Since I’ve written up all the films I’ve been watching in bed this week, I’ll also say something about the one we actually saw in the cinema last week. As it happens, the only Trek novel I have read in the last twenty years is a Vonda McIntyre story about how Kirk and Spock got together, so I had already been exposed to one origin tale. (Her recent account of her involvement with the Trek franchise is also entertaining.)

I am sure Vonda McIntyre, who I know reads this lj occasionally, won’t object to my conclusion that the film is much more memorable. Films generally are more memorable, because they are more of a social experience: it’s not just you communicating with the author via a hunk of dead tree, it’s your imagined interaction with the characters on screen; and your shared reactions with the person you’re seeing it with, plus all your friends and acquaintances who have seen it, in a group experience that only books about Harry Potter can achieve. (All of which is muted but still not entirely absent if you’re watching the film a year later on a crappy MP4 player while in bed dosed up on painkillers; cf my write-ups of Hellboy II, Iron Man and Dark Knight.)

The decision to set the new Star Trek in a parallel timetrack, where Kirk’s father died, Vulcan is destroyed and Spock is in love with Uhura, also of course liberated JJ Abrams from many of the constraints that McIntyre’s novel had; she had to end up with the Enterprise as we know it, Abrams theoretically didn’t but we cheer because he did anyway. We cheer at a lot of places in the film, in roughly this order: Uhura, Captain Pike, the hungover McCoy, the green-skinned girl, the first appearance of Spock, the Enterprise including Chekov and Sulu, the appearance of Old Spock, Scotty (and his sandwiches and sidekick), and Leonard Nimoy’s closing monologue. It looks fantastic, spaceships, monsters, dying planets and all. The supporting characters – Chekov, Sulu, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and even Captain Pike – get a lot of very pleasing development. There are some cracking lines of dialogue, even if some of the references to Trek history may pass you by as they did me. There were of course a number of Things Which Don’t Make Sense (another area where films often seem to have more liberty of manœuvre than books) but it would be unkind to list them. (Just one example, though: McCoy smuggling Kirk on board the Enterprise would surely have resulted in court-martial and expulsion from the service for both of them!)

This was really good fun, and I venture to predict that it will win next year’s Hugo, and other awards, by a country mile.

• Monster Jellyfish : Discovery Earth : Discovery Channel
  (tags: climatechange)

This is one of the shortlisted entries for Best Graphic Story in this year’s Hugo awards, and the only one supplied free to the voters. Frankly, it’s pretty poor. A crew of badly drawn and poorly characterised space mercenaries try to get a profit out of capturing an old enemy, who is variously alive or dead as the plot progresses. There are some Funny Bits. I would say that Firefly did it better, but that’s a bit like comparing The Lord of the Rings with The Eye of Argon. I hope the Hugo category of Best Graphic Story continues, but I hope the other nominees are better than this.

I’ve been trawling through the various threads of discussion regarding the new Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics blog, whose aim is “to promote positive reviews of books, movies and comics.”

Well, I’m not interested. If a source tells me up front that it won’t publish critical reviews, I can’t be bothered engaging with it. Except to agree with Nic Clarke when she says “I’m still not clear on what ‘ethics’ have to do with celebrating books you like”.

Well, I thought that was tremendous; a dark meditation on the effects of Batman’s existence on his environment. The special effects are great, the direction and camera work are superb, but what carries the film is the acting, and the central commanding performance is Heath Ledger’s Joker, magnetic, horrible, fascinating, makes what could have been a painfully silly storyline into a mesmerising carnival of terror. The other stars are great too; I thought at first that Christian Bale was a bit subdued as Batman, but I came around to him in the end. Everyone else has seen this by now, so I’ll add that I was pretty impressed that they killed off a major character half way through – that really shows that all bets are off. Sorry, WALL-E, you were very cute but this will get my Hugo vote.

(I guess there is room for some debate as to whether or not Dark Knight is actually science fiction. But if it has made the shortlist, it is eligible for the Hugo, and it certainly feels sfnal to me.)

I was tipped off by to the fact that I actually owned one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s lesser-known works, which was not published under his own name. He translated it from French, although the French text was itself a translation; apparently his manuscript notes indicate that he was using a dictionary to cross-check vocabulary with the original text (which was in a language he did not know all that well). Below the cut is the complete Tolkien translation as it appears in my 1966 copy of the book, presumably cut about a bit by his co-editors; an account of the whole affair is to be published very soon.

Jonah

Jonah rebels against his mission
1 1 The word of Yahweh was addressed to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Up!” he said, “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and inform them that their wickedness has become known to me.” 3 Jonah decided to run away from Yahweh, and to go to Tarshish. He went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish; he paid his fare and went aboard, to go with them to Tarshish, to get away from Yahweh. 4 But Yahweh unleashed a violent wind on the sea, and there was such a great storm at sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5 The sailors took fright, and each of them called on his own god, and to lighten the ship they threw the cargo overboard. Jonah, however, had gone down below and lain down in the hold and fallen fast asleep. 6 The boatswain came to him and said, “What do you mean by sleeping? Get up! Call on your god! Perhaps he will spare us a thought, and not leave us to die.” 7 Then they said to each other, “Come on, let us draw lots to find out who is responsible for bringing this evil on us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us, what is your business? Where do you come from? What is your country? What is your nationality?” 9 He replied, “I am Hebrew, and I worship Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” 10 The sailors were seized with terror at this and said, “What have you done?” They knew that he was trying to escape from Yahweh, because he had told them so. 11 They then said, “What are we to do with you, to make the sea grow calm for us?” For the sea was growing rougher and rougher. 12 He replied, “Take me and throw me into the sea, and then it will grow calm for you. For I can see it is my fault this violent storm has happened to you.” 13 The sailors rowed hard in an effort to reach he shore, but in vain, since the sea grew still rougher for them. 14 They then called on Yahweh and said, “O Yahweh, do not let us perish for taking this man’s life; do not hold us guilty.” 14 And taking hold of Jonah they threw him into the sea; and the sea grew calm again. 15 At this the men were seized with dread of Yahweh; they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows.

Jonah is saved
2 1 Yahweh had arranged that a great fish should be there to swallow Jonah; and Jonah remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. 2 From the belly of the fish he prayed to Yahweh, his God; he said:

3 “Out of my distress I cried to Yahweh
and he answered me;
from the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you have heard my voice.
4 You cast me into the abyss, into the heart of the sea,
and the flood surrounded me.
All your waves, your billows,
washed over me.
5 And I said: I am cast out
from your sight.
How shall I ever look again
on your holy Temple?
6 The waters surrounded me right to my throat,
the abyss was all around me.
The seaweed was wrapped around my head
7 at the roots of the mountains.
I went down into the countries underneath the earth,
to the people of the past.
But you lifted my life from the pit,
Yahweh, my God.
8 While my soul was fainting within me,
I remembered Yahweh,
and my prayer came before you
into your holy Temple.
9 Those who serve worthless idols
forfeit the grace that was theirs.

10 “But I, with a song of praise,
will sacrifice to you.
The vow I have made, I will fulfill.
Salvation comes from Yahweh.”

The conversion of Nineveh and God’s pardon
3 1 The word of Yahweh was addressed a second time to Jonah: 2 ‘Up!” he said, “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach to them as I told you to.” 3 Jonah set out and went to Nineveh in obedience to the word of Yahweh. Now Nineveh was a city great beyond compare: it took three days to cross it. 4 Jonah went on into the city, making a day’s journey. He preached in these words, “Only forty days more and Nineveh is going to be destroyed.” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. 6 The news reached the king of Nineveh, who rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes. 7 A proclamation was then promulgated throughout Nineveh, by decree of the king and his ministers, as follows: “Men and beasts, herds and flocks, are to taste nothing; they must not eat, they must not drink water. 8 All are to put on sackcloth and call on God with all their might; and let everyone renounce his evil behaviour and the wicked things he has done. 9 Who knows if God will not change his mind and relent, if he will not renounce his burning wrath, so that we do not perish?” 10 God saw their efforts to renounce their evil behaviour. And God relented; he did not inflict on them the disaster which he had threatened.

The grievance of the prophet and God’s answer
4 1 Jonah was very indignant at this; he fell into a rage. 2 He prayed to Yahweh and said, “Ah! Yahweh is not this just as I said would happen when I was still at home? That was why I went and fled to Tarshish: I knew that you were a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, relenting from evil. 3 So now Yahweh, please take away my life, for I might as well be dead as go on living.” 4 Yahweh replied, “Are you right to be angry?” 5 Jonah then went out of the city and sat down to the east of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then Yahweh God arranged that a castor-oil plant should grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head and soothe his ill-humour; Jonah was delighted with the castor-oil plat. 7 But at dawn the next day, God arranged that a worm should attack the castor-oil plant – and it withered. 8 Next, when the sun rose, God arranged that there should be a scorching east wind; the sun beat down so hard on Jonah’s head that he was overcome and begged for death, saying, “I might as well be dead as go on living.” 9 God said to Jonah, “Are you right to be angry about the castor-oil plant?” He replied, “I have every right to be angry, to the point of death.” 10 Yahweh replied, “You are only upset about a castor-oil plant which cost you no labour, which you did not grow, which sprouted in a night and has perished in a night. 11 And am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?”

• Climate change may displace up to 200 million – CNN.com
  (tags: climatechange)
• DUPs spectacular ascent not solid
  My article in the Newsletter
  (tags: northernireland)
• Suicidally strong IP? – Crooked Timber
  (tags: copyright)

…that comments on my review of Hellboy II have spiralled in several peculiar directions.

Well, another Hugo-nominated film based on a comic that I had barely heard of. I found the politics stupid to the point of being offensive: I don’t think anyone with the slightest notion about Afghanistan could find either the kidnapping plot or the Iron-Man-rescues-the-villagers scene anything other than crude and simplistic. (And bloke who’s grown up living off the fortunes of his dad’s arms business is converted to Doing Good when he suddenly realises that the bangy things kill people? Gimme a break.)

The effects were pretty impressive, but essentially allowed Iron Man and Iron Monger to ignore the laws of physics to the point where there wasn’t much tension left. This will not be at the top of my Hugo ballot.

I met up with Misha (I have known him for years) a few months ago at the Tube station close to his home. It was festooned with posters for his book (presumably a coincidence; I doubt that the advertising agencies care where he lives). I suggested he should autograph the posters but he sensibly declined to do so.

The book is an excellent run through the pervasive infiltration of organised crime around the world, which Glenny attributes largely to the collapse of the Soviet Union (though with a nod also to the US War on Drugs). He takes us on a breathless tour of the underworld in the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, India, Dubai, Nigeria, South Africa, North America, Colombia, Brazil, Japan and finally China – which will have a key role in the future of crime, for good or ill. As always, he mixes deft character sketches of the personalities with gobsmacked horror at what is going on.

I must say that in general his account reinforces my libertarian instincts – criminalising drug use has little effect other than to empower and enrich criminals; stringent immigration laws enable and reward human trafficking; prohibiting prostitution makes vulnerable women even more vulnerable. The one area where this doesn’t work of course is in the exploitation of scarce natural resources – the account of what is happening to the Caspian Sea’s caviar is very depressing.

An excellent book, and an easy if sometimes wrenching read.

…turns out to be on-line after all, so no need to expend efforts in getting it to me (but thanks for the offer). I am irritated that I used a double negative (“not unexcited”) where I meant a single (“not excited” or “unexcited”). I blame my sore back.

Working through the Hugo nominees is exposing me to a lot more parts of the sf world: it is a surprisingly good educational experience. I was vaguely aware of the Hellboy comics but had no idea that there had been a film version, let alone two.

I’ll be honest: the most exciting thing about the film for me was that the climactic segment is set in a steampunk elvish subterranean vault under the Giant’s Causeway. Unfortunately the local colour is just some aerial photography of the Antrim coast, before we return to location filming presumably somewhere in California (cloudless sky, wrong sort of vegetation, and crucially no hexagonal basalt pillars in sight) but I appreciated the effort (as I’m sure the Montenegrins appreciate Karlovy Vary and Lake Como in Casino Royale). The Bethmoora demon’s Ulster accent was not quite as bogus as I had feared (John Alexander is Scottish). Apparently King Balor’s lines are all in “Gaelic”, which presumably means Irish; would be interested to know what any gaelgeori thought of this. Also “Nuala” and “Nuada” do not have three syllables. (Maybe two and a half, depending, but the stress is certainly not on the first ‘a’.)

The special effects are great: thinking especially of the tooth fairies, the Elemental stomping New York, and the Golden Army reassembling itself; also Dr Kraus’s ectoplasm and Liz Sherman’s fiery manifestation. The script is OK, some witty lines, some interesting setup for future stories, but a lot of cliches. The plot is pretty straightforward. I will rank WALL-E ahead of this in my ballot.

I wrote a piece for the Newsletter about the elections yesterday – would be interersted to know if they used it for the print edition as it doesn’t appear to be on-line.

(I have written for the Tele and Irish News previously, and indeed helped the latter set up their online edition in the dim and distant past, so if the Newsletter did print the piece I now have the hat-trick of Belfast dailies.)

If it is possible to scan and email the article (assuming it exists), I would be very grateful!

• vasco_pyjama: On climate change and the developing world
  (tags: climatechange)

My back has seized up, and I have been ordered to bed for the rest of the week, which was alarming at what would have been a busy time at work. But there you go. The upside is that I have been able to do some more due diligence re the Hugos, by watching the three non-Who nominees in the Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form category. NB that these were the first episodes of Battlestar Galactica or Lost that I had ever seen.

Revelations probably worked least well for me, being the culmination of a couple of long-established Battlestar Galactica story arcs. The revelation that a key character was actually a Cylon makes little impact if you don’t know what a Cylon is. The quest for Earth wasn’t explained here, so the importance of finding it again was a bit puzzling. But the acting was generally good, the hostage-taking situation engaging, the production values excellent and the music at the end haunting. I will probably put it fifth on my ballot but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it.

By contrast, The Constant pulled me in from the word go. The basic concept is of someone adrift along their own time line – see Slaughterhouse-Five, The Time-Traveller’s Wife and “If This is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy”. I must say I would never have thought it could be pulled off in a visual medium, but they have done it very well, with Cusick and Davies as Desmond and Faraday turing in superb performances. There is an obvious nod also to Flowers for Algernon. Slight loss of marks for referring to the non-existent physics department of an Oxford college, and for a little too much acting with your beard at one or two points. But I think I will rank this second or third, competing with Turn Left, which had a similar theme but done less satisfactorily (but it is Doctor Who).

Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog is an entertaining enough one-off Joss Whedon production, reminiscent of Once More With Feeling but to be honest not really as good. Neil Patrick Harris/Dr Horrible’s monologues to camera, and Nathan Fillion’s testosterone-fuelled Captain Hammer, are the most interesting things about it, but one feels that one is being invited to admire the production not because it is being done well, but because it is being done at all. Still, it did make me laugh out loud once or twice, which I rather regretted as I was then immediately reminded of why I was lying in bed watching.

So, in the end, my Hugo ballot in this category will probably be:
1) Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (Doctor Who)
2) Turn Left (Doctor Who)
3) The Constant (Lost)
4) Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog
5) Revelations (Battlestar Galactica)
Though I am still musing the second and third placings, and may swap them.

A Belgian correspondent on Facebook queries my statement that Bairbre De Brún has a particularly high personal vote, and of course he is quite right; when you take open lists (as we have here) into account, her 126,184 votes rather pale into insignificance behind Guy Verhofstadt’s 565,359. I haven’t gone through the EU27 figures to work out if anyone beat Verhofstadt, but it’s clear that several Belgians beat De Brún.

Jim Nicholson (UUP) + 37,942 = 132,227
Diane Dodds (DUP) + 24,462 = 115,722
Alban Maginness (SDLP) + 2,614 = 97,428
5,463 non-transferable

Nicholson is over the quota (which was 121,144), so he is elected.

Votes left in the system: the SF surplus of 5,040, and Nicholson’s surplus of 11,113. Even in the unlikely event that they all went to Maginness, he would still be more than 3,000 votes short of Dodds, so she is elected.

( – I failed to report the 7,548 untransferred votes from Alliance and Greens, which possibly threw out your calculations.)

So 53% of Allister’s votes went to Nicholson, and only 35% to his former party.

On this basis I fancy his chances of winning a seat at the next Westminster election are good, esp in North Antrim which has a history oif maverick election results going back more than a century.

Distribution of Green and Alliance votes:

Alban Maginness (SDLP) +16,325 = 94,814
Jim Nicholson (UCUNF) +11,392 = 94,285
Diane Dodds (DUP) +2,914 = 91,260
Jim Allister (TUV) +4,284 = 70,481
Non-transferable: 7,548

Puts poor Alban ahead by a nose, but he will be easily overtaken by the other two on Allister’s transfers. The Green and Alliance transfers split pretty evenly between Unionists and Nationalists.

Bairbre De Brun, Sinn Fein – 126,184 (26%)
Diane Dodds, DUP – 88,346 (18.2%)
Jim Nicholson, Ulster Conservative and Unionist – 82,893 (17.1%)
Alban Maginness, SDLP – 78,489 (16.2%)
Jim Allister, Traditional Unionist Voice – 66,197 (13.7%)
Ian Parsley, Alliance – 26,699 (5.5%)
Steven Agnew, Green Party – 15,764 (3.3%)
Quota: 121,144

Looks like my former French teacher will have the largest personal vote of any member of the new European Parliament (because the only other places where there isn’t a list system are the Republic and the German-speaking cantons of Belgium, where the number of voters is much fewer).

Glad to see that my gut feeling that SF’s vote might have dropped slightly was correct. (SDLP vote share actually up slightly, but won’t help them, though I see some eternal optimists still think Alban can make it.)

Best Alliance result in a European election since 1979.

Very cheering I expect for Jim Allister, though he will still lose and see Nicholson and Dodds elected on his transfers.

asks:

i) I’m in that ‘what am I going do after I graduate’ place. What you do looks really interesting to me. What would you suggest to someone like me who wants to know more?

First off, it’s cheering to hear that my work sounds really interesting. Most days I think it is too, which I guess indicates that I am in more or less the right place. But I’m going to interpret your question (reading it as “how do I get an interesting job like that?”) in both a specific and a general way.

Specifically mine is not an entry-level job, and my employers are not hiring entry-level people for my sort of role. I am now 42, and I’ve got here by way of postgraduate degrees in completely different subjects, political activism, field work in post-conflict transition countries and eight years in Brussels thinktanks. I’d always hoped I might end up doing this sort of work, but the route to get here was not obvious.

Generally, it is worth investing some time in reflecting on what you want for yourself. The best book on this subject, for me anyway, is Richard Nelson Bolles’ What Color Is Your Parachute?. Go and buy it, as soon as your nearest bookshop opens. You won’t regret the tenner or so it costs, or the weekend you will need to spend filling in the worksheets.

ii) Related to the above, I’m hoping to do a Masters no matter what happens. Would an International Relations Masters or similar be useful, or would a Masters in a related discipline, specifically the War Studies MA at Kings be a good way forward?

Since my own masters is in medieval astrology, I am not sure I can give a terribly concrete answer. What you will get from a taught postgraduate degree is i) information about whatever it is about, ii) analytical and research skills, and iii) a few months’ respite from the job market. I’m not convinced that academe is ever especially up to date in international relations; you have to rate the comparative utility of going to lectures vs reading a couple of decent newspapers every day. IR theory is almost completely useless in terms of the day-to-day practicalities of diplomacy. I have never actually studied politics and have no regrets about that; nor has it hampered me from following a political career. (I do sometimes wish I had a better grounding in law.)

The analytical and research skills are, however, important and transferable, and doing a Masters allows you to hone those skills in an environment where your early mistakes are pretty cost-free. So I must say if I was shopping around I would be attracted by a course which had a decent component on the nuts and bolts of research and writing, whatever the particular area of interest.

And then there is getting a job, where it’s very true that just having any postgraduate qualification ticks one of the necessary boxes for a lot of positions (including the internships in my own office). I suggest you google the phrase “has just graduated with a masters in X from the university of Y” and see what comes up! I notice that I meet far more people who have studied at LSE than Oxbridge here in Brussels; I don’t know if either is on your list.

iii) how do I track down appropriate internships to get some insight into all of this?

This is the easiest of your questions to answer. For British-based internships, check http://www.w4mp.org; for Brussels positions, check http://www.eurobrussels.com and http://jobs.euractiv.com – I shall be advertising the next internship vacancy in my own office on all three (probably advertising at end of August for a start date in October). Also if you identify an organisation that interests you, there is no harm in the informational interview and direct approach.

A big job market is about to open up in the European Parliament, starting this evening. Likewise at Westminster a whole lot of opprtunities may open up next year (and also people will already be jumping ship in advance of the end of term). All of that has an effect on the overall market in political jobs.

My other piece of advice, not exactly internship related but in the same ballpark, is to check out the prospects of election observation missions – that link is a little out of date but the basic information remains correct. Doing ten days in a transition country is a good way of testing your attraction to working in the field!

I hope all that is helpful. Feel free to take this up with me directly by email as well.

I was rather expecting this to be a sober and gruelling tale of conflicted sexual identity. I was almost completely wrong. Middlesex is largely an exuberant tale of growing up as a girl in a Greek-American family. The first delight is the complex background of her grandparents, brother and sister who escape from the inferno of Smyrna in 1922 and marry each other in a secretly incestuous union. Then there is a tough but engaging depiction of the Greek-American community of Grosse Pointe and Detroit, against the background of mid-century America: the Depression, the war, the riots of the 1960s, and the moment of truth in the 1970s when Chekhov’s gun goes off, and Cal chooses to be male after fourteen years of being a girl.

Rather as Romeo and Juliet works partly because we are told up front by the Chorus that the title characters are going to die, Middlesex is absolutely clear about what is going to happen, and its charm is the clarity with which it is all laid out. I have absolutely no idea how relevant or true to life it is for readers who have themselves grappled with gender identification issues (and would be very interested to hear reactions from such quarters); it certainly raised my consciousness while also entertaining me greatly. Strongly recommended.

asks two questions:

1. What is your degree(s?) in?

My first degree was a B.A. in Natural Sciences from Clare College, Cambridge (graduated in 1989).
I got an M. Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science, also at Clare College, Cambridge (in 1991).
Like you (I suspect) I have the joke Cambridge M.A. (which I guess I got about 1992).
And my doctorate, also in History and Philosophy of Science, was eventually obtained from the Queen’s University of Belfast (in 1997).

2. What is your connection with Northern Ireland such that you ended up standing as a candidate there?

Well, I was actually born there! And lived there most of my life until I went to Cambridge in 1986; and then after I left Cambridge in 1991, went back to Belfast until I moved to Bosnia at the start of 1997. I joined the Alliance Party as a teenager, rejoined in the 1990s and ended up as the Party Organiser / Director of Elections for three years. That also included being a candidate in North Belfast in 1996.

asks: I suppose you moved to Belgium for career opportunities. Have you ever regretted that decision?

Belgium was very much a positive choice. I read What Color Is Your Parachute? and decided I wanted a job working on the implications of EU enlargement for the Balkans; and found someone in Belgium prepared to pay me for doing just that. There have been several occasions when I’ve been very glad that my career worked out the way it did. On the positive side, the services provided by the state for our children are just fantastic, and would hardly be matched elsewhere. On the other side, I look at the challenges and frustrations of either electoral politics or academe (which were the two other tracks I was considering) and am glad to have ended up elsewhere. Let’s face it, living pretty much anywhere in the developed world is probably the best living conditions anyone has ever had in the history of the human race. For my career interests and my family’s needs, Belgium has some good extras.

asks: If you could be head of any country (ie the one with all the power), which country would you rule?

That’s a tricky one. Actually my fantasy involves being able to sit by the beach and read science fiction books, rather than have absolute power. So I guess somewhere English-speaking with decent bookshops and good weather which would more or less run itself without bothering me. Perhaps Australia or New Zealand.

asks: You are one of the two most effective super-connectors amongst my friends. The other is Jon Singer. Do you two know each other? I know other super-connectors, but not as well. Was this a deliberate choice? A natural tendency? Is it something you work on actively or just the way you are? Do you use tools to help you network? Discuss. 

Re : I don’t know him at all, though I see we have 24 mutual lj friends and 21 mutual facebook friends (including your good self in both groups). So I can’t speak to his techniques.

Deliberate choice or natural tendency: Well, sometimes the one reinforces the other, doesn’t it? Do you choose to eat chocolate, or just happen to like it? I have always felt that “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” was good advice, and so have invested my social capital in a diverse portfolio.

Yes, I do work on it actively. I have a contacts file of about 3,500 people, which I periodically – ie weekly – check against Facebook and LinkedIn to see if any new people have joined. And of course I am adding to that all the time through business meetings and fannish contacts.

asks: So do you believe the people you represent are “right” or is it more like a legal advocate: everyone deserves representation?

The latter in principle, though both in reality. Everyone has the right to be heard; we do assess whether or not our clients can pass an ethical test, and have turned people down for that and other reasons. (The other likely reason being that there is not much we can do for them as our services are rather specialised.)

, thanks for your question; I look forward to answering it in person some day.

Others, feel free to ask.

Conall McDevitt has taken me to task for my back-of-an-envelope calculations about the drop in turnout last night. (Incidentally, Conall, I can spell your name correctly; I would appreciate it if you can return the favour.) We now have the full turnout figures for all 18 constituencies, so here they are, ranked by the fall in turnout between the last Euro-election in 2004 and this year’s vote, and coloured as to whether the 2001 census found more Catholics or more Protestants in each:

Newry and Armagh 49.1% (-16.9%)
FST 51.5% (-15.2%)
Mid Ulster 52.8% (-12.6%)
West Tyrone 50.3% (-12.1%)
Foyle 44.3% (12.0%)
West Belfast 46.6% ( -10.5%)
North Antrim 43.2% (-10.1%)
East Derry 42.3% (-9.1%)
South Down 45.0% ( -9.0%)
Upper Bann 41.8% (-8.4%)
Belfast North 41.0% (-7.7%)
South Belfast 42.1% (-7.2%)
Lagan Valley 38.9% (-7.2%)
East Belfast 38.8% (-6.1%)
South Antrim 38.0% (-5.8%)
Strangford 34.2% (-5.7%)
East Antrim 34.5% (-4.8%)
North Down 34.5% (-3.5%)

That is not a difficult table to read, even for SDLP supporters, who are habitually prone to wishful thinking; the average fall in turnout in Catholic majority seats is 12.6%, in Protestant majority seats 6.9%. I expect the gap between combined Unionist candidates and combined Nationalist candidates to widen from 2004 (when it was 48.5 to 43.2). I suspect that the intense rivalry between the three Unionist candidates has decreased the usual differential of turnout (Nationalists have been pulling out more of their potential voters at every election since 1996), and the combined Unionist vote will be comfortably over 50% even though it is split three ways. There is therefore no chance of the SDLP winning the third seat. (Incidentally the above figures suggest that the SF vote share will also be down, though word from the tallies is that this is not the case.)

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Provisional unofficial turnout numbers figures from the Northern Ireland constituencies (with the 2007 Assembly turnout in brackets) – from Stratagem:

Mid Ulster 52.83% (73.1%)
West Belfast 46.6% (67.4%)
South Down 44.97% (65.0%)
North Antrim 43.7% (61.3%)*
South Belfast 42.1% (62.4%)
North Belfast 40.98% (60.9%)
Lagan Valley 38.86% (60.0%)
East Belfast 38.82% (60.0%)
South Antrim 38.03% (58.6%)
East Antrim 34.53% (53.5%)
North Down 34.48% (53.8%)
Strangford 34.24% (54.5%)

* Mark Devenport at the BBC has this figure as Newry and Armagh rather than North Antrim, but if so it is very low!)

Looks to me like (very broadly speaking) the Nationalist vote is down 22%, the Unionist vote more like 20%. So I expect the “gap” to be if anything a bit wider than the Assembly elections in 2007, ie combined Unionist total at around 50% and combined Nats some way below that. So while de Brún will retain her seat for SF, looks like Alban Maginness has failed to sneak in for the SDLP.

Rumours rather incredibly have the Unionist vote split three ways, with James Nicholson of the UUP/Conservatives ahead of Diane Dodds of the DUP and Jim Allister (ex-DUP now TUV). The fact that these rumours come from Allister’s camp, thus admitting that he will probably lose his seat, make them more credible!

Mildly wishful thinking on my part: the turnout has dropped least in areas where the Alliance Party is strongest…

I’ve rephrased the wording of this meme floating round, so as to make it less annoying…

On LiveJournal, we often think we’re close, but really, we know less about each other than we like to think. So I want you to ask me something you would like to know about me, something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about, or something you’ve always been curious about but have never asked, or something completely silly that you’d like me to answer for kicks. No limits on the range of questions, either: ask me anything you want to know about, whether it’s a fannish opinion or trivia about my real life or my thoughts on events in the offline world.

Comments to this post screened; answers will go in public posts if appropriate.

Well, I’m inclined to vote the Open VLD ticket on Sunday. Their election literature arrived yesterday; they have what look like a sensible enviromental approach on the economy, and the law-n-order stuff which worried me in the summary on De Standaard’s website was simply not there. (So either De Standaard got it wrong, or Open VLD aren’t terribly serious about being hardline on those issues; I’m happy either way.)

Most strikingly, Open VLD are explicitly in favour of the right of same-sex couples to adopt; and this is a campaign promise which can actually be implemented, as we are electing the Flemish parliament which decides these issues in Flanders. Dear reader, would it be possible for a potential party of government (Open VLD held the prime minister’s position from 1999 to 2008) to run on adoption rights for same-sex couples in your country?

(Of course, here in Belgium we’ve had same-sex marriage for years – none of this “civil partnerships” compromising – and the world has failed to end; once you’ve got that far, it’s obviously an anomaly if some married couples can adopt and others can’t.)

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The best of luck to Ian Parsley, who is the Alliance Party’s candidate in the European elections in Northern Ireland tomorrow.

Likewise to my Lib Dem friends, alphabetically arranged: Stewart Arnold, Neil Corlett, Chris Davies, Andrew Duff, Jonathan Fryer, Simon James, Ben Jones, Christopher Le Breton, Sarah Ludford, Deborah Newton-Cook, Rebecca Taylor, Diana Wallis, Graham Watson, and Peter Welch. I will see most of you in Brussels one way or the other.

Also tomorrow the Netherlands elects its MEPs. Best of luck to Sophie in ‘t Veld, as lead candidate for D’66 – hope you get re-elected too.

Some countries will vote on Friday and Saturday, but most on Sunday. I shall cast my vote for Annemie Neyts here in Belgium; my best wishes go to Marianne Mikko in Estonia, Gisela Kallenbach, Doris Pack, and Heide Rühle in Germany, István Szent-Iványi in Hungary, Jelko Kacin in Slovenia and Ana Maria Gomes in Portugal; and especially to Nina Suomalainen in Finland who is not an incumbent but trying to get elected for the first time.

This is a bit complicated, so bear with me.

Go to: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/9602?inPopup=true
Click on “Sendung verpasst?” at the top
Click on “Di GESTERN” on the next page (NB if you don’t do this today, it will be “Di 02.06.09”)
Click on the right arrow at the bottom of the page
Click on “22.45 Uhr / Dokumentation / Die EU von A bis Z”
Click one of the three options for “Bandbreite” (probably the bottom one) and then on the word “Übernehmen”
The playback window then appears. My segment is from 07:00 to 09:00. Voiceover in German from my English original (and Mohamed Sidati’s French).