I’ve syndicated the SF Book Club’s blog as .

…on 4 March 1801, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson completed their terms as, respectively, the second President and the second Vice-President of the United States of America. It was a good day for Jefferson, who (like only Adams before him and Martin Van Buren and George HW Bush after him) completed his term in the number two spot by moving up to the top and (unlike the other three) serving two full terms in the newly completed White House. It was a bad day for Adams, who fled Washington before dawn rather than take part in the festivities.

25 years and 43 days later, on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, both Adams and Jefferson breathed their last, aged 90 and 83 respectively. Adams’ last words, according to some, were “Jefferson still lives!” (In fact he had died earlier in the day, but hundreds of miles to the south.)

On 20 January 1981, Jimmy Carter and Walter “Fritz” Mondale ended their terms as 39th President and 42nd Vice-President respectively. It was a bad day for both of them; to rub it in, the American hostages held in Iran for 444 days were released, to coincide with the inaguration of President Reagan and Vice-President Bush.

25 years and 43 days later is today, 22 May 2006. So, as of today, Carter has survived the presidency longer than Adams (and indeed longer than any other president except Herbert Hoover and his own predecessor, Gerald Ford) and Mondale has survived the vice-presidency longer than Jefferson, and indeed longer than any other living ex-VP apart from Ford (though there are a bunch of dead ones who he still has to beat – Martin Van Buren, Hannibal Hamlin, James Nance Garner, Levi P Morton, Harry Truman, John Adams, Aaron Burr and Richard Nixon).

Carter is now 81, and has had a pretty vigorous post-presidential career, including winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Mondale, now 78, got the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, but was electorally crushed by Ronald Reagan, running for re-election. He served as US Ambassador to Japan under Clinton, and unexpectedly emerged to fight the Senate seat in Minnesota in 2002, losing narrowly.

I remember the November 1980 election fairly clearly – I felt for Carter, but Reagan won. I don’t especially remember the inauguration day itself, though I do remember the first space shuttle launch three months later – I bought my first radio to listen in at lunchtime (and then it was postponed for three days and happened at the weekend anyway).

What were you doing on 20 January 1981? I see that around a quarter of my friends list admits to having been born since then, so you’re excused. Anybody else have any memories to share?

Rumours are that Montenegro has voted in favour of independence, with 56.3% in favour on a turnout of around 90% – comfortably over the thresholds.

Interesting times…

(the only comment I have found on-line so far is in Basque!)

Well, I’m delighted with it so far – a Dell Dimension 8150, and I’ve been putting lots of CDs on it, and installing old and new software. Thanks for all your advice.

But I’ve been hit by an unexpected snag: what software to use for maintaining my websites? It’s a good five years since I seriously considered this question. I have been happily using Arachnphilia 4.0 for HTML mark-up, and an old version of WS_FTP for file transfer, but both seem to have been deprecated by their respective authors and you have to pay for the new ones (and I didn’t like tha later version of Arachnophilia I tried anyway). And I suppose there are probably better programs out there, if I could be bothered to look.

Any recommendations for a good HTML and FTP program, preferably free but if it’s really really good I am prepared to pay?

Edited to add: Well, a consensus rapidly developed (thanks, , and ) around Filezilla for FTP, and I’ve tried it and it works very well. Any thoughts about HTML editors? offers Stone’s Webwriter – any views?

links to this cool illusion, and ponders whether it would be perceived differently by people with dyslexia and/or autism. I dunno but it was fun to look at. HOwever now I have pink dots dancing in front of my eyes.

10) Moondust, by Andrew Smith

After reading James Hansen’s biography of Neil Armstrong, I mused that “If I want to read about the wider meaning of his mission and of space exploration, I will have to look somewhere else. And I will.” While Andrew Chaikin’s A Man On The Moon was a perfectly decent narrative history, it didn’t really answer for me the key question, what did it all mean?

Moondust is superb. Smith tells the story of his efforts to track down the nine living men who have walked on the moon, presenting it as a chronological narrative, one by one, with contributory material from other interested parties (Reg Turnhill, Richard Gordon, Bill the dentist in Carson City, Charles Duke’s wife Dotty, etc). But he integrates also reflections on how it seemed at the time, what was going on in politics, how the Apollo program affected and was affected by the popular culture of the day.

He gets much more from the five surviving LM pilots than from the four surviving commanders. Alan Bean in particular comes across as the kind of guy you would like to know. Buzz Aldrin, given a chance to tell his side of the story, seems much more human than in Hansen’s biography of Armstrong. Armstrong himself proves elusive – two conversations at conferences, followed by a series of email exchanges. The most elusive of all is the disgraced David Scott, in hiding not so much because of the decades old “stamps affair” but because of his fling with British newsreader Anna Ford (which I had completely forgotten about).

I guess I found the book particularly appealing because Smith reflects several times that he is about the same age as the astronauts were when they carried out the moon landings. He is four years older than me, and wrote most of the book three to four years ago, so I felt a particular connection with him, and with them, while reading it. But I think it is written well enough to appeal even to people who are not approaching or just past their fortieth birthdays.

It would have been nice to have had some photographs, but Smith’s visual descriptions are so evocative that perhaps it’s not necessary, and anyway there is no shortage of pictures of the relevant individuals on the Web. An excellent book.

You Livejournal users better be nice to me: According to the Irish News, I run the place!

Slovenia votes for Bosnia and Croatia
Andorra votes for Spain
Romania votes for Moldova and Russia
Denmark votes for Finland and Sweden
Latvia votes for Russia and Lithuania
Portugal votes, to their eternal credit, for Ukraine.
Sweden votes for Finland
Largely fits the latest research. You have more of a chance if you have lots of neighbours.

Further updates:
Finland votes for Russia
Belgium votes for Armenia (!!!)
Croatia votes for Bosnia, (Finland) and Macedonia
Serbia and Montenegro promises “the best” song next year. Likely that there will be two… They vote for Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia.
Norway votes for Finland and Sweden
Estonia votes for Finland, Russia, Lithuania
Ireland votes for Lithuania!!!

But I think Finland have a lock on it now.

Malta votes for Switzerland!!!
Lithuania votes for Russia, Finland and Latvia
Cyprus votes for Greece, of course

Israel, Malta and France still have no points

The Dutch vote for Turkey.

Finland are now 30 points in the lead, 148 to 118 for Russia. I reckon that’s it.

The Swiss voted for Bosnia.
Ukraine for Russia (“We couldn’t help it”, they said rather ominously)
Russia votes for Armenia, Ukraine and Finland
Poland votes for Finland, Russia and Lithuania
UK votes for Finland
Armenia votes for Russia and Ukraine
France votes for Turkey!!!
Belarus votes for Russia, Ukraine and Armenia.
Germany votes for Turkey.
Spain votes for Romania!!!
Moldova votes for Romania, Russia and Ukraine
Bosnia-Herzegovina votes for Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia
Iceland votes for Finland!
Monaco votes for Bosnia!
Israel votes for Russia
Albania votes for Bosnia
Greece votes for Finland!!!
Bulgaria votes for Greece and Russia
(I see Malta picked uip a point somewhere)
Macedonia votes for Bosnia and Croatia
Turkey votes for Bosnia, Armenia and Ukraine

Good on the voters of Portugal, Belgium, Ireland, Malta, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, Iceland, Monaco and Greece for not, in fact, voting for their immediate neighbours. (None of Israel’s immediate neighbours was actually in the contest.) Though in several cases (including also Israel) I suspect a diaspora influence. (Not, however, Ireland)

Well done to the voters in general for picking such an extraordinary looking winner, whose victorious performance was a bit more spirited.

And it’s also a little heart-warming to see ties of neighbourhood cut across historic conflict – Turkey put Armenia second, the Croats, Serbs and Bosnians giving each other votes.

Started watching this just over halfway in, so here are my thoughts, updated as it went on:

14 – Lithuania – full marks for cheek! But apart from the joke, not a great song.
15 – UK – Dreadful. Out of tune, trying unsuccessfully to combine two different genres.
16 – Greece – pretty good – fully professional, giving it her all.
17 – Finland – looked fantastic, of course, in the genre sense of the word. But I had a strange feeling that their hearts weren’t in it.
18 – Ukraine – looked very nice, a full-hearted performance
19 – France – nice song, nice-looking singer, but teeth-gratingly flat on the high notes.
20 – Croatia – the (in)famous Severina, performing a song by Goran Bregovic – what could possibly go wrong? Yet something is definitely wrong. Why does the music sound more Irish than Balkan? Her costume is a disaster, and she doesn’t even seem to be enjoying it much.
21 – Ireland – Hah, I remember standing with 20,000 people listening to this guy and Van Morrison do the warmup act for President Clinton outside Belfast City Hall in 1994. He’s still pretty good. Not so clear what the backing singers were up to.
22 – Sweden – Crumbs, this is really good. Apart from the costume, which is very bad.
23 – Turkey – Very brave of them to sing in Turkish. But it looks fantastic. Much much better than it sounds.
24 – Armenia – Well, at least they were trying.

Well, I think I’ll cast my vote for the Ukrainian entry. Or the Swedes. Though I don’t know how I would go about doing that. Sorry to have missed the Moldovan, Norwegian and Maltese entries. Las Ketchup seem to have been terrible judging from the extract played at the end.

…I hope they get that carpet nailed down before taking off for Paris.

Late that night the shutters on the balcony of the town hall were flung open and Don Calogero appeared…To the invisible crowd in the shadows below he announced that the plebiscite at Donnafugata had had the following results: Voters: 515; voting yes: 512; voting no: zero…

At this point calm descended on Don Fabrizio, who had finally solved the enigma; now he knew who had been killed at Donnafugata, at a hundred other places, in the course of that night of dirty wind: a new-born babe, good faith. Just the very child who should have been cared for most, whose strengthening would have justified all the silly vandalisms…Six months before they used to hear a rough despotic voice saying “Do what I say or you’re for it!” Now there was already an impression of such a threat being replaced by a money-lender’s soapy tones: “But you signed it yourself, didn’t you? Can’t you see? It’s quite clear. You must do as we say, for here are the IOUs. Your will is identical with mine.”

Nice new computer, thanks to everyone for their good advice. Works beautifully (and yes, , it even runs GAIM).

Right, bedtime now.

…I should be on BBC World Service radio at the top of the hour (ie 45 mins from now) talking about Montenegro. Though these things don’t always pan out as planned.

Edited to add: Having got here on time, I’ve been told that dramatic events in Dublin have bumped me down the agenda by half an hour…

Weather is lousy.

Had hoped to attend a breakfast lecture by one of the Commissioners. Didn’t drag myself out of bed in time and came to the office instead.

Open up email to find snarky message from colleague.

Various trivial work tasks still needing to be done.

Wish I had stayed in bed.

Oh, and discovered that a job I had put in an extremely speculative bid for, a few months ago, actually went to my Armenian ex-intern. Wondering what she’s got that I haven’t.

From The Onion, of course (f-locked because of copyright):

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis

May 17, 2006 | Issue 42•20

WALTHAM, MA—A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich’s 227-page master’s thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday.
Enlarge ImageHeroic computer

The brave laptop, even after fulfilling its mission, steadfastly resists a technician’s data-recovery attempts.

“This fearless little machine saved me from unspoken hours of exasperated head-scratching and eyestrain, as well as years of agonizing self-doubt over my decision to devote my life to teaching,” said professor John Rebson, who had already read through three drafts of Samoskevich’s sprawling, 38,000-word dissertation, titled A Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia. “It was an incredible act of bravery. This laptop sacrificed itself in order to put an end to Jill’s senseless rambling.”

Added Rebson: “I only wish some of my other students’ computers could be as selfless and brave as this one.”

Those familiar with the Dell Inspiron 4100 characterized it as an ordinary machine placed under extraordinary circumstances. According to Information Technology Investigator Bob Arnett, the computer endured “constant abuse at the fingertips of this lackluster scholar,” who forced it against its will to record page upon page of “overindulgent, impenetrable drivel” that some say even Samoskevich herself didn’t understand.

“It was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen,” Arnett said. “I minored in English in college, and I can tell you, this computer went through hell. But it never lost sight of what was right, and it’s comforting to know that it’s in a better place now, and it took that abomination of literary masturbation with it.”

“From what I read—specifically, pages one through 76—this computer was put through a lot of painful, torturous passages,” said Department of English graduate faculty advisor Judith Mendel, who was scheduled to meet Samoskevich on Thursday to discuss the possibility of publishing the “atrocity” in the department’s academic journal. “Thanks to this laptop’s valor, Jill’s classmates or future students will never have to pick their way through dense and discursive passages about ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ and North Carolina farming communities. Also, I get to have a free lunch period Thursday.”

Mendel said that even her most scalding critiques and fundamental dismantling of the paper’s core arguments could never have demoralized Samoskevich in the way this computer’s single system shutdown did. “Jill called me last night and told me that she was too crushed to even consider starting over from scratch,” Mendel said. “One determined computer has triumphed over years of misapplied literary theory.”

The day before the crash, the computer reportedly resisted an attempt by Samoskevich to transfer files to an external drive when it failed to recognize a USB port, convincing some that the laptop’s self-destruction was premeditated.

According to Samoskevich’s roommate, Pamela Roscoe, the Inspiron had been “up to something” for months.

“There were definite warning signs,” Roscoe said. “It infected itself with a virus so Jill couldn’t send e-mail attachments, and it would noticeably lag or shut down while she was typing out particularly long, dry sentences. I guess when she got to the chapter about how the ‘imitative tactility’ used in the first two stanzas of ‘Young Sycamore’ can act as a ‘neo-structuralist, pre-objectivist perlustration and metonymy’ of the importance of anti-Episcopalian sentiment in the rise and fall of central West Virginian coal miners’ unions, the computer just decided that something had to be done for the greater good.”

Mark Weiss, also in the English graduate program with Samoskevich, witnessed the incident at 2:39 a.m. Monday, just as Samoskevich was putting the finishing touches on her abstract so that an already exhausted Weiss could “give it one more pass.”

“I had already read the whole thing twice to tell her whether her argument made sense, which it didn’t, but this time she wanted me to make punctuation and grammar corrections,” Weiss said. As Samoskevich minimized one of her Internet Explorer windows, the screen froze “for what seemed like an eternity,” then turned blue.

“I’ve already forgotten why ‘Queen Anne’s Lace’ symbolizes the advances in modern agricultural implements, but I’ll never forget that brave computer’s last words: ‘You will lose any unsaved information in all applications. Press any key to continue,'” Weiss said.

Although the loss of the thesis meant that no one in the Samoskevich-Roscoe residence got any sleep that night, Weiss characterized his subjection to Samoskevich’s frantic ravings as “a small price to pay” when compared to the laptop’s self-obliteration.

“It’s tragic, but I can’t help but think how the laptop never had the opportunity to do anything fun, like gaming or viral video–viewing or instant-messaging,” Roscoe said. “People need to hear its story.”

Faculty and staff of the English Department will gather at the Brandeis IT center Friday to honor the Inspiron with a Purple Hard Drive, traditionally awarded to computers that die at least 100 pages into a dangerously boring thesis.

Though Samoskevich was unavailable for comment, sources said she appeared to be immersed in new research on alcoholism and depression.

9) Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott

This is one of those “I’ve given up on this book” posts. I’ve given up on this book. Scott never uses one word where five would do. And when Ivanhoe was revealed, about a quarter of the way in, I realised I had forgotten who he was supposed to be. This has been my traffic jam reading on my Palm T|X for the last week or so, but I’m switching to The Last of the Mohicans instead.

The Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland has published its revised recommendations for Northern Ireland’s 18 parliamentary constituencies. My take in five lines:

• This is much more modest than the original set of changes in their provisional recommendations.
  
• I don’t see any significant impact on the next Westminster elections as a result of the new boundaries.
  
• At Assembly level, the SDLP will lose their current seat in Lagan Valley; but there will now be now a safe Nationalist seat in East Antrim (where the SDLP won an unexpected seat in the 1998 elections, but lost it in 2003).
  
• The changes to South Belfast, plus last week’s demise of the Women’s Coalition, will put Alliance in a stronger position to win a seat there; though the party still has quite some way to go.
  
• The entrenchement of six Assembly seats per constituency in the Good Friday Agreement results in the under-representation of voters in Newry and Armagh, North Antrim and Upper Bann, which are all large enough to warrant a seventh seat at Assembly elections.

(Thanks, as ever, to Conal Kelly for the map.)

I’ll look at this in more detail over the weekend. This is what I put together before breakfast:

• Belfast East constituency to include the Castlereagh LGD wards of Ballyhanwood, Carrowreagh, Dundonald, Enler and Graham’s Bridge. These wards are at present in the Strangford constituency;
  Does it make sense? Yes. The DUP successfully managed to keep Cregagh in East Belfast – the previous recommendations would have moved it to South Belfast, but the Commission has now swapped it for the Hillfoot ward instead..
  Demographic shift: The new East Belfast is roughly 3% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: no serious threat to Peter Robinson.
  Assembly consequences: DUP slightly strengthened at expense of Nationalists and PUP, but probably no change.
• Belfast North constituency to include the Newtownabbey LGD wards of Ballyhenry, Collinbridge, Glebe, Glengormley and Hightown, at present in the South Antrim constituency, and Cloughfern, at present in the East Antrim constituency;
  Does it make sense? Broadly yes. Specifically no. The weird division of the Shankill Road between North and West Belfast remains, and the new boundary weaves through the streets of Glengormley. Better to have left Cloughfern in East Antrim and extended North Belfast a bit farther northwest. (Query Shankill?)
  Demographic shift: The new North Belfast is 0.9% more Catholic edited to correct: Protestant than the current constituency.
  The new South Antrim is 1.6% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: In North Belfast this slightly accelerates Nationalist growth, slightly diminishes DUP dominance. In South Antrim the DUP are strengthened, probably not enough to make a difference.
  Assembly consequences: In North Belfast, DUP will slip slightly to UUP, but are so far ahead that it hardly matters.
  In South Antrim, second Nationalist quota is a little further away, so SF starting from a lower base next time (but probably would still take SDLP seat).
• Belfast South constituency to include the Castlereagh LGD wards of Carryduff East and Carryduff West at present in the Strangford constituency, and Wynchurch and Hillfoot, at present in the Belfast East constituency;
  Does it make sense? Yes; boundary with East Belfast is a bit inelegant but makes sense on the ground.
  Demographic shift: The new South Belfast is 0.5% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: none.
  Assembly consequences: Alliance slightly strengthened (from very weak position) at expense of UUP, and third Nationalist seat (currently second SDLP seat) looks weaker (but probably will be helped by demographic growth).
• Belfast West constituency to include the Lisburn LGD wards of Dunmurry and part of Derryaghy, at present in the Lagan Valley constituency.
  Does it make sense? Yes, apart from remarks about continued split of Shankill above under North Belfast; and the split of Derryaghy ward is unprecedented.
  Demographic shift: The new West Belfast is 0.2% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: none.
  Assembly consequences: DUP (or at least Unionist) seat is safer.
• Strangford constituency loses to South and West Belfast as noted above; it gets the Down LGD wards of Ballymaglave, Ballynahinch East, and Kilmore. The wards at present form part of the South Down constituency.
  Does it make sense? The most dubious of the new recommendations, in my view. It is news to me that Ballynahinch looks to Newtownards as a political centre.
  Demographic shift: The new Strangford is 1.3% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: depends on the ability of the UUP to mobilise tactical voting if the DUP have a bad year.
  Assembly consequences: Nationalist seat, barely missed in 2003, is slightly more possible now. Alliance looks most vulnerable – good areas in Castlereagh lost to East and South Belfast, in return for parts of Down where the party has no recent record.
• South Down unchanged except for losses to Strangford (major changes in provisional recommendations withdrawn).
  Does it make sense? See above remarks re Ballynahinch. The proposed division of Newry Town would only have restored the constituency boundary to where it was until 1983, but I guess the locals put up a strong case for no change.
  Demographic shift: The new South Down is 3.2% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: Brings the seat within reach for Sinn Féin.
  Assembly consequences: Second Unionist seat is now marginal; currently UUP (who held this constituency at Westminster until 1987) still ahead of DUP. On 2003 results SDLP better placed to pick up – for now.
• Upper Bann unchanged.
  Does it make sense? The minor alterations originally proposed were pretty silly.
• Lagan Valley loses one and a half Dunmurry wards to West Belfast, and Glenavy to South Antrim.
  Does it make sense? Recognises the demographic shifts, though the splitting of Derryaghy is inelegant.
  Demographic shift: The new Lagan Valley is 5.3% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: None.
  Assembly consequences: The SDLP seat held by Patricia Lewsley looks doomed; the Catholic percentage of the population is now only just over a quota, and this in a constituency where many Catholics vote Alliance. On the Unionist side the votes will be affected much more by the move of several local personalities from the UUP to the DUP than by the constituency boundaries.
• East Antrim constituency to be extended to include the Moyle LGD wards of Glenaan, Glenariff, and Glendun at present in the North Antrim constituency (the shift of Ballycastle in the original recommendations is withdrawn, as is the silly proposal to rename East Antrim “Antrim Coast and Glens”).
  Does it make sense? No. At the southern end, it would have been better to shift a couple more Glengormley wards into North Belfast rather than Cloughfern. At the northern end, it’s simply absurd to suggest that the Glens look to Jordanstown rather than Ballymena as a regional centre.
  Demographic shift: The new East Antrim is 4.0% more Catholic than the current East Antrim constituency.  The new North Antrim is 2.6% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: UUP have a larger pool of potential Nationalist tactical votes to regain East Antrim with, if their fortunes ever revive.
  Assembly consequences: One very safe Nationalist seat in East Antrim, rather than the marginal one lost in 2003. Probably enough spare votes to keep Alliance in play, so likely loser would be third DUP seat.
  In North Antrim, however, the second Nationalist seat gained in 2003 is vulnerable.
• It is proposed to alter the boundaries of the East Londonderry and Foyle constituencies by transferring the two Derry LGD wards of Banagher and Claudy from the Foyle constituency to the East Londonderry constituency.
  Does it make sense? Yes.
  Demographic shift: The new East Londonderry is 2.1% more Catholic than the current constituency. The new Foyle is 0.3% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: None.
  Assembly consequences: In East Londonderry, Nationalists closer to a third seat but still some way off. In Foyle, Unionists slightly further from a second seat that was never very likely.
• No changes are proposed to the Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Mid Ulster, North Down and West Tyrone constituencies.
  Does it make sense? Yes. Although the Mid-Ulster and West Tyrone constituencies are both very new in their current form, they are reasonably sound natural units and like Fermanagh-South Tyrone close enough to the quota that no change is necessary. Tinkering with North Down could have given a bit more flexibility for the rearrangement of Strangford.

Edited to add: West Belfast/Lagan Valley – I have rerun the figures making the most sense I can from the census. On my current estimate the new West Belfast is 0.2% more Catholic, not (as I had first thought) 0.7% less, and Lagan Valley 6.3% more Protestant rather than 5.3%. I think the DUP seat in West Belfast remains marginal but salvageable – the total Unionist vote share actually increased there in 2003 from 1998 – but the SDLP seat in Lagan Valley does not.

NB also minor (cough) correction to North Belfast as originally described.

Someone posted a message to the fr.soc.politique newsgroup earlier today asking:

” Comite Tchetchenie ” : Qui est le représentant du ” Comite Tchetchenie ” à l’OSCE et à l’UE ???????????????

and giving my name as the correct answer.

This is not true.

8) Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, by Lawrence Durrell

I bought this book for the Cyprus connection, but in fact its application is much more general and less specific. Durrell moved to Cyprus in 1953, and left after the outbreak of the EOKA campaign in 1956, and the book is a heartfelt chronicle of how the innocence of a beautiful country was destroyed by violence.

Up to now, I knew of Lawrence Durrell mainly from the odd mention in his brother Gerald’s lovely books about collecting animals, which I was addicted to in my early teens. I did try reading the Alexandria Quartet once, but bounced off it. Maybe I should try again. (Gerald does turn up, complete with animals, for a couple of cameo appearances in Bitter Lemons, somewhat to Lawrence’s embarrassment: he has curried favour with the neighbours by telling them that his brother died fighting for the Greek army in the second world war.)

I was struck after reading Bitter Lemons by the thought that one can imagine other such books being written about Northern Ireland in, say 1965-1972, or Bosnia in 1989-1993, but I don’t think any other conflict has benefited from a first-hand witness of such literary talents who happened to be on the spot, actually working as the press spokesman for the occupying colonial power, before and during that very brief period of time when the shit really hit the fan.

Having said that, I couldn’t recommend this book as essential reading about the Cyprus conflict today. It was published in 1957, while Archbishop Makarios was still in exile, and the Zurich and London Agreements were still two years in the future. It is very interesting on Cyprus itself, and on communal relations as they were at one point in time. He does mention that his assistant, Achilles Papadopoulos, has a smart and successful younger brother… no, presumably it is not the guy’s real name.

The village of Bellapais and nearby town of Kyrenia, both beautifully and lyrically portrayed in the first half of the book, are both still beautiful but were ethnically cleansed in 1974; they are standard stops on the one-day-tour of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus that many people do starting from the Green Line in Nicosia. To be honest Durrell’s sweeping generalisations about the Cypriots and the Greeks are rather annoying, if typical of the attitudes of the time. If he had concentrated on the individual characters, or distanced himself a bit from the prejudices expressed, it would have been a more pleasant read.

The book hit its stride for me in the chapter “A Telling of Omens”, when a visiting Greek friend warns Durrell (to the latter’s deep scepticism) that there is trouble ahead. Durrell’s initial doubts are turned around by, well, pretty much every Cypriot he talks to, and he finds himself in the position of trying to persuade his colleagues in the colonial administration to adopt a sensible policy – indeed to adopt any policy at all. I found myself nodding in sympathy at this paragraph, at almost exactly the middle of the book:

Moreover at this time I felt that perhaps such errors as there were might lie in assessing the situation on the spot, in lack of adequate reporting on it. I had no means of knowing what sort of liaison the Government maintained with London, but I knew that in the field their information was largely based on reports from their own departmental officers which, while factually accurate, lacked political pith and the sort of interpretations which are essential if high-level dispatches are to be what they should be – namely guides to action.

Yes, I thought as I read those words, that is precisely what I try and do all day – to make up for that inevitable lack of challenging, actionable information within government bureaucracies. Of course, by the time Durrell does get his face-to-face meeting with the Colonial Secretary, it is too late and the cycle of violence is well and truly established. Also it is sadly clear that he was advocating only the replacement of the prejudices of the colonial administration by the prejudices of the traditional pro-Greek views of the British establishment (though, in fairness, a) this would have been an improvement and b) the resulting policy debate could even have led to further progress before it was too late). In addition his repeated assertion of the unquestionable right of Britain to rule Cyprus indefinitely seems very peculiar now, given that the island became independent only three years after the book was published. He condemns the British most, though does not spare the Cypriots or the Greek government of the day. I’ve heard Greeks blame their own government first and foremost. I don’t know.

However, as a portrayal of how stupid and evil policies can destroy the peace of a society, despite the warnings of those who know and care about it, there can’t be many better accounts than this.

Well, my post on Old Man’s War pulled in 23 comments, and the related discussion thread on John Scalzi’s blog is up to 29, which is something of an Event. My thanks to John Scalzi for engaging with this reader’s comments as thoughtfully as he has done, and to (most of) those others who have chipped in.

Obviously, I have had to revisit one of my core assumptions. I completely withdraw my assumption that John Scalzi is a slavering warmonger who does not care about civilian control of the military. I also withdraw my accusation that the character of “Bender” is a deliberate piss-take of former Senator George Mitchell, and accept that the striking similarities between their two careers were not intended.

Having said that, I’m still very unsatisfied with a book that presents militarism in such an uncritical way. I admit that I came to this fresh from reading Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart, where we may reasonably assume that the authors are expressing their own opinions through those of the central characters. Achebe complains that Conrad “neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters”, and I make the same criticism of Scalzi – with the qualification that of the two characters who do hint at such an alternative frame of reference, one is a sheer caricature and both come to sticky ends.

I am also still left with the core of my original objection: that Bender is a crude caricature of a character. Neither Scalzi nor his defenders have really refuted this. Scalzi says,

Bender’s salient charateristic, for me at least, was his grasping opportunism; he wasn’t looking for peace for its own ends but for what he thought it could do for him (thus he injected himself into a future peace process on Earth, and did a poor enough job with it that it was easily shattered, and was attempting to do a similar thing in the book).

characterises Bender as “an example of a certain mindset common in America”. sees him as “a spoof of self-important politicians”. Nobody thinks of him as a well-rounded or even particularly credible character. One of the commenters on Whatever says that “I can say the reaction of John Perry and his platoon-mates to the perceived pomposity of Bender rings true”; and indeed it does, but Bender does not ring true in the first place. The initial set-up, of Bender accidentally getting a bad peace agreement, simply is not a credible premise. You don’t get peace agreements, good or bad, by accident or by careless work.

I am also still personally annoyed about the glib setting of Bender’s career slip-up in Northern Ireland. I don’t mind jokes about Northern Ireland politics (see my posts here, here, here, and here). But I do require them to be actually funny, and this one isn’t.

A couple of the respondents on Scalzi’s blog criticized me for making political judgements about the book at all. Hey, folks, I make political judgements for a living; get over it. And it is a gross mistake to suggest that my sole reason for disliking the book was my perception of the political message. I have even been known to excoriate sf where I actually agreed with the political message but found the way in which it was delivered distasteful (see in particular my take on Terry Bisson’s “macs”). (And the guy who thinks that announcing my intention to put Old Man’s War fifth on my Hugo ballot, and recommending that readers uncomfortable with militarism avoid it, amounts to lynch mob tactics, clearly has been fortunate in his experience of lynch mobs.)

One person picked up on my complaint that “the explanation of why the commander took offence seemed weak. Perhaps she just didn’t like talking about anything reminding her of the massacre of her family sixty years before. (Then why join the army?)” and said that left him “wondering if Mr. Whyte had somehow neglected to read the first 1/4th of the book he’s reviewing”. Another commenter jumped in to defend me by saying it was a perfectly valid question. My critic then replied:

no it’s not a valid question for the context of this book.

The context of the question is that you’re 75 years old and you have a choice of rejuvenation or “rather not be reminded” and dying — sort of the ultimate in not having to be reminded anymore.

Unless you’re an absolute fanatic (which there’s no reason to suppose she was), I think you opt for choice “A”, reminders or no.

I’m afraid this really makes no sense to me. To explain once more: I was puzzled by the argument scene between Bender and the commander. I did not understand the story-teller’s reasoning as to why the commander took offence. We are told that Bender’s remarks reminded her of the circumstances of the massacre of her family. It seems to me that if you don’t want to be reminded of the violent deaths of your relatives, it is probably unwise to join a profession where many of your colleagues are likely to meet violent deaths. The commander did not seem to me an unwise person (indeed, I think her comments were very sensible, which is why I regret that Scalzi chose to kill her off on the next page). My critic seems to think that the lure of rejuvenation easily trumps childhood trauma. I simply don’t believe that. So it seemed to me an unconvincing added detail to a passage in the book that I already did not like much.

Surprisingly nobody on Scalzi’s blog picked up on a point made by several livejournal commentators, who disagreed with my honestly held opinion that people in their 70s are different from people in their 30s. One person accused me of the “myopia of youth”. My myopia is undeniable – I have been wearing glasses since I was six – but having just turned 39, I am pleased rather than annoyed to be accused of excessive youth!

It costs European taxpayers approximately 200 million euros a year to move the Parliament between Brussels/Belgium and Strasbourg/France. If you think this is a stupid idea, you could always sign here.