World

NZ TV on the global financial crisis

2008-10-06T22:18:00.002+13:00

My economist friend Penny Wise weighs in again:

Where would we be without the various Sky News channels from overseas and the ability via the internet to read decent newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times to get some informed perspective on the financial crisis gripping world markets? Or, even better than those, the access we have to a huge range of websites specialising in finance or blogs by first-class economists and finance practitioners, e.g. Marginal Revolution.
But if you don’t look at those, what do you get from local television? Oh dear. Lindsay Perigo famously described TV news as brain-dead. Over at TV3 the body seems to be decomposing.
Let’s just consider the performance of John Campbell and Mark Sainsbury last Tuesday night after the emergency package failed to get passed in the US Congress, and the US stockmarket fell 7%, with shockwaves sweeping around world markets. The threat of financial collapse, leading to a massive global economic contraction, was and is very real.
On TV1 news they used a clip from the film Wall Street with that great line by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko: “Geed is good.” Did they think the movie was a documentary?
When the news dragged itself to a close, at least in Close Up Sainsbury used two well-informed locals to comment on developments, one of them being Gareth Morgan who is always good for a strong opinion and who does know what he is talking about. But why is it not possible to speak with some informed people close to the action in the US – and that does not mean the regular chats with the local journalist based in New York. This is, after all, a huge story.
So far, so bad.
How about TV3? What did we get from John Campbell at 7pm? His contribution was a few minutes prancing around in front of his new pet screen, featuring a very big number, $9,889,199,531,449.08, even down to the absurdity of the last $0.08. Total US public debt. So what? Where was the context, the international comparison, the time series chart, the meaning? Nothing, just Campbell, like an old spinster in a rocking chair, sipping tea and murmuring, “Ooh, isn’t that terrible.”
After that introduction the programme went on to feature lively and stimulating segments on a problem with airline tickets, the inconvenience of bikes on roads (I just give them a nudge with my SUV if they get in the way), and a riveting exploration on how some retired people keep themselves active.
Campbell promised to follow this up the next evening with an interview with the whistleblower from the Enron scandal. Good grief, it is not the same issue – that was primarily about corporate fraud and the exploitation of poorly thought-out electricity industry regulation. The next night we did indeed see the courageous woman who blew the whistle on the fraudsters at Enron, and is now a journalist. A good woman. But for god’s sake she is no expert on these issues, and had nothing interesting to say at all.
Is it beyond the wit of any producer to find somebody knowledgeable on these issues? Start with academic monetary economists or finance practitioners, preferably both in the same person, and work down.

The global financial crisis

2008-10-02T22:23:00.014+13:00

I asked my economist friend Penny Wise to explain just what the hell is happening out there. She writes:

I have been ordered to explain this. But why should I do all the work for nothing? Fortunately, smarter and harder working people than you or I have already done this, so I will instead point those interested to useful sources of instruction, rather like a traffic officer at an intersection, wearing the crisp white gloves of seriousness and pointing authoritatively at the links.

1. Does this crisis represent a failure of free markets, of untrammelled deregulation, and the consequence of unrelenting greed?
Oh please.

2. But surely it is greed that motivates Wall St, and is behind all these troubles?
Lest we forget, greed starts early – see these greedy little fuckers. I doubt you are much different. What do you want, that you haven’t actually earned yourself, from Helen and John this election?

3. Did nobody see this coming?
Yes, of course, even decent investigative journalists. Read the opening and closing paragraphs of this from eight years ago. At the heart of this whole sub-prime mortgage mess was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The story is in hundreds of places, such as here.
This opened up a vast new business in risky loans, which greedy and opportunistic, or enterprising (take your pick), folks leapt into with enthusiasm. These bundled up mortgages became tradeable securities themselves, and holders naturally wanted to shed some of the risk of holding them. Thus insurance companies like AIG got involved and, risk being a difficult thing to assess, they clearly got that terribly wrong. So too did the credit rating agencies that assessed the risk of these financial instruments and financial institutions. Mistakes galore: some were simply mistakes, some were no doubt errors inspired by an inclination to lean in the most profitable direction.

Read on...

4. But don’t these central banking bailouts show that capitalist banking doesn’t work?
No, all financial firms are vulnerable to panics. That is what we have central banks for. Read Willem Buiter: and this earlier post of his as well.
The point about this crisis is that as problems have mounted, and inevitable mistakes have been made by all parties involved, a sense of urgency turns quickly to a sense of panic. We see the stock market on the news, but the real problems are in credit markets, which are hugely larger and more important than the stock market. When Lehman was allowed to fall into bankruptcy, a vast amount of cash got locked in. From that moment, all investment banks became suspect. Hedge funds wanted their cash out, just in case. In this environment, even a very well-run bank can fail. Thus even an investment bank like Goldman Sachs, which appeared to have avoided the sub-prime exposures, got caught and had to be recapitalised quickly to survive – enter Warren Buffett, who may well have grabbed himself another bargain.
With credit markets seizing up, intervention by central banks became essential. That is happening around the globe. But each step up in the intensity of the crisis lowers the value of the assets on financial institution balance sheets – for example, is a package of sub-prime mortgages on Bank A’s balance sheet worth 50c in the dollar, or 20c? As that estimate falls, so does the viability of that bank, and thus its need for recapitalisation. That death spiral is a contagion of panic that the Fed, and now the US government, has to stop. That is why an intervention of some sort must happen. The devil is in the details, but that needn’t concern us – it will be messy and political, and the deficiencies of whatever gets done will be debated for decades.

5. If it doesn’t get done?
It will, because the alternative is genuinely terrible. Let's visit Willem Buiter again.

6. OK, but isn’t the bailout just going to renew all the moral hazard issues associated with the so-called “Greenspan put”?
Ah yes, Greenspan. US monetary policy has been much criticised, and a summary of that argument is here. To be fair to central bankers, and Greenspan, different courses of action would all have led to different sets of problems. Their decisions are always trade-offs made under great uncertainty. There will always be something to moan about with the benefit of hindsight.
The problem with all this is moral hazard, where the message of a rescue package can be that risky activities get rewarded whatever happens. The Fed was clearly concerned about that a few months ago. At this point, however, with Wall Street utterly transformed, that is much less of a concern. Probably unwittingly, the Fed has created way more pain than intended. Shareholders in genuinely insolvent businesses need to get slaughtered, management fired and so forth, all fairly obviously.

7. So should we feel smug that the New Zealand banking system seems very safe by comparison?
Ahem – recall all those finance companies that have gone bust in the past few years, and all the savings that went with them. If the recession here continues, there will be plenty more mortgagee sales as well.
Our own recent experiment with very low interest rates, and high tax rates, helped propel all those naive folks into putting their life savings into finance company debentures to try and get a positive return (after tax and inflation), or into property as that seemed the hot asset. The arithmetic? By late 2003 you could get about 5% on term deposits at the local bank, rising to about 6% through 2004. Inflation was heading up to reach 3% into 2005. House prices were rising at annual rate of 10-20+%. So what does that financially unsophisticated person, not far off retirement, do? What they were facing was a 5% return at the bank, less tax of 33% to 39%, thus an after-tax return of 3.1 to 3.4%. But with inflation in the process of rising to 3% (and they would have felt that it was higher still given the way house prices were flying) their expected real, after-tax return (i.e. subtract 3% for inflation) would have been a mere 0.1 to 0.4%. In short, you really weren’t getting ahead at all by putting money in the bank – it seemed a dumb move. Thus starts the mad and desperate search for higher yields – go directly to the finance company and, as it turned out, without passing GO. Or, leverage up and buy some investment property. Finally we get to today in NZ, with many regular folk wiped out financially, and many who are about to be.

The NZ Reserve Bank and Dr Cullen may have to take part in the walk of shame as well.

8. This is all terribly serious, is there nothing to laugh at here?
Hell, yes. Read this risible attempt from somebody who regularly splashes around in the shallows of economics and finance, but still drowns each time. In a particularly weak attempt to use the financial crisis for shallow political point scoring, we see Finlay McDonald parroting one of the more fatuous lines we have heard from Dr Cullen, namely that John Key as an ex-Merrill Lynch manager is in some way associated with this crisis. McDonald ladles it on further by referencing the Enron scandal and the US Savings & Loan crisis. The Kiwiblog response to this childishness was best.
McDonald cannot seem to refer to something he disapproves of without tossing in a useless descriptor. We don’t have “complex financial instruments”; they must be “insanely complex financial instruments” Well, no, they are just complex – you need a bit of maths to understand them, but not much. He refers to the entertaining book Barbarians at the Gate, but has obviously not caught up with the fact that the authors managed to write the book and get the moral completely wrong – the problem with RJR Nabisco was that the real barbarians (the existing woeful management, wasting the massive cashflow of that company) were inside the gates. He refers to another colourful book, Liars Poker, but the author, Michael Lewis, was no insider, just another guy on a giant trading floor where all sorts of personality types flourish... And so on, splashing around in the shallows, the concluding paragraph being the shallowest of them all.
And we mustn’t forget the political hacks, for example Matt McCarten.
It would be wasting everybody’s time to go through and point out that virtually every sentence is plain wrong, absurdly overstated, or utterly lacking in context or exploration of alternatives. Only the brain-dead could not do this for themselves. The problem with political hacks, from the right and the left, is that they see everything in party political terms. On the right we have all manner of strident commentaries, the strangest being those from the Republican right in the US which oppose any bailout/rescue because it undermines the principle of “so-called” free markets.

9. What does this mean for investors?
If you have your financial snout still deep in the trough, are heavily borrowed and invested in real estate or shares, then life is hellish. As they say on Wall Street: bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
Oh, and for god’s sake – especially all you folk about to retire – don’t put your life savings into just the one asset or institution. You know what grandma used to say about eggs and baskets.

10. In summary?
There is blame to go around for everybody. Of course we need better regulation, better monetary policy, less political meddling, better governance structures in corporate America and around the world. But just saying so does not equal a solution. These issues are difficult.
Less greedy and opportunistic people, from corporate captains down to unemployed house-buyers would help as well, but we shouldn’t base any policies on that prospect.
At the heart of this crisis is the vast stock of toxic mortgage debt that has unhinged the global financial system. The aggressive buying of sub-prime mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a key part of this story. But only a part.

Now, back to work.

Penny Wise is an economist who has spent many a dark and stormy night working in Australasian financial markets.

Well I never

2008-04-03T16:11:00.002+13:00

Heading of the month, from Stuff:

Rap music glamorises drug use, study says

Isolde's tale

2008-03-30T22:47:00.004+13:00

Alex Ross in the New Yorker on the current production of Tristan und Isolde at the Met:

He might make an arresting Peter Grimes; he already has the weathered, haunted look

I’ll bet, after this experience.

From the archives: Rioja — the big taster

2008-03-30T16:30:00.000+13:00

The drinkers
Mark Broatch is NZBC’s film reviewer and Director of the World Service.
Chris Bell writes about TV, whisky and music and is NZBC’s Director of Light Entertainment.

The drinks
a. Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Elciego (Álava) Reserva 2000: $46.95 — Accent on Wine, Auckland
From the label: “This Reserva quality wine comes from the oldest bodega in Rioja. Through adherence to time-honoured skills and original techniques, Marqués de Riscal wines retain a distinctive and appealing character, a style reflecting the best virtues of traditional Rioja. Aged in cask for at least two years, followed by a further year in bottle, Riscal Rioja has a ripe, fruity bouquet and a lingering oaky flavour.”
b. Marqués de Murrieta Ygay Reserva 1999: $42.95 — Glengarry Ponsonby
From the label: “85% Tempranillo, 8% Mazuelo, 7% Garnacha”
c. Remelluri Reserva 2000: $39.95 — The Wine Vault, Auckland
The label includes a map, to help you find your way back home, if you happen to have drunk too much of it at the bodega. However, it’s very confusing if, like us, you live in New Zealand. There’s no information about the grape blend on the bottle.

a. Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Elciego (Álava) Reserva 2000: $46.95 —Accent on Wine, Auckland
MB: “Can you smell anything?”
CB: “Very perky. It reminds me of that one we had in Vivace.”
MB: “All the tannins are settled, toned-down, muted, aged the fuck out of. Does it have the mix on the bottle...? No, it doesn’t say. Usually they’re a mix of Tempranillo grapes, sometimes Shiraz and sometimes they put a bit of Garnacha in them. I dunno… this is going to be difficult.”
CB: “In the tasting notes, he’s talking about the white version of this.”
MB: “Oh… I don’t know, it’s got plenty of front and then it sort of fades away, to my taste.”
CB: “It doesn’t taste as good as it smells. Or as much as it smells.”
MB: “No. Well, different.”
CB: “It’s really perky, I think.”
MB: “What’s that taste at the back? I thought it was shoe polish, but…”
CB: “No, I’m not getting shoe polish.”
MB: “No? There’s something right at the end… There’s something slightly sour about it.”
CB: “Mmm. Yeah, just before it finishes, it’s a bit citrusy.”
MB: “Citrusy.”
CB: “Yeah. Just a tiny bit.”
MB: “Well, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
CB: “That one smells really good, but I’m kind of underwhelmed by it.”
MB: “It’s hard to know… sometimes it’s not until I get to the second or third glass that I can tell. Shall we try the Marqués de Murrieta?”
CB: “Mmm.”

b. Marqués de Murrieta Ygay Reserva 1999: $42.95 — Glengarry Ponsonby
MB: “This is the one that he says, for the price — $40 to $45 — is one of the best value wines in the shop. This is the 1999 Marqués de Murrieta Ygay. Is that a slightly sweeter bouquet…?”
CB: “I’d have said the opposite.”
MB: “Would you? Sourer? Gee. I wouldn’t have a clue.”
CB: “That smells like boot polish to me.”
MB: [groans] “Let’s just make it all up! OK, I’m going to do this…”
CB: “I’m going in… That’s much bigger. It’s got that kind of ruby thing to it, as well, like a sherry… that sort of tawny edge to it.”
MB: “Oh yeah. I didn’t really look at that with the Riscal.”
CB: “No. This is really scientific.”
MB: “Um. Yeah, muted tannins again. Nothing ugly coming through, is there? They’re all about 13%, which, according to the guy in the wine shop is perfect, that’s exactly what they should be. They shouldn’t be above 14%, or you’d have the alcohol pushing through.”
CB: “Yeah… I reckon this is earthier than the Riscal.”
MB: “Yup. I’d agree with that. Yeah, definitely. And it’s kind of got a bigger middle to it, to my mind… maybe not.”
CB: “The Riscal was all top.”
MB: “Yeah, all top, front, whatever you call it.”
CB: “I was sort of making a musical analogy, so with the next one I could go, ‘It’s got lots of bottom-end.’”
MB: “That’s right. Reverb. It’s a nice, balanced wine. Do you like that one? It’s kind of…”
CB: “I like the Murrieta more.”
MB: “That one’s kind of quite sour at the end, as well. It sort of makes my throat go, ‘mmmerrm’.”
CB: “The Murrieta does?”
MB: “Yeah. Is it sour to you? It does taste quite sour. I think it’s all that… This one is… it says on this one, ‘85% Tempranillo, 8% Mazuelo, 7% Garnacha’. Barrel-aged for 22 months. Bottled back when I was a child: June 2002. It says 18° serving temperature. That’s probably sitting inside a hut. Inside a…”
CB: [slurring slightly] “I like this one much more.”
MB: [gulping] “Yup.”
CB: “It’s just got more character, somehow.”
MB: “Mmm.”
CB: “I think all the character in the Riscal was in the nose. And that might just be a first impression thing.”

c. Remelluri Reserva 2000: $39.95 — The Wine Vault, Auckland
MB: [mouthful of roasted almonds] “Mmm. OK… This is the Rrrrremellurrrrri… Rrremelllllurrrrri [several bogus attempts at pronunciation] Reserva 2000 Rrrrriocccchhha.”
CB: “Your Spanish is getting better.”
MB: “The bottle’s got a nice little map on the back… Doesn’t say anything… something about the old something of the monastery of Toloño. Doesn’t say anything about what’s in it. All right. Rock and roll… Mmm… This is definitely less flowery and perky, isn’t it?”
CB: “Well, my instant impression was that it was really flowery…”
MB: “Well, it’s definitely got more aroma.”
CB: “It’s got a kind of a grassy quality, like mown grass or something. Or maybe not… maybe more like…”
MB: “It smells like a dirty alleyway to me. If I was walking up a street in Spain, I’d say, ‘Should we take this shortcut?’ That’s what it smells like.”
CB: “Actually, now you mention it, I know what you mean [takes another swig]. There’s something rural about it. When I said ‘mown grass’, maybe I meant, like, shit. Like, manure.”
MB: “And it actually tastes the same. No, it actually tastes like it smells, which is the first one — well, to my mind.”
CB: “Yeah, the other two definitely didn’t taste like they smelled.”
MB: “Yeah, definitely agricultural, isn’t it. I don’t know what that means, but… we might be able to find something on the internet about what it’s got in it.”
CB: “Yeah, I’ll look the Remelluri up because it’s got a really weird name.”
MB: [slurring] Rrreemellurrrrri. “It kind of seems less sophisticated to me. To you?”
CB: [gulping down more] “Yeah.”
MB: “Like, it’s not unpleasant or anything.”
CB: “Ah! They’ve got a website, but it’s all in Spanish.”
MB: [slurring heavily] “A very inoffensive wine, that. But it doesn’t seem to have as much character, to my mind.”
CB: “It’s a bit crude, isn’t it.”
MB: “It’s sort of… yeah. Unsophisticated. It must be the country cousin of these.”
CB: [reading from a website blurb] “‘Known not for its aristocratic roots…’ Definitely not. ‘Neither for its successful style of blending modern technology with the traditional extended period in oak, Remelluri has become over the years a cult wine. Its production is tiny…’
MB: “Oh!”
CB: “‘It’s unusual for being a single estate bodega…’ blah, blah, blah…”
MB: “It’s pretty sort of contained as a wine. I think it’s really well done, but... They’ve got all sorts of weird and wonderful varietals over there.”
CB: “It says, ‘Tempranillo, Graciano and Garnacha’. What year are we drinking?”
MB: “2000. These nuts are very moreish, aren’t they? Well, should we try something new? Maybe we’ll get a different impression. Which one did we prefer, do you think?”
CB: “I definitely preferred the Murrieta.”
MB: “Yeah, I think so. Did you?”
CB: “Yeah, definitely. Although, I do tend to agree with you. When I’ve done whisky tastings, the first glass, the first sip, the first sniff was completely not the same as what I thought about it later on. Let’s go back to the Riscal. I want to see what I think of it now.”
MB: “OK. A proper glassful this time. That’s a lovely smell! That’s so comforting. There’s something kind of grandma about it…”
CB: “There is something comforting…”
MB: “Which is what attracted me to Rioja in the first place. There’s just something, like, solid and ‘home’ about it. It’s got a real core to it. It’s not all fucking fancy at the front and blah, blah…”
CB: “Rioja doesn’t feel like winter wine to me. You know, like Shiraz and stuff. Most red wine, I don’t really want to drink it in the summer. But I can imagine myself drinking this in the summer.”
MB: “Yeah, even though it’s got quite a lot of ‘oomph’ to it, definitely. I think because it’s a blend.”
CB: “It’s not as perfumed now as it was when we first opened it.”
MB: “No. But I imagine if you had a sweet tooth, Rioja would be a challenge for you… He says, necking it back like a child with cordial.”

[Back to the Riscal]
MB: “Are you enjoying that one?”
CB: “I’m still not bowled over by it.”
MB: “No.”
CB: “They obviously thought, ‘This wine tastes really average. We’ll have to flash it up with the bottle.’ Put three labels on it and some gold foil.”
MB: “Which one is this one?”
CB: “This is the one that looks like it’s going to be the best.”
MB: “Yeah. Although, you know, you get ropier Italian shit and you know it’s the roughest crap in the world.”
CB: “I mean, two words: Mateus Rosé. But I still think it’s got a bit of citrus in it.”
MB: “Could be, yeah. I’m not disagreeing.”
CB: “Not the thing you get down the back of your throat.”
MB: “On your tongue.”
CB: “Just in your mouth. The feel that you get from lemon juice. But it kind of lacks depth. And look, if you look at the colour of it, it’s nowhere near as tawny as the Murrieta.”
MB: [slurring] “Absolutely. It definitely lacks depth… I mean, it doesn’t lack depth, but there’s not a lot below the surface, is there?”
CB: “It’s like me.”
MB: “Deeply superficial.”
CB: “That can be the heading for this one.”
MB: “But I’m a real convert for the style. It’s just I wish they weren’t quite so expensive. Although having said that…”
CB: “Stop going on about the price.”
MB: “No, having said that, there was one I tried from the shop just over the road, and they do different varieties — I don’t know how they do it, presumably they age it longer — and one had a red label and one had some other colour, and it was just fantastic, and it was $17, which was quite OK. Rock ‘n’ roll.”
CB: “So was that Gran Reserva?”
MB: “What? No, no.”
CB: “It’d be nice to try a Gran Reserva, just to see.”
MB: “Yeeeeaaaah… I haven’t seen one.”
CB: “Maybe you can’t get them here.”
MB: “Maybe not. No, this was just a plain, bog-standard Rioja. But it was great. Really good.”

[Back to the Murrieta]
CB: “Ooh, that’s nice. That’s definitely the nicest.”
MB: “I think so. I definitely think so. But there’s almost nothing to the Murrieta, do you think? It goes down so smoothly.”
CB: “Maybe that’s the thing about them: they’re not really complex. They’re quite strong and heavy, but they’re not hard to drink.”
MB: “No. They’re not like big buggering Shirazes…”
CB: “No.”
MB: “That well, you know, really hammer you around. I mean, they’re great to drink but you know you’re drinking them. Whereas, I reckon you could drink this, and think, ‘Great wine’, and really have a nice experience.”
CB: “See, this… You know it’s got that tawny thing about it. It’s…”
MB: “It’s pitch black, isn’t it.”
CB: “It’s dark, and there’s something sort of chocolatey about it, like really good dark chocolate. I think. I might be completely wrong…”
MB: “No, no! Now that you say it. I’m one of those people who can’t identify things.”
CB: “I think I’ve got a reasonably good sense of smell, in that I can smell things when they’re there. But to actually relate it to stuff…”
MB: “No, I think chocolate is good.”
CB: “Maybe cocoa more than chocolate.”
MB: “Yup.”
CB: [groaning with dread] “I’m going to have to transcribe this tape.”
MB: “Well, there’s big gaps, aren’t there, between us wanking on about stuff. Well, I think we’re agreed: Murrieta.”
CB: “Yes. Although, I want to give the third one a second chance.”
MB: “Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I just think it was far enough behind that you could say… unless it kicks in really well on the second glass, Roberto’s your uncle. [Final word on the Murrieta] “Yeah, that’s a lovely wine, isn’t it. It really is so polished.”

[MB back to the Remelluri; CB annoyingly still on the Murrieta]
MB: “I’m coming round to it!”
CB: “Is this the third one?”
MB: “No, you haven’t got the third one.”
CB: “You have?”
MB: “Yeah. I like the colour.”
CB: “I bet it’s not as good as this one.”
MB: “No, but as I say, second glass, you know. I mean, look at that, it’s pretty good, isn’t it?! And my voice is going higher and higher in pitch! Ah, pissed already. It doesn’t take much. That’s the trouble, how many years of drinking? Twenty-five, maybe. I’m no better. It still takes me about a bottle… Yeah, there’s a kind of sourness to it, a top note, if you were thinking perfume or something. No, you’ve still got the Murrieta. Have you still got that one?”
CB: [maudlin, slurred, tired and emotional] “I think so, yeah.”
MB: “I don’t mean to hurry you. I don’t. I really don’t.”
CB: “I’ve got to catch up because it’s too annoying, trying to compare pears with apples.”
MB: “All right. Let’s rock ‘n’ roll. Are you coming round to it?”
CB: “Yeah. It’s definitely between the Murrieta and the Remelluri now, isn’t it?”
MB: “Oooh! that’s a big call. That’s a big call. That’s a big call. The Riscal is the most expensive one! Shall we compare?”

[Side by side comparison: Remelluri and Riscal]
CB: “What’s this one, the Remuera?”
MB: “The Remuera of wines is on the left. What shall we do…? Which one do you prefer in the nostrils? Yup, the Riscal is far more subtle.”
CB: “I think we should have been drinking them out of these sherry copitas all along, because they collect the smell better.”
MB: “The Remelluri is a real rock ‘n’ roll smell now!”
CB: “How dare you come back, you bastard!”
MB: “OK. I’m going to try the Riscal.”
CB: “I still think it’s got that chocolatey, cocoaey… or was that the other one? I can’t remember now.”
MB: “Mmm. Mmm. I think the Riscal is kind of heavier tasting to me, but honestly, the Remelluri has really pulled back. It’s made up some ground, hasn’t it. It seemed thin and pathetic and anorexic.”
CB: “It was crude, I thought.”
MB: “Yeah, like an anorexic farm girl.”
CB: “Or maybe even a fat farm girl…”
MB: “It’s still, I think, unavoidably agricultural.”
CB: [clearly just agreeing with everything now] “Yes, yes, I totally agree with that.”
MB: “But it’s pleasant. Like, you enjoy going to the country.”
CB: “Country matters.”
MB: [shouting] “‘I’m a country member…!’ I remember.”
CB: “Yes, definitely agricultural.”
MB: “Yes, the Riscal is far more refined than the Rrrrrrrremelllllllurrrrrrri. Less offensive. But it’s kind of less interesting as a result, isn’t it?”
CB: [stunned silence]
MB: “Mmm? Don’t you think?”
CB: “Yes, yes, it is. I agree with you. This was the one that was the best in that price range?”
MB: [belches loudly]
CB: “Yeah?”
MB: “Er… No, no. That was… that was… this is slightly cheaper, the Remelluri was about five dollars cheaper than the other two. But the Murrieta was, he said, the best value for $40 to $45 in the shop.”
CB: “Yeah, the Riscal is sort of inoffensive. I can imagine, like…”
MB: “It’s refined though, isn’t it?”
CB: “I can imagine rich, Spanish people drinking the Riscal with dinner. But I don’t think it’s as interesting as the other two.”
MB: “It’s a different kind of interesting from the Murrietta.”
CB: “A different kind of interesting… that’s another good heading. We might need to have lots of crossheads in this review.”
MB: “But… I mean… you know… I think there’s a world apart… myself. But we’ll probably try the Murrieta and go, ‘That’s fuckin’ shit. Eeeuuuuwwwwww!’”
CB: “No, I don’t think so. Not at this stage.”
MB: [semi-coherent] “Well, we’re trying it next. Hmm… Yeah, it’s definitely… yeah… there’s definitely more interest because it’s agricultural. But, you know, it’s got a lot… more… going on. But the Riscal is smart and cleverer and intelligent. It’s like a race between the rich boy and the young boy who wets his bed every night and he has to run home to take the sheets off the line. Do you remember that film?”
CB: “No.”
MB: “So what are we saying? What are we in favour of?”
CB: “Rioja. You drink wine for different reasons than you drink Scotch. But with whisky, the really good ones that I like are the most extreme, you know?”
MB: [mouth full of nuts] “Islay whiskies.”
CB: “Yeah. And the Remellura, to me, is the Islay whisky of the three. I still think the Murrieta is the best, but I kind of think this has got so much character, you forgive the fact that it smells like manure.”
MB: “I think that’s absolutely right. Isn’t that weird? Because the Riscal is the one we thought would fucking knock us over.”
CB: “Yeah.”
MB: “The one with the gold wire on it, third place. How sad!
CB: “I would say it was pretty close, though, between the three of them. As you say, the Riscal is really refined, and I suppose there would be circumstances where that would really work, where you’d want to drink that kind of Rioja.”
MB: “Oh yeah, you wouldn’t want to drink the Rrrrrrrremelllllllurrrrrrri, um, all the time.”
CB: “No.”
MB: “But if you were… yeah.”
CB: “Do the Spanish drink Rioja with dinner?”
MB: [whispering] “I don’t know, really. [On a roll, shouting unnecessarily] They drink a lot, but they drink it over a long period. Like, they’ll drink from ten in the morning until sort of midnight, but they’ll just have a glass here, a glass there, after work, before work… As far as I can tell anyway. They’ll have one in the morning, with their coffee. They’ll have one at lunch. Maybe a couple at lunch. Then they’ll have one after work, then they’ll go out for tapas late, have a sleep, and then their tapas. As far as I can tell…”
CB: “I’m not sure my system would survive that.”
MB: “Yeah, but they don’t drink all the time. Instead of bingeing…”
CB: “Not so much the drinking, but the way they eat, as well.”
MB: “Mmm.”
CB: “Maybe you’d get used to it.”
MB: “I don’t know about the eating late at night. But they do, all the time. Maybe that’s why they get fat when they get old. So are we going to do the Murrieta and then call it a day?”
CB: “Yeah.”
MB: “Now, I think that the Murrieta has the best label, too. Which is no inconsiderable thing. People buy a lot off the label.”
CB: “Although, it has lots of fonts.”
MB: “Yeah. The Riscal bottle is like a woman’s dress after a party: it’s starting to look a bit sad. The wire, you know.”
CB: “The wire’s starting to look a bit sad. And I noticed when you brought it in that the wire had cut through part of the label.”

[Final thoughts on the Murrieta]
MB: “I still think it stands up because it’s got complexity.”
CB: “Am I imagining it, or is the Murrieta actually the sweetest of the three?”
MB: “I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to say. There’s definitely a kind of… it’s got a sort of… there definitely is a like a… a kind of… like a preserved… not preserved… processed fruit thing about it. I’m thinking, like, guava or something.”
CB: “I’m getting guava… I’m getting… pissed.”
MB: [shouting] “I’m getting legless. Legolas!”

Our verdict: The ranking
1. Marqués de Murrieta Ygay Reserva 1999: $42.95 — Glengarry Ponsonby
2. Remelluri Reserva 2000: $39.95 — The Wine Vault, Auckland
3. Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Elciego (Álava) Reserva 2000: $46.95 —Accent on Wine, Auckland

Norton 360 live chat support

2007-04-21T21:38:00.000+12:00

The first time I logged in to Symantec Live Technical Support, I was number 2 in the queue. My support agent Kaleem was a fast typist, but didn’t have an instant fix for me:

[23:21] CB: Hi, since installing Norton 360 I’ve been unable to update my internet time settings. I’ve tried disabling the Norton Firewall but I get error messages when I try to synchronise with either of the available Microsoft Time Servers. Does Norton 360 disable this functionality?
[23:21] Kaleem: No Chris, the Norton will not disable the functionality. Before troubleshooting this issue, I need to gather more information about this problem from you. This will greatly assist me in finding a resolution to your problem.
[23:22] CB: No problem. Let me know what you need.
[23:22] Kaleem: Do you have any other Antivirus or Firewall or Spyware programs installed on your system?
[23:23] CB: I have Spybot Search and Destroy installed, but as far as I know, that only scans when the app is open. That’s all — Microsoft Firewall is disabled through the Norton settings.
[23:23] Kaleem: Okay. Please let me know if you can synchronize with the personal firewall disabled.
[23:24] CB: You mean the Norton Firewall? It worked before I installed 360, when I was running whatever the previous Norton internet protection was called.
[23:25] Kaleem: Okay. Please let me know if you had removed the previous Norton programs before installing the Norton 360 program.
[23:26] CB: Yes, Norton 360 removed them automatically.
[23:26] Kaleem: Okay. Please note that this issue can happen if there are remnants left on your computer of the previous Norton programs.
[23:27] CB: Right. Am I able to remove those remnants manually?
[23:28] Kaleem: In order to resolve this issue I suggest that you uninstall the Norton product using the Norton Removal Tool and then reinstall the Norton 360 program.

I did all of the above, which took well over an hour, but to no avail — the Date and Time Properties internet settings continued to return error messages from both available time servers. Next time I logged on to Symantec chat, I was 18th in the queue and it took 90 minutes to get to the front of it. This agent, Suraj, didn’t seem quite as confident and took a while longer to type in his replies, causing a few classic chat post overlaps:

Suraj: Could you please let me know the issue you are facing with Norton 360 program?
CB: I had a previous Symantec Support live chat session, followed all the advice provided in the chat by Kaleem, the support agent (which was to remove old and current Norton 360 software with the Norton Software Removal Tool and then to reinstall Norton 360) but still have the same problem: Even with the Norton and Microsoft XP Firewalls disabled I am unable to synchronise internet time. I have a permanent wi-fi internet connection. Both Microsoft time servers return errors. Any ideas?
Suraj: I am sorry, I was unable to understand. Could you please rephrase it for me?
CB: As I say, Norton 360 won’t allow me to synchronise the internet time (using the clock at bottom right of your screen). I didn’t have this problem with Norton Antivirus. It’s only started happening since I installed Norton 360.
Suraj: Okay. May I place on hold for 2-3 minutes while I research on this issue?
CB: Sure. No problem. I’ [accidentally hits enter key, mid-sentence…]
CB: I’m running XP Pro.
Suraj: Okay.
[Short pause while Suraj does some research…]
Suraj: After uninstalling the Norton program, were you able to synchronise the Internet time?
CB: No. But I reinstalled 360 again immediately after the uninstall.
Suraj: Okay. I suggest you to uninstall the Norton 360 program and then check whether you are able to synchronize the Internet time. Get back to us with the results. All Right?

This turned out to be unnecessary because, after a bit of Googling, I discovered I wasn’t the only person having difficulties synchronising my internet time. Connecting to a different internet time server as described in various group discussions, simply by pasting it into the Date and Time Properties/Internet Time/Server panel (which I hadn’t realised you could do manually) instantly solved the problem and Symantec was off the hook. It was just another of those infuriating internet coincidences. However, full marks to both of my support agents for persevering, and to Symantec for having the foresight to offer live chat as a support option. I’d use it in a heartbeat if I had further problems. It knocks Microsoft and Apple’s support into a cocked hat.

Five minutes with Paul di Filippo

2006-11-12T16:05:00.000+13:00

Short story writer, novelist and reviewer Paul di Filippo is the kind of writer other writers love to hate: as if his prodigious output weren’t enough, it’s said he managed to write five of his novels and many of his short stories on a Commodore 128 computer.

He coined the word ribofunk to describe the sub-genre of science fiction in which he specialises, and which uses elements of the hard-boiled detective novel, film noir and post-modernist prose. His manifesto defines the sub-genre thus:

“Speculative fiction which acknowledges, is informed by and illustrates the tenet that the next revolution — the only one that really matters — will be in the field of biology. To paraphrase Pope, ribofunk holds that: ‘The proper study of mankind is life.’ Forget physics and chemistry; they are only tools to probe living matter. Computers? Merely simulators and modellers for life. The cell is King!”

A search on ‘ribofunk’ generates around 20,000 Google hits.

Your biog says you’ve been a finalist for a lot of awards, but have you ever won any?

“I have indeed broken my loser’s streak just once, by winning a British SF Association Award for best short story for 1994’s The Double Felix. The story title was misspelled on the official ballot, and my name was misspelled on the official trophy, which arrived years later and looks like Monty Python’s Holy Grail. I currently use it to hold sticks of incense. All of which is not to negate my gratitude to BSFA.”

Rhode Island: Red state or Blue state, state of denial or state of fear?

“Well, with the recent election the whole country starts to resemble a more regal purple, sensibly blending red and blue. But RI remains more liberal than the average. The citizenry seems more hopeful than fearful, although we do live continuously under the dire threat of colonisation by rich Bostonians to our north.”

You once wrote an exposé of the frustrations involved in having work accepted by Wired, in spite of the magazine briefing its commissioned contributors in detail. Has Wired bought any more work from you since you wrote this article?

“I think a whole new regime has taken over the magazine since my experiences, and with any luck they wouldn’t hold my past outburst against me. And although I have not placed any long pieces with the magazine since that first ill-fated one, I did recently secure an entire page (!) in the November 2006 issue for my six-word short story, commissioned along with almost three dozen others: ‘Husband, transgenic mistress: wife, “You cow!”’”

You’re a prolific author of short stories, particularly of speculative fiction. Good, paying markets for short stories around the world are in decline. How does the market for your own work look in the States?

“The demise of magazines that pay a ‘living wage’ is not good news for me or any other writer whose focus is short fiction. I’m heartened by a prevalence of original anthologies, and classy small-press magazines, but it does become more difficult to sustain oneself by writing just at these lengths for such markets. And of course the invention of webzines is another cheerful development, although their mode of existence is yet shaky. A certain online monetary inflation calculator that I occasionally use indicates that the penny-a-word rate obtained by the pulp writers of the 1930s, once derided as chicken feed, should translate to twenty-cents-per-word in modern terms. So even the top mags that pay, say, ten-cents-a-word are paying half what used to be standard during the Depression!”

You’ve written a sequel to a comic by Alan Moore of Watchmen fame. Was this a daunting prospect, and did you get to meet or correspond with Moore during the course of the project?

“I had almost zero contact with Moore throughout the whole project. But he read my scripts, and I learned of his approval through my editor, Scott Dunbier. I also learned that Moore preferred that I not kill off his favourite character, as I had intended, and that I substitute an adoption scene for a woman getting pregnant by her canine husband and giving birth to some sort of doggy hybrid. Good calls, I say in retrospect, on his part!”

In your essay The Infantilisation, Electrification, Mechanisation and General Diminishment of King Kong, you posit that “seriously intentioned sequels and offshoots of the Original Tragedy … fumblingly recast or attempt to extend the material in such a manner as to rob it of all its archetypical force and resonance”, so what did you make of Peter Jackson’s retelling or, for that matter, Russell Hoban’s?

“Although I thought the Jackson remake was exciting and skilful, in the end it seemed superfluous. What really did it add? The Hoban piece, from what I see online, looks a bit more like a post-modern pastiche than a straight remake, so I have hopes for it, especially given Hoban’s talents.”

If visitors to NZBC only read one book this year, which book should it be?

“For sheer fun and pleasure, if you’re a ‘core SF’ reader, I’d have to recommend The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi. I’ve always been a sucker for Keith Laumer’s Retief series, and [Scalzi’s book] is like a supercharged refashioning of those tropes. But I haven’t yet gotten my hands on Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day...”

What’s on your iPod’s ‘On the go’ playlist at the moment, or are you an iPod refusenik?

“Although a huge music listener, I am an iPod refusenik, mainly because I don’t need portability of music. I take walks ranging from one to three hours every day — trying to do very little driving — and when I’m out and about I like to talk to people and hear birdsong and random conversations and even traffic noise. I don’t care to be insulated in a fake Hollywood soundtrack of my own devising. When I’m home, I like to listen to large blocks of music composed with a scheme by the creator: in other words, entire ‘albums’ or CDs. And actually, when I’m writing, I play the radio! WBRU, the college station associated with Brown University. That way, I get exposed to new music and also experience the serendipity of someone else’s choices.”

E-books would seem to dovetail naturally with the sci-fi genre and its fandom. Might technology, after all, be the writer’s life-raft?

“Certainly print-on-demand, as exemplified by Wildside Press and its imprint, has been a lifesaver for me, allowing publishers to take on books of mine with only marginal sales potential, such as my collection of humour columns, Plumage From Pegasus. I have little experience with e-books, but selling some reprint stories through Fictionwise was a good experience for me. I don’t think, despite all the headwork by such visionaries as Cory Doctorow, that we yet know the ultimate model for the vehicle that will connect writers and readers, to the profit of both!”

What do you use for note-taking, capturing ideas and tracking submissions? Are you a proponent of pencil and notebook; do you favour proprietary software; or is it open source everything for you, even though your initials are PDF?

“I am old-fashioned enough to still stick with pen and paper for my note-taking. I have a pocket notebook brand that I love, Oxford Memo Books, because it’s sewn together instead of employing a metal spiral, and so when you sit on it, it doesn’t imprint your butt like something out of a Re/Search tribal scarification volume.”

What are you working on right now, when is your next book due to be published and what will it be?

“I’ve just placed two books with PS Publishing: Harsh Oases, a story collection, and Roadside Bodhisattva, a (mainstream!) novel. I’m not even certain which one Pete Crowther intends to bring out first, but there will be one in 2007 and one in 2008. My current work in progress is a novel for the firm of Payseur & Schmidt to be titled either Cosmocopia or Cosmicopia (readers, help me decide!), with illustrations by Jim Woodring.”

What’s wrong with my iPod? iTunes 7.0!

2006-10-10T21:34:00.000+13:00

Father forgive me, for I have sinned: I spent a lot of my hard-earned on an iPod hi-fi (fans of geek porn, see the 360° view here), a new oPod case… oh, and an iPod Video, 80GB. Well, you know how it is: I ran out of space on my 40GB after only about 1500 tracks because they were all in Apple Lossless format, and iTunes is downloading new podcasts every week for me to find space and ear-time for.

I’m running iTunes Version 7.0.1.8 and so far have had two brand new 80GB iPod Videos, both purchased from the same New Zealand reseller. Each was apparently defective.

Both iPods successfully loaded my music library and played podcasts and music perfectly, both on headphones and on my iPod hi-fi. But when I subsequently plugged the iPods into any of the four USB 2 ports on my laptop, they failed to show up as devices in My Computer (a Toshiba P20 laptop on which I’m running Windows XP, Service Pack 2) or, just as worryingly, in iTunes.

The problem also occurs on a second PC — the iPod refuses to show as a device in My Computer, Windows File Explorer or in iTunes. However, it does show up in Device Manager, and the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon shows on the Windows status bar as soon as the iPod is connected. Even so, when the iPod is safely ejected, the iPod screen continues to show ‘Do Not Disconnect’. So the only way to safely eject it is to reset the iPod — the Apple equivalent of a forced reboot.

I’ve tried restarting the computer, putting the iPod into ‘disk mode’, as well as the rest of the time-consuming remedies listed on the Apple website. Unfortunately, none of them helps because I can’t get the iPod to appear as a device on my computer. It’s therefore impossible to rename the Drive Volume (to another letter instead of ‘E:’) or restore the iPod to factory settings.

I can’t help thinking Apple has created a Catch-22 situation by removing the iPod Updater option in iTunes 7. None of the previous versions of iPod Updater is compatible with iTunes 7, meaning people who have a disk mount problem can’t restore their iPods: if you can’t get the iPod to show up in either iTunes or My Computer, you’re stuck.

The only solution seems to be a downgrade to iTunes 6.x or another, previous version of iTunes, but even this maddening workaround is fraught with problems.

So why isn’t there a ‘restore’ option in the iPod’s own diagnostics menu, some combination of click-wheel buttons that will allow you to reformat and restore the drive to factory settings? Why has Apple chosen to go down this dark and lonely software cul-de-sac?

My previous (40GB) Fourth-Generation iPod mounts perfectly on both my laptop and another PC, suggesting it’s the new iPods that are the problem and not my computer. And, as I said, the new iPod also fails to mount on a second PC, which would tend to underscore this theory.

Both faulty iPods have been set to ‘manually update’ and I also ticked the ‘Enable Disk Use’ option and removed the checkmark from ‘Automatically open iTunes’.

I have no complaints about TotallyMac.com, the New Zealand reseller from which I bought my iPod and which supplied me with the replacement when the first device proved to be defective. The after-sales service was prompt and courteous and both iPods were replaced by TotallyMac.com’s Sean Carmichael without question. He also spent around 30 minutes above and beyond the call of duty going through a range of possible fixes over the phone with me, all to no avail.

There is clearly a more serious compatibility conflict between the new iPods, iTunes 7.0 and iTunes 7.1. There are a lot of worthy suggested fixes to be found online, but none of them solves my particular problem. While I’m by no means an übergeek, neither am I an iPod newbie nor a computing novice. I’ve spent far too many hours researching this frustrating problem when all I want to do is listen to music on my new hi-fi and download the latest podcasts.

On the recommendation of Sean from TotallyMac.com I took the first of the apparently defective iPods in to the friendly folks at Magnum Mac on Newton Road in Auckland, and the service tech there said, “If you’d bought this iPod from us, we’d replace it — we can’t get it to show up on our PCs.” There was nothing in it for them, so I was grateful for their attention and honest assessment.

I never had any problems with my previous iPod, so I’m hoping my experience with the iPod Video to date will be nothing worse than an ugly and expensive interlude — I’ve spent over $30 on courier fees, taxi fares and toll calls, not to mention the high price I paid for the iPod in the first place.

It’s all put rather a large bruise in my idealised view of Apple and its products. It would be good to hear from someone out there who has experienced similar difficulties and who might be able to explain what the problem is.

And if mine is a problem already known to the folks at Apple, some reassurance that it will be dealt with in future iTunes updates would be nice.

Confessions of a sock puppet

2006-09-12T18:22:00.000+12:00

I’m not the slightest bit interested in podcasts, I’ve never read a book by Russell Hoban, and I only pretended to have the email addresses of people like Toby Young and Dave Dobbyn so I could interview Pippa Wetzell. OK?

I am a sock puppet. I used Chris Bell as a pseudonym to disguise my true identity. I actually go by the name McTavish of Banffshire, and I’m a West Highland White Terrier (dog shown not actual size).

The good news for you poor duped bastards is that NZBC’s Director-General — a man I consider myself lucky to call “The DG” — has agreed to back me up, on the basis that I’m “brave” and “brilliant”. At least that’s what I think he said at the Coco Club; by then, the music was loud and the cocktail of rohypnol and ketamine I’d dropped in his Lion Red had started to kick in.

Those of you who read my blog posts under the impression that they might be true are to be offered a full refund. The DG recognises you may have been disappointed by my baloney. I know he is. There is a catch: only those readers who visited NZBC before today — the date on which I admitted the full extent of my deceit — will be eligible for the refund. And the DG will want to see hard evidence.

NZBC readers must send us their IP address as well as all photographs of Scarlett Johansson from their temporary internet folders. Readers who have visited this blog from outside of New Zealand (hereinafter referred to as “The World”), must courier a working, flat-screen computer monitor, along with the valid till receipt, to NZBC head office immediately (there’s no need to send us any cables, thanks).

In the meantime, watch out for the soon-to-be-impending relaunch of my website, a site which, according to the Boston Globe, contains “the most lacerating collection of short stories since Darby Larson”. The DG has described my stories as “uncommonly genuine”, which is weird because I made them all up, too.

It’s funny, you know, but at a certain time of the evening, in certain bars, when the light gets low, the DG looks a lot like Oprah Winfrey.

Adios, suckers.

Levy: his feet on my dashboard

2006-07-11T15:35:00.000+12:00

A cheery Lord Levy (right) in an unlikely face-off with the late Yasser Arafat.

In what now seems like a previous life, in the late 1970s, I was Michael Levy’s chauffeur. Michael Levy is now Lord Levy and he’s still in the news a lot more often than I am. After selling Magnet Records to WEA, Levy became the British Labour Party’s chief fundraiser. On 22 June, he gave evidence to a committee of MPs investigating party political funding. Levy had been instrumental in raising millions of pounds to help Tony Blair to win a third term. Controversy has arisen because it’s argued that Levy invited the rich to convert political donations to the Labour Party into loans so they wouldn’t have to be registered. And then there’s the matter of “cash for peerages”, covered by the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, which makes it illegal to reward anyone who has given “any gift, money or valuable consideration” with a title of honour.

Levy has said he won’t become Blair’s “fall guy” over cash for peerages. Fair enough, too, since his close friends (such as producer Pete Waterman, of Stock-Aitken-Waterman fame) have said they hadn’t even realised he was a socialist.

It looks as though this one will run and run, particularly since Levy escaped answering a single question about his fundraising role during a recent meeting with MPs from the Commons constitutional affairs committee, and is now being dubbed “the mouse that fails to roar”. Critics blame Levy (along with a few others) for conjuring up the current intensity of “communal derision” for Blair, in a similar way as millions once loathed Maggot Scratcher.

Meanwhile The Sun complains that Levy has “one of the worst work-rates in the House of Lords” and has not spoken in the Upper House since Blair gave him his peerage nine years ago. He has apparently voted only seven times out of a possible 67:

“The PM’s pal — dubbed Lord Cashpoint for his skill at gathering cash — also failed to sit on a single committee or table a question.”

This year, Levy has been lampooned by the former Whose Line Is It, Anyway? impersonator Rory Bremner in a sketch in which he portrayed Levy as Fagin, complete with prosthetic hook nose. Giles Coren of The Times (who, ironically, was defending Levy) called him:

“…a loud, unelected, millionaire smart-arse with a big nose and a widow’s peak and expensive suits and the most Jewish surname imaginable, whose power in the land derives entirely from wealth made in commerce”.

I bet he was happier being ridiculed for releasing Alvin Stardust singles. Which is more or less where I came in: back in the late 1970s, I was yet to turn 20; a shy, wannabe-rockstar who worried about bad skin, wore a succession of silly haircuts and dreamt of a job in an A&R department. I was working for Levy’s independent record label Magnet — which he called a mini-major — home to Bad Manners, Chris Rea and yes, Alvin Stardust.

Levy was the archetypal, 20th Century corporate tyrant. With only one or two exceptions, everyone in the firm was either afraid or in awe of him. This was at a time when the long lunch was king and tabletop Asteroids ruled the pubs. Ozzy Osbourne drank at the Royal Oak (our York Street local), where the ex-Ten Years After drummer held court alongside Den Hegarty from The Darts and other music biz hangers-on, like me. Baker Street was our song and “underground listening” consisted of 12-inch dub-mixes of Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs.

In my memory, everything from those times is invested with significance. Such as the fact that I once used to drive the man who is now “Lord Cashpoint”, Tony Blair’s major fundraiser and his Middle East Peace Process Envoy, to his meetings with his lawyer at WEA, in Soho’s Broadwick Street. I’d also be sent out to buy him lunch, an experience I previously described here. I liked to think that the smooth running of the company hinged on this task because otherwise, if his salt beef wasn’t hot when I returned with the paper bags of mustard-soaked sandwiches from Reuben’s, the afternoon air would be blue with expletives and resonant with the slamming of doors.

Levy had a reputation within Magnet for throwing ashtrays and reducing his long-suffering PA to tears. I, though, had few problems with the boss — ‘ML’, as everybody called him — and have no axe to grind. He was moody, but the other employees’ complaints about him remained largely hearsay to me. I learned a lot about music and the industry that feeds off it from ML and my time at Magnet and never experienced any ashtray-throwing during my two years with the company. But the “glass-topped table with marble legs”, described in this story, sounds familiar: there was a similar table in Levy’s office in the 1970s and early 1980s — it doubled as the boardroom table and was the scene of many a product meeting shouting-match that would resound through 22 York Street. Also familiar are “the bouffant hair and high heel shoes”, and that wasn’t only our Essex-girl receptionist.

I started at Magnet as the company’s messenger. I ‘inherited’ a beat-up, white Renault 4 van that had been ill-treated by the previous driver. When Peter the ‘post boy’ quit, it became my job to drag the huge sacks of records round to Baker Street Post Office, to refill the franking machine and stick postage labels on thousands of brown cardboard envelopes full of vinyl (there were no CDs then) for DJs, promoters and clubs.

Success at the top end of the British singles charts was on the wane by the time I joined Magnet, but those ‘in the know’ had calculated the firm made most of its money from licensing its master recordings — The Darts’ version of Daddy Cool, or Chris Rea’s Fool If You Think It’s Over, for example — to overseas companies for release on album-length compilations.

The accountant and financial controller would entrust me with wads of cash of a girth bewildering to a mere 20-year-old, for depositing either at a Baker Street bank or Levy’s own, ornately gothic branch on Park Lane. Quite where all this cash came from or for what it was destined I was never to discover, but I remember on more than one occasion carrying well over £10,000 in banknotes, without security, back to the office. My employer must have realised that I was either honest or stupid, or possibly both.

When one day the post-boy and I sneaked out of the office to make a series of mundane record deliveries together, we experienced ML’s wrath firsthand. We’d decided it would be quicker to make these deliveries in tandem — I’d stay in the van while Peter leapt out to deliver envelopes to places like the NME, Melody Maker and Smash Hits. The real reason we went on this mission was for the laughs. And a jolly jape it was; at least until we returned to head office, to find ML apoplectic, fuming that there’d been no one to take him to his meeting, deliver documents, or collect his salt beef sandwiches from Reuben’s.

“I just thought…” I stuttered.

“Don’t think!” yelled ML, in his withering way, “I’m not paying you to think! I do the thinking around here!”

Another abiding ML memory is of a hellish drive to WEA Records in Broadwick Street, Soho, from Magnet’s offices on York Street in the West End. ML had decided it’d be quicker for me to drive him there in the company van than for him to negotiate his Rolls out of the cramped garages in a mews off Gloucester Place, where it and the other company cars were minded daily by a cantankerous old fellow with emphysema who, once he had all the vehicles parked for the day, refused to move them again before close-of-business.

I’d been driving for Magnet for a while by then, and Broadwick Street was one of my regular stops. I’d worked out a number of shortcuts and was reasonably confident I could get us there in 15 to 20 minutes. As was customary, ML sat in the passenger seat with his expensively heeled feet up on the van’s dashboard, occasionally singing boisterously or regaling pedestrians (some of them possibly burqa-clad). Everything was going just fine until we hit a traffic jam on Marylebone High Street. ML was adamant we’d gone the wrong way. It wasn’t long before he had his head out of the window and was bellowing at the traffic and slamming his hands against the dented bodywork.

ML urged me to cut-up the cars in front, pull out onto the wrong side of the road, drive onto the pavement — anything to get him to his meeting. He was intimidating at the best of times, but once he started shouting at you it was no contest — you became a gibbering wreck. “What did you go this way for?! I told you I was in a hurry!”

I protested. I gibbered. I pulled out of the traffic jam and drove down the wrong side of the road. Luckily, I managed to cut back in again, turn down Weymouth Street in front of a taxi, narrowly missing the traffic island, past Harley Street and onto Portland Place. But by now ML’s mood had soured and he leapt out of my van close to his destination on Berwick Street with not so much as a “You’re fired, you idiot!”

I also have an acute memory of ML spending £100 of company money on a dark blue suit, white shirt and black tie from an Oxford Street menswear store for me to wear, so that I could chauffeur him about in style. My first official function in this getup was dropping him off at the then-fashionable Italian restaurant La Loggia at the Marble Arch end of Edgware Road in the company Daimler. (Later, on a regular trip to Pye Studios around the corner, I stopped outside La Loggia to examine the menu and spent the better part of a week’s wages on dinner there, to experience life as I imagined a millionaire would experience it, at least until the bill arrived.)

When a bald tyre caused me to write-off Magnet’s Renault 4 van in the rain near Hampstead Heath one night, it was ML who called me at home over the weekend to make sure I was OK. He didn’t seem to care so much about the van, which now looked like a crumpled Coke can. And ML agreed to see me when, a couple of years later, I bravely and rashly (or so it now seems) asked if he’d invest in a business venture I’d been foolish enough to get involved in.

He was courteous rather than patronising — which he could have been, since I had absolutely no business experience — and listened to me enthuse about my plans for half an hour or so. I remember him being surprised by the exclusively Jewish surnames of lawyers and accountants on the business plan I presented him (I’m not Jewish, but I’d learned to value his brand of business acumen) and his shock that I’d had the cheek to open a bank account at his Park Lane branch.

ML shrewdly declined to invest in my business and a little later, the bank on Park Lane called us to ask us most politely to take our business elsewhere. Even though our modest account was in the black, it was thought that perhaps such a prestigious branch did not quite suit our modest startup. I wondered at the time whether ML might have had a hand in this but, as it turned out, it didn’t matter one jot — the venture soon went belly-up.

I haven’t seen ML since the 1980s. The media has been wondering what’s next for him, now that Blair’s days are numbered; apparently he’s been helping the Prime Minister plan his next career move, although he may soon need some help of his own.

Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking that, if I’d stuck with ML, it might have been him and me delivering that letter from Tony Blair to President Mahmoud Abbas — the one outlining proposals to revive the Israel-Palestine peace process. We’d have approached on the wrong side of the road in a beat-up, white Renault 4 van, with ML munching on a salt beef on rye, his feet on the dashboard, waving pedestrians out of the way as I gibbered at the wheel.

More on “Lord Cashpoint”
Lord Levy on terror alert after home attack
Levy was “against secret loans”
The entrepreneur who proved himself rather good at accumulating money
An exclusive offer from Lord Levy
Lord Levy of the £20 note
The Prime Minister’s “sidekick”
His “skill at extracting cash from businessmen”
The cash for honours inquiry
“You have taken a few knocks — in fact more than a few — mainly on my behalf”
Lord Levy and Opus Dei...?
Levy is said to have collected £7 million for Labour
Middle East Peace Process Envoy “exchanging views” in Kazakhstan and Latin America
Regulators: BBC show not anti-Semitic
No questions for Levy
Giles Coren: “What the Dickens were they thinking?”
An eccentric choice as the PM’s envoy for the Middle East
“How did the party of the poor become the best friend of the millionaires?”
Levy ‘told Labour donor to keep loan to party secret’
Like a brother to Tony Blair

Update 20 July: Levy secretary’s MBE queried (Jean Cobb was ML’s secretary even when I worked for him in the 1970s, so I reckon she deserves at least an MBE, for putting up with him for so long.)

Update 31 July: The cover of Private Eye

Update 18 December: Blair refuses to back Levy in Labour’s cash for honours scandal

Update 22 January 2007: Blair likely to quit if aides charged in loans inquiry

Update 31 January 2007: Levy arrested over perversion of justice

Update 20 July 2007: No one to face charges in cash for honours inquiry

Five minutes with Dr Jill Tarter

2006-07-06T14:27:00.000+12:00

Dr Jill Tarter is the director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute which was set up by NASA and is now privately run, a major contributor being Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

Dr Tarter provided the inspiration for Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos which was made into a film starring Jodie Foster. Carl Sagan was himself a director of SETI. She speaks to Andrea Malcolm.

Obviously you think there’s a possibility of extra terrestrial life. Why is that? Is it based on probability or do you have other reasons for thinking so?

“From what we currently know about the universe, life - even intelligent life - may exist elsewhere. That doesn’t mean that it does, that doesn’t say how probable it is, only that we have not found reasons to exclude the possibility. In the past two decades we have begun to discover planets orbiting other stars, and to appreciate extremophiles that live in environments once thought to be unsuitable for life. The universe today has the appearance of being more bio-friendly than it did when I was a graduate student, but we all know that appearances can be deceiving. There is no substitute for scientific exploration to answer this question.”

What would be the most likely first sign of life existing outside Earth? Would it be radio signals or something else? Do you ever come across inexplicable signals from space?

“We might detect a radio signal or a light pulse or some other evidence of an alien technology first, from which we would infer the existence of other technologists. Or our first indication of life on another world may come as the result of probes sent to Mars or Europa in search of microbes, or telescopes that will image terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and deduce that some sort of biology is producing the chemical disequilibrium indicated by the remote analysis of their atmospheres.

“In our SETI Institute observing projects, we have occasionally found interesting signals that at first appeared to be coming from a distant star - but in every case, we eventually were able to show that we had detected an unexpected bit of our own technology.”

New Zealand (through Auckland University of Technology) is currently working to become part of the world’s biggest telescope project ever, the Square Kilometre Array. The Square Kilometre Array project will create a telescope (effectively thousands of linked telescopes including two sited in New Zealand). How will the SKA help with this search? What is the reason for your visit to New Zealand? Is there any other way a small country like New Zealand could get involved?

“The SKA will have 100 times the collecting area of the Allen telescope array that the SETI institute and the University of California Berkeley are now building. Therefore it will be able to detect SETI signals that are 100 times fainter than those the Allen array can find, or find the same strength signals coming from 10 times farther away. It will be able to explore a much bigger portion of our own Milky Way galaxy for SETI and also do amazing science that we are just beginning to define. The SKA will be an international telescope whose construction can/should involve the whole world. I’m hopeful that the SKA will adopt an ‘open skies’ policy so that the very best scientific proposals for observing time get accepted, independent of the country from which they originated.

“This will allow for tests of general relativity within black holes, and enable scientists to explore the question of how the galaxy evolved, the possibility of extra solar planets and whether there is extraterrestrial intelligence. It will be sensitive enough to search for signals no stronger than those generated for television.”

How many people participate in SETI@home?

“SETI@home is run by UC Berkeley, so I haven’t looked lately. Last time I did look, more than 5 million people around the world had downloaded the screen saver and maybe 1/2 million were using it at any time.”

I understand you want to encourage more girls to become interested in science. How do you think this can be done? Do you have any advice for universities about how to recruit more girls into these areas of research? What percentage of SETI staff are women?

“We have a lot of women on the scientific staff of the SETI Institute. Among my small team doing SETI, there are now three of us - a big percentage! University is too late to try to recruit women into science - you have to start much younger, at age 8 or 9, by encouraging them, by not telling them that they cannot do science because of their gender, by incorporating different styles of learning in the classroom (one size never fits all) and particularly by impressing all young students about the importance of math - for any sort of science or engineering they might eventually decide to do. We lose women out of the science pipeline at the first opportunity they have to opt out of taking math classes - we need to encourage them to continue and find ways to make it more enjoyable and meaningful for all students.”

If you weren’t doing the job you’re in, what other job would you like to do?

“Hard question, since I think I have the best job in the world! An astronaut, an architect, or a movie director (do you have any idea how much cool technology, innovation, and intellectual effort actually goes into making a movie?) would be high on my list.”

Jill Tarter will give a public lecture at 4pm on Friday July 7th at WA220 lecture theatre, AUT University, 55 Wellesley Street, Auckland. Andrea Malcolm works for AUT.

The end of idealism

2006-05-04T09:16:00.000+12:00

It's almost sad to watch the dawning realisation among the right that the Middle East is steadfastly refusing to be transformed, as America planned, into a hotbed of western, or even eastern democracy.

The Taliban and Al Quaeda are reoccupying Afghanistan and the reconstruction of Iraq has been almost catastrophically badly managed. Iraqis themselves are increasingly pessimistic. In the White House the signs are growing of a changing of the guard. It's out with the neocons and in with some of George Bush senior's old advisors.

Pragmatism is replacing idealism all over. Personally I think a bit of idealism is a good thing, but the neocon plan was simply too ambitious, too sweeping. Too high risk.

I've always held that dream had some chance of success. A slim chance, but a chance. For it to work the plan had to work quickly and effectively. It hasn't and it is now all but opportunity lost and the right knows it.

Even the most staunch proponents of the war are now sounding defeated. From endlessly praising the democratic spirit of the Iraqi people some are now starting to blame the Iraqis for their own troubles. Over at Sir Humphrey's Lucyna "quotes approvingly" a post on Iraq, "where lying is a way of life".

At first we were all offended at being lied to so much. But after a while, you stop taking it personally, and you just start giving credit where credit is due: They can't build anything, can't manufacture anything, and can't fix anything that breaks. But at least they are good at one thing: lying their asses off all day, every day.

It's a complaint that strongly echoes those of a previous generation of Middle Eastern imperialists, the British.

AL, quite rightly, is livid about the new US fortress/embassy being built in Baghdad:

Could the US State Department have chosen a worse idea, considering the "Green Zone" they presently use is already a running joke worldwide? Are these people so completely incompetent, clueless and out of touch that this ever seemed like a good idea? And if I think it is a bad idea after reading Iraqi blogs, what must Iraqis think?

In comments to this post new recruit Andrei really parades the new and growing attitude of the right toward Iraq. It's the reemergence of an old conservative standard" "Why help people who won't help themselves":

Why can't the Iraqis keep their own electricity running? Why is it the Americans that have to do this? If the place is a basket case (which it obviously is) why is it that the Americans have to fix it up?

The answer to this is that America is one of the most humane countries on earth (if not the most humane) and they are taking responsibility for fixing up someone else's mess (in this case Saddam Hussein's).

If Iran had won the Iran/Iraq war do you think they'd have taken responsibility for Bhagdad's electricity? Virtually any other country on earth having acheived a victory like the coalition's victory over Saddam Hussein would have crushed the population just to keep them in line.

Instead the Iraqis are being spoon fed with billions of dollars of aid and cretins like the author of that article a chucking brickbats. And the insurgents are lapping it up and obliging the authors of such articles by blowing up power supplies to feed them material for more America bashing.

Perhaps crushing the Iraqi population might have been a better way. Peace might have come quicker that way.

Perhaps, Andrei, perhaps.

AL has pointed to the successes happening in Iraqi Kurdestan and I agree the freedom of the Kurds has been one big plus out of the whole exercise. Let's hope it can last.

Fisking Robert

2006-03-13T10:14:00.000+13:00

The Great War for Civilisation, Robert Fisk, Fourth Estate, London 2005, NZ$40.

By John O'Neill

No other journalist has been paid such compliments and received so many awards from his peers as Robert Fisk for his 30 years of reporting the Middle East. His detractors serve only to enhance the essence of his work by the process of fisking which seizes on a line of questionable accuracy and by mocking it seeks to destroy the edifice he has constructed.

Fisking is easy: 'King Hussein's stallion rears on her hind legs behind his coffin'. Or the bathetic question following a horror village massacre in Algeria: 'What sort of man would throw a bomb into a birdcage?'

Fisk covers the historical background very simply:

After the Allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just 17 months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career - in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad - watching the peoples within those borders burn.'

That has been his mission: to 'be there' for those who continue to suffer for the arrogance of honoured statesmen who served their country's interests by shameless huckstering such as the double-booking of Palestine to both Arabs and Jews.

This book threatened me as none other. I have lived a long and optimistic life comforted by a belief that humanity moves forward, slowly and with halting steps, to a more kindly occupation of this planet. Fisk destroys such faith with evenhanded accounts of barbarities perpetrated in the lands which produced our greatest religions by all who lived and entered there. Whether the tortures and slaughters were face-to-face and personal or by computer-driven weapons of mass dismemberment from 30.000 feet, the effect of the narration is to provoke the lingering question: 'Are we all mad?'. It takes a lot of thoughtful focussing on the occasional flashes of generosity and courage which leaven the book to begin to restore optimism. At least for me, it will happen.

Robert deserves a fisking in at least one respect: his fixation on his father and the consequent determination to drag Bill Fisk into the history with links that are tenuous to the point of invisibility. Bill Fisk was an odd man, rigid, hard, cruel in the way of many family men of his generation. He served in France in the closing years of the First World War with no great distinction other than refusing to command a firing-squad on a convicted Australian soldier/murderer. Much of Robert's chapter on his father should have been edited. His title for this book is taken from one of his father's war medals: a mistake. The subtitle: 'The Conquest of the Middle East' is far more relevant and powerful.

His mother, Peggy, whom he loved, merits only a few paragraphs but these explain a lot. When Robert first confronted the fact of mortality as a child, he asked why bother with all that homework when we all had to die. Peggy replied: 'By the time you grow up, they may have found a cure for that'. This may well be the source of the eternal optimism that drives her son to live the life he has chosen.

Fisking Robert is not just the lighthearted ribbing of a great man and his work. When it is deadly serious it is least effective. Efraim Karsh is not happy with Fisk's account of the mass-murder by Baruch Goldstein of Muslim Palestinians at prayer at Abrahams Rock in 1994. The facts are that Goldstein, in his Israeli army reserve officer's uniform, used his army-issue automatic rifle to kill 29 and wound more than 100 pilgrims and was then beaten to death by the survivors.

Fisk says that Baruch and the 'incident' were condemned with much less vigour than if he were a Palestinian 'terrorist'. Goldstein was an 'American import'. Goldstein ' killed to prevent a massacre'.

The consequent deaths of 25 enraged Palestinians and 9 Israeli soldiers were not added to the figures for the carnage. The name of the game, according to Fisk, was distancing Israel. Karsh takes this absolution one step further by declaring Goldstein 'deranged'. Which causes me to wonder why his tomb pronounces him a saint and holy martyr and is a place of pilgrimage and veneration. Much less does it explain how a deranged man became a qualified medical doctor and officer of the Israeli army. Fisking, then, is an unstable weapon which sometimes backfires on the fisker.

The history of the Middle East over the last hundred years makes sour and terrible but essential reading, particularly the nurture by Britain and USA of the Israeli cuckoo in the nest of Arabs. To have it told in the first person by an eye-witness is the only hope of peace: peace through understanding that every Western intervention brought betrayal, humiliation and suffering.

And why the interventions? After the destruction of Iraq by sequential sanctions, bombings, invasion and occupation, which government offices were singled out for protection from the looters? The Ministry of Oil.

The question I am left with is: who will silence Fisk? In fundamentalist American/British/Israeli logic he is not 'with us'. Therefore he must be 'against us' and ruthless measures may legitimately be taken to save 'democracy' and 'our way of life'. I really fear an assassin's bullet on the veranda of his home in Beirut or an accident on his many journeys. It will be in vain and counter-productive in the manner of many such 'interventions' but what can we do? To read him is the only gift we can bring. I really must also remember his motto: "journalists do not take gifts from prime ministers!"

Scoop interviews Robert Fisk here.

Google Book Search is a fine thing

2006-02-21T20:25:00.000+13:00

I first heard about Google Book Search early last year, when I interviewed Professor Dan Atkins from the School of Information at the University of Michigan, during a conference in Auckland. Atkins spoke about the partnership between Google and leading research libraries (including the University of Michigan), which set out to digitise up to 10 million volumes over the next six years. He did his best to assuage the largely tertiary and library audience’s fears over copyright breaches relating to educational works.

But enough about the big picture; back to my shameless self-promotion. In late 2004, my first novel Liquidambar won a competition organised by PABD and UKA Press in the UK. This is the only reason the book is today available in hard copy (exclusively online for the time being). Publication was the prize. After seven years spent writing and editing this novel, I’d reached the end of my tether with the ‘old world’ publishing industry. Having successively signed up with two relatively high-profile literary agents in the US, and after numerous attempts to lure publishers there, in the UK and here in New Zealand to buy my book with largely frustrating results, one thing became apparent: few publishing industry professional are willing to read unsolicited works any more, let alone take the risk of publishing non-mainstream books via the traditional route. Liquidambar is neither an experimental novel nor did I set out to write an airport blockbuster. But I remain convinced that it’s original and that a substantial readership exists for it.

Hence my decision to enter the PABD/UKA “Search For A Great Read (SFAGR)” competition.

Liquidambar was shortlisted, and eventually won. My good friend and fellow Krakenista Richard Cooper also had his novel, All My Own Work, shortlisted. We had read each other’s books and I honestly thought his to be a worthy winner — I still do — but, in the interim, having been heavily involved in the later stages of the saga, I’m sure Richard is pleased his book didn’t win the SFAGR.

The acquisitions editor at the co-organising publisher, UKA Press, worked with me to ready my manuscript for publication, and I was naïve enough to believe that the end of my writing troubles were nigh: surely a mainstream publisher worth its salt would be interested in a prize-winning, professionally edited novel for which the cover art (owned by me) and pre-press files had been prepared at someone else’s expense. Publishing costs would be substantially reduced, and there had already been a certain amount of marketing, national radio and press around SFAGR both locally and internationally (including a mean-spirited piece in the Sunday Star-Times, that didn’t waste a word on Liquidambar’s literary merits or, indeed, the lack of them, but instead, in a sublime piece of serendipity that would have tickled its hack protagonist Typo Blod, managed to misquote me and misspell his name).

If I couldn’t interest a publisher in my book, perhaps I could at least sway some literary agents to do a bit of work in exchange for their 15/20 percent… To date, however, nada.

As it turns out, literary competitions are ten-a-penny. The Guardian’s books section noted at the time: “…the literary world is unable to go a week without being overwhelmed by the compulsion to give someone, somewhere a prize”. The literary establishment, on the other hand, have been overwhelmed only by the compulsion not to read my book. And, how can you get onto a major long-lists, let alone a shortlist, if your book is still languishing in a publisher slush-pile somewhere?

Last October, I decided to register Liquidambar with what was then Google Print (later to become Google Book Search), a service that promised to scan and index pages and make them available to internet users via a new function embedded in the Google search engine. Unfortunately, a file-naming error (damn and blast those impossibly long ISBNs) has delayed the book’s acceptance to Amazon UK’s very similar ‘Search Inside’ programme, with which I also registered last October.

The Google Book Search service is still in beta, but it’s already a powerful tool — for authors, publishers and internet users alike. You only see a “snippet” view of each work, not the whole book, thus negating widely publicised concerns over copyright and lost-sales.

The great thing about it is that you have a chance of attracting readers who may otherwise never have stumbled across your page at Amazon, through closely targeted searches. If, for example, you were eccentric enough to search on the words “Typo Blod” in Google Book Search, not only would you find my book at the top of the result list, it would be the only hit. Mind you, why anybody would be weird enough to use those search terms is anybody’s guess, but a quick look at your own website’s search statistics will provide ample evidence that there are lots of weirdos out there.

Far more sensible searches, however, including some of the distinctive titles of Edward Hopper’s paintings (each chapter in Liquidambar is named after a well-known Hopper work), also return Liquidambar very highly. The titles, “Tables For Ladies”, “Shakespeare At Dusk” and “Compartment C, Car 293” (with or without the comma) each return Liquidambar at the top of Google Books’ search list. Of course, if you merely search on “Edward Hopper” you’d have to dig a lot deeper — but that’s only fair; mine isn’t a book about Hopper, but about his works.

So how does any of this help a struggling novelist? Well, as I’ve said, authors of self-published or print-on-demand books have an uphill struggle getting their work noticed — either by readers or by the industry. Hopper fans interested enough in their favourite painting to search for a book about it might find that one set in ‘Hopperworld’ tugs on their purse-strings. Suddenly, Book Search becomes a much more powerful tool. Sure, my book costs £11.00 from Amazon UK and, by the time you’ve added freight to that you’ll be the better part of 20 quid poorer. But bundle your order with a couple of CDs, a DVD or, um… a Weightwatchers 8976U Glass Body Monitoring Precision Electronic Scale, and it starts to sound more cost-effective.

It may be a coincidence (or even an error) but since Liquidambar has been on Google Book Search, its “sales rank” on Amazon UK has leapt from 920,158 on 3 February to 232,593 today. Between February and December of 2005, it languished somewhere between the 1,000,000 and the 800,000 mark. To put all this firmly into perspective, my favourite author Russell Hoban’s latest book Linger Awhile, from the Bloomsbury Harry Potter stable, is sitting at 7242, and Dan Browne’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code is at 37.

Liquidambar has been on the Amazon UK site for well over a year. Those of my friends who care about such things regularly quiz me, “So, how’s the book selling?” and I’m sure they think I’m just being cagey but I really wish I could tell them. It honestly isn’t as easy as it sounds. So, before calling me up in the hope I’ll shout you lunch at Antoine’s to celebrate my new-found status as a “bestselling novelist” (ha!), there are a few things you ought to know:

1. PABD, the “publisher” (although that term isn’t suited to the world of print-on-demand, I don’t know what else to call it) of Liquidambar, has so far accounted for just a handful of copies sold through the trade. At one time, PABD was also selling the book directly from its own site, but since it stopped doing so it has failed to link my page to Amazon UK. I’ve received only two royalty statements from PABD, and they were so vague that they put a new slant on the term “creative accounting”. A group of four PABD authors, including myself, are now taking them to task over their shonky practices — if necessary, publicly.

2. Amazon UK’s sales rank shows only a book’s position relative to other books in the online store. There might be a plausible explanation for Liquidambar’s sudden leap up its sales ranks, but the only one I can think of would be the sudden deletion of over 600,000 titles from Amazon’s database.

3. It’s proven virtually impossible to persuade anyone to review my book on its own merits. Although Kathy Hunter at Leaf Salon was keen, and Art News had a copy of it (with its art-related content in mind), to date, the only detailed review that has appeared, other than those written by allies and compatriots at Amazon, is this thought-provoking, if not entirely positive, piece by Andrew Hook at Infinity Plus in the UK. Oh well. As Ricky Gervais commented in the January issue of Q magazine as part of his interview with Coldplay’s Chris Martin, the only way to avoid the “difficult second album” syndrome is to make sure that your first album is crap… At least this reviewer put some thought into it and had taken the trouble to read some of my other fiction.

4. A review copy sent to the Guardian when it started reviewing print-on-demand books was met with silence, and attempts by both Richard Cooper in the UK (who’s kindly been acting as an “unpaid agent” — by my calculations, 15 percent of nothing is still nothing), and myself to cajole the paper into responding, using Terry Gilliam-like tactics, resulted in the literary equivalent of tumbleweed borne on a cold, desert wind. When finally Mrs Ian McEwan, Annalena McAfee, the Guardian reviews editor, did respond, her letter to me was addressed to “Auckland, Australia”. We’re planning to buy her a map for her birthday.

4. In spite of the fact that it was part of the SFAGR prize, Liquidambar is still not available for sale via Amazon.com, 16 months later. This, according to PABD, is because the pre-press file supplied to the US printer was corrupt. Curiously, nobody informed either PABD or myself of this minor detail. The file I supplied to PABD was just fine, as it had been professionally ‘flight-checked’ by Digital River in Auckland.

Liquidambar is currently with a reader from the New Zealand branch of a multinational publisher. But until I see a royalty statement that shows some accurate Amazon UK sales figures, it seems I’ll have to resort to old-fashioned methods of promoting it.

Wanna buy a book?

Stephen's joke

2006-01-28T18:35:00.000+13:00

In the run-up to the last British election, Tony Blair was being shown around an Edinburgh hospital by its administrators. Towards the end of his visit, he was shown into a ward of people exhibiting no obvious signs of injury.

He greeted the first patient and the chap replied:
"Fair fa' your honest sonsie face,
Great chieftain e' the puddin' race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm,
Weel are ye Wordy o'a grace,
As lang's my arm."

Tony, somewhat confused, performed his sparkling grin and moved on to the next patient, again greeting him with a smile and hello.

This patient replied:
"Some hae meat, and canna eat,
And some eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit."

As Tony was led towards the third patient, that patient began rattling off as follows:
"Wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi bickering brattle!"

Tony turned to the doctors accompanying him and asked, "Uhmmm, I say, whatsort of ward is this, a psychiatric ward?"
"No," replied one of the doctors, "it's the serious Burns unit."

Five minutes with Seth Godin

2006-01-10T13:17:00.000+13:00

When NZBC initially approached prolific blogger, marketing guru, bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin and asked if he could spare us five minutes in October last year, we weren’t too surprised when he politely declined. “Alas, just now, I don’t even have two minutes!” he apologised. Oh well, If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again. Then give up. There’s no use being a damned fool about it, the great WC Fields once advised us over several martinis. So we tried again. And this time, Seth graciously acquiesced. But time is money, and this man keeps his answers brief and to the point; which is just as well because the NZBC certainly couldn’t afford to hire him as a marketing consultant, what with the government cuts and the Director-General’s lunch expenses to cover. We thought our CFO would be impressed if we could get some of Seth’s advice for free. But, as Mr Godin himself explains, it’s the way you ask the questions that matters. So, do you want to see how he answers them?

You’ve pointed out that today the creative bar is set a lot higher because access to professional tools is easier and cheaper. For example, you suggest we’re less likely to give substandard movies the benefit of the doubt. But doesn’t a wealth of ‘smooth-looking’ product also mean that much great creative output is being buried in an avalanche of new releases and aggressive marketing?

“There’s no doubt that in movies especially, the marketing and the opening weekend are critical. It’s interesting to note that in music, marketing got so big it exploded... so now, an unknown has a better chance of breaking through (if the record is good).”

In Unleashing the Ideavirus you’re an outspoken critic of sites that charge for web content. Do you have any advice for the publishers of the New Zealand Herald (which as recently as last year went over to a ‘premium content’ model for its columns), as well as for bloggers and writers who struggle to make a living from the written word?

“You can make a living, but by LEVERAGING the attention, not charging for it. Readers are already paying you... they are paying attention, which is precious.”

In Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Get Back In The Box, he writes: “In the emerging new renaissance culture, ownership is itself something of a burden… Accumulation of stuff is giving way to the right to use stuff — the misunderstood principle at the heart of every Internet phenomenon from user-to-user trading sites such as eBay to file-sharing applications such as Bittorrents.” Do you share Rushkoff’s enthusiasm for “Open Source Everything”?

“Nothing is everything! But it is true that getting people to interact, getting them involved, is a required first step.”

Do you believe that the future could look like Minority Report: “Good morning, Mr Godin,” the shop window ads would say, “would you like some brown rice and squid soup?”

“No question about it. It will definitely happen, and it will happen because in fact, we want it to.”

How many extra copies of your books do you think you’ve sold by having your readers do the marketing for you (as you recommend in Unleashing the Ideavirus and Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable) than you would have done if you’d left it to Old Economy book publishing companies?

“I think it’s a 100 to one difference, no exaggeration.”

If visitors to NZBC only read on book this year, which book should it be?

“That’s a hard one. How about Ben Zander’s The Art of Possibility.”

Which tracks do you have on your iPod’s ‘On the go’ playlist at the moment, or are you an iPod refusenik?

“I’ve got an iPod. I’m listening to Nina Simone, Fatboy Slim, Gil Evans, The Trammps and Young MC.”

Why Best doesn’t belong in the dead box

2005-10-27T22:15:00.000+13:00

It’s been said that when George Best left Manchester United it marked “the end of football in England”. He scored 28 league goals in 41 matches for the club in the 1967-68 season, when they finished as league runners-up, making him the team’s top scorer of the season; a position he also held for the following four. He made 361 league appearances for United, scoring a total of 136 goals, and holds their record for the most goals scored by one player in a non-wartime match: six, against Northampton Town in the fifth-round of the 1970 FA Cup.

But it wasn’t about the goals, and I couldn’t care less about the supposed demise of soccer. With Best, it was all about the vibe.

In the far less complicated 1960s and 1970s, I was a Man United fan. This was neither because I loved football as most boys of my age did, nor because at the time the club had one of the finest teams in British soccer history — among them Bobby Charlton, Brian Kidd, Alex Stepney, Pat Crerand, David Sadler, Nobby Stiles, Denis Law and Willie Morgan — but because Man U gave the soccer world glamour, in the form of the first player who genuinely was a star, on and off the field.

Where for a previous generation there had been Stanley Matthews and Duncan Edwards, where in future there would be Kevin Keegan and David Beckham, the Baby Boomers’ poor white trash hero was always and can only ever be George Best. In Michael Parkinson’s book BEST, an intimate biography, a photo caption describes the 1960s-era Best as having “the physique of a toothpick and the pallor of a child raised on chip butties”. Yes, he was just like any of us chip buttie kids, if only we’d been born prodigiously talented instead of just scrawny.

In the 1970s, along with pictures of Paul Kossoff (Free’s heroin-damaged guitarist), Susan Stranks and other stars cut from the pages of Look In magazine, I had a Best poster on my bedroom wall for the better part of the decade. The “hard knocks” at school tended to support Leeds United or Liverpool and, even in those days, being a Man U fan earned you a dead leg or a Chinese burn. Best was not above their derision; a popular taunt on the terraces at the time, sung to the tune of Jesus Christ, Superstar, went: “Georgie Best, superstar / Walks like a girl / And he wears a bra.” The name-calling may have hurt the odd fan, but it clearly didn’t do Georgie any harm.

He must have been one of the first soccer players to warrant his own annual and, of course, I owned one. George Best’s Soccer Annual (No 3) — with its sharp black and white photos of Best posing in one of the fashion boutiques he co-owned, wearing rock star clothes and sporting his Beatle-ish haircut — didn’t make me long to be a soccer player. I was, however, fascinated by shots of George hugging a brace of rangy models in hot-pants: if “walking like a girl” could score you women like these, I was ready whether my country needed me or not. The idea of soccer groupies was so rock ‘n’ roll — and Bobby and Nobby from the combover-club didn’t seem to be getting any.

Apart from that, I was shocked, bemused and a little excited by Best’s disrespect for authority — the time he threw a clod of mud at a referee, for example, only to be sent off in disgrace. (A newspaper cartoon of the time suggested the mud had contained an affectionately thrown lucky shamrock.) Oh, to have had the balls to do the same to my sadistic PE teacher, whose favouritism for the sports-mad thickos was pointedly political. The idea of being Best (the disrespectful individual who gave his best for the righteous Captain Busby but probably no one else), was far more attractive to me than being “best” (the team player, blindly following orders from a fascist thug but displaying no character or panache).

I watched TV avidly, as Best (who had just come off a month’s suspension for some other misdemeanour) scored a double hat-trick and ran rings around the outclassed opposition during Man U’s fifth-round FA Cup game against lowly Northampton Town on 7 February 1970. I was ten, but even a pre-pubescent soccer novice and sports agnostic could see that this was more than just a game of footy; Best seemed supernaturally gifted, appearing to glide around opposing players, inches above the pitch, with a boot locked on the ball until he decided it was time to release it, goal-bound. The BBC Sport website sums up the phenomenon, when it describes how he scored his final goal of the match:

“He skipped through the Northampton defence, rounded keeper Kim Book, and stood on the ball on the goal line, saluting the United fans before knocking the ball into an empty net.”

At the time, critics focused on the fact that Northampton Town was an inferior, fourth division team. Pelé — probably the greatest player of all time and all-time top Brazilian goalscorer — holds the world record for hat tricks (92). He played against many substandard league teams in his day; scored five goals in a game six times and four goals 30 times, but the statistics show no record of him having scored a double hat-trick, ever. And no England player has ever scored more than five goals in a single match. As I said, though, it isn’t the goals, it’s the vibe: the élan with which he scored them. Best’s display against Northampton Town was poetry; but he wasn’t boring old Betjamin, he was ballsy Lord Byron. Without the limp.

Man Utd, incidentally, didn’t even get to the cup final that year (Chelsea won it, beating Leeds 2-1 in an Old Trafford replay following a score draw at the first attempt), but the only important score that season was MUFC 8, Northampton Town 2 (Kidd kicked United’s two other goals).

For a generation of kids, Best’s defining image as the 1970s soccer star pre-dated the musical revolution that happened in 1976. In the days when most players still wore their shirts tucked into their shorts and their socks hiked-up to their knees, Best played with rumpled socks and his shirt hanging out, to the disgust of your grandparents and old fogeys alike. His shirt would billow behind him as he ran; persistence of vision leaving, like his long, windblown hair, a blur of speed-lines behind the ball. Some of us were less impressed by the fact that he left other players for dead than we were by the way he wore his number 11 or 7 red shirt. He epitomised that same Britishness that the Beatles, the Clash and Oasis have at various times represented.

Some have cruelly said the best thing that could happen to George now would be for him to die quietly. I don’t think it’s a matter of him deserving anyone’s sympathy, or their liver. But, along with Pastorius, Hendrix and Belushi, Best helped to define a particular kind of 20th Century style — the eccentric outsider whose flamboyance distracts you from his brilliance just long enough for him to pummel your senses into a pulp. And critics will say that, like them, Best wasted his talent. But the brightest flames burn fastest, and Best in his heyday encapsulated the game’s appeal with the elation of an on-pitch magic show.

I’ll leave the pundits arguing over whether he really was the best. George Best has never lived his life by the book but, even with his best behind him, he’s been far more fun to watch than people who do.

Updates
2 November 2005:
George Best ‘out of bed’
George Best: the waster who became patron saint of drunks
Now George Best is on kidney dialysis

9 November 2005:
Best out of danger

20 November 2005:
George Best still on life support as he battles severe infection

22 November 2005:
Legend Best ‘partly conscious’

23 November 2005:
George Best is ‘better than he was’

25 November 2005:
‘His hours are numbered’

Friday 25 November 2005, 12.55pm:
George Best dies, aged 59
The long goodbye

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2005-10-26T09:47:00.000+13:00

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Three-hour tour of a career

2005-09-07T21:42:00.000+12:00

Gilligan's dead. He died on Friday. Poor old silly old chicken-headed Gilligan. His name was Bob Denver, of course, no relation to John as far as I know, but he did live in West Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. Which are not actually in West Virginia, as someone from West Virginia once told me at a drunken awards night. I think she said they were in Virginia, but it reminded me once again why I don't trust song lyrics.

Gilligan's Island, the absolute naffest of the naff TV series, ran from 1964 to 1967. Yet it had a kind of irritating charm, a bit like Winston Peters. The weekly tale of a bunch of idiots stranded on deserted island after a pleasure cruise, and its silly theme tune, stayed with me. I must have seen it in repeats, as I wasn't yet a sentient being.

He was 70, would you believe, Gilligan. He'd had a quadruple bypass earlier this year and was having treatment for cancer, says the NY Times.

"Little buddy" is survived by his third wife, Dreama – America is such a strange place – and children. The Denvers had a syndicated radio show, Weekend with Denver and Denver. America is such a strange place.

A few years ago, a tabloid magazine tracked down the cast members of Gilligan's Island. Gilligan, the Skipper too, the Millionaire, and his Wife; the Movie Star, the Professor and Mary Ann. Usually these Whatever Happened To... stories are furiously upbeat and show how gorgeous these now quite clearly ancient people still are. But the Professor, for one, doubtless despite the best efforts of make-up, lighting and digital retouching, looked like he'd been drinking fermented coconut juice for the past 40 years. Poor Professor. He was the best one, a sort of predigital McGyver, who invented a radio out of coconuts and braided tree fronds. And he never got to shag Mary Ann.

Slate's Dana Stevens has a telling anecdote about the man (though she's mistaken about Dawn Wells. She was Mary Jane.

In 1998, at the age of 63, Denver was charged with possession of 35 grams of marijuana, which he claimed at first to have obtained from his friend and former Gilligan co-star Dawn Wells, who played the vampy movie star Ginger. But later in court, Denver refused to narc on Wells, testifying that "some crazy fan must have sent it" (along, presumably, with the 10 other grams of pot and three pipes found in a search of his home). After pleading no contest to the charge, he received six months' probation.

Given Denver's role in the creation of two of the archetypal TV slackers of our culture, there's something sweet about this story: The image of the then 59-year-old Ginger acting as Gilligan's supplier; his loyalty in refusing to name her in court; and most of all, the image of an aging Gilligan/[earlier character] Maynard G Krebs, still dreaming away in his hammock or jamming on his bongo drums, smiling, a little high, and not quite ready to leave the island yet.

Here come the nouveau PC

2005-08-29T19:34:00.000+12:00

“Whatever you do, don’t mention the war,” said John Cleese in perhaps the most famous episode of Fawlty Towers. He was referring to WWII, but it wouldn’t be an inappropriate sentiment now. Far from it in fact.

The war you don’t mention is Vietnam, not WWII. The Sydney Morning Herald’s wittiest columnist Mike Carlton picked up on this on Saturday:

The new political correctness of the ratbag right decrees that nobody must compare the unhappy result of the Vietnam war to the wonderful march of democracy in Iraq. Anyone who mentions the word quagmire can only be a pathetic baby boomer, dissolute and decrepit, pining for the bad old days of moratorium demos, Whitlamism, bell-bottom pants, Jane Fonda, etc.

This view is trumpeted most loudly by the thirty-something know-alls of the right-wing blogosphere, whose ferocious enthusiasm for the Iraq war is matched only by their reluctance to take part in it.

Carlton is an Australian, obviously, but I’m sure you get the drift. He was responding to an article in the same paper by Washington correspondent Michael Gawenda who said there were no lessons from Vietnam that apply to Iraq and that boomers should get on with planning their retirement.

Carlton responds, “groping about in the fog of senility,” that in both cases it was not a good idea to rely on CIA intelligence fantasies (Gulf of Tonkin, WMD), that overwhelming technological superiority does not guarantee victory, that in neither case could liberal democracy be imposed (GW Bush and LBJ both hailed new constitutions), finally, he says, both wars show you should have clear war aims and exit strategies.

The American people have begun to tire of young soldiers coming home horizontally for no visible result. Eventually, whoever is in the White House will announce that Baghdad is ready to command its own destiny, blah blah. Iraq will then either collapse into civil war or become a hardline Islamist theocracy in league with Iran. It will be the fault of Dubya and the neo-cons if the US is humiliated, with the war on terrorism no nearer an end. But by then we baby boomers will be safely tucked away in the sunset home.

Come on, let’s be fair Mike. There are two other possible scenarios. A new Saddam might emerge as a staunch US ally and, at the expense of untold lives and treasure, we’ll all lurch back to the 1980s. Or, unlikely as it may seem right now, the American mission may yet be accomplished.

But leaving the fate of Iraq aside for now, the idea that the right is creating, or rather increasingly bogged down in, a new form of political correctness is interesting. What we call PC is really just lazy reflexive thought, I think. It emerges when once vibrant systems of ideas hit their peak and start heading downhill. No matter where it comes from, it is an attempt to limit debate and discussion. Wikipedia defines it as follows:

Political correctness is a term used to criticise what are seen as misguided attempts to impose limits on language and the range of acceptable public debate. While it frequently refers to a linguistic phenomenon, it is sometimes extended to cover political ideology and behavior. The terms "politically correct" or "P.C." are also used.

Watching the right over the last couple of years has been like watching one of those time-lapse nature films. You can see them peaking and decaying before your very eyes. From the triumphalism of the conquest of Baghdad, through the incompetent management of the post-war period and the insurgency to now, the right has failed and the noise from its legion of camp followers just gets more and more shrill.

Worst of all, they suddenly seem bereft of ideas. Look at Donald Rumsfeld’s recent performances. He is a shadow of his former self. He's becoming a girlie-man.

The war hawks suddenly appear impotent in the claws of a history they themselves created. When you do see new strategies, they are almost universally attempts to right the wrongs of the very recent past. They are initiatives the political centre and left have been calling for throughout – such as Condoleeza Rice’s recent attempts to rebuild a kind of multilateralism.

So what about some other examples of the political correctness of the right? Over at Public Address Russell Brown has spotted a few over the years such as a centre right council “wading into people’s lives” to ban alcohol consumption in public areas across the Auckland Or Murray McCully attempting to neuter a public health advertisement that “might offend a significant number of viewers”

These are, I guess, everyday examples. They are the responses of political conservatives more than of the new right. But if you have a good look at the Shrill Brigade online you will find other examples - apart from their unwillingness to mention the war.

For instance, isn’t describing someone as a feminazi as much an attempt to demonise someone’s ideas and shut down debate as describing someone as a male chauvinist pig? The shrill fall easily into using these comfortable terms – feminazi, MSM, girlie-man, surrender-monkey – largely as a substitute for thought.

It’s thinking by numbers, cut and paste logic. It’s just what they accuse their political enemies of. It’s sad and it’s increasingly weird.

Last week under the ponderous heading “A lefty writing for the MSM can’t find anything wrong with Clark’s speeding motorcade” AL (Antarctic Lemur … presumably not his real name) over at Sir Humphrey’s had a bit of a go at this post by me. He seemed mightily offended:

O'Neill appears to be a technology reporter for Fairfax Australia papers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age. Note his use of certain terms suggests he considers himself part of the political left.You can read an Australian bloggers exchange with O'Neill about perceived bias in the MSM here. I imagine the irony will be lost on O'Neill.

Sprung! Well done Lemur! Long may you evolve …

The irony was lost on me, I must admit. For starters, if you’ll pardon a minor factual correction, the blogger in question isn’t Australian. Secondly, if you read what he says, he isn’t actually complaining about his treatment in the dreaded MSM – well not much.

Even if he was, believe it or not, in the MSM we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about offending people. Call us old fashioned, but to some extent we consider it our job. I know, I know, that’s not very PC of us, and since we are all lefties that must be very confusing for you, Lemur. But I’m sure you’ll adjust.

When I pointed out that what I was saying in my post was exactly what the judge in the case had said (see comments to post), Lemur harrumphed a bit, as Lemurs do, and pulled his neck in:

The judge is obviously correct (I wouldn't 2nd guess a judge) - if Clark and Sutton don't assume responsibility for the journey, then indeed the driver is responsible.

Note the officers involved have been advised by the Police Association not to talk to the media, and the civilian driver says he can't talk because of a clause in his employment contract. And no the judge isn't a leftie, he's just applying the law as it stands.

So when I say what the judge said I’m a “lefty” and when the judge says it he’s not. Hmmm. But what I really like about AL’s post is this line: “Note his use of certain terms suggests he considers himself part of the political left.”

These are the guys who used to lampoon the left’s paranoia, their tendency to look for black helicopters everywhere. I realise that some at Sir Humphreys may be, like Mike Carlton, “groping about in the fog of senility”, but Reds under the Bed? That's so, like, 1950s.

Okay, away from political weirdness and back to political correctness.

Way back in 1996, in an article titled "Mummy, what’s a feminazi?" the late Andrew Heal argued that we still talk about PC is a travesty in itself.

There was a point - it must have been a couple of years ago now - when "PC" looked set to die a well-earned death. If it has remained part of the wider vernacular, it is surely because: a) its employers are so damned unhip they don't know when a catchphrase stops being funny and begins to bark like a dead dog; and b) because it's a damn convenient whipping boy.

What better than a shadowy, unseen enemy, rich in parody-prone stereotypes which nobody claims to be part of and never fights back? God knows, with the death of communism we needed another one.

PC gave rise to the "silent majority". (Another phrase which, on both counts, may be as mythical as the one under scrutiny. Who would dare accuse working-class anti-PC heroes like John Banks, Leighton Smith and Arch Tambakis or their middle-class counterparts Rosemary McLeod, Frank Haden and Lindsay Perigo of being backward in coming forward?) .

The term 'straw dogs' springs to mind. Heal cites another definition of PC: "conforming to a body of liberal or radical opinion, especially on social matter, in the avoidance of anything, even established vocabulary, that may conceivably be construed as discriminatory, or pejorative; advocacy of this".

Now, quite apart from the fact that "may conceivably be construed" sounds like a prime piece of doublespeak in itself, this requires us to define two other words. Liberal: "generous; noble-minded; broad-minded; not bound by authority or traditional orthodoxy". And radical: "favouring thoroughgoing but constitutional social and political reform".

So political correctness, it would seem, is being bound to an authoritarian doctrine but not being bound by authority. It requires a narrow-minded conformity to broad-mindedness. All this time, in other words, PC may have never actually meant anything much at all. Then again … a conformity to broad-mindedness. Couldn't extremists on either side of the PC divide learn something from that sentiment?

Conformity to broad-mindedness? Sounds okay to me. The lack of doubt and nuance in much of what the Shrill Ones right, sorry write, is a sure sign of its absence.

In the end all the recent talk of political correctness is, like what it criticises, an attempt to categorise and deride ideas, often very different ideas, without dealing with or even attacking their essence.

It’s an attempt to avoid debate. And only girlie-men do that.

Okay, be careful out there and whatever you do, remember, don’t say "quagmire”.

Irreducible stupidity?

2005-08-21T11:05:00.000+12:00

For someone like me, for whom the idea of overarching patterns and underlying design helps to confer some meaning to life, Intelligent Design — the idea that there are natural systems that cannot adequately be explained by natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence — has a selfish attraction.

Indeed, what would the point of all this be, if the works of all my favourite novelists, poets, film-makers and artists weren’t the product of a universal mind, weren’t the victory of meaning over coincidence?

The problem is, if you’re going to take scientists to task, you’d better know your science. It’s difficult — if not impossible — to make a stand over Intelligent Design without understanding the intricacies of biology and quantum physics.

Right. I’ll get me coat.

Meanwhile, the mainstream scientific community, says Wikipedia, opposes claims that ID is a solid scientific theory: “Despite ID sometimes being called Intelligent Design Theory, the National Academy of Sciences has said, intelligent design ‘and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life’ are not science because their claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own. Instead it is argued that they find gaps within current evolutionary theory and fill them in with speculative beliefs.”

We’ve all seen those credulous, wide-eyed geezers in anoraks on our TVs, clutching their Da Vinci Code maps and their Bible Code log tables, rummaging through the French countryside in search of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, accepting even that which is labelled as fiction as Gospel; never mind the myths that are sugar-coated in a little science to help make them more palatable with passing time. “I don’t believe all of it, of course, but there must be an element of truth in there someplace because it can’t all be coincidence…”

It’s when religious and controversial thinkers try to displace or to discredit science with their own theories that the real problems begin for ID.

Leon Wieseltier (whose surname translates from German, in a wonderfully evolutionary way, as “weasel animal”), the literary editor of The New Republic, calls the proponents of intelligent design “cunning souls”. “Intelligent design was conceived as the solution to a religious problem, not a scientific one. The problem is that the cosmogony in Genesis does not resemble what we know about the origins of the world.” But, as Wieseltier says, “Sanctity is not an excuse for stupidity”.

The most famous proponent of ID is William A. Dembski. Dembski, says Wikipedia, is a US mathematician, philosopher and theologian who advocates the idea of intelligent design in opposition to the theory of evolution through natural selection. While Dembski concedes that “lightning strikes are readily explained in terms of the laws of physics, with no need to invoke a designer”, he does argue for evidence of design in physics and cosmogony.

In order for a counter-theory even to be entertained by the scientific community, it has to be credible, which means rigorous testing. ID proponents protest that their theories are being ignored by academia, which breeds ignorance. “How does presenting only one theory breed ignorance?” asks Jason Rosenhouse in Should we teach “the Controversy”? “If there is only one theory that is supported by the available evidence, then surely it breeds ignorance to present anything other than that theory.”

Such critics of intelligent design, and of Dembski in particular, say no papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific literature that support ID. Dembski has claimed that his book, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, was peer reviewed. But the reviewing was done by mathematicians and philosophers, not by biologists and evolutionary scientists. Wikipedia says:

“While it is true to say that a work about ID has been published in a peer-reviewed journal for mathematics and philosophy, it is false to claim that any work actually supporting the existence of intelligent design has been so published in the arena of scientific press in which the topic is debated, which is what Dembski implies.”

Of course, Dembski has his own blog and his posts accumulate plenty of inflammatory comments. But even to a layperson like me, it rapidly becomes apparent that his science is armed with a peashooter while the other side has the WMDs. Philosophically, he fares a little better, but he’s widely satirised by the scientific community and many websites are dedicated to discrediting his beliefs and spoofing those of other ID proponents.

Dembski’s writings, and in particular this paper, make persuasive reading, in a Dan Brown sort of way, but he struggles to prove that ID is indeed science, and not, as many claim, politics.

It’s interesting to me that Dembski refers to a work of fiction, Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact, to explain himself; his point apparently being that Sagan based his characters’ methods on actual scientific practice:

“In that novel, radio astronomers discover a long sequence of prime numbers from outer space. Because the sequence is long, it is complex. Moreover, because the sequence is mathematically significant, it can be characterised independently of the physical processes that bring it about. As a consequence, it is also specified. Thus, when the radio astronomers in Contact observe specified complexity in this sequence of numbers, they have convincing evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.”

Detractors would say, though, that if you create a long enough string of numbers you’ll always find patterns in it; just as a study of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick will produce multiple arrays of equidistant letter sequences that apparently ‘predict’ the assassination of well-known personalities.

Terrestrial intelligence is proving itself to be increasingly resistant to Dembski’s ideas. It’s as though the world, if not the universe, is moving irreversibly away from him. There are sufficient biologists and physicists capable of rubbishing his science for the amusement of their peers. But it takes a really good novelist to utterly destroy confidence in it for the benefit of the common man. Martin Amis, in his 1995 novel The Information, contrasts the vastness of the universe with his own protagonist and antagonist to remind the reader how insignificant are their earthly fixations:

“It would seem that the universe is thirty billion light years across and every inch of it would kill us if we went there. This is the position of the universe with regard to human life.”

It has to be said, though, that in discrediting and lambasting Dembski, the scientific community has occasionally been guilty of a similar form of sloppy logic to that of which they accuse him. Proponents of intelligent design are not proposing a form of creationism and they do not literally interpret the first chapters of Genesis.

Critics of intelligent design, such as Jacob Weisberg at Slate, say the IDers are resisting scientific reality, but if you read Dembski’s white paper, in it he argues dispassionately for a separation of ID from creationism, and does not say that because it seems to him that there are signs of design behind physics theory and cosmogony that this is proof of the existence of God. Dembski is not proposing supernaturalism as an explanation or a cause of ID:

“… the charge of supernaturalism against intelligent design cannot be sustained. Indeed, to say that rejecting naturalism entails accepting supernaturalism holds only if nature is defined as a closed system of material entities ruled by unbroken laws of material interaction. But this definition of nature begs the question. Nature is what nature is and not what we define it to be. To see this, consider the following riddle: How many legs does a dog have if one calls a tail a leg? The correct answer is four. Calling one thing another thing doesn’t make it something else.”

Unfortunately, Dembski’s punchline works as well against him as it does in his favour. Good science requires there to be a debate about definitions and principles, but riddles don’t really contribute anything meaningful to the debate when Stephen Hawking and Sir Roger Penrose are on the opposing team.

And yet, history bears the testimony of plenty of scientists who ignored contrary points of view simply because they were considered incompatible with the prevailing view of the universe at the time.

If ID science (such as it is) is wrong, immature, or incompatible with the science of Hawking and co., fair enough. While I can understand the traditional scientific community snubbing its nose at creationists and those seeking to rewrite the evolutionary textbooks, I find it a little difficult to understand why such noble minds even bother to grace the philosophy of ID with their scholarly attention if the science is so egregious. Dembski says:

“The controversy surrounding intelligent design occurs at many levels, but it is ultimately a scientific controversy within the scientific community… if there were no scientific controversy here, these other aspects would never have gotten off the ground.”

But others, such as Rosenhouse at Talk Reason, argue for ID to be utterly disregarded by scientists because: “its defenders have not shown that their theory can account for any of the data evolution accounts for, and they have not provided any reason for believing that their theory even has the potential to produce anything useful to science.”

Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” To that, the proponents of intelligent design would probably say, “Define Nature.”

But it is perhaps Amis who makes the strongest, and saddest, point of all:

“The information is nothing. Nothing: the answer to so many of our questions. What will happen to me when I die? What is death anyway? Is there anything I can do about that? Of what does the universe primarily consist? What is the measure of our influence within it? What is our span, in cosmic time? What will our world eventually become? What mark will we leave — to remember us by?”

Whether or not Amis is right about the meaning of life being nothing (and not, as so many of us had come to believe, 42), asking such questions is natural enough. And the likely answer is a sobering, if peace-filled, one. Science is showing it’s increasingly likely that seeking a meaning is the only meaning we’re going to get. However you spell the name of your supreme being, if there is one, it’s become progressively more challenging to accept that it’s operating at a secular level. Coming to terms with this is going to require an evolutionary leap of humanity equivalent to those required by the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution.

In this regard, at least, Mr Dembski and his kind are being left behind by the collective consciousness. Here’s Amis, one last time, from The Information:

“It might help if we knew where we were going, and how fast.
The Earth revolves at half a kilometre per second.
The Earth orbits the Sun at thirty kilometres per second.
The Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way at 300 kilometres per second.
The Milky Way is travelling in the general direction of Virgo at 250 kilometres per second.
Astronomically, everything is always getting further away from everything else.”

(P.S.: The King of Gonzo’s memorial celebration makes for a suitably absurd footnote.)

Blogjams and other stories

2005-08-04T19:35:00.000+12:00

There's one born every minute. Blogs, that is. Well, actually, one every second. That's inflation for you. There may be a million blogs in the UK, 14 million worldwide. Almost certainly more. Perhaps less.

The Guardian quotes Technorati founder Dave Sifry as saying that while the blogosphere is growing like topsy squared, the number of active blogs has been steady for the past year. "I think that this shows that even as the blogosphere is growing at a geometric pace, the 'stickiness' of the tools and the willingness to write hasn't changed much at all." There has to also be willingness to read, of course. Content will always be king, queen, wizard and jester. Though the Blog of Anne Frank doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?

Still, any eventuality's possible in a world that gives in which a blogging London call girl can land a book deal and a Channel 4 drama, even though she really may just be a bloke taking the michael.

Speaking of films, Slate has a story on the possible death of movie theatres due to film studios giving them the financial equivalent of stomach-stapling by shortening the time window till movies go to video (straight to DVD doesn't have the same dismissive thump, does it?). It mentions the idea of the 'triage' of films via test screenings, polls and focus groups, to figure out which ones would draw punters into theatres and which would be best dumped straight into the (now hugely profitable) DVD market. This, of course, already happens in New Zealand. Some US movies never make it into cinemas, and you can just see poor buggers in the video shop wondering if they had read anything good about Death to Smoochy in their trawls around the critical web. Some films get a showing at the film festivals, and the public is never sure if ones like League of Gentlemen: Apocalypse (fan-pleasing effort, with a bulging plot resembling a student's last-minute science project) or Birth (a remarkably patient Nicole Kidman-led meditation on possible reincarnation from the maker of Sexy Beast) will get a wider release.

Of course, one way we know if a film is any good is if a critic we usually agree with gives it a plug or a swerve. Suckers of the fake critic David Manning of Connecticut's Ridgfield Press can at least get their money back, thanks to an LA court. The Hollow Man, A Knight's Tale, Vertical Limit, The Animal and The Patriot all boasted glowing review lines supposedly written by Manning, but really penned by employees of Sony. The first two films are schlocky fun, but the other three did need the help. But are there really not enough soft critics around?

No room for soft sorts when it comes to Auckland's transport. If Istanbul can, despite centuries of deeply impacted history underfoot, extend its meagre underground system, and Christchurch, with its allegedly awful traffic problems can consider a subway, why can't we? Curiously enough, the NZ Herald says a sort of maybe one is indeed on the drawing board. Why the hell, though, do we have to wait 20 years for it?

Everyone is someone else’s infidel (2)

2005-08-02T21:14:00.000+12:00

My methodology in writing Part One of this post may have been slovenly, and yes, my own website is called ‘The Bumper Book of Lies’ (a collection of short, genre fiction, not Snopes-style urban myths), but I didn’t set out to uncover a right-wing conspiracy or a shock breakdown in journalistic ethics. And now I’m going to damage my reporting credibility further by contradicting my earlier post and quoting Sting, from History Will Teach Us Nothing:

“Without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse
Without freedom from the past, things can only get worse.”
[© Sting, 1987, published by Magnetic Music Publishing Ltd, Represented by Regatta Music/Illegal Songs Inc.]

At least I made an attempt at rigorous research. All you need is a web browser and half a brain. Within hours of posting Everyone is someone else’s infidel (1), Richard Langworth, editor of Finest Hour at the Churchill Centre, replied to an email in which I’d asked him whether any record exists of why Churchill excised the two chapters from later editions:

“Hi Chris-
Your travels do take you widely. Are you still receiving CC publications? We published that quotation in FH 113 as “Quotation of the Decade?” I see Winston (grandson) has just discovered and published it.

The reigning expert on the text is Jim Muller, who prepared the new unabridged edition coming out with St Augustine Press, so I’m passing your query to him. I am sure Jim knows exactly what was excised, but whether he knows why in each particular case, I’m not sure. But I think those chapters contained some criticism which WSC deemed wise to expunge after his political career began.”
(My emphasis)

I wasn’t sure which travels Mr Langworth was referring to, but I had recently got back from the dairy... It occurred to me that he might be confusing me with someone else, so I checked. As it transpires, I’d been fortunate to get such a prompt and friendly response:

“My apologies, Chris… I thought you were the Prof. Chris Bell, who has recently rotated from the Naval War College at Newport, R.I. to the University of Alberta. Your question sounded just like one he would ask!”

Ah. My email was clearly smarter than I am. In the meantime, I received fascinating new information from Professor James W. Muller, from the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, who may also have been unintentionally misled by Mr Langworth into believing I was a University of Alberta Professor [memo to self: research online diplomas]:

“Seven chapters of The River War (and parts of all the others) disappeared when the book was abridged for the second edition in 1902. One of those was Chapter XXII, ‘The Return of the British Division’, the source of the passage referred to in your message, which Richard Langworth forwarded to me.

“Because the passage as you quoted it omitted one part, lacked italics, and had some errors in punctuation, I quote it here from the first edition:

‘How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical {249*} frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social developement of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is {250*} a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science — the science against which it had vainly struggled — the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.’

“The source of the passage is Winston Spencer Churchill, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899), II 248-50; numbers in {braces*} within the quotation show where new pages begin. With respect to the question of why Churchill omitted the passage in the second and all subsequent editions of the book, we have little hard evidence. We know that his literary agent and publisher sought a second edition of the book that would fit into a single volume, and that that required cutting long passages from the first edition. We also know that some readers and reviewers criticized the first edition for its personal passages, which they found inappropriate and unnecessary in a campaign history. We can surmise, as several biographers have, that Churchill might, on second thought, have deemed some passages indiscreet, and that he took advantage of the need to abridge the book to excise them. That this might be one such passage is suggested by Churchill’s argument in the previous chapter (II 214-15) that British imperial authorities ought not to attack the religion of native subjects.
(My emphases)

“The original source of the passage is the last of Churchill’s fifteen dispatches to The Morning Post (London), written at Assiout on Sep. 20, 1898, which appeared on p. 5 of the newspaper on Oct. 13, 1898. The newspaper editor made some small changes in what Churchill actually wrote, which was as follows:

‘How dreadful are the curses which Mahommedanism lays upon its votaries? Besides that fanatical fever, which is as rational and as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog — there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, insecurity of property, exist wherever the followers of Mahomet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace & refinement: the next of its dignity and sanctity. Individuals may show splendid qualities. But the influence of the religion is paralysing. It does indeed teach men how to die. It should rather teach them how to live. Dying is a trick very few people have been unable to pick up.’

“The original holograph dispatch, which I have quoted here, is in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds.

“Further information on all of these points will be included in the new edition of The River War to be published later this year in two volumes by St. Augustine’s Press, which incorporates a new edition of Churchill’s dispatches from the war on the Nile in Appendix I, based for the first time on his original holograph dispatches. With all best wishes,
Yours,
Jim Muller”

[The part of the quotation that had been removed entirely from the email version I received was “Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die”. The other inconsistencies were in Americanised spellings and punctuation.]

Perhaps Churchill did, then, decide this passage was indiscreet, that it didn’t tally with his previous argument that the Empire shouldn’t attack the religion of native subjects. If Churchill wrote it and then thought better of it, it’s incumbent upon bloggers, political columnists and those who forward email messages to everyone in their address books to do the same before quoting him.

Ben Macintyre, in his Times column ‘How would Churchill have answered the Islamist threat?’, cited in Part One of this post, uses portions of the quotation to support his argument that Churchill would have fought the suicide bombings in London with “inexorable sternness”. So it’s disingenuous of him — as well as of those who misquoted it in blogs or forwarded WC’s “speech” to all and sundry via email — not to mention that it was edited it out of the book shortly after it was written. They could have found out that Churchill may have been less resolute than they’d assumed with a little research.

In his day, Winston Churchill was happy to describe civilisation as “sympathetic, merciful, tolerant, ready to discuss or argue, eager to avoid violence, to submit to law, to effect compromise” — when it suited him. Those qualities are mere aspirations as long as we disseminate ancient, abandoned arguments uncritically. And let’s not forget that WC himself was willing to abandon those characteristics of civilisation whenever they became inconvenient.

Dying is indeed a trick very few people have been unable to pick up, and here we have a man who (purportedly) said, “A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.” A doctrine less reasonable when applied to your own side’s PoWs, and those serving in the armed forces at the time would have been right to wonder where WC drew the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and when he was likely to shift it.

I once heard Peter Gabriel remark that the true sign of a person’s intelligence is where they draw that line: “As soon as a group of people are designated as ‘them’, a remoteness, a distancing, is created right from the outset,” he says. He has also said: “When you put people in the box marked ‘them’, you can kick them around a lot more easily than when they’re in the box marked ‘us’. So I think it’s useful to try and empty the box marked ‘them’ and fill up the box marked ‘us’.”

Macintyre of the Times goes on to refer to “the outpouring of resistance on the internet, with its spontaneous black humour” and how swiftly the internet allows the world to change. Indeed, it’s capable of changing from this to this in little more than the blink of an eye. We really should thank [insert your chosen Deity here] for black humour.

The late Frank Zappa had a song called Dumb All Over. Part of it goes:

“Whoever we are
Wherever we’re from
We shoulda noticed by now
Our behaviour is dumb
And if our chances
Expect to improve
It’s gonna take a lot more
Than tryin’ to remove
The other race
Or the other whatever
From the face Of the planet altogether.”
[© 1981, 1994 The Zappa Family Trust d/b/a/ MUNCHKIN MUSIC (ASCAP). All rights reserved.]

Zappa shared some views with the humorist Bill Maher, who cautioned, in his one-man show ‘Victory Begins At Home’, that the tolerant must be careful not to tolerate the intolerant. We should also resist the urge to condemn the many for the evils of a few, or because we don’t like the sound of their names — whether we decide to call that group “terrorists”, “infidels” or, for that matter, “bloggers”.

It’s a word that gets bandied about, but my New Oxford Dictionary of English says “infidel” originally denoted a person of a religion other than one’s own, specifically a Moslem (to a Christian), a Christian (to a Moslem), or a Gentile (to a Jew). And Dr Jamal Badawi, Professor of Religious Studies and Management at St. Mary’s University and vice-chairman of the Islamic American University, says “infidel” isn’t an accurate translation of any word in the Qur’an. It was used by the Crusaders to refer to the Moslems, not the other way around.

An online glossary of terms used in reference to Islam says the word “Kafir”, which is frequently translated as “infidel”, literally means someone who covers his or her heart, somehow signifying an unbeliever. “It is a descriptive term, not a derogatory slur or a sanction for murder. Kafir does not translate to infidel, which is offensive and dehumanising, used to justify the murder of Moslems during the Crusades.” The same glossary says Mohammedan is: “an out-dated and extremely offensive word coined by orientalists to describe Moslems. Moslems reject this title since it implies they worship Mohammed, instead of The One God”. The Churchill quotation refers to “Mohammedanism” which, at the very least, is inaccurate.

Religious groups of all flavours, of course, take offence easily. Believers in Omnipotent Beings may not only be insulted by words but also alarmed that they are being used to reinforce untruths. The easy accessibility of such errors in translation underscores how much the world has changed since WC’s tirade. “Islam” is no more a “them” in the sense of it being an enemy than “Christianity” could be considered by Christians to be a unified ally.

There are lessons to be had from history if we’re willing to learn them, and we really would be “dumb all over” to dismiss Churchill’s leadership skills and experience. However, while he may have recognised the rise of dangerous movements and dictatorships in swathes of contemporary action, he had no experience of life in the 21st Century.

One of the most important historical lessons we ought by now to have learnt is that single forces rarely motivate the individual. So, since everyone is someone else’s infidel, perhaps we need a new kind of ‘Declaration of Independence’.

“Ist” in German means is. “Ist” in English usually means trouble for somebody else; it’s in Christian, after all. Fundamentalist. Islamist. Existentialist. Orientalist. Atheist. Anarchist. Fascist. Communist. Nationalist. Papist. Pacifist. Militarist. Buddhist. Zionist. Feminist. Fatalist. Racist. Dadaist. Terrorist.

The “ist” that really matters is individualist. Why do we try so hard not to be individuals? And what would we change if we stopped trying to be anything else? It’s impossible to be 100% logically consistent about it but it’s something we might strive towards, in the spirit of Churchill’s argument that we shouldn’t attack the religion of native subjects.

Everyone is someone else’s infidel (1)

2005-07-31T21:20:00.000+12:00

Another email is lazily doing the rounds. Mine came via someone I know in the UK, prefaced by the asinine remark, “I always did like that fellow’s speeches.”

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
— Winston S. Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899)

Not being one to confuse the acceptance of things at face value with a desire for historical continuity, I deleted the email. And not being one to let rabid dogs lie, about an hour later I went back and retrieved it from Deleted Items.

One of the finer things about blogging, I’m discovering, is that it encourages you to strive for clarity in your ideas. Journalists and blogging colleagues at both ends of the political spectrum can be a big help in this, but we also generate a lot of white noise.

The world needs to do a lot of thinking just now. It requires action, too, but what it doesn’t need is more hatred, the lumping-together of individuals into amorphous groups of “ists” for the sake of laziness or to support belligerent nationalism and zealotry.

I was not surprised to find that the bloggers had discovered the WC quote. But it was depressing to find that it appears on many blog sites without even the most cursory of analysis, as though it represents the ultimate and inviolable expression of truth. It’s also depressing to find this quotation framed by so much hatred, and by blinkered incitements to violence.

I didn’t yet own a copy of The River War, so I could only verify that quotation online. I could have gone to the library, of course, but I was overcome by fearful fatalistic apathy that the book might be out on loan.

The Winston Churchill online shop doesn’t offer it for sale. Volume I is available from Project Gutenberg, but Volume II appears not to be. So I wrote to Ronald J. Goodden, who is cited as the person who produced the e-text in January 2004. He replied:

Mr Bell:
I'd be happy to oblige, if possible. Which “quote” were you referring to? Please understand that this etext is from a 1902 single-volume edition.
Cheers,
Ron Goodden
Atlanta, U.S.A.

I explained how, recently, elements of the WC quote have resurfaced in one of Ben Macintyre’s Times Online columns, ‘How would Churchill have answered the Islamist threat?’, but in a contextualised and incomplete form — at least when compared with the version circulating via email.

Frustrated that Volume II of The River War appears not to be widely available, I headed to Amazon UK and bought the Adobe e-book for a couple of pounds. It’s a single volume and none of the words quoted in Macintyre’s Times article appear in this e-version, other than the phrase “the mighty stimulus of fanaticism”, which isn’t part of the more controversial quotation.

The Churchill Centre refers to the unexpurgated version of the quote, the version that most frequently appears on blog sites (including at this one). The right-wing blogs are generally critical of Macintyre for supposedly neutering the full force of WC’s message.

The Churchill Centre’s ‘Publications and Resources’ section sheds more light on the missing text:

“THE RIVER WAR
First published by Longmans Green, London: 1899 (2vols)
Woods A2
Churchill’s greatest early work: a prose epic with much relevance today. Editions through 1965 are highly collectable. All editions from 1902 had an abridged text, in which Churchill excised about 25% of the original manuscript, but also some new material. First editions have 950pp, others 456 or less. An indispensable work. The Churchill Centre is now facilitating publication of a new unabridged edition.”
(My emphases)

Don’t expect, then, to be able to find that quotation in many of the currently available editions of WC’s book. It was removed following the first edition. So, unless you’re rich and/or resourceful, you’ll be lucky to find it in print.

Does Ben Macintyre, therefore, own one of the highly collectable and unabridged early editions? He doesn’t say. I wonder where he found the text from which he quotes; has he seen a copy of the book, did he seek out the original edition in a library, or did he simply find the quotation via the internet, as I and other bloggers have done?

The average blogger might have an excuse for inconsistency and obscurity, Mr Macintyre less so. I suggest he would have done his readers a service by mentioning that what must now be the best-known quote from this book was removed from most popularly available editions long ago, and that it has only recently come back into print.

If Churchill edited his own text, he may himself have removed the quotation from all subsequent editions as long ago as 1902, along with much else (my e-book, for example, has just 199 pages). The abridged version contains no preface explaining how and why the edits were made. I wondered whether this particular segment had been removed more recently by the publisher, in a post-Rushdie fit of political correctness.

The Churchill Centre very helpfully thanks one Gregory Smith for finding the quotation in the unabridged edition of The River War (the site suggests it might be the “Quotation of the Decade”), and it seems to be Smith who has largely been responsible for returning it to the attention of the modern reader. Andy Guilford, another reader at the Centre, says he cannot find the infamous quote in his one-volume Prion paperback (1997) and cannot remember having heard it on a ‘Books on Tape’ audio production, either.

“The editor” responds to Mr Guilford:

“The quotation falls in Volume II, Chapter XXII, ‘Return of the British Division’, which Churchill omitted starting in 1902. Likewise culled was Chapter XXI, ‘After the Victory’ [...] The bad news is that unabridged original copies of The River War (1899 1900) cost from US$1000 up. The good news is that an entirely new two volume edition is coming, thanks to Professor James Muller and The Churchill Centre.”

At the time I published this post, Richard Langworth, the editor of Finest Hour at the Churchill Centre had not yet replied to an email l sent him asking whether any record exists of why Churchill excised the two chapters from later editions.

In the meantime, Ron Goodden wrote back to say that he had entered some key phrases from the quotation into the Gutenberg e-texts for me, but was unable to locate them in the 1902 edition of the book. “I can only assume,” he wrote, “that if the quote is indeed genuine, it comes from the much longer, original edition. Sorry.”

If any NZBC reader has a print edition of the original, unabridged book, you have more money than sense. But I’d still be more than happy to buy a photocopy from you, in order to compare it with the e-book and find out what else has been removed.

Is it, then, insignificant that the quotation isn’t in recent versions — especially as the Churchill Centre is now re-publishing the unabridged book? After all, it isn’t as though I am suggesting that the quotation never originated from WC’s pen. Whether or not the widely distributed quotation is accurate, the fact remains that at some point the author or his publisher decided — for reasons as yet unknown — to remove it and the surrounding chapters.

The fervour these words still generate might be one reason why WC might have had the foresight to do so, but I doubt it.

In any case, it’s a bit rich for anyone to accuse The Times’ columnist Macintyre of neutering the full force of WC’s message when it’s relatively easy to establish that WC did a fair bit of that himself. It has to be said, though, that Macintyre isn’t exactly clear about the source of his quotes. He states that in The River War Churchill’s account “ended in the battle of Omdurman in 1898”. In fact, even in the abridged e-book, this is Chapter 15 of 19 chapters. The volume culminates in ‘The End of the Khalifa’. And all the stuff about rabid dogs and fanatical frenzy appears neither Macintyre’s column nor is it in the widely available abridged version of the book.

Anyway, as you can see, “fearful fatalistic apathy” needn’t be terminal — it’s even possible to corroborate some facts online, with a little cursory research. But should I be worried about my “degraded sensualism”? And if I’m ever improvident (my recent credit card statements suggest that I am), and I’m occasionally slovenly or sluggish, does that make me retrograde, does that paralyse my development, too? Or would other shortcomings be required for that? And who would one contact about finding a concubine?

I feel the need to exercise some artistic licence of my own, and to speculate further about why WC may have self-censored his work.

Perhaps he realised that it was rather odd for him to be ascribing “slovenly systems of agriculture” to the followers of a particular belief system. Particularly when, rather inconveniently, the origins of agriculture lie in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, part of present day Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Around those parts, they first started getting sloppy about 9500-8000 BC, and it was pretty much all downhill from there, thanks to those well-known disorderly bastards, the Sumerians.

Meanwhile Churchill’s antecedents were bashing around in caves with antlers and bones and trying to figure out how they could keep their fire alight so they could watch Aston Villa at home to Charlton Athletic.

[My thanks are due to Elisa B. for reminding me of the history of agriculture. I must have had a fatalistically apathetic spell on the day we did that in school.]

Where I grew up in the 1960s, “systems of agriculture” also tended towards the slovenly. They mainly involved Welsh hill farmers in wet duffle coats trying to drag bedraggled sheep by their hind legs out of the swamps and into their wellies before stopping in at the Chapel to bellow a few hymns in a defunct language (there were no mosques in Caergybi).

To WC, Islam was not only a dangerous force but also a curse upon its followers; an extraordinarily sweeping condemnation, even considering that his quoted words are over 100 years old — not that bold strokes necessarily invalidate old words. But it was a very different world in those days. Britain still had its Empire, the Crusades were being avenged in different ways and the world’s mothers were yet to bear millions of soon-to-be premature corpses.

We do well to learn lessons from the past, but we shouldn’t transpose them onto the present without questioning them, and we certainly shouldn’t expect them to help stop what is being perpetrated by a relatively small number of suicidal individuals, supposedly against the “infidel”. More about that in my next post, Everyone is someone else’s infidel (2).

The environmentally unsound confessions of a cosseted fauxmosexual

2005-07-20T20:57:00.000+12:00

No, the title isn’t that of a long-lost J.P. Donleavy novel. My confession is that I’m a man who cares for his skin. Big deal! you say, And so you should! In which case you may be any one — or indeed most — of the following:

a) A woman
b) A beautician
c) Living outside of New Zealand
d) None of the above.

I am, at least as far as my most retrosexual male friends are concerned, a metrosexual — better yet, as Carson Kressley might say, a “fauxmosexual”. This means, according to my friends’ definition rather than Carson’s, that I wash my face, use underarm deodorant and only have dirt under my nails when I’ve been picking up rocks.

I have grudgingly begun to agree with my friends. This is partly because I’ve spent so much time and money on cleansing, shaving and anti-ageing products at my local department store that I was recently invited back for a free facial treatment. During the course of this, I discovered to my shame that I knew far more about the products than the company’s own beautician did.

I say “to my shame”, but actually I can tell you all of these things without cringing, blushing or other major discomfort because for some time now I’ve had a girlfriend, which, I hasten to add with great glee, my supposedly macho friends do not. Not only is she young and beautiful and lovely, but my Retrosexual mates don’t have one at all. Not even an ugly one! “Well,” as Geoff Tipps might say, “It don’t sound much when you say it out loud.”

(Having a girlfriend also means I don’t need to pick up any more rocks, which is just as well because my chat-up lines were pathetic and I’d been forced to resign myself to progressively larger and less shapely rocks... “I don’t fancy yours much, pal.”)

My girlfriend tells me she likes the way I smell, and I have reason to believe she isn’t just saying that to make me feel better about being, at least by traditional Kiwi male standards, sexually ambiguous (that is, not only don’t I play rugby, I don’t want to watch it, wear stripy shirts or hang around in sports bars drinking Lion Red). It’s probably a good thing for them that none of these people knew me in the 1980s when I looked really girly.

But my cleanliness isn’t a fashion thing. I’ve always been mildly obsessive about it. I bathed and washed my hair daily even as an 11-year-old. My Mum must have thought I was a little angel, but my brother made up for that.

It’s surprising, though, that I didn’t get beaten up more often by the bullies who prowled the sprawling, violent North Wales comprehensive school I attended, wearing blazers with razor blades sewn under their lapels and with thumping great 22-lace Doc Marten boots on their adolescent feet, as though they were characters out of A Clockwork Orange. I assume their own feral tang (an unlikely collision between Sugar Puffs and diarrhoea, as I remember it) masked my perfumed pits and locks.

These days, as well as having an American Psycho-style personal hygiene routine, involving lots of these absurdly expensive, white-packaged facial products, I’m inclined to beat myself up quite a lot about the impact of my actions on the environment. What a dichotomy! All that foaming face-wash and shampoo lather would, in itself, be bad enough, but now I’ve discovered that the company that makes most of these overpriced personal care products doesn’t appear to care about the waste products they generate, our water quality, recycling or, indeed, what their customers care about. But hey, it’s an American company, so no great surprises there.

Over the years, I’ve spent literally thousands of dollars on Lab Series products. Yes, I know it’s sad, but we all have our vices. I’ve never been under any illusion that these products were going to work miracles on me, but on the other hand they haven’t done me much harm, either. And I didn’t expect them to be any more or less damaging to the environment than other soaps and detergents, but I didn’t think it could do any harm to ask.

So what makes me say that Aramis (which is owned by Estée Lauder) doesn’t care about the environment? Well, I wrote to them, and their reply would tend to suggest that they’ve been colluding with George W. Bush to destroy as swiftly as possible the world as we know it, and that they’ve employed an automaton — a Woman of Mass Denial — to help them to do it. It was an easy mistake to make: I thought they were trying to make me look younger, but in fact they are dastardly Evildoers, intent on poisoning everybody and destroying the planet. I’m so gullible sometimes.

When I first went to the ‘Ask An Expert’ section of the Aramis Lab Series For Men website I just wanted to know whether the “gentle scrubbing particles” in Lab Series’ Multi-Action Face Wash are made of plastic. You see, when you use this stuff to wash your face, it leaves a residue of strange blue beads behind in the washbasin, and they appear to be composed of something that doesn’t dissolve in hot water.

OK, this isn’t exactly the Exxon Valdez disaster, but why exactly would I want to send a daily consignment of tiny plastic beads into the wastewater just to make my face feel smooth after I’ve shaved? Can’t they make these things out of something biodegradable, like, er… apricot pits or something?

Anyway, a couple of weeks went by and, as you do, I forgot completely about having written to Aramis. I assumed my web form query had been swallowed by the internet and lost forever. Life, and my rigorous personal cleansing regime, went on. But then, a bloated email squelched into my inbox. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it had been written by Donald Rumsfeld, masquerading as a woman — yes, the aforementioned WMD:

-----Original Message-----
From: ConsumerCommunications-Lauder@esteelauder.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 5:07 PM
To: Chris Bell
Subject: Case #2,122,598

Dear Mr. Bell,

Thank you for your interest in Aramis.

As you may know, Aramis is one of the Estie Lauder Companies, Inc. As a global organisation, the Estie Lauder Companies share your concern and recognise the importance of protecting and preserving the environment.

Recycling has always occurred at the manufacturing stage, where worldwide manufacturing programs take maximum advantage of locally available options.

No standardised approved test exists to substantiate 'biodegradable', 'environmentally safe', or 'eco-friendly'. We therefore do not make these claims for our products. However, we have no reason to believe our products are not any of the above.

We trust that the above addresses your concern.

Sincerely,

Justine Vella
Consumer Communications Manager

2,122,598

THIS E-MAIL IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE ADDRESSEE(S) AND MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED THAT ANY USE OF THIS INFORMATION OR DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION OR COPYING OF THIS E-MAIL IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS E-MAIL IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY THE SENDER IMMEDIATELY BY RETURN E-MAIL AND DELETE THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE.THANK YOU.

Oh, the delicious “and now fuck off” tone of that final line! Oh, the bellowing arrogance of that disclaimer! Oh, the joy at discovering that neither Ms Vella nor the personal assistant who is likely saddled with her correspondence know how to spell their own employer’s name! And what about that number in the subject line and ominously added at the end for luck? Can I really be the 2,122,598th poor sod that Ms Vella has shrugged off with a vacuous, flak-crafted email? She seems to wear that number like a badge of honour, like a bomber pilot after a precision raid.

How convenient that no standardised approved test exists to substantiate “biodegradable”. How about creating your own test in one of your labs (if they exist), or referring to Greenpeace, or asking a country like Germany that has some experience in recycling and environmental impact? But no, why bother! “Estie” makes no such claims for her products, so who cares. We’ll all go down together, in a petrochemical-fuelled cart without a catalytic converter. After all, worldwide manufacturing programs take maximum advantage of locally available options. What a marvellous way of saying, “We don’t know or care what the manufacturers do — we’re in product marketing, stupid.”

I have no reason to believe that the WMD is an actual, living person. But, oh! What pleasure I took in replying to “Ms Vella”:

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Bell
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 5:55 PM
To: ConsumerCommunications-Lauder@esteelauder.com
Subject: RE: Case #2,122,598

Dear Ms Vella,

Yours is precisely the kind of evasive response a PR person might give to a hostile query. As I've been an Aramis customer for 25 years, I think it would be reasonable for me to expect a less ambiguous response from your company.

I used the facility on your website to ask a perfectly straightforward question about a specific Aramis Lab Series product: Are the exfoliation beads in Lab Series Multi-Action Face Wash made out of plastic, yes or no?

If they are (as indeed they appear to be), and as these bi-products are likely to end up being dispersed in New Zealand's wastewater, you would have every reason for believing that they are neither 'biodegradable' nor 'environmentally safe', and therefore certainly not 'eco-friendly'.

(Incidentally, I believe you'll find that your paymasters are the Estée, rather than Estie, Lauder Companies.)

So, no, your response does nothing to address my concerns and I am therefore seriously considering ceasing to use your products and publicising your unsatisfactory response via my website. And yes, I do note your disclaimer.

Yours sincerely,
Chris Bell

I now await Ms Vella’s response, taut-skinned… Well, I have to use up the rest of my Multi-Action Face Wash, don’t I. It cost me a bloody fortune.