Grand

Heroes, lots of heroes, dressed in red. This was a day to compare with any in the proud history of a rugby country so tiny in terms of its productive sporting areas that you could almost jog around it. Any doubts that Wales are the best team in Europe, any doubts that they are anything other than an outstanding team in the making, were blown away. In rugby’s greatest stadium, we had one of the grandest Slams.

I'm celebrating Wales' Grand Slam by rolling my sleeves up and hacking embedding IPlayer streaming content from the BBC.

You can view source to see the code. The key is a meta data file http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/metafiles/episode/b009hq38.xml.

The filename for the xml is the same as the shtml filename on the programme's main web page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009hq38.shtml.

Streaming content will only be available for a week, but what a week it will be.

Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds

It is customary to think about fashions in things like clothes or music as spreading in a social network. But it turns out that all kinds of things, many of them quite unexpected, can flow through social networks, and this process obeys certain rules we are seeking to discover. We’ve been investigating the spread of obesity through a network, the spread of smoking cessation through a network, the spread of happiness through a network, the spread of loneliness through a network, the spread of altruism through a network. And we have been thinking about these kinds of things while also keeping an eye on the fact that networks do not just arise from nothing or for nothing. Very interesting rules determine their structure.

SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE LIKE THE EYE
A Talk with Nicholas A. Christakis

First As Tragedy, Second As Farce

Nietzsche - as any fule kno - began his career as a philologist before turning to philosophy. Indeed he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel at the precocious age of 24.

I had a dabble with etymology myself earlier this week.

Meet Marina:

My name is Marina and I am a philologist (the study of linguistics and etymology). I love to discuss the origins of words.

This being the future, other people are also enjoying their fifteen minutes:

The prostitute at the centre of the scandal that brought down the governor of New York state, Eliot Spitzer, has become the most sought after person in the US, with camera crews camped outside her Manhattan apartment and her MySpace page inundated with traffic.
Ashley Youmans' website address was receiving about 1m page impressions an hour yesterday morning, and at midday it was taken down and rebooted to remove her personal account of her life and a recording of one of her songs. The deleted page carried the quotation: "What destroys me, strengthens me."

Nietzschean indeed.

Leverage

I got an email from Andy M - an old friend and colleague from my days in process contracting - yesterday saying that after four years on the Tengiz Field project he's leaving for pastures new. The oil is flowing, and his services are no longer needed.

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengiz_Field.

The plant he was working on was estimated to turn a profit after costs when oil was $15 a barrel.

It was over $110 last night.

The economic implications are staggering.

SAN RAMON, Calif., Jan 29, 2008 – Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) announced today that its affiliate Tengizchevroil LLP has started up new facilities as part of the first phase of its expansion at the Tengiz Field in Kazakhstan.

This initial expansion of 90,000 barrels per day brings Tengizchevroil’s current capacity to a total of approximately 400,000 barrels per day. Included in the startup is the Sour Gas Injection (SGI) project and the front end of the Second Generation Plant (SGP). SGI reinjects produced sour gas into the reservoir at very high pressures to boost production. SGP was brought up to about one-third of its full capacity and is currently separating the natural gas for injection while also stabilizing and sweetening the crude oil. Once fully operational, SGP is designed to also process sour gas into gas products and elemental sulfur.

The addition of full facilities is projected to further increase daily crude production capacity at Tengiz to 540,000 barrels. Start-up of full facilities is expected during the second half of 2008.

“The successful startup of the first phase of the expansion is a state-of-the-art technological achievement and a demonstration of our ability to execute next-generation, highly complex projects,” said Guy Hollingsworth, president of Chevron Europe, Eurasia and Middle East Exploration and Production. Once at full operating capacity, approximately one-third of the sour gas produced from the expansion is planned to be injected into the reservoir. The remaining volumes will be processed as commercial gas, propane, butane and sulfur.

“This multibillion-dollar SGI/SGP expansion of the world’s deepest producing
supergiant oil field is another step forward in partnering with Kazakhstan
to develop the full potential of the country’s vast energy resources,” said
Jay Johnson, managing director of Chevron’s Eurasia business unit. “We will
continue to grow and modernize the country’s energy sector and generate
economic prosperity.” Chevron has a 50 percent interest in Tengizchevroil.
Other partners are KazMunaiGas, 20 percent; ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Ventures Inc., 25 percent; and LUKArco, 5 percent.

Etymology

Prodnose: Where does the word widget come from?

Myself: Glad you asked.

Nowadays - as I am very boring - I think of widgets as portable chunks of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.

So far so good, but I first remember the word from the wonderful 1963 James Garner movie "The Wheeler Dealers". (Here at A Welsh Born Icon we are all about Lee Remick and John Astin and I recommend you check it out.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Widget says, "it might be worth mentioning here that Roald Dahl used the term widget to describe male gremlins in his book The Gremlins back in WWII". (Here at A Welsh Born Icon we are all about Roald Dahl.)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/widget says it is a "blend of window and gadget, coined by George S. Kaufman in his play Beggar on Horseback (1924)". (Here at A Welsh Born Icon we are all about George S. Kaufman and especially "The Man Who Came to Dinner".)

Now you know as much as me.

Prodnose: Whatever floats your boat.

Fixed in the Mix

Here's Ray Ozzie on Microsoft's strategy at MIX 8.

I watched the first half hour or so last night. It is great to see announcements like the decision to make SQL server available in the cloud as a service. We've been waiting for that for years.

This post is also my first attempt at embedding Silverlight content.

Two out of three ain't bad

What a weekend it was for Welsh sport!

After beating Ireland on Saturday, Wales take a 100% record to the last game of the Six Nations next weekend knowing that France have to beat us by at least twenty points to win the championship, and that if we beat them we will complete another historic Grand Slam.

Yesterday, I watched Cardiff City storm into the semi finals of the FA Cup for the first time since the 1920s.

The only blot on the landscape was David Haye's defeat of our Enzo Maccarinelli in the cruiserweight world title unification bout in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Tonight, after missing the encounters travelling back from Austria, and courtesy of the internet, I will be watching the boxing and the rugby. That would have been unthinkable a few years ago: Progress indeed.

I'm Back

The Usual Suspects from http://www.schmitten.at/de/service/photopoint/.

Austria

"Mitterer's plays confront human suffering and oppression with an honesty and directness that is often painful for theater audiences. Siberia is a metaphor for survival under the most adverse conditions. This moving monologue represents one old man's struggle for dignity in a retirement home. .....The Austrian playwright Felix Mitterer, born in 1948 in the Tyrol, is one of today's leading contemporary European dramatists."

I'm leaving for Austria this morning, staying here for a week's skiing with the New Ninja Bomber and 25 other friends, so I bunburied along to the Colour House Theatre last night for two hours cheery Austrian drama to get myself in the mood.

Posting to the blog may be light for the next week.

Going Swimmingly

People who've seen him are forever telling me, unprompted, that my little boy is good at Thai boxing. It happened again this week, and I'm proud that he seems to have some talent for it as opposed to being proud of him for having a talent.

I take him to swimming lessons as well. At the end of last term his friend Jonnie got promoted leaving Ben one class below. He buckled down, asked Ian the teacher what he had to do to catch up, did it, and was promised he could move up after half term.

Yesterday was the first lesson after half term. Mission accomplished, and I want to record that I am proud of him for pulling it off.

Gurkhas

Did you know that there is a fine Nepalese restaurant about half way between Tooting Bec and Balham tube stations? Just stop for a minute and think about it. Isn't that great?

I don't know what I was expecting at Gurkhas Diner particularly, but I was surprised and delighted.

The light and spacious room has a parquet floor, This is a restaurant where your napkins comes in a stylish napkin ring. There are also oversized wine glasses and great effort has been made with the presentation of the dishes on the plate.

We had Dayalu, Takeko Farshi, Tarai Chicken, Sunsari Pork, Lukla Simi, and Bhat. You can look at the menu for yourself to see what it all means.

HIghly recommended: Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations as we eat our way around the world in London.

Wake Up Boilers!

Sean's new book, "The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and Nietzsche" has finally arrived from Amazon which means I will almost certainly end up reading it over our skiing holiday next week and cementing my deserved reputation as the one of the world's leading poseurs.

It's not the first time his publishing schedule has done this to me. Years ago in Cyprus a girl asked me what the large format paperback I was reading as I sprawled on a recliner next to the swimming pool might be. I took a deep breath and announced that it was "The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida". We never spoke again.

I googled "Sean Burke Plato" looking for reviews and came up with this blog post written by a former student of his. I'm not sure that I recognise the character it portrays, but then again I've known the subject since primary school so we are a long way past shyness.

Zoom

I was fooling around with photomosaics over the weekend for a project that may - or may not - come to fruition and produced the image above.

The photo is John and Dave from last year's Childline Challenge. Click on it, load the full size version and zoom in. You'll find it is made of hundreds of other little photos.

Something Good '08

I propose this as the theme tune and dance for the wave of sporting euphoria sweeping the Principality.

Sports Round Up

Wales 47-8 Italy: I'm delighted provide this link that can be used again and again for the next week to watch the game (UK only unfortunately).

Remember that when Italy beat us last year we were languishing at the bottom of the table with four losses from four games; this year we have three wins from three, and masters of all we survey courtesy of England's victory against France.

Moving from Wales versus England to something that is more like a Wales/Italy joint venture, John and I had been toying with the idea of going to Vegas for the Calzaghe/Hopkins fight on April 19th. We've finally agreed that it is not really a practical proposition, what with one thing and another, so this means that I will be definitely be available for the Childline Challenge on Sunday April 20th.

What kind of performance I will put in after staying up to the early hours to watch the boxing live from Nevada I don't know, but at least (as previously agreed), I only have to do the swimming and running as Chris is signed up for the cycling.

If I break my leg skiing next week, I won't have to do either of course.

Alpha Male, Beta Software, Gamma Ray

Completing an unlikely Microsoft trilogy, I present this extraordinary video: Bill Gates Last day at Microsoft:

Why do all the top brass at MSoft talk exactly like Kermit the frog?

Microsoft 2.0

There is much sound and fury in the media today about Microsoft offering APIs and more for interoperability.

I've looked at what they've posted on the web so that you don't have to, and to he honest I managed to tear myeslf away as there was some paint I fancied watching drying.

I had hoped for more from the Ray Ozzie regime.

Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?

A "stay-at-home" server: you know it's the right thing for your family. But how do you explain this wonderful choice to your children? Finally, there's a book that talks about the home server using small words and fun pictures, perfect for kids. Written by Tom O'Connor and lovingly illustrated by Jill Dublin, this is a book you and your family will want to read over and over again.

Microsoft really is beyond parody sometimes.

Half Term

The New Ninja Bomber is attending a football course run by Fulham FC this week.

It struck me when I was making his packed lunch this morning, that if you are going to be running around outside in shorts for six hours a day in temperatures as cold as London in February what you need is fuel. I wonder if I can get some pemmican a la Scott of the Antarctic. 50% pounded meat and 50% melted fat, the food police would have kittens.

I like widgets

The World’s Creative Hub

A list of more than 20 schemes, intended to turn Britain into the “world’s creative hub”, has been drawn up by ministers and will be unveiled in a Green Paper this week, putting flesh on the bones - God help us - 0f:

Establishing a five-hour a week “cultural offer” for children and young people
Introducing “creative apprenticeships” for 1,000 young people
Creation of a new college of digital media, and encouraging other similar institutions
Exploring the possibility of creating a academy for the creative arts for 14 to 25-year-olds
Promoting art and design colleges and conservatoires
Using Arts Councils to “promote the objectives of the creative economy programme”
Local network of “beacon agencies” for creative industries
New entreprise fund for creative industries
Fostering greater cooperation in the fashion industry
A £10 million research and development fund Extra start-up cash and training for riskier new film ventures
Skills Department to lead strategic review of the economic and social impact of innovation
Regional creative economy strategy frameworks
A “menu for local infrastructure” to help give creative industries better space and planning guidance
Mixed media centres: nurture digital film talent in six centres nationwide
Protection of live music venues, such as Astoria and Hammersmith Palais
Move to require internet service providers to take action on illegal file sharing
Intellectual property enforcement teams and a forum to bring together stakeholders
Putting intellectual property issues in the curriculum
Making the public aware of intellectual property
Work with partners to develop Davos-style “world creative economy forum”
Creative festivals season including permanent home for London Fashion Week and Southbank film centre
UK Trade International five-year strategy to make Britain more competitive in creative industries.

My particular favourite is "fostering greater cooperation in the fashion industry" (Nipple Clamps for Labour anyone?), but each idea has its own special Orwellian demerits.

Which will be the biggest fiasco do you think?

Come Out Writing

BBC

The International Olympic Committee is for the first time permitting athletes to write blogs.

The IOC has set out guidelines for blogging at the Beijing Games to ensure copyright agreements are not infringed.

I'm amazed. Who are they to permit it or not?

To Say Today

Nearly didn't get to post today. Only three minutes until midnight. Thank goodness that I've nothing to say.

One Act Bladder

'Earnest' was apparently Victorian slang for 'gay'; 'Cecily' was a well-known name for rent boys.

Oh dear. The quote from the programme above and a lukewarm review from The Evening Standard, left me fearing the worst as I settled into my seat at the Vaudeville Theatre for Peter Gill's latest. Then the curtain opened, Algernon and Lane started talking nonsense about piano playing, cucumber sandwiches and champagne and all was well with the world.

The Importance of Being Earnest can be classified with Cyrano de Bergerac. If you are capable of watching a production of either without enjoying it then you are so jaded that you should be forbidden from the theatre.

We were also treated to an interval after each act. Two G&T's and two loo breaks greatly enhance any comedy when you are given to arriving as well refreshed as I tend to.

Am I Blue?

Thump the Clouds have come to mind this morning as I met up with AndyM and a bunch of other folk earlier this week, so for your Valentine's present you can have the lyrics to an eight bar blues of ours from back in the day. It's all very sad, but then it is the blues after all and the last word links to a deliriously romantic story. Cheer up, it might never happen.


I came to the party
I saw you again

It's hard to believe this

But it took me way back when

To when I first met you

The scene of the crime

To once upon a time

Sucking white wine up

From a paper cup

To kid myself that there was

No need for a cover up

I asked you a question

You told me a lie

You didn't see me cry

I woke up on Sunday

I wrote down this song

And started to think that

I had been away too long

I thought of that singer

Of love and of life lived in vain

And headed for the train.

Got the horn?

A duck-billed dinosaur that possessed a built in horn to woo females has been found in Mexico.
Velafrons coahuilensis possessed a built-in horn which it used to woo females
The 25ft creature, a youngster that would have grown up to be around 35 ft, had a fan-shaped bony crest on its skull filled with nasal passages.
The 72 million-year-old dinosaur, named Velafrons coahuilensis, probably performed to attract mates.
Scientists believe the appendage may have been used as a kind of trumpet, with air blown through it to make showy or seductive sounds. read on.

See also "teenage pregnancy common in dinosaurs". I'm starting to toy with a hypothesis that they died out because of binge drinking, loud music and wanton promiscuity. Perhaps I could get the Daily Mail to commission a few hundred words on the subject.

......... I had that T. Rex in the back of my cab once ...............

Great Minds

Has any other reader noticed the remarkable resemblance betweeen Doris Lessing, the octogenarian Nobel literature laureate and "epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny," and Bernard "B-Hop" Hopkins who is due to be subjected to Joe Calzaghe's scrutiny with scepticism, fire and power on April 19th?

I wonder if they are, by any chance, related?

Hopkins: "Barack Obama 'will be assassinated within months' if he wins presidency"

Lessing: "They would kill him," the 88-year-old author of novels The Grass Is Singing and The Golden Notebook said in an interview, though she did not specify who she believed would kill Mr Obama.

Prodnose: Well that's something of a hostage to fortune don't you think?
Myself: John 19:22; Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written."

High Rise

I had to replace my original el grupo book choice a few weeks back because "A Solider's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point" isn't published in the UK yet.

I'm now recommending Suketu Mehta's account of Bombay, "Maximum City". Thanks to the blog I have a record here of what I thought when I read it myself three years ago.

The post also reminds me that in February 2005 the BBC was reporting on Bombay slums being forcefully cleared. In 2008 The Times reports:

A flagrant style of luxury living is springing up above Bombay’s densely populated slums for a select few prosperous enough to spend up to £5 million on a designer apartment.

Bombay is the seventh most expensive place in the world to buy an apartment, according to the Global Property Guide, despite half the 18 million population living in slums without a lavatory or running water.

I propose a new HTML tag to be used a follows:

That's <irony> progress </irony> I suppose.

Wrath of the Lich King

The New Ninja Bomber (courtesy of his maternal grandmother) is enhancing his World of Warcraft access with the "Burning Crusade" expansion pack. "Burning Crusade" sold 2.4 million copies on the day it was released in January 2007. No album could post anything like those numbers these days.

According to Amazon, The Wrath of the Lich King - which is the next expansion pack - is due to be released the day before his birthday this year.

The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King's will and end his reign of terror for all time.

That's a shoe in for a present then, including as it does "new hairstyles and dances".

(I was amazed when the Queen's Christmas broadcast notched up a million or so YouTube viewings, but this video showing the origin of Word of Warcraft dances has been watched nearly seven and a half million times. Include me out!)

Killing the Radio Star

We are up to week four of the "Contender Asia". AVI available here.

I've installed the DiVX Mobile application on my mobile phone, and that seems to play AVI format videos with no problem at all.

The Nokia N95 comes with a TV-Out cable, so I watched the show last night by plugging my mobile phone into the TV.

That seemed truly bizarre.

I Playing

The news had rather passed me by I am afraid, but the BBC's IPlayer has been offering streaming video since December.

It's an intriguing development and means that you can watch Wales beat England again and again here, (well at least for one more day). I imagine that the Wales Scotland game will be up over the weekend.

From what I can gather, flash is the video format used. The BBC doesn't offer a straighforward way of embedding moving pictures in blog posts like this. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to hack one though. I may try and have a look at it, time permitting.

Bookfest

"Girls like literacy, and boys like maths." Thus sprake the New Ninja Bomber this week. I was a little put out by this, demanding as I do, the Trivium and the Quadrivium. How did we ever imagine that artes liberales in primary schools would be safe in the hands of Mr Balls?

Given this, I attended the party to launch the organisation of October's 2008 Wimbldeon Bookfest, in a sombre frame of mind. I expected it to be a small affair, but - lo - it was packed to the gills, there was free booze, and they will be doing more stuff for kids this year.

Books are in the rudest of health in SW19.
Trebles all round!

Boiling Down

Time for a new challenge.

I hereby challenge myself to get down to the 175 pound light heavyweight limit by the time of the Calzaghe Hopkins fight in Las Vegas on April 19th.

John beat me in the our first challenge, but I beat him in the second. Both our weights have been recorded in the training blog this morning.

Whoever loses the most weight between today and then wins.

(There is a hint of Lent and penance about kicking this off on Ash Wednesday, don't you think?)

Slow News Day

The Sun newspaper reports that a satellite orbiting Mars has now spotted what looks suspiciously like a big smiley face drawn crudely onto the surface of the red planet.

Disconcertingly reminiscent of the "acid house" faces worn by late-eighties ravers, the vast visage stares out from a crater, beaming a wonky-faced message of goodwill out in to the solar system.

In Bed with Embed

We are three episodes into Contender Asia now. In the course of following it I am becoming more familiar with a video codec called DiVX with which I was previously only peripherally aware.

There seems to be a lot to be said for it. I have embedded the web player below. You will need approve the installation of some code if you want to use it. For some reason it doesn't seem to be working properly in IE. It is fine in Flock though and is perfectly usable full screen. XBOX 360 support should already be in place and PSP is promised.


See also http://www.stage6.com/user/lazy_m/video/2175101/The-Contender-Asia-Ep-3

Light of My Life, Fire of My Loins

The wonder of woolies:

The Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about 6, was on sale on the Woolworths website for £395.

I'm reading Lolita at the moment, as Chris has assigned it for the next book club meeting,

I generally carry a paperback around with me to help kill quiet moments travelling or waiting.

Lolita is proving quite problematical in this regard. Even I am sensitive enough to realise that its not really being the thing to be seen pulling out while sitting on a park bench watching your seven year old and chums cavorting on the swings, slides and roundabouts.

Whereas many mothers were familiar with Vladimir Nabokov and his famous novel, it seems that the Woolworths staff were not. At first they were baffled by the fuss. A spokesman for the company told The Times: “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”

Quite so.

Also, in "only connect" mode, I see that Mark from my neighbouring Wheelhouse Theatre Company impersonated Humbert Humbert at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006. Perhaps I'll bend his ear about Lolita as well.

Charisma

On the eve of taking on Wales at Twickenham on the first weekend of 2008's 6 Nations championship, England's inspirational Johnny Wilkinson has controversially called for tries to be banned from rugby.

"I think it's only fair", said Wilkinson. "You've got to reward the sides that make rugby worth watching, the teams that score mainly drop-goals and penalties and barely pass the ball."

England's captain Phil Vickery backed up his teammate: "Southern hemisphere teams like New Zealand and South Africa are ruining the game with their almost total reliance on tries and running rugby. I don't think British and European fans want to see energetic, free-flowing rugby at the expense of the good old-fashioned, stop-start, kick, lineout, kick, maul, kick, scrum, kick game".

"The current scoring system means less talented teams, like the Welsh 2005 Grand Slam winners, who did practically nothing except run in tries were rewarded with more points than skilful guys who expressed themselves with a whole varied repertoire of kicks. We were kicking to touch, kicking penalities and kicking drop goals yet we still didn't win. It was so frustrating that I felt like kicking myself. Something's got to give, or it'll be the end of rugby as we know it."

Perusing

A tardy "Eat Your Way Around the World in London" moved its slow thighs across the desert sands to Borough Market on Wednesday night, and thence to Tito's Peruvian Restaurant, 4-6 London Bridge Street SE1 9SG.

Once a bottle of Tacano, from a vineyard established in 1540 (see http://www.peruvinos.com/) had been opened and poured, a revelation was at hand.

I started on cod ceviche with sliced sweet potato and fried corn. I first fell in love with ceviche at the Gaucho Grill two years ago.

Wikipedia says:

Ceviche (also spelled as cebiche, seviche or cevice) is a form of citrus marinated seafood salad, popular in many Latin American countries, originating in the Viceroyalty of Peru. One theory suggests that it got its name from the Quechua "siwichi". However, it is likely to be a cognate of another Spanish word, "escabeche" (marinade), derived from the Arabic term "sikbaj". Another theory suggests that its name comes from the word Cebo, name given to the Corvina fish by black Peruvians.

I'm delighted to claim it for Peru.

The main course was Pato en Aji (duck leg in chilli sauce with yellow beans and rice) which is a dish from Huaral, a town in central Peru.

Mmmmm. Beans and rice. From the hoppin' John of the Carolinas, to the feijoada of Brazil. From the vibrantly unPC monicker of Cuba's Moros y Christianos to our very own Garfield's Rice'n Peas. What a story there is to tell.

For your homework (before you follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations) I am setting "Rice and Beans: The Itinerary of a Dish", page 278 to 322 of John and Matt Lewis Thorne's Serious Pig: An American Cook in Search of His Roots

Chuck Norris for President

Chuck Norris, as previously noted, is a phenomenon.

Google won't search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don't find Chuck Norris, he finds you. (Hat tip, SimonB)

Actually, I have been delighted to find that the great man genuinely writes a weekly column here, which last year featured a wonderfully self mocking list of campaign promises he would make if running for President.

My favourite is:

Increase jobs in America by sending ninja teams to sabotage and steal them back from other countries.

He'd get my vote.

Dance

Charles Dance has been named best actor in the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for Shadowlands.

I went to see it a few weeks ago, and his is indeed a fine performance in a fine play.

The alchemy of acting, at least for me, resides in the communication of the spaces between the words; impulses repressed, fleeting reactions, inarticulacy even.

There is a moment in the play when Dance - as C.S. Lewis - is standing, with his hands in his pockets, downstage of Janie Dee as Joy as her character tells him some bad news she has received.

You can tell that he wants to reach out to her but somehow can't bring himself to do it, and looks down at the fists bunched in his jacket in a sort of reproach as if they don't belong to him.

I have no idea how one writes, directs or performs such a virtuoso manifestation of a scene, but it is a privilege to see it done.

Prepare For Glory

The World Cup still only seems like yesterday, but the Six Nations has rolled around again and Wales travel to Twickenham to take on England this weekend.

I've embedded a YouTube copy of the BBC's trailer for this year's competition above. It's almost a pastiche of the trailer for the movie 300 that came out over a year ago. If you also consider that "Meet the Spartans" - a 300 spoof - was number one at the US box office over the weekend, it is clear that the film has entered public consciousness - regardless of critical brickbats - to an extraordinary degree.

I wonder how many time schoolboys have kicked each other in the sternum shouting, "Madness? This is Sparta!" over the last twelve months.

Blogging Early Monday Morning

Guy goes to work every day, eight hours a day, seven days a week.

Gets his nuts so tight in a vice that he starts questioning the very fabric of his existence.

Then one day, 'bout quitting time, Boss calls him into the office and says, "Hey Bob, why don't cha come on in here and kiss my ass for me, will you?"

Well, he says, "Hell with it. I don't care what happens, I just want to see the expression on his face as I jab this pair of scissors into his arm.

Then he thinks of me.

He says, "Wait a minute. I got both my arms, I got both my legs. At least I ain't begging for a living.

Sure enough, Bob's gonna put those scissors down and pucker right up.

See, I'm what you call kind of a "moral traffic light", really. I'm like sayin', "Red! Go no further!"

Oorah

My brother John having thrown down that gauntlet to me to me on a cross-trainer and barbell complex workout competition last week, I am hereby returning the favour by suggesting we go head to head on the United States Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test this week.

This consists of:

• as many pull ups as you can do
• as many crunches as you can do in two minutes
• a three mile run.

Follow the link for notes on form. Scoring works as follows: five points for every pull-up, one point for every crunch, and one point is deducted from 100 for every 10 seconds slower than 18 minutes.

Scores are graded into 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class (below 3rd you fail) according to an age adjusted scale. I choose to interpret this as meaning that I can still win even if I get fifty points less than John. He may disagree.

Contender Asia

Do you remember Peter Manfredo Jr fighting Joe Calzaghe last year? He came to prominence via "The Contender", a reality television series that followed a group of boxers as they competed with one another in an elimination-style competition.

Well the format has been adapted for Muay Thai in "The Contender Asia". Our interest was obviously piqued considering that my little boy has been taking Muay Thai lessons for eighteen months now, and I've even been doing it myself for nine.



The show started airing last week, but it's not available in the UK so I've been reduced to online craftiness in order to watch it. I really don't like pirating things, but as the official website presents the series as if it is playing out weekly - though it is obviously all in the can already - I really can't see any alternative if Ben and I are to sit down and every seven days and speculate on the how it ultimately turns out.

In the Internet age it seems to me that producers need simultaneous worldwide distribution, especially with special interest material. Then again, if I knew how they could pull it off, I'd probably be a lot richer than I am.

Dr. Wilma Shaffer

I admit that Spamfighter has an excellent range of products and has reduced my stress level, but glancing at my spam folder this morning to check that it hadn't been over zealously weeding out messages I realised that I sometimes miss the unconscious vigorous poetry of audacious, sub literate invitations along the lines of:

Your woman lived you alone because of she had done it with your mate.
By reason of she has always dreamed about enormous jang.
Enlarge your male device and you'll be popular among chicks promptly.
This is your chance to change your sexual life.

"Your woman lived you alone"; genius.
"Jang"; new to me.
"Promptly"; not the adverb I would have chosen, but on reflection an unimprovable mot juste.

PS If I ever succumb to World of Warcraft, my character will almost certainly rejoice in the soubriquet "Enormous Jang".

A Swingin' Affair

The Mack Big Band invites you free of charge to its public rehearsals every
Tuesday evening 7:30 for 8pm in the Colour House Theatre.

Come along, get a drink from the bar, and listen to 5 saxes, 3 trombones, 4 trumpets, piano, bass, guitar, drums and vocalists run through a classic big band repertoire.

That's where I went on Tuesday evening after getting back from Poole and doing my duty in the gym. Why not check it out?

In Which I Encounter Four Knaves

One day as I lay drinking in my sleep, and singing as I drank, four bravos, four down-at-heel rogues, entered my inn, the Horse of Bronze, in Remiremont under the Vosges. They came to steal my wallet, which contained letters to Sieur de Coquille-les-Baraquins. With one bound I left my bed and, seizing my sword, slit the cheek of the first, gashed the forehead of the second, pierced the left shoulder of the third, and pricked the fourth over the heart. I then trussed them up like fowls and rolled them into the cellar. At Jarnac I fought until I had nothing left to fight with but a one-inch stump of sword. At Ivry I had eighteen horses killed under me. At Arques I broke in the great doors of the castle with a blow of my fist. Yet let me not boast.

The Chevalier de Menfiche! Coeur-de-Fer! At your service. My honour insulted by omission from a list. A list of little conseqence you say? Allow me, in turn, to DEMAND satisfaction!

En Garde!

If life gives you melons

I'm off early for a long day today. Let me leave you with a notion:

Ours are ominous times. We are on the verge of eroding away our ozone layer. Within decades we could face major oceanic flooding. We are close to annihilating hundreds of exquisite animal species. Soon our forests will be as bland as pavement. Moreover, we now find ourselves on the verge of a new cold war.

But there is another threat, perhaps as dangerous: We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85 percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty happy. The psychological world is now abuzz with a new field, positive psychology, devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Psychologists practicing this brand of therapy are leaders in a novel science, the science of happiness. Mainstream publishers are learning from the self-help industry and printing thousands of books on how to be happy. Doctors offer a wide array of drugs that might eradicate depression forever. It seems truly an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of persistent good fortune, joy without trouble, felicity with no penalty.

Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste? What are we to make of this American obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?

Surely all this happiness can't be for real.

Sleep tight. Back tomorrow.

Anthropology in Azeroth

As I sprawled on the couch during a rainy interval over the weekend, half reading my book, I was also watching the New Ninja Bomber playing World of Warcraft.

He met up with Rayburn - who was playing from Morden - and they took off by ship on a long and intricate quest.

I am still amazed at how comfortable he is with this sort of realm. Techy as I am I still don't get it.

I wonder if the fact that I am not - and have never been - much of a gamer is relevant. Perhaps Chris - a gentleman and a gamer of my vintage with a son around the same age as mine has an opinion? (I will pass on the message about Celts.)

One thing I certainly don't see is that games and computers are bad for kids or socially stultifying. My little one is happy in the park with his bike, a football, some chums, and happy rampaging in a digital virtual world. I don't like the implied either/or dichotomy that one sort of fun is necessarily enjoyed at the expense of the other.

Anton Ego

I watched a moody DVD of Ratatouille last night.

I've known Brad Bird was a genius since The Iron Giant.

But what pray is the explanation of the extraordinary resemblance of the supercilious critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole) to our own Will Self?

I think we should be told.

Bibi van der Zee (Whom God Preserve)

Body warmth to power heating. Trucks that run on chocolate. Floors coated with cheese. Bibi van der Zee looks at new ways of turning our waste to good use.

Dr Strabismus suddenly seems tame

The Fisher King

In the world of medieval romance there are many weird and wonderful creatures – there are golden dragons and green knights, sinister enchantresses and tragic kings, strange magicians and spears that bleed and talk. And yet, in all this panoply of wonder, few figures are more mysterious than the Fisher King. Entrusted as the keeper of the Holy Grail itself, he resides in a castle made of magic where he lies blighted by a wound that does not heal. He is a complex and poetic figure and has meant many things to many people. From the age of chivalry to that of psychoanalysis and beyond, he has been Christian and pagan, tragic and enduring, a sinner, a fertility god and a symbol of sexual fear and desire.

Melvyn's guest explainers on the consistently wonderful "In Out Time" this week included Stephen Knight, Distinguished Research Professor in English Literature at Cardiff University, and Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Welsh, Cardiff University.

In honour of these academics from my native land I have decided to believe the more or less arbitrary assertion that the Fisher King is derived from the figure of Bran the Blessed in the Mabinogion, and is therefore Welsh.

Addendum
1. It is impossible to read of "Bran the Blessed" without thinking of the robust and bushy bearded Brian Blessed. This is a good thing.
2. In his newsletter, Lord Bragg talks of the Fisher King's influence on Eliot's "The Waste Land" and observes that "with a book like Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, the idea of a sterile landscape post some ecological holocaust is hovering at the edge of possibility". We're reading "The Road for the next El Grupo. This is a good thing.
3. Finding a lance in a tangled Welsh wood and storming the magic citadel of London. This is a good thing.

Dramatis Personae

As the question has been asked:

Prodnose: humourless, reasonable oaf who interrupts the flights of fancy. (The name is journalistic slang for a sub-editor.)

Plus

Mr. Justice Cocklecarrot: well-meaning but ineffectual High Court judge, plagued by litigation involving the twelve red-bearded dwarfs.

Mrs. Justice Cocklecarrot: his wife. Very silent, until she observes that "Wivens has fallen down a manhole". An enquiry from the judge as to which Wivens that would be elicits the response "E. D. Wivens". After a worrying interval she reveals that E. D. Wivens is a cat. His Lordship observes that cats do not have initials. "This one does", says she.

Tinklebury Snapdriver and Honeygander Gooseboote: two counsel. The elbow of one has a mysterious tendency to become jammed in the jaws of the other.

Twelve red-bearded dwarfs, with a penchant for farcical litigation. Their names are Scorpion de Rooftrouser, Cleveland Zackhouse, Frums Gillygottle, Edeledel Edel, Churm Rincewind, Sophus Barkayo-Tong, Amaninter Axling, Guttergorm Guttergormpton, Badly Oronparser, Listenis Youghaupt, Molonay Tubilderborst and Farjole Merrybody.

Captain Foulenough: archetypal cad and gatecrasher who impersonates the upper class in order to wreck their social events. Educated at Narkover, a school specializing in card-playing, horse-racing and bribery.

Mountfalcon Foulenough: his priggish nephew, who brings havoc to Narkover and "makes virtue seem even more horrifying than usual".

Vita Brevis: debutante frequently plagued by, but with a certain reluctant admiration for, Captain Foulenough.

Dr. Smart-Allick: genteel, but ludicrous and criminal, headmaster of Narkover.

Miss Topsy Turvey: neighbouring headmistress, courted by Smart-Allick.

Dr. Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht: eccentric scientist and inventor.

Lord Shortcake: absent-minded peer obsessed by his enormous collection of goldfish.

Mrs. McGurgle: seaside landlady. Fearsomely British, until she decides to reinvent her house as "Hôtel McGurgle et de l'Univers" to attract the tourists.

Charlie Suet: disastrous civil servant.

Mimsie Slopcorner: his on-off girlfriend, an ill-informed and irritating social activist.

The Filthistan Trio: Ashura, Kazbulah and Rizamughan, three Persians from "Thurralibad", two of whom play see-saw on a plank laid across the third. They have a series of contretemps with British bureaucracy and the artistic establishment, in which the trio generally represents the voice of reason.

Dingi-Poos: the Tibetan Venus. She obtains desirable commercial contracts by using her charms to hoodwink visiting British envoys, principally Colonel Egham and Duncan Mince.

Big White Carstairs: Buchanesque Empire builder, with a tendency to mislay his dress trousers.

O. Thake: man-about-town.

Lady Cabstanleigh: Society hostess.

Stultitia: her niece, a playwright.

Boubou Flaring: glamorous but vacuous actress.

Emilia Rustiguzzi: voluminous (both in bulk and in decibels) opera singer.

Tumbelova, Serge Trouserin, Chuckusafiva: ballet dancers.

Colin Velvette: ballet impresario.

"Thunderbolt" Footle: handsome, socially celebrated boxer (who can do everything except actually fight)

The M'Babwa of M'Gonkawiwi: African chief, who occasions great administrative problems in connection with his invitation to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Clam of Chowdah: oriental potentate

Mrs. Wretch: formerly the glamorous circus performer Miss Whackaway, now wife to Colonel Wretch and "horrible welfare worker".

Roland Milk: insipid poet

Human Skateboard

The New Ninja Bomber's favourite YouTube video.

Laziness, Impatience and Hubris

From PaperPools (via Light Reading) we learn the

Virtues of a programmer, according to Larry Wall, Randall L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen in the second edition of Programming Perl.

1. Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris.
2. Impatience - The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris.
3. Hubris - Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.

You can't say you haven't been warned.

How We Live Today

‘The wife will kill me if she finds out I’m smoking again...’

Smart Women

Feeling the weight of your overdraft after Christmas? Merryn Somerset Webb, author of Love Is Not Enough: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Money, takes a lighthearted look at how you can save the pennies this year

Prodnose: Where are we going with this?
Myself: Indulge me for a moment or two.

1 Drink less coffee out. One latte a day will add up to nearly £500 over a year.
2 Breastfeed your babies.
3 Never order cocktails. Stick to wine or beer in bars. Better still, never buy your own drinks!

Prodnose: Monstrous!
Myself: You sir are no gentleman.

4 Keep your weight constant: if you rarely change size you can buy quality pieces of clothing and wear them for years.
5 Wash more, dry-clean less: whatever it says on the label, woollens don’t really need dry-cleaning. Even pashminas come out of the woollen cycle just fine as long as you iron them when a little damp. Wash cashmere on a gentle cycle and lay it flat between two towels to dry.

Prodnose: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, I'd like to hang this out to dry.
Myself: Actually the list is a little short on thrills, but what do we find 28 hints later?

33 Buy your bike from www.bumblebeeauctions.co.uk. The site auctions property that the police have either seized from burglars and the like or had handed in and not been able to find the owners for.

Myself: That's right Prodders old man, it's expressed in language up with which I shall not put, but according to ICWales.co.uk, our very own site was mentioned in the Western Mail yesterday. The prophet is not without honour in his own land!
Prodnose (coldly): Be still my beating heart.

Blank spaces count

If you ever get an SMS from me, there is a strong chance that it will be exactly 160 characters long. This is because I generally type into the Nokia Text Message Editor on a PC, overrun the SMS message limit and then edit them back down. It is also typical of the mad tasks and constraints I am forever setting myself.

Courtesy of Sir Normblog, I have learned of text-message poems (verse which makes a virtue of this limit), and this winning example from Sophie Hannah.

Blank spaces count as characters. It's true.
I wasn't sure. And then I thought of you.

I'm delighted with this idea and, having given you my Haiku some time ago, I'm sure I'll be posting an example soon. In the meantime I like the way that the discipline clips a famous stanza from Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat in a way that emphasises the poem's message, to wit:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of

Supply your own regret after the abrupt truncation.

Next stop - or maybe the same thing - keitai tanka.

Campaign

Campaign Game Back a candidate and gain the support of the regions to win the Presidential Election.

Play this free game now!!

Much to my astonishment the 7 year old New Ninja Bomber has become a great fan of the US Election game above.

To the extent that the world is waiting for my reaction to the winners in the New Hampshire primary, please be informed that I can't be doing with Xanthippe Rodham Clinton at any price. The dynastic implications of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton series of presidencies are ridiculous. What will they do next? Marry Chelsea off to Bilawal Bhutto?

I kinda like the cut of McCain's jib though. There is such a thing as moral authority. We should pay attention when someone who has been imprisoned and tortured takes the high ground on Guantanamo and waterboarding. I admire him for it.

One Year Later

It's a year today that John and I started recording our workouts. Looking at January 2007 I can see that I'm only five pounds lighter than I was then, despite keeping at the exercise pretty consistently.

I celebrated the anniversary with an early morning run along the Wandle today, and hated every step of it. (I'm going to step up roadwork in January and February before skiing in the first week of March.)

Looking on the bright side, I feel a lot stronger and fitter so I imagine that I have probably lost around half a stone in fat, and it is certainly better than being heavier than I was a year ago.

Also on the bright side, HELP YOUR HEART WITH EXERCISE - AND BOOZE says the Guardian.

LackLustre!

You better beware, you better take care
You better watch out if you've got long black hair
He'll come from behind, you go out of your mind
You'd better not go, you'd never know what you'll find

Aah, aah
You look in his eyes, don't be surprised
If you don't know what's going on behind his disguise
Nobody knows where Lustre goes
He'll steal your woman out from under your nose

Does anyone know the way, did we hear someone say
We just haven't got a clue what to do
Does anyone know the way, there's got to be a way
To Lack Lustre!

The cops are out, they're running about
Don't know if they'll ever be able to Lack Lustre out
He's gotta be cought, he's gotta be taught
'Cos he's more evil than anyone here ever thought

Does anyone know the way did we hear someone say
We just haven't got a clue - ow!
Does anyone know the way, there's got to be a way
To Lack Lustre!

Lustre, Lustre, LackLustre!

Prodnose: You just go from bad to worse.
Myself: Why shouldn't I sprinkle as much fairy dust as I please on Sweet's glam classic? We Brits may have taken it in with our mothers' milk, but over the pond it peaked at No. 73 in the Billboard Hot 100. It's practically my patriotic duty to promote it.
Prodnose: Then why the puerile changes to the lyrics?

Myself: An architect may pray in his own cathedral: I shall laugh at my own jokes. Ha ha, and for that matter, hee hee.

Prodnose: But the whole sordid spectacle, isn't it rather undignified for a man of your age and girth?
Myself: Certainly not, but bear with me; this blond page boy wig, these gold platform shoes, and yon satin catsuit are needed to give you the full effect. God is in the details old boy.
Prodnose (thoroughly unmanned): Ah, ummm, I think I may have left the oven on. Bye.
Myself and the Entire Company (reprise: to the wail of a siren and the stomp of boots): You better beware, you better take care ........

The New Guard

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.

Prodnose: I'm sorry, I don't see the relevance.
Myself: No, I suppose you don't.
Prodnose: You are humming a nursery rhyme.
Myself: Guilty as charged. Perhaps there is a deeper meaning. Once more with feeling, riddle me this Boy Blunder.

THEY'RE CHANGING GUARD AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE -
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN WENT DOWN WITH ALICE.

My Unwritten Books

Book Description
George Steiner, the eminent professor of English at Cambridge and Geneva universities, has outlined seven books he has never written, but has always wanted to write, in seven sections.

Synopsis
In this fiercely original and audacious work, George Steiner tells of seven books which he did not write. Because intimacies and indiscretions were too threatening. Because the topic brought too much pain. Because its emotional or intellectual challenge proved beyond his capacities. The actual themes range widely and defy conventional taboos: the torment of the gifted when they live among, when they confront, the very great; the experience of sex in different languages; a love for animals greater than for human beings; the costly privilege of exile; a theology of emptiness. Yet a unifying perception underlies this diversity. The best we have or can produce is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind every good book, as in a lit shadow, lies the book which remained unwritten, the one that would have failed better.

Much as I love the brief spoof book descriptions in "The Best of Beachcomber", Amazon outloons them again and again.

Flocking

I'm trying out a new browser called Flock which is advertised as integrating social networking, photo and video sharing and blogging services.

That should really be a boon if it works as advertised.

Watch this space.

BBC News: From our own correspondent

From good Queen Liz, great white chief far over the water, a bale of Hudson's Bay blankets for new President Huckabarack Omaha.

Smoke pipe of peace at IOU Caw-cawaassough.

This mugwump not war chief like Bushitler.

With Your Tongue Down My Throat

Oh, to be young again! I could practically feel myself slouching (pimplier, moodier, and greasier) as I read this celebration of the first hundred issues of Granta, a tiny Cambridge journal that "rose to conquer the literary world".

Reminiscing over the back issues, the first I can remember reading is Granta 12: The Rolling Stones and the last is Granta 22: With Your Tongue Down My Throat. That is two and a half years' worth of a quarterly.

We drifted apart after that, never having regained the intensity of our relationship after the peaks scaled by Granta 20: In Trouble Again: Redmond O'Hanlon in the Amazon jungle, Salman Rushdie in Nicaragua, Colin Thubron in China, Ryszard Kapuscinski in Angola, Martha Gellhorn in Cuba, Peregrine Hodson in Afghanistan. Plus: Amitav Ghosh, Norman Lewis, Timothy Garton Ash, Hanif Kureishi, and Orville Schell.

Battle at Kruger

Chris having already taken care of documenting the next lot of books we are to read, I thought I would commemorate my trip to Swansea by digging up a YouTube video Dave recommended. It has been viewed over 23 million times to date.


Wikipedia: The video begins with the herd of buffalo approaching the water, unaware of the lions resting nearby. The lions charge and disperse the herd, picking off a young buffalo and unintentionally knocking it into the water while attempting to make a kill. While the lions try to drag the buffalo out of the water, it is grabbed by a pair of crocodiles, who fight for it before giving up and leaving it to the lions. The lions sit down and prepare to eat, but are quickly surrounded by the reorganized buffalo, who move in and begin charging and kicking at the lions. After a battle which sees one lion being tossed into the air by a buffalo, the baby buffalo (which is miraculously still alive) escapes into the herd. The emboldened buffalo chase the remainder of the lions away.

At the point of delivery

Gordon Brown has delivered a New Year's message to the National Health Service. We are promised

a new constitution of the NHS setting out for the first time the rights and responsibilities associated with an entitlement to NHS care.

This is an ominous development. What can the word responsibilities possibly represent in this context other than a threat that those who adhere to what are deemed bad habits may be refused (or receive reduced) NHS care?

We live in an age of stultifying orthodoxy in which Ministers of the Crown fall over each other to issue us with guidance on - and pass judgement on - any number of issues that are none of the Government's business.

If we let 10 Downing Street foist the principle on us that, for apparently trivial example, people who smoke or are fat are failing in their responsibilities to the Health Service, and that in return the Health Service's responsibility to them is commensurately reduced, then we will have abandoned something precious.

What would there be to stop a future administration of a different ideological stamp deciding that, say, people who became infected with HIV for want of taking responsibility for precautions were in breach of their contract with the NHS and thus ineligible for care?

Loads of potential examples spring to mind. It is a bad idea.

Eros and Thanatos

I met up with quite a few of my peers from the old days back in Wales over the Christmas and New Year break. Satisying as it was to note that I was probably trimmer and more limber than is average for my contemporaries, I couldn't help but notice, as we were drinking in rounds, that I certainly conistently put more booze away more quickly than average as well.

I therefore call upon you to witness to the fact that I am giving up the demon drink for January.

Prodnose: That's not very erotic.
Welsh Born (with considerable dignity): I beg your pardon.
Prodnose: The news that you are going on the wagon for a month; what has Eros to do with it? Your title is a come-on hinting at carnality.
Welsh Born: Dunderhead! According to Sigmund Freud, humans have a life instinct - which he named 'Eros' - and a death drive, which is commonly called (though not by Freud himself) 'Thanatos'. This postulated death drive allegedly compels humans to engage in self-destructive acts. I used the title, a tad melodramatically I'll grant you, to compare and contrast my daily habit of training and then undoing my good work in the pub. Better people than you enjoy these classical references. Did you think I meant country matters?
Prodnose (looking like a fool): Uh no. I mean yes. I see.
Welsh Born (protesting too much): I suppose I could have used Apollo and Dionysus in the sense that Nietzsche uses the terms Apollonian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tradgedy: Apollo, as the sun-god, represents light, clarity, and bench presses, whereas Dionysus, as the wine-god, represents drunkenness and ecstasy.
Prodnose et al: ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Welsh Born (astride hobby horse): The Dionysian, which corresponds roughly to Schopenhauer's conception of Will, is directly opposed to the Apollonian, which corresponds to Schopenhauer's principium individuationis ...........................

Dinner for One

I wish you a Happy New Year with an odd story courtesy of Dr Rob

Every New Year's Eve, half of all Germans plunk down in front of their televisions to watch a 1963 English comedy sketch called Dinner for One. Walk into any bar in Bavaria and shout the film's refrain: "The same procedure as last year, madam?" The whole crowd will shout back in automatic, if stilted, English: "The same procedure as every year, James." Even though Dinner for One is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most frequently repeated TV program ever, it has never been aired in the United Kingdom or the United States, and most of the English-speaking world is ignorant of its existence. When Der Spiegel probed the mystery last New Year's, it found that the BBC had not only never contemplated broadcasting this veddy British nugget in the United Kingdom, the BBC's spokesperson had never even heard of it.

You are not laffink?? Ve haff vays of making you laff!!

Mea Culpa

I'm off to Wales today for some book talk, but I am ashamed to say that - although I have polished off the other three nominations - I haven't reread 'Crime and Punishment' even though I am the one who recommended it. I remember it reasonably well even though I first read it years ago, so a little internet revision and a flick through the paperback will have to take the strain.

On the importance of reading - now that I am feeling remorseful for ducking Dostoevsky - I was very struck by this review of 'Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point' last week.

While freshmen down in Manhattan at Columbia and NYU think about jobs and paychecks they'll secure after graduation, and hook-ups they make before it, cadets have a rigorous regimented existence in class and out, and they know they will assume command of 30 men and women when it's over, probably in a hot zone.
The prospect throws them into hard questions of life and death, duty and sacrifice, courage and leadership, and they probe great works to figure them out.

Another stereotype bites the dust.

Amundsen and Scott

The Guardian

Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic's most remote research facility after an incident described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up".
The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent.

I finally finished "The Last Place on Earth" Roland Huntford's book on Scott and Amundsen and the race for the South Pole over Christmas. It's not like me to dawdle over a read for three months, but the volume became my kit bag book, as its episodic construction suited it for piecemeal reading while the NNB had a Muay Thai lesson, or I whiled away half an hour on the recline exercise bike.

Oddly enough a chance encounter with Top Gear's Polar Special on a Freeview channel earlier this week remnded me what a brutal business travel on the ice must have been all those years ago. Richard Hammond lost the ability to count from one to ten and was bursting into tears after a matter of days on the dog sled.

N95 Podcast Client

I have found a podcast client produced by Nokia and installed it on my N95.

I tried it out with In Our Time yesterday, and it worked a treat downloading audio via the office Wi-Fi connection.

You can connect bog standard headphones to the N95.

I'm definitely going to start using this to keep me entertained when I'm out pounding the road as the Childline Challenge for 2008 looms.

Peace Oil

I got a bottle of Peace Oil for Christmas. It is produced in Israel by Jews, Arabs, Druze and Bedouin working together.

That seems very laudable, and - by the wonder of the memory palace that is a relgular blog - it has sent me back thirty months in my imagination to The Trycicle Theatre and The Arab-Israeli Cookbook.

Less laudably; progress in the Middle East over the last two and a half years: none.

Pyelem G Vudhaus

Encouraging news from Russia in The Telegraph today

An expression of dreamy euphoria crossed the face of Sir Watkyn Bassett, collector of antique silver and nemesis of the hapless Bertie Wooster.

On the stage of Moscow's Cleopatra restaurant, a bearded Honky Tonk band was playing Irving Berlin. Nearby a group of girls in their evening finery debated which of Bertie's aunts was the most detestable.

The décor may have been decidedly New Russian and the food served by the waiters khachapuri - a sort of Georgian pizza - rather than Dover Sole. But for Sir Watkyn, alias Mikhail Kuzmenko, it was as though the restaurant had been transformed into the dining hall of Blandings Castle or the Drones Club.

Outlawed by Stalin in 1929, P G Wodehouse - or Pyelem G Vudhaus as he is known - has undergone a remarkable revival since the ban on his books was lifted in 1990.

As president and founder of the Russian Wodehouse Society he has attracted over 3,000 members, some from as far away as Cheliabinsk and Omsk, thousands of miles to the east. His monthly Wodehouse dinners at the Cleopatra and elsewhere are always sold out.

In a week when I have been gifted a copy of Michael Frayn's long out of print 1963 "Best of Beachcomber", is there a hint of a revival of classic British humourists in the air? Civilisation can only benefit. For the avoidance of doubt, be advised that I unhesitatingly include Vivian Stanshall, the Ginger Geezer, in that august company.

A Christmas Carol

Just like last year, and the year before I am marking Christmas on the blog with a story. This season's offering is perhaps the most famous, and a hat tip goes to my brother for getting me to read it.

STAVE ONE.

MARLEY’S GHOST.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.
Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

Read the whole thing here.

NORAD Tracks Santa

http://www.noradsanta.org/ is a big hit with my wired niece and nephews.

Well I never

Buckingham Palace has launched http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel with great fanfare.

Afghanistan

Maybe work like this is what the Ministry of Defence was trying to supress with the shenanigans I railed against.

I think you should read it.

Light to Variable

I'm off to Wales so blogging will be sparse for a few days though I may fill in the blanks later.

Happy Christmas.

D'yer Mak'er

An astounding tale of Céline Dion’s global semantic flexibility:

If you hear Céline in Jamaica, run: Her music, blasted at high volume, has become sonic wallpaper in bad neighborhoods, according to music critic Garnette Codogan: “It became a cue to me to walk ... faster if I was ever in a
neighborhood I didn’t know and heard Céline Dion.”

Well I never. Then again, at least the rude boys haven't adopted the resurrected Zep's:

Oh oh oh oh oh oh
You don't have to go oh oh oh oh oh
You don't have to go oh oh oh oh oh
Baby please don't go.

Ay ay ay ay ay ay
All those tears I cry ay ay ay ay ay
........... etc.

I run whenever I hear that.