today's one to watch

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2008/sep/10/cern.large.hadron.collider

thinking: join up

Population goes ZING. Need more food. Population ages, eats for longer. Fat people die earlier, but eat more.

Solution:

1) Ban meat
2) Expand the armed forces and drop entry criteria
3) Start an aggressive campaign to export the wonderful European model to the rest of the world; don't stop until achieved


Who needs an MSc?

Ask Oxford

In not-really-penance for swearing a while ago, I put up Ask Oxford's word of the day for a week. Of the seven that I featured, four were English, and perhaps loge is also in standard use. However, they are still arriving in my inbox, sourced from the Oxford Dictionary of English, Many of them appear to be misplaced from the Oxford Dictionary of Foreign.

Khanga – the East African fabric – is arguably in-place, since people in East Africa largely speak English (though khanga will have predated English presence there). But pensionnat and tupic are simply not English words. Likewise cantal and skyr, while several others have been legal or kitchen terms drawn from French.

The point of subscribing to such a service is to expand your vocabulary, to then slip those new words into your speech/use of words. So I guess it's fine if you are happy to keep explaining the funny words you're using (although knowing what a tupic is from having befriended a Canadian Inuit is preferable...). Of course, as an armchair polyglot I'm not complaining, but there are loads of obscure English words - or foreign ones that are used - which could feature. But maybe they've all been used in the years before I clicked on the service.

Having the time of your life

Wow. Forgive us, less than plugged in, for not realising that Mamma Mia would be a film based on ABBA. Flimsy plot, beautiful Greek-island scenery, clearly great fun to make. The older cast, women especially, had a riot, while the younger tried too much to act. The Julie Walters-Meryl Streep-ThatOtherOne WhoWasInThatOtherThing trio were great, the songs were fab. Meryl gets points for effort, Pierce gets points deducted for allowing the director to give him a second chance. Colin Firth, for the first time since he was frozen as Mr Darcy when I was but a whippet, made me realise that he is an actor. (Not, I must say, through his acting.) Didn't stop laughing :)

Mukuvani good, missiles bad

So Condi Rice and Ratko 'Radek' Sikorski toasted their missile defence deal with Georgian wine? I think they are missing a trick here. Recent events have shown the great capacity of NATO for defending its allies, members or soon-to-be. Makes sense for Russia to get its licks in now. What can Europe do to help? By now, Condi knows: Georgian wine is gorgeous. Su-perb, I can't put it strongly enough. The best I've had, including Hungarian. Especially the reds, lip-smacking, dreamy concoctions, legs up to here, and if it had eyes they would say take me seriously, and take me now. The whites were somewhat similar, but white. What? Never had any? Quelle shock. I've never seen a bottle of Georgian wine in London (or Bratislava, for that matter - or maybe one?) because the EU imposes import duties on it. Forget silly mutual defence pacts: as Kalman Mizsei, former UNDP Europe chief, said about Moldova, where he is the now the EC's man, it would make such a small difference to the European wine sellers, to have more access for Georgian wines, and it would bring plenty cash to Georgia.

Last year I met three Georgian ruling party MPs, who despite being in their twenties could say nothing about young people in Georgia. Perhaps the 'people' part was missing - like most of the population, they were in the Saakashvili's shadow. If Russia doesn't annex them and dispense with silly things like parliaments, these apparatchik cretins can carry on fighting with History as to who can screw Georgia most. Hard to be overshadowed by a fifty year old still living with his mother (or is that the brother?), so no such problems for Radek. A rising star, in the post-socialist free market radical mould, insulated by the deep resentment of Russia/communism. The role of the state? Out of the economy and into the bedroom (nobody said it was that consistent...). Getting the requisite CV testosterone as defence and foreign minister; next Polish president but one.

Crushed velvet

On 21 August forty years ago, loads of troops from Warsaw Pact countries moved in to Czechoslovakia for a few days, to crush any ideas of further democratising the regime t/here, which was already one of the more liberal socialist regimes. Of course, the Russians have been celebrating in Georgia, but here in the Little Big City, people are also remembering. There was a guard of honour greeting I. and I off the bridge this morning at Safarikovo Namestie (just what the traffic needs with the current roadworks); they swiftly got onto coaches, with their bumfluff and shiny toy rifles, too young to remember anything interesting about being a soldier in Europe.

The other remembrance activities involve the Mestska Policia (city cops) - all of whom were probably enthusiastic army chaps in their day - pushing gypsies off bikes, and what I can only hope is a T mobile promotion, in typically thoughtless Slovak style. Unless, of course, it is a take on the new value system in the ex-socialist countries, which I will mention whenif I put up pictures from the last visit to Danubiana...

In other news, some of my work:

Escaping Europe's biggest housing estate for similarly noteworthy lake

The great Balaton

Trabant convention!

Made of cardboard... cheap (once), fuel efficient, and if you crash, you die.

Trabis everywhere! (Iron cross noted...)

This man's writing is winding, like running home with shopping to avoid encountering a hoodie in the twilight; the physical effort mixing with the shame of cowardice and the knowledge that it was probably just someone else with their shopping nervously finding their way home.

When they finish on the Paprikahaz, they'll start with the abbey.

For whatever reason, a one-night holiday felt like a week away, in a good sense. The almost complete privatisation of the shore, and the slightly tacky feel of the resorts, makes it not an ideal destination, but the water is lovely, and apart from the Trabi rude boys, it was utterly relaxed. No organised Having Fun, at least where we went (the previous weekend on the south shore, last weekend on the north). Tihany is pretty, and has a sad cautionary tale: before the (pretty tasteful) building began in earnest, there was an echo that would repeat eleven syllables, and now there is not. Skoda.

the essential bridge

or why Back to Basics isn't always a winner



(a collaborative project of the grim groll bros.)
(or indeed, perhaps, a foreshadowing of what happens when CERN ends the world)
(joe, please: what you told me about recording the essential sound of the room?)

OMG CERN is fly

LHC turn-on delayed by infestation of rappers

guzzla

How eco is my jetpack, compared to a budget flight? Ryanair operates Boeing 737-800s, which uses 0.01387 gallons of fuel per passenger mile (here), presumably with a full plane (quite common in my experience). On looking, I am hoping for a significant and obvious difference to help my decision, as the comments in that last link show that working out fuel efficiency for aircraft is not such an exact science. (Also suggests that comment boards on every topic attract similar relationships, no love lost in aerospace!)

Rationale for asking: I fell of my bike and tombstoned my wrist (without managing to break anything), so have done virtually no exercise for two months, therefore won't be able to cycle to the Big Chill tomorrow. Alternatives needed.

My jetpack eats 10 gallons/hour (gph), although with a fuel capacity of five gallons, this suggests half an hour's flight time. Its range is 31.5 miles, at a maximum speed of 63 mph. Which is definitely another victory for the airline industry. So we will fly.

babies not really the point, nor all bad

Okay, I was reminded by this article to write about the youth policy work I was doing. The article is about Nashi, Putin’s youth organization which apparently includes around 7% of all Russians aged 17-25. There you have a highly nationalistic pro-natalism – babies for the fatherland – aimed at making Russia great again, all tied up with the pastime of making threats against neighbouring countries and harking back to a time before they were born.

At one point, Scaffolder said surely too many people in the world. Probably that’s true, and to be honest I’m rather neutral on the whole drive to increase the birth rate; but the situation relating to old-age-dependency ratios, pensions and the like is certainly pressing, and it motivates policy-makers, meaning among other things that it attracts money. Immigration and change in the social security system will have some effect, but it’s politically impossible to solve it through immigrant labour schemes (and probably immoral, if it meant bringing workers from Africa and Asia for a limited period, then send them back, denied pensions and justified with reference to unemployment at home…). Maybe it will lead to the great crisis of capitalism that shakes our system back to a pre-agricultural blissfest, but in lieu of that…

For me, the concern about demographic developments is an opportunity to change society for the better. Narrowly, with regard to youth policy, it is a chance to have a largely ignored and patronized section of society have more involvement in development of policies which affect them; it’s opportunistic, but that’s not an argument against it, and anyway only a minority of the agenda is about more money ‘for young people’.

More exciting in my view is that talking to young people about their reasons for fertility decisions recognizes that you can take a non-laissez faire approach to this area of policy; on the back of which: a) governments will do something, so it’s better that their policies are in line with other goals about gender equality, participation, individual choice and are aware of related areas (e.g. housing, reproductive health). Which is where U. N. technical advice comes in… b) perhaps luckily, there is more and more evidence that policies which increase fertility tend to be those which also support gender equality, and the wider restructuring of our priorities, particularly about the relationship between work and the rest of life, but also about the role of the market and state intervention. Which means there is a pretty strong case to make in contrast to more militant, wombs-and-soldiers pro-natalism.

Countries with higher female labour force participation and better parental and paternal leave entitlements and flexible working options tend to have higher birth rates. If the young Romanians you talk to tell you they don’t have kids because they can’t afford to live independently, then maybe you would consider a policy which mitigates the shameful effect of western European property speculation in poorer eastern countries, and that kind of thinking benefits everyone.

That’s a kind of best-case thinking or justification; at worst, this work has no effect (more likely the more rubbish the managers); somewhere in the middle it leads to more involvement of young people in both UN programming and government policy-making, related to gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health, and with any luck education and labour market issues also. It’s links like the latter that show the overlap with other areas of social concern away from ‘just fertility’ – given that fertility-related behaviour is complicated, but is significantly influenced by (actual and expected) job stability, employability (money for vocational training has also been in freefall in non-western Europe, despite all your Polish plumbers…), ability to do things you want to do before having children (mobility policy) et cetera. Market fundamentalists don’t have an answer to low fertility (that I have read – simply paying women to have babies doesn’t really work), so maybe this helps lessen their impact, important in this part of the world as it is further west, south and east. And I guess north, to Russia, if they want to listen.

Have to run, maybe more later. Open for questions ;)

The sunshine of home

Having soaked up all the glamour Petrzalka has to offer, Taylor and OJ said a quick farewell this morning, silver-lined in that I will now have a little more time to be here. Pix2follow, when my camera turns up. I guess you got home safe, chickens - doubtless aided by a glass of crisp, dry white wine and a scratchcard.

Top stuff, thanks for coming.

In other news, "Basra is not Surbiton."

Higher powers

I was going to write a little something about the pathetic bigot refusing to officiate over gay ceremonies in her role serving society, but Dave's post sums it up, so I thought a comment would suffice. Otherwise, sorry for my absence: I have been entertaining (or at least giving a bed to) Oli and Sarah, with predictable hilarious consequences.

red star - swastika - west-east train of thought

On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights issued its judgement in the case of Vajnai vs Hungary. This case concerned a man, Vajnai, vice-president of the Workers' Party, who was arrested at a demonstration for wearing a red five-pointed star, and convicted (though not punished further). That symbol is banned in Hungary (and several other former communist states) for its association with totalitarianism.

The ECHR found that Vajnai's freedom of expression had been violated, as the restriction was not "necessary in a democratic society". This means in effect that Hungary's law - and those of other countries - banning that symbol can't be enforced and should be revoked. (Though in theory a country demonstrating that it suffered even more under Soviet influence, or facing a live 'totalitarian communist' movement dedicated to seizing power, could get away with a ban.)

Several European states, including Germany, Austria and France, have similar bans on Nazi symbols; after Henry Mountbatten-Windsor wore a swastika armband at a posh-idiots-only colonials and natives themed party, Germany moved to have a ban on the swastika covering the whole EU. Several former-communist states insisted such a ban should cover the red star and the hammer and sickle as well. Needless to say, it didn't pass, partly due to major Hindu opposition.

This ruling is relevant, but I don't think it will affect the bans existing on the swastika. The court clearly accepted that the red star is more than just the symbol of the USSR /advocating totalitarian rule, which is obviously true; in the ruling it is described as "a symbol of the international workers' movement". The swastika, by contrast, is much narrower and less ambiguous, partly due to its restricted use in (European) history (please ignore Hinduism and Latvian traditional knitwear).

I don't think banning symbols is an appropriate way of dealing with the threats associated with them, and obviously shouldn't be done for fear of causing offence. But this does raise a question about the relative western perceptions of the Nazi and communist totalitarian regimes, which I think has left Europe a bit deformed. Speaking for myself, but I think reflecting the tone used in western education/media/normal leftist view, the obviously important points about childcare and poverty obscure the suffering caused by the communists.

Even attached to their respective regimes, the swastika is far more offensive than the red star, right? Hitler-holocaust-dead Jews (and gypsies etc), incarnation of evil... Well, yes and no - it's hard to top the industrial slaughter of an entire race of people for 'badness'. But people suffered massively under communism: famine, large scale routine torture and execution of largely meaningless victims ('40s-'60s, smaller scale thereafter), and the moral-mental pain of the identification of society with the party and the destruction of trust and intellectual life and the scary arbitrariness of it.

Having a hot war with one lot and a cold war with the others makes a difference, and the German regime didn't survive long enough to become part of the furniture and get its belly lodged confortably under the table of international relations. But it's the war that was fought, rather than the holocaust, which means Nazi Germany keeps such a legendary status in english-speaking discourse - the intense dislike, coming from war propaganda largely unconcerned with the holocaust, has been kept up over decades, its basis morphing from existential threat in war to moral shock at genocide. In the UK at least, that kind of anger was never sustained (or developed?) regarding communism, and that over Nazism is a bit false.

Anyway, many leftist groups in the west (democratic and not) failed to judge the socialist regimes by any critical standard. The UK Labour government in the seventies even gave an honourary kinghthood to Nicolai Ceasescu! So when those regimes collapsed, the ambiguous sentiments of the centre-left meant the post-communist folk found the open arms of the market fundmentalist parties and politicians.

And this has its effects. One little one is the contribution to the further meaninglessness of political parties and their naming in Europe: no mainstream party in an ex-socialist country was going to join the Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament, so instead of renaming the EP group to the European Social Democrats or something equally bland (as it is called in German), parties fitting with PES (especially a PES which includes all these highly capitalist socialist parties from western Europe) are instead members of the European People's Party with the Tories. But there are exceptions, and Serbia's Democratic Party is aligned with PES. (Not that any of this really matters, or detracts from the damage which political parties to to democracy.) The PES is left with the renamed ruling communist parties. Which might from where UK Labour is getting its liberty-squishing zeal and intellectual nullness.

PS: Interesting to see that the ECHR ruling was unanimous, even with judges from Georgia, Hungary and Lithuania among the panel. (And Turkey, a country also quite into banning symbols.) But this reflects the fact that judges in the ECHR tend to be legal professionals in service of the convention, in contrast to their nationalist lackey equivalents at the International Court of Justice.

PPS: Aside on legal procedure: the Hungarian courts initially referred the case to the European Court of Justice, the highest EU court, for a judgement on whether the principle of non-discrimination prevents one member state from banning a symbol which would not be banned in another state. (The ECHR is a court of the Council of Europe, not the EU.) This looks like a rather strange move - as would be expected, the ECJ found this was totally not in their field of competence; but if it had been able to rule on it, the court would have almost certainly found that such measures do not contravene the principle of non-discrimination. This would maybe have strengthened the hand of the Hungarian government when the case came, inevitably, to the ECHR.

nothing much to report

I have just discovered that people post advert breaks on youtube. This isn't even narcissistic. It's just plain odd! Not a lot completely defies understanding or explanation. Can anyone help? (Thankfully, the colleague who just now tapped on my window to enquire about my shocked face is well disposed to me.)
~
At its height, the largest employer in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was a classy ceramics factory in Pécs, which I think is rather nice. Although a lot of the stuff is quite ugly and kitch, Zsolnay's techniques were new to pottery. Including getting painted-style pictures onto high temperature fired pieces:~
Things we missed as children/How to make kids' TV stomachable to adults:

"Any more calls, Janine?"
"...ghost terrorists in the UN - they're protesting the Monroe doctrine - and some guy named Samsa called to say he's been posessed by a giant cockroach."

Those were the days, I am tempted to say, but I haven't watched children's telly for a long time, so it wouldn't be fair.

more sharp things

I listened to the first episode of the new sharp things series, and give it thumbs up. The Ways of the Country had a lovely twist; Egging On was chirpy, but I missed something. Anyway, have a listen.

fury i

Fuck governments. Or maybe Fuck dishonest, lazy responses to things your opponents say. (Or Fuck the axiom better Labour than the Tories...) It's admittedly easy to say whatever you like in opposition, but then this case is different, since Labour aren't so in power in town halls. In short, the Tory communities-and-local-government bloke has told Tory councils to 'not cooperate' with the government (in the words of the Grauniad). To read the article, it seems that the message is more not to let the central government present local governments with faits accompli that are strenuously against local wishes.

Overall, I'm in favour of local government, I like local responsibility as a principle, and I don't think the 'legitimacy' of central govt is greater than that of local. At the same time, I value the ability of the central level to prevail in some policy areas - what local council will risk pushing for a wind farm etc on its territory? Or for some consistency in healthcare in a country with a so far still national health (less convincing, perhaps!). Or immigration. Point being, there is a legitimate question to be asked about relative powers of different levels of government. Preferably not addressed in a spirit of strong-crushes-weak.

My despair: the issue comes into the open, and the government's response is

The statements amount to political posturing and political hubris. It will be up to the electorate to decide in two years' time who is running the country. I hope the majority of Conservative councils will have the sense to ignore this and continue co-operating with the government to benefit their local community.

which says nothing, completely ignores that there is an issue to discuss, and is arrogant. Make a principled argument for why the central government should have power in the areas of conflict raised by cantankerous local authorities... but not a principled peep out of the government, except the drivel over 42 days. (Mind you, even Liberty missed the ball on that... And someone tell David Davis that you cannot care for the individual's freedom from state power while supporting edath penalties.)

Not that the Tories have been any better (look at London local govt in the eighties...), and they will doubtless do their own version of the worst when in government. So it's not Labour or the Tories that is the problem, but the absence of principled discussion, driven by the attitudes of those who own and operate the media (on market principles). Which makes this as irrelevant as a calendar under the ocean.

modern world etc

Quote of the day: "Now, click on advanced settings. Which is a bit of a misnomer..."

A great advantage of flexible working arrangements is that I can take advantage of half-price Monday admission to galleries and the like. I proposed on Saturday night to dear Michel, a student, that we visit the KunstHausWien – ViennaArtHouse – yesterday, and we would have, but he had to do respond to something in the peer review process as he is a big shot of some sort in biochemical futurism. So I went alone, a quick pop over the border,* from the centre of Bratislava to the centre of Vienna in less time than it takes to navigate London Bridge station get from Lewisham to Islington. This is a total aside, but it’s such a nice feeling to be able to nip there and back and not feel required to spend eight hours in museums to make it worthwhile (the train is about seven quid, though).

The upshot being that I am on the lookout for a good biography of Friedensreich Hundertwasser – fine artist, architect (social housing, waste incineration, public toilets, kids’ care home), theorist on semi-utopian ways of living in accordance with ‘nature’ – who changed his name to ‘Peace-empire Rainy-day Multicoloured’, lectured naked and visited godknowshowmany countries. They didn’t even have one in German at the shop. Amazon doesn't look promising : (

His visionary bit – a lot of oppositional stuff about nature and humans, particularly urban life, and the ‘illegal occupation’ of nature by people – attracted my skeptical side at first, but I came away not thinking he was saying anything unachievable or undesirable, and certainly not crazy. Just stuff that would need some fundamental shift in the western psyche, and a bit more localism and pride in community than is fashionable, at least in metropoles. And the media be damned (ECO LOONIE GETS HANDS ON HOSPITAL). Wouldn’t need an increase in what is already spent on public works… just a bit of reeducation for architects and builders, and a social
willingness to live in a place that looks like The Shire.

Lots of his paintings were pretty cool, too, occasionally with names to die for (Two envelopes on a long voyage, People (compliment to trees)). And flags, and stamps, and all sorts. Quite a revolutionary revolutionary (to my eyes), in that he was often into tradition and parochialism, albeit on a world scale. Involved in 'policy issues' and such like, and extrovert in spreading his message, but maybe because he is an artist, no proper biography. He's been dead eight years now. (Opportunity to make some money?...) I mean, the Taschen book of this and that, lots of lovely pictures, is well and good, but it won't do what Roland Huntford did for Fridtjof Nansen, or what Roland Bainton did for Martin Luther.

* I love Schengen. I asked the machine at the "UK Border" in Brussels whether he has any inside info on when the UK would join. He told me such an idea was a 'waste of time', and called forward the next traveller in line, to feign a glance at their photo page and send them on their way.

bisect the sects

Update: I initially refrained from mentioning the other vile belief of these people, that women are less human than men, on the grounds that quite a number of Anglican dioceses across the world have female priests and deacons, and some have bishops, and I didn't want to be any more open to charges of generalisation than I already am. However, reading further about the defecting (defective?) group, they are also ambivalent-opposed to ordaining women. Oh, and I liked that in response to Williams' comment about their legitimacy, being self-selected, they responded that they are selected by god. hee hee. But scary, so not funny.
~
After many years of talking about it, the scriptural purists/anointed bigots in the Anglican church have finally done it, and struck out on a righteous path toward spiritual rebirth and the (multiple) repression of gayness. They won't formally call it a schism, for the most practical and material of reasons (division of the churches etc), but they will no longer accept the authority of that most confused of loving, little-bit-liberal archbishops Rowan Williams.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (or Nambla) is sick of the anti-Christian tendencies of their ex-fellows in USA and Canada (and England). These heretics have too long been allowing that gay people are capable of forgiving God his slanders and staying part of the CofE club despite the option of leaving to join a nice non-judgemental corps like the Quakers. As the Telegraph commentator points to, it might be easier for the less indecent-minded Anglicans if these pure souls simply left, instead of hanging around to make (even more!) protracted trouble for the leaders. But faced with a highly fertile Islamic enemy, splits in the Church may be seen as weakness... what to do?

Of course, my two pennies-worth are not usually taken on board by archbishops (or any bishops), but I suggest these folk make union with the Roman Catholic church. They can surely leave aside their childish standoff about whether the wine becomes blood and whether Mary is a deserving object of superstition - return to the original, Henry VIII Anglicanism - and enjoy enthusiastically accepting the need to do away with intrinsic moral evils. (Except when these occur within the church, in which case the acceptance should be a little more low key.)

Some sort of prisoner swap could perhaps be negotiated, in which the Catholics who don't agree with the pope could be taken under Rowan's grizzled wing, and the Anglicans yearning for authoritarianism and sexual obsession could come under the sway of Rome. Archbishes Akinola and the Ugandan one could reach an accommodation on division of leadership roles, which given the impressive record of the Anglicans in Uganda might mean the RCC was less likely to say nothing when moral evils do in fact occur. But only some.

bits of tree left everywhere

In this dayageculture, simply being human is not enough to acknowledge one another, but some things, like extreme weather, make strangerswilling to converse.


Not me though, I was in my room, taking photos.

Latest of several, with another coming tonight. Being driven through the first of these at 80 kph on misty, branch-covered 1.5 spaced roads was remarkably soothing

Sharp Things plug

Sharp Things is made by a cheerful, engaging chap named Matt, as well as being edited by some fine fellows from Leytonstone (or Lancaster). The second series starts on Tuesday, including in a few weeks a thirty-second story by yours truly, a demisemiquaver of delight missable only in its brevity.

Sharp Things is back!

Sharp Things is a podcast series for rethinkdaily featuring short stories by new writers. It begins on Tuesday 1st July and will run for two weeks.

You can subscribe via iTunes, add the rethinkdaily application on FaceBook, or listen through the website: www.rethinkdaily.co.uk.

Tune in to hear stories from Sion Scott-Wilson, Tania Hershman, Peter Ward, Liam Tullberg, Dave Pickering, Heather Taylor, Jenny Adamthwaite, Mac Dunlop, Peter Brown, Dan Scott, Chris Grollman, David Gaffney, Daniel Gent and Holly Howitt.

Bring everyone you know!

lightening

- the mix, as the dark sugar nestles into the welcoming butter, and beating fluffs the consistency

- the sky (the buildings, the kitchen counter), with the second night of the pressburg storm season under way

- my mood, as the quirk-pop maestros struggle to stay in time

- my chances of sleeping, with all said sugar in the bowl i'm licking

hiking clears the head

A few pictures from our lovely long hike on Saturday

The sun was viscious

But here it was about 15 degrees cooler

Discovering our mistake.

Still going at sunset...

The folk running this little thirst-stop were SO drunk, which somehow made their Slovak easier for me to understand. Never has a pint of Kofola been so welcome.

big ideas

This is very exciting, arguably also for people not headed for life as a statistician... It's worth a few minutes of your time, I would say.

Dobry, Charlie, dobry.

So, Pavla is Lacko, I am Ferko and Ilona is Jarko, after the dobermans (a year and a half old and forty kilos each!) owned by the Bulgarian who rents Miroslav a room for ten pounds a month. He was selling the Big Issue ("Nota Bene") and I think Ilona initially got a good vibe from him. Our soups and beers were very tasty, so we invited him to join us.

Eventually he believed we weren't playing some cruel joke, and again eventually he stopped being overly grateful. German at home and Russian at school, and smatterings of Spanish, Italian, English and French with the other tenants of the Bulgarian landlord. German at home was a sign of high status, before the communists got rid of that sort of thing. Born 5.6 kilos, and a crooked spine because of it, and apparently the name of my pouch is a forget-me-not (nezábudka, from his leatherworking days). And beautiful women, dogs called Socrates and a lot more besides.

Once he reached the dobermans, he was totally relaxed, and speaking as he would in any normal situation. At this point, him being a Slovak and 49, there was a good chance of the gypsies and the Hungarians coming up (like the way bile comes up), and that's the test - insincere humouring or challenging it. But he was such a thoroughly good, balanced and open-minded bloke that that test didn't arise.

When it was time to go, we said a completely normal goodbye. Having had a comically melodramatic and reverent hello which was quite embarassing, this was maybe the nicest part. Bratislava is a small place, so I'm sure we will see him again. I kind of hope he doesn't bring the dogs, though.

the impulztanz festival is wicked

Grr, said the Chris. What comes to mind when you hear "communications"? Never mind "knowledge management"... the two sets of people have a fortnightly meeting on Wednesday mornings at 9.30.

09.37
Chris (on telephone): Hi, it's Chris, do we have this meeting?
M: Ahh, A's not here.
Chris: As in, not here yet, or not--
M: She's in Turkmenistan.
Chris: Then I guess no meeting.

Which wouldn't bother me so much, indeed would make me smile, but I hate getting up etc. and last night only slept at three after having to publish a (crappy) story (my worst yet) after returning from the last train back from Vienna (we missed the planned one by two minutes, but it left four minutes before we'd thought).

Point being: in Vienna, I saw the Steve Reich Evening show by Anne Teresa de Keermaeker and her Rosas dancers. She the choreography, he the music. When we arrived I didn't know what I was seeing (at all), but I sensibly trusted the judgement of the friend I was there with. This show was hypnotising, the music and dancing precise to the point of being awesome. Very repetitive but never dull, and showed very well the talents of boths artists and all their colleagues.

But talking about dance is always disappointing, so there (or here).

Endless clicks and concatenations

Past the group of screaming, wasted teenagers demanding of their female minority things bound to end in misery, and toward the surreal Slovak lyrical accompaniment to Hit the Road, Jack: my second trip to the Petrzalka racecourse. The first time, a horse called Senita won Ilona 225 crowns and a great feeling of satisfaction. Then, there were large family groups and few wasted people.

This time, Maris and I were in the park next to the track, celebrating Dni Petrzalky - the Petrzalka Days - with a few stars of the Slovak scene. The last group we saw was Hex, who reminded us that today is Fathers Day by singing a song about their dads (as far as I could follow).

Not 'reminded' in the sense that I didn't know, but it made me think to write this, since I know he will read it. I'm super proud of and impressed by my father at the moment. Having retired a few months ago from a job he did for longer than I can think, he's now letting his love of games and invention fill his time, designing, making prototypes and testing them on people, reading up on patents and chasing machinists for quotes about bulk orders, getting business advice from my mum and finding inspiration from the man who invented the wind-up radio.

The current project is a game superficially resembling Rubik's cube, in that it is based around colours and patterns, mathsey underneath but not on top and hand-held with a satisfying feel to it. (The call for anyone who enjoyed the Rubik cube to come froward still satnds.) I've seen it in a couple of incarnations, although I'm told it has come a long way even since April. An early picture, not really doing it justice, is here:

We've disagreed about parts of it, espacilly the gameplay aspects - me thinking it didn't have enough, Dad recently assuring me he's worked on that - and I'm pleased to hear it is still developing well. It willbe nice to have a new toy to play with, but especially pleasing is the excitement in my dad's voice when he talks about it and in his eyes when he hands it around. He's been making things in his spare time for years and it's heartwarming to see him go so enthusiastically about it now he has the time. Although it's a secondary or tertiary concern, I look forward to the result.

So yes: good example of taking your chances, Dad. This is the card that got lost in the post.
Love from Chris
x

Personalising the political

This morning was an utterly normal morning, perhaps because I have finished Fateless. The sounds of air raid sirens and bombings which have characterised eastern Petrzalka in the last couple of days have been banished, since today is the first recently when I won't read a few pages of that book.

In brief, it is the story of a Jewish Hungarian teenager's experience of German camps during the second world war. The author, Imre Kertész, won the nobel prize for literature in 2002, and one of the things that convinced me to buy this over a few other options in a Budapest bookshop last weekend was the quote from the Nobel panel, about the

possibility of continuing to live and think as an individual in an era in which the subjection of human beings to social forces has become increasingly complete... [the author?] upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.

which, as pretentious as it is to say, are ideas which appeal to me a lot.

At the beginning, after maybe five or ten pages, I thought Ah, another Holocaust book - but I know the Holocaust, so I wish the writing were a little more appealing, which is an arrogant but basically fair reaction from an educated European, many of whom have consumed a masses of information of various forms about the Holocaust, WW2 and the bloody Nazis.

I got used to the writing, and admittedly I sympathise with the habit of constantly qualifying ones words and making clear they are subjective opinions, as annoying as this can be to read. In the case of this book, it was a habit well in line with the author's take on what he went through and ends up giving a good background to his 'conclusion' at the end.

In some sense, my fear was well-founded, in that being a book about life in concentration camps, a fair portion of the content was inevitably about (adjustment to) the hardships and the inhuman parts of the existence which I can gain only so much an appreciation of without going through it (there is no regret in that statement!). But the style of presentation, and the way the author recollects how he thought and felt (published 30 years later) is mind's eye-catching; in places, given What We Know Now, it was painful to read his naive take on what was happening (that of a 14-year-old? or simply of someone whose history books didn't contain examples of anything like the Holocaust and for whom it was therefore unimaginable - while we, having digested the Nazis (he doesn't use that word once), famously see parallels everywhere...). And a good writer can make readable prose out of things as familiar as buses or rain or whatever, so familiarity clearly isn't a deal-killer.

The most notable, for me, among the writing here was his point (as I took it) that life in the labour camps took place a day at a time, and therefore the human experience of it was quite different from what we might imagine from consuming the Holocaust as a single event and viewing it in political terms or as though such a phenomenon could be a policy choice.

In relation to the quote of the Swedish judges, one thing the book does is to uphold the experience of the individual ('of' historical events) against the historical-journalistic focus on whole events and societies to be digested in one go. But then history books and literature have different purposes; arguably one of the latter is to re-present things from non-traditional perspectives, like maybe mental illness or love or such 'individual' phenomena from a structural perspective.

All that said, maybe Primo Levi had the same approach - I haven't read anything by him.

The last page, as well as the rest of the book, recalls Gyorgy Faludy's My Happy Days in Hell, a review of which may follow at another time.

(Another thought was that it is impossible for me to read any book about this - more than any other single topic - in the way I'm accustomed to reading fiction, namely without knowing what happens next: there was the odd surprise, but (ironically, given the place of arbitrariness in this narrative) with such a topic there are a limited number of outcomes and plot devices, and given the basis in historical events and continuing elusiveness of capturing the words of dead people, a fundamental 'unknown' of the story is known through its having been written at all. I wonder what it would be like to read this book without knowing plenty about the events in which the story sits.)

a bit of a day

When I got home last night, there were two cats recalling their human past, just outside the door of my building. They were talking in melancholy and relatively deep voices - like those of forlorn toddlers - perhaps about the days when people had been happy to see them and let them into the warmth.

It's a windy place, Petrzalka. We have several trees, but large areas with only wide roads and tall square buildings, the latter making for brutal sideswiping tunnels of time-is-money, capitalist air in a hurry. (It was quieter before.) On days like today, I feel extra sorry for these chilled felines, although I don't see why they don't hunker down in the trench that has been dug around our building and left. (This illustrates the Petrzalkan way of doing things - in functional stages rather than by area, so we decide to cut all the grass in town over the course of one hellish weekend, and I suspect they have fewer people capable of laying the cable (or whatever) than they have capable of digging the holes. Needless to say, we have got used to it.)

This afternoon, no sign of the cats (one orange), but I shared the small lift with two gentlemen, one lame and becrutched, the other smiling, helpful and siniste (both orange). They were having an animated, friendly conversation, but stopped when we were in the lift, picking it up again as soon as they left two floors up (one was lame, it's okay). I can't decide if this was because they didn't want to share their conversation with me, or if they didn't want to impose it on me. It's a small lift with a charming, sweet-bitter scent, amply filled by the three of us and considerably less scented than usual, most of the air being taken up by bodies; or maybe I was holding my breath in the awkwardness. People don't look one another in the eyes here, even when they're bellying one another in the hips. (So in that sense, at least, it is like being in England.)

My computer has started behaving horribly slowly, so I will curtail this indulgent gaze at my navel (also orange). Good luck to all those who have exam results soon, and I suppose to everyone else as well, since good luck is quite important in general. I'll write about Fateless (previously published as Fatelessness, previously published as Fateless, first published as Sorstalanság) when this aged hunk of poo has cooled off.

give this a proper gander

I just read George Orwell's wonderful essay Politics and the English Language again, having forgotten about it for ages (formatted for online reading here). It is a short, passionate piece (which reads like he's honestly fed up), recommended for every writer's reading. I hesitate to go back through the recent UNDP news pieces with this in mind, but as a good structuralist I take comfort in knowing that I am a victim of the stylistic constraints placed on me by organisational politics. Which means: don't write full pieces including critical aspects, because that isn't our role - which is true, but after reading an impassioned piece by a journalist highlighting the crimes of the propagandist, it's not so nice to realise which I am! (Not that he only goes for propangandists - academics, other journalists and arts luvvies are also in there.)

Among this UN stuff, the tendencies he identifies are worst in the use of language to more or less deliberately obscure meaning or fulfill a formula. Under the section 'Insincere language and its uses', Orwell links the deterioration of language with the broader conditions of existence in dictatorships, as stellar cases of writing where declared and true intentions are different. We are supposed to be promoting democratic governance (another discussion), but we can't mention undemocratic practices; we only work at the invitation of governments so we have to keep them sweet. In public presentation, which is my part of the job, bad things are either left out or euphamised into obscurity. It's not surprising - propaganda, not news, journalism or communications. But I worry that this extends from the way public documents are written to the way that private things are written (I have seen examples of both honesty and obscurity in internal communcations), and even to the way that private communcations are spoken.

I started writing this instead of getting around to writing an acceptable paragraph on UNDP in the Caucasus. In a piece of self-censorship, the clause about ongoing and past conflicts in the region went, because I know it will later be excised and I'm in complaining, not active mood.

Orwell writes ('The invasion of ready-made phrases', near the end):

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow.

Meetings are full of empty phrases, particularly irritating when these present non-action as action (we will (enthusiastically! with great commitment!) wait for the results of the consultation). The aspirins are most conspicuous (yet unacknowledged) in planning and reporting on activities, although it's maybe a stretch to link this to language. Nobody has time or money to properly judge achievements based on well-designed and measurable indicators(!), but failing to acknowledge this at the front, a set of outcomes and outputs and others is in place, and a project is judged successful if the right number of the right sort of people received training in the right thing. There is no space for meaningful, honest evaluation of activities, so logframes of standard results and indicators - with their own language - are the convenient way of joining the dots. Never mind that the numbers were out of order. (Eyes opened for the next post, A defence of jargon...)

Talking of language: China

~

What do you do with a load of dead dolphins? Is it wrong to eat them?

Not being snobbish

From something I read today:

The regional PPP with Coca Cola Company is assisting three remote mountain villages in getting access to safe water as pilots.

Can't you just see them piling into their planes and swooping down on the stream with buckets at the ready? : )

Blue background, white text

What a week. I realise that in addition to the serious absence of empty time, reading a computer screen all the time for work puts me off writing here. I can't be alone in this, so any tips gratefully received. The absence means of course that several things will come all at once, so apologies in advance for the length and non-sequitur nature of this. I will return after a shower. With luck, the heat'll make the lack of hot water bearable. (The shower was an appropriate antidote to the slow sauna of summer; I didn't try shaving.)

On Saturday, I went to my second Hungarian wedding, which was a huge and very enjoyable affair. The happiest couple were those responsible for publishing Calvin and Hobbes in Hungarian, which should endear them to everyone. A good hundred guests each per spouse, lasting ages without getting dull and sunny as the Gulf. They had a fine band, which finally stopped around six in the morning, having played for most of the previous twelve hours to enthusiastic dancers, and about fifteen cakes : ) The blah in the church was of course strange and cultish, but bearable, contrary to what I have heard about high Anglican equivalents (it probably helped that it was in Hungarian, rather than Anglish). The gravity of the whole thing was somewhat undermined by the four (count them) photographers flitting around throughout, videoing from behind when the vicar or whatever did his bit and when Ilona did a reading. I imagine vicars (or whatever) being trained for this the same way horses are trained to deal with crowd noise and backfiring cars for work at football matches and riots. But the couple looked very happy, and kept looking at each other and not at the one between them and the cross, which was sweet to watch.

Games with the bride

The most amusing part of the whole thing came before the church, when according to Hungarian village traditions, the vofej led a procession of the groom's family+ to ask the bride to come out of the house. This vofej addressed the crowd, families and all as the mouthepiece of the bride and groom, and spoke in verse the whole time. I was told he is a history teacher during the week, and most entertaining he would be.
(What is the alternative if you don't want to marry someone in the name of Zeus? Obviously in the name of society is also out, but then the town hall is just a way of having the legal preference for married people once society has developed from having official religion. Ditto humanism etc, unless of course you are actually marrying for the sake of a belief system. Taking the ceremony as given for the sake of argument, the 'moment of joining' is the solemn one, and I guess it helps to have a third party say when that happens. But if you marry just for the sake of professing your forever-commitment to one another, who is invested with that authority? What does the procedure become?

According to a chap from the Department for Work and Pensions who I met in Geneva, British policy is going toward having completely individualised benefit systems. He seemed convinced by the argument that Tatchell's idea of allowing people not in romantic relationships to marry would lead to absurdity. Maybe I misunderstood him, but it seemed that where a married couple have a breadwinner-homemaker relationship, the individualised pension system would mean that the homemaker's lively widowhood would rely on the breadwinner having made voluntary payments into H's pension while alive, i.e. no shared/transferable assets meaning no assumed inheritance, rather everything having to be shared out explicitly in the will. He seemed sure it was good from a gender equality point of view; it seems to make female pensioner poverty more likely, but maybe I didn't fully get him. I had to return to my seat at the start of the next session.)
~
Despite what the some may say, earthquakes killing your family is still not good if those people are Chinese. Two weeks before the earthquake in Chengdu, a friend of a friend had just published Dujiangyan: in harmony with nature, the first English language guide to one of the areas which would be badly damaged, and now "irrevocably out of date". If you want to do a little something, you can buy this for 200 renminbi (box on the right), all proceeds to help the recovery of affected children.
~
In light of what happened at the election and since, my article on getting rid of family voting in Macedonia seems a little overshadowed. Family voting (basically where the man of the family votes for his wife and others eligible) is as much a violation of human rights as ballot stuffing, all the more so where it is widespread. But it's mostly women and young people who suffer, and anyway, it's a domestic issue...

That's enough for now. Photos as soon as I recover my camera from under the front seat of the car. Goodness, the potholes.

Budapest, Saturday afternoon. Bodyworlds, which exams prevented me from seeing in London, has spawned copycats, such as Bodies. I imagine the original to be a lot more artistic and somehow more neatly executed, but maybe they just have better lighting and more expensive photographers doing their promotional stuff.

But it was wicked to see all the muscley bits and a diaphragm, an omentum and so on. And foetuses in jars at a load of gestative stages (digestation = twins?), which look shockingly like they might grow up to be humans... Arteries are much thinner than I had thought. Through Galen's broken foot I came across Jonathan Monks' uncanny ability to suggest what is wrong with you and how to fix yourself: pain in the calf? Press here in the armpit and see how that feels, etc. Then you look at these long nerves and multilapping muscles and begin to see how it all might work.

When the proud fennel citadel finally weakens and falls:

Knees and a nose, a nose and knees

Bodies tells us that there are arteries not far behind.

And I suppose I should also feature the proud fennel citadel in its glory days, but I don't seem to have that picture here sad face

Currently reading: Antal Szerb's short story about a king, Oliver VII. I like his style. I understand that none of the several people (minimum) to whom I recommended The Pendragon Legend has dropped by number 88 to pick it up. What a waste! Still, it will sit and wait, books are nice like that. Not like blogs.

audiences

(because i'm feeling lazy, perhaps, and becuase i reckon people don't read comments on several day old posts, this was a comment responding to this on an earlier post)

Goosey, I find your example very odd - what's strange about fans at a gig raising their arms and cheering for the band on stage? I'm well up for making people consider their actions in a different light, martian's-eye views and all. (Although it seems a little risky when those in question aren't just cheering but are pushing you toward stardom!) When at rallies, I feel a bit uncomfortable looking at people chant about whatever they chant about. Or rather, the most striking aspect is always the similarity between war-stopping or World Bank bashing protests and rallies on other, mutually exclusive activities, NF or whatever, football chants, the bits in church services where everyone mumbles the same thing. They all have something sinister and disappointing about them. In true bio-structuralist form(!), I guess it says that people and social organisms are very similar undearneath, only distinguished by the window-dressing of allegiances or agendas.

Audiences are oppressive, and they have codes of behaviour. Seeing Wynton Marsalis at the Royal Albert Hall was (great, but also) very frustrating: an RAH audience Does Not move. At all. the very occasional nodding head, and goodness knows how many tensed up buttocks and silenced hips dying to show that they can hear the music.

The time I most hated audiences was at the end of "Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder", a dance piece by Yasmeen Godder. She is an Israeli choreographer and this piece had a major theme of the suffereing and humiliation of life with checkpoints. Of course it was much deeper than that, with a lot of references to pain within individual relatinoships as well as the larger scale, and all delivered with maybe the most precise, smooth dancing I have ever seen. In short, both form and content were captivating and moving. It ended with a woman crying-scraming very loud and hysterically with her boyfriend dying in her arms. A very strong climax, the stage dark apart from the two of them, all other dancers gone - it was 'over', except that she was continuing this incredible grief. In that moment, there was no wronger audience reaction than to start clapping and whistling. We should have all left quietly, or what. But they clapped and cheered and I couldn't fathom that we had just spent an hour watching the same thing. Maybe I'm snobbishly projecting, but pretty much everyone else had missed the point.

Green blues

Our office received a 'Green office award' from the UNDP administrator some time, last year or this. I just did a study on the tap in the bathroom near my office. This tap is left running, as the only way to turn it off is to do yourself an injury. Once I managed to get it down to maybe two drips a second, causing greater physical pain than the soul-pain of leaving it running. The people who mostly use that bathroom are the security guards and the woman who mans reception, and me. It isn't laziness, it's simply unreasonable to expect anyone to turn that tap off. I mentioned it to the building manager several weeks ago (he of the fridge). Apparently, taps are difficult to replace and expensive. He is pathetic. I wonder whether it was also him who decided the best place for a fire escape is out the back of the stairs...

Anyway, now the Green Office Team (which I guess doesn't include him) knows that we are wasting about 730 litres of water a day, and have agreed to do something about it. In an email.

That's the fuel capacity of a Panzer tank, or (more relevantly?) the average annual drinking-water intake of a Canadian.

Further to Geneva, some photos

On offer at the Red Cross museum, which is an alright museum, but their mazelike layout is a bit effective. At the beginning they have a section about protecting life, with extracts from various ancient cultural-religious texts purporting to support the idea of humanity in warfare. However, at least in the case of the extracts from Sun Tzu and the Hadith, they say 'treat prisoners well, as they will then be more effective slave labour.' This lays the basis for humanitarian law...

Over at the museum of human perfection, they had pretty things to entice the eye.

Even Geneva has panelaky

Public art by the Palace of the Nations

Heaven's Gate

They take their food seriously (it seems, though I didn't eat particularly well).
They even fly-post invitations to cutlery events: