My Friend Dave

Great long piece about the cartoonist David Berg of MAD Magazine.
(tags: comics )

Social services cuts could be ‘largest factor’ in rise in deaths

UK Govt winning war against old, sick and poor.
(tags: ukpolitics disability )

What I Want Out of Twitter

@Scalzi on de-trolling your feed.
(tags: twitter )

I hugely enjoyed Europe in Autumn, which we shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award last year and which also got onto the BSFA shortlist. Here Dave Hutchinson returns to his future world of a fragmented Europe, but from a very different angle: rather than exploring the new frontiers that have been erected in our world, his spy hero finds himself exploring also parallel maps to societies which are liminally linked to us, there and yet not there. It's a book with One Big Idea, explored at leisure and in a way that made me care very much about the outcome of the main characters' investigations. Given the current febrile state of relations between the UK and the rest of Europe, it's a timely reminder that things could be very different. I loved it.

Since I wrote this (my bookblogging is running a few days behind at the moment) it was announced that Europe at Midnight is one of the shortlisted books for this year's BSFA Award. Congrats to Dave; it will be a tough choice.

• Trump Is Making Up His Opposition to Iraq War
  
  Those damn facts again.
  (tags: uspolitics waronterror )

Trump Is Making Up His Opposition to Iraq War

Those damn facts again.
(tags: uspolitics waronterror )

As previously noted (here, here and here), I've been populating my potential shortlists of Hugo nominees by reading the output of Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Asimov's, Subterranean Press and Strange Horizons for the calendar year of 2015. I've now finished that process and also read a few other bits and pieces, including most of the stories nominated for the BSFA Award. I'm aware that my list varies quite a lot from other people's, but I'm also encouraged by recent reports suggesting that the best outcome for the awards is simply for lots of people to nominate lots of good stuff. So I'm not going to worry too much about nominating tactically; I'm just going to make sure that I have five good nominations in each category.

From the last quarter of the year, my favourite stories from my chosen venues were these:

Tor.com
[short story] "Some Gods of El Paso", by Maria Dahvana Headley – a great alternate history of emotional transfer.
[short story] "Points of Origin", by Marissa K. Lingen – a very nice story of parenting.

Clarkesworld
[short story] "Summer at Grandma's House", by Hao Jingfang, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan – gay granddaughter helps her grandmother's genetic engineering research.
[novelette] "So Much Cooking", by Naomi Kritzer – lovely story of escaping the plague.

Asimov's
[novella] "Citadel of Weeping Pearls", by Aliette de Bodard – relieved that I liked this after bouncing off her recent novel; splendidly intricate emotional tale of Asian space opera.
[novelette] “English Wildlife” by Alan Smale – wow, really unusual story of ancient English lion magic.

Strange Horizons
[short story] "The Game of Smash and Recovery", by Kelly Link – good story of what might happen to bright children in the future
[short story] "Liminal Grid", by Jaymee Goh – cybercrime in near-future Malaysia – rather good.

So my current set of long lists is as follows:

Novellas
Aliette de Bodard, "Citadel of Weeping Pearls" (Asimov's, Oct/Nov 2015)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Demon (Spectrum)
Paul Cornell, Witches of Lychford
Eugene Fischer, "The New Mother" (Asimov's, Apr/May 2015)
Kristine Kathryn Rusch "Inhuman Garbage" (Asimov's, Mar 2015)
Lisa Shapter, A Day In Deep Freeze (Aqueduct Press)
Allen M. Steele, "The Long Wait" (Asimov's, Jan 2015)

Novelette
Eneasz Brodski, "Red Legacy" (Asimov's, Feb 2015)
Paul Evanby, "Utrechtenaar" (1, 2 – Strange Horizons, June 2015
Naomi Kritzer, "So Much Cooking" (Clarkesworld, November 2015)
Sarah Pinsker, "Our Lady of the Open Road" (Asimov's, Jun 2015)
Priya Sharma, "Fabulous Beasts" (Tor.com, July 2015)
Vandana Singh, "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" (Tor.com, Apr 2015)
Alan Smale, “English Wildlife” (Asimov's, Oct/Nov 2015)

Short Stories
Karl Bunker, "Caisson" (Asimov's, August 2015)
Nino Cipri, "The Shape of My Name" (Tor.com, Mar 2015)
Jaymee Goh, "Liminal Grid"  (Strange Horizons, Nov 2015)
Hao Jingfang, tr Carmen Yiling Yan, "Summer at Grandma's House" (Clarkesworld, Oct 2015)
Maria Dahvana Headley, "Some Gods of El Paso" (Tor.com, Oct 2015)
L.S. Johnson, "Vacui Magia" (Strange Horizons, Jan 2015)
Marissa K. Lingen, "Points of Origin" (Tor.com, Nov 2015)
Kelly Link, "The Game of Smash and Recovery" (Strange Horizons, Oct 2015)
Jay O'Connell, "Willing Flesh" (Asimov's, Apr/May 2015)
Robert Reed, "The Empress in Her Glory" (Clarkesworld, Apr 2015)
Kelly Robson, "The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" (Clarkesworld, Feb 2015)
Iona Sharma, "Nine Thousand Hours" (Strange Horizons, April 2015)
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, "Everything Beneath You" (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Wole Talebai, "A Short History of Migration in Five Fragments of You" (Omenana)

There are rather too many short stories, always an over-populated category, and I have a new understanding for why it has been so difficult to winnow down that particular corner of the field in recent years. Now I look forward to browsing other people's recommendations – looking particularly at the Rocket Stack Rank and Ladybusiness aggregations of ratings – and also seeing what the Nebula shortlist looks like before I finalise my choices.

Finding BoShek

Superb Star Wars sleuthing!
(tags: sf )

RTÉ Journey Through Dublin City, 1966

Fascinating.
(tags: ireland )

Donald Trump finally went too far for Republicans

…by telling the truth about Iraq and 9/11. This election just gets weirder.
(tags: waronterror uspolitics )

What the In campaign is doing right and what it is doing wrong

@KironReid dissects, quoting me.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The real censorship in children’s books: smiling slaves is just the half of it

@djolder on the real problem.
(tags: race freespeech books )

The fourth of the Big Finish Short Trips anthologies, and the third edited by Jac Rayner, published in 2003. At that stage we had eight canonical Doctors, so it seems in retrospect a fairly obvious idea to compile a collection of nine stories, each featuring one of them, with one more featuring them all. And while there are many cultural uses of the number nine, the Muses make a pleasing link with ancient culture.

I liked most of these stories, three in particular: (Terpsichore) "Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing", by Robert Shearman, an unusually good Sixth Doctor story; (Thalia) "The Brain of Socrates", by Gareth Roberts, with the Fourth Doctor and Leela; and (Clio) "The Glass Princess", by Justin Richards, pulling together all eight Doctors in a rather moving story of inexorable forward time travel. Also a shout out for (Calliope) "Katarina in the Underworld", by Steve Lyons, as far as I know the only published spinoff fiction featuring Katarina, and a rare grappling with matters of the afterlife.

Next in this sequence: Short Trips: Steel Skies, ed. John Binns.

Two of the four pieces that I voted for were among the three shortlisted candidates in this category. The third was Sarah Anne Langton's cover of Jews Versus Zombies, and though I do like its geometry, it doesn't seem to me to be saying much about science fiction, or anything else, so I will rank it last on my ballot once the form is up and running.

It's a very tough decision between the other two, though. In the end, I'm putting Jim Burns' cover of Pelquin's Comet second. It's an arresting composition, but perhaps just a little less adventurous with colour and shade than my top choice, and also rather traditional in its subject matter – not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that, of course.

Which leaves Vincent Sammy's illustration for "Songbird" in Interzone as my top choice. I haven't read the story (and indeed haven't read Pelquin's Comet either, though I did read Jews vs Zombies), but this is the kind of illustration that challenges the reader to find out what the story is about, whereas the Burns piece seems pretty clear on that score. I find the composition pretty fascinating.

Presumably there are only three nominees due to a multiple tie in nomination votes for fourth place – this happened also in 2013 (when I ranked the eventual winner third out of three). I'm a bit surprised to see it repeated with the new two-stage process. Perhaps there was less voter input in this category than the others; if so, an opportunity to celebrate more good sf art has been missed.

Edited to add: Am locking out anonymous comments on this because it's been getting a weird amount of Japanese spam. You can log in using other OAuth identities if you want.

Chestnut blight

I hadn’t heard of this before reading Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.
(tags: biology )

Antonin Scalia’s death was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News. Here’s how the newspaper got the scoop.

(tags: uspolitics media )

Best Graphic Story Ballot for the #RetroHugos1941

Some recommendations and links.
(tags: sf hugos )

When I visited the John Dee exhibition last week, I managed to get a decent picture of the horoscope that he had drawn in the margin of his copy of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos:

It's a nice clear example of the astrological text. Starting at the left, and going clockwise (therefore backwards through the zodiac), I interpret it thus:

• The Ascendant (the part of the Zodiac on the horizon) is Leo ♌ 4°2', and Saturn ♄ at Leo ♌ 12° is about to rise.
• Jupiter ♃ is somewhere in Cancer ♋️.
• Venus ♀ is at Gemini ♊ 12°.
• The Sun ☉ and Moon ☽ are both at Taurus ♉ 15° – it's a New Moon.
• Mercury ☿ is at Taurus ♉ 5°.
• The Mid-Heaven (the part of the zodiac at the zenith, due south) is at Aries ♈ 27°37'.
• The Descendant, opposite the Ascendant, is at Aquarius ♒ 4°2'.
• Mars ♂ is at Scorpio ♏ 21°.
• A strange star-shaped glyph is marked as being at Scorpio ♏ 15° – I thought at first it might be the lunar node, which would mean that this was the chart for a solar eclipse, but I no longer think so for reasons described below.
• The lower mid-heaven, opposite the mid-heaven, is at Libra ♎ 27°37'.

That gives us the following set of planetary positions:

It is possible, but tedious, to run these positions through the historical record of planetary positions. I did so, using the proprietary Alcyone Ephemeris, and emerged after a lot of grinding with the following planetary positions for the full moon at 0908 on 30 April 1006:

This is, er, not a bad fit, if I say so myself. I really had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. So I cross-checked with Tuckerman's Planetary Tables which include a timestamp of midnight on 1 May 1006:

It's pretty clear that the software and Tuckerman are in close agreement. So a plausible hypothesis is that Dee – who, let's not forget, lived from 1527 to 1608 – was casting a horoscope for the new moon of 30 April 1006.

Why?

Well, the brightest ever supernova recorded in history, SN1006, was first seen from Cairo on precisely that day, 30 April 1006. (Cairo also fits with the mid-heaven and ascendant, whose relative positions vary considerably with latitude.) Specifically, Ali ibn Ridwan recorded the positons of the planets at the time when the supernova was first seen, and his account is quoted verbatim in the 1964 paper by Bernard Goldstein which first proposed that there might have been a forgotten supernova in 1006 (first page, second page). The planetary positions recorded by ibn Ridwan are exactly the same as Dee with a couple of additions:

Ali ibn Ridwan was only 18 in 1006, so if these were his own calculations – the Moon and Mercury (let alone the ascending node) would not have been visible, so he couldn't have observed them directly – it's a jolly good piece of work. Goldstein basically did the same calculation as I did, with much more difficulty given the fewer tools available in the 1960s, and came up with the same answer. It is pretty obvious that Dee was drawing up a chart of his own to follow Ali ibn Ridwan's report. The clincher is that the longitude of the 1006 supernova is reported by Ali ibn Ridwan as precisely Scorpio ♏ 15°, which is where the odd star-shaped glyph is in Dee's chart.

So how did Dee get hold of Ali ibn Ridwan's observations? That is the easiest question of all to answer. The horoscope is drawn in the margin of the 1619 Venice printing of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, Quadriparti in Latin, which actually includes the commentary on Ptolemy’s text by Ali ibn Ridwan ("Haly" in the Latin tradition) in which he wrote about the 1006 nayzak. Dee was fascinated by the supernova of 1572, and may have spotted this account as relevant to his interests. Or he may have just relished the exercise of drawing up a horoscope for a different day and age. At any rate, I think the story behind this particular marginal note of Dee's is now clear.

Well, that was a pleasant way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon!

Long, long ago, in 1991, I was researching the medieval textbook Liber de arte astronomice iudicandi by the late twelfth-century English astrologer Roger of Hereford, which survives only in a dozen or so manuscripts. Various indications led me to try and compare his text with the earlier twelfth-century translation by Hermann of Carinthia of the ninth-century Introduction to Astrology by the ninth-century scholar Abu Ma'shar, written when Baghdad was the centre of learning of the medieval world. Fortunately, the University Library in Cambridge had two copies of the Hermann translation. It has been out of print for some time; the earlier one dated from 1488 and the later one from 1506.

As I did my research – in the course of which I found that Roger of Hereford had cribbed pretty substantially from Hermann's text (and also cast a horoscope for Eleanor of Aquitaine, using a birthdate of 14 December 1123) – I chose to work from the 1506 edition rather than the 1488 edition of Hermann's book. This wasn't a choice based on which was more legible or accessible; it was purely because the 1506 book had the name of a previous owner firmly inscribed on the flyleaf, and a number of his scribbles and notes in the margins. It was, quite simply, a thrill to work with a book that had been owned and loved by the great Elizabethan wizard John Dee, the man who probably inspired Prospero in The Tempest and a key figure in the murky relationship between early modern science and magic.

That was more than half my lifetime ago. But when I saw that the Royal College of Physicians was hosting an exhibition of books stolen from Dee's library during his lifetime, I knew that I had to go and relive the summer of 1991. And I was right. The books are wonderful artefacts in themselves, but Dee's marginal doodlings make them even more fascinating. I was fortunate to have the company of and as I explored the exhibition on Tuesday morning. Before going to my own photographs, which unfortunately are not particularly good, I commend you to those in this Culture24 article and these by Jason Atomic.

This is a nineteenth-century picture of Dee at Queen Elizabeth's court. A ring of skulls around him was painted out by the artist.

The picture hangs beside a display cabinet including several objects on loan from the British Museum and the Science Museum. These include:

Yes, that is the magical mirror through which Dee and his assistant Kelly held conversations with angelic beings. It is in fact polished obsidian glass from Mexico. The case has a note by its subsequent owner Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto, quoting these lines from Samuel Butler's epic poem Hudibras:

KELLY did all his feats upon
The Devil's looking-glass, a stone

And yes, that's Dee's own crystal ball in the right of the picture. A golden magical disc is out of shot.

On the shelf below is a smaller mirror, and also this item:

This crystal, according to Dee, was given to him by the angel Uriel in 1582.

I hope that the Royal College of Physicians has installed adequate thaumic safeguards on that display case. Those are some pretty impressive magical items.

Here's the exhibition curator Katie Birkwood (@girlinthe) explaining how the exhibition was put together:

And here is none other than Jeanette Winterson, at the opening ceremony, explaining why Dee mattered:

A couple of warnings. The first two display cases, giving the historical context for the whole story, are right at the well-lit entrance to the first floor display and are covered with protective cloth, whereas the rest are uncovered because they are in the relative dimness of the walls – we missed the first cases and had to go back and look at them. There are two last display cases isolated on the second floor, along with dissected human veins and arteries. It also must be said that the RCP building is a truly horrible example of 1960s architecture.

On the flip side, we found that in the morning at least the buttery in the lower ground floor was open in the mornings, contrary to advertisement, and that that lower ground floor also has a couple of other historical medical exhibits which were worth a few minutes strolling around.

Do go and see it.

Double Deckers – To the countryside

Episode 6: Summer Camp
First shown: 17 October 1970 (US), 4 February 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writers: Harry Booth and Glyn Jones
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Melvyn Hayes as Albert the Street Cleaner
Betty Marsden as Millie
Hugh Paddick as Gerald
George Woodbridge as Farmer Giles

Plot

Albert and the gang go camping, much to the annoyance of a couple camping in the next field, but entirely with the approval of the local farmer. Japes ensue when their donkey misbehaves, and then it rains overnight.

Soundtrack

I've put the French version of the opening song up top; "Into the Countryside" is by regular series song-writers Ivor Slaney and Michael Begg, and features some cinematography reminiscent of Procul Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" (which is from 1967 so it cannot be a coincidence). Do have a watch.

"Granny's Rocking Chair" is a beautiful sweet little song, where for the first time we see the Double Deckers as Billie and her backing singers (minus the sleeping Tiger):

Double Deckers – Grannie's Rocking Chair par love15

"Granny's Rocking Chair" is credited to a Mair Somerton-Davies, of whom little else is known except that she is also credited for a 1966 single by a band called Situation. At least, little was known of her until I contacted her daughter, who told me:

Mum was an amazing lady – she had a group called the Tip Toppers we were based in Watford and used to raise money for mentally handicapped… also we regularly used to put on performances for the elderly and had concerts at Watford Town Hall. Mum had two bands one called Tiles Big Band the other called Manego – these were in addition to the Tip Toppers and also she was a Drama Teacher Song Writer, Teacher and also helped people with speech impediments.

"Granny's rocking chair" actually started off as "Granny's Rocking horse" but then as she put it to music it became "Granny's Rocking Chair". The original theme song for the double Deckers was actually written by Mum but in those days they changed a small part of it and she was never paid royalties on it. The song was called "Get On Board" and the original line was "get on board all you people" and they changed it to "get on board with the double deckers" therefore rewriting some of the melody… originally an album was to have been released called The Kids Next Door… it was a shame she was never fully recognised for her amazing talents.

Let that recognition start here.

(And while we're on music, note the nod to Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice for an early scene with the donkey.)

Glorious moments

This is a real delight of an episode, with two excellent songs and some excellent comedy moments. The potential villain, Farmer Giles, turns out to be a good guy; and the actual villains, the snooty camping couple, are redeemed by ἀγάπη after ὕβρις and νέμεσις.

Less glorious moments

There's a slightly nasty element of class sneering at Millie and Gerald, who are clearly not as respectable as they think they are. (And they sleep in separate beds; and she's unaware of his military record. Interesting.)

What's all this then?

This is so totally derivative of the 1969 film Carry On Camping that it actually has one of the film's main performers, Betty Marsden, in a very similar role. (Though there is no equivalent here of the memorable Barbara Windsor shower scene; this is a kids' show, after all.)

Where's that?

The bridge is the one at Tyke's Water Lake in the grounds of Haberdasher's Aske's School for Boys, three miles from the studios where most of Here Come the Double Deckers was made. The bridge also featured the previous year in the opening titles of several of the Tara King episodes of The Avengers, and was soon used again for the pre-title sequence of Dracula A.D. 1972 starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The pupils at the school at this time would have included Britain's current minister for Europe, David Lidington, and also my mate Andrew who works for the European Commission.

The other locations are nearby.

Who's that?

This episode has an particularly high-powered guest cast for its time.

Betty Marsden (Millie) was born in 1919, and was particularly well-known for her regular roles in the 1960s radio comedy shows of Kenneth Horne, Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne. She also appeared in two Carry On films, Carry On Camping, as noted above, and a small part in the 1961 Carry On Regardless. She also plays the tipsy slave auctioneer Verlis in Assassin, a particularly camp episode of Blake's 7. She died in 1998.

Hugh Paddick (Gerald), born in 1915, was also a veteran of Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne, where he played Kenneth Williams' sidekick and together they made an unsuspecting public aware of Polari. Other than that, he tended to be a straight man to the likes of Tommy Cooper, Jimmy Tarbuck and Morecambe and Wise, though he got two now-forgotten sitcoms of his own, Rentaghost fore-runner Pardon My Genie (he was the Genie) and Can We Get On Now, Please? in which he played the quietly brilliant clerk of the court. He died in 2000.

George Woodbridge (Farmer Giles), born in 1907, was typecast as playing yokels, inn-keepers and farmers in horror films. But at this stage he was moving into more friendly territory, and he really hit the big time as Inigo Pipkin, the kindly old puppeteer in the ITV children's show of the same name, first broadcast in 1973. Unfortunately he died that year, only a few weeks into the filming of the second series. Pipkins, as the show was renamed, actually worked his death into the plot, brave territory for a children's programme. The show ran until 1981.

Glyn Jones (co-writer and script editor) has been mentioned here a few times. I posted about his life here and the extracts from his autobiography relating to Double Deckers here.

See you next week…

…for The Pop Singer.

The World Isn’t Less Free Than It Used To Be

@fivethirtyeight summarises @FreedomHouseDC.
(tags: politics democracy )

We Are Hopelessly Hooked

Why we can’t stop being online.
(tags: internet psychology )

The Onion on Jeb Bush

Cruel but hilarious.
(tags: uspolitics )

Independent and Independent on Sunday print closures confirmed

Not very surprising.
(tags: ukpolitics media )

Why I Just Dropped The Harassment Charges [against] The Man Who Started GamerGate

A tough read.
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality games )

• Fri, 07:53: Give a little thought to what a GOP campaign against Bernie Sanders might look like https://t.co/pRJ7uaTf4k via @delicious
• Fri, 10:45: Give a little thought to what a GOP campaign against Bernie Sanders might look like https://t.co/oqmkvTnJTq You ain’t seen nothing yet.
• Fri, 12:56: Putin is a bigger threat to Europe’s existence than Isis – George Soros https://t.co/LcvsrF1o9b Yup.
• Fri, 15:30: Tik-Tok by John Sladek https://t.co/MF8AAzX26f
• Fri, 16:05: The World Isn’t Less Free Than It Used To Be https://t.co/jyaJRPYfCr @fivethirtyeight summarises @FreedomHouseDC.
• Fri, 20:48: We Are Hopelessly Hooked https://t.co/j1GFETDWOY Why we can’t stop being online.
• Fri, 22:14: Friday reading https://t.co/IKoO3pSHvs
• Fri, 22:26: Ted Heath on a skateboard. You’re welcome. https://t.co/ttwnkAFxmd
• Fri, 23:43: Independent and Independent on Sunday print closures confirmed https://t.co/N3PdAB7Hwk via @delicious

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver
The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin

Last books finished
The Sword of Forever, by Jim Mortimore
The Sinn Féin Rebellion As I Saw It, by Mrs Hamilton Norway

Next books
Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson
The Magic Cup, by Andrew M. Greeley

Books acquired in last week
Gentleman Jolie and the Red Queen, by Lois McMaster Bujold – special signed limited edition, gloat gloat
Mother of Eden, by Chris Beckett
The Legends of Ashildr, by James Goss, David Llewellyn, Jenny T. Colgan and Justin Richards

BSFA Award winner from 1983. I thought I'd read this before, but in fact the robot book by John Sladek I'd previously read was Roderick, his take on Candide. Tik-Tok is about a robot who decides to subvert the Asimovian laws of robotics (which any sensible person must cheer) and manages to secretly wage a campaign of crime and murder across the country before, in a Being There sort of moment, becoming Vice-President of the United States. There's a lot of dark humour, gratuitous violence, and not terribly well drawn analogies with slavery and racism.

I don't really think the BSFA covered itself in glory that year. The other shortlisted novels were Cat Karina, by Michael Coney; Golden Witchbreed, by Mary Gentle; Helliconia Summer, by Brian Aldiss; and The Citadel of the Autarch, by Gene Wolfe. I haven't read Cat KarinaTik-Tok, and while I would have voted for Aldiss I think the BSFA award would have most respectably gone to Wolfe. The Hugo and Nebula for Best Novel that year both went to Startide Rising. (The BSFA short form award went to Malcolm Edwards' one and only published fiction, "After-Images".)

This came to the top of my TBR pile because it won the BSFA award for 1983. The next two winners of that award were Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock and Helliconia Winter by Brian Aldiss, both of which I have reviewed here not too long ago. So my next from that particular list will be The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw.

In Catholic Ireland, Battle Lines Drawn Over Abortion as Election Looms

Newsweek reports.
(tags: ireland sexandgenderandsexuality savita )

Putin is a bigger threat to Europe’s existence than Isis – George Soros

Yup.
(tags: waronterror eu russia )

Give a little thought to what a GOP campaign against Bernie Sanders might look like

You ain’t seen nothing yet.
(tags: uspolitics )

I got this from the authors (all three of whom are friends of mine) back in 2009 when it was published. At that stage there seemed to be an opportunity for a breakthrough in the Cyprus problem; the Turkish Cypriot president, Mehmet Ali Talat (full disclosure: I was advising him from 2007 to 2010) had been elected in 2005 on a platform of securing a solution, and the newly elected Greek Cypriot president, Demetris Christofias, was ostensibly committed to doing the same.

A People's Peace for Cyprus, published by the Centre for European Policy Studies (where I worked from 1999 to 2002), gives the results of extensive public opinion polling on both sides of the island about what might or might not be acceptable elements of a new peace agreement to reunify the island. It's actually quite an encouraging read; the gaps exist, of course, but even on difficult issues such as the constitutional arrangements for a power-sharing government, the arrangements for property owned by Greek Cypriots in Turkish Cypriot-controlled territory, and the future security guarantees and responsibilities of Greek, Turkey and the UK, a bridgeable gap could be envisaged. I suspect that opinion has not moved very far in the seven years since the research was done – iof anything there may have been a further drift towards finding accommodation.

I'm afraid there is one very silly idea in the book, which I pointed out at the time. It is that as part of the settlement, there should be agreement on a kind of playbook for what external interventions should be appropriate in case one or other side should block implementation of any part of the agreement. Quite apart from the Chekhov's gun point that agreeing in advance on what disagreements can be envisaged more or less guarantees that those disagreements will happen, the fact is that offering a new set of rules to play with to two sides who are already over-equipped with lawyers is simply asking for trouble. Much better to get a commitment to full implementation, and nothing else, up front, and for international mediators to be ready to come and bang heads together when sticking points are reached.

Apart from that, all of the rest of the findings are pretty sound, and indicated that there was (and I think still is) room to find agreement on a settlement plan for both sides on Cyprus.

The 2009 opening proved to be illusory. Talat, who is one of the nicest and best politicians I have ever worked with, appeared to be a lame duck after his party lost the 2009 parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus – though my own view is that he could have still sold an agreement to his own electorate, but that unfortunately Christofias had never been serious about negotiating with him. Christofias went on to preside over the disastrous July 2011 Mari explosion and the even more disastrous collapse of the economy, both of which happened directly because of decisions that he took (or rather didn't take). He was indolent and incompetent, and those of us (including me) who hoped in 2009 that he might negotiate a settlement as he had promised were engaging in wishful thinking.

Things have now, thank heavens, moved in a positive direction again. The two current Cypriot leaders, Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akıncı, seem to have found a new dynamic – witness this charming video from December of them valiantly attempting to read seasonal greetings in each other's languages:

Apart from the encouraging dynamic between the leaders, I also want to point out that the two chief negotiators, Özdil Nami and Andrea Mavroyannis, are really seriously committed to finding a solution. The findings of the 2009 CEPS survey may soon become relevant once more.

This came to the top of my TBR pile as the shortest book of those I had bought in 2009 and not yet read. Next on that list – having polished off On The Way to Diplomacy – is A History of Anthropology by Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

Angouleme comics festival screws up *again*

If you’re in a hole, stop digging!
(tags: comics sexandgenderandsexuality )

The Top 12 PR Crises Of 2015: Part 1

Volkswagen tops the list.
(tags: publicrelations )

Life in the Grey Zones

@ecfr brings news from nowhere (Abkhazia, Crimea, etc).
(tags: transdniestria nagornokarabakh war )

Pro-Europeans shouldn’t big up Cameron’s deal

@HugoDixon’s nuanced approach.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Ignore the Brexit press. Cameron has got more than he expected from Europe

(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Nearly 14,000 disabled people have mobility cars taken away

UK war on disabled continues.
(tags: ukpolitics disability )

Three and a half degrees of separation

My number is 2.90 – less than Sheryl Sandberg.
(tags: facebook )

Transatlantic Tech: Privacy Shield Edition

Analysis from my colleagues.
(tags: internet )

How the Refugee Crisis Will Reshape the EU

@StefanLehne, wise as ever.
(tags: eu migration )

‘Facilitating Coexistence’: the endgame for Brexit

@AndrewDuffEU is pessimistic.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

How did the UN get it so wrong on Julian Assange?

Good question.
(tags: wikileaks law )

Apollo 14 astronaut Captain Edgar Dean “Ed” Mitchell dies at age 85

Fewer and fewer left now.
(tags: space death )

If You Think Europe Has a Refugee Crisis, You’re Not Looking Hard Enough

Much worse elsewhere.
(tags: migration )

Anne Frank’s Stepsister: ‘Donald Trump Is Acting Like Hitler’

And she knows what she’s talking about.
(tags: uspolitics migration )

The New Jersey-raised, bow tie-loving president of Estonia gave the best speech on the refugee crisis

Go @IlvesToomas!
(tags: uspolitics ukpolitics migration )

An old-school reply to an advertiser’s retro threat

Hooray!
(tags: media pr )

Seven steps to winning a referendum

My @EurActiv piece. @APCOWorldwide @UlsterUni
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Yanis Varoufakis, Peddler of Snake Oil

Tell us what you *really* think, @Jan_Techau!
(tags: eu greece )

Why Didn’t They Talk To You Privately? On “Call Out Culture” and Power Differentials

(tags: psychology )

We’re the Only Animals With Chins, and No One Knows Why

Fascinating!
(tags: biology )

John McCain on torture

Sad that this needs to be said.
(tags: uspolitics waronterror )

It’s really a bit frustrating that, having finished the third book of the trilogy (after I voted for both previous books in the BSFA and Hugo ballots last year and the year before) and again hugely enjoyed it, I now find that I can’t really express why I like this book, and these books, so much. I guess a lot of things come together: the fish-out-of-water leadership of Breq, the central character; the interplay between the other established characters from previous books; the humorous social and linguistic malapropisms of the Translator; the completely overt yet subtly done political threads in the plot, and the interplay between wielding power and communication. Others have written at greater length than this about its merits and its few flaws. Me, I’m just going to vote for it.

• Mon, 12:52: Integral z² dz from 1 to the cube root of 3 times the cosine of 3π over 9 = log of the cube root of e. (Tx NGibbins) https://t.co/WPpUdFaJZc
• Mon, 16:53: An old-school reply to an advertiser’s retro threat https://t.co/p3oBDCTmO4 via @delicious
• Mon, 18:34: No Official Umbrella, by Glyn Jones https://t.co/4MnbNOy5D5
• Mon, 18:37: Mathematical limericks https://t.co/9EeIdsw7hV
• Mon, 20:05: Seven steps to winning a referendum https://t.co/XpCXCeMGP5 via @Euractiv
• Mon, 20:48: An old-school reply to an advertiser’s retro threat https://t.co/sRLS1p2nXG Hooray!
• Mon, 23:59: RT @BradStaples: APCO’s @nwbrux outlines seven steps to winning a referendum – advice on how to avoid #Brexit https://t.co/51DZMbAjGy
• Mon, 23:59: RT @ChairmanYaffle: Seven steps to winning a referendum https://t.co/rcuG4vfbaN via @Euractiv
• Tue, 10:17: Here for John Dee. (@ Royal College of Physicians in London) https://t.co/QK0Sn0hc6X https://t.co/2RQM6WvOXr

Glyn Jones was an actor, writer and director, who was born in South Africa in 1931 and died in Crete in 2014. This 700-page autobiography recounts the high and low points of his career, somewhat rambling in places, name-dropping of course, but mainly complimenting those who did him favours of various kinds over his long career or noting with satisfaction that he spotted this or that star on his way up (Peter Firth, Paul McGann). The parts about his South African childhood and early acting career are fascinating; the story of his most frustrating failure, a play about the Connaught Rangers' mutiny on 1922, is very moving; the assembling of his letters home from teaching trips to the USA rather less exciting. It is a bit of a shame that he did not run it past a thorough editor – a bit more structure would have done the reader a world of good, and a half day with Google would have filled in some of the frustrating blanks.

Jones hit my personal interests in two respects in particular. He was the script editor for Here Come The Double Deckers in 1969-70, and is credited with writing or co-writing 9 of the 17 episodes of the show – in fact he probably really wrote them all, that being the role of a script editor in those days. I excerpted the pages of the book about Double Deckers here.

But he is also one of the very few people to have both appeared as an actor in Doctor Who, and written a story. (The others were Victor Pemberton in Old Who, Mark Gatiss in New Who, and I would also count Noel Clarke who wrote an episode of Torchwood.) He appeared in the early Tom Baker story The Sontaran Experiment as one of a group of stranded astronauts (who all had South African accents):

But earlier on he wrote the William Hartnell story The Space Museum, a four-part story where the second, third and fourth episodes are about the overthrow of a rather dull despotic regime, but the first is a real work of genius, one of the spookiest Who episodes ever and a good candidate for being one of the best single Hartnell episodes. Here it is:

Glyn Jones reflects on this experience as follows:

There are a few later references to Who in passing, mostly to his novelisation of the story (in which he Tuckerised at least two of his friends). It's a good perspective on how brief his engagement with the show was in a long career. And in general the book is a good read if you skip some of the later chapters.

A Dozen, a Gross, and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
is nine squared and not a bit more.

A second one, from (requires "zee" rather than "zed" for the last letter of the alphabet):

Integral z-squared dz
from 1 to the cube root of 3
times the cosine
of three pi over 9
equals log of the cube root of e.

• Sun, 13:59: House of Shattered Wings, by Aliette de Bodard https://t.co/hlUXCQpgQK
• Sun, 16:05: Anne Frank’s Stepsister: ‘Donald Trump Is Acting Like Hitler’ https://t.co/jOQAm19qnA And she knows what she’s talking about.
• Sun, 17:01: Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott https://t.co/3kZejmmQXv
• Sun, 19:13: The New Jersey-raised, bow tie-loving president of Estonia gave the best speech on the refugee cri… https://t.co/uWzizk3P3G via @delicious
• Sun, 20:48: The New Jersey-raised, bow tie-loving president of Estonia gave the best speech on the refugee crisis https://t.co/DeDLJ53QeQ Go @IlvesToo…
• Mon, 10:45: A Dozen, a Gross, & a Score, + 3 times the square root of 4, divided by 7, plus 5 x 11, is 9² and not a bit more. https://t.co/KlyayHxRUw
• Mon, 11:19: BSFA shortlisted novels: Goodreads / LibraryThing stats https://t.co/Tk174sfTQr

And so the awards season starts in earnest. Official BSFA press release here. Congrats to all concerned. In particular, I think the non-fiction short list is a lot better than in previous years.

The Goodreads / LibraryThing stats for the shortlisted novels are as follows. Ranking is consistent between the two (except that there is a tie at the end for LibraryThing). I’ve read three and must now get the other two.

A classic of nineteenth century sf, where the story is told by an inhabitant of a two-dimensional universe who has become aware that a third dimension exists. As a teenager I had read Martin Gardner’s extended review of this book and similar writings, and to be honest it was better than the original source material, which is laden with assumptions about what the reader would find funny which rather grate on today’s sensitivities particularly with regard to gender but also class and race; it has not aged well. But at the same time the core message, challenging the reader to conceive of a conceptual breakthrough where our universe is just one aspect of a higher dimensional reality, is well executed – and of course the concept of other dimensions has become much more operational since 1884.

This came to the top of my TBR pile as the most popular sf book in my LibraryThing that I had not yet read. Next on that list is Walking on Glass, by Iain M. Banks.

May have just been the mood I was in at the time, but this failed to grab me; I didn’t understand the setting, or what the characters were trying to do. I love the way de Bodard writes in general, so for me this was a rare miss.

Another superb book of short stories by the Canadian Nobel Prize winner. The two that particularly grabbed me were the very first, “The Love of a Good Woman”, about the mysterious death of an optician, and “Before the Change”, about the daughter of a small-town abortionist. But they are all pretty good.