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The Twin Cities' weekly newspaper City Pages tells the story of yet more underestimated and underfunded support for US soldiers in Iraq through the story of one Iowa man, grievously injured in Iraq, hurriedly retired from the National Guard and now receiving care at the VA hospital in Minneapolis. The Minneapolis VA is one of four new "polytrauma" treatment centers set up to handle the new complexes of injuries that soldiers are experiencing (and surviving) in 21st century warfare. But how are they going to cope with the incoming flood of veterans from this war on the one hand, and massive funding cuts on the other?
Former US President Jimmy Carter's article in last week's Observer is a strong and unequivocal condemnation of the current administration's abrogation of international treaties and agreements, and the inevitable forteiture of international respect and credibility that follows. And, as a man of faith (a faith far more demonstrable and sincere than that of Mr. "God-told-me-to-attack-Iraq" Bush), Carter also deplores the increasing militarism and fundamentalism of American Christianity. A must-read article.
 This post is a little late in coming. I got back from my weekend Sunday night, intending to post right away, with some nice pictures. But I have a "new" laptop and thus I had a few technical glitches (or maybe just senior moments - DH, don't say a word!) And I had a terrible Monday night experience courtesy of Central Trains and Midland Mainline, although I forgive Midland Mainline because they apologised and sent me home in a taxi. (Other than that little bit, I don't want to talk about it.)
So, the Dru Yoga Centre near Bangor in Wales, is very lovely. Pure air and water, vegetarian foods, gentle vibes, warm and cosy "chalets". I particularly enjoyed the walk through the rolling countryside to a nearby bubbling stream (or small river). The yoga was OK too, although I only attended half the sessions; after all, I was there to relax. There will be a link for all the pictures soon.
Experian USA will be conducting a study to track the outstanding payable balances of 635,000 businesses, the large majority of which are small businesses employing fewer than 50 people. The data will be broken down by major sector, SIC codes, and size and age of the businesses, as well as geographically. So far, it is known that businesses in the affected areas had outstanding payables of $40 billion. Repayment on invoices and debt is a way of tracking business recovery.
This is a good thing, but only a fly's-eye view of the whole economic picture, in my opinion. (Trust me! I have a bachelor's degree - in Economics!) In order to pay off debt and try to claw a way back into the marketplace, many small businesses will slash staff. This will of course have a ripple effect. Already my relatives in the area tell about the impossibility of booking any motel accommodation for at least a year. They were all snatched up in the first weeks by insurance, consulting and construction firms flocking into the Gulf region to work on, and no doubt profit from, the recovery. I have nothing against profit, of course, but this does rather leave the remaining residents "high and dry" (sick wordplay, I confess) when it comes to jobs and housing. The study is not measuring any of this, but somebody should be.
First, a jab to the nose! Then a hook to the temple! Next, knight takes bishop on D5! Testing both brains and brawn, it is supposedly the ultimate alpha-male sport. Yes, it's . . . chess boxing! Deborama is absolutely fascinated by this new international sport that started out life as a very subtle performance art piece and now nets its artist-founder a tidy little income.
Diablo Cody's all-purpose lapsed-Catholic (but not totally lapsed) confession of faith in City Pages is incredibly moving, despite the clever, hip, former-sex-worker tone. Read every word, there are some real gems of writing there.
. . . and the British have no idea about curry! There is a joke about a British lad (of, say, 50) who has had a curry late at night, after a marathon drinking session in one or more pubs, nearly every Friday night of his adult life. Then one day he has one for lunch. And is appalled at how unpleasantly hot and pungent it is! And British men, in particular, do not know how to make curry. They are always very proud of their fiery creations, with loads of half-cooked onion, tinned tomatoes, extra chili, and a huge wad of raw madras curry paste dumped in at the last minute. It's more of a trial by ordeal than a meal deal, let me tell you. (See the excellent cookbook Cooking Like Mummiji, touted on these pages, for lessons in a better way.)
The catering service at my place of employment is officially "celebrating Diwali". Far be it from me to criticise their attempts at cultural sensitivity, but today they featured a Beef Madras. Besides being Diwali (or near to it, anyway) it is also into the last few days of Ramadan. So who exactly is going to eat this Beef Madras, amongst the Indian and Pakistani members of our workforce? Hindus (hello!) don't eat beef (if they are devout) and Muslims don't eat lunch during Ramadan (if they're observant.) So there you go. All the British lads can "celebrate Diwali" by devouring sacred cow cooked in a manner that would make Mummiji blanch. I saw one of our Asian or British Asian employees or contractors special-ordering a Vegetarian Madras, so I popped into the queue behind him and said "I'll have what he's having." But our "chef" is a British lad and it was - well, pretty bad. All hot and sour where it should have been pungent and alluring, no subtlety, loads of onions. Nice try, but no banana.
Rosa Parks is to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Who would have ever predicted such a thing? The only downside to this story (apart from her being dead, but she did have 92 years) is that she is the first woman to have this honour in over 200 years.
: " 
Powerful. Intimidating. Trivia Nazi. President Bartlet is all of these and more. A super-nerd who's into chess, National Parks, and rambling off things in Latin, POTUS is the 'real thing.' Not being completely upfront with the American people may cause him re-election headaches, though...
:: Which West Wing character are you? :: "
Could we be seeing the beginning of the end for the Bush administration? Could there be a premature departure in deepest shame, a la Nixon? We can but hope. It feels like the tipping point is just around the corner, and the feverish comment on the ins and outs is very alluring.
DH asked: what the heck kind of a name is "Scooter" for a grown man? "Frat boy," I answered.
Dick Jones of Patteran Pages is eminently qualified to do that movie review of Socrsese's Dylan epic, but unfortunately I don't know if he saw it. He did see the The Madhouse on Castle Street, and become a lifelong advocate of everything Dylanesque (that's Bob D, not D Thomas, of course, although the two often go hand in hand.) Dick says the things I wanted to say about Dylan: My relationship with Dylan as a key figure in that movement of souls that gathered us up in the ‘60s & dumped us, high & dry, somewhere in the middle of the ‘70s was never one of acolyte. Rather he represented for me a symbol of detached individualism. He followed his own trail, not because some imp of perversity had him flouting the protocols, but because he was driven by creative forces over which he had no control. In an era of largely spurious non-conformity, in which fashion & popular cultural diktat functioned significantly at the behest of commercial concerns, Dylan walked alone. Drawn by his eccentric star, he entered the forbidden realms of country music, recorded utterly unsuitable cover versions, embraced the suffocating sterility of fundamentalist Christianity, & then – his voice shot & with blood in his eye – he returned to the timeless blues, ballads, rags & hollers of his seminal years. Ever the maverick, evading the obsessive efforts of the media finally to bind him to the ground like Gulliver, Dylan has maintained triumphantly an inviolable uniqueness amongst his many peers. Inhabiting as he has for so long a bewildering multitude of roles & identities, each drawing deep on America’s rich resources of popular culture, he has enjoyed a measure of creative freedom & self-determination experienced by very few artists. I’ve been tempted to shell out for increasingly expensive concert tickets each time he has toured. But somehow, after all these years, from beatnik cherub to ageing troubador, it’s simply enough to know that he’s out there.
I saw the above slogan (but without the question mark) on a very large banner on the outer wall of the Methodist Mission in Nottingham city centre. This is just so wrong on so many levels. It presumes that 1) civilisation and Christianity (or Protestantism? or Methodism?) are antithetical; and it presumes that 2) civilisation is a bad thing and that perhaps the luckless masses exposed to it need treatment to ameliorate their suffering; and it presumes that 3) what is wrong with the "modern world" is the presence of civilisation, rather than its all too conspicuous absence. You see, this is what happens when people who are far too shallow and stupid to understand any philosophy at all are allowed to read or hear a little about post-modernism. All I can think is, poor old John Wesley must be rolling around in his grave.
This classic post from yesterday in the excellent blog Body and Soul is about human scale economics, what you have vs. what you own. It really hit me right where I live. This is an absolute must-read, and it is right on target for the sort of thing I would now be publishing if I had pursued my dream to be an academic economist. My grand thesis which never happened was based on this tantalising paradox: economics started out as a branch of philosophy that was concerned with the human drive to be happy. It is now called, half-affectionately and half-disparagingly, "the dismal science". How did this branch of knowledge transform itself from the art of happiness to the science of immiseration? Ah, that's a very good question ...
I had high hopes of this City Pages review of Scorsese's No Direction Home, based on the title and the "hook" (Scorsese takes 200 minutes to preserve the mystery of Dylan). But I was disappointed, very disappointed. Biggest problem with it? The reviewer confesses that he is too young "to have ever trusted the dude in the first place" and then continues, thinking himself very hip and clever: The combative mid-'60s press conferences, the autobiographical fabrications, the mumbled cryptoquips, the endless string of overrated best-album-since-Blood on the Tracks-es--all were part of the legacy passed on to us post-Boomers. Excuse me, but do give it a rest. "Us Boomers" have heard this particular whinge quite enough, thanks. But then, having framed this as another us-vs-them generational pissing contest, he allows several howlers to creep in. He notes that "Like A Rolling Stone", in a week when it was no. 2 in the Top-10, "nestled not incongruously between the Beatles' Help and the Beach Boys' California Girls" in a screen-shot in the film. Damn, when in the 1980s or 1990s or this decade did you have three top songs of that calibre? Isn't it just too obvious that post-Boomers are suffering from the most massive case of Bloomian anxiety of influence imagineable? Isn't it all just too darned Oedipal? And then, and then, the twerp has the gall to cast aspersions on Scorsese's choice of a sound-track to the 1950s. Hey, dude, you have just told us that you were not around then, and Scorsese most definitely was, and he is a cultural giant while you are a lowly insect toiling away as a stringer for a local weekly! Where the heck do you get off telling Scorsese he got it wrong? Truly, I wish someone would write a good review of No Direction Home. Someone who "gets" Dylan, who was alive in the 60s, who respects but doesn't worship Scorsese and who doesn't have an axe to grind. Damn, that could be me. Too bad I'm so lazy.
August Nimtz, a New Orleans native who is now a history professor at the University of Minnesota and a leading American Marxist scholar, has this brief but pithy interview with the City Pages' Jim Walsh.
Of course, I had to buy the new Guardian today. Britannia has been all abuzz about the new "Berliner" format, quite like a tabloid but more serious and attractive. (I also had to buy an Independent, but that was because it had a banner that said "Life Without Sex" by Belle du Jour, which turned out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch. When will I ever learn?) The Guardian had this story, that everyone has, no exclusives, about the NHS recently discovering that - shock, horror - depression is rampant in the UK and the handing out of anti-depressants like candy is having almost no positive effect. A few skillion pounds is about to be invested in more cognitive-behavioural therapists. I could have told them this years ago. I first suspected the problem because almost everyone I know is clinically depressed, and almost all of them have tried drugs, and I don't know a single person who has "recovered" or even been helped. Oh, they sometimes say they are helped; they say they would be much worse without the drugs. But I wondered. So, after over 20 years as a diagnosed but unmedicated depressive myself, I gave two anti-depressants a try (not at once, obviously). The first made me want to die with almost the first dose so I quit it immediately. After a six month hiatus I tried again. The second one, I could tolerate and took for a few months. I noticed no improvement and stopped it on my own without consulting the GP. The only possible lingering side effect of this ignoble experiment is possibly a few (well more than a few) extra pounds I could ill afford. Grr. Bring on the CBT on the NHS, I say.
Here's a story that you may not have heard at the time. Ex-VP Al Gore paid to airlift the patients of a hospital in New Orleans to Tennessee when they were stranded in life-threatening circumstances. (Gore has apparently been a little shy about the story, no doubt due to his unfair and atrocious treatment by the press in the past.)
In an interesting if chilling parallel, I was watching the new Andrew Marr show Sunday AM this morning and in the ritual reading of the newspaper headlines, one of the national tabloids had a front page story alleging that hospital staff in New Orleans engaged in mercy killing of stranded and terminally ill patients. I could not find a link for this on the internet (I'm sure it must be out there*) but I did find a lot of other stuff, including this powerful accusation of ethnic cleansing in New Orleans. Here's a quote: Buffalo-based columnist Michael I. Niman notes Sept. 8 how the feds effectively shut down citizen self-help rescue efforts such as [New Orleans resident Charmaine] Neville's:
The Â?too dangerous to rescueÂ? myth was also employed by FEMA as rationale for ordering rescue teams to stand down early in the crisis. Louisianans are a tough lot, and many private boat owners from areas surrounding New Orleans immediately entered the city as flooding began, creating an ad hoc rescue flotilla. Many survivors tell of strangers in small fishing boats plucking them out of second story windows or off of roofs, depositing them high and dry on highway overpasses. The Federal government put a stop to such heroism, while failing to replace the independent effort with one of their own. (Online at MediaStudy.com)
There appears to have been an overt policy of racial and class discrimination in the rescue effort. ThMilwaukeeee Journal-Sentinel Sept. 2 reports the ordeal of Kelli Nelson, an African-American Wisconsin native working as a nurse at Charity Hospital, New Orleans' largest public hospital and trauma center. She and other personnel and patients were finally airlifted out to San Antonio on the 2nd, after she stood on the roof with a big sign reading "Save the babies, please get us out of here." The city's big private hospitals like Tulane were evacuated days earlier. Trapped in the city, Kelli did manage to get out some chilling text messages to her friends and family.
"She says the situation has gotten worse," the friends relayed that Kelli had messaged them. "The evacuation was aborted... [T]hey had taken babies and mothers down to a boat to go to Tulane's helicopter pad and they were refused access to the pad... what a horror story.
"Does that mean indigent people have no rights...?
* Update: It was The Sunday Mail. I ended up buying the paper and reading it "offline". The pundits on the show pooh-poohed the possibility of accuracy of this story, but I have to say it had, for me, a ring of verisimilitude.
A shocking story comes to a conclusion of sorts. Only read this if you have the stomach for the unpleasant truth.
Okay, cast of characters for those who don't know me. Dad and Mom (79 and 72 respectively) are still alive. There are six of us "kids" : oldest, middle and youngest sisters and oldest, middle and youngest brothers. All but youngest brother, who is also the youngest, are married with one or more children. I am oldest sister (and the oldest). (It's beginning to sound like one of those nice logic puzzles, but never fear, this is just for orientation.)
Middle sister's family and Mom and Dad all live in Gulfport, not, thankfully, near the gulf. Youngest sister's family lives in Hattiesburg, MS. Oldest and youngest brothers both live in Alabama, youngest is in a nice little house in Birmingham. The middle brother is somewhat reclusive, so he actually is not very involved in this story. So, before Katrina hit, I phoned youngest sister Denise to check that Mom and Dad were with her and not left behind in Gulfport. Middle sister Cindy was in the midwest working on a contract. Her husband and son took refuge up in Northern Mississippi with another relation. And then, not surprisingly, we had phone silence for three days while I worried and fretted. Because we heard that things were not that good even in Hattiesburg. I now have news, even having received an e-mail from Mom, bless her, that they all had to abandon the house in Hattiesburg (not sure when - Tuesday or Wednesday) due to lack of water, power and food. By the way, there were other people sheltering there, too, a total of nine, including a baby. Denise and family and Mom and Dad set out in a 2-car convoy to the youngest brother's house, where my parents have been lodged and it looks like they may be there a while. All three houses are still standing, but damaged. That's "the blue house" that Cindy's husband built for their family, "the duplex" on the same land that he built for our parents and his very aged father (who apparently "rode it out" there and is also OK) and the lovely Victorian house in Hattiesburg that Denise's husband carefully restored. So it looks like Mom and Dad, at least, may be displaced persons for a couple of months at least. For one thing, the hurricane season is only started! Now there's a disquieting thought.
Oh, and. The parents' car died irreparibly just as they got to Birmingham. Still, we are all grateful, knowing it could have been a lot worse. Pray for those still suffering far crueler fates in Louisiana and Mississippi.
And then there is this:
President Bush flew over New Orleans and parts of Mississippi's hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." Although ex-President Clinton is too much of a gentleman to criticise Bush, this has got to be said. If Clinton were president, absolutely nothing would have prevented him from landing in New Orleans and doing his famous touching, feeling, comforting thing. I am just saying. The difference between the two men is searingly obvious. I am in mourning for New Orleans, a city I loved, and Mississippi, a state where half of my family resides. On a personal level it is hard to get information. I know more or less where everyone is, but they are cut off by phone and power outages, so I do not know how much loss they have suffered. All we can do is wait and pray. And send money to the Red Cross or your choice of charity if you can. Update: here is a whole bunch of news photos from LA and MS.
Most of the web news is focusing on New Orleans and the Louisiana coast in the hurricane Katrina story, but it appears that the Mississippi Coast is taking the brunt of landfall. This is something that concerns Deborama very much, as her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law and nephew all live in Gulfport. The live CNN and Fox News reports from the beach in Gulfport are very frightening. I am waiting for it to be a little later and then I will phone the other sister in Hattiesburg to see if the parents got evacuated and are up in Hattiesburg. I also have a young friend, mainly a friend of daughter Aimee, who lives in New Orleans. Apparently 80% of New Orleans is evacuated. Of course the concern there, apart from the possible loss of life, is the devastation that will result if the levees are breached and the petroleum wastes, toxic chemicals and septic tank contents flood New Orleans, which is up to 10 feet below sea level in places.
I am posting this from my new laptop. Sorry for the huge lapse in blogging. Going back to work (11 hours per day), and trying to keep up the momentum of my new healthy lifestyle (10 hours per day, including 7 hours for sleep), and spend at least a little time with DH(3 to 4 hours per day), none of which can be done simultaneously, simply does not leave time for blogging. Something's gotta give! Any suggestions?
This article from the Washington Post details how the current US administration is gradually coming to realise that their initial "plans" for post-war Iraq were based on a very faulty understanding of Iraqi history and politics. With all the government officials being quoted anonymously, it appears that they are still rather skittish about openly admitting the unrealistic and even naive nature of the original ambitions for a unified, secular, pro-western government to emerge after the "liberation" from Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shi'ites to create a special status. The Shi'ites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said. The US administration is giving up such hopes as the enshrinement of women's rights in the constitution, a totally secular government and the complete integration of Kurds and Shi'ites into a unified Iraq. Instead, they are now focusing limiting the failures by influencing the constitutional process to make it easier to amend in the future, and establishing some credibility and order in an accelerated withdrawal of coalition troops and advisers.
Mo Mowlam passed away yesterday after a period of grave illness. She survived a brain tumour several years ago. Among other glowing tributes, Prime Minister Tony Blair said of her:
It is no exaggeration to say she transformed the politics not just of Northern Ireland itself but crucially of relations between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and it was this transformation that created the culture in which peace-making could flourish.
My boy Carey has finally got his website up and running. Go see it. Buy some art. I love it, and not just 'cause he's my son, either.
I posted (In good faith, having seen it in more than one "proper" news source) that the woman shot with Steven Vincent, American trouble-making blogger in Basra, was his fiancee as well as his translator. "Fiancee" being often the polite term for lover these days. This article in the 5 August Guardian G2 section causes me to be pretty sure that this was not the case. The article goes into far more depth about who Vincent was and where he was from, and quotes extensively, amongst others, from his wife back in New York City who was in almost daily contact with him and knew all about Nouriya and is adamant that the relationship was a platonic friendship. This is fairly important, because it has been suggested that the "reason" for the attack was a presumed sexual relationship between the two.
I am halfway through the first week of my functional restoration programme. It is not Army basic training tough, but it is tough nevertheless. We were warned on Monday that our levels of pain may increase at first, that emotions would well up, and that we may have some negative feelings about the treatment. All true! Today we had a lecture about stress and learned that we may be experiencing random floods of adrenalin. Well, that may explain the two almost sleepless nights, despite being bone-tired, and the strange desire to do violence to DH, who has no idea what I am going through. Hormones mostly suck, in my opinion. And I say this despite having experienced pregnancy (thanks, I actually slightly prefer old age!) and having at least the memory of having a great sex life. The problems with hormones is that the good vibes they give you are far more than outweighed by the misery they can cause in other circumstances. YMMV.
In the UK as in the US, it seems that the best die young. Robin Cook was only 59, with possibly the best part of his already brilliant political career ahead of him. This is a very sad turn of events.
I have made some minor changes to the template. I added my Truth Laid Bear status back in, now that I am back in the mammal category, although at a vermin level. Also, see the update of the Constant Gardener post to read about my woes over at the book review blog, and plea for debugging help.
Blogging may be scarce for the next two weeks, or it may be better than usual. I am off work, but attending day-long physical therapy, group therapy and punishing exercise sessions at the Priory, Sketchley Hall. Meanwhile at home, we are embarking on an intensive six-week house makeover, to put our house on the market for the second time. This time, we're serious.
In preparation for the above-mentioned PT fortnight, I decided to bite the bullet and get my hair cut really short. I have had medium to long hair for the past decade. I went to local unisex hair-cutter and said cut it really short - not a crew cut, but short enough so that nothing can touch my face. With a fringe (American = bangs) but not heavy or long. And that's what I got. It looks quite different. When I brush my teeth, I reach for my hair to keep it up out of the way and there is no hair. When I go to bed, I feel as if I need to "let my hair down" but there is nothing to let down. My scores of hair scrunchies and bobby pins can be hidden away, possibly forever. I am a new woman.
This story is from the Times Online. Steven Vincent was an American journalist/blogger based in Basra. He had been posting stories about the conditions of lawlessness and corruption in the (supposedly) British-controlled area, stories that were often critical of the British military. He was also the author of a well-received book about post-invasion Iraq and was said to be working on another about the history of Basra. He was kidnapped along with his translator and fiancee, who is seriously wounded.
Update: see correction post above.
I see that David le Carre's last-but-one book, "The Constant Gardener", is to be made into a film. This is a great idea - not only is this one of le Carre's most moving and passionate books, with a message that is rarely seen in literature or non-fiction, but it is told in a very cinematic way. I can hardly wait to see it.
This post will be cross-posted at Deborama's Books and if I can get my lazy donkey in gear, I may even re-read and review it.
I was also very taken with le Carre's last book, Absolute Friends, but somehow I doubt that will ever be made into a movie. Not in this decade anyway.
***Update*** 7 August
I did try to cross-post this at Deborama's Book Reviews and Store, but we are having problems over there and I ended up deleting the post. For some reason, my template no longer displays as it did. Look and see, it's all messed up. I tried debugging it with my limited HTML/CSS skills but failed. Also, Amazon associates has changed the links they give you from simple text and/or book-cover graphics to some horrible, busy, scripted box, which really does not work with my book blog's format very well. The two latest posts use what they provide, and I don't like the look of it at all. I can edit it down to something useable, as I did with this post, but yecch. If anyone wants to volunteer to help me debug my book review template, or wants to offer a shortcut to getting simple links from Amazon, I would be very grateful.
Here is a link to Seth Garwood's obituary in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, including a "guest book" feature where people can leave condolence messages.
This no-holds-barred polemic against the Iraq war. which does not shrink from calling Bush and Blair war criminals, is on the usually more conservative Newsmax website. I probably would not have put it this strongly, but there really isn't anything I can disagree with in it.
Rev. Seth Garwood, the minister of my church in Minneapolis, died quite suddenly and unexpectedly (he was young middle-aged) last Thursday. I was notified by e-mail, for which I am grateful, grateful that we have this e-mail connection which means so much to us absentee members. It is so painful to lose someone suddenly anyway, but when you cannot even grieve, except alone in your house thousands of miles away, it makes it worse, in a way. The only ripple on the www is this obituary on the Methodist Annual Conference website; no picture yet, but I am trying to obtain one.
Whenever I get news of someone dying who was a friend back in Minnesota, it sharply increases my sadness at being separated from that wonderful community of friends I enjoyed there, which is not something I expect ever to experience again in my life. (I can hope, of course.) Anyway, even though I missed the memorial service today, my thoughts and prayers are with my beleaguered little church in Minneapolis, and the family and friends of Seth.
The slowest motion train wreck in history is the unfolding horror show of GM technology. (Disclaimer: I am not a Luddite, nor am I opposed to all "tampering with nature", nor am I an ill-informed granola-cruncher with knee-jerk oppostion to "evil GM". This is serious stuff here, and I am quite serious about it.) The reality of GM testing and its commercial deployment is so far from the cynically glib pronouncements of its deluded proponents that it leads one to begin to doubt literally every word they say. They mouth platitudes about careful testing and scientific consensus about safety, when they know that no such things exist or could even be faked up if required. The thing is, they probably won't be required. This is because the main community relations effort of the giant headless chicken corporations that produce the actual GM products consisted of a very effective pre-emptive smear of anyone who opposes GM technology for any reason. Now we have a scenario where they roll out GM rapeseed to a few willing UK farmers (surrounded by a small horde of vociferous protesters and a vast, worried but quiescent public) blandly assuring us that gene transfer to create "superweeds" is a billion-to-one improbability (note the scientific precision of that; they obviously did tests far too sophisticated for us to understand.) Within a mere three years there is the news of the discovery of a GM superweed that herbicides cannot kill. It rates a few anxious paragraphs and the world goes back to its nap. Meanwhile, in the jungles of South America, GM trees are the latest untested and almost unimagineable threat to the vital rainforest.
The fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. I have been obsessed (a bit) with this ever since the story broke last Friday. DH and I have desultory half-arguments about it; neither of us wants to take a strong position, but he tends to be more forgiving to police (in general) than I am. I am interested in hearing from American bloggers, readers and friends as to how much coverage this gets in the US and what the general opinion is about it.
The Brain Sex Quiz will tell you how female your brain is. This is related to a series on the Beeb called Secrets of the Sexes. It's better than the usual dumbed-down science fare on TV. At this site you can also read about the accuracy (or not) of intelligence tests, which celebrities have high IQs and the latest thinking on - um - thinking.
Yesterday I missed work to go and be evaluated at The Priory, Sketchley Hall, in Hinckley. I have been recommended to a great programme they have there called "Functional Restoration". It's basically an intensive get-fit thing that lasts 2 weeks and corrects muscle-and-joint problems that may have been caused by accident, injury or neglect (or all three in my case.)
Today I attended the Nottingham Bookcrossers Meetup at Costa Coffee in Nottingham. I released eight books and caught three. I shopped a little and came home on the train.
Ah, the train. There used to be a direct train from Hinckley to Nottingham but it was discontinued about a month ago. Now, the first leg of my train journey (to home) is generally from Nottingham to Leicester and the second is from Leicester to Hinckley. The second leg is only on Central Trains but the first can be Midland Mainline, which is travelling to London via Leicester. Except not today, because there is a track-side fire outside of Luton, one of the stations it goes through, which "involves gas canisters". Therefore my second train was packed with people trying to get to London. They were bound for the next stop after mine to catch a Virgin Train to London Euston, which does not go through Luton. Everybody was quite cheerful about it; they were just glad it wasn't a bomb.
The Times and other news sources covered the weekends WWII Memorial events in the same spirit they were presented, somehow simultaneously linking London's present-day terror attacks to the Blitz and the threat of world-wide fascism in the 1940s and still giving superior honour to the veterans of the Second World War. The Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury and even the veterans themselves all followed the same theme, amidst the flypasts, mass marches and pageantry that the British do so well (dropping millions of poppies from a Lancaster bomber for example, and the seven Books of Remembrance with the names of all the wartime civilian dead).
Aslam, of the blog methinks [mythic flow], has a post about his love for NYC, Madrid and London. Then he puts it in perspective, quoting William Rivers Pitt of Truthout, and I nod my head sagely and pass it on: In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday". (Actually, I would have said "Thursday", but then I didn't think of it, did I?) The Truthout.org editorial goes on to say: Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.
 There are a number of sources of information about the terrorist attacks in London earlier today. Web sources do not tend to be as up-to-date as the TV and radio, but if you are at work or not near a TV, it may be your best bet. Sky News has a good selection of stuff on the web, including this summary of public transport and traffic conditions. My first checkpoint at work was Google News UK, and although it was a little slow getting the news at first, there is a lot there now. I see from the Guardian that the US has raised the HSA threat level to orange. (It is my perception, by the way, that the British take this sort of thing in stride a lot better than Americans; there is a remarkable air of sang-froid and getting on with it, and not letting the terrorists win by shutting everything down and going into full panic mode.) The Guardian also has a story about the possible perpetrators, and the level of planning that would have been required for this type of attack. The choice of time for the offensive is chillingly brilliant strategy, with the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in Singapore for the IOC meeting, and much of the nation's security force focused on Gleneagles and the G8 Summit.
Or not, as the case may be. I have been very remiss, I know. I have just come through a re-organisation of the division of the company I work for. I have "come through" in the sense that I have kept my job, by basically re-applying for it. A number of us were forced to go through a selection process involving tests and interviews. I think about 2/3 of the project team I am on did not make it, which does not bode well for the stress-free completion of the project. This reorganisation was forced upon us by economic necessity, and the management layer was hit at least as hard as the lower tiers, so there is not much point in moaning about it. Still, British people do like a good moan, and redundancies are never painless, so the stress levels have been high and are not going to go down very soon.
We recently took a little day trip to Ludlow, a place I have wanted to visit for a while, because of its foodie reputation. It was nice. We bought some foods. We had company in the house yesterday and overnight. DH made a smashing cassoulet with venison (from Ludlow) and chorizo (from the local supermarket) and flageolet beans and fresh tomatoes. My buffalo wings, made with free-range chicken from Ludlow, got lots of compliments, but were very easy to make. You can read more about Ludlow and our recent food and drink explorations on Deborama's Kitchen.
What with all this going on, I have also had to miss out on a bit of book-crossing activity. The Unconvention in Birmingham is just now drawing to a close, but I missed all of it, as well as the mini-meetup in Beeston two weeks ago. I was sorry to miss both of these events, just as I was getting into the BC spirit. I did manage my first release, a controlled-release to two non-BC friends from the train, of a really wonderful book that DH and I both liked a lot: The Last Family in England. Look for a review at Deborama's Book Reviews soon.
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