William Hartnell's Bacon number is 3
William Hartnell and Richard Attenborough appeared in Brighton Rock.
Richard Attenborough and Ariana Richards appeared in Jurassic Park.
Ariana Richards and Kevin Bacon appeared in Tremors.

Patrick Troughton's Bacon number is 3
Patrick Troughton and Christopher Lee appeared in Scars of Dracula.
Christopher Lee and Rose Byrne appeared in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Rose Byrne and Kevin Bacon appeared in X-Men: First Class.

Jon Pertwee's Bacon number is 3
Jon Pertwee and Richard Wilson appeared in Carry On Columbus.
Richard Wilson and James McAvoy appeared in Gnomeo and Juliet.
James McAvoy and Kevin Bacon appeared in X-Men: First Class.

Tom Baker's Bacon number is 2
Tom Baker and Bruce Payne appeared in Dungeons & Dragons.
Bruce Payne and Kevin Bacon appeared in Pyrates.

Peter Davison's Bacon number is 2
Peter Davison and Matthew Macfadyen appeared in Wuthering Heights.
Matthew Macfadyen and Kevin Bacon appeared in Frost/Nixon.

Colin Baker's Bacon number is 3
Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy appeared in The Airzone Solution.
Sylvester McCoy and Frank Langella appeared in Dracula.
Frank Langella and Kevin Bacon appeared in Frost/Nixon.

Sylvester McCoy's Bacon number is 2
Sylvester McCoy and Frank Langella appeared in Dracula.
Frank Langella and Kevin Bacon appeared in Frost/Nixon.

Paul McGann's Bacon number is 2
Paul McGann and Stuart Townsend appeared in Queen of the Damned.
Stuart Townsend and Kevin Bacon appeared in Trapped.

Christopher Eccleston's Bacon number is 2
Christopher Eccleston and Rose Byrne appeared in G-Force.
Rose Byrne and Kevin Bacon appeared in X-Men: First Class.

David Tennant's Bacon number is 2
David Tennant and James McAvoy appeared in Bright Young Things.
James McAvoy and Kevin Bacon appeared in X-Men: First Class.

Matt Smith's Bacon number is 2
Matt Smith and Toby Jones appeared in Christopher and His Kind.
Toby Jones and Kevin Bacon appeared in Frost/Nixon.

Note that X-Men: First Class and Frost/Nixon both appear four times; and that Sylvester McCoy is Colin Baker's link to Bacon, via a BBV video from 1993!

I have a 90-page, 30,000 word document which needs editing by a native English speaker and also if possible an Executive Summary by roughly yesterday. I know a few people reading this are in that line of work, though possibly had other plans for the day! If you are interested in taking this on please email me at work – nicholas.whyte@independentdiplomat.org – with a quote (or with any further questions).

Thanks for replies – solution has been found.

• Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocks
  
  On neurology and nonsense.
  (tags: science )
• Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images
  
  Fantastic pic.
  (tags: science )
• Why Is There a Helium Shortage?
  
  @ITregillis wrote more about this last year at http://bit.ly/QKpygf and subsequent. (Warning: rabid libertarian comments.)
  (tags: science )

The fifth in the ongoing manga series set in a seventeenth-century Japan from which most men have been eliminated by disease, the pick of the remainder sequestered in the Ōoku, the shōgun’s harem. This volume collects four of the original parts of the story, and after the first three, I was beginning to wonder if I would continue with this series; the misgovernment of the shōgun Tsunayoshi is not all that exciting a story, apart from the dramatic death of the young heir. I also realised that I was not picking up Yoshinaga’s cues about her characters’ ages; presumably readers more accustomed to the genre can spot the markers showing that they are in their 40s or 50s, but they almost all look about 25 to me (with a few clear exceptions). I was feeling a bit adrift, and finding it hard to keep track of the characters’ multiple names (and wishing the publisher had provided a dramatis personæ).

But the last of the four parts re-engaged my interest; I don’t know much about Japanese history, but just knowing that this was a gender-rotated re-telling of a real historical event (the Ako Incident of the Forty-Seven Samurai) made it more interesting to read, particularly since it has dramatic political repercussions in Yoshinaga’s world (as I suppose in our own, though I know practically nothing about it). And at the end we meet the child who will become the shōgun Yoshimune, with whom this whole story started (we have been in extended flashback for a very long time now). So I will get the next volume, if with a slight feeling that it’s on probation.

Thanks, all, for earlier comments, which revealed some interesting variations in recruiting culture across organisations. Candidate A’s second referee just replied with a sufficiently positive write-up that I feel confident in making the offer. Checking the records I find that we had already asked Candidate B to help me reach their referees.

As it happens, Candidate A was marginally the front-runner after interviews, so I will tell Candidate B, perfectly truthfully, that unfortunately there was a better candidate on the day, and incidentally they need to re-check the coordinates and availability of their referees.

Choosing between two differently but equally well qualified candidates for the internship vacancy coming up in my office. I emailed their four referees (two each) on Monday, and have had the following responses:

Candidate A:
First referee is an EU official who has changed job and email address, but was at least still hooked up to their old system, and replied with a positive testimonial.
Second referee is a university professor who has not replied to my email (which on inspection was sent to the general departmental address as given by Candidate A). I googled for other email addresses this morning and forwarded Monday’s email to them. I also called the department but he only works there on Tuesdays.

Candidate B:
First referee is an ambassador based in Geneva, who has not replied to my email (which on inspection was sent to the general embassy address, as given by Candidate B). I called the embassy this morning and they promised that the ambassador would call back today. My hopes are not high as it is a busy week in Geneva.
Second referee is a university professor who has not replied to my email (which on inspection was sent to a personal address as given by Candidate B). I googled for a university address and forwarded Monday’s email to it this morning. No telephone number on the university’s website.

I think it’s quite likely that I won’t hear back from any of the other three; this is a frenetic time of year for university professors and for ambassadors in Geneva to be asked to give testimonials for people who worked with them for a few months some time ago. In that case I will go for candidate A who at least had one person willing to speak to their abilities. But I feel I should let candidate B know that I was unable to contact their referees and consequently offered the position to another candidate. I will also advise candidate A to update their referee coordinates.

Any thoughts on how to do that tactfully?

• My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall by John Major – review by Simon Callow
  
  One for the Christmas list.
  (tags: books )
• New evidence that Leicester skeleton ‘was Richard III’
  
  University administrator trying unsuccessfully to hide his excitement!
  (tags: history )
• A Crucial Election in Georgia
  
  A relatively objective guide.
  (tags: georgia )
• Crushing Debt Drove Me to Kosovo — And Then to Iraq
  
  An accidental election technology specialist writes.
  (tags: iraq kosovo )
• EU Parliament spat: “Why can’t you understand?”
  
  “Can’t you, Mr Earl, understand the modern world?”
  (tags: ukpolitics eu )

This is my sixth Lovejoy book in my current run, and the first of those which is set entirely in East Anglia. It is also one of the best; Lovejoy’s obsession with antiques and his particular code of personal loyalty lead him to a dramatic and waterlogged showdown, with cosmic vengeance delivered by a bereaved donkey because the state’s forces of law and order are too corrupt and compromised to do it. I think I’d recommend this one to people wondering if the Lovejoy novels are their kind of thing.

This is a novel set between 1518 and 1555, mostly in Germany with excursions to surrounding countries, about a radical Anabaptist and the papal agent who pursues him through the sixteenth century’s wars of religion. It has had a lot of attention particularly in Italy (“Luther Blissett” is apparently a pseudonym for four Italian writers) and is seen by some as a metaphor for modern global politics, and/or in the Umberto Eco tradition of The Name of the Rose.

I wasn’t completely satisfied with it. I thought that the nameless hero’s story of shifting identity and conflict was quite well realised, with lots of grim and effective contemporary detail, even though it wasn’t really clear until close to the end that this was going anywhere, but Hilary Mantel pursued a similar idea rather better in Wolf Hall. The Q sub-plot, however, annoyed me; much of it is told in letters ostensibly written by Q to his patron in Rome which totally fail to get the contemporary idiom (and necessarily include much info-dumping); and the final revelation of Q’s identity was disappointing.

It was interesting to read this alongside Not of this World? with its rather different framing of Protestant/Catholic relations.

A few months ago an old friend strongly recommended that I try the classic bandes dessinées series Les Mondes d’Aldébaran, a set of 15 albums by Paris-based Brazilian writer/artist Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira, Leo for short. I thought it would also be a good opportunity to hone my French (a language I use less often than you might think), so went and got the first of the fifteen in the original (though it has been translated into English if you are interested).

The first five albums are set in an isolated human planetary colony called Aldébaran, which (we are told on the first page) lost contact with Earth long ago. Our central characters, 17-year-old Marc and 13-year-old Kim, witness peculiar things happening in the ocean near their village, and then – as promised in the title – catastrophe destroys their homes, and the story switches to odyssey format as the two of them travel to, and beyond, the distant metropolis.

Although the setting is much the same as one might get in a traditional hard sf novel, the execution is very different; the bande dessinée tradition concentrates much more on character and dialogue than on technology and Being Smart. The tech we do have is almost but not quite streampunkish, with motor vehicles apparently made of wood and a mad professor type who turns out to be rather banal in his nastiness. The human and physical landscape clearly owes a lot to the author’s native country – Marc and Kim’s home village appears to be pretty multi-ethnic, though it’s less clear if that is true of the city; the jungle is a place of risk but not deadly danger; distances are vast but not unbridgeable.

I’ll certainly keep going with this series. The French, thank heavens, is manageable – a fair bit of subjunctive but I was able to cope, and the vocabulary is all pretty obvious. And basically I want to find out what happens next.

This is a study of evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland, published in 2001. It is a very interesting book, phrased as a series of conversations using extracts from dozens of interviews with self-described practising or former evangelicals; while some fit the stereotype of barnstorming bigots, there is a full spectrum of those whose faith leads them to ecumenism and cross-community outreach, in some cases even to support for Irish nationalism, or indeed to turn their backs on politics and get on with witnessing for a different kingdom.

Jordan himself is a semi-outsider; though a Belfast church-worker, he is from Bray, Co Wicklow, and has converted from Catholicism. He makes it fairly clear that his own sympathies are with those who choose to engage positively with politics and with their neighbours, but sensibly and compassionately resists moralising and allows all of his interviewees to give their testimony in their own terms.

2001 was a low point in the Northern Ireland peace process, and Jordan’s interviewees are split between those disappointed with the results of the 1998 agreement and those gleefully claiming that they told us so. Most of them must now be voting for the DUP, whose remarkable swing to support of implementing power-sharing coincided with their rise to political dominance among Protestants. It would be interesting to hear from his interviewees now.

But basically, the book shows that if we want to, we can learn much more about people who we disagree with by listening to what they have to say than by yelling about how wrong they are. I found it very useful.

• The Real Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin, 1926-1928
  
  Awww!
  (tags: photos )
• A Visual History of the Best Professional Artist Hugo Award Winners
  
  Prize-winning art through the years
  (tags: sf art )
• Steve Biko – Wikipedia
  
  Died 35 years ago today.
  (tags: death race )
• How I Learned to Defrag My Brain | Alex Hillman
  
  Might be worth a try. I use Evernote.
  (tags: lifehacking )

I’ve read a couple of other books set in Iceland – an unusually dull one by the otherwise reliable Jane Smiley, and of course Njal’s Saga. Independent People, which more or less won Laxness his 1955 Nobel Prize, is halfway between them; a tale of an exceptionally stubborn farmer who attempts to maintain his self-respect through grinding poverty and family disasters, not caring in the least what his neighbours or relatives think about him. He’s not a particularly attractive character but the society and landscape of Iceland are brilliantly evoked. Given recent events, the fact that evil Icelandic banks pop up at the end of the story was interesting. Also note that for Iceland, the First World War was undoubtedly a Good Thing because wool prices went up causing an export boom. Lots of poignant passages too, of which the one about the calf sticks in my mind. A somewhat grim read but more interesting than some of the Nobel winners I have sampled.

• No Georgian dolphin?
  
  Of sea-pigs and loanwords. (Do read comments too.)
  (tags: linguistics )
• How Irish women lost political power
  
  Not convinced by explanation that feminist gains were reversed due to factional conflict within the wider revolutionary movement. I would eant to see evidence that Republicanism had really internalized feminism in the first place. My suspicion is that, like the Labour movement, politicized women were convenient allies for the leadership of SF (and later CnaG/FF) on the way up, and equally conveniently discarded once power had been achieved.
  (tags: history ireland )
• Greece’s Pampered Armed Forces Revisited
  
  Judy Dempsey rebutts her critics.
  (tags: eu greece )
• The Bush White House Was Deaf To 9/11 Warnings
  
  Iraq was more important.
  (tags: waronterror )

• Talk:The Human Stain – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
  There you go again!
  (tags: wikipedia )
• Saakashvili eats own tie – YouTube
  
  From 2008. I missed this at the time.
  (tags: georgia )
• Why We’re Happy Being Sad: Pop’s Emotional Evolution : NPR
  
  The shift from major to minor keys in Top 40 hits.
  (tags: music )
• The Weatherman Is Not a Moron
  
  “The I.B.M. Bluefire supercomputer in the basement of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., is so large that it essentially creates its own weather.”
  (tags: mathematics )

• The GOP convention negative bounce: a final look
  
  I feel like I am cheating on Nate Silver (my secret psephological boyfriend) by reading this. But if you’re only doing it online it doesn’t count.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Underground, by Suelette Dreyfus
  
  See chapters 8 and 9 about Julian Assange.
  (tags: wikileaks internet )
• Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes?
  
  Probably not.
  (tags: travel )

For those interested in the earlier career of Julian Assange under his hacker identity of Mendax, over twenty years ago, I refer you to chapters 8 and 9 of Suelette Drefyus’ 1997 book Underground, available here in a variety of formats provided by my old mate Justin Mason. An interesting read.

• How Upsetting : Maria Miller and the political internet meme
  
  A political facebook meme that isn’t true? How surprising. But I bet hardly anyone who reposted it bothered to check the facts.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality ukpolitics )
• Taking the Romney critique seriously
  
  Dan has difficulty doing so.
  (tags: war uspolitics )
• d20 Dice Randomness Test: Chessex vs GameScience | Awesome Dice Blog
  
  You have to admire the dedication!
  (tags: games mathematics )
• The demise of a social media platform: Tracking LiveJournal’s decline
  
  The sad truth!
  (tags: socialmedia livejournal )
• Bidzina Ivanishvili: The billionaire with a Georgian dream
  
  More or less sympathetic profile from the Independent.
  (tags: georgia )
• Western Sahara: It’s Time for the People to Choose | Middle East Institute
  
  “When history, international law, regional geopolitics and security concerns all point to the same conclusion, there is really no other option. It’s time for the Security Council to assume control and accelerate resolution of the dispute by deciding on a clear timetable and deadline for holding a referendum on self-determination, as required by international law. It’s time to let the people choose.”
  (tags: westernsahara carneross )

• Data App: Texas Reservoir Levels
  
  See where the water is running out, in real time!
  (tags: maps )
• Securing your facebook profile
  
  Top tips (via @amcunningham).
  (tags: facebook )
• On Self-Publishing and Amazon
  
  Why Amazon is wrong.
  (tags: books amazon )

So, the bloke after whom Mount Everest was named had a niece who was a prominent mathematical educationalist; whose husband invented Boolean logic; one of their daughters was a revolutionary novelist whose husband is the guy the Voynich manuscript is named after.

Small world.

John McCain and Joe Lieberman just walked into the building.

But I’m not in the meeting that they are doing upstairs.

• The Dark Knight Rises «
  
  OK, I admit it, it *was* this bad.
  (tags: films )
• How Long Will Your Digital Storage Media Last? | Agogified
  
  The answer may not be reassuring.
  (tags: )
• Ax murderer’s pardon stirs fears of war
  
  Getting worse. (Says @SabineICG, and she’s right.)
  (tags: azerbaijan Armenia )
• When the lights go out | drlj
  
  On being with the dying.
  (tags: death )

• 580 – The Legend of the Tsar’s Finger | Strange Maps | Big Think
  
  Too good to be true, alas.
  (tags: maps )
• The President Vanishes: The Lost Day video, Putin-Medvedev and the August War | Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail)
  
  Analysing a peculiar video.
  (tags: georgia )
• Ax Killer Pardon Reignites Caucasus War Fears in Oil-Rich Region – Businessweek
  
  Not good news.
  (tags: azerbaijan armenia war )
• 15 Reasons Why Flying United Airlines Sucks
  
  Slightly shocked by several comments defending United. Astroturf???
  (tags: travel )
• Space to Reflect: Back from the Con: A Priest in SF Fandom
  
  Caroline Symcox, ordained fan..
  (tags: religion sf )

I’m beginning to get the hang of the Lovejoy books now: a richly described and usually mildly exotic setting; an utterly convoluted and insane plot (as in conspiracy); a moderately convoluted and insane plot (as in storyline); lots of antiques lore injected into the text with varying degrees of randomness; and many many women competing to get into our hero’s bed (though the sex is never very explicit). It’s quite a different Lovejoy from the TV series – younger, randier and frankly more criminal. It helps me get to sleep at night reading a few pages before lights out. (At least I think so; will continue the experiment for the five Lovejoy books still on the shelves.)

The Very Last Gambado is about a criminal raid on the British Museum, disguised as a movie about a raid on the British Museum (which is this book’s lovingly described exotic venue). It was written some way into Lovejoy’s TV appearances, and one wonders if the dissolute and past-it male lead was – no, never mind, that’s unfair. But there are a lot of interesting observations about the madness of a film set, particularly involving stunt men, and the thought experiment of trying to raid the British Museum is an intriguing one; anyone who knows that corner of London at all well will end up scratching their heads at the complexity of the problem.

Meanwhile we do also get a fair bit of Lovejoy on his home ground in East Anglia, fighting off amorous women with varying degrees of failure, and encountering a forger’s workshop located on a second-hand bus, which is an arresting image. And I’m glad to report that our hero has acquired two new budgies after the awful fate of the ones in Gold from Gemini.

This book also has a moment which makes the classification of the series as non-genre rather than fantasy very difficult. Lovejoy is a “divvy”; he has an astonishing ability to tell real antiques from fakes. One can usually handwave this away as well-honed observational skills and intuition – I can look at a tray of objects and guess how many there are to within 15-20%; I used to be able to date a medieval manuscript to the correct half-century at a glance; Lovejoy’s skill as an extension of that sort of thing seems OK. But here, Lovejoy actually detects a genuine antique within a sealed container, unable to see it, but it makes his heart beat faster just to be near it. It’s not all that important to the plot (well, it might be, but I had some difficulty following) so I will still classify The Very Last Gambado as non-genre in my end-of-month and end-of-year tallies. But I have a lingering doubt.

The internal chronology of the Lovejoy books must be pretty convoluted. This one was published between Jade Woman and The Great California Game, but cannot be set between them as one flows directly from the other via a trans-Pacific plane flight (which would not normally include East Anglia or the British Museum). It cannot even be immediately before Jade Woman, as Lovejoy’s sort-of primary partner here is Lydia, whereas at the start of Jade Woman it is Jane, and nor can it be immediately after The Great California Game which ends with Lovejoy still in America and still entangled with Jane. I suspect that The Very Last Gambado may be a jump back to an earlier point in the timeline. I will keep an open mind.

I’ve known for some time that Robin Hobb is to be one of the Guests of Honour at Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon; and was rather guiltily conscious of the fact that I had never read any of her books. Even apart from the Worldcon connection, she has been recommended to me several times by you guys.

Well, if you did recommend her to me, you can feel very smug, because I thoroughly enjoyed Assassin’s Apprentice, the tale of the bastard son of a prince whose natural and supernatural gifts turn out to be useful to his grandfather in the twisted paths of statecraft in a fantasy kingdom desperately seeking allies against attack from a barely human, possibly inhuman, foe. The description of intersecting court politics and personal loyalty was intricate, fascinating and even moving. (OK, she uses puppies shamelessly as a way of engaging the reader’s emotions; but I am a sucker for small furry creatures with large trusting eyes.) I will go out and get the sequel, and probably the third volume; and then consider how much further to take it.

I am trying to identify why Assassin’s Apprentice worked for me, when the very similar (and much shorter) Yearwood totally did not. It may partly be the puppies; it may be the well-handled theme of education from many sources. But in general I think Hobb has a better political sense, and also after killing off a significant character or two in the early chapters there is a much greater feeling of suspense.

One minor linguistic whinge: the words “flout” and “flaunt” are used the wrong way round!

• Hugo Awards: An apology and explanation
  
  Commenters not happy. (But using paid service would have prevented problem.)
  (tags: internet sf )
• Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Hugo is The Doctor’s Wife
  
  Gaiman confirms he is writing another episode.
  (tags: doctorwho sf )
• The Trouble With Atheists: A Defence Of Faith
  
  Francis Spufford on belief.
  (tags: religion )
• Legacy Libraries, Five Years On …
  
  The project formerly know as “I See Dead People’s Books!”
  (tags: books )

• Knocked Over: On Biology, Magical Thinking And Choice – The Rumpus.net
  
  An unexpected pregnancy at 44.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Chicks Dig the Uniform — Crooked Timber
  
  “My husband has been deployed to Afghanistan for six months.”
  (tags: war )

I got three out of four in the fiction categories, and also voted for the winners in both Dramatic Presentation categories, and Best Related and Best Graphic, so that's a good Hugo awards ceremony for me. And a much better evening for Jo Walton, John Cluite, Graham Sleight, and the Who crowd. Congratulations to all the winners.

Best Novel: Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor) – Good heavens! Amazing!

Best Novella: “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov's, September/October 2011) – Yay again!

Best Novelette: “Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com) – Hooray! Another one I voted for.

Best Short Story: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2011)

Best Related Work: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight (Gollancz) – more hooray!

Best Graphic Story: Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press) – hooray!

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Game of Thrones (Season 1), created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss; written by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, Jane Espenson, and George R. R. Martin; directed by Brian Kirk, Daniel Minahan, Tim van Patten, and Alan Taylor (HBO) – another one I voted for

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): “The Doctor's Wife” (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman; directed by Richard Clark (BBC Wales) – first one I voted for!

Best Editor – Short Form: Sheila Williams

Best Editor – Long Form: Betsy Wollheim

Best Professional Artist: John Picacio

Best Semiprozine: Locus edited by Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, et al.

Best Fanzine: SF Signal edited by John DeNardo

Best Fan Writer: Jim C. Hines

Best Fan Artist: Maurine Starkey

Best Fancast: SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: E. Lily Yu