.)

It’s the sort of letter you would expect of an Irish Catholic who was also a British lieutenant-colonel, who had survived Gallipoli and (much earlier) the Boer War, and who went on to run a rubber plantation in Malaya before retiring to impoverished gentility in Northern Ireland. I don’t agree with a number of the sentiments expressed; but I think it’s appropriate at this time of year to post it here.

13 January 1918

Dear Padré,

This is to wish you all of the best for 1918 and also to ask why the divil we never hear from you? The boys do be going strong and as you probably have read we have had three successful stunts so we are all wagging our tails hard.
Has been hard work on little food and less drink; absolutely no whiskey! Stuffer is perforce a teetotaler and aging rapidly.
John Luke, sitting beside me much wishes he was where he last saw you. I gather you fed him nobly with drink in proportion!

Well, here we are in the Holy Land and as Pat Murphy said “It’s no wonder Abraham was always wandering; sure he would be looking for a better spot.”
I got as far as Jerusalem just for a look at it. As a city most disappointing, incredibly dirty and smelly with a loathsome population. The interest of course is in the association with Biblical and Christian incidents. I saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Via Dolorosa, Garden of Gethsemane Mount of Olives etc etc. Had only time for a glimpse at each, and also one or two of the Moslem places. The Mosque of Omar built on the site of Solomon’s temple is far and away the finest thing in Jerusalem or out of it. The whole of this country is full of interest also. We bivouaced under the hill where Christ is supposed to have appeared to the three disciples after his resurrection. There is a Latin Monastery there ran by Franciscans. – French and Italian.
Got some bread and oranges out of them when they learnt we were all R.Cs. The Turk had left them pretty bare. The O.C. Monks breakfasted with me next day and was very interesting. They are evidently very industrious people, have transformed the top of a bare and bleak mountain into quite a charming spot. Trees planted, gardens flourishing with vines, oranges, pepper trees, etc. to say nothing of flowers and vegetables. Chapel is very fine and the Monastery and Hospice are very large; all buildings cut stone. We were using Hospice as a hospital. By the way it was here our padre first failed us. Being a holy man I sent him out foraging to the Monastery, as we were short of food, and expected him to return with all sorts of luxuries. However all he got out of the Monks was permission to pray in their Chapel! Not much use to hungry men! I think you or the Canon would not have come away empty handed.
The padre is one of your recruits F^r O’Carroll by name a good lad, but a bit young for the “brutal soldiery”. Next day I took in the job of foraging myself.
Another day we had a small scrap in the same place where Joshua hunted the 4 kings (I think). As far as I remember a terrific hail storm put the wind up them. We were assisted by a fog and sneaked up to the Turk and put the wind up him.
As regards fighting generally we have had a walk over as compared with the Gallipoli days. My company on 9^th August lost more in 3 hours than the battalion has lost in all this campaign. Thank God for it. Our last stunt, when we counter attacked during Turks attempt to recapture Jerusalem, was I think our best effort. Anyhow the old Division was let loose as a whole and we fairly wiped everybody else’s eye. Our share of the pick up was more killed, wounded, prisoners, guns, M.Gs. etc. was more than three times as large as all the other divisions put together.
It was hard work though. Xmas day was the divil raining like hell and New Years Day if possible worse. All the time we were on bully & biscuit and not enough of either. Indeed to look back now over the country we put the Turk out of it is astonishing an army was ever able to cross it. We went up 4 mountains all nearly 3000 feet high to say nothing of dozens of lower eminences. Men of course were marvelous, so happy and cheery under most adverse conditions and mad keen to get at the Turk. The other day a patrol came back grousing, saying the officer in charge was no good as he couldn’t find them any Turks to kill! With me still or rejoined lately are John Luke and Shadforth (both have done awfully well) also old Dovey, Loveband and of course the Stuffer. Wodehouse also here sticking it out well in spite of rheumatism.
Lots of the “old hands” here also “getting their own back”.
Col Cox writes he met you in Ireland so he will have given you all recent news. –

We have had no mail for weeks. In this country and under present weather conditions it takes a lot of doing to keep us fed and supplied with lead as a gift to the Turk. –

What is going on in Ireland? Is the convention going to put things right or are the Germans going to fool the Irishman into another rebellion? Meantime we are sighing for fresh blood to help us carry on. Only yesterday I had 2 men hit for the 4^th time and another hit for the sixth! They will still carry on whilst thousands of able bodied men at home waste time doing nothing but talk rot.
Nothing else matters, except to beat the Hun. When that is done there will be no particular harm in people returning to their petty parish politics. –

Well! Well! God save Ireland anyway!
Have you done any racing lately? And if so I hope you gave Miss May Grehan VAD. better tips than you ever gave me! Give her my kindest regards. Also to The Canon when next you see him, and the two of you can drink to the health of yours v sincerely

W. H. Whyte

Most of the personal references mean nothing to me; I haven’t been able to identify the monastery “where Christ is supposed to have appeared to the three disciples”; the “9^th August” obviously means Gallipoli; the “convention” refers to the Irish Convention, chaired by Horace Plunkett, in a well-meaning but doomed (and now largely forgotten) attempt to get a constitutional settlement in Ireland before Sinn Fein’s rise became unstoppable; and “Miss May Grehan” I think is the sister of the wife of his brother George, whose death in 1919 I noted at the top of this entry. In a sense, posting it here is a memo to myself to find out more about him, if I can.

5) The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton

What about Martin Tupper now?

Difficult to be really sure about this one. The plot is relatively straightforward; Gabriel Syme, poet and detective, infiltrates the Central Committee of Anarchists under the pseudonym of “Thursday”.

No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the last time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially after what uncle said.

But all is not as it seems on the Central Committee and a series of chase scenes, through the streets of London and rural France, ensue, accompnied by dramatic unmaskings.

Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known. — A FRIEND.

Towards the end the chase continues by elephant and by balloon. (Incidentally the latter is liberated from Earl’s Court which apparently in 1907 boasted a ferris wheel along the lines of the London Eye.)

The word, I fancy, should be ‘pink’.

But the plot is interspersed with odd reflections on wealth, power, religion, politics, human characters, and so on; of course it’s not much good as a text on anarchism, any more than Jules Verne or Arthur Conan Doyle is on Mormonism.

When the herring runs a mile,/ Let the Secretary smile;/ When the herring tries to fly,/ Let the Secretary die./ Rustic Proverb.

And the ending just gets truly bizarre. While we know right from the start who Thursday is, the central mystery of the book is the man who was Sunday; and while the author hints at the answer, we are really left to make our own interpretation.

Your beauty has not left me indifferent. — From LITTLE SNOWDROP.

Incidentally I think the “Martin Tupper” referred to must be the obscure nineteenth-century poet rather than the central character of that wacky sit-com “Dream On” – which surely got a little inspiration from this book.

With my interest piqued by a cri de cœur from , I have just watched Westlife singing “Mack The Knife”.

‘s reaction is if anything understated:

Westlife sum up everything that’s wrong with the music industry. They’re charmless. They’re gormless. They’re talentless. They have delusions of grandeur. And most of all, they sing really, really, really shit songs.

I had the singular privilege recently of spending a day with one of America’s leading Brecht scholars. I don’t think I dare bring this abomination to his attention. I sense rapid gyrations from a normally quiet corner of the Dorotheenfriedhof in Berlin.

[edit: This is what it should sound like.]

Eastern European workers needed in Britain. Yet more evidence of the wrong-headedness of immigration policy.

From Dave Barry:

We have finally come to the end of the bitter hateful partisan viciousness that has consumed us for far too long, and we can now look forward, as a nation, to beginning a new era of bitter hateful partisan viciousness.

News in from Macedonia: turnout very low in the referendum today – I hear figures of a mere 27%. This is Good News. It may seem a bit obscure to most of you, but I hope the pieces I wrote before the referendum was called and immediately after are enlightening.

From :

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

4) Missing Man, by Katherine MacLean

This book, published in 1975, is a fix-up of three stories published in Analog between 1968 and 1971 featuring psychic detective George Sandford, the last of which won a Nebula. The setting is remarkable – New York in a world recovering from environmental catastrophe, where there is much greenery and derelict buildings (and vulnerable underwater suburbs), and significant social control in return for quality of life. Sandford’s somewhat seedy character and his feelings of blurred identity when he tries to read the minds of criminals (or their victims) are quite vivid. It is reminiscent of Alfred Bester, Philip K Dick and John Brunner. MacLean was obviously a pretty talented author who simply didn’t produce as much as the other three; the only other story by her I remember reading is “The Snowball Effect”, about the small town sewing circle that takes over the world.

There’s been a lot of discussion of fraud in the recent US election.

My gut feeling is that there’s not a lot in it. Most cases of election fraud I have dealt with have been large scale, of the order of shifting 10-15% of the vote at least. If you are a corrupt election official, there is very little point in shifting the vote by only a percentage point or two, because the risk is quite strong that it will not deliver the required result. If you have a close race then it is even more risky, because a vengeful winner will take it out on those who tried to cheat him or her out of victory. A couple of interesting examples:

* the Serbian elections where Milosevic lost power in 2000 – votes were in fact counted honestly at the local level, but the central election commission then deliberately added them up wrong to give him an extra 10% from his opponents’ votes. Eventually rectified, as you may remember, when demonstrators stormed the parliament building and forced the supreme court to rule that he had lost.

* recent elections in a little-known bandit statelet on my patch. Similar tactic attempted, though the numbers were a bit more outrageous (government candidate’s vote vastly inflated, opposition candidate vastly deflated); again demonstrators of each side have stormed the various soi-disant decision-making bodies and there’s a bit of a stand-off at the moment. Nobody in the west has noticed though. (Neither candidate will be recognised anyway even after they’ve decided who won.)

On the other hand, compare:

* elections of recent years in Montenegro, which has its problems, nonetheless have been rated fair on the mechanics at least by international observers. As one observer explained to me, because the outcome is uncertain, (and usually the margin of victory narrow) the election administrators have every incentive to run them fairly because they genuinely don’t know what the result will be.

In some cases vote fraud is endemic and entire villages vote the way they are told to by the elders. On the other hand, the elders may well have an interesting habit of changing their mind from election to election about who to vote for, and I suspect that there is some internal discussion in each village before the elders make their decision.

So, in summary, the small scale of the alleged possible fraud in the US to me indicates politically that it probably didn’t happen. The fact is that the result matched the opinion polls (and even the exit polls) within the margin of error. Plus I saw somewhere (but foolishly didn’t note its address) a back-of-the-envelope analysis showing that the states with the biggest discrepancies between the opinion polls and the results are not necessarily those with voting machines.

The other strike against the theory is that it does seem to me that there’s a strong tradition of backbiting in American government; I find it pretty easy to get officials to brief me off the record about the failings of US policy, and we’ve seen public dissent at the highest level in almost every administration – even this one – think Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke. These people keep records, and at a certain point it will eventually suit their personal agenda to go public with them and stab their former colleague in the back.

To run an effective vote-stealing campaign requires the knowledge of hundreds of people. (OK, if you’re doing it by machine, probably a few dozen rather than hundreds, but the number is still large.) Given the stakes, at least one of those people would have come forward by now because they weren’t paid enough, or were snubbed by their immediate superior in the chain of command, or split up with their lover, or even got religion. (In the cases I mentioned earlier, everybody in the entire country knew what was going on.) Argument from silence is always a bit risky but I think it reinforces my initial gut reaction.

The one egregious 4000 vote error in Franklin County Ohio was reversed, though of course the systematic biases in the system against poor and less well educated voters remain. Plus of course the disfranchisement of former felons which is a major human rights infringement. But a conscious plan to rig it for the Republicans – I think not. Too few votes stolen, and too many people would have known.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal, along with these instructions.

To begin with, legislation emphasised the protection of tenants.

(from a chapter about the Land Acts in a book on Irish history)

I know I’ve done this before, but…

Using the advanced search bit of livejournal (if you have a paid account) you can actually find out who on your friends list is what age – that is, of those who have dared to disclose. You have to be a little cautious with it because a) the cut-off age is birthdays, so “between 21 and 26” actually means people whose ages run from 21 to 25, and b) the search database isn’t totally up to date, so a few of the most recent additions to my friends list don’t show up. Having made those corrections:

Of 68 “mutual friends”, 46 (68%) have given their ages in their lj info.
33 of those 46 (72%) are younger than me
3 (including me) are my age – 37
10 (22%) are older than me

Taking it in five year cohorts, there’s an interesting effect – a bulge at the lower end, reflecting the general age profile of livejournal, and another bulge around my own age, reflecting I suppose people who I have most in common with in terms of life experience:

I just thought you’d like to know.

Going through a draft report (bleary-eyed, Saturday morning) I found a reference to a disputed patch of territory at an altitude of “3000 km”. Shared this with Anne, whose comment was:

Conflict resolution in SPA-A-A-A-ACE!!!

Maybe you had to be there.

Although I am of course a fan of space exploration and of finding out new things about our universe, I’m sort of glad to see that Saturn’s moon Titan is retaining its air of mystery for now. Several long-time sf favourites of mine were set on Titan in whole or in part, incuding Roger Zelazny’s short short story “The Bands of Titan”, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan, Arthur C Clarke’s underrated Imperial Earth, Greg Benford and Gordon Eklund’s over-rated If The Stars Are Gods, and John Varley’s eponymous trilogy. It’s nice not to have one’s youthful illusions spoiled as yet. Though I rather doubt that it will turn out to be like John Varley’s version, let alone Kurt Vonnegut’s.

Books I haven’t read set on Titan (I suppose):

Stephen Baxter, Titan
Philip K Dick, The Game Players of Titan
Edmond Hamilton, [Captain Future and] The Harpers of Titan
James Patrick Hogan, Code of the Lifemaker
Alan E Nourse, Trouble on Titan
Ben Bova, As on a Darkling Plain
Manley Wade Wellman, Sojarr of Titan

Are any of these (or indeed any others not on my list) worth reading, folks?

Also of course there’s the infamous film Saturn 3, which I haven’t seen, with screenplay by Martin Amis of all people, starring Kirk Douglas, Karvey Keitel and Farrah Fawcett. I think I’ll give that one a miss.

The Straight Dope, on the differences between Britain and America, concludes:

A case can be made that folks in the UK are too nice for their own good. In reading parliamentary transcripts and such you’re struck by how exasperatingly fair-minded and decent everyone is–not just the lefties, either. One detects little appetite for the draconian measures that some believe have reduced crime in the U.S., notably the harsh sentencing laws that have given us one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world. If present trends continue, though, no doubt the Brits will learn to be assholes just like us.

I should add that very few of my American acquaintances, and none of my friends, are assholes; but then none of them are involved in law enforcement – apart from David Feige (not an asshole) and the rabid immigration lawyer I met last month (keeping an open mind about her).

Fantastic tribute to Danijela by one of my successors in the Banja Luka office of NDI.

The EU constitution specifies that in future, a qualified majority to approve most decisions in the European Council must include at least 14 states, being at least 55% of the EU’s member states, with at least 65% of the population. A nice formula (better than the Nice formula which is the current system). Just one thought on the consequences of this if the EU eventually takes in the countries I’m working on:

A lot of Western Europeans are concerned about allowing in the Bosnians and Albanians (let alone potentially the Kosovars and Montenegrins), even in the long term, because then the number of states in the EU will be heavily weighted towards the Balkans. Applying the 65% population key, this doesn’t matter so much as their populations are pretty small. However they will definitely count towards the 55% of member states key. I see here an incentive, on European grounds, to recognise the independence of Scotland and other well-behaved Western European non-state regions, to try and rebalance the map a little more towards the West.

Hmm, I may have to flesh this out a bit. (or maybe not.) Thanks to for reminding me of this conversation.

“No, he hasn’t given up yet – he’s still waiting for some votes to come in from the State of Denial.”

John Quiggin on Crooked Timber finds cold comfort.

If Kerry does win after all, it will be under the worst possible circumstances. A minority of the popular vote, a hostile Congress and the need to prevail in a vicious legal dogfight in Ohio. The Republicans will be out for impeachment from Inauguration Day, if not before that. At this stage, a Kerry victory would produce the worst of all possible worlds – responsibility without power.

William Saletan on Slate is (once again) pushing John Edwards:

If you have any doubt about his electability, just read the exit polls from the 2004 Democratic primaries. If you don’t think he’s ready to be president—if you don’t think he has the right credentials, the right gravitas, the right subtlety of thought—ask yourself whether these are the same things you find wanting in George W. Bush. Because evidently a majority of the voting population of the United States doesn’t share your concern. They seem to be attracted to a candidate with a simple message, a clear focus, and a human touch. You might want to consider their views, since they’re the ones who will decide whether you’re sitting here again four years from now, wondering what went wrong.

I’m not completely convinced. He wasn’t able to come close to carrying North Carolina (11% behind Bush/Cheney, got only 84% of registered Democrats to vote for the ticket).

Anyway the idea that Democrats can only win with a Southern candidate was effectively disproved last night (even though they lost). It looks like the losing margin will be less in Iowa and New Mexico than it was in Florida, the only Southern state they were ever in contention for. Had Kerry won Ohio, he could have become President without winning a single state from south of the Mason-Dixon line (except parts of California).

Hillary in ’08? (I think not, but maybe Obama?)

So, Kerry needs most of the five remaining states. He is behind in Iowa, Nevad, New Mexico and most crucially Ohio, and ahead by only 13,000 votes in Wisconsin. This does not look good.

Still waiting for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

A bit depressing at the moment. Ohio is 53-46 to Bush, but with only 6% of returns in. Florida with rather more in, 41% of votes, has 52-47 to Bush, which is within shouting distance (and the gap has been narrowing), but only just. Nothing from PA yet.

See the most recent posts in for news from the front line…

http://www.livejournal.com/users/yonmei/358954.html

http://www.electoral-vote.com/ (Democrat)
http://www.tripias.com/state/ (also Democrat, I think)
http://www.electionprojection.com/ (Republican)
http://www.dalythoughts.com/ecb.htm (also Republican, I think)
http://www.mydd.com/special/president

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/ARTICLES/ElectionNight2004/pe2004elecnighttime.php
(from http://www.uselectionatlas.org/ )

http://contrapositive.blogspot.com/2004/10/election-night-cheat-sheet-as-promised.html

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/article.php?id=LJS2004110101

For fun:
http://www.command-post.org/2004/2_archives/016522.html

2) The Scheme for Full Employment, by Magnus Mills

I’ve been feeling a bit off-colour all day (and it’s a public holiday too) so had time to read this while writing article for and looking after Bridget as rest of family went to the zoo. It’s a short book, written very lightly and so I finished it in a couple of hours. A firm of lorry-drivers whose only task is basically to service their own lorries as part of a nationwide scheme for full employment is hit by industrial action. It’s supposed to be funny but to be honest I didn’t really get it; who exactly is being satirised? Academics? The NHS? The pre-Thatcher nationalised industries? The last of these seems the most likely but hey man, that was over two decades ago. Or was it really the Soviet Union? For that matter, does Moby-Dick represent the Republic of Ireland? (I did once read an academic article arguing precisely that.) All a bit pointless really.