John Lewis, Donald Trump, and the Meaning of Legitimacy

Today’s must-read.
(tags: uspolitics )

Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet, by Douglas Adams and James Goss
See How Much I Love You, by Luis Leante
Every Heart A Doorway, by Seanan McGuire

Last books finished
Jeremiah: Een Geweer in het Water, by Hermann
Rhyme Stew, by Roald Dahl
The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
The Palace of Dreams, by Ismail Kadarë

Next books
The Colour Of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
The Other Islam, by Stephen Schwartz
Rip Tide, by Louise Cooper

Books acquired in last week
Five Go On A Strategy Away Day, by Bruno Vincent
Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars, by Catherine Clinton
The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin
Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
Monstress Volume 1: Awakening, by Marjorie Liu
The Geek Feminist Revolution, by Kameron Hurley
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Penric and the Shaman, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Penric’s Mission, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Second paragraph of third chapter, with bonus Akkadian fable:

The names of civilisations that arose in the ancient Near East now ring with the note of remote antiquity. Three dozen and more are known that flourished in the three millennia from the start of records c.3300 BC until the invasion of Alexander in 330 BC, among them such powers as Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, Lydia and Persia. They bring to mind visions of oriental absolutism, breathtaking ruthlessness and gaudy magnificence. Despite their many pretensions, their cultural fertility and sometimes truly universal power, they have left no heirs. Something of this was foreseen by at least one of their own writers:

arad mitanguranni
         annû bēlī annû
umma usātu ana mātia luppuš kimi
         epuš bēlī epuš
         amēlu ša usātam ana mātišu ipuš
         šakna usātu-šu in kippat ša marduk
e arad anāku usātamma ana mātia ul epuš
         la teppuš bēlī la teppuš
         ilīma ina muḫḫi tillāni labīrūti itallak
         amur gulgullē ša arkûti u pānûti
         ayyu bēl lemuttima ayu bēl usāti

Servant, listen to me!
         Yes, master, yes.
I will benefit my country
         So do, master, do.
         The man who benefits his country
         has his good deeds set down in the record of Marduk.
No, servant, I will not benefit my country.
         Do not do it, master, do not.
         Go up to the ancient ruin heaps and walk around.
         See the skulls of the lowly and the great.
         Which belongs to one who did evil, and which to one who did good?

from "the Dialogue of Pessimism", Akkadian.

This fascinating book turned out to be very interesting as paired reading with The Horse, the Wheel and Language. It looks at the history of those languages which have become dominant for a while in areas far from their origins – Sumerian, Akkadian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Arabic, Egyptian, Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Nahuatl, Quechua, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Russian, and English (plus a few others of course) – and asks how this process happens, and also how such languages get displaced by their successors.

He starts with the Middle East, and I probably learned more from this section than from any other. I would have found it difficult to distinguish between the Akkadians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians; now I appreciate the lovely continuity between Akkadian, Aramaic and Arabic, all fairly closely related and the lingua franca of Mesopotamia and far beyond for centuries. The Greek chapter also pulls apart the roles of the different Greek dialects in both literature and politics; again, information that I had been vaguely aware of but packaged here comprehensibly. And it had not occurred to me that Ancient Egyptian survived as Coptic until a few centuries ago.

I particularly appreciated was the account of the linguistic shifts of the Chinese languages. I've found it very difficult to get to grips with Chinese history in the past – the names mean nothing to me and I don't have a good sense of the geography; and I've sensed some writers steering away from the question of internal cultural or ethnic differences in China. Of course, if you approach it through the lens of language, it is impossible to ignore the cultural and ethnic aspects, and equipped with those tools I suddenly found a lot of what I had previous read fitting together much better in my mind. And it's important for understanding how our world will work in the future – Mandarin has about the same number of speakers as the second, third and fourth languages in the world combined (Spanish, English and Hindi/Urdu), and the other Chinese languages are level pegging with major European languages like French and Italian.

The linguistic approach also offers a somewhat different perspective on imperialism and colonisation. It's actually rather rare in historical terms for a language to jump tracks and become a widely spoken mother tongue in places far from its origin. Most of the ancient languages discussed were languages of commerce, religion and/or administration which took a very long time to percolate into the population as a whole; apart from settler colonies, the same is true in more modern times – Dutch is not spoken in Indonesia (and barely in the Caribbean); English may be the national language of India but it is spoken by only 10% of the population. It is relatively unusual for the colonisers' language to completely displace the previous incumbents. English has been lucky twice: when Germanic tribes conquered the Western Roman Empire, Britain was the only province where their language stuck, everywhere else either retaining Latin (or Basque, which had been around for even longer) or switching from Aramaic to Arabic when the time came. Surviving a narrow brush with Norman French, it then became the core language of European settlement in North America. In both cases, depopulation of the indigenous population by plague, helped by ethnic cleansing, appears to have been a crucial factor, as with Spanish in Latin America. (Simple conquest is not enough; cf German and Japanese.) Similarly, Portuguese has Brazil, but none of the other ex-colonies is really lusophone in the same way; as for French, there is no country apart from France where it has a majority of native speakers – not Belgium (38%), not even Monaco (45%).

But Ostler is very far from being an anglophone triumphalist, and takes his last chapter to look ahead at the eventual fall of English as a world language, and to speculate about what might replace it. One would have to bet on Chinese, already an official language or an unofficial language of commerce all round the South China Sea. He makes the point that Chinese, English and Malay/Indonesian have all been helped in their success by rather simple internal structures which make them relatively easier to learn to speak. Chinese, however, is hampered by its writing system which is much more difficult to grasp. I must say I can see English clinging on for centuries to come, as a lingua franca for humanity, even with a relatively decreasing share of native speakers.

(Note for self: I would love to understand why it is that the parts of Moldova which were actually in the Roman Empire are precisely the areas where the non-Romance-speaking minorities, the Bulgarians and Gagauz, are concentrated.)

Anyway, very much worth reading, full of detail and connections which I had not thought of before.

The BSFA longlist was published last weekend, and as ever I'm running the books through Goodreas and LibraryThing, to track both number of owners on each system (you have to dig into Goodreads a bit for that, but it is there) and the average rating of each book.

The results are as follows (ranked by geometrical average of number of owners), the top nine of the 34 entries in each column indicated in bold:

Some may be surprised to see last year's Hugo winner, The Fifth Season, on the list; but its UK publication was not until 2016. It is one of three books to finish in the top quartile of all four measures, for what that is worth, the other two being A Gathering Of Shadows and Death’s End.

This of course tells us nothing more than the popularity of these 34 books among users of Goodreads and LibraryThing; the BSFA voters may have a very different set of views.

UK to stay under EU law in post-Brexit phase, Malta says

Unwelcome news for some I’m sure, but realistic.
(tags: ukpolitics eu brexit )

DUP likely to remain largest party, pollster suggests

I am also quoted.
(tags: Northernireland )

The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen

A Russian trolling operation?
(tags: Internet Russia )

The jobless world and its discontents

@ChakhoyanAndrew speculates.
(tags: economics )

10 Discworld Quotes You’ll Desperately Need for the Next Four Years 

Indeed.
(tags: sf uspolitics )

Prospects for U.S. Democracy Promotion Under Trump

Tom Carothers of @CarnegieEndow is not too gloomy.
(tags: democratization uspolitics )

Second paragraph of third section:

Somewhere nearby, he could hear the metronomic left-right-left of the 2: 47 P.M. shift, entering the Timkin roller-bearing plant in their sneakers. A minute later, precisely, he heard the softer right-left-right of the 5: 00 A.M. formation, going home.

Since I can't comment on any potential Hugo nominees this year, I'm going back to the start, and looking at all the works that have won both Hugo and Nebula, in order. (Many years ago I started a similar project but working through them in alphabetical order. This eventually stalled when too many new winners had early alphabetical names.)

"Repent Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman" won both the 1966 Hugo for Best Short Fiction, and the 1965 Nebula for Best Short Story. Fellow Hugo finalists were "Day of the Great Shout", by Philip José Farmer; "Marque and Reprisal", by Poul Anderson; "Stardock", by Fritz Leiber; and "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth", by Roger Zelazny. None of those four is on the long list of 30 stories also nominated for the Nebula. Of the Hugo final ballot, I have read only "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" (which won the Nebula for Best Novella, the categories being not yet set in stone). Dune won the Nebula for Best Novel, and tied with "…And Call Me Conrad" (now better known as Lord of Light) for the Hugo. The Nebulas had a tie for Best Novella: “He Who Shapes”, by Roger Zelazny, and “The Saliva Tree”, by Brian Aldiss. The Hugos also made an award for Best All-Time Series, which was won by Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories. The concept of a Hugo for Best Series then went dormant for half a century, and is now returning this year – though only series which include a volume published in 2016 will be eligible.

It's a very Sixties piece, about a future dystopic society where life is regimented to the last second, the sinister Ticktockman being in charge. One dissident calling himself the Harlequin becomes a chaos agent, playing pranks on both the rulers and the ruled; he is pursued, captured and re-educated a` la Winston Smith (this parallel is explicitly made), but at the end the Ticktockman himself is starting to slack.

The good bit is the writing, which is intense stream-of-consciousness and conveys vivid images. However, the story's classic status cannot disguise the fact that it has not aged all that well; in the end, the Harlequin isn't challenging anything very much, and his means remain somewhat unexplained – where do you get $150,000 worth of jelly beans? Algis Budrys commented when it was first published that it is s "primitive statement … about [the] solidly acceptable idea [that] regimentation is bad." I was also struck by the sexism of the story. The Harlequin's first reported activity is directed explicitly at women:

He skimmed over a slidewalk, purposely dropping a few feet to crease the tassels of the ladies of fashion, and— inserting thumbs in large ears— he stuck out his tongue, rolled his eyes and went wugga-wugga-wugga. It was a minor diversion. One pedestrian skittered and tumbled, sending parcels everywhichway, another wet herself, a third keeled slantwise, and the walk was stopped automatically by the servitors till she could be resuscitated. It was a minor diversion.

Hmm, triggering incontinence and temporary death is a minor diversion? If your victims are female, I suppose. Back to the Marx Brothers, I guess. Note also the not very equal relationship between the Harlequin and his girlfriend Pretty Alice, who also presses him to conform like a good spouse should; the Ticktockman later alleges that she turned him in, and one can see why she might have done.

So, that's the first in the chronological list of joint Hugo and Nebula winners. Next is Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Martin McGuiness’s departure represents failure on all sides

Newton Emerson sums it up.
(tags: northernireland )

Peter Weston (1944-2017)

Among many other things, he owned the foundry which has made the Hugo Awards since 1984.
(tags: hugos sf death )

North looking at a new election landscape

My piece for Wednesday’s Irish Times
(tags: northernireland )

The Exoplanet Revolution Turns 25

The other worlds that we have found.
(tags: astronomy )

A Portrait Of A Chef As A Young Woman

Great short film about my cousin Katie Sanderson @kjsfoodprojects.
(tags: cooking )

Second stanza of third section (“Song of the Little Hairy Man”):

And when the night’s all thundering
I shall not fear the thunder
Nor fear the mammoth’s blundering,
nor bandits and their plundering
— For “How much, we was wondering?”
I’ll walk the wide world under.

This was part of the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle, only 14 pages, published in 1999 and illustrated by Charles Vess. Most of it is a very short coming of age story about a girl and the significance of magpies; there are also three poems. The third poem is rather neat but the other two (including the one excerpted above) are rather slight.

This was left over from your recommendations for last year. Next on that list is The Habit of Loving, by Doris Lessing.

5 Russian words that explain Vladimir Putin

Actually 6½.
(tags: Russia russian )

Architect of modern Ireland TK Whitaker dies aged 100

Very sad news.
(tags: death ireland )

TK Whitaker, supreme mandarin and good citizen

Obituary by Fintan O’Toole.
(tags: ireland death )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

This chapter concentrates on the death date, the date after which Proto-Indo-European must have ceased to exist. But it helps to begin by considering how long a period probably preceded that. Given that the time between the birth and death dates of Proto-Indo-European could not have been infinite, precisely how long a time was it? Do languages, which are living, changing things, have life expectancies?

My attention was drawn to this by a very positive review from none other than Lois McMaster Bujold back in 2009 on her Myspace blog (the review is now lost, alas, due to Myspace deleting it).

It is a very detailed presentation of evidence supporting a theory that I have known about for a long time: that Proto-Indo-European, the long-lost language from which most European languages, most Indian languages and others (notably Farsi) are descended, was originally spoken by tribes living on the steppe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, around 3500 BC. There’s a well-known set of arguments for this which starts from the vocabulary which can be reconstructed: their language had words for birch, otter, beaver, lynx, bear, horse and bee and honey (these last significant because apparently you don’t get bees east of the Urals). The fact that they had a whole vocabulary dealing with wheeled vehicles, and also sheep with wool (woolly sheep only appear after 4000 BC, whether due to mutation, artificial selection or both) also sets an archaeological time horizon.

Anthony turns this linguistic evidence into a sequenced story of technological innovation: the domestication of sheep and cattle, then horses, then the development of agriculture and towns, and then the invention of wagons and war-chariots. This was enough to give the people of the steppes using this technology a decisive edge as they settled the fertile but hiterto unfarmed uplands and valleys of Europe and Southwest Asia. This is supported by a wealth of archaeological evidence from excavations in Russia over the last few decades, several conducted by Anthony himself. (I confess I skimmed the detail of the digs; I worked on two archaology sites in 1984-85, which was enough to scratch my itch for life.)

I’ve always found the idea of reconstructing a dead language romantic and fascinating, but this book really scores by making firm arguments based on archeaology and documentation (such as the Rig Veda) which all support the conclusion. He also looks at when and where the daughter languages might have plausibly split off to form their own groups, though not in detail. The early history of Germanic languagues is still a bit mysterious. But it’s a fascinating book, which left me with admiration for what we can find out, but also awareness of how little we can ever know about the lives of our ancestors thousands of years ago.

Was 2016 especially dangerous for celebrities? An empirical analysis. – Medium

Short answer: Yes.
(tags: mathematics deaths )

As a trade negotiator, I’m shocked at Brexiters’ ignorance

Wisdom from Canada.
(tags: canada eu ukpolitics sf )

I wore men’s clothes for a month – and it changed my life

Fascinating.
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )

EU Law Analysis: What is ‘free trade’?

Explained quite simply.
(tags: economics ukpolitics brexit eu )

New year, new day for my weekly roundups.

Current
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler
Short Trips: Farewells, ed. Jacqueline Rayner

Last books finished
Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution, ed. Margarette Lincoln
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, by David W. Anthony
A Fall of Stardust, by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison

Last week’s audios

Next books
Jeremiah: Een Geweer in het Water, by Hermann
Rhyme Stew, by Roald Dahl
Rip Tide, by Louise Cooper

Books acquired in last week
Moomin: The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip
Torchwood: Rift War, by Ian Edgington
Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet, by Douglas Adams and James Goss
Class: What She Does Next Will Astound You, by James Goss
Class: Joyride, by Guy Adams (?)
The Stone House, by A.K. Benedict
1,411 QI Facts to Knock You Sideways, by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Five on Brexit Island, by Bruno Vincent
A Brief History of the Hobbit, by John D. Rateliff

Second paragraph of third chapter (“Samuel Pepys: A Scholar and a Gentleman”, by M.E.J. Hughes):

The reasons for educational patronage were various. Piety and devotion were important; but there was also a pragmatic element. Society was in a state of transformation. The governance of towns and cities, the management of the professions such as law and medicine, the pursuit of science and the day-to-day functioning of the army and navy were all routinely placed in the hands of professional bureaucrats, often from the urban lower and middle classes. This created a real incentive to educate bright but poor city boys such as Pepys.

I went to the exhibition about Pepys in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich just before Eastercon last year, and this is the book-of-the-exhibition. I was actually a little disappointed that the exhibition did not have the diary except in electronic replica, but otherwise it was a very good display of artifacts illustrating Pepys’ life and times. I found the book a lot more satisfying, oddly enough. As well as explanatory illustrations of the material that was on display in the exhibition, it has sixteen substantial essays by academic researchers on different aspects of Pepys. One might have thought that there was little to add to Claire Tomalin, but there’s always something to be gained from new perspective. I found the chapters on Tangier and Islam (by the book’s editor, Margarette Lincoln) and on religion (by Clare Jackson) particularly interesting, but they are all good, and I hope that the book will get a deserved long run of life among Pepys fans.

This was the first book I finished in 2017!!! It was also the top non-fiction book on my unread shelf recommended by you. Next in that list is Europe In The Sixteenth Century by H. G. Koenigsberger and George L. Mosse.

Vote for your favourite Blue Peter presenter of all time

The serious questions now.
(tags: tv )

I went this morning with my older godson D (as opposed to my younger godson E), his other half S and their new baby L (the youngest of our grandfather’s 24 great-grandchildren) to the Adventures in Moominland experience at the Southbank Centre. S is actually Finnish, so was particularly good company for this outing. You can’t take pictures inside, but you can take them outside.

You have to book in advance for a specific slot for the 50-minute visit; we had unfortunately booked different slots, but they were commendably flexible and found enough space for us all to do it together.

I won’t say too much about the experience itself to avoid spoilers, but it is particularly aimed at grownups who want to revisit the Moomins, though I think children over seven will not be bored. One three-year-old in the group before us had had enough after ten minutes and was extracted early. Little L (almost four months old, and wearing her Moomin sleepsuit for the occasion) enjoyed the different sensory stimulations, entertaining everyone by giggling madly at one point, and dropped off into a satisfied sleep at the end. (Some people will need to be aware that there are flashing lights and scary bits.) Each visit is led by a docent, supplemented with cheery voiceovers by Sandy Toksvig. (The docent kept looking at me when the subject of Hemulens came up. I don’t know why.)

I will give away one spoiler (well, two): particular attention is given to how Tove Jansson’s relationship with the first woman she loved is played out in the story of Thingumy and Bob in Finn Family Moomintroll, and to how the love of her life, Tuulikki Pietilä, inspired Too-Ticky in Moominland Midwinter. (Our docent asked S to correct his pronunciation of “Tuulikki Pietilä”, which he knew was wrong.) It’s impossible to tell Tove Jansson’s story without including her love life, and full marks to the organisers for embracing the opportunity.

Upstairs there is a small free exhibition of some of the Moomin comic strips, both as drawn and as published, which are suitably surreal.

I bought a couple of mugs as well as one of the comic strip collections.

And my godson D made a new best friend.

Remaining Angry

Brexit as we see it now.
(tags: ukpolitics eu brexit )

More lies from Boris Johnson

Dissected by Miriam González.
(tags: eu brexit ukpolitics )

2016 in Charts. (And Can Trump Deliver in 2017?)

Fascinating charts.
(tags: uspolitics )

Wealth of people in their 30s has ‘halved in a decade’ – BBC News

In the U.K.
(tags: economics ukpolitics )

Why Slow Thinking Wins

Time to reflect.
(tags: psychology Lifehacking )

Second frame of third page:	Second frame of third section

I picked up this graphic novel at Octocon. It's a nice little Bildungsroman of a young woman who's just had a serious row with her boyfriend seeking advice from her mother, who incidentally is getting a tattoo to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary. There isn't a lot of plot as such, more just general reflection on live, love and the pursuit of happiness in the early years of the 21st century, particularly as they might affect a Polish immigrant in Ireland. The English is not always completely idiomatic (as illustrated above) but the author's heart is in the right place, and with a good editor she could do quite well.

And so ends my bookblogging for 2016!

Sir Ivan Rogers’ letter to staff in full

Speaks for itself.
(tags: ukpolitics brexit eu )

An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton

This is really cool.
(tags: hamilton )

Showing up

It’s important.
(tags: life Death )

Second paragraph of third chapter (A Deepness in the Sky: the Tragical History of Pham Nuwen):

In A Fire Upon the Deep we learn early on that our immediate cosmic neighborhood is divided into Zones, working outwards from the Galactic core. In each Zone, cognition and technology work better. So in the core it isn’t possible to be intelligent at all, in the Slow Zone it’s possible to be as intelligent as a human but no better and you can’t go faster than light, in the Beyond you can have FTL and anti-gravity and enhanced intelligences, and in the Transcend you can have godlike intelligences and Clarke’s Law tech. The novel takes place in the Beyond, with an excursion to the Slow Zone, and concerns a problem from the Low Transcend risking upsetting the whole thing. (Vinge apparently thought up this brilliant universe as a way around his idiotic Singularity non-problem, which just goes to show that a) constraints can produce excellent art and b) every cloud has a silver lining.)

Most of you know Jo Walton. (One of you is Jo Walton.) This book of reviews originally published on Tor.com in 2008-2011 is an extended conversation about great (and some less great) works of SF, part of a chat that I've been having since the start of the century. The final essay, which I think didn't appear online, established the agenda: this is not literary criticism, this is talking about books, not new books but books that she has reread and thought about for our benefit.

As always, I find I have distinct points of convergence (Bujold, Le Guin, the Clarkes – Arthur C. and Susannah; Doorways in the Sand, When the Kissing Had To Stop) and divergence (Brust, Cherryh; to an extent Delany and Asimov); but enough of the former that I will be adding several of her recommendations to my own wish list (Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Black Wine, In The Wet).

And the piece on The Last Dangerous Visions is grim but funny at the same time. All good fun and recommended.

Problemen Desiro tonen federaal wanbeleid NMBS

Long piece from August 2015 about rail policy, still relevant.
(tags: belgium rail )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our envolved tendencies are considered "normal" by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)

There's probably a serious argument to be had about the extent to which monogamy is or is not a basic part of the way we humans interact with each other. Unfortunately only the barest traces of a serious argument are to be found in this book, which combines polemic, sarcasm and condescension to the point that you are clear that the authors think they are right, but can't really have confidence in what they say about anyone else, particularly anyone who thinks that pair-bonding is in any way important beyond the fantasies of the fiendish conspirators who have foisted it on generations of unwilling mates.

A mild strike in their favour is that they are very dismissive of Steven Pinker, who has certainly failed to convince me at all. I was also interested in the evidence presented that men in industrialised societies are producing fewer sperm, though this came at the end of so much straw-manning that I really wasn't sure I could trust it. But in general, it's a great example of how to take the very interesting discussion that one could have about polyamory, and then weaken it through the choice of rhetorical tools.

I'm thinking of going to the Moomin exhibition on the South Bank on Saturday – probably early 1000 or 1015, as I'll be on the 1pm Eurostar home. Anyone want to come too?

How Britain will negotiate Brexit

Reading the runes.
(tags: ukpolitics brexit eu )

Nine economic lessons from 2016

Most, but not all, gloomy.
(tags: economics )

EU English again

Glorious.
(tags: eu english )

Self-selecting newspaper polls do NOT show Britain has turned against Brexit

A dose of reality.
(tags: brexit ukpolitics )

2017 is not just another prime number

Lots of oddities.
(tags: mathematics )

The 2017 elections to watch for progress on gender equality

Rick writes.
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality elections )

TrainWorld, the new-ish train museum at the old Schaerbeek railway station in the north of Brussels, has been advertising a temporary Tintin exhibition, and F and I decided to go on the last afternoon of the year, yesterday.

Well, our verdict is that if you are into trains, it's probably a lot of fun; but if you are into Tintin, it's probably a better investment of time and money to head down to Louvain-la-Neuve for the Hergé Museum. There is one quite nice room with original Hergé manuscripts and early editions of the stories which are most closely linked to trains, and it's true that the train is an important element of Hergé's (and therefore Tintin's) world view – they have a facsimile of Hergé's earliest surviving childhood scribble, which is very recognisably a train (first drawing here). And the main exhibition halls have had a few Tintin memorabilia bolted onto the existing displays. But that's it, and otherwise the museum is aimed very much at the target audience of train enthusiasts, which is fine but doesn't include me (or F) really; the Tintin connection is largely there to draw in visitors like us who might not have been as interested in the main collection.

Having said that, the museum did make me nostalgic for the days when trains ran reliably across the continent. I wrote, gosh, back in 2004 about the joys of inter-railing. More recently, Jon Worth has been brutally chronicling his own travails with the rail system as it currently is, and Frances Robinson wrote an impassioned indictment of EU policy on rail.

I was about to write that I had taken very few long train journeys of late, and then I remembered that only a few weeks ago I travelled home from Frankfurt by train, and then to Strasbourg and back. So maybe the situation is not quite so bad after all; and anyway I guess it's nice that I associate long train journeys with young love, and it was certainly nice to be reminded of those days at the museum, even if I could have wished for more Tintin.

Here's a picture of the whisky tank car from The Black Island, standing outside the museum. In the original 1937 edition, the whisky referenced in the story was a the very real Johnnie Walker; Methuen insisted on 131 anachronisms and inaccuracies being corrected before UK publication in 1966, and Hergé (or rather his assistant Bob De Moor) took the opportunity to change the whisky to Captain Haddock's favourite fictional tipple, Loch Lomond. (Captain Haddock was not yet on the scene in 1937.)

The Origins of Princess Leia’s Hairstyle

Inspired by a Mexican revolutionary!
(tags: mexico sf )

Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere

An alarming analysis.
(tags: uspolitics russia climatechange )

How Watership Down was written

Richard Adams’ granddaughter reminisces.
(tags: sf writing )

George Michael and Me

Moving.
(tags: Music Death )