Isidore takes a deep breath. ‘An interplanetary thief is building a picotech machine out of the city itself while the cryptarchs take over people’s minds to try to destroy the zoku colony in order to stop the tzaddikim from breaking their power,’ he says. ‘I want to stop them both.’ He pauses. ‘Also, I think the thief is my real father.’

I had fairly high expectations for this after a run of recent sf books which didn’t really excite me. Unfortunately I didn’t like it quite as much as I had hoped; I thought there was basically some neat ideas and world-building in there, but actually I think Charlie Stross does this sort of thing rather better. Too many made-up words, and present tense throughout didn’t really focus my attention. Maybe I was just in a bad mood.

• Think Again: European Decline
  
  @markhleonard and @hanskundnani tackle seven myths, more or less convincingly.
  (tags: eu )
• Intellectual Biography and Niall Ferguson
  
  Drezner on form.
  (tags: bloggers )
• Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown
  
  "The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology."
  (tags: funny )
• Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t
  
  Broken down by age and sex.
  (tags: genderandsexandsexuality films )
• Ultraconserved words? Really??
  
  Too good to be true.
  (tags: linguistics )
• Vintage Dutch safety posters
  
  Wow.
  (tags: art dutch horribleworkplaceaccidents )
• Michael Gove and ‘correct grammar’: let me explain this slowly
  
  "there is one certain way to make life harder for children to acquire Standard English: creating tests that fail them."
  (tags: ukpolitics education )
• Where on the Blue Marble
  
  Space game!
  (tags: maps space )

I had the flu jab last October, and since then I haven’t needed a day off work for anything more serious than jet-lag.

I cannot remember that ever happening (or, rather failing to happen) before. This last winter was the healthiest of my life that I can recall.

• Eurobubble – Conference, Part 1
  
  First of three 5 minute shorts about Brussels conferences
  (tags: eu )
• Eurobubble – Conference, Part 2
  
  (tags: eu )
• Eurobubble – Conference, Part 3
  
  (tags: eu )
• Google / Landsat, 1984-2011
  
  A terrifying look at how we are changing the world.
  (tags: maps climatechange )
• Colour film of London in 1927
  
  Amazing!
  (tags: film london )

I found out a few weeks ago, greatly to my delight, that the woods near our house are basically full of Bronze Age and Gallo-Roman tumuli. Today being a bank holiday and a fine day, we went out in search of the two nearest (numbered 2 and 3 on the linked map), and found them fairly easily.

Tumuli in a forest don’t photograph well. You need to be on the ground to appreciate why the sudden swell of the land looks obviously and convincingly like a human addition to the land’s natural contours. Presumably this mound, rising barely a metre over the surrounding soil, would have been much more impressive when originally constructed.

And here, the pattern of sunshine and leaves (living and dead) is what catches the eye (quite apart from the lovely human being in the foreground), This one actually had traces of a ditch surrounding it, but I really couldn’t see a way of photographing it.

We walk over our ancestors; these mounds are remnants from the Bronze Age, maybe five thousand years ago. They are a message from two hundred generations before our time: look, we were here too, and some part of us remains.

I've been following the debate on reform of the Seanad (the Irish Senate) with great interest; see here, here, here, here and here. Up to now, my position has been very much in favour of abolition. There is only one other small state in the EU with an upper house (Slovenia); the other ten smaller than Austria (which is federal, and has twice Ireland’s population) get by with one, as do Sweden, Hungary, Portugal and Greece. I therefore welcomed Enda Kenny’s promise, while in opposition, to abolish the Seanad, and actually found Labour even more compelling in the arguments they made in their manifesto (which, quelle surprise, turn out not to actually be binding on their elected representatives).

However. I am reasonably impressed by a 30-page paper with the title “Radical Seanad Reform through Legislative Change”, co-authored by Feargal Quinn, Michael McDowell, Joe O’Toole, Noel Whelan and Katherine Zappone, and published here, here and here. While two of them are serving senators, two of the other three have retired from politics, and Whelan and I wrote a book together exactly ten years ago this spring. Not all details in the paper are correct – Croatia, for instance, went unicameral in 2001 (cf §4.3 on page 18), and not all of them are convincing. But the main argument – that the electoral base for the Seanad is fixed by legislation, not the constitution, and that it could and should be broadened out to include the entire electorate even without a referendum – is thought-provoking.

I found even more interesting the argument for the Seanad’s actual contribution to the legislative process. My own criterion for a useful revising chamber in an otherwise unitary state is that it actually revises, and the evidence here, though skimpy, is fairly compelling (note also this comment on one of my previous posts). I now feel that although my gut sympathy remains with the abolitionists, any referendum proposal to abolish the Seanad will need to demonstrate not only that it makes appropriate adjustments to the various other state structures which would need to be altered because they depend on the existence of the Seanad or its Cathaoirleach, but also that it brings in equivalent or better safeguards against hasty legislation by a unicameral Dáil. These needn’t be constitutional amendments or even legislation – changes to the Dáil’s Standing Orders would probably cut it – but they must be there.

Worth a look if you are interested in upper chambers in general as well.

L’Europe ne se fera pas d’un coup, ni dans une construction d’ensemble : elle se fera par des réalisations concrètes créant d’abord une solidarité de fait. – Robert Schuman

καὶ ταῦτα εἰπὼν βλεπόντων αὐτῶν ἐπήρθη, καὶ νεφέλη ὑπέλαβεν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν. – St Luke

• Ten Things Romans Used for Toilet Paper
  
  Now you know.
  (tags: history )
• 14 May screening of “No Fire Zone” in the European Parliament.
  
  I’ll be there; hope you will too.
  (tags: srilanka )
• @stealthmunchkin’s latest email to the CEO of @btcares
  
  It’s not the despair; it’s the hope.
  (tags: phone )
• Who wants to live forever?
  
  News from Jay Lake; not unexpected, but awful.
  (tags: death )

Current:
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (half-way through) – last of the Christmas presents
Doors Open by Ian Rankin (just started) – second last of the Rankin books
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (just started) – topped the non-fiction poll
Toy Soldiers by Paul Leonard (nearly finished) – next New Adventure
The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash (halfway through) – insomnia reading

Last books finished
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Redshirts, by John Scalzi
Deadly Reunion, by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts

Next books
Miradal: erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud by Hans Baeté et al (birthday book)
The Peoples of Middle Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake

Books acquired in last week:
Miradal: erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud by Hans Baeté et al
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort by Ivan Petrus Adriaenssens

LT Unread books tally: 448

• Hitting Back
  
  About domestic violence.
  (tags: crime sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Abyei on the edge after killing of top Dinka leader
  
  Appalling – UN offers military protection to local chief, Sudanese militia kill him anyway.
  (tags: southsudan )
• Sylvia Browne: is she for real?
  
  Short answer: no. Longer answer: yeugh, what a revolting and disgusting person.
  (tags: wankers )
• After Belfast, Boston
  
  Lisa reflects.
  (tags: northernireland wanton terror )
• Argonauts of the incredibly specific: anthropological field notes on the Liberal Democrat animal
  
  Brilliant but very long: "Do you know what a Blue Letter is? Do you think Focus is a noun? What does the term Shuttleworth mean to you? Have you met Erlend?" Yes, that last one is the real test!
  (tags: ukpolitics libdems )
• There’s little chance of Britain leaving the EU
  
  Peter Kellner (Mr Ashton): referendum (if it happens) will pass.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• A new “why” for climate action
  
  The view from Costa Rica.
  (tags: climatechange )

• Why are there so many female academics in Turkey?
  
  …and so few in Belgium?
  (tags: belgium sexandgenderandsexuality )
• The weirdest sentence in the U.S. constitution
  
  Are Senators sacrosanct?
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Would You Click the Link in This Email That Apparently Tricked the AP?
  
  Lots of people do.
  (tags: hacking )
• Handless Kazakhstan Man Denied British Visa for Lack of Fingerprints
  
  Taking the British government’s war on the disabled to a new front.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Arctic Ocean ‘acidifying rapidly’
  
  *gulp!*
  (tags: climate change )

• Doctor Who fan buys 14,000 books of the TV show on eBay for schools
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: doctorwho )

This year’s Hugo nominations seem to have produced more than the usual grumbling (I am away from base, so won’t link to any of it, and if you are interested you have probably seen it). I admit that I too found the Best Novel shortlist a bit uninspiring. I don’t want to overstate this; I am used to there being a couple of entries on it that leave me cold, and this year I found points of redemption even in my least favourite nominee. Conversely, however, I do normally find that there is at least one nominee that does catch my enthusiasm and which I can then cheer for. That did not really happen this year. As ever, I found the BSFA list more to my taste, which I guess is not so very surprising, in that I have more in common with more of the selectorate.

Anyway, my ranking in this category is:

5) Redshirts, by John Scalzi – a two-joke book, executed in Scalzi’s usual style, which a lot of people clearly like more than I do.

4) Blackout, by “Mira Grant” – more running around to avoid zombies, with characters unsuccessfully seeking closure.

3) 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson – surprisingly tedious romp round the Solar System, wise people from off-Earth kindly decide to fix the planet.

2) Throne Of The Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed – sword and sorcery in richly imagined Arabian-style culture, not very surprising plot and characters.

1) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold – fun, and nearly as good as some of the stuff she wrote twenty years ago.

See also: Best Novella | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

“…the most rational explanation for what does go on in this ship is that a television show intrudes on our reality and warps it. But that’s not the worst thing about it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Finn said. “If that’s not the worst thing, what is?”
“That as far as I can tell,” Jenkins said, “it’s not actually a very good show.”

This is by some way the most widely owned of this year’s Hugo nominees, and it ticks a lot of fannish boxes so will probably win. I myself will put it last. This is basically a two-joke book, and the punch line to the second joke (above) is delivered less than a third of the way through; all the characters sound the same; and we don’t ever get an Explanation for what is going on. Having said that, the third of the three codas, a time-travel parallel worlds love story, is far superior to the rest and I would have given it a much higher ranking if it were nominated on its own in some other category.

• Oh! The places you CAN go!
  
  My former colleague Vibeke (@GenderHopes) writes to her daughters.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• de Brontës in Brussel
  
  Audio tour (in English) of Brussels places associated with Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
  (tags: )
• UK Local Elections 2013 – Live Data, Live Results Maps…
  
  Varying degrees of penetrability (thanks to redfiona99).
  (tags: )
• Orphan works – the new law in the UK
  
  Francis explains.
  (tags: copyright )
• GPs ‘flooded’ with letter requests due to UK benefit reforms
  
  in Scotland, so presumably elsewhere too.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• 102 hours in pursuit of Marathon bombing suspects
  
  As it happened.
  (tags: waronterror )

• Cyprus and the memory stick
  
  Peter Birks explains it all.
  (tags: Cyprus economics )
• Genesis of the Remembrance
  
  Davros learns the reason for every Dalek defeat. "Bugger!"
  (tags: doctorwho funny )
• Is the flags row running out of steam?
  
  My views on the 2014 Belfast elections.
  (tags: northernireland )
• The Yeni Tzami, Salonica’s esoteric mosque
  
  The legacy of the Dönmeh.
  (tags: islam Greece )
• UN report on killer robots (PDF)
  
  Disappointingly fails to cite Asimov.
  (tags: robots )

5) Fringe: Letters of Transit

As with last year, I had actually seen four of the five nominees on (or very shortly after) first broadcast, which left me with only Fringe to catch up with. It’s not my show, and there were obviously lots of payoffs for narrative lines of which I was utterly unaware, but there was plenty of interesting stuff going on and one or two good lines, certainly enough to justify putting it above “No Award”.

4) Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks

It gets really difficult after that. I loved all four of the other nominees and one gets into really spurious grounds for ranking one below another. My spurious reason for putting Asylum of the Daleks below the other three is that I didn’t think it handled the Rory/Amy relationship well.

3) Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan

Now it gets even more difficult. I loved The Angels Take Manhattan too, but my spurious reason for putting it below the other two is that the payoff for Amy and Rory’s departure was a bit disappointing; they could easily enough travel away from New York to see the Doctor again.

2) Game of Thrones: Blackwater

Only one episode from the second series of GoT got nominated this year, but this was clearly the best set piece: an excellent chapter from the book, steered to the screen by GRRM himself. I felt the ending was fumbled, but otherwise really enjoyed it. I would not be at all surprised to see this win in San Antonio.

1) Doctor Who: The Snowmen

But my vote will go to The Snowmen, which ticked many of my fannish boxes, and has set up the mystery of Clara which we are still waiting to see resolved. I don’t think one should be rude even to Sontarans, but otherwise I fully approved. In any case, I will cheer if any of my top four wins, and shrug in bemusement if the voters opt for Fringe.

See also: Best Novella

Does anyone have recommendations on how (or indeed whether) one should start reading Perry Rhodan? Is it a continuous narrative where you need to know what happened from the beginning, or are there particular arcs you can jump into (and if so, which)? Or should one just start with the latest and keep going from there?

• 22 Unbelievable Places that are Hard to Believe Really Exist
  
  Brilliant photographs.
  (tags: photos )
• Azerbaijan’s government rolls out new defamation bill, leaving public figures free to gag online critics
  
  Democracy inaction!
  (tags: azerbaijan )

Current (all just started)
Redshirts, by John Scalzi
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Deadly Reunion, by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Last books finished
Blackout, by “Mira Grant”
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Next books
A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Niall McGregor
Toy Soldiers, by Paul Leonard

“You said you were my personal physician.”
“That’s correct.”
“So tell me: How long have I been a clone?”
Dr. Thomas dropped his pen.

The last of the trilogy about political bloggers after the zombie apocalypse, Blackout resurrects Georgia Mason, killed at the end of the first book, and reunites her with her brother Shaun to sort the world out (where “the world” should be understood as largely coextensive with the forty-eight contiguous states). There are some nice vignettes of the post-disaster society, but an awful lot of pointless running around to get our characters in place for the two denouements mid-book and at the end. I’m feeling a bit uninspired by the Best Novel nominations this year.

(NB this is the third book with this title which had failed to impress me in the last few years – see also Connie Willis and Oli Smith.)

Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.!

A quote which is not so representative of the book, but will strike a chord with anyone who has ever grappled with insomnia.

This is of course a classic, but was also one of the books listed in the Locus Poll of Best 20th Century Fantasy which spurred me to get it. I was familiar with Bradbury’s style, both lyrical and stark at the same time, from The Martian Chronicles and other short stories; I am not actually sure that I had read one of his novels before. It is an effective tale of a creepy carnival coming to a small Mid-Western town, the central characters being two teenage boys and the older father of one of them; apart from the spooky adventure there are musings on adulthood and aging. I see that Bradbury was in his early 40s when he wrote this; that’s the point when the limits of your lifespan really start to hit most people. I enjoyed it a lot.

1920:

2013:

(Allied bombing in 1944, followed by a 1976 fire in what was left.)

There used to be a big megalith south of Tienen.

It’s not there now.

(Dr Kempeneers reckons that this is the site, but basically there are no big megaliths anywhere else in the vicinity either.)

Non-fiction 2 (YTD 9)
Chicks Dig Comics, ed. Lynne M. Thomas and Sigrid Ellis
TARDIS Eruditorum, vol 1: William Hartnell, by Phil Sandifer

Fiction (non-sf) 2 (YTD 7)
Bring Up The Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome

sf (non-Who) 9 (YTD 27)
Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed
The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie
San Diego 2014, by “Mira Grant”
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, by Nancy Kress
On a Red Station, Drifting, by Aliette de Bodard
The Emperor’s Soul, by Brandon Sanderson
1632, by Eric Flint
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
Blackout, by “Mira Grant”

Who 5 (YTD 22)
The Eye of the Giant, by Christopher Bulis
Summer Falls by ‘Amelia Williams’ (James Goss)
Zamper, by Gareth Roberts
Father Time, by Lance Parkin
The Roots of Evil, by Philip Reeve

Comics 2 (YTD 8)
Aldébaran 3: La Photo, by Leo
Tesseract, by Tony Lee

~5,500 pages (YTD 19,000)
6/20 (YTD 20/73) by women (Thomas/Ellis, Mantel, “Grant”x2, Kress, de Bodard)
2/20 (YTD 2/73) by PoC (Ahmed, de Bodard)

Rereads: Swallows and Amazons (1, YTD 4)
Acquired 2011 or before: 4 (YTD 25) – The Eye of the Giant, Zamper, 1632, Father Time
Acquired 2012: 2 (YTD 14) – Swallows and Amazons, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Acquired 2013: 14 (YTD 34) – The Roots of Evil, On A Red Station, Drifting, La Photo, Summer Falls, Blackout, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Throne of the Crescent Moon, Chicks Dig Comics, The Emperor’s Soul, San Diego 2014, TARDIS Eruditorum 1, Tessaract, The Blade Itself, Bring up the Bodies

Reading now:
Redshirts, by John Scalzi

Coming Next (perhaps):
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor
Doors Open, by Ian Rankin
The Last Mughal, by William Dalrymple
The Peoples of Middle-Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
Daystar and Shadow, by James Weldon Johnson
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
Starship Fall, by Eric Brown
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
Deadly Reunion, by Terrance Dicks
Toy Soldiers, by Paul Leonard
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake
Final Sacrifice, by Tony Lee

My cousin Brian.

• Women win 3 out of 3 seats in Malta’s European by-elections
  
  From 0% to 50% of the 6 Maltese MEPs!
  (tags: eu malta sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Emma Bonino is Italy’s new foreign minister
  
  "After months of bad news from Italy, at last we have some good news".
  (tags: eu italy )
• Hank Johnson: Imagine a World Without Balloons
  
  US Representative’s impassioned plea for helium.
  (tags: uspolitics helium )

The only thing that saved Wallenstein’s life was the extreme range.

This is the story of a coal-mining West Virginia community which finds itself transported back in time to 1632 (actually 1631 but it’s the following year before the action starts) in the middle of Germany during the Thirty Years War. Using good old ‘Murrican know-how, the townsfolk develop representative democracy, religious freedom and cheap banking, and use their locally available arsenal to ally with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to help him win the war (and avoid death) fifteen years early. There is much loving description of a cute girl who blows people’s heads off (finishing with Wallenstein), and similar battle scenes; the transported Americans make it through almost 600 pages of fighting without suffering a major casualty. As with another time-travel war book co-authored by Flint, his protagonists never lose an argument or a battle. There is only one black guy in town and he happens to be the doctor, so that means that any discussion of racism is largely confined to the Americans bringing enlightenment to the anti-Semites of central Europe. People who like that sort of thing will like this, but I am not really sure that I am one of them.

(Interesting note: Mannington WV, the place on which the town of Grantville is explicitly based, had an African American population of 2.54% in the 2000 census and 0.2% in 2010; a drop from roughly 50 people to roughly 4. I wonder what happened?)