• The Ashtray: The Ultimatum (Part 1) – NYTimes.com
  Wow, I wish I'd been in those seminars.
  (tags: history science)
• In the Dock, in Paris – The Judgment « EJIL: Talk!
  The famous libel case brought over an online review: "On March 3, 2011, the Tribunal de Grand Instance de Paris issued its decision in the Criminal Libel Case brought against me based on a complaint by Dr Karine Calvo-Goller. It would appear that the Court ruled in our favor on all issues."
  (tags: freespeech)

i) births and deaths

7 March 1930: birth of Brian Hayles, author of The Celestial Toymaker (1966), The Smugglers (1966), The Ice Warriors (1967), The Seeds of Death (1969), The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974) as well as of the novelisations of The Ice Warriors and The Curse of Peladon.

7 March 1934: birth of of Gordon Flemyng, director of Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

7 March 1964: broadcast of “Five Hundred Eyes”, third episode of the story we now call Marco Polo. Ping-Cho tells the story of Ala-eddin; Barbara is trapped in the cave of Five Hundred Eyes.

7 March 1970: broadcast of sixth episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians. The Doctor finds a cure for the Silurians’ plague, but they capture him.

7 March 1981: broadcast of second episode of Logopolis. The Doctor and Adric travel to Logopolis on the instructions of the Watcher, not realising that they have brought Tegan with them and that the Master has followed them.

I was completely unfamiliar with Poe’s prose before launching into this collection of his complete stories. I must say that I wish I had bought a ‘Best Of Poe’ rather than a Complete Poe. The sad truth is that a lot of the stories are pretty rubbish. His philosophising about death and aesthetics is dull, his humourous pieces range from self-indulgent to racist (the Dutch being particular targets) and the early romantic horror pieces are suffused with the icky self-loathing that you might get from an author who married his thirteen-year-old cousin and was then habitually unfaithful to her.

It’s not all bad. Most of the really famous stories, the ones I had previously heard of, were indeed worth reading – Arthur Gordon Pym (I smiled when I saw the letters familiar to me from Ethiopia), the Dupin stories (though Sherlock rightly observes that he himself is better), the Fall of the House of Usher, the Cask of Amontillado, and basically everything that Zelazny references in his A Dark Travelling. Two stories I had not heard of that I also enjoyed were the end-of-the-world tale of Eiros and Charmion, and the doppelganger yarn of William Wilson. But Poe wrote an awful lot of rubbish as well, and you can skip it in good conscience.

I’ve been fortunate with my Doctor Who books so far this month; Matrix is a Seventh Doctor / Ace Past Doctors Adventure, set not long after Survival, which couldn’t really have been done as a New Adventure because by the time the series had matured to the stage where a story like this could have fitted, Ace’s continuity had moved on. It has a remarkable section featuring an alternate Ian Chester and Barbara Wright in whose world the UK has been annexed by the USA, and also manages to breathe fresh life into the Sixth Doctor’s trial and the Cheetah Planet, neither of which is normally my favourite bit of continuity, with Jack the Ripper and the Wandering Jew thrown in. Perry and Tucker keep it remarkably well disciplined. I couldn’t recommend it unless you are familiar both with the Trial of a Time Lord season and Survival, but if you are, it is well worth reading.

i) broadcast anniversaries

6 March 1965: broadcast of “Crater of Needles”, fourth episode of the story we now call The Web Planet. Ian and Vrestin meet the Optera; Barbara tries to link with the invading Menoptera but they are massacred by the Zarbi.

6 March 1971: broadcast of sixth episode of The Mind of Evil. The Thunderbolt missile and the Keller machine are both destroyed, but the Master escapes.

6 March 1976: broadcast of sixth episode of The Seeds of Doom, ending Season 13. The Krynoid grows to enormous size but is destroyed by the RAF.

ii) date specified in canon

6 March 2005: setting of Rose, according to poster seen in Aliens of London (2005).

The Byzantine Empire still has barbarians at the gates; the Lombards, however, are deflected to go and conquer Northern Italy.

“Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did–some little distance off, but fresh and clear.”
“Footprints?”
“Footprints.”
“A man’s or a woman’s?”
Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered.
“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

And so we are off to Dartmoor, in a tale of ancient legends and tangled family histories of criminality and concealed relationships, in what I think is the best of the Sherlock Holmes stories – Doyle does very well at the atmospheric description, and is getting much better at characterization – Watson getting increasingly irritated by Holmes not letting him know what he is up to. I know the story so well that it is actually quite difficult to judge how well it works as a mystery, but it is very entertaining.

I thought this a particularly good Eighth Doctor story, with our hero and Sam ending up on a grand artifact of planetary engineering and falling in both with human military factions and the local very alien beings (themselves exploited by the humans) while facing ‘orrible danger from radiation. Would be a good taster for anyone wanting to give this series a try.

As I suspected, Holmes did not stay dead for long (apologies if anyone feels that is a spoiler, but the story of his return was published in 1903 which I think is a decent interval). None of these thirteen stories particularly stands out for me, though I noticed a general trend away from high politics towards domestic drama – for instance in “The Adventure of Abbey Grange”, Holmes and Watson confront the murderer but decide that they like him more than his victim so let him go. I also sensed a stronger geographical specificity – one story is set in am unidentified Oxbridge college, another explicitly in Cambridge. There are some fairly blatant retreads as well – “The Six Napoleons” is the same story as “The Blue Carbuncle” but with busts instead of geese. Still, they are all engaging reading; one almost feels that Doyle has stopped trying too hard and found a gear that suits him.

My Doctor Who rewatch has brought me to The Leisure Hive (which is better than I remembered) and Meglos (which isn’t), both of which feature incidental music of way above average quality by Peter Howell. A bit of googling reminded me that he was the author of the amazing Greenwich Chorus, of which there doesn’t seem to be a decent online version. There is, at least, this audience footage of a live performance of the piece by Howell:

Fantastic.

i) births and deaths

5 March 1932: birth of Gertan Klauber, who played the Galley Master in The Romans (1965) and Ola in The Macra Terror (1967).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

5 March 1966: broadcast of “The Steel Sky”, first episode of the story we now call The Ark. The Tardis lands on a vast spaceship inhabited by humans and Monoids; Dodo’s cold spreads throughout its inhabitants.

5 March 1979: broadcast of second episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The Doctor and Jago find a ghost at the theatre; Leela and Litefoot find Mr Sin at the door.

5 March 2008: broadcast of Something Borrowed (Torchwood), the one where Gwen gets married despite an alien pregnancy.

• Deserting democracy in north Africa | European Voice
  Seemingly oblivious to the democratic fervour sweeping across the Middle East and the Maghreb, the European Union has moved to prop up another autocratic and corrupt regime to the south of the Mediterranean – that of King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
  (tags: westernsahara)
• How we found the rudest cities in the world – Analytics @ foursquare | Foursquare Engineering Blog
  Manchester the rudest city in the (English-speaking) world; El Paso a close second, others (Pittsburgh, Bloomington) way behind.
  (tags: languages england)
• NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God | The Onion – America's Finest News Source
  (tags: religion space funny)
• APOD: 2011 February 27 – Saturns Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters
  Wow.
  (tags: astronomy)
• New Spotify Playlist: The Twenty Best Monkees Songs « Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!
  "…the Monkees had a rather good excuse – they weren’t, at least to start with, a band. Rather they were performers in a TV show *about* a band. As they often say themselves, “no-one complains that William Shatner never really captained a Starship”"
  (tags: music)
• Goodnight Dune
  Dune reimagined as a children's book
  (tags: sf funny)
• Democracy-promotion.Now what? « Neighbourhood
  As the ‘post-Cold War era’ turned into the ‘multipolar world’ era, the notion of Western democracy promotion underwent similarly dramatic changes. The West became too weak to pursue democracy-promotion head-on and was seen as being forced to fall back on old-school realist approaches to democracy. But just when this realist approach to democracy-promotion seemed to almost finally become dominant, the popular wave of protests in EU’s southern neighbourhod changed everything again. Now the question is what will come next.
  (tags: politics)
• YouTube – The Ukulele Orchestra – Wuthering Heights
  The official video. Wouldn't it be <s>great</s> awful if life was really like that?
  (tags: music funny)
• YouTube – A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 – by Isao Hashimoto
  Boom.
  (tags: war)
• Rescued from the bonfire, the lost work of C S Lewis – News, Books – The Independent
  "By what seems more than coincidence, I appeared at The Kilns that very day and learned that unless I carried the papers away with me that afternoon they would indeed be destroyed," Hopper wrote. "There were so many that it took all my strength and energy to carry them back to Keble College." For the past 46 years, Hopper has spent his time sifting through the saved material before it is transported to Oxford's Bodleian Library. Four years ago, he realised that fragments of the famous Aeneid translation, referred to by Tolkien in his own letters, had escaped his attention. Since then he has worked with Reyes to piece together the translation, which exists in fragments spread across several notebooks.
  (tags: books)

broadcast anniversaries

4 March 1967: broadcast of fourth episode of The Moonbase. The Doctor defeats the Cybermen by using the gravitron to make them float away into space.

4 March 1972: broadcast of second episode of The Sea Devils. The Doctor and Jo escape the the nearby sea base and discover that the Master is stealing equipment.

4 March 1978: broadcast of fifth episode of The Invasion of Time. The Doctor and friends escape, and the Doctor persuades Borusa to let him have the Great Key.

The books I am reading: The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes (specifically The Hound of the Baskervilles), by Arthur Conan Doyle; The Fall of the House of Usher and other Stories, by Edgar Allan Poe; Matrix, by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker (Past Doctor Adventures).

The book I am writing: The Life of Sir Nicholas White, by Nicholas Whyte.

The book I love most: The Lord of the Rings, I’m afraid!

The last book I received as a gift: Of Blood and Honey, by Stina Leicht, kindly sent to me by the author. (Unless one counts Bookmooch, in which case it’s Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, sent from Massachusetts.)

The last book I gave as a gift: Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory by Deborah M. Withers, a Valentine’s day present for my wife. (Again, unless one counts Bookmooch, in which case it was Raven’s Gathering, by Keith Taylor, sent to Pennsylvania ten days ago; or work-related gifts, in which case I gave a copy of Independent Diplomat, by Carne Ross, to someone I had a meeting with this morning.)

The nearest book on my desk: I’m working up some election stuff at present, so the two books on the desk are Rallings and Thrasher’s Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies (2007) and Brian Walker’s Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1918-92.

Another books read meme: Tor.com have been conducting an online poll on the best sf/f novel of the last decade. I was slightly surprised to see it won by a book which I do not rate that highly myself, but anyway it gives me the material for another books meme, using the 50 books which got 51 or more votes. As usual, bold the ones you have read, italicise those you have started but not finished, and strike through those you didn’t like.

Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
Blindsight, by Peter Watts
Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey
A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson
Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
Towers of Midnight, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch
Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett
The Gathering Storm, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Knife of Dreams, by Robert Jordan
The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling
Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan
Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson
Mistborn: The Hero of Ages, by Brandon Sanderson
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Deadhouse Gates, by Steven Erikson
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik
The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
Mistborn: The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson
Changes, by Jim Butcher
Winter’s Heart, by Robert Jordan
Crossroads of Twilight, by Robert Jordan
Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds
New Spring, by Robert Jordan
The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold
A Feast For Crows, by George R.R. Martin
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
Memories of Ice, by Steven Erikson
The Scar, by China Mieville
The City & The City, by China Mieville
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
Accelerando, by Charles Stross
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon
Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
The Darkness That Comes Before, by R. Scott Bakker
A Shadow in Summer, by Daniel Abraham
The Price of Spring, by Daniel Abraham

I haven’t read any of the Robert Jordan books here but have read enough of the earlier ones to know I won’t be reading any more!

i) births and deaths

3 March 1924: birth of John Woodnutt, who played George Hibbert in Spearhead from Space (1970), the Draconian Emperor in Frontier in Space (1973), Broton and the Duke of Forgill in Terror of the Zygons (1976), and Seron in The Keeper of Traken (1981).

3 March 2004: death of Sheila Dunn, who played Blossom Lefavre in The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965), the computer voice of the Electromatic company in The Invasion (1968), and Petra Williams in Inferno (1970). She was married to television director Douglas Camfield.

ii) broadcast anniversary

3 March 1973: broadcast of second episode of Frontier in Space. The Doctor and Jo are brought to Earth for questioning, where the Doctor is captured by the Draconians and then recaptured by the humans.

iii) date specified in canon

3 and 4 March 1215: setting of The King’s Demons (1983).

This is a locked entry partly because I’m professionally concerned with some of this, and partly because I’m going to refer to rumour and speculation.

The British government announced yesterday that it will cut its foreign aid programmes (in the sense of ‘phase out by 2016’, not ‘end next week’) in 16 countries: China, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Moldova, Bosnia, Cameroon, Lesotho, Niger, Kosovo, Angola, Burundi, the Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq and Serbia; and focus bilateral resources in the 27 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As a strategy to concentrate on eliminating poverty, it makes sense. It’s nice to see several African countries ‘graduating’, in the sense that the UK considers it unlikely that poverty reduction will be as big an issue in 2016 for Cameroon, Lesotho, Niger, Angola, Burundi, and the Gambia. I’m sorry to see my own current clients, Moldova, on the list, but I have to admit that if the relatively new government is able to continue its record of economic growth and also integrate more strongly with the EU, the case for switching resources elsewhere is rather good.

However, I’m also sorry to see a narrowing of focus at the same time as the budget is being increased. Reducing poverty is obviously a laudable goal, but the UK has done at least half-decently in funding democratisation and human rights, and it would be a shame if (as is implied) that expertise now gets stopped.

That’s all a matter of fine-tuning. However, what really made me sit up was the announcement of changes of funding to various multilateral organisations. The Minister announced,

I am delighted to tell the House that nine organisations have been assessed as providing very good value for the British taxpayer. They include UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, or GAVI, the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We will increase funding to those organisations, because they have a proven track record of delivering excellent results for poor people. Of course there is always room for improvement and we will still require strong commitments to continued reform and even better performance.

At the same time, DfID funding to various other bits of the UN is to be reduced, and in some cases cut entirely (including the International Labour Organisation, though it will continue to receive the UK’s membership fee which comes from a different pot).

I’m entirely prepared to believe that the ILO is poor value for money (even though my aunt works for it). But I was astonished to see UNICEF and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on the list of agencies that perform well. My own soundings within the humanitarian aid community – where I don’t work myself, but various friends and former colleagues do and mutter to me from time to time – was that both UNICERF and the Global Fund are absolutely shocking in their institutionalised mismanagement of projects, both in terms of how they treat their staff and how they manage funds.

My soundings may be out of date, or may have been wrong in the first place, and perhaps UNICEF and the Global Fund have got their act together in time for the government’s review. But as I said, I was very surprised to see them rank quite so highly.

i) Births and deaths

2 March 1939: birth of Hugh Walters, who played William Shakespeare in The Chase (1965), Runcible in The Deadly Assassin (1976), and Vogel in Revelation of the Daleks (1985).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 March 1968: broadcast of fifth episode of The Web of Fear. The Great Intelligence reveals that it wants to drain the Doctor’s brain of his knowledge. The Doctor and friends escape the Yeti, but the sinister fog starts to infiltrate their base.

2 March 1974: broadcast of second episode of Death to the Daleks. The Daleks cannot fire their weapons; the Exxilons capture everyone, but the Doctor and Sarah escape, and start wandering the tunnels.

2 March 1982: broadcast of second episode of Black Orchid. The long-lost elder brother turns out to be locked in the attic at Cranleigh; he has escaped, though, and falls to his death.

2 March 1983: broadcast of second episode of Enlightenment. The Eternals are racing for the prize of Enlightenment. They start reading Tegan’s mind, and Turlough jumps overboard.

2 March 1984: broadcast of fourth episode of Planet of FireThe Two Doctors. Lots of nasty slaughter, but at the end the Sontarans and Androgums are dead and the Doctors and friends alive.

The fifth of seven dates in the year when six episodes of Old Who were broadcast.

• Denying genocide should not be called freedom of speech
  The problem, however, is that Dr. Trifkovic and his supporters do not want to have a dialogue. As any nationalist would do, they see their version of the past as true and valid, and demand that others believe it, too.
  While calling for a dialogue they shout at their critics, rather than talk to them and then have the audacity to call such shouting the expression of the freedom of speech.
  (tags: balkans)
• Peeking past Rhea | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
  (tags: astronomy)
• watervole: Dancing with Daleks
  The Daleks' Morris Dance
  (tags: funny doctorwho)

i) births and deaths

1 March 1918: birth of Roger Delgado, the first Master (1971-73).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

1 March 1969: broadcast of sixth episode of The Seeds of Death. The Doctor uses the weather control system to destroy the seeds, and draws the Ice Warrior fleet off course; the Earth is saved.

1 March 1975: broadcast of second episode of The Sontaran Experiment. Styre experiments on Sarah, but Harry sabotages his ship and Styre is killed; the Earth is saved..

1 March 1982: broadcast of first episode of Black Orchid. The Tardis lands at Cranleigh Hall in the 1930s, where Nyssa has a double, the Doctor plays cricket, and everyone gets into fancy dress.

1 March 1983: broadcast of first episode of Enlightenment. The White and Black Guardians appear, and the Tardis materialises on a mysterious sailing ship which is racing through space.

1 March 1984: broadcast of third episode of Planet of Fire. Peri, in the power of the Master, discovers that he has been drastically reduced in size.

1 March 2002: webcast of “Planet of Blood” part 3, the fourth episode of Death Comes to Time. More ‘orrible slaughter as one ally turns out to be a vampire and another a lieutenant-colonel rather than a policeman.