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More from Maggie (and a colleague)
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My friend Maggie Fick reports.
Gibbon Chapter XXXIX: Theodoric and Boethius
Theodoric the Ostrogoth conquers Italy with the agreement of the Eastern Empire and consent of the local Romans; he co-opts two remarkable Latin statesmen, Boethius and Cassiodorus, to his regime but the former is executed. It’s a well-written chapter – frankly a bit better structured than the somewhat rambling end to the original third volume – though the accounts are of a dull set of Eastern successions and then a competent but unexciting consolidation of power in Italy and points west by Theodoric. If anything I think Gibbon could have made more of the remarkable circumstance of Theodoric appointing two of the leading scholars of the day as his chief ministers. I expand on this point further.
Getting rid of Amazon; problems with The Book Depository
A year ago I deleted all my book reviews from Amazon. Yesterday and today, sparked by Amazon’s antics in Illinois (which I first learned about from the estimable
I’ve moved most of my online purchase of new books to The Book Depository, at the recommendation of
Much more seriously, several people to whom I sent the wishlist link – supposedly http://www.bookdepository.com/wishlist/498854/Nicholas-Whyte – were unable to see anything other than the Book Deposityr front page; my mother emailed The Book Depository for assistance and was given the extraordinary answer that “The only way you can access other people’s wishlists, is if you have their account details to login” which rather removes the point of having them! So in the end I had to re-circulate the link to my Amazon wishlist, if I wanted to get any Christmas presents.
The other annoying thing that then emerged about The Book Depository’s system is that, unlike Amazon, when you buy a book for someone it doesn’t disappear from their wishlist. This meant that when books did arrive from The Book Depository, I had to manually delete them from both lists. There was also the obvious risk of two people getting me the same book. So basically, The Book Depository’s wishlist system sucks, and clearly hasn’t been designed with actual customers in mind.
(The service is also a bit low-end: “We cannot offer any tailored gift options to customers. All of our orders will be accompanied by a packing slip which features the email address of the customer who placed the order, and the cost of the order.” So your present won’t be wrapped but will have the price tag. Classy.)
I see that The Book Depository also has an affiliate scheme, but I’m not sure if I want to invest the time and effort into adding their links to my website, or any other space I control, until I feel a bit more confident that they are getting their act together. And I’m on the lookout still for competent alternatives.
Whoniversaries 9 January: The Rescue #2, Terror of the Autons #2, Jack takes over Torchwood
None.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
9 January 1965: broadcast of “Desperate Measures”, second episode of the story we now call The Rescue. Koquillion is unmasked as Bennett; the Didonians kill him, and Vicki leaves with the Tardis.
9 January 1971: broadcast of second episode of Terror of the Autons. McDermott is killed by the chair; the older Farrel by the doll; and the Doctor and the Brigadier are abducted by Auton policemen.
iii) date specified in canon
9 January 2000: Jack Harkness becomes leader of Torchwood Three, as explained in Fragments (2008).
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-9-2011
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'I will not identify the minister unless he chooses to put up his hand. However I should clarify two points. Firstly, the reference to Tokaji wine was intended to give a sense of the flow of time and of argument over an extended conversation, not to imply that the minister's tongue was loosened by the flowing alcohol. My interlocutor was sober; which makes his admission all the more brave and interesting. The second point is: what precisely was the minister referring to when he acknowledged that the government had “fucked it up”? He has called me to explain that he was only talking about the government's presentation of its case: the timing of the law (on the eve of Hungary's EU presidency) and the failure to appreciate quite what a row it would provoke in the rest of Europe. He still stands by the need for the legislation and its substance. I accept his clarification.'
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'Over a long dinner assisted by the expertise of the specially-appointed “EU presidency sommelier” one minister first claimed the media law was no different from other European countries. He later admitted that it was, indeed, more stringent than similar laws elsewhere. “You have to understand, this is central Europe, where there is anti-Semitism and anti-gypsy sentiment. The government has to protect people.” By the time the sweet Tokaji dessert wine was poured he conceded: “OK, we fucked it up."'
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"The reactions to WikiLeaks share one abiding characteristic, so obvious that it can easily be overlooked, namely an unwillingness to address with any sophistication or seriousness the complex and everchanging world that the US — and all of us — must now deal with. The prevailing and lazy assumption is implied but all too clear: that the foreign policy élite, and government, should be left to get on with the job, with whatever secrecy that they demand. … So far WikiLeaks has produced a reaction all too symptomatic of our troubled democracy. Instead of informed debate, hysteria and told-you-so complacency. This reaction is perhaps the most important — and devastating — consequence of WikiLeaks, and the one that should give us the most pause."
Seanad Éireann (and a bit about the House of Lords)
I’ve been following up on the debate on reform of the Irish Senate, and came across the Irish Labour Party’s proposals for constitutional reform which has an excellent three-page summary at the end of why the Seanad should simply be abolished. A lot of the analysis is also relevant to the British debate on reforming the House of Lords:
Why have two Chambers?
There are really only three arguments for a bicameral parliament. The first is as part of a federal structure, which is not relevant to this State [ie Ireland].
The second argument in favour of bicameralism is a desire to put some sort of check on the popular principle embodied in a popularly elected house. In emerging democracies in particular, there may be a perceived need to safeguard a process towards democratisation and consolidation of the rule of law and to impose checks on the exercise of power in a society where a simple majority-rule system may constitute a threat.
However… the traditional view of the Seanad as providing a check on the legislative impetuosity of the people’s representatives in the Dáil no longer represented the reality of power. Legislative proposals were now drawn up and shaped within government departments; consultations with interest groups and experts made for a high degree of consensus before they reached the Dáil. Consequently it was the Dáil which now provides the check on the main promoter of legislation – which is nowadays the government.
The third argument for an upper house is a political philosophy that justifies bicameralism because of a need to represent the citizen as a member of “civil society”, socialised by the smaller constituent communities which the citizen forms and to which he or she belongs. On this argument, the majoritarian principle in a unicameral system is undemocratic in a pluralist society, because minorities are excluded and unrepresented.
In all cases, clearly, an upper chamber must be established on different principles than the lower chamber.
There are two essential aspects: a different institutional basis and a different political makeup. Otherwise bicameralism is superfluous, as the second chamber, as de Valera feared – and as came to pass – would merely be a redundant duplicate of the first.
In other words, bicameralism makes sense only where there are differences of function between the two houses of parliament, derived from differences in their composition. Where, for example, direct popular representation in the lower house, founded mostly on functioning political parties, would be complemented in an upper house by representation of interests, founded on institutionally organised social interest groups.
But if the same system of general election applies to each chamber; if the political parties have the same institutional relationship within each chamber; if the members of both chambers have joint party caucuses and are subject to the same party whips and so on; then the second chamber loses its rationale because, as a duplication of the first house, it has nothing additional to offer.
I fear that the proposals I’ve seen for electing the House of Lords fall very much into that trap. My own view is that review of draft laws by independently selected experts, on a constitutional but consultative basis, which is pretty much what the British House of Lords has evolved into already, is probably the best reason for having a second chamber though without the historical flimflam attaching to the current arrangements. Interestingly the Irish Labour Party’s document indicates that there are also similar elements developing in the Irish system:
In a relatively political mature society which is not federal; which is not an emerging democracy; where the rule of law is not threatened by majoritarianism but is maintained by the Constitution and the judiciary; and which is not sharply divided along ethnic or religious lines, it is not obvious whether or which of the numerous interests within the state should be institutionally represented or in what form. And, quite separate and apart from the Seanad, for much of recent Irish history, representative functional and vocational groups were involved in the decision-making processes of government, albeit on an entirely non-constitutional basis. Such processes are reflected in bodies such as the National Economic and Social Council underpinned by the National Economic and Social Development Office Act 2006, and to be streamlined following the MacCarthy report.
If the reality is that the NESC works well the logical course of action at this stage is to abolish Seanad Éireann on grounds of redundancy. Other institutions are doing a job originally intended for it.
I blink a little at this because of course there is a European Economic and Social Committee functioning as part of the EU; I’ve never been very clear about how useful it is (meaning that I suspect it may not be), but I have to admit that my own interests have been in the area where EcoSoc has least to say, ie foreign policy. I haven’t followed the development of the equivalent Irish body at all.
If I were voting in the imminent Irish election, Labour would get my vote on the strength of their concluding section:
Conclusion
In conclusion, if Ireland is to remain a representative democracy, then for all its faults Dáil Éireann is the essential component of our constitutional framework. There must be a parliamentary chamber composed of the directly elected representatives of the people, which chooses the government and holds it to account and approves legislation. The Seanad, on the other hand, is not essential. It is an optional extra. Because it is not directly elected by the people, its existence is not central to the concept of representative democracy.
The second house must therefore have some other, additional function. It must in some way contribute added value to the process. It has to justify its existence. If the justification is inadequate, then it should go.
The reality is that there is popular indifference about the future of the Seanad. The reasons are clear enough; they have persisted since the Seanad’s establishment in its present form in 1937. Quite simply, no one is sure what purpose the Seanad is meant to serve.
We in the Labour Party have taken a long, hard look at Seanad Éireann, both as members, former members and colleagues of members of that body. We believe the popular indifference is justified.
The case for a Seanad has failed. It is ultimately the decision for the people but our judgement is that the Seanad should be abolished.
Incidentally, I know that Fine Gael have the same policy; I find their new website impossible to navigate, their old one has been taken off-line, and the policy document (when I eventually found a cached copy) is much less well argued than the Labour version.
Hungary v the Economist
This half-year’s Hungarian presidency of the EU has got off to a duff start: a new law on state regulation of the media has caused a great deal of controversy, perceived by many people as falling well short of the EU’s human rights standards. I confess I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention up to yesterday, concentrating on enjoying my winter vacation and then mopping up backlogs when I returned to work. I don’t much like the Hungarian PM, Victor Orbán, who I met once a long time ago and whose career I have since been following with a gloomy fascination; but I have a great deal of respect for the Hungarian diplomats and other officials who I deal with on external affairs issues in Brussels, who tend to be helpful, well-informed and realistic. On several issues that I care about, Hungary has been, is and will be an important player in the internal EU debate.
But a couple of interesting pieces came my way
The head of the new National Media and Communications Authority (NMHH) and concurrently established Media Council was unilaterally appointed by the Prime Minister. The four members of the body were all nominated by the governing Fidesz party. The Council has wide regulatory authority over public and private media, TV and radio stations, printed and online newspapers – even blogs. All have to register with the Council as a prerequisite to operate. The authorities have wide-ranging power to impose penalties if they deem media content to infringe on “public morality” or “constitutional order.” They can fine media they find guilty of “offending” any minority as well as any “community” or “group,” including “the majority.”
Most ominously for freedom of the press, this ruling party-controlled body has the power to impose fines for “imbalanced news coverage.” Since January 1, when the media law entered into force, legal proceedings have been initiated against a minor radio station that broadcast music deemed to be obscene and against a major private TV station for airing a reality show. Penalties can be so severe that they have the potential to bankrupt some print and electronic media outlets. If the Council deems the issue “grave” enough – and no definition of “grave” can be found in the law – the “culpable” company and its owners’ companies will be denied the right to apply for licenses in the future. And under the law, the fundamental principle that the media can protect its sources is now dead on arrival.
There’s more gloomy analysis form Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post. “Charlemagne” (Anton La Guardia), the Economist’s EU correspondent, has been providing much the best coverage of the issue, with a piece posted on Thursday, his column in the Economist print edition yesterday and two more blog pieces later on (here and here). In the second piece, Charlemagne tries to get inside the internal Hungarian story fo the affair, and ends with this paragraph:
Over a long dinner assisted by the expertise of the specially-appointed “EU presidency sommelier” one minister first claimed the media law was no different from other European countries. He later admitted that it was, indeed, more stringent than similar laws elsewhere. “You have to understand, this is central Europe, where there is anti-Semitism and anti-gypsy sentiment. The government has to protect people.” By the time the sweet Tokaji dessert wine was poured he conceded: “OK, we fucked it up.”
In the feverish central European media environment, this last paragraph itself has become a story, with Charlemagne posting a clarification this morning:
I will not identify the minister unless he chooses to put up his hand. However I should clarify two points. Firstly, the reference to Tokaji wine was intended to give a sense of the flow of time and of argument over an extended conversation, not to imply that the minister’s tongue was loosened by the flowing alcohol. My interlocutor was sober; which makes his admission all the more brave and interesting.
The second point is: what precisely was the minister referring to when he acknowledged that the government had “fucked it up”? He has called me to explain that he was only talking about the government’s presentation of its case: the timing of the law (on the eve of Hungary’s EU presidency) and the failure to appreciate quite what a row it would provoke in the rest of Europe. He still stands by the need for the legislation and its substance. I accept his clarification.
It didn’t take much googling of Hungarian news sources to identify the minster as Tamás Fellegi (here, if you can penetrate the Magyar), the minister for National Development (listed as non-party rather than as a member of the majority Fidesz), himself a media tycoon.
As I said at the top, I like the Hungarians in general, and where their foreign policy agenda intersects with my own interests they seem to be doing the right thing. I would like to think that they can sort this one out, and cannot but agree with the Economist’s conclusion:
Mr Orbán could do himself a world of good if he, like my ministerial interlocutor, were to admit that the media law had been a mistake and, even better, pledge to review it…
January Books 5) Doctor Who Annual 1979
But in general the 1979 annual seems to be continuing the track of improvement on previous years. The fiction again is well-written and actually fairly substantial, the prose stories taking up 35 pages out of 64 and the comic strips another 12; the comic strips seem to have absorbed the spirit of 2000 AD in both style and substance, very flashy and busy but actually telling a story at the same time; and apart from my whine about the artwork the characterisation of Leela and the Doctor is generally (though not consistently) accurate. I was intrigued by one of the prose filler pieces as well, about the ‘Skyship’, which I hadn’t heard of but turns out to be the ancestor of the Skyship 600 airship which is in fact in commercial use today. (So, yes, I was actually educated by the educational bits.)
Most of the stories fail the Bechdel test at the first hurdle, in that there is no female character other than Leela; the sole exception is the first of the comic strips, “The Power”, which features a character called Princess Azula, but she and Leela do not have a conversation, so it fails the second hurdle. One can perhaps query whether the Bechdel test is fair on stories where most of the characters are non-human, though I think that if the non-humans are clearly gendered it’s not unreasonable.
January Books 4) Heart of TARDIS, by Dave Stone
When I was involved with the postal game hobby, “Dave Stone” was an in-joke, a pseudonym used by zine editors to conceal the real author of some mildly controversial piece of opining (usually by said editors themselves). When I first encountered the name of the Doctor Who author, I assumed that this might be continuation of the same tradition, but Wikipedia and other soruces assure me that this is not the case, and Mr Stone is a real person. This is the first of his books that I have read, though I’ve listened to two of his Bernice Summerfield audios (liked one, not the other).
It’s a Past Doctor Adventure featuring Two, Victoria and Jamie in one time-line, and Four, Romana I and K9 (plus Brigadier and Benton) in another, dealing with a weird space-time anomaly which traps the earlier Doctor in a small town based on the Simpsons. I thought there were some good characetr moments – especially for the two Doctors and the female characters – but rather lost track of the plot. Apparently there are lots of Simpsons in-jokes which sailed over my head. Indeed I felt that a lot of the book was the author thinking he was being funny, but it didn’t really work for me.
A definite Bechdel pass though. (Having said which, I accept the caveats in this article, pointed out to me by
Whoniversaries 8 January: William Hartnell, DMP #9, Day of the Daleks #2, Face of Evil #2
i) births and deaths
8 January 1908: they don’t get more fundamental than this: birth of William Hartnell, who played the First Doctor from 1963 to 1966, and returned for The Three Doctors in 1972-73.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
8 January 1971: broadcast of second episode of Day of the Daleks. Jo is captured and brought to the 22nd Century; the Doctor is confronted by a Dalek emerging from the time vortex.
8 January 1977: broadcast of second episode of The Face of Evil. The Doctor passes the Test of the Horda; Xoanon unleashes the invisible monsters on the Sevateem.
Doctor Who Rewatch: 16
My rewatching of Old Who has now brought me to Season 15, the first season with no native earthlings on the Tardis.
It is a particularly good story for Leela, who is utterly exasperated by the screamy Adelaide (she does a brilliant eye-roll when Adelaide faints) and stuns the other Edwardians with her relaxed attitude to death; it makes her horror when Reuben-the-Rutan is unharmed by her knife all the more striking. It’s a bit un-Doctorish to wipe out the entire Rutan mothership as they land, but gives a satisfying bang at the end of the story.
But the giant prawn is a striking example of an ill-designed effect wrecking viewer enjoyment of the story (and this after several episodes of excellent model work). It’s not quite as catastrophic as the dinosaurs in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but that’s only because it’s in just one episode out of four rather than six out of six. Kim Newman has opined that this is the story where Doctor Who starts going downhill because of the introduction of K9; I disagree, but the moment when the giant prawn emerges at the end of the third episode is a low point in a season which doesn’t have a lot of high points.
(Also I’m a bit troubled by Leela and the infected Lowe driving the Tardis to get the unconscious Doctor to the Bi-Al asteroid. It’s out of character for the infected Lowe not to clobber Leela, it’s out of character for Leela to know how to pilot the Tardis, and it’s out of character for the Doctor to let anyone else do it. A sad precursor of the Tardis-as-taxi syndrome of the Fifth Doctor’s era.)
It’s also yet another brilliant story for Leela, by her creator Chris Boucher, who wrote three of the six stories featuring her and the Doctor without K9. She is great at challenging and teasing the Doctor, efficiently violent but also pragmatic, also just a little vain about her new dress. More on this later, but Jameson’s performance is tremendously enjoyable here as elsewhere.
The unchangeable factor is that the weather for the location filming was dull, so the story gets off to a tremendously dull start; it’s difficult to make the roof of a cigarette factory in Bristol look much like the top of a kilometer-high apartment block on Pluto, but it helps if the weather cooperates. I wonder if there’s also a bit of an unconscious assumption on my part that cuddly blurry film should represent contemporary Earth settings, and sharp-edged videotape the future; so the setting looks even more like Bristol than Pluto.
But the other factors were simply mistakes made by Holmes in the script and not sufficiently rounded off in the editing process. The story is simply very nasty. The rebels are really very unpleasant people, threatening to kill him and Leela; we don’t really see why the Doctor should choose to help such unlikeable (and otherwise unmemorable) individuals. The Company of course are even worse, which is OK since they are the baddies, but the attempted steaming of Leela is a really horrific prospect, much worse actually than any of the supposedly extreme violence of the previous season.
It does have its good points. The interplay between Gatherer Hade and the Collector is great fun (though again Holmes is usually smarter than to give all the good dialogue to the villains) and K9 gets to be very useful in his first proper story after joining the Tardis. Though even then, the framing narrative of the chess match in the console room doesn’t quite gel. I don’t think I’ll watch this one again, unless the DVD commentary is particularly good.
There are two problems with Underworld, both of which really manifest much more in the second half than the first. One is the persistent use of CSO to show the cast exploring the P7E world’s caves. Seen out of context, this is jarring and distracting; in the context of mid-70s Who, it is not quite as bad, apart from the awful scene at the start of the third episode where Leela, Idas and the Doctor float to the centre of the asteroid by vaguely waving their hands, which is the moment when the story was killed for me on first watching when I was ten and which has destroyed my suspension of disbelief every time I’ve rewatched it since. The second is that some of the cast are not very good. In particular, the Seers and their minions (as opposed to the Minyans) are very lack-lustre in their delivery, and Tom Baker stops pretending to take it seriously. It’s all rather reminiscent of The Sensorites, and not in a good way.
Then we have one of the best episode endings in the whole of Who when the Sontarans show up – and older viewers will recall the discussion of Gallifrey as a Sontaran military target back in The Time Warrior. This promising setup for the last two episodes is then completely wasted in 25 minutes of running around outside the Tardis followed by another 25 running around inside the Tardis. Nothing interesting is done by anyone, the Shobogans in particular turning out to be completely superfluous.
In addition, the stakes of the overall narrative of the Whoniverse are raised unfeasibly high – the key hidden from every President by every Chancellor (so no Chancellor ever became President? Did anyone tell Goth?) and the Weapon Too Terrible To Use (which, of course, is used) followed by Leela’s abrupt departure which at least reasonably well performed though it comes out of the blue. But I think I would recommend first-time viewers to stop at the fourth episode, and make up their own ending.
One of the things I love about Tom Baker as the Doctor is that he is so alien; there seems to have been a definite decision by Holmes and Hinchcliffe, followed by Graham Williams and his script editors, to make the companions alien as well. It’s a risk, of course; Leela could easily have been a one-joke character – think of Katarina, way back in 1965, who was rescued from the ruins of burning Troy and then killed off four episodes later during the Daleks’ Master Plan. Originally she was supposed to be only in The Face of Evil, and then only for a couple more stories, and of course Leela’s character is a bit limited in that the more she develops, the less she becomes like Leela, so she had a rather finite lifetime.
But Louise Jameson is superb – it’s not surprising that of the Old Who companions not already established professionally, she had much the best subsequent career. She lifts the one-joke savage to a fascinating human being – rather like Tom Baker’s Doctor, we keep watching because we really want to know what she will do next.
Fellow Leela fans will want to track down her six spinoff novels and even more so the fantastic Gallifrey audio from Big Finish which bring her together with Romana II, both K9s, and various others (including Romana I and the Prosecutor from Trial of a Time Lord). I have been less convinced by her appearances in the Companion Chronicles.
So, a season where Hinchcliffe has gone and Holmes is going; where several stories simply lose their way after decent starts, for a combination of script and technical reasons. I hate to be harsh, but the last season with similar difficulties was the last Letts/Dicks season in 1973-74, just before Hinchcliffe and Holmes took over. My memory of the Key to Time season is that it was mostly better; at an episode a day, I should be reporting on it in the first week of February.
< An Unearthly Child – The Aztecs | The Sensorites – The Romans | The Web Planet – Galaxy 4 | Mission To The Unknown – The Gunfighters | The Savages – The Highlanders | The Underwater Menace – Tomb of the Cybermen | The Abominable Snowmen – The Wheel In Space | The Dominators – The Space Pirates | The War Games – Terror of the Autons | The Mind of Evil – The Curse of Peladon | The Sea Devils – Frontier in Space | Planet of the Daleks – The Monster of Peladon | Planet of the Spiders – Revenge of the Cybermen | Terror of the Zygons – The Seeds of Doom | The Masque of Mandragora – The Talons of Weng-Chiang | Horror of Fang Rock – The Invasion of Time | The Ribos Operation – The Armageddon Factor | Destiny of the Daleks – Shada | The Leisure Hive – The Keeper of Traken | Logopolis – The Visitation | Black Orchid – Mawdryn Undead | Terminus – The Awakening | Frontios – Attack of the Cybermen | Vengeance on Varos – In A Fix With Sontarans | The Mysterious Planet – Paradise Towers | Delta and the Bannermen – The Greatest Show in the Galaxy | Battlefield – The TV Movie >
Life expectancy and GDP per capita over the last 200 years
Brilliant video presentation of world viday statistics. (hat-tip to
Whoniversaries 7 January: Francis De Wolff, Geoffrey Bayldon, Highlanders #4, Underworld #1
7 January 1913: birth of Francis De Wolff, who played Vasor in The Keys of Marinus (1964) and Agamemnon in The Myth Makers (1965).
7 January 1924: birth of Geoffrey Bayldon, who played Organon in The Creature from the Pit (1979) and the alternate timeline Doctor-who-never-left-Gallifrey in Big Finish audios Auld Mortality (2003) and A Storm of Angels (2005). Also Catweazle.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
7 January 1967: broadcast of fourth episode of The Highlanders. The Doctor rescues everyone, Grey is led off to jail, and Jamie leaves with the Tardis crew.
7 January 1978: broadcast of first episode of Underworld. The Doctor lands on the Minyans’ ship, and they are bombarded by space debris. I watched this again last week and the first two episodes are not as bad as I remembered (the second two, however, are).
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-7-2011
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Looking at the question objectively, I think we'd have to agree that the female breast, however interesting in situ, would make for a singularly misshapen champagne glass. But you know how it is with these male fantasies.
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Speculation on past and future other Doctors, including Rowan Atkinson (who turns 55 on 7 January).
Barquentine
Following on from the Sowerby resonance of just over a year ago, I now find myself having just finished one book and reading two more which feature a character called Barquentine. Granted, Gormenghast is the sequel to Titus Groan so in fact it’s the same character, the heir and successor of Sourdust, the Master of Ritual; but I was then startled to encounter his cousin or descendant Susan Barquentine in Dave Stone’s Doctor Who novel Heart of TARDIS. Both characters are sinister and somewhat faily (Mervyn Peake’s Barquentine is sinister partly because he has a wooden leg and scoliosis, the Dave Stone one is a sinister succubus-like entity) but I’ll discuss those problems later. What interests me now is, has anyone reading this ever actually met a real person whose real name was Barquentine?
Links
My Delicio.us posting skipped a beat yesterday but seems to be back on form today. These were the links it should have posted:
What, child? What child? –
Because I’m Clever – Nasty Canasta on the Tenth Doctor
New Year… New Money – “So as Estonia enters the new year, it adopts a new currency. In fact, given the horrors of Estonian history over the past century, it is the ninth time that Estonia has been forced to change its money: 1910: Tsarist Roubles, 1916: Occupation Marks, 1918: Estonian Marks, 1928: Estonian Kroon, 1940: Soviet Rouble, 1941: Occupation Marks, 1944: Soviet Roubles, 1992: Estonian Kroon. The difference is that this time the symbolism is one of peaceful prosperity and not of occupation.”
Chicks Dig the Eleventh Doctor – Tara O’Shea and Lynne Thomas on the Eleventh Doctor
Fezzes Aren’t Cool – Mark Waid on the Eleventh Doctor
MiG-29s for sale
If you have $8.5 million to spare, the Moldovans would like to sell you half a dozen warplanes (not used since 1997 though).
Wakefield latest
From the British Medical Journal this week:
the paper was in fact an elaborate fraud… not one of the 12 cases reported in the 1998 Lancet paper was free of misrepresentation or undisclosed alteration, and that in no single case could the medical records be fully reconciled with the descriptions, diagnoses, or histories published in the journal… A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he [Wakefield] wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction… Wakefield has been given ample opportunity either to replicate the paper’s findings, or to say he was mistaken. He has declined to do either.” – Fiona Godlee, editor in chief, Jane Smith, deputy editor, Harvey Marcovitch, associate editor
How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed – Brian Deer
Everything about this case fills me with disgust and rage.
Whoniversaries 6 January
6 January 1955: birth of Rowan Atkinson, who played the Ninth Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death.
6 January 2009: death of John Scott Martin, Dalek operator and player of many parts in Old Who.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
6 January 1968: broadcast of third episode of The Enemy of the World. The one surviving episode of the story, with Denes kept prisoner in a corridor (!), Victoria working in the kitchen, and Salamander realising that something is up.
6 January 1973: broadcast of second episode of The Three Doctors. The Second Doctor, the Brigadier, Benton and the Tardis are transported to Omega’s world to join the Third Doctor and Jo.
6 January 1979: broadcast of third episode of The Power of Kroll. The Swampies try to execute Romana, the Doctor and Rohm-Dutt, but they manage to escape by screaming; and Kroll rises from the deep.
6 January 1982: broadcast of second episode of Warriors of the Deep. The Silurians attack the seabase and the Doctor and Tegan are trapped by the Myrka.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-6-2011
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"FPTP fails on its own terms"
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"Conspiracy theories are often used to justify political actions. This is especially true in Russia where the 1990s are regularly portrayed as the decade when the West set out deliberately to 'weaken and humiliate' Russia… But when it comes to western motives and policy, there is one problem with the Putin and Karaganov line of argument. It just does not accord with the facts. "
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God, I used to dream about that sort of thing when I was ten!
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The problems of the recent Supreme Court ruling
January Books 3) Sisters of Sinai, by Janet Soskice
Back when I was an undergraduate I spent two years living in the “Colony”, the sprawl of buildings owned by Clare College at the foot of Castle Hill. The central building of the complex is a late Victorian mansion called Castlebrae, which had the following inscription on a plaque in the front hall:
| This house was originally the home of DR AGNES SMITH LEWIS (1843-1926) and DR MARGARET DUNLOP GIBSON (1843–1920) Inseparable twins, tireless travellers, distinguished Arabic & Syriac scholars. Lampada Tradam. [Let me hand on the torch] |
I never went much to Castlebrae (see melancholy footnote at the end of this review) but was always intrigued by the plaque and hope that some day I would find out the story behind it. Thanks to Janet Soskice’s book, Sisters Of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels, I now know much more: the Smith sisters, Agnes and Margaret, born in Scotland and fabulously rich, developed a strong interest in the roots of ancient scripture and had the means, motivation and ability to cultivate the monks of St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, where in 1892 they discovered a palimpsest which contained the oldest Syriac text of the Gospels known today. Then in 1896 they alerted Jewish scholars to the existence of the Cairo Genizah, which is still being transcribed in Cambridge to this day (see Mark Glickman’s awestruck account of a visit to the Porter’s Lodge at Castlebrae). For these efforts the University of Cambridge gave them no official recognition at all (it was not until 1921 that women were even awarded degrees for which they had qualified, and not until 1948 that they were given formal equality with men in the university). They also founded Westminster College, which nestles at the corner of Madingley Road. Janet Soskice has made it a fascinating story of women infiltrating the intellectual establishment (granted, rich women who had no children and no need to actually work) in the social and geopolitical context of the day. Strongly recommended.
One small point that interested me personally was reference to Sir Robert Ball, the Irish astronomer, as being a fellow-worshipper with the twins at the small Cambridge Presbyterian church (which opened in 1891). Ball, a Protestant from Youghal, Co. Cork, and former professor at Trinity College Dublin, must surely have been brought up Church of Ireland rather than Presbyterian; in addition I happen to know, because he wrote about this in a letter to Oliver Lodge which I have seen, that he was in fact an atheist, but deliberately concealed this from his very devout wife. Her father was from Belfast and I guess it’s therefore more likely that she was a Presbyterian, so presumably Ball himself mixed with the church circle (and probably attended even though he did not believe). You’ll find them both buried under a large Celtic cross in the cemetery off Huntingdon Road. John Couch Adams, Ball’s predecessor in the Cambridge chair who famously failed to discover the planet Neptune, lies under another Celtic cross not far away (his wife was also Irish).
Both of the Smith sisters married rather late (Agnes in 1883 and Margaret in 1887), and each was widowed after only three years of marriage, a grim coincidence. The only person who I knew at all well who lived in Castlebrae was a charming medical student, a year or two younger than me, who often invited me for delicious meals which she would cook with her boyfriend, a fellow medic, studying at Churchill College. They got married shortly after their graduation, and I’m sorry to report that he fell ill and died about three years later; he was only 25. I’ve totally lost touch with her now; her married name is not uncommon, and I think she may have become a GP in the south of England (at least Google reveals two GPs in the south of England with that name). That is my melancholy footnote.
January Books 2) Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
The Gormenghast trilogy did well in my 2011 reading poll, so I’ve got underway; I realised that I have in fact read the first two books, so this is my first reread of 2011.
Titus Groan starts with the birth and ends with the first birthday celebrations of the heir to the grand, tradition-bound castle of Gormenghast; every grand fantasy citadel since owes something to Mervyn Peake (thinking, most recently in my reading, of Isse Tower in Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s The Ill-Made Mute, but there are many others). Peake weaves a grand miasma of doom and foreboding over the sterile rituals of the castle, introducing also the villainous Steerpike who seeks to exploit the gaps between the formal rituals and the emotional needs of the ruling family for his own profit.
It’s not terribly clear what era Peake imagines the novel to be set in. The internal workings feel rather Edwardian in a way, conscious of past glory and ignorant of the future. The description of the mud-huts of the villagers outside the castle sounds medieval at best. It also has to be said that not a lot actually happens; my memory is that this is mostly scene-setting for the second book.
I’m going to try and track Bechdel passes and fails for the fiction I read this year. Titus Groan is a technical pass. There is more than one woman characterr; they do talk to each other. Sometimes they talk about Titus, who is a baby not a man, so perhaps such conversations do get through the Bechdel test. The earl’s demented twin sisters burble to each other about many things, not all of which are men, but it’s not clear that those are really conversations in the full Bechdel sense. Anyway, towards the end, Titus’s sister Fuchsia reminisces about her childhood with her nanny, which I guess does qualify in that no men are mentioned.
Anyway, on to Volume II now.
Whoniversaries 5 January
5 January 1929: birth of Norman Kay, who composed the incidental music for An Unearthly Child (1963), The Keys of Marinus, (1964) and The Sensorites (also 1964).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
5 January 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of The Time Warrior. Rubeish and the Doctor return the kidnapped scientists to the twentieth century; Linx kills Irongron and is in turn killed by Boba Fett Hal; and his spaceship explodes on take-off, destroying the castle.
5 January 1980: broadcast of third episode of The Horns of Nimon. The Doctor and Romana discover the source of the Nimons’ energy, but Soldeed catches them.
5 January 1982: broadcast of second episode of Castrovalva. Tegan and Nyssa jettison a quarter of the Tardis rooms, and bring what’s left to Castrovalva.
5 January 1983: broadcast of second episode of Arc of Infinity. Tegan goes to Amsterdam to find her cousins; the Doctor is apparently executed by the Time Lords.
5 January 1984: broadcast of first episode of Warriors of the Deep, starting Season 21. The Tardis lands in an undersea base in the year 2084, and is caught up in human Cold War politics and the rise of the reptiles.
5 January 1985: broadcast of first episode of Attack of the Cybermen, starting Season 22. The Tardis lands in London, where Lytton is doing something sinister; meanwhile on Telos, something else sinister is happening.
January Books 1) The Hiſtory of That moſt Eminent Stateſman, Sir John Perrott
My first completed read of 2011 is a download from Google Books, rejoicing in the title: The Hiſtory of That moſt Eminent Stateſman, Sir John Perrott, Knight of the Bath and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a 1728 edition of a manuscript probably written by his son Sir James Perrot in the 1590s, after Perrot’s death but before Elizabeth I’s. Perrot is important in my project on my ancestor Nicholas White in that they worked together in Ireland when Perrot was a senior English appointee and White one of the most senior Irish-born government officials; also, they both died in the Tower of London (awaiting execution in Perrot’s case, awaiting trial in White’s) in the trails of the bizarre Denis O’Roghan conspiracy. I was particularly hoping to find our more about this last from this book, since it actually promises on the front page that it will describe “His Fatal CATASTROPHEILL and TESTAMENT and his DEATH in the Tower, 1592″, but unfortunately the writer decides to skip the crucial details with frustrating discretion:
Now havinge related Sir John Perrott’s Life and Services thus farre, my wearied Pen is unwilling to proſecute his Storie any farther; partly becauſe the Finiſhing thereof will be laborious, and aske ſome Lengthe of Time and of Diſcourſe; but principally for that the Cataſtrophe of his Life was very tragicall; and to writte all that happned therin, may, perchaunce, breede Offence, and touch the Proceedings of Times paſt too much: Therfore for this time, there ſhall noe more be ſayd of hym, but this, that his whole Life was lyke to a tragical Comedie, in the Beginninge prosperous and joyfull; in the Ende unfortunate and lamentable
So we will not find here the reasons for Perrott’s fall from grace, let alone the unfortunate fact that he was unable to convincingly deny having described the Queen as a ‘base bastard piss-kitchen’. We do, however, have Perrott’s own will, written when he was already under sentence of death, in which he explains of course that it is everyone else’s fault, inspired by a startling though perhaps not very surprising source:
And nowe I make my Complaints to God and all good Men, that I have bene moſt falſelie accuſed through the Malice and Envie of ſome wicked and evill diſpoſed Perſons, Schollers of Machiavelli, that I have been a Tratour to my Soveraygne Queene and Countrie
Sir Nicholas White gets three direct mentions, first as helping to deal with the ‘Canenaughs’ (presumably the Kavanaghs of Carlow), then as one of a number of officials writing a joint letter to the Queen in defence of Perrott in 1585, and then writing a farewell poem to commemorate Perrott’s departure from Ireland in 1588.
It’s an interesting enough primary source, but I’ve done enough reading by now to know that it somewhat exaggerates Perrott’s achievements and almost completely omits his failings. There are more recent and more scholarly (but also much more expensive) books about Perrott, so I will just have to obtain them somehow.
Eclipse
Having missed the lunar eclipse two weeks ago due to the snowfall (still not completely cleared), I managed to see the partially eclipsed sun rising this morning as I drove to Tienen (where U now spends two days a week). In fact it was pretty difficult to miss, directly in front of me along the line of the motorway, huge and crescent; it would have been terrifying to people in prehistoric cultures who might see such a sight once or twice in a lifetime. No wonder that the ancient Babylonians buckled down to eclipse prediction as soon as they could.
Literary anniversaries
This is a fun little exercise – seeing which books were published 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 150 years ago and so on. I’ve imposed arbitrary cut-offs based on LibraryThing ownership, which means that, for instance, we lose Brian Aldiss’ The Primal Urge and Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat, but it’s a diverse enough array as it is.
I invite further discussion and recommendations (or dis-recommendations) in comments.
Whoniversaries 4 January: Daleks #3, Krotons #2, Robot #2, Castrovalva #1, Greatest Show #4
4 January 1964: broadcast of “The Escape”, third episode of the story we now call The Daleks. Susan meets Alydon the Thal in the forest, and returns to the others in the city, where they capture a Dalek.
4 January 1969: broadcast of second episode of The Krotons. Zoe and the Doctor take the test and enter the machine; the Krotons manifest themselves.
4 January 1975: broadcast of second episode of Robot. K1, the robot, kills a cabinet minister and threatens to kill the Doctor.
4 January 1982: broadcast of first episode of Castrovalva first full story with Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, starting Season 19 of Old Who. The new Doctor collapses; Adric is captured by the Master; and the Tardis is heading back to the Big Bang…
4 January 1989: broadcast of fourth episode of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, ending Season 25. The Gods of Ragnarok are behind the circus; the Doctor defies them and the circus collapses into rubble.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-4-2011
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Review of Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. "I have not read such delightful, convincing, and readable science writing since the dearly lamented Stephen Jay Gould. This book is funny, absorbing, clear-eyed, and deeply anti-patriarchal in a way that feels incidental to the facts rather than rising from any agenda — which I find utterly, gleefully vindicating and deeply satisfying."
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"Dear Hugo nominators: please do not nominate Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear as a single work."
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Graham Sleight on the Ninth Doctor: "Eccleston and the Ninth Doctor may now be remembered for their refusals, but refusals can sometimes be the bravest thing to do."
C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Doctor Who
Fans of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien should check out their guest appearance in Jonathan Morris’s comic strip story in the latest Doctor Who Magazine (dated 12 January, cover featuring Matt Smith in a Santa hat with Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins). Very pleasing.
edited to add: Today is Tolkien’s birthday! (3 January 1892)
Abolishing the Seanad – update
It seems that Fianna Fáil have suddenly discovered the virtues of abolishing the upper house of the Irish parliament (see today’s Irish Times, here and here). Obviously, given my previous post on the subject, I think this is a good idea. However, I also have to agree with the opposition spokespeople quoted in the Irish Times who see the latest initiative as an attempt by the government to put off the general election for a couple more months.
Abolishing the Seanad is not quite as straightforward as deleting Articles 18-19 of the constitution, which deal with the composition of the Seanad, and Articles 20-24, which deal with its relationship with the Dail. There are a few other issues to be addressed as well.
- The Seanad does allow for extra time and space for draft legislation to be tweaked before it is enacted. Will the Dail add some extra committee stage to its own procedures, and/or (my own favoured option) establish a pool of external experts to give their non-binding but formal opinions on Bills?
- Article 14.2: At present, in the case of the death, incapacity, or absence of the President, the presidential powers are exercised by a three-member commission consisting of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Ceann Comhairle, and the Cathaoirleach of Seanad Éireann. Do you just delete the last of these, or add a different third member?
- Article 27.1: half of the Seanad, plus a third of the Dail, may at present petition the President to call a referendum on a Bill before it is signed. This has never been used. Obviously it’s impractical to just allow a third of TDs to call a referendum; but should the entire provision be scrapped, or perhaps go for some kind of provision for say 5% of registered voters to trigger a referendum by petition (as in the long-forgotten Article 47 of the Irish Free State constitution, also never used)? Myself, I hate referendums and would prefer the first option, but there’s room for a debate.
- Article 31.2.i: The Cathaoirleach is a member of the Council of State. Simply delete, or replace with someone else? (Probably the former.)
- Article 12, Article 33.5, and Article 35.4: The President, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and judges of the High Court and Supreme Court, can at present be removed from office only by vote of both Dail and Seanad. Is it reasonable to make that possible by vote of the Dail only? (Probably it is.)
I’m not totally convinced by the line that the Seanad should only be abolished as part of a wider programme of institutional reform – the case against its retention seems overwhelming and urgent to me. But I must say that given these tedious but necessary details which need to be ironed out, the case against rushing to abolish the Seanad in time to hold the referendum on election day seems pretty compelling.