The Cycle

Harmony: Latin Cross

With the Cross, I come to the end (or perhaps the beginning or perhaps even the middle) of my cycle, where it stands between the Ankh (or crux ansata) and the Star of David.

The link from the cross to the star was perhaps best articulated by Pope John Paul II when he described the Jews as, "our cousins, our elder brothers, the roots of our faith".

The most well known cross is the Latin cross, which to Christians, represents the cross of Christ's crucifixion. When shown with the image of Christ, it is called a crucifix.

Interestingly, the cross of Christianity was a later symbol of the faith, replacing the lamb, fish, alpha/omega, and phoenix as emblems.

The original Christian cross, today called the Greek cross, is shaped like an X. It was an abbreviation of the name 'Christ,' not a representation of the cross of the crucifixion.

I have read that the Latin cross came into favor later, when the wife of Constantine, Empress Helena, claimed to have discovered the 'true cross' of the crucifixion.

Blind Tasting

When it comes to wine drinking duties at home, I generally take care of the red while Jane is responsible for the whites, and I was pleased to see that the Stormhoek freebie was a Sauvignon Blanc as she has taken against Chardonnay lately. Have you noticed how difficult it can be to find anything other than a Chardonnay in some places lately?

I put a glass of the Stormhoek in her hand - unheralded - after she got in one night earlier this week. "This is good, what is it?" she said, so I guess that they are hitting all the right spots.

Worked for me too, thanks.

P.S. Goodness me, the above is certainly a pooterish effort. It is all true though, and a price worth paying for free booze.

165,000 kg

I noticed when I logged out at the gym today that there is a running counter on the screen that reveals that in the two months I have been going I have lifted a total of 165,000 kg.

Puny humans always HOUND Hulk, try to HURT Hulk, but Hulk is the strongest one ... Hulk will SMASH puny humans!

Harmony: Ankh (Crux Ansata)

The ankh is an ancient Egyptian symbol of life.

Some have speculated that it represents a stylised womb. It does bear a strikung resemblance to the symbol used to represent the Roman goddess Venus which is now so familiarly used to identify the female sex. (This is how I link the Ankh to the male (Mars) symbol in my cycle.)

Early Coptic Christians adopted the Ankh as a form of the cross known as the crux ansata.

Embracing Faith

Brynja, an Icelandic model and artist, has produced a necklace and bracelet design based on ideas that are not disimilar to my cycle of harmony and Jane's jewellery. David Beckham has been photographed wearing it apparently.

More power to her elbow, but I prefer our design - or will when its finished - as I think it has more narrative coherence as we trace a real path through the symbols.

(I also bet that Jane's product will be more affordable.)

Stormhoek

My personalised bottle of Stormhoek arrived yesterday. I got bottle 73 of 75 so it may have been a close run thing. I hope to start (and to be frank, finish) drinking it tonight. The leaflet with it said:

Hiya,

Thanks for signing up for your free bottle of Stormhoek. I hope you like it.

OK, so what's the point of all this? Sure, I suppose giving out a few bottles to some bloggers could potentially be quite good PR, etc etc. Maybe a few of you will blog about it. Maybe not. You never know.

But in the back of my mind I'm thinking there might be something larger going on here. What if, say, not one or two of you end up blogging about it, but a couple of dozen? What will be the rippling effect?

Will the idea-virus spread far enough that suddenly, instead of one or two people knowing about the wine, suddenly tens of thousands of smart connected people in the UK know about it, and are talking about it?

Is that enough to launch a national brand?"

Who knows, but I will drink to the sentiment. It also gives me an excuse to post the greatest ever wine cartoon - gaping void excepted of course - a masterpiece by James Thurber.

Googlify

A daft but curiously satisfying Google hack.

Chicago crime database

What can I say?

Chicagocrime.org, the Chicago crime database, which I mentioned last month has now officially launched, has implemented many of my ideas for integrating google maps, weblog structure and RSS feeds.

Ruby Banner Retail

I've added the two shops where Jane is currently selling her jewellery to a Google Map to look at how markers are programmed. Click on the marker to get the address of the shop.

It is comapartively straightforward:

var point = new GPoint(-0.2024,51.5128);
var marker = new GMarker(point);
map.addOverlay(marker);
var html = "Oi, 77 Portobello Road, Notting Hill Gate, London W11 2QB. Tel: 020 7221 0472";
GEvent.addListener(marker, "click", function() {
marker.openInfoWindowHtml(html);
});

You add a point, create a marker from it, and then overlay it on the map. The address is displayed by listening to the click event for the marker.

I am not sure that I have geocoded the addresses as accurately as perhaps I might, but the markers are close to the genuine locations.

(I have noticed that Google have added a new Hybrid view since last time I used the API.)

Necklace

Ruby Banner necklace by Jane incorporating some of the Harmony ideas.

Caught Knapping

More from the BBC on symbols of masculinity.

A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, researchers say.

The 20cm-long, 3cm-wide stone object, which is dated to be about 28,000 years old, was buried in the famous Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura.
......
'In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia, it was also at times used for knapping flints,' explained Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tubingen University.

Ouch.

1. Living 28,000 years ago, they wouldn't have realised that according to the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, males possess a penis, but no one can possess the symbolic phallus.
2. I have no idea what I mean by that.

Harmony: Mars

The Taoist Yin Yang can be thought of as representing the balance of female (yin) and masculine energy. I was surprised to find that the standard male gender symbol on the left is actually the astrological symbol for Mars. (Yes, the standard female symbol is the astrological Venus). Some authorities say that the male symbol is a stylized representation of the god Mars' shield and spear.

I don't think its strictly a religious symbol like the others in my cycle, but I though I should write it up today as Tuesday is named after the Norse god Tyr, but the Romans named it after their war-god Mars: dies Martis.

Melancholic Observation

I just bought a birthday present for a niece at Amazon UK. (One day late, mea culpa.)

Too many people in my Amazon address list have died in the last year or so, but for some reason I would feed a bit callous deleting them.

Full Bacon Jacket

Raybs came home from school last week clutching a signed copy of a book called Full Bacon Jacket personally inscribed by Tom Hathaway, the author, with a dedication to him and two of his friends.

It seems that Raybs, Alex and Dan had been sitting on top deck of the bus discussing - as teenage boys do - what would be the best way to conduct yourself if you were a bent under cover cop. When a guy approached them and asked their names they thought he might be a policeman who had overheard their nefarious schemes. It wasn't. It was an author who, having delighted in the gibberish that they were talking, handed over a copy of his book and thanked them for reminding him of the rubbish he used to talk when he was their age.

All in all, quite a classy gesture I think. I haven't read his book, but here is a plug anyway.

Nottingham gave the world Robin Hood, the English Civil War, the Salvation Army, Raleigh Bicycles, Boots the Chemist, John Player cigarettes, Speedo swimwear, Pork Farms, a dozen World Boxing Champions and many hundreds of thousands of pretty girls. Unfortunately, in 1987, it also gave the world 'The Chimneys' - the most barrel-famished, whore-thirsty, scapegracious, sociopathic, peace-torpedoing flange of desperadoes ever to lay siege to parochial decency. Luckily, the world escaped by the skin of its teeth. Just. How? Cover the budgie. Bin the mobile. Rig the room for impact and strap yourself tightly in for a white-knuckle ride through the true, larger than life chronicle of the girls, the gigs, the giggles; the boys, the bars, the birianis; the cars, the capers, the courtrooms - and be ready to laugh and cry and orgasm. Probably all at once.

Britons in Spain get winter payments

The winter fuel payments scheme instituted by Gordon Brown has handed out around �7 million to pensioners living in Spain and other southern European countries, it emerged yesterday.

The Liberal Democrats urged a review of the system after discovering that thousands of recipients of the �200-a-time payments were resident in the sunnier climes of countries such as Portugal, Cyprus and Greece.

I always relish the phrase "it emerged" in news stories, as if these things just bubble up without human intervention or agency.

London's 9/11?

An astonishing story from Saturday's Times:

AN INDIAN man was jailed in Bombay yesterday for plotting to fly passenger jets into the House of Commons and Tower Bridge in London on September 11, 2001. Mohammed Afroze was sentenced to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al-Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne and the Indian Parliament.

His lawyer has claimed, however, that the confession was "forcefully taken" and that Afroze was tortured by Indian police.

Afroze admitted that he and seven al-Qaeda operatives planned to hijack aircraft at Heathrow and fly them into the two London landmarks. The suicide squad included men from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afroze said. They booked seats on two Manchester-bound flights, but fled just before they were due to board.

We are not Afraid

I got to Hammersmith in plenty of time for the Open Tech conference on Saturday and I had about three quarters of an hour to kill so I was mooching around the Hammersmith Broadway shopping centre that is built over the tube station.

At about half past ten a general alarm went off and an insistent repeating taped message said that all staff and customers were to evacuate at once. I imagine that after 7/7 and 21/7 there was only one thought in most peoples' minds, but I was still astonished to see a minority of the public very close to panic bolting for the doors.

For some reason I had a strong feeling that it was very, very important not to run, but to walk almost casually out. I realise that this is somewhat ridiculous as well but it arrived in my head in an instant as a firm conviction.

Suddenly Sunday

Jane was working yesterday so I took our four year old swimming, then to Burger King for lunch, then to see the Fantastic Four at the Odeon.

A special day I think, and it may be thanks to James Lileks' pieces about spending time with his Gnat that I realise, so kudos to him as well.

Deep Throat

A hospital consultant is to conduct a clinical trial to test if singing exercises can reduce or eradicate snoring.

More than 100 patients at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital are to participate in a programme of exercises that are designed to strengthen the throat. Snorers and their families who volunteer for the tests have been warned that the songs have been chosen for their therapeutic effect rather than their beauty, and include
grunting noises.

I tried sprays, a Chinese ring, and even a device clamped in my mouth to reduce my snoring.

However, I have been going to the gym most weekday lunchtimes and doing some cardio work since the beginning of June and - touch wood - that seems to be doing the trick and domestic harmony is returning.

Intertwingled

I am off to the Open Tech 2005 conference in Hammersmith today.

Among the speakers is Ted Nelson - a long time hero of mine- inventor of hypertext, author of Computer Lib/Dream Machines (I wonder where my copy can be) and coiner of the word intertwingularity.

There is no food, but the bar will be open. We all have our crosses to bear I suppose.

Transport for London Real-time Map

The Transport for London Real-time Map gives an up to date illustration of the state of the Tube network. Disrupted lines appear in their normal colours, disrupted stations appear in red, and you can click on the line or station for a full description.

Nice work and a valuable service. Here's to the day when it is all grey because there are no disruptions.

Harmony: Yin Yang

The Yin Yang is the Taoist symbol of the interplay of forces in the universe. In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang represent the two primal cosmic forces in the universe. Yin (moon) is the receptive, passive, cold female force. Yang (sun) is masculine- force, movement, heat. The Yin Yang symbol represents the idealised balance of the forces; equilibrium in the universe.

In my ring of symbols - an attempt to focus on links and similarities rather than differences. it follows the Zen Enso. The link between them is that the Zen school of Buddhism adopted precepts from Taoism.

Thump the Clouds

I thought I had summoned the lyrics of Shield Hill up from my memory earlier this week, but I have just remembered that there was a middle eight.

There's different kinds of natural wastage
And voluntary redundancy.
I've seen enough people wasted and, my Lord,
It don't seem so natural to me.

Oh dear me. Time has not been kind I thought the ersatz Bruce Springsteen of the verses and chorus were bad enough, but that is ersatz Billy Bragg.

Strangely enough, I could have sworn that I saw Phil - who played bass on the song - in Charlotte Church's band performing "Crazy Chick" on Top of the Pops at the end of May. I've Googled up a solo of his from a Sax Appeal song called, but of course it is, "CHEE-O-WA-WA CHA CHA". Press play and listen while you read the fine joke I have put below it.



A missionary goes to the most remote part of jungle. As soon as he arrives in the village he is to visit, he hears drums beating wildly in the distance. He asks the Chief what the drums mean. The Chief's reply is "Drums play, good. Drums stop, bad."

During the missionary's entire month long stay he frequently asks the Chief about the continuous drumming. The Chiefs reply is always the same. "Drums play good. Drums stop bad."

Finally as the missionary is leaving he asks the Chief again about the drumming. The Chief says "Drums play, g..."

"I know, I know" says the missionary. "Drums play, good. Drums stop, bad. But why is it bad when the drums stop?"

The Chief shakes his head and says, "when drums stop, bass solo."

Barcode; Bah Humbug

Electric 80s is the new compilation from Sony BMG. The cover artwork features a barcode. And by mistake staff at retailers like Tesco have been scanning in the artwork rather than the real barcode.

So anyone who bought the triple CD from Tesco got it for only seven pounds (rather than the usual 12.99). Not only are Sony BMG having to give Tesco the missing five pounds from the retail price, but they had to destroy 40,000 units of stock.

But it's good news for singer Jack Johnson. The fake barcode has sometimes registered on the computer system as his new CD. So he has seen a 20% increase in sales this week!

Google Maps API: First Shot

I have had a quick look at the programming the Gooogle Maps API.
The heart of the code that produces the map above is simple:
var map = new GMap(document.getElementById("map"));
map.addControl(new GSmallMapControl());
map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-0.104370, 51.512482) , 2);
map.openInfoWindow(map.getCenterLatLng(),
document.createTextNode("We drank around here last night"));

You need to sign up for a with Google Maps API key to use the system. This only gives you permission to access the maps from a single directory. This is a pain in the neck for a weblog becaue the frontpage, archive and permalink versions of a post are all in different directories. For the moment I have got over this by putting the map in an Iframe.

I think it is quite impressive. Try zooming in on the satellite view. When I next get some time, I will try adding more information to the map using markers.

Last Night in Blackfriars

The Queen Mary, Waterloo Pier, Victoria Embankment, London, WC2R 2PP
The Goose at the Castle, 148, Queen Victoria St, London, EC4V 4BY
Shaws Booksellers, 34 St. Andrews Hill, London, EC4V 5DE
The Cockpit, 7, St. Andrews Hill, London, EC4V 5BY
The Rising Sun, 61, Carter Lane, London, EC4V 5DY

I really must get round to doing something with these lists with the Google Maps API once my head clears.

Sticking it to the Man

I've been writing on and off about how I think the Police could use Google Maps to help them interact with the public.

Here is one man's story about using Google maps -and WiFi - to get himself off the hook: Gear Live How Google Maps Got Me Out Of A Traffic Ticket.

Book Lists

Chris, who encouraged me to produce my own top 20 book list earlier this year has starting blogging along with his wife Kim. He posted a list of Jeffrey Eugenides top 10 novels yesterday.

I think lists like this are great, they can never be definitive, but a good book recommendation is always a wonderful gift. (I also hold recommenders of bad books in an implacable rigour of disdain. Boosters of "The Last Don", you know who you are.)

In 1984, Anthony Burgess brought out a list of - and a short booklet reveiwing - his choice of the 99 best novels in English since the war. As I recall, he published it as a rebuke to a top 100 list in the Sunday Times, and he modestly confined himself to 99 hoping that readers might nominate one of his as the hundredth.

Here is the list. I worked through a lot of it with great reward to myself. If I had never read this list I may never have been introduced the work of Robertson Davies, a little known true great.

1939
Party Going (Henry Green)
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (Aldous Huxley)
Finnegans Wake (James Joyce)
At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O'Brien)

1940
The Power and the Glory (Graham Greene)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
Strangers and Brothers (to 1970) (C P Snow)

1941
The Aerodrome: A Love Story (Rex [Ernest] Warner)

1944
The Horses Mouth (Joyce Cary)
The Razor's Edge (W Somerset Maugham)

1945
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

1946
The Gormenghast Novels : Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), Titus Alone (1959) (Mervyn Peake)

1947
The Victim (Saul Bellow)
Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry)

1948
The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene)
The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer)
No Highway (Nevil Shute)

1949
The Heat of the Day (Elizabeth Bowen)
Ape and Essence (Aldous Huxley)
1984 (George Orwell)
The Body (William Sansom)

1950
Scenes from Provincial Life (William Cooper)
The Disenchanted (Budd Schulberg)

1951
A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell)
The Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger)
A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (Henry Williamson)
The Caine Mutiny (Herman Wouk)

1952
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor)
Sword of Honor (to 1961) (Evelyn Waugh)

1953
The Long Goodbye (Raymond Chandler)
The Groves of Academe (Mary McCarthy)

1954
Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis)

1957
Room at the Top (John Braine)
The Alexandria Quartet (Lawrence Durrell)
The London Novels (Colin MacInnes)
The Assistant (Bernard Malamud)

1958
The Bell (Iris Murdoch)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Alan Sillitoe)
The Once and Future King (TH White)

1959
The Mansion (William Faulkner)
Goldfinger (Ian Fleming)

1960
Facial Justice (LP Hartley)
The Balkan Trilogy (to 1965) (Olivia Manning)

1961
The Mighty and Their Fall (Ivy Compton-Burnett)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
The Fox in the Attic (Richard Hughes)
Riders in the Chariot (Patrick White)
The Old Men at the Zoo (Angus Wilson)

1962
Another Country (James Baldwin)
An Error of Judgement (Pamela Hansford Johnson)
Island (Aldous Huxley)
The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)

1963
The Girls of Slender Means (Muriel Spark)

1964
The Spire (William Goldin)
Heartland (Wilson Harris)
A Single Man (Christopher Isherwood)
The Defense (Vladimir Nabokov)
Late Call (Angus Wilson)

1965
The Lockwood Concern (John O'Hara)
Cocksure (Mordecai Richler)
The Mandelbaum Gate (Muriel Spark)

1966
A Man of the People (Chinua Achebe)
The Anti-Death League (Kingsley Amis)
Giles Goat-Boy (John Barth)
The Late Bourgeois World (Nadine Gordimer)
The Last Gentleman (Walker Percy)

1967
The Vendor of Sweets (R K Narayan)

1968
The Image Men (JB Priestley)
Pavane (Keith Roberts)

1969
The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)

1970
Bomber (Len Deighton)

1973
Sweet Dreams (Michael Frayn)
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)

1975
Humboldt's Gift (Saul Bellow)
The History Man (Malcolm Bradbury)

1976
The Doctor's Wife (Brian Moore)
Falstaff (Robert Nye)

1977
How To Save Your Own Life (Erica Jong)
Farewell Companions (James Plunkett)
Staying On (Paul Scott)

1978
The Coup (John Updike)

1979
The Unlimited Dream Company (JG Ballard)
Dubin's Lives (Bernard Malamud)
A Bend in the River (VS Naipaul)
Sophie's Choice (William Styron)

1980
Life in the West (Brian Aldiss)
Riddley Walker (Russell Hoban)
How Far Can You Go? (David Lodge)
A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole published posthumously)

1981
Lanark (Alasdair Gray)
Darconville's Cat (Alexander Theroux)
The Mosquito Coast (Paul Theroux)
Creation (Gore Vidal)

1982
The Rebel Angels (Robertson Davies)

1983
Ancient Evenings (Norman Mailer)

Bertrand Russell: WBI

Bertrand Russell was born at Trellech in Monmouthshire and died almost one hundred years later in 1970 at Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionedd.

He is therefore a wondefully unlikely "Welsh Born Icon", even though personally I have always considered him foolish if not dangerous.

Here for example, is one of the early fruits of "his perpetual intellectual battle for eternal truths", his espousal of eugenics.

"In extreme cases there can be little doubt of the superiority of one race to another.... It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensible, so that their extermination (apart from questions of humanity) would be highly undesirable."
� Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929)

Not a quote you would be likely to hear from a Russell admirer these days I'll warrant. "Extermination (apart from questions of humanity)" is a nice distinction that would only ever occur to an over clocked mind.

What a deadly danger eugenics was in the 1920s! H G Wells thought the weak should be killed by the strong, having �no pity and less benevolence�. The diseased, deformed and insane, together with �those swarms of blacks, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people � will have to go�. He envisioned a time when all crime would be punished by death because �People who cannot live happily and freely in the world without spoiling the lives of others are better out of it.�

From what I can gather, the cogent opposition to this sort of rubbish came from Chesterton and Belloc. You'd never guess that today from received opinion.

Richard Feynman

From a Telegraph review of Richard Feynman's letters:

Feynman's first wife had tuberculosis and died of it in 1945, spending her last months in a sanatorium in Albuquerque while he worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atom bomb. Feynman wrote to her every day; six weeks before she died, he wrote: 'You are a nice girl. Every time I think of you, I feel good. It must be love. It sounds like a definition of love. It is love. I love you.'

This has great charm. Feynman was widowed when he was 27, and 16 months later, he wrote another letter to his dead wife, which we are told bore the signs of repeated handling, ending: 'My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. P.S. Please excuse my not mailing this - but I don't know your new address.'

He was too high-spirited, however, to let this tragedy destroy him, and the following year he produced the work that won him the Nobel Prize."

I haven't read the letters, but I did read "Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character", years ago. It is a wonderful book. Go on treat yourself to a copy.

Texas Slow-Cooked BBQ Brisket

Attn John, I have found a project for the meat in your freezer. Note that the recipe allows for 8 hours uninterrupted drinking once the brisket goes in the oven and before you eat. (I bet the oven temperature given is Fahrenheit rather than Centigrade if you're cooking it for that long.)

After you've given this brisket a quick sear on the grill, the oven does all the work. Sighs of pleasure usually accompany the first bites of this meltingly tender, juicy, slightly smoky beef. Serve it with or without a barbecue sauce. Leftovers, if there are any, make fine Texas-style hash studded with red and green peppers and potatoes or barbecue sandwiches.

Meat: 2 supermarket briskets at 4 or 5 pounds each or a custom-cut 'double brisket,' 8 or 9 pounds, trimmed of excessive fat

Marinade (Quantities are generous. Halve the recipe if total brisket weight is less than 6 pounds):

1 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup red wine
1 can (14 ounces) beef broth
Few drops liquid smoke seasoning (if you wish to enhance the natural smoke and are not using a smoky barbecue sauce)
Juice from 2 limes
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup chopped parsley
6 green onions, white and green parts, chopped
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 serrano chiles, stemmed and halved
1/4 cup barbecue sauce, such as Bulls Eye or a homemade sauce, recipe follows (optional)
For finishing:
Oil for searing
2 tablespoons barbecue sauce such as Bulls Eye or a homemade sauce
2 tablespoons butter at room temperature
Salt
Pepper
Tender greens or watercress and red-leaf lettuce for garnish

Three days ahead of time, put the brisket, fat side up, in a large pan at least 2 inches deep or a heavy-duty plastic bag. Combine the marinade ingredients and pour over the brisket. Cover or seal tightly and marinate for 30 to 36 hours. Invite brother to feast.

Preheat an outdoor grill. Remove the brisket from the marinade (reserve marinade) and rub with oil. Sear on the grill, fat side down, for 8 to 10 minutes. Turn and sear the opposite side for 8 to 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Lay out several overlapping sheets of heavy aluminum foil large enough to enclose the brisket completely. If you are using two briskets, lay one on top of the other. Pour about 1/2 cup of the marinade over the meat, then wrap securely in foil. Refrigerate the remaining marinade for another use within a week or freeze for longer storage. Put the brisket(s) in a roasting pan and place in the center of the oven. Roast, undisturbed, for 8 hours.

After 8 hours, remove the brisket. Let it stand 10 minutes, then pour off and reserve the juices. Cover the brisket lightly with foil to keep it warm. You may not wish to use all the juice. If you want a real barbecue sauce taste, stir in 1/4 cup barbecue sauce to taste and cook a few minutes more. If you prefer the natural juices to dominate, add 1/2 cup of reserved marinade to the juices and boil 10 to 20 minutes to reduce and thicken. Then whisk in the 2 tablespoons of barbecue sauce and 2 tablespoons soft butter. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Slice brisket diagonally across the grain about 1/3-inch thick. Arrange slices overlapping on a warm platter, with garnish of greens around edge. Moisten with juices. Pass additional juices. A 10-pound brisket, or two smaller ones totaling 10 pounds, serves about 16.

Shield Hill

I'd call my old man a fool,
I'd say that guy knew his place.
I'd tell you, when I got out of school
They weren't gonna step on this boy's face.

I've got dreams but I had plans.
I'd take on a whole wide world.
That was me, my guitar in my hand
Standing up square my flag unfurled.

Just sitting out on that old Shield Hill,
Wrapped in a night so black and so still.
Drawn by the lights, the refinery,
Knowing there's nothing there for me.

Things can change as years fly by,
Take a drink or even meet the girl,
Though you try and keep your hopes up high
You can get mixed up in this world.

Lose the nerve to look so far
No one else will ever ask you why,
As night after night you still strum your guitar,
Pretending you missed your chance to try.

Just sitting out on that old Shield Hill
Wrapped in a night so black and so still.
Drawn by the lights the refinery,
God knows there's nothing there for me.

(Thanks to Chris and John for reminding me of this 1985 Thump the Clouds song on Saturday.)

Shavings from the Bench

It may seem that Microsoft Media player won't have anything to do with .VOB files if you try and open them directly (VOB is the DVD video format). There is an amazingly simple workaround though; all you have to do is change the file extension to .MPG and the player will show them with no problem.

(If you don't understand this, it is almost certainly of no use to you.)

Terrorism Futures

Two years ago - in July 2003 - Paul Wolfowitz, then the Deputy Defense Secretary, announced that a controversial plan to create a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes was to be dropped.

Wolfowitz, answering a question about the program from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, defended the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which created the program and set up a Web site describing it.

"The agency that does it is brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative," he said. "It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative in this area."

"There is something very sick about it," a clearly angry Boxer said, adding that those responsible should be fired.

I thought at the time that the futures market idea may well have been brilliant and that to dismiss it - when so much was at stake - because some folk thought that it was in bad taste was ridiculous.

Again earlier this year - I remembered Senator Boxer's contribution to killing the initiative during her extraordinarily boorish treatment of Condoleezza Rice during the Secretay of State's confirmation hearings. I have been thinking about it again in the light of London's recent unpredicted attack. Victor Hanson has been watching the Senator for longer than I have, and noted back in February that, "Boxer, the Bay Area�s premier progressive and crankiest of the questioners, has had a history of defining political disagreements in terms of personal partisanship, of us-versus-them rather than of mere opposing ideas".

I did a lot of work on oil market futures as an MBA project. Markets are incredibly powerful aggregators if information. Exchanges tend to predict events really well when no one person knows the answer and when information is distributed among many people with different types of knowledge. Expert appointed panels may often have blind spots caused by conventional thinking and unspoken assumptions. Markets can allow people who may have insight and relevant knowledge but not generally accepted quailifications to contribute to moulding opinion.

Anyone whose grandstanding has possibly contributed to robbing the USA's intelligence agencies of a tool with a strong history of accurately predicting future events bears a heavy responsibility in my view.

Back in 2003, Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz wrote the following in the Washington Post.

While the joke about military intelligence being an oxymoron is an old one, it bears repeating here. It's no coincidence that we don't have the same doubts about financial markets. Recent events have underscored the difficulty of aggregating information from lower levels of the intelligence bureaucracy. Imagine if a "Niger Uranium sale" contract had been trading in January; our guess is that this would have been close to valueless, reflecting the hard intelligence available at the time that such sales never occurred.

Nearly 24 months down the road, with the White House reeling from the revelation of Carl Rove's involvement in discrediting and/or pressurising Joseph Wilson on the Niger controversy by leaking the fact that Mrs. Wilson was a CIA agent, this is an even stronger argument for markets over spin than it was at the time.

Mumbles' Own WBI

It would be churlish to say goodbye to Swansea without elevating Private Eye editor and "Have I got News for You" stalwart Ian Hislop (born Mumbles 1960) to the rank of Welsh Born Icon.

Who would have guessed?

The Mumbles Mile

I am off to Swansea today to meet up with Chris and my brother John and to attempt the Mumbles mile for the first time in more than two decades.

The Mumbles Mile is a section of sea front laden with pubs, all within short walking distance of each other. The White Rose, The Nags Head, The Village Inn, The William Hancock, The Antelope, The Prince of Wales, The Famous Bear, The George and The Pilot; be still my beating heart.

Afterwards, I would ideally like to walk back along the beach to Neuadd Lewis Jones - like the callow youth of 1979 - while eating a take-away Chinese curry with my fingers. You really have had to be there to understand how good that was.

You love life and we love death

Mark Steyn from March last year:

Here's a story no American news organization thought worth covering last week, so you'll just have to take it from me. In the southern Iraqi town of Amara, 20 men from Scotland's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders came under attack from 100 or so of Muqtada al-Sadr's 'insurgents.' So they fixed bayonets and charged.

It was the first British bayonet charge since the Falklands War 20 years ago. And at the end of it some 35 of the enemy were dead in return for three minor wounds on the Argylls' side. If you're used to smart bombs, unmanned drones and doing it all by computer back at HQ, you're probably wondering why a modern Western army is still running around with bayonets at the end of their rifles. The answer is that it's a very basic form of psychological warfare.

'If you're defending a position and you see someone advancing with a bayonet, you may be more inclined to surrender,' Colonel Ed Brown told the British newspaper The Guardian. 'I've never been bayoneted, but I can imagine it's pretty gruesome.' Or as Corporal Jones, veteran of the Sudan, used to say every week on the ancient BBC sitcom 'Dad's Army': 'They don't like it up 'em.'

By comparison, a Cruise missile, an unmanned drone, even a bullet are all antiseptic forms of warfare. When a chap's charging at you with a bayonet, he's telling you he's personally willing to run you through with cold steel. The bullet may get you first, but, if it doesn't, he'll do it himself. To the average British squaddie in the 21st century, the bayonet's main practical purpose is for opening tinned food. But when you need it on the battlefield, it's still a powerful signal of your resolve, your will.

As Wellington remarked of his own troops, "I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me".

"You love life and we love death", say the Islamofascists. History proves - and I think it is too often forgotten by our own media and metropolitan elites - that, once roused, the British may well be the most deadly and implacable foe in the world. If you love death, you've come to the right place.

God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule

NEW YORK�Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence."

"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, imams, and Biblical scholars. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11 violence carried out in His name, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.

"I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important," said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. "I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?"

"But somehow, it all gets twisted around and, next thing you know, somebody's spouting off some nonsense about, 'God says I have to kill this guy, God wants me to kill that guy, it's God's will,'" God continued. "It's not God's will, all right? News flash: 'God's will' equals 'Don't murder people.'"

From The Onion after 9/11. Still works.

Two Minutes Silence

Thirty-two people, most of them children, were killed yesterday when a suicide bomber exploded his car beside a convoy of American soldiers handing out sweets in a Baghdad suburb.

The blast left the street covered in pools of blood, mangled bicycles and the corpses of the young, many still clutching blue-wrapped chocolate bars.

Depravity beyond belief, and more innocents to be remembered along with London's as we now fall silent for two minutes as a mark of respect.

Daruma

Daruma is the Japanese name for Bodhidharma. I was so taken with him while doing the research for the post about the Enso earlier this week that I put I bid in for a Japanese Daruma hanging scroll on eBay. I won it early this morning and have paid so it should be winging its way from Tottori in Japan very soon. There is a detail of it on the left.

The reason he looks so bug-eyed, is that he supposedly, cut off his eyelids while meditating, to keep from falling asleep.

(Naturally, this being a legend, tea bushes sprung from the spot where his eyelids hit the ground and it is said that this is the reason that tea is so important for meditation and why it helps the meditator not to fall asleep.)

Google Video Search

Google Video Search now allows you to restrict your search to "playable video".

How to Back Up DVDs

Paul Thurrott writing in Connected Home:

A company called SlySoft makes an ingenious $39 application called AnyDVD, which resides in memory and unprotects commercial DVDs on the fly. So, when AnyDVD i