Jambalaya

Lance Knobel writes "I've written a lot about anti-Americanism being an acceptable prejudice in Europe. Antisemitism attracts more criticism, but remarks like Dalyell's are accepted to a degree that would not be tolerated in the US" in response to Jonathan Freedland's Guardian article on Tam Dayell's recent racist slur. Both are off the mark.

There is no question this this was a racist slur: it was out of order and unacceptable. We all know that, and Tam Dayell (who is a spent force anyway) is further diminished by it. But it certainly does not warrant a public display of righteous indignation.

One should not take absence of condemnation as acceptance; tolerance is surely a virtue to which we should aspire; 'America's advanced intolerance' is not.

Afficionados of Pringles snacks will be devastated to learn that their factory was destroyed by a tornado earlier this month. (It's only bad news that travels like wildfire.)

The weather at the moment is dominated by a large cyclonic depression centred to the northwest of Ireland. It hasn't changed its position much over the past week and looks well dug in. It is pulling strong damp southwesterly/westerly winds across the country with periods of heavy rain alternating with fine but windy spells punctuated by heavy showers. It is warm in the sun but cooler when cloud dominates, making choice of attire difficult. The garden is doing well out of it, save for those plants that have been damaged by the wind.

Satellite photographs show the depression as a giant catherine wheel of cloud, larger overall than the British Isles. High pressure building to the East, over northern Europe is no doubt impeding its easterly progress but this doesn't do much to diminish its massive internal energy.

The awsome power of the elements is worth remembering: it is not a recent phenomenon, as global warmists might have us believe.

I am sitting on a train -- the Scottish Pullman -- on my way from King's Cross to York for the annual BAMM conference. For a change I am travelling ordinary class: the super advanced saver return at ｣49 was too good to miss.

The accomodation is quite good: air conditioned and more than adequately comfortable. There are two types of seats: cramped and not-so-cramped. The former spacesavers are stacked like airline seats. The latter (to which I have upgraded myself) are the familiar four to a table variety. I needed a table to write on, but the train is flying so fast (under two hours to York) and swaying so much that writing is pretty near impossible.

[Scribbled on a train yesterday: transcribed today in a York Internet cafe that is entirely Mac. Wow!]

A somewhat odd editoral in this week's Lancet asks if science is stuck in the Middle Ages. "In medieval Europe a young man who wanted to become a craftsman would apprentice himself to a master, after which he worked for a time as a salaried journeyman, before setting up as a master himself. There was an assessment of his skill--the making of a masterpiece--and the system was rigorously overseen by a guild. If this scenario sounds familiar it is because even today it is in use the world over to train the next generation of scientists." Quoting the recent report from the US National Academies on the challenges facing science, the editorial goes on to say that (for various reasons) "the current system compares unfavourably with the medieval one".

So far so good. Although clearly derived from the medieval craftsman approach, the present system for training young scientists and for managing science is significantly different, not least because of the sheer scale of scientific endeavour, not to mention the potential profits and their effect on priorities and scientific behaviour. This is not to deny, of course, that medieval craftsmen did it just for love rather than money. Judging from their legacy, however, one suspects that quality might even have been more important to them than quantity. So why does the editorial conclude: "Perhaps it is time to move the career paths of scientists out of the Middle Ages?"

It is well known that an alarmingly high proportion of current scientific eneavour is of astoundingly low quality (just look at the published literature). Should we not then reverse the trend for scientists in academic institutions to become shareholders and board members of biotechnology enterprises — especially those that do not "place a high enough priority on diseases that affect those who are least able to pay," — and encourage a more quality and needs-driven scientific culture?

The present uncharactersitic British summer heatwave has prompted a plethora of news articles on how to stay cool. An article in the Times, for example, covered dietary considerations ("In order to stay as cool as a cucumber, eat cucumbers"). But how do you keep your house cool? Do you open windows (to encourage a breeze), or close them? Should you draw curtains?

Today has not been good. Filled with a stinking cold I have been on a short fuse, sounding off at colleagues who didn't deserve it, and some who did. Petty frustrations — the stuff of life these days — became even more unbearable in the humid, post-heatwave-induced torpor. Machines played up, Murphy-like, whilst networks played down. Ho hum, ho hum.

There was a bit of good news somwhere, I am sure, but alas I cannot remember what it was.

It may seem that this site has gone into hibernation: not quite so. Much of my free time has been taken up with a gradual but complete upgrade of all the server software. We are now running up to date on Panther, Apache, Frontier, UW imapd, Exim and Squirrelmail. Lots of glitches on the way, but managed without any significant service interruption. Phew!

A memorial service for John Craig will be held at Ardingly College tomorrow, Tuesday 27th April at 11.15am. John was my brothers’ housemaster, and Nicholas has written the following obituary for the College:

John Craig, who died on 19th December at the age of 78, was one of a collection of remarkable young teachers who came to Ardingly during the 1950s under George Snow and who stayed to make it one of the finest schools in the South of England. Best known for his ‘tutorials’, where all his pupils were invited to discuss the ‘meaning of life’, John Craig was also a distinguished teacher of English Literature of the old school. One of his most celebrated threats was to give or dictate notes, if that was what his class wanted, but no text was ever annotated during one of his lessons because the words and poetry had to speak for themselves. For John Craig, Literature and the life it reflected were magical. He was one of that breed of teachers who was both able to appreciate the wonder of life and to impart its magic to generations of pupils, bringing the same vigour and originality to each new crop. He took his beliefs beyond the classroom to the CCF parade ground, the games field and most especially to the swimming pool where in sometimes glacial conditions, he ensured that all pupils could swim by the end of their first year. Latterly, he was renowned for his ‘school of life’ in the Western Isles where countless friends and visitors came to share his wondrous vision, climbing the hills, rowing in the sea, observing the wildlife, discussing literature and learning to love life to the full.

John Edgar Craig was born the second of four children on August 25th, 1925. His father was later to become the professor of Classics at Sheffield University and from him John inherited his love of scholarship. At the age of ten, a heart condition kept him in bed for a year and it was then that he began to devour English literature. In later life there were whole collections, such as all the works of Dickens and Shakespeare, that he would re-read every year. At Rossall, as well as being made Head Boy, he became a keen rugby player and cross-country runner. Still in the late sixties no pupil of his could beat him over ten miles if they were fool enough to challenge him.

During the early years of the War, fully recovered from his childhood illness, John and his brothers spent the summer months on Loch Long where they roamed the hills with complete freedom. As soon as his age allowed, he enlisted in the army and entered active service on the last day of the War as an officer in the 4th Battalion of 4th Gurkha Rifles. Although he ‘missed’ the War, there was still much work to be done and his regiment had the difficult tasks of first overseeing Indian Independence, and then helping to steady Burma during its difficult transition. The whole experience marked young Craig for life and he never lost his love of India, which he later visited twice, nor his love of the Gurkhas and Gurkhali. In retirement, in 1991, he became closely associated with the Gurkha Museum at Winchester, where he gave a great deal of his time to conducting research work and assisting with exhibitions. He wrote numerous publications, including a study on the development of the Kukri, and Gurkhas in the Burma Campaign 1941-1946 that are now regularly used by the Museum. He assisted in The museum shop twice a week and provided a friendly, and re-assuring face to the many local and foreign visitors. Illness forced him to stop working for the Museum in 2001, but he maintained a close link and interest in the development of the Gurkha Museum.

In 1948 John Craig went up to Oxford where he was the pupil of Masterman and Wilkinson. He was the undergraduate who, in the latter’s biography, jumped up from reading his essay to put out the fire started by the sleeping don’s pipe, to be told immediately to ‘carry on reading’ as soon as the disaster was averted. On coming down from Oxford in 1951, he took up a position as English master at Ardingly where he was to spend the rest of his career, retiring in 1987. His voice when teaching was legendary; he brought a nobility to the reading of Shakespeare, his rendering of Chaucer was unparalleled and through it all, he engaged his pupils in countless debates on every conceivable subject. In 1963, he became housemaster of Hilton and for the next fifteen years enjoyed the finest moments of his career; indeed, for John Craig teaching was practically a twenty-four hour job and the evenings spent with his senior pupils were never counted. While housemaster, he continued with the CCF and was awarded the OBE for his services in 1968.

In giving himself to the lives of his pupils, he showed a generosity of spirit in all its forms and many families adopted him as part of their own lives. He had both a love of everything that was good, from fine Burgundy to Scottish watercolours, and a contempt for material things, so that in retirement he could do no better than a council flat having given away nearly all he possessed. Among those who benefited from his generosity were pupils whose parents could not afford the fees and who unknowingly received help from this anonymous donor.

John Craig was a strong Christian of the CS Lewis tradition who, despite losing faith in the church, never lost his faith in, nor love of, God.

(© Nicholas Bunch: December 2003)

Farmers around us are growing large amounts of rape again this year. Not only do they get a hefty EC subsidy, but we get to look at acres of a not very pretty yellow landscape. In a couple of weeks or so, the pollen will come and with it—so some people believe—a spate of respiratory illness, coinciding in all probability with the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend, when our local hospitals and healthcare systems will be least able to cope.

It's that time of year again!

Wired News reckons the time has come to stop capitalizing the word “Internet”. Well that is, of course, entirely their perogative, but in my simple and humble opinion it is a retrograde step that further reduces the precision with which we use the English language, and thereby the richness of meaning that we can convey.

Why?

An internet is simply an interconnected (computer) network—any such network. The Internet is, well, the internet.

To resolve practical matters of the use of English such as this I usually consult Fowler’s Modern English Usage. (‘Modern’, in this context, means sometime after the 18th century.) I have both the second and third editions of Fowler, but the former—edited by Sir Ernest Gowers—is for me the more insightful.

Neither edition directly sheds light on the internet/Internet issue, but Gowers’ essay on capitals is worthy of quotation:

The use of Capitals is largely governed by personal taste, and my own, while not favouring seventeenth-century excess, happens to favour even less the niggardliness now sometimes apparent. The printed page that is starved of capitals suffers not merely in appearance (to my eye at any rate) but also in function, for denial of capitals to well-known bodies, institutions, officials and the like militates against ready reference.

The rest of the entry makes it quite clear (to my mind at any rate) that Wired has done us a disservice. Nevertheless, it can take some consolation in Sir Ernest’s final words on the matter:

Let it be repeated, the employment of capitals is a matter not of rules but of taste; but consistency is at least not a mark of bad taste.

Google Maps UK has arrived. Terrific! At first site this seems a great implementation and easier to use than the other street mapping sites. The route planning function is excellent, and fast. There are a few user interface glitches but these are relatively easy to work around, and no doubt will be ironed out in time.

Satellite maps are missing: hopefully they will come soon. IMHO, essential.

One interesting observation is that the route to and from our home treats Waynflete Road as one way, South to North. News to us, but perhaps Google is prescient as well as everything else. Local residents are well aware that Oxfordshire County Council has plans for the notorious Green Road Roundabout. Work has already started on the ‘short term measures’ part of this scheme—swapping the bus lanes on the London Road—which, in isolation, has been an unmitigated disaster so far.

The original scheme envisaged traffic lights at either end of Waynflete Road (i.e. at both of its junctions with Bayswater Road) which would have effectively killed off rat-running up Waynflete Road. However, in their ultimate wisdom, officers of the County Council have apparently decided that the more northern set of lights is unnecessary. What makes them think that they know more about this than the traffic consultants they hired at great cost to us ratepayers defeats me completely, but it now appears that Google has let the cat out of the bag and that the hidden agenda is to make Waynflete Road one-way.

There is a kind of argument for this that might hold sway: it must be miserable for the bus drivers (who only drive one-way up Waynflete Road) having to negotiate parked cars, traffic calming measures, and irate drivers (not to mention cyclists) coming in the opposite direction. How much easier would it be for them if the street was one-way in their favour?

Frankly, though, I don’t think we owe them any favours at all. The buses the two rival companies now run are far too large, too heavy, and too frequent (they typically hunt in twos and threes, mostly near empty). The damage they have caused to the surface of Waynflete Road is considerable. It was resurfaced only a few years ago and is now dangerously defective, and potentially lethal to cyclists.

Addendum: I had hoped to illustrate the above rant about Waynflete Road with a map refereence to Google Maps, but this is not available at this time. So here is one from a rival.

Today’s atrocities in London were the archetypal cowardly act. Innocent, defenceless people going to work mindlessly slaughtered. To what end? A previously unknown derivative of al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bombings. To what end? If it actually was responsible, it has simply confirmed its cowardice. If not, it has demonstrated cowardice on an even higher plane.

Any belief that this group has that its actions will have the desired effect is monumentally misplaced. Of course that assumes that we understand what the ‘desired effect actually is. If we don’t then we have an even bigger problem, with neither side having the foggiest notion of what the other is about. Either way, I am unclear how to reconcile the concept of “God, the merciful, the compassionate” with “revenge”, and any God that sanctions this kind of barbarity doesn’t get my vote.

Happily, as far as we can tell, all our friends and acquaintances in London are safe and sound. May a more merciful and sensible God ensure it remains so.

Yesterday’s bombings in London left many commuters stranded. London’s hotels were reputedly only 80% full but instead of making the other 20% readily available (at cost or even free) as a gesture of solidarity, there are reports of massive price hikes, with some being charged double or more than the usual rate. This cynical behaviour does no credit to the industry or, indeed, to London.

A spokesman for the hotels trade organization, the British Hospitality Association, which represents hotels reportedly said he was ‘surprised’ by the increases, but evidently did not denounce them. For sure, the industry will face a difficult time for a while in the aftermath of the bombings—US travellers are apparently already cancelling in droves—but sympathy for their plight will be seriously dented by these acts of opportunistic greed.

Someone should publish a list of the culprit hotels.

it is only proper that a weblog with the name Jambalaya should pause and reflect on the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has wreaked on the home of the said dish, the loss of life, and the virtual destruction of its major city, New Orleans.

I have visited New Orleans twice and have very fond memories. Although it has its problems, it was a fun place to be, and no human community deserves the fate that has befallen it. Our thoughts at Bayswater Farm are with you all.

Another visit was looming this December, for the American Society of Hematology annual convention. My first visit to both New Orleans and ASH was for such a convention twenty years ago. It was a large event then, but would have been massive this year. It seems from this side of the Pond that there is no way this year’s convention can now take place.

New Orleans thrived on tourism, and conventions such as ours will have been major players in its economy. Should this year’s ASH convention not now go ahead, I suggest that the least we could do is donate our registration fees to a relief fund for the people of this stricken city.

(Addendum: It now seems that ASH plans to relocate its annual meeting to another city. I may or may not go, but have made a donation to the Red Cross.)

1. Get fit
2. Plan the next bit
3. Write more

Happy New Year to All!

A while back I had to start moderating comments before publication as the vast majority were specious, opportunistic and irrelevant (in other words, spam). I have been busy of late and haven’t checked the pending list for a while. Today I discovered that 1650 comments had been received and were awaiting my ‘approval’. Fat chance: even though most of them feigned flattery (“Nice site”, etc), they were all trash, so that is where they went. The same fate befell the 733 or so accumulated trackbacks.

For now, and until I can upgrade to weblog software that can handle these intrusions more appropriately, its goodbye comments, and goodbye trackbacks. Anyone who has anything sensible to say can email chris at this domain. If it passes my substantially more rigorous mail spam filters, and I like what you say, I’ll publish it.

In May 1979 we bought our first colour television. Kath had just recouped her meagre pension payments, Jose was six months old, and Wimbledon was about to start. The box was a Toshiba 14 inch ‘portable’, but it was all we could afford, was small enough not to dominate our tiny living room, and had fantastic definition and colour. The Toshiba was our only television for over 12 years, and when we eventually had enough to justify a larger box I would happily have bought another Toshiba were it not for the availability of an ex-demonstration Sony (which we are still using) at a great price. Nevertheless, the Toshiba loyalty lives on: I bought a Toshiba portable CD player in 1997 which still works well (but only from the mains), and I am now eyeing up a Toshiba LCD television…

On the other hand, Lance Knobel’s experience with Toshiba has been less endearing and serves as a salutory reminder of the irrationality of ‘brand loyalty’, how lingering memories can illogically modulate choice, how appearances may not be what they seem, and—more than anything—caveat emptor.

In an article part lamenting and part supporting the bureaucracy that nowadays underpins Wikipedia, Lance Knoebel reminds us of the need to maintain our critical faculties while reading Wikipedia (and, for that matter, Encyclopedia Britannica).

Not to mention the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, Times, Daily Telegraph and, yes even—The Grauniad (to mention but a few).

The reality is that we are surrounded by and bombarded by a plethora of opinion masquerading as information. One can take it at its face (entertainment) value, be seduced by it—or savour it critically and enjoy the prose over the content, or vice versa—as the mood dictates. The choice is ours.

Everything worth doing is difficult to do well.

But always worth the effort.

"Hello Darling!"

(viaTerry Wogan, BBC Radio 2)

The Economist this week has a sympathetic obituary for Robert McNamara, the systems analyst-cum-defence secretary, who died earlier this month.

McNamara brought to American foreign policy and in particular the Vietnam war the economic logic and rigour that he had applied in industry: “The things you can count, you ought to count”, but it did not work out as he had hoped.

In The Economist’s words:

At the height of the conflict, he was called a baby-burner. His son marched against him. Jackie Kennedy once pummelled his chest with her fists, crying at him to “stop the slaughter”. All this was difficult. He was an instinctive liberal, driving a battered Ford, living in university suburbs, where his recommended book for the reading group was Camus’s “L’Etranger”. Warmongering was not in his nature.

He was haunted by the thought that amid all the objective-setting and evaluating, the careful counting and the cost-benefit analysis, stood ordinary human beings. They behaved unpredictably.

That’s the problem: friend or foe, we are still unpredictable. As we head into another recession, and the cost-cutters, bean counters and performance managers ply us with their metrics, let them remember that.