Month: January 2011

Somewhat surprised that I’ve yet to encounter a gay bar, or similar, called the

Large Hardon Collider

. Too much spontaneous sniggering at the time, insufficient organization to solidify and institutionalise the bad jokes

Europe: Not just boring, but old:

Now the Europeans really do seem to be acting old — not

delusionary and bewildered, like the USA, but elderly, crotchety. Bent

over their knitting.

Without Americans and Soviets around to boss and screech at

them, the Europeans are obsessed with immigration and internal

minorities. It’s all about the lazy, job-stealing Polish plumber or

the North African guy next door who killed a goat in his bathtub….

Obviously immigration is a big deal for small, relatively homogenous

societies with big language and heritage issues. But something about

this pervasive anxiety really makes contemporary Europeans seem feeble

and small-minded. These used to be massive, globe-spanning,

imperial states. Even in the Cold War, they were at least the major

pieces on the planetary chessboard. Now you can ask what the glorious

European Project is about, and it’s mostly about a cushy retirement

for what’s left of their managerial class. Europe’s younger generation

is getting one of the rawest deals you can imagine.

Adam Curtis, via Charlie Brooker:

“What I’m hoping they’ll do is pull back like in a helicopter and look at themselves and think about how they’re a product of history, and of power, and politics, as much as a product of their own little inner desires. We’re all part of a big historical age. That’s just what we are. And, sometimes, we forget.”

I do somewhat try to overlook politicians saying silly things — most of us are intermittently idiotic, and are just lucky not to be constantly filmed. Still, when the stupid is both extreme and premeditated, we’re surely allowed a bit of mockery.

First: Michael Gove takes ‘Red Tory’ in a bewildering direction, declares himself proud to be a Maoist. Because when you’re introducing such an extreme

attack on

modernization of the education system, you run out of models to follow. And China has the best example* in living memory* of how to annihilate education (and much else) in only a few years. So of course Gove wants “

in education…to implement a cultural revolution just like the one they’ve had in China

“. [The whole article is a spectacular case of “what was he thinking?”] [via jacinthsong]

Meanwhile in the US, the incoming chair of the House subcommittee on energy and the environment**, apparently believes that the Bible guarantees us no climate change

So I want to start with Genesis 8, verse 21 and 22. “Never again will I curse the ground because of man…” I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for His creation.

…

The second verse comes from Matthew 24. “And He will send His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. And I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

So, in order to get him taking climate change seriously, we need him to believe we’re living in the end-times?

* Or almost; I guess the Khmer Rouge still have the edge. Fortuantely Phnom Penh wasn’t on Gove’s itinerary.

** I’ve no idea if this is an important committee, or just a dumping ground for annoying congresscritters. I hope the latter.

Like library_keeper, I’ve been playing with Google’s new ngram tool. This is supposed to show the historical frequency of word usage, based on Google Books. It’s briefly fun and utterly unreliable — in other words, it should be perfect for the internet.

But, after tinkering, I can’t really find much that’s both unexpected and even mildly believable. Waves of subcultures are marginally interesting, although you should porbably discount the goth revivals of 1860 and 1880. [the long and mutating history of ‘punk’, on the other hand, is genuine]. Or you could have a graph of years (1920,1930, etc), which seems to show more recent years being forgotten more quickly. And you can play off science against religion, duty against freedom, or all the isms against one another.

But basically, I’m stumped. There must be

something

interesting in there, but I can’t find it. Can anybody else do better?

The Asia Times has a two-part article by Michael Flynn on the military-media complex.

He takes the surge as an example of military policy-laundering. As Petraeus said:

“far more important than the surge of 30,000 additional US troops was the surge of ideas that helped us to employ those troops”

. Laundering (not Flynn’s term) because the policies originate from the military, but need the imprimateur of the think-tanks to win over the administration:

“Petraeus knew that the [George W] Bush administration’s credibility was low, that it was going to have trouble selling the surge,” said Finel in an interview, so he hand-picked a number of civilians who he knew were behind this policy and helped turn them into media “experts”. This effort sidelined critics of the surge, says Finel, who were viewed as “outsiders, people without access, and thus not to be believed”.

It’s a bit like the classic consulting scenario. The managers know what policy they want to introduce, but don’t have the authority to impose it themselves. So they hire external consultants, who (knowing which side their bread is buttered) produce glossy reports in favour of the policy. This enables the managers who hired them to win over other power centres within the corporation. Replace corporate factions with branches of governments, consultants with think-tanks, and the comparison is pretty exact.

One difference is how the public sphere gets twisted about as result. Since the media’s capacity for independent analysis has withered away, it is vulnerable to being contorted by such internal power-plays. In the absence of journalists with the time, competence or inclination to compare stories to reality, “all that is solid melts into PR” [k-punk]. We lack the resources to figure out. We’re left in Plato’s cave, sharing at the shadow-play as pundits talk to pundits, unequipped to glance at the real world outside.

This isn’t unique to the military. So many small inofficially-political groups are funded by the EU, DfiD and the like, I presume often with the (carefuly unstated) hope that they’ll influence public debate.

But the military is bigger — I recall reading that the Pentagon’s PR budget is larger than the entire budget of the state department

Bruce Sterling’s state of the world: actually pretty dull so far. But he has form, and I have faith.

I recently discovered the Serpent. This is a musical instrument vaguely similar to a tuba, but developed in the late 16th century for the purposes of church music. The idea was apparently to create an instrument which sounds similar to a low male voice, so as to enhance the lower ranges of plainsong. Opinions on the instrument are mixed, to put it tactfully:

It is blown with a cup shaped mouthpiece which is very similar to that of a trombone or Euphonium/Baritone. Played softly, it has a firm yet mellow tone color, or timbre. At medium volume, it produces a robust sound which seems to be a cross between the tuba, the bassoon, and the French horn. When played loudly it can produce unpleasant noises reminiscent of large animals in distress. [source]

Over the past four centuries, other writers have been far nastier. And it sounds like a nightmare to play:

The Serpent really requires a totally unique approach and playing technique….Because it is not possible for the basic Serpent to be vented properly, the instrument does not conveniently resonate at the desired pitches the way modern wind instruments do….

Since the Serpent does not center accurately on most notes, the player must be able to ‘sight sing’ the music much like a singer must look at a given note and produce the correct pitch without mechanical assistance. Once the player has the specified pitch in mind, he must then produce the required vibration with his lips, forcing the instrument to go along even if it cannot actually resonate at that frequency.

There must, somewhere, be groups of people dedicated to playing the oddest of instruments. Ideally together.