The Chicago crime database is a freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago that uses Google Maps. This is just like part one of the ideas for "keeping the public safe and geeling safe" that I was proposing in May, that is it enables the public to find incidents that have occurred nearby.
Also rather happily, part 2 of my idea - using feeds to keep the public informed of developments - is also rather neatly covered by Microsoft's wide ranging announcement of support for RSS at Gnomedex last Friday.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Chicago crime database
Everybody Goes to Rick's
Paul and I picked my four year old up from nursery after work yesterday afternoon as Jane was ruuning late. When she got in, and as we were setting off for Tooting she recommended that we eat at Rick's Cafe (122 Mitcham Road, Tooting, SW17 9NH tel: 02087675219). This had the unfortunate effect of bringing Bogie and Bergman's Casablanca to mind causing us to waste most of the next couple of hours trying to remember the name of the actor who played Capt. Renault. (It was, as any fule kno, Claud Rains.) In the 1980s, this film's script was sent to readers at a number of major studios and production companies under its original title, "Everybody Comes To Rick's". Some readers recognized the script but most did not. Many complained that the script was "not good enough" to make a decent movie.
En route we had a pint in The Gorringe Park (London Road, Tooting, London, SW17 9JR) and then one in the The Railway Bell (284, Mitcham Rd, London, SW17 9NT), both of which were pretty disappointing, but then we bowled up at The Ramble Inn (Amen Corner, Mitcham Road, Tooting, London, SW17 9JG) which was great.
The Amen Corner address also had the advantage of reminding me of Welsh Born Icon Andy Fairweather Low (Cardiff 1948) so I serenaded any passers by with "Bend Me Shape Me", "Half As Nice", and "Wide Eyed and Legless" as we proceded from there up to the ever reliable Rick's where I enjoyed croquettes of Spanish ham with sauce vierge then char grilled rib eye steak, chips and green peppercorn sauce and a bottle of Rioja.
The only downside was that Paul, fresh from the Claud Rains triumph, decided to regale me with a tidal wave of Casablanca trivia and demand that I publish it here.
F'rinstance:
After shooting, the producers wanted to remove "As Time Goes By" as the song identifying Rick and Ilsa, but couldn't manage it becaue Ingrid Bergman had cut her hair very short for For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) which was shooting at a distant locale and she therefore could not re-shoot already-completed scenes that had used "As Time Goes By".
The final scene includes midget extras as aircraft personnel walking around a model cardboard plane, because of budgetary and wartime rationing constraints.
etc. etc.
I don't know where he gets it all from. I've looked at the Trivia for Casablanca (1942) page today however and found a great modern story.
There is more poignant stuff as well.
Conrad Veidt, who played Maj. Strasser, was well known in the theatrical community in Germany for his hatred of the Nazis, and in fact was forced to hurriedly escape the country when he found out that the SS had sent a death squad after him because of his anti-Nazi activities.
Many of the actors who played the Nazis were in fact German Jews who had escaped from Nazi Germany.
Google Maps API
"The worlds most intriguing company" has finally made a Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API) available.
This will let developers embed Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript, add overlays to the maps (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed "info windows" just like Google Maps.
This is going to supercharge the display of geographical data on the 'net.
Blogroll
I updated to Newsgator 2.5 yesterday, and noticed as I was fooling around with the online component that it included the facility to publish a "Blogroll".
My blogroll is simply a list of the RSS feeds to which I subscribe. I have put the list under the Archives on the left of the page. You can go straight to it by clicking here
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Tooting
We are off to Tooting Railway station and environs tonight for the last Wednesday pub crawl before Abbeyfest.
That reminds me of the old story of the American couple in London who wanted to go to the Tutankhamen exhibit at the British Museum.
Flagging down a taxi, they instructed the driver, 'Take us to Tutankhamen!' and off they went.
Some time later, the driver delivered them to Tooting Common.
William Donaldson
Another great Telegraph obituary. Willie Donaldson's alter ego was a Right-wing nutcase and wet fish merchant from Elm Park Mansions, SW10, who specialised in writing brash, outrageous and frequently abusive letters to eminent public figures, enclosing a one pound note. Donaldson's genius was to write letters that appeared absurd to the public but not to those to whom they were addressed. The recipients duly replied, often unaware that the joke was on them. This might have been so, had he not enjoyed hating himself so much: "The salient features about me are laziness, self-indulgence and sex addiction," he confessed, in his characteristic melancholy drawl. "I'm genuinely shocked by my own behaviour."William Donaldson, who died on June 22 aged 70, was described by Kenneth Tynan as "an old Wykehamist who ended up as a moderately successful Chelsea pimp", which was true, though he was also a failed theatrical impresario, a crack-smoking serial adulterer and a writer of autobiographical novels; but it was under the nom de plume Henry Root that he became best known.
I remember Henry Root although I was still a teenager when the letters saw the light of day. (I can't help but wonder if they played any part in the inspiration of Ali G.)
Although the potted biographies of the eccentrics are a thing of beauty and a joy forever, it is also worth reading the Telegraph's obituary column to salute, sixty years on in their twilight, the generation that fought World War II. It is genuinely humbling to read of apparently ordinary people who performed extraordinary feats of valour in the Fourties and then returned to steady jobs and allotment tending, seldom it seems even raising their voices again. (I always find it amazing, as he is so modest and unassuming, that Kevin's dad fought his was up through Italy with the Eighth Army and had a good friend and comrade shot dead as they stood shoulder to shoulder. What an easy life I have by comparison.)
Root chastised the Archbishop of Canterbury for failing to thank him for the five pounds he had donated towards roof repairs; suggested to Margaret Thatcher (who kept the enclosed one pound) that Mary Whitehouse should be made Home Secretary; sympathised with the Queen about the "problems" she was having with Princess Anne ("My Doreen, 19, is completely off the rails too, so I know what it's like"); and told the Thorpe trial judge, Sir Joseph Cantley: "You tipped the jury the right way and some of your jokes were first class! Well done! You never looked to me like the sort of man who'd send an old Etonian to the pokey", a communication which brought a visit from the police, investigating allegations of attempted bribery.
He volunteered to run sundry failing football clubs; to visit the Chief Constable of Manchester with his newly formed-group The Ordinary Folk Against The Rising Tide of Filth in Our Society Situation (TOFATRFLOSS); asked Angela Rippon to send him a photograph of Anna Ford and enquired of the Tory Party director of finance the going rate for a peerage. He wrote to the late Sir James Goldsmith urging the elimination of "scroungers, perverts, Dutch pessary salesmen and Polly Toynbee". "Dear Mr Root", Goldsmith replied, "Thank you for your letter which I appreciated enormously."
Some recipients were puzzled, some furious, and some swallowed the hoax, hook, line and sinker. Nicholas Scott MP answered Root's letters about his love life, claiming that all was well between himself and his wife. The Foreign Office replied to Root's enquiries as to whether Mrs Root might be assaulted by "local Pedros" on holiday in Ibiza, informing him that "the activities to which you refer are indeed apt to occur in most popular tourist centres". When he told Sir David McNee, then Police Commissioner at Scotland Yard, that it was "better that 10 innocent men be convicted than that one guilty man goes free", he was told: "Your kind comments are appreciated."
........
He had an unerring eye for the approach which would rankle most with his recipients. Writing to Harriet Harman, then of "The National Council for so-called Civil Liberties", he began: "I saw you on television the other night� Why should an attractive lass like you want to confuse her pretty little head with complicated matters of politics, jurisprudence, sociology and the so-called rights of man? Leave such considerations to us men, that's my advice to you. A pretty girl like you should have settled down by now with a husband and a couple of kiddies." If she must work, he continued, she should consider a career such as "that of model, actress, ballroom dancing instructor or newsreader", before enclosing a pound for her to buy a pretty dress and urging the future MP to get in touch with "my friend Lord Delfont".
Compiled and published in 1980, The Henry Root Letters became the number one best seller... It was claimed that one of his more redeeming features was that while he hated pomposity and hypocrisy in others, he disliked himself even more.
Physics Lectures
I picked up a great story from O'Reilly Radar.After winning the Nobel prize, Max Planck went around Germany giving talks. His chauffeur heard the talk so many times that he had it by heart, and so one time, he asked Max Planck if he could give the address. Planck agreed, they changed places, and the lecture came off famously. But then came the Q&A, with the very first question being one that the chauffeur had no hope of answering. The chauffeur replied: 'I'm surprised to hear such an elementary question on high energy physics here in Munich. It's so simple, I'll let my chauffeur answer it.'
My brother used to be an academic at ETH, the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Once, after giving a guest lecture he was asked a question he couldn't understand, "I'm sorry I have no idea what you mean", he replied.
His interlocutor tried a follow up. Vince was still genuinely baffled and perhaps a little uncomfortable, yet afterwards several people quietly, and individually, approached him to thank him for putting down a notorious bore, hair-splitter, and obfuscator. "I've been waiting to see that bugger put in his place for years", said one. Dr. Browne's genuine bewilderment having come across as withering scorn.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Government Bills
With the Bill to introduce ID cards getting its second reading in the Commons today and the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill at the committee stage, it has struck me quite forcibly (and embarassingly) that I do not have a very clear idea of the procedures by which the Houses of Parliament acutally pass laws. Here then, is the skinny on the overall system. Perhaps the committee stage and the process of amendment will become clearer to me as events roll along. Public Bills can be introduced into either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. As a rule, government bills likely to raise political controversy start in the Commons, while those of a technical but less party-political nature often go to the Lords first. Bills with a mainly financial purpose are always introduced in the Commons. If the main object of a public bill is to create a public charge - involving new taxation or public spending - it must be introduced by a government minister in the Commons. The procedure of passing a Public Bill is similar in both Houses. The stages are: first reading The first reading of a public bill is a formality. Once formally presented, a bill is printed and proceeds to a second reading. Amendments can be made at the committee and subsequent stages.
second reading
committee stage
report stage
third reading
passage through the other House
Royal Assent
The Bleat
James Lileks' daily Bleat is always a treat. Have I recommended or linked to him before? I'm not sure, but I should have. Yesterday, he was hitting all the buttons in full "Night Hawks" and "One for my Baby" mode;
My wife, child and mother-in-law left Friday for the outlands of the state, leaving me and the dog to amuse ourselves in the time-honored method: staying up until 3 AM watching Star Wars with the stereo pumped up to 11. ........ But that's all I'm left with: me myself and rye.
What I really want to do is sit in a vacant bar listening to the jukebox, scraping the labels off the Shiners, smoking Winstons, staring at the bottles. Somewhere in the bottom of every man's heart is just such a place, waiting. The bar is long and dark and full of scratches; the bathroom stinks, and there's a rotary-dial pay phone in the back. No one uses it much because no one has anyone to call. The bartender doesn't like you but that's just fine, because you don't like him either. It's night; it's summer; when the jukebox stops you can hear the traffic on the highway outside. Or you could, if there was any.
I've been there. A few years ago when the family left a couple of days earlier than me for a break at a cottage in Kent, I remember hiring a DVD of American Beauty, and buying a case of Stella, because I hated the film so much that I wanted watch it drinking and sneering at Sam Mendes' director's commentary. Screaming "tell me again why a plastic bag swirling in the wind is a breathtaking image of meditative and unforced beauty, you sonovabitch!" over his rationalisations was indeed deeply satisfying.
Masour Pulao
Reza Mahammad was on the BBC's Saturday Kitchen this weekend. I've seen him before on a show about Indian food called 'Delhi Belly' that he did with Sanjeev Bhasker. He is an hilarious natural on the TV; think Freddie Mercury at the tandoor.
He cooked a Masour Pulao (layered minced lamb with rice), that I want to note for future reference in case it disappears from the BBC website - especially as we brought plenty of saffron back from Dubai and we have still got sacks of cinnamon from Kerala.
Ingedients
1 tsp saffron strands
600g/1 lb 5oz basmati rice (uncooked weight)
50g/2oz red masour lentils or puy lentils, soaked according to packet instructions, or tinned green lentils
150ml/5fl oz vegetable oil
4 onions, thinly sliced
4 whole cinnamon sticks
6 to 8 whole cardamom pods
2 tsp fresh root ginger, finely grated
1 tsp garlic, crushed
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 green chillies, halved
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp red chilli powder
450g/1 lb minced lamb
1 tbsp plain yoghurt
handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped
small bunch mint leaves, chopped
For the garnish
3 boiled eggs, shelled and halved
Method
1. Make the saffron water by soaking the saffron strands in 200ml/7fl oz of hot water. Leave to stand until needed.
2. Wash the rice in warm to hot water and leave to soak in a bowl of water while you prepare the other ingredients.
3. Add the lentils to a large pan filled with 400ml/14fl oz hot water (you can use some chicken stock instead of the water to give more flavour if you prefer). Place over a low to medium heat and cook for approximately 30-45 minutes, until the lentils are tender. If necessary, add more hot water during cooking. If using tinned lentils you can omit this step.
4. Heat two thirds of the vegetable oil in another large pan and heat until smoking hot. Add half the onions and fry until they are golden brown and crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on kitchen paper to drain. Set aside.
5. Leave the oil in the pan and add the cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods. Allow the spices to sizzle for a few seconds then add the remaining raw onions and fry until golden brown.
6. Now add the garlic and ginger and stir for a few seconds.
7. Add the chopped tomatoes, green chillies, ground cumin, garam masala and red chilli powder and stir for a minute or two.
8. Add the minced lamb and cook until browned then add the yoghurt and stir through. Cover the pan and cook on a low heat for 30 minutes.
9. Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to the boil and add the rice. Add three teaspoons of salt and a drizzle of oil to prevent the rice from sticking. Cook until the rice becomes tender but not completely cooked through - about three minutes. Drain well and leave to stand.
10. Add the remaining oil to the empty rice pan and add a layer of the crispy-fried onions and a drizzle of the saffron water.
11. Next add a thin layer of rice, then a thin layer of the lentils and some of the lamb mixture.
12. Repeat the above several times until all the ingredients have been used up and you have a number of layers. Finish with a layer of fried onions and sprinkle over the chopped coriander and mint.
13. Cover the pan with a clean, dry cloth and steam over a low heat for 10 - 15 minutes.
14. Transfer to a large platter and garnish with the boiled egg halves. Serve.
On the show, he missed out the garnish,finished the dish in the oven under foil in the oven, and then tapped it "whole" out of the inverted dish to serve.
I need to put his restaurant the Star of India (154 Old Brompton Road, London, SW5 0BE tel:020 7373 2901) on my to do list.
I have found out that he's also made a series about Kerala, India called "Coconut Coast", exploring the exotic and delicately flavoured dishes influenced by the spice traders and merchants from Portugal and the Gulf." We all fell in love with Kerala when we were there so I would love to see that. Come to think of it cookery shows might be a great thing for Google Video.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Google Video
John Battelle's Searchblog has got a scoop saying Google will launch online video playback today.
I've confirmed that Monday Google will launch an in-browser video playback feature based on the open source VLC media player. This is the logical next step for Google's video search and upload function, which began taking uploads from anyone who cared to submit back in April.
I'll try and embed an example in the blog once its launched. With Google providing the hosting and streaming - plus, possibly a payment mechanism - this could really throw the doors open to smaller content providers. Google as a TVOD channel?
Piles of Poles
According to the magazine with Saturday's Times,"London is one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities - with the food to prove it. Jenny Linford's guide lifts the lid on a melting pot".
She says:Finchley used to be very Japanese, but the Japanese have now moved out to Acton. I went to check up on an Iranian food shop there, and there was a sign up in Polish. I went in, and half the shop has now become Polish, full of cabbage and sausages and pickled herring. That�s been a big change, that sort of compromise.
Everywhere is becoming Polish as far as I can tell. The finest example I have come across is that the Pakistani grocer in our High Street sells curry powder imported from Poland!
The fourth edition of Food Lovers� London by Jenny Linford is published by Metro Publications on July 23 and is available from Books First priced �7.64 (RRP �8.99) plus 99p p&p on 0870 1608080. I will try and remember to invest in a copy.
We want RSS everywhere
Here's the BBC coverage of Microsoft's RSS announcement at Gnomedex on Friday.Microsoft's next version of its browser, Internet Explorer 7, will make it easier for people to keep automatically aware of website updates. IE7 will have an orange button on the toolbar which will light up when it detects a Really Simple Sndication (RSS) feed on a site.
Appropriately, Microsoft's RSS team has an MSDN RSS feed MSDN RSS feed that we can use to follow developments and a blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam/default.aspx.
Users can click on a 'plus' button to subscribe to the site's feed, as they would with a bookmark. The new browser is due to be released this summer.
It had its public debut at the Gnomedex technology conference in the US city of Seattle on Friday.
The open-source browser, Mozilla Firefox, already lets web users subscribe to feeds of websites they read regularly, such as weblogs and news sites.
The move is part of wider plans Microsoft has to integrate RSS formats throughout its latest version of Windows - Longhorn - which it sees as a major step forward.
'We are making sure that throughout Windows the experiences for users are easy,' said Dean Hachomovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer team.
When I subscribe I can say what is interesting to me, the machine can do the work, and I can enjoy the fruits of its labour
'We want RSS everywhere. I want it in more than just the browser and aggregators. We want to help RSS get even bigger and better than today.'
At Coraider we have been building RSS into almost everything we have done for several years and working hard on evangelising it to the UK Police. I gave this presentation at several forces in 2003. I still think it holds up well.
Maybe at last we will start to get some benefit from all this work.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Ebay Bargain
A radio presenter who flirted on air with Jodie Marsh has paid a terrible price. Kerrang 105.2's Tim Shaw told the glamour model that he'd leave his wife and children for her, little suspecting that his wife, Hayley, was listening. In revenge she sold Shaw's �25,000 Lotus Esprit Turbo for 50p on eBay.Times Online via Normblog.
The description read: 'I need to get rid of this car immediately - ideally in the next two to three hours before my husband gets home to find it gone and all his belongings in the street.' Hayley, 27, told The Birmingham Post:
'He was all over her during the interview. It was pathetic. The car is his pride and joy, but the idiot put my name on the logbook. I am sick of being disrespected.' A Kerrang spokesman said Shaw was 'gutted'.
New Zealand 21-3 Lions
We don't subscribe to Sky Sports, so I would have had to go down to the pub to watch the Lions play the All Blacks on Saturday morning.
Regarding the odds of me watching a rugby game in a boozer without drinking, "it is difficult to be precise, Captain: I should say approximately 7824.7 to one", so rather than write off a Saturday I had to pass.
From what I have heard, I am certainly glad that I did. Surely after this spanking, and with Brian O'Driscoll injured Gavin Henson must get a start in the next Test?
(I haven't always avoided beer for breakfast watching sport in a pub, nearly ten years ago my brother John and I watched an England Euro 96 soccer game in a bar in New Orleans' Irish Channel. An afternoon match in Blighty translated to a very early kick off in the Big Easy. My recollections of the rest of the day are, to say the least, hazy which is probably a good thing.)
Refutation Thus
There are two famous put downs of Bishop Berkeley's views. Boswell writes in his famous Life of Johnson:After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."
Mgr Ronald Knox, coined both the limerick summary I posted yesterday and his own response in the same form.
Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours Faithfully, GOD.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Idealism
For this weekend's poems I am jumping from Berkeley Square to Bishop Berkeley. George Berkeley was one of the three most famous eighteenth century British Empiricists (along with John Locke and David Hume). He was an idealist: everything that exists is either a mind or depends for its existence upon a mind. He was an immaterialist: matter does not exist. He accepted the seemingly outrageous position that ordinary physical objects are composed solely of ideas, which are inherently mental; a view neatly summarised in a limerick.
There was a young man who said, God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Benares Berkeley Square
Jane booked a table at Benares Restaurant for my birthday after we saw the chef/proprietor Atul Kochhar on television.
He was on a SkyTV show in which the best chefs in Britain prepare, cook, debate and present what they consider to be the Greatest Dishes known to man. In the first episiode he was competing with Gennaro Contaldo, Alexis Gaulthier and Angela Hartnett to produce the best starter in the world and his Galawati Kebab won out over Soffritto Napoletana, Soup with Black Truffles and Frogs Legs Mouselline.
The meltingly delicate Galawati kebab was apparently created for a toothless Nawab of Lucknow, but it won our hearts as well so we had to investigate further.
When Kochhar was the head chef at the Tamarind restaurant he was the first Indian chef to be awarded a Michelin star and Benares is certainly a class act. The decor is quite dark and the ambience is very cool, with a series of water-filled pools decorated with gerbera flowers and lillies.
We were a little bit disappointed to find that the Galawati kebab was not on the menu.
I had Subj Bahar - cumin scented pan-fried potato cakes, grilled pickled paneer, tandoori closed cup mushrooms & tomato with basil oil & garlic vinegar dressing - to start, and then Parda Biriyani - a pastry sealed pot of fragrant rice and lamb served with raita. I also ordered a black dal.
The waiter, very politely, over ruled my red wine choice and steered me to a Napa Valley Zinfandel which certainly did complement the spicy food wonderfully well.
It was a great gastronomic experience. The Benares website says, "the presentation may be lean towards modern European, but the heart of each dish can be traced to individual households across India" which is pretty much on the button. (I also found myself wondering whether or not there is any French/Indian hybrid cooking, maybe from around Ponicherry?)
Kochhar's book Indian Essence: The Fresh Tastes of India's New Cuisine
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Patrick Pakenham
Two great stories from a Daily Telegraph obituary.During his legal career, Pakenham became something of a legend, and, 25 years on, accounts of his exploits are still current. During his appearance before an irascible and unpopular judge in a drugs case, the evidence, a bag of cannabis, was produced. The judge, considering himself an expert on the subject, said to Pakenham, with whom he had clashed during the case: "Come on, hand the exhibit up to me quickly." Then he proceeded to open the package. Inserting the contents in his mouth, he chewed it and announced: "Yes, yes of course that is cannabis. Where was the substance found, Mr Pakenham?" The reply came swiftly, if inaccurately: "In the defendant's anus, my Lord."
Pakenham's final appearance in court has been variously recorded. As defence counsel in a complicated fraud case, he was due to address the court during the afternoon session, and had partaken of a particularly well-oiled lunch.
"Members of the jury," he began, "it is my duty as defence counsel to explain the facts of this case on my client's behalf; the Judge will guide you and advise you on the correct interpretation of the law and you will then consider your verdict. Unfortunately," Pakenham went on, "for reasons which I won't go into now, my grasp of the facts is not as it might be. The judge is nearing senility; his knowledge of the law is pathetically out of date, and will be of no use in assisting you to reach a verdict. While by the look of you, the possibility of you reaching a coherent verdict can be excluded." He was led from the court.
Guys and Dolls
I went to Piccadilly yesterday to see Ewan McGregor as "Sky Masterson", Jane Krakowski as "Miss Adelaide", Douglas Hodge as "Nathan Detroit" and Jenna Russell as" Sarah Brown" in Guys and Dolls.
'Guys and Dolls is the One, the greatest of all the great Broadway musicals' - Daily Telegraph
'Ewan McGregor's charm makes fairy tale of New York a hit' - The Independent
'Jane Krakowski - well worth queuing for' - Daily Express'
Douglas Hodge - a great comic actor' - Daily Telegraph
'Jenna Russell - a delight' - Daily Telegraph
'Guys and Dolls' is a dramatisation of stories written by Damon Runyon, and Runyon is supposed to have based the character Nathan Detroit on a legendary New York figure called Arnold Rothstein (who was also the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby). Arnold Rothstein was gambling, and Arnold Rothstein was money. He was Mr. Broadway and had his own booth at Lindy�s restaurant in Manhattan where he held court.
He is remembered to this day as the rumoured mastermind of the �Black Sox� scandal, the fixing of the World Series. In 1919, baseball was truly "America�s pastime." Because they considered themselves grossly underpaid by team owner Charles Comisky, eight members of the Chicago White Sox, led by first baseman Chick Gandil, conspired to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati team� if they could find a gambler willing to pay them to lose.
Gandil approached a former featherweight boxing champion who had fought under the name "the little Hebrew" and in retirement, served in Arnold Rothstein�s entourage. He told him told him that, for $100,000, he could guarantee that his teammates would lose to Cincinnati.
In 1921, the eight players were convicted of fraud and banned from baseball. The go-between was was convicted of trying to fix the Series, but Rothstein, who never met the players, testified on his own behalf and was acquitted.
The retired featherweight intermediary was a famous figure in his own right and classed by Damon Runyon himself as "one of the five greatest fighters of all time."
Nat Fleischer, publisher of Ring magazine and probably the world's foremost boxing authority, named him as at least the third greatest fighter his class ever produced, behind only Terrible Terry McGovern and Cardiff's Jim Driscoll, with whom he had fought a ten-round no-decision bout eleven years before his day in court.
Yes, it was the fight I wrote about yesterday, and the conspirator was none other than Abe Attell. "I love it when a plan comes together".
A postscript: One of my brothers tells a story about chancing on a bar near Broadway, when he was in New York, where all the guys kept their hats on and talked out of the sides of their mouths. It was a shrine to Abe Attell just like the Royal Oak's tribute to Driscoll in Cardiff more than three thousand miles to the East.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Peerless Jim
In the late Seventies and early Eighties, I used to drink in the Royal Oak in Cardiff. There was boxing gym on the on the first floor, and the front bar was crowded with fight photos and memorabilia but dominated by a huge photograph of the legendary Cardiff boxer "Peerless" Jim Driscoll.
Driscoll learned his trade in the boxing booths and won the British featherweight title, but the legend was really forged in the USA where he travelled next.
This was the era of the no-decision in America, where the rules stated that if a boxer was not knocked out then the fight was declared to have no result. On the night of February 19th 1910 just ninety-eight days after his first fight in America, the Driscoll stepped intothe ring against the reigning featherweight champion of the world, Abe Attell, a true great who had held the title since 1901.
The reporters all gave the verdict to Jim Driscoll, who claimed that Attell had agreed to be bound by the newspapers decision. An agreement Attell did not recall.
Nat Fleischer when commenting on the fight said 'Driscoll was easily the best. The Welshman easily outpointed Atell and virtually took his title away from him. He definitely proved, as far as I am concerned, that he was the best featherweight in the world'.
The Police Gazette said, "Jem Driscoll gave Abe Attell an artistic trouncing, luckily the law forbade the rendering of decisions, otherwise Driscoll would have taken the featherweight title away with him." While Tad Dorgan wrote, "Abe Attell found his reign as premier featherweight boxer in the world had come to an end. ...At the National Athletic Club on East 24th Street the little Briton opened the eyes of the crowd and closed one of Abe's. ..there was no question as to which was the better man."
Harry Shaffer has noted that, "at this point in his American tour Driscoll was as great a draw as any fighter, most entertainers, and far greater than the heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson."
This makes what happened next all the more remarkable. When the representatives who were handling Driscoll's affairs in America, went to see him at his hotel they had great plans, but they found Jim all packed, ticket in hand. He was ready to sail for home to keep a promise to take part in an exhibition bout at the Park Hall in Cardiff, in aid of his favourite charity, the Assault at Arms Committee, which supported Nazareth House, where the Sisters of Nazareth cared for scores of orphans. Driscoll kept his promise appearing, as always, for free.
He was to return to America only once, in the Spring of the following year, on the promise of a championship fight, but that was not to be, "Attell proving as elusive outside the ring as Driscoll was inside", and he returned home already suffering from the early stages of the lung disease that would take his life at the age of 44.
Which is why, in a way, this is a story for my own 44th birthdday today
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Farr v Louis
After writing a post yesterday that mentioned both Joe Louis and a Welsh heavyweight, I couldn't really let the matter drop without reference to Tonypandy-born Tommy Farr's 1937 fight with the "Brown Bomber". (By coincidence, it was Louis's first defence after taking the title from Jim Braddock who is currently being portrayed by Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man).
Like Jimmy Wilde and Jim Driscoll before him, Tommy Farr came up through the boxing booths. Almost unbelievably, he had his first official fight - a six round points win - when he was twelve. By the time he faced Louis he was still only 23 years old but had been involved in more than 200 fights if you include the boxing booth bouts. At the weigh in when Louis noticed the scars on his back, (which were a result of Farr's days in the coal mines) and asked him how he had got them, Tommy is supposed to have replied, "Oh, they're nothing, I got those fighting tigers!"
It is said that everyone in Wales listened to the fight. I remember Kevin's Dad many years ago assuring me that Farr had won and been robbed in a shameful home town decision.
"How can you be sure?", I asked.
"I heard it on the radio", he said.
Well courtesy of BBC Wales you can hear the last couple of minutes radio commmentary on the fight again nearly 70 years later. It sure sounds like he was winning to me.
CoeXisT
I have found Bono a faintly ridiculous figure ever since my mother reacted to a TV appearance by observing, "isn't that Bozo out of OoBeeDoo", but I do think that the design above that seems to be what he wore on a headband at the U2 gigs in Twickenham over the weekend is striking and apt for the people of the book.
And do not dispute with the followers of the Book except by what is best, except those of them who act unjustly, and say: We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our God and your God is One, and to Him do we submit.(Qur'an 29:46)
Monday, June 20, 2005
Pessimism for Beginners
Here, via normblog, is a modern poem by Sophie Hannah in the fine tradition of last week's 19th Century Pessimist.
When you're waiting for someone to e-mail,
When you're waiting for someone to call -
Young or old, gay or straight, male or female -
Don't assume that they're busy, that's all.
Don't conclude that their letter went missing
Or they must be away for a while;
Think instead that they're cursing and hissing -
They've decided you're venal and vile,
That your eyes should be pecked by an eagle.
Oh, to bash in your head with a stone!
But since this is unfairly illegal
They've no choice but to leave you alone.
Be they friend, parent, sibling or lover
Or your most stalwart colleague at work,
Don't pursue them. You'll only discover
That your once-irresistible quirk
Is no longer appealing. Far from it.
Everything that you are and you do
Makes them spatter their basin with vomit.
They loathe Hitler and Herpes and you.
Once you take this on board, life gets better.
You give no-one your hopes to destroy.
The most cursory phone call or letter
Makes you pickle your heart in pure joy.
It's so different from what you expected!
They do not want to gouge out your eyes!
You feel neither abused nor rejected -
What a stunning and perfect surprise.
This approach I'm endorsing will net you
A small portion of boundless delight.
Keep believing the world's out to get you.
Now and then you might not be proved right.
Oh My God
From the Evening Standard today:A ban on any mention of religion in civil wedding ceremonies is set to be relaxed after over-zealous officials prevented the playing of Robbie Williams's song Angels.
A ruling from the Registrar-General in 1995 prohibits any reference to 'a god or deity, prayer or worship, or church or temple' at a civil ceremony.
Banned works include poetry by Shakespeare, readings from EM Forster's Howard's End and Aretha Franklin's song I Say A Little Prayer.
A review by current Registrar-General Len Cook today recommends a relaxation to allow 'readings, songs or music that contain an incidental reference to a god or deity in an essentially non-religious context'. The Government is supporting the proposal, with the public and churches being invited to express their views.
..............
The 1949 Marriage Act, still in force, says that civil wedding ceremonies should not include any "religious service". But the ban was strengthened in 1995 to include pop songs and literary readings with only incidental references to religion.
In a test case last year, a couple were refused permission to have a reading of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet which begins, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." because it includes the words God and grace.
Some Bible readings will also be permitted under the new rules if they are not particularly religious in content.
..........
Ministers intend to introduce changes to the guidelines later this year.
One issue under consideration is whether to permit the singing of hymns, or whether they should only be played in instrumental versions. At present they are banned.
Couples arranging civil ceremonies in recent years have been refused permission to play instrumental versions of Ave Maria, Pie Jesu and Zadok the Priest.
Once again, the government's doodling with religion in public life is beyond parody. I would say that the proposition that "some Bible readings will also be permitted under the new rules if they are not particularly religious in content", represents the current high- water mark of the ridiculous genre.
Registrar-General is particularly sinister sounding post don't you think?
Tom, Katie, and Ron
Here's a story about Scientologists which I should republish while I can. Katie Holmes may have fallen for it, but Tom Cruise's sci-fi seduction technique scared the bejeezus out of Scarlett Johansson, a source close to the actress says. Weeks before he began wooing his brainwashed bride-to-be, Cruise made repeated phone calls to the 19-year-old starlet - who was then set to co-star with him in Mission Impossible III - imploring her to meet him at the Scientology Celebrity Center in L.A. But when the actress finally agreed, the supposedly professional get-together took an oddly spiritual turn. '[Cruise] took me into this room, which was stifling hot, and was showing me all kinds of info about joining the church,' Johansson told our source. 'The whole time he didnt even offer me a cookie!? Instead, he offered her dinner'and a glimpse into the Twilight Zone. After two hours of proselytizing, our source says Cruise opened a door to reveal a second room full of upper-level Scientologists who had been waiting to dine with the pair, at which point the cool-headed ingenue politely excused herself. Soon after the meeting, Johansson dropped out of Mission Impossible III, reportedly due to scheduling conflicts. Asked about the incident, Johansson's momager, Melanie Johansson, referred Radar to a publicist, who did not return calls or emails seeking comment. After striking out with Johansson, Cruise reportedly turned his attentions to 24-year-old Jessica Alba, 22-year-old Kate Bosworth, and 18-year-old Lindsay Lohan, before settling on the 26-year-old Holmes. As far we know, Cruise's War of the Worlds co-star, Dakota Fanning, was never under consideration.
We should really stop laughing long enough, however, to wonder what the famously litigious Church of Scientology will be able to try on in the courts once the British Government adds the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill to its arsenal. There is interesting coverage in Wikipedia.Critics charge that the ultimate aim of Scientology lawsuits is to completely destroy their opponents by forcing them into bankruptcy. A frequently quoted statement by L. Ron Hubbard regarding the use of lawsuits was quoted by Judge Leonie Brinkema in the case of Religious Technology Center vs. The Washington Post, in 1995:
"The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."�L. Ron Hubbard, The Scientologist, a Manual on the Dissemination of Material, 1955
The Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill is in effect a tool of intimidation that will be seized on by fanatics to silence critics and punish apostates. Passing it will be an act of madness.
Human Cannonball
Todd the human cannonball, a circus act blasted through the air at 60mph, has been fired because he's afraid of flying. Todd Christian, 26, was sacked by the Cottle & Austen circus because he refused to travel to South America for a training course. 'I know it sounds silly because Im a human cannonball, but if I'm on a plane for a long time I start to panic,' he said."
Soft trumpet and a bell
In1962, after he'd beaten his closest rival, Floyd Patterson, and become Heavyweight Champion of the World, Sonny Liston said, "Some day they're gonna write a blues song for fighters. It'll just be for slow guitar, soft trumpet and a bell."
I've been thinking about heavyweight careers since Mike Tyson retired on his stool at the end of the sixth round after a desperate performance against Kevin McBride last week. It just seems inevitable that Tyson is going to join the long list of former champions that end up with nothing to show for their careers. Tyson's tailpsin is pobably going to make Joe Louis' troubles after he retired look like a holiday.
At least world heavy weight champions do get to see some money even if it is only fleetingly. I was in university in Swansea in 1981 when a local fighter called Neville Meade - who worked as a waiter in a curry house near Singleton Park - won the British Heavyweight crown. I was astonished to find that the pugilist was still working there the next time that we bowled up for a chicken Madras "half and half" a few weeks later. So, I think it safe to assume that his purse for winning the title must have been less than spectacular.
He certainly, however, made you think twice before attempting to run out without settling the bill.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Experience: "Nurses Song"
When voices of children are heard on the green,
And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
William Blake
Two poems and two nurses. The healthy nurse of Innocence empathises with the children's wants and can even indulge them. The nurse of Experience is a corrupted figure who only finds realisation in domination as a refuge from the terrors of the memories of a distorted childhood.
Of which does the Peter Pan of Pop remind you?
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Innocence: "The Nurse's Song"
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies
No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep
Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills ecchoed
There is a "Nurse's Song" by Blake from both the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. I mean to publish one each day this weekend contrasting them as a sort of abtruse comment on the Michael Jackson trial.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Hateful Things
From Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke (drawn to my attention in Red's Bookshelf): Children are being trafficked into the UK from Africa and used for human sacrifices, a onfidential report for the Metropolitan Police suggests. We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials fo future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civic fury. History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same
- troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet.
These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real good. You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition, by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did, you would root out every thing that is valuable in the human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are kings, judges, and captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving, that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the gospel; no interpreters of law; no general officers; no public councils. You might change the names. The things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice.
Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts and the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs wtih the fresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad; it continues its ravages; whilst you are gibbeting the carcass, or demolishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourself with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with all those, who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under colour of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.
Read that last paragraph and especially the last sentence again. Now consider the a BBC report from yesterday afternoon Boys 'used for human sacrifice'.
Children are being beaten and even murdered after being labelled as witches by pastors, the report leaked to BBC Radio 4's Today programme said.
It said that people who are desperate seek out churches to cast spells for them.
"Members of the workshop said for spells to be powerful it required a sacrifice of a male child unblemished by circumcision," the report said.
Contributors said boys were being trafficked into the UK for this purpose, but did not give details because they said they feared they would be "dead meat" if they told any more.
There were also claims that youngsters were being smuggled into the UK as domestic slaves and for men with HIV who believed if they had sex with a child they would be cleansed.
Fortunately, the punditocracy is on hand to cut through all this verbiage to the heart of the matter.
For as we all know the Police are institutionally racist, but at least the report:Dr William Les Henry, a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmith's College, said there was an element of racism about the report.
acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue as the abuse was a product of individuals' faith and beliefs.
Well that's alright then. Thank goodness the government is moving at breakneck speed to introduce legislation that will demand that we are legally bound to be circumspect in any criticism of such faith else we incite religious hatred.
All the sensitivity training in the world is not worth one weal, cigarette burn, or bruise on the black skin of a brutalised boy. One of the things that I loathe most about the notion of hate crime law is that it is so bloody prissy; its real purpose is to help its drafters and supporters feel good about themselves. If they need to feel guilty about something, they should feel guilty about the hideous inversion where the mindset it has brought forth is responsible for the abandonment of children to unimaginably degraded fates beyond the hope of any deliverance in this world.
PS I just looked up Dr William Les Henry on a search engine. There is a profile of him here. "He�s a far cry from academic stereotypes" apparently. I'll bet he is.
Portmanteau
I have just realised that by appending my own surname to yesterday's 80's portmanteau being I get the still valid Boy George Michael Jackson Browne. Is this a record?
Also a propoos of nothing it has always amused me that Prince, Madonna, and George Michael's given names are Prince Rogers Nelson, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, and Georgios Krylacos Panayiotou respectively. So Mr. Michael is the only one who adopted a stage name, leaving aside for the moment the vexed issue of Mr. Nelson's squiggle which I always felt was a bit of a put on anyway.
Literary Pub Crawl
Paul and I went up to London Bridge for a drink after work on Wednesday. We turned right when we came out of the station this time and worked our way east along the river and then back again as follows:
The Copperage (48-50 Tooley Street, SE1 2SZ)
The Horniman (Hay's Galleria, Tooley St, SE1 2HU)
Dean Swift (32 Lanfone Street, SE1 2LX)
Anchor Tap (28, Horselydown Lane, Bermondsey, SE1 2LN)
Elusive Camel (186, Tooley St, SE1 2TZ)
Bunch of Grapes ( 2, St. Thomas St, SE1 9RS)
The Dean Swift has large framed photos of Robert Maxwell and Richard Nixon on the wall. "Ho, ho. Very satirical."
Near St. Saviour's Dock, we stumbled - I think that is the operative word - upon "Jacob's Island" in which Bill Sikes meets his nasty end in Oliver Twist. So Dublin is not the only place for a literary pub crawl.
Here is Dickens' description of the area:"... crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud and threatening to fall into it - as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage: all these ornament the banks of Jacob's Island."
And to think you imagined we were out having fun. Speaking of fun, due to some last minute cancellations and rearrangements in the giddy social whirl, there seems every danger that tonight I might be exposed to:
Solo banjo chaos, featuring original material and the works of The Ramones, The Clash, a 19th Century romantic Spanish song and a Gaelic rendition of a Roy Orbison classic.
Pray for me.