Cognitive dissonance

The Profit Burglar and I needed to debrief after yesterday's user group meeting, so - as it was an evening I was looking after the New Ninja Bomber - we retired to my place rather than the pub.

After we'd finished our work related chat, and after my six year old had dispatched his homework and been fed and watered, Ben and Paul started up Marvel Unlimited Alliance on the XBOX 360 in cooperative mode and fought their way together through all of the first level. Even though Paul - as Thor - fell in their climactic battle with Fing Fang Foon, Ben - as Wolverine - managed to defeat the dragon alone and fight his way through to a Shield Access Point where he could save game's current status and resurrect his brother in arms.

Thinking of the fun they had for half an hour or so leads me to conclude that - like much else - the conventional wisdom that "video game play is socially isolating", bears very little relation to reality.

Up, Up, and Away

No time to blog today as we are hosting the bi-annual Bumblebee User Group meeting.

Worth noting however that at the time of the equivalent meeting last year, Bumblebee Auctions month running average rank of Bumblebee Auctions was 246,829 accoring to Alexa, and today it is 140,516, so we are still going in the right direction.

Cracking the top 150,000 sites in the world is a real achievement I think. I wonder what rank that would give us in the UK?

To take the numbers for a walk, assume that a third of the most popular sites are in each of Asia, America and Europe, and assume again that that perhaps a quarter of the most popular European sites are in the UK, that would put us in the top 12,500 in the domestically.

Supporting the Police

A major step towards power sharing in Northern Ireland was taken last night after Sinn Fein ended 86 years of opposition to policing in the province.
A decade after the ceasefire that heralded the end of the 30-year violent campaign that saw the IRA carry out 1,800 murders, its political wing voted to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Very well, here is the police appeal for information on the murder of Robert McCartney. Think they'll get any more in the new era? Me neither.

It'll be the second anniversary of the murder tomorrow. See icons passim.

Among The Righteous

United Nations 26 January 2007:

The General Assembly today adopted by consensus a resolution condemning, without reservation, any denial of the Holocaust, with the United States, among the text’s 103 sponsors, stressing that to deny the events of the Holocaust -- one of the most tragic moral catastrophes in history -- “was tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms”.

One year on from writing about it last time, I still can't understand why holocaust denial should be treated as a heresy that is intrinsically more wicked than any other. I'd almost like to agree, but somehow I can't. How can denying the events of the Holocaust be "tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms”? I just can't draw the dots.

There's better rhetoric available:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Then there are newly discovered stories with morals for today as much as for the 1940s, from Robert Satloff's Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, which give us Arab heroes like Si Ali Sakkat, a former mayor of Tunis, Tunisia, who sheltered 60 Jewish workers when they showed up at his farm, and Si Kaddour Benghabrit, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, who gave 100 Jews counterfeit Muslim identity papers.

Speaking as an adopted gay Catholic . . .

"Speaking as an adopted gay Catholic ..." an interesting and perhaps even wise piece from today's Telegraph, with probably the best headline since "Sex change Bishop in Mercy Dash to Palace".

One pedantic canard; the Church doesn't say that homosexuals are "intrinsically disordered", it says that homosexual inclinations are "objectively disordered", thus:

This orientation of one's sexual attraction is judged "objectively disordered" because it inclines people in ways contrary to the masculine/feminine complementarity which the Catholic tradition takes to be normative, and which society normally presumes, so the Catechism suggests that it "constitutes for most of them a trial." Yet the inclination itself cannot be sinful, even though objectively it may be said to be disordered, since it is "deep-seated" rather than freely chosen, with its sources "unexplained," so its being "objectively" part of us can hardly be our responsibility.

I just pass it on. I've banged this drum before and the chance of any subtle distinction getting airtime in the media scrum is less than zero.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I find that I'm conflicted on the issue of diet and health. I had pizza Tuesday, a burger Wednesday. I fully intend to have a post pub kebab tonight. What's the problem with meat, salad and pitta bread?

Sorry. I cannot bear this any more. This must be complete nonsense. This is ridiculous. The hearing has already lasted an hour and ten minutes. You have twenty more minutes. You have got to do better than this — three permanent
secretaries. You are talking drivel.

While relishing a chairman of the Public Accounts Committee with the panache to berate senior officials in the style above in a public session, I'm still bewildered by the Committee's publication of 'Tackling Child Obesity—First Steps'.

I drop off or collect a child at primary school five days a week, and I've never noticed kids looking fat or slothful at all. In fact I find myself dreaming of a sheep dog or a tranquilizer gun whenever I have to extract my running, jumping, climbing loon from the park to take him home.

I've a lingering suspicion that all the hammering of junk food in the media is just another example of the self selected metropolitan elite's snobbish disdain for the habits of normal folk. The exhibition of the estuary-vowelled Jamie Oliver in this context as if he is some sort of house trained pet also gets up my nose.

And yet ..... and yet .....

I'm getting and ignoring nutrition advice from every direction with my triathlon training. Maybe it is time to start thinking and learning about it more systematically.

Kiwiburger

A New Zealander friend with whom I was discussing "eat your way around the world in London" pointed me to the Gourmet Burger Kitchen.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen was developed by three New Zealanders who craved the way food tasted back home

According to my misty eyed, nostalgic informant the unlikely sounding kiwiburger (beef, beetroot, egg, pineapple, cheese, salad & relish) is the very essence of New Zealand in a sour dough sesame seed bun.

Noting with approval that Peter Gordon, whose Cook: At Home with Peter Gordon of the Sugar Clubhas done sterling service in my kitchen for years, had consulted on the menu we presented ourselves at the Wimbledon branch last night.

It was great fun, though now I've done my duty I will probably steer away from the beetroot, fried egg, pineapple combo in future.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

I was saddened to hear that Ryszard Kapuscinski has died. What a unique and intriguing voice and career he had.

Here's the oeuvre.

I particularly remember 'The Emperor' and 'Shah of Shahs' about the respective downfalls of Haile Selassie and the Shah of Iran; books perched between hard nosed war reporting and magic realism that could also be read as allegories of communist Eastern Europe.

Volumes nostalgically redolent to me of late seventies and early eighties book shop haunting; of Granta and oversize Picador paperbacks in their own spinning display racks.

Pizza

The New Ninja Bomber having conceived a taste for pizza, I've been thinking about knocking one up from scratch with him just to demonstrate that it is a practical proposition.

We've made cookies and cakes before, so the dough shouldn't be too much of challenge.

Sauce likewise straightforward: fry some onions and garlic in olive oil, then drop in tomatoes and oregano and leave to its own devices.

Considering that all we do then is leave the dough to prove, then roll it out and cover it with the sauce, a little cheese, and some tuna and sweetcorn, I can't help wonder why pizza is always demonised as junk food.

Seems perfectly healthy fuel for a growing hooligan to me.

The Midterms

I watched episode 3 of series 2 of the West Wing last night. When Bartlet is making fund raising calls from the residence there's a rugby game playing on his TV. What is with the US Presidents and the game? No one else in the States seems to give a fig for it.

Something that consistently makes me laugh in the show is the way that the characters throw dialogue at one another as they march determinedly from one office to another.

I pity the poor camera operator scuttling along in reverse. It makes me think of a quote attributed to Ginger Rogers, "I did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels".

Every Day I Have The Grues

According to The Economist:

LANGUAGES divide the spectrum up in different ways. Welsh speakers use “gwyrdd” (pronounced “goo-irrrth”) as a general word for green. Yet “grass” literally translates as “blue straw”. That is because the Welsh word for blue (“glas”) can accommodate all shades of green. English-speaking anthropologists affectionately squish “green” and “blue” together to call Welsh an example of a “grue” language. A few of them think grue languages are spoken by societies that live up mountains or near the equator because ultraviolet radiation, which is stronger in such places, causes a progressive yellowing of the lens. This, the theory goes, makes the eye less sensitive to short wavelengths (those that correspond to the green and blue parts of the spectrum). Unfortunately, though the Welsh do live in a hilly country, it is hardly mountainous enough—let alone sunny enough—to qualify.

Racy

Chris has posted a charming story about his little boy taking his Shark Boy and Lava Girl DVD to a restaurant, and having it played by the staff.

I remember thinking when I saw it with the New Ninja Bomber, that it was amazing how the film inhabited a child's imaginary world and that it must have been an extraordinary feat of empathy to pull it off.

I've since discovered that part of the explanation is that the inspiration for the movie was a tale that the director Robert Rodriguez's son Racer, then 7, made up about a boy who grew gills and a fin and became half-shark, and a girl who incorporated fiery volcanic elements. Robert encouraged his son to keep working on it, and there is a "story by Racer Max Rodriguez" credit on the finished film.

Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" movies are great entertainment for children as well and also have the added advantage that Dads can watch them appreciating Carla Gugino as the Spy Kids mum but remembering her in Sin City. You can do this with her supporting role in Night at the Museum as well.

Cosmic

The physicist Steven Weinberg - a Nobel Laureate - reviewing Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion", finds it "disturbing that Thomas Nagel in the New Republic dismisses Dawkins as an “amateur philosopher”, while Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books sneers at Dawkins for his lack of theological training."

But also while cantering - it seems to me - through Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God, he says of the "cosmological proof", that "it does have a certain appeal to the physicist. In essence, it argues that everything has a cause, and since this chain of causality cannot go on forever, it must terminate in a first cause, which we call God."

It is important to remember though that Aquinas' coinage of the Prime Mover argument from motion precedes Newton's formulation of the conservation of momentum. Today the argument suggests a God that set the universe in motion by giving it a huge kick up the arse a long time ago, but that is not really what Aquinas suggested. Following Aristotle he would say that motion continues so long as there is only an applied motion to an object and removing the motion stops the object, so his first "proof" is really more along the lines that God is what keeps the universe going rather than some sort of divine pool shark with a sledgehammer break.

I think it is an important distinction. You may disagree, but at least I've got it off my chest. For your homework review New Order's 1990 England football anthem in the light of the above:

Love's got the world in motion
And I know what we can do
Love's got the world in motion
And I can't believe it's true

Gonna Fly Now

I stood in line for Rocky Balboa last night. I'd been looking forward to it since last July, but the real reason I needed to see the film as soon as it opened in the UK was that my brother has bought a boxed set of the first five Rocky movies as a motivational tool to augment his triathlon training and I needed to get one up on him.

It is a good movie. Burt Young as Paulie is as brilliant as ever, and the script cleverly resonates with and updates the original film, but what I can really use at the moment is inspiration like:

Let me tell you something you already know.
The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.
It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.
But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.
How much you can take, and keep moving forward.
That's how winning is done.

That is going to be worth a few more seconds and yards when my legs feel like lead, my lungs are fit to bust, and somebody has sandpapered my throat.

Seuua

ARTtes 4 Kids is organising an exhibition of students' work to celebrate its first full year of operation, so we have borrowed the New Ninja Bomber's tiger painting back from the Jackapong camp to display in it. The show will open on the evening of Saturday 27 January.

Mixed martial arts and fine arts.

Vermiculture

I knocked up some coq au vin with mustard mashed potatoes for dinner last night, and as the pile of potato peelings and onion skins etc. grew, and as I pushed it into the bin, I remembered that Dave Wooding used to feed the family's kitchen waste into a wormery that converted it into compost and plant feed.

I've dug up some details of a baby one on the internet this morning. It is too late to get it for this weekend, but I'll order one in time for the first weekend in Feb as it will be fun - and educashional - to set it up with the New Ninja Bomber. Unless I miss my guess just the name of the red tiger worms that power it will be enough to pique a six year old boy's interest.

The Yellow Stuff

Just in from Scientific American:

.......the biologically active components of turmeric--curcumin and related compounds called curcuminoids--as having antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal properties, with potential activity against cancer, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic maladies.

More and more, broccoli and tomato curry seems to be the way forward. Can't argue with that.

The Green Stuff

The Times:

Eating tomatoes and broccoli in the same meal could help men to fight prostate cancer.

A study suggests that when they are both present in a regular diet, the two foods — known for their cancer-fighting qualities — help to reduce tumours more effectively than when they are eaten separately.

I prescribe broccoli and tomato pasta and curry.

I can't help but think of the first President Bush's bombastic assertion:

“I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.”

What a strange thing the will to power is.

This Thing of Darkness

I'm working my way through This Thing of Darkness at a leisurely chapter or so a day, and found out yesterday that Harry Thompson, the author was struck down with cancer around the time it was published.

Here's a profile and interview written by a friend when he was sick but vowing to fight on, and here's an obituary published when he lost the fight.

He was just a little older than us, but near as dammit a contemporary of el grupo; a sobering thought.

Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

A Modest Proposal

Telegraph:

A fresh row over criminal databases broke out last night with the revelation that immigration officials frequently cannot check on the criminal past of European Union citizens entering Britain.

So obviously, given the logic that is applied to every other public policy issue, we should tackle this problem by building a central database to hold criminal records for the entire EU.

"It costs money because it saves money."

Irony is a form of speech in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the words used. Irony involves the perception that things are not what they are said to be or what they seem. Dramatic irony lies in the audience's deeper perceptions of a coming fate, which contrast with a character's lack of knowledge about said fate. A common metaphor for using irony is to "have your tongue in cheek".