(13)

An interesting take on vigilante films, such as Death Wish and for that matter, Dirty Harry:

"But film critics are such inveterate moralists, directing their principled scorn on every deviation from strict correctness and crossing with the light, right? Not in any world we’ve seen. Something in the vigilante film seems to foment a strident exception to typically (and reasonably) agnostic views toward violence in the review community. There’s a limitless history of criminal anti-heroes, and their violence never seems to invoke much explicitly “moral” response. Pauline Kael hated Dirty Harry and loved Bonnie and Clyde. To brand (frequently murderous) “youth on the run” films as objectionable would only earn rapid branding as a hopeless scold, while ex cathedra warnings against the evils of vigilante cinema seem almost a critic’s sworn duty. How to explain this double standard? It’s, well, simply a strain to explain this without looking to the political connotations of the works in question."

A problem that I, as a classical liberal, have with vigilante films is how sometimes the issue of due process of law tends to get mocked a lot. There is a line from Dirty Harry where our Clint, in his legendary way, takes the piss out of the "Miranda" rule about searches and so on. Various Amendments are shown to be jokes. And let's remind ourselves that when you watch a film starring Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood shooting down a bad guy, you, the viewer, know that the bad guy is a bad guy and naturally cheer the flinty-eyed man with his .44 revolver. But in real life, the guilt of that odd-looking person is not so obvious. Hence why we have things like laws, Habeas Corpus, juries, search warrants, and all the rest, and why the likes of us get angry when these things are violated, or mocked by the likes of Tony Blair as signs of "19th Century values". Indeed, take the case of investigative journalist Radley Balko in the US, who has made a career of showing how the War on Drugs and other campaigns have, when combined with the militarisation of the US police, created a series of disasters.

I can therefore feel the moral force of a film which shows a person taking the law into their own hands when I know, for the brief lifetime of a movie, that the person who gets the bullet is guilty. These are often powerful films about morality, and the better ones also highlight some of the ethical dilemmas well, as the better Eastwood ones often do, for instance; even the old Bruce Lee martial arts films play to that sense of rectifying injustice. All great, in my view. But the problem, of course, is that life is not like a film where guilt is always known. It's a lot messier, and that is why vigilantism is not generally consistent with a civil, pro-freedom order. This is why, even under stateless societies, some form of order has to exist and someone has to say that "this is how we establish guilt and punish the guilty".

To make it absolutely clear in case anyone brings this up, vigilantism in my view is not the same at all as the freedom to use potentially deadly force if necessary in self defence. I am talking about people who, having seen or suffered a crime, decide at a later date, on their own initiative and without any process of law, to exact a form of punishment, deadly or otherwise.

(12)

Phyllis Dixey - 1914 to 1964 - Striptease Artiste - lived here in flat number 15.

- The wording proposed last November for a new British Heritage blue plaque, but it proved controversial. I only just came across this story. Since then, I don't know what has happened. Is this plaque actually going to materialise? What it says at the bottom of this recent news item, about another proposed blue plaque in honour of movie actress Margaret Lockwood, suggests not. If not, shame.

(12)

There is nothing in this film for the Left.  Where they demonized Margaret Thatcher, the movie humanizes her.  It is not about the great events of her political life; these are its backdrop.  Her entry into Parliament, her leadership bid, the miners' strike, the IRA and the Falklands War all feature, but the movie is not about them.  Rather is it about the strength of character with which she confronted successive challenges and crises.

- Madsen Pirie reviews The Iron Lady. Unlike Nicholas Wapshott, Pirie liked it a lot, and says it will make those who see it like and admire the lady herself more.

(5)

Nicholas Wapshott, a columnist and book author about Reagan and other historical figures, has seen the film, "The Iron Lady" (about Margaret Thatcher). I am going to see the film this evening with my wife and two friends, both of whom are pretty big fans of the lady. Wapshott, writing over at Reuters, hated the film. (Reuters carries signed columns these days, and its writers can be far more open about their biases, which is all to the good).

"But it is the chilling image of a once dominant leader reduced to a fumbling, mumbling old crone that is the movie’s main theme and, while it may pass muster as a sly piece of brutal political theater, as a record of Thatcher and her many achievements, both for good and ill, it is a pitiless, poisonous travesty. Streep has lent her extraordinary acting skills to perhaps the most shameful and cruel piece of political revenge ever to have made it to the screen."

"Would Henry Fonda have volunteered his name and faultless reputation to “The Deranged Mr. Lincoln”? Anthony Hopkins dignified Oliver Stone’s somber “Nixon” by trying to get beneath the skin of the paranoid president brought down by his private demons. Even Josh Brolin in Stone’s hilarious “W” made America’s most contentious president in recent times a likeable, surprisingly complex eldest son yearning to show his father he was worthy of winning the White House."

Another paragraph from later in the review:

"It is in the context of Thatcher sharply reducing the size of the state that the violence between picketers and police and the poll tax riots that punctuated her reign can be best understood. There is a high political price to be paid for redrawing the boundaries between the private and public sectors, and for deliberately provoking a recession, in the face of well organized opposition. In “The Iron Lady,” the newsreel shots of cars burning and mounted police beating miners with batons are left unexplained."

Wapshott's review is interesting because, as I noted a few weeks back when discussing a review I read in the Spectator, some reviewers from the left have had their brains scrambled by a film that makes them sympathise with a person who has lost some of her mental powers.

So, having read this review, I am still going to see the film with an expectation that this will be an interesting production. For the subject of this remarkable person continues to fascinate, a fact no doubt given heightened interest due to how, for example, the disaster of the eurozone has given some of her old skepticism about the hubris of Eurofederalism new relevance. Her old preaching about the importance of thrift, saving and hard work is hardly irrelevant.

The changes that Margaret Thatcher wrought in the UK are profound, but it is also worth pointing out that she fell short of what she might have hoped for on a number of fronts. The state continues to take a huge chunk of our money; our higher education system, much of the media and chattering classes are reflexively anti-capitalist and at odds with some of the key features of Western civilisation. Even today, there are those who pine for the old, brutal certainties of Soviet-era collectivism. And from a libertarian/classical liberal point of view, the Thatcher era disappointed: no real change to the Welfare State; erosions of certain civil liberties; imperfect privatisation; missteps on Europe (such as, arguably, the Single European Act). Welfarism and the associated creation of an underclass of feral, uneducatable youngsters, was not really addressed during her time in office (but then again, it has not been addressed for the past 20 years, hence the kind of violence that hit the UK last summer).

And yet those of us old enough to remember what a mess Britain was in during the 1970s, with its hideous inflation, endless strikes, shabby goods and services, eroding willingness to confront foreign aggressions and general crapness, cannot fail to be struck by the scale of what was achieved in Thatcher's term of office. In the private sector, the union closed shop is no more; inflation, while still a serious problem (as this blog often points out), is not in the double-digit levels it used to be. Some of the old, inefficient state-run industries have been put into mostly private hands; the City of London, despite some criticisms that can be made of the "Big Bang" deregulation, is unquestionably one of the greatest financial hubs on Earth. And consider this detail although it comes across as a bit crass at times: even a state broadcaster such as the BBC has a show called "Dragon's Den", which is about would-be entrepreneurs pitching for venture capital funding on TV. Such a celebration of business would have been unthinkable on such a channel 30 years ago. Mrs Thatcher told the British that it was okay to make the most of yourself. For all her faults and errors, that is one of the "vigorous virtues" (to use a term from a book on Thatcherism by Shirley Robin Letwin) that endures.

And to call oneself a socialist is still, let's not forget, not nearly as easy for a politician to do today if he or she wants to get elected. Somewhere during the 80s and 90s, I think, that term was discredited to a significant degree. Not just by Thatcher, granted - the fall of the Berlin Wall and the associated discrediting of Soviet-style central planning did for that. But her relentless attacks on socialism and central planning, and her championing of the free market, played a significant part.

Here is a good book on Mrs T by Claire Berlinski, published some time ago. Recommended. Another book worth checking out is the new opus on the history of the Conservative Party by Robin Harris. Charles Moore, whose biography of Thatcher comes out after she dies, has a good column up at Vanity Fair.

Anyway, I'll write about my own impressions at a suitable point.

(5)

This story is more than a week old, but the case of how a line from the movie "Serenity", based on the moronically discontinued TV series Firefly, was used in a free speech crackdown is still worth a mention. Here is a video with Neil Gaiman, the SF writer, about the controversy. (H/T, Huffington Post).

More commentary from FIRE, the group supporting individual rights in the US education system.

Maybe I should wear my own Western-style "browncoat" coat in sympathy. I bought it in Ireland and it gives me a nice "Clint Eastwood" sort of appearance.

(7)

I like this:

CAPE TOWN. After 28 years of silently tolerating it, a group of unemployed local musicians have joined forces to release a Christmas single, entitled ‘Yes we do,’  in response to the Bob Geldof inspired Band Aid song, ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’

Thankyou to Tim Worstall for spotting this.

Speaking at the launch of the single, whose proceeds will go towards teaching discipline, literacy and contraception at British schools, composer and singer Boomtown Gundane said that for years he had been irked by Geldof’s assumption that hungry Africans were also stupid.

Sadly, it's a joke. But quite a good one, I think.

(11)

On Boxing Day the whole family sat round to watch The Borrowers. This is the latest TV retelling of the charming tale of the two inch tall people who live under floorboards, scavenging from us big people for food and other useful items.

Much of the plot of this version revolves around a professor played by Stephen Fry who captures some of the little people, wants to show them off to the world as an amazing new discovery of natural history and (and this is where it gets far fetched) threatens to dissect them. So the little people spend their entire time avoiding the big people and escaping from them. Which is my problem with The Borrowers.

It is typical of the misanthropy of the mainstream creative arts. Evil humans only want to dissect and eradicate little people. What should happen is that Stephen Fry reveals the little people to the world, and so begins a new age of emancipation for them. There is no question of dissecting them: the human rights activists would not stand for it. And think of the advantages of trade. No more hiding under floorboards and scavenging; the little people get all the benefits of big people technology and big people get all the benefits of little people labour. Not only could they do useful work in confined spaces, but they seem to have human equivalent intelligence so we could run our call centres and get our computer programming done in exchange for fewer resources.

It's a win win, which supposedly doesn't make for good drama.

(7)

A musical mood struck me on the way to the coffee shop this afternoon and upon my return I recorded this song for friends and any one who finds it interesting. I am more than a couple years away from gigging and touring and sitting about studios and given how busy I am with other things I decided to skip the guitar backup since it would take a day to get it up to performance quality. This is not to say that recording a song in three takes from the printout of the lyrics to 'final' on a telephone headset is anything like what I'd do in a professional studio setting. But it will serve and I do not think Judy Garland will come back and haunt me for it.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Dale Amon vocals

Merry Christmas to all!

(5)

Wise words from David Thompson. He supplies video to prove his point, video which reminds me of the scene in Road Trip, where the snake tries to eat Tom Green.

This posting has nothing to do with France.

(12)

“Putting Meryl’s performance aside – I’ve raved about it enough, plus it was only a pie, and there was no custard – you do not get any sense of Thatcher’s political coming of age. Why did she believe what she believed, and why so vehemently? Why go to war, for example, over an island no one in Britain cared about? You also get no sense of the human cost of her policies, how she disadvantaged the poor and took a hammer to the society she did not believe in.”

Deborah Ross, writing a review of the film, The Iron Lady (about Margaret Thatcher), page 88, The Spectator (behind the paywall). Here is the Spectator link for those who pay for the thing.

It is quite amusing, in a grim sort of way, to see how a writer such as Ms Ross is torn by her admiration for the film as a piece of moviemaking art and its sympathetic portrayal of Lady Thatcher, and her own leftist opinions concerning the alleged impact of this person on the United Kingdom (her remarks about the Falklands presumably indicate Ms Ross would have let the Argentine junta just take the Falklands, but she never tells us in the short space available).

As a free market liberal, I certainly do not revere this politician (the government share of GDP at the end of her time in office was barely different from at the start and some thumpingly bad domestic legislation, like the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, got passed), but it is nevertheless rather striking how certain film critics have had their heads messed by this film.

I am definitely going to see it. US-based movie reviewer Kyle Smith really liked it, and for the sort of reasons that, I suspect, upset Ms Ross.

(14)

I greatly enjoyed this article by Kevin D. Williamson about Thomas Sowell. Sowell is now in his eighties. When somewhat younger, he looked like this:

Here is what is probably the key paragraph in Williamson's Sowell piece:

Because he is black, his opinions about race are controversial. If he were white, they probably would be unpublishable. This is a rare case in which we are all beneficiaries of American racial hypocrisy. That he works in the special bubble of permissiveness extended by the liberal establishment to some conservatives who are black (in exchange for their being regarded as inauthentic, self-loathing, soulless race traitors) must be maddening to Sowell, even more so than it is for other notable black conservatives. It is plain that the core of his identity, his heart of hearts, is not that of a man who is black. It is that of a man who knows a whole lot more about things than you do and is intent on setting you straight, at length if necessary, if you’d only listen. Take a look at those glasses, that awkward grin, those sweater-vests, and consider his deep interest in Albert Einstein and other geniuses: Thomas Sowell is less an African American than a Nerd American.

My strong is Williamson's italics.

I'd never thought of Sowell as being anything like this guy …

But yes, I guess maybe there is a resemblance. Here is link to a brief snatch of video of Moss saying something very Sowellish, about the importance of getting a good education.

By the way, I am not calling the actor and director Richard Ayoade a nerd. I don't know about that. But I do know, as do all who enjoy The IT Crowd, that Ayoade's TV creation, Moss, most definitely is a nerd, and a nerd first and a black man way down the list, just as Williamson says of Sowell.

Although, as a commenter said of this bit of video: "Richard has a bit of Moss in him." A bit, yes. But what has really happened is, surely, that Ayoade was a nerdy kid, and has kept hold of it for comic purposes.

I suspect Sowell did something similar, and, as Williamson suggests in his article, in a more courageous and significant way. He too was a genuinely nerdy kid, who could understand truth better than he understood the demands of fashion. Then, when he got older and started to tune into the zeitgeist, he had to decide if he was going to shape up and get with the liberal (in the American sense) fashions of his time or stick with that truth stuff he had got to like so much. He stuck with the truth.

Also, I don't believe Sowell would ever remove a water tank (see the second of the two video links above) and then be surprised that his plumbing no longer worked properly.

(3)

Listening to Pergolesi's Stabat Mater is like drinking champagne with God.

- HC Robbins Landon

Quoted on BBC Radio 3 today, by music scholar Lionel Sawkins, in a programme about Le Concert Spirituel, which seems to have been an eighteenth century French version of the Proms. Pergolesi's Stabat Mater was the single most popular piece played at these concerts.

(22)

"Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?" said Wilfred.

"ffinch-ffarrowmere," corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals.

- from the short story Meet Mr. Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse, quoted by Stephen Fry, in an essay by him about Wodehouse published by the Independent in 2000.

(12)

And by that I do not mean that someone has merely been printing stuff on a violin. The violin itself was made by a printing machine.

Here is a video of the violin not only being enthused about but actually played, by Simon Hewitt-Jones. To whom many thanks for the email that alerted me to this amazing object.

(2)

One of the Chicago Boyz, the one who goes by the name "onparkstreet", recently posted a question that I had pretty much given up asking myself at all regularly: Where Have You Been Whit Stillman?

He links to this, where we encounter the news that, wherever Whit Stillman may have been for the last decade (while apparently failing to finish other movies) he is now back in business, with a new, completed and ready-to-view movie called Damsels in Distress. I'm about a month behind the news on this, but frankly, I don't pay much attention to the latest movies any more, so I'm not that surprised that it took me this long to learn of Stillman's return.

A movie which apparently stars four girls doesn't much appeal to me. I tend to prefer chick flicks to implausibly violent costume dramas set either in a violent past or a violent future, but I like my chick flicks not to be too chicky, so to speak. I like men to join in and do occasional manly things, like hit one another and lie and be unaware of people's feelings, in among all the chick chat. In Metropolitan, Stillman's first movie and my favourite of his, blows and loud insults are exchanged, in among all that witty dialogue with its deftly constructed sentences which begin, continue and then end, just as if someone had written them out beforehand. In Barcelona someone has his eye shot out.

But how much damage are four damsels going to do to anyone? How often will they give me a rest from girls being receptive to each others' feelings, and get the plot motoring properly by injecting relieving doses of insensitivity and uncaringness?

I will definitely make a point of seeing this latest Stillman movie, and judging by what is said in postings like this, I may quite enjoy it, and maybe enjoy it a lot. Nevertheless, I will be hoping for it to be more enjoyable than I will be fearing it to be.

(11)

I have already quoted from and commented on The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 a couple of times here. Now I've read it. Unless I'm being paid to read a book, I only read it to the end if I'm enjoying it, so point one to make about this book is that I wasn't paid to read it. Samizdata writers and readers are not brought together by a shared fascination for classical music and the world in which it was created and had its first impact, so I don't know if you would also enjoy reading this book. But I can say a bit about why I did.

I know Beethoven's music, and the Ninth Symphony in particular, quite well, possessing as I do a large classical CD collection containing lots of Beethoven and more than a few recordings of the Ninth. A painlessly entertaining way to learn more about classical music in general, and Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony in particular, is, for me, always welcome. This book was painless partly because it is all written in a language I can easily follow, English. Many books about classical music use lots of musical notation. I can just about decipher such symbols, but seldom with the fluency that is necessary immediately to get the points an author is trying to make with them. Sachs could easily have peppered his text with such hieroglyphics, having himself been a conductor before he became a writer. He did not. He relied on words. He also avoids using Italian words, saying very loud rather than fortissimo, and so on.

This book is also painless in being quite short. 225 pages, including all the extras. I'm a slow reader, so that, for me, was another plus.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony itself famously includes words, in its particularly famous final choral movement, as well as just orchestral music. It is therefore entirely proper, when pondering the meaning and impact of this symphony, to think also about the general artistic atmosphere - involving such things as poetry and literature - that surrounded its creation and reception, rather than just, say, Beethoven's earlier pieces and the other music being composed at the time. More so, if anything. Nobody else was then writing music like Beethoven's, but the wider artistic ambience definitely chimed in with what Beethoven was trying to say with the Ninth. The Ninth, in its turn, reinforced these tendencies by setting them to music.

How accurately Sachs describes this general artistic ambience, I am not educated enough to say. But he at least convinces me that he knows what he is talking about. That I was doing something to fill a big gap in my knowledge of a crucial time in cultural, political and economic history, was yet another reason for me to be glad to have read this book.

The political story Sachs tells is of a continent aroused into radical enthusiasm by the French Revolution, but then disappointed both by that revolution's subsequent Napoleonic nature and then by its defeat by a coalition of anti-radical powers. The Napoleonic Wars were followed by a period of political reaction, all over Europe. In such a world, the liveliest minds shied away from real world politics and instead turned inwards. Instead of challenging the powers-that-were with riots and revolutions, they challenged them with Art, asserting the primacy of Great Artists over merely aristocratic inheritors of power. Power from within would trump the inherited privilege of the old aristocracy who remained, temporarily, in political command. (If that reminds you a bit of the history of the USSR, Sach agrees with you.)

The contemporary of Beethoven who came most alive for me, as a result of reading this book, was Byron. Poet, scored with lots of women, died fighting in Greece for … something or other. That was pretty much the limit of my knowledge of Byron. I don't know a lot more now, but I do know a bit more. The point of Byron's Greek enthusiasm being that supporting Greek resistance to the Turks was just about the only kind of radical enthusiasm you could publicly indulge in, and get away with. On the back of this peculiar gust of political emotion, Byron, himself a hereditary aristocrat (although he didn't know he would be that until he suddenly became that), became that very modern sort of figure, an international celebrity, with no official position but lots of influence. As Beethoven had already become. Other early nineteenth century artistic celebrities whom Sachs also writes about are: Stendal, Hegel, Pushkin, Delacroix and Heine, about all of whom, as with Byron, I now know a bit more than extremely little.

Like their confreres of our own time, these Great Artists were typically very scornful of those other sorts of new men, the money grubbing capitalists. Heine is quoted expressing lofty disdain for these mercenary oafs and their contemptible preference for mere entertainment over Art. This despite the fact that it was the new money of these mere tradesmen that, then more than now, was providing the Artists with their new found clout, either directly, or indirectly via the spending power of the greater number of state bureaucrats that their endeavours were making possible. The first performance of the Ninth was staged for a paying audience, and at least partly with the idea of easing Beethoven's money worries (so much for the notion that artists don't fret about mere money), rather than commissioned and all paid for by an aristocrat. The contrast with how the Eroica Symphony (number three of Beethoven's nine symphonies), as shown in the film Eroica that I referred to in an earlier Beethoven posting here, was extreme. The Eroica Symphony first exploded into the world, assuming Eroica has the story roughly right, in a large room in an aristocratic mansion, in front of an audience that was outnumbered by the orchestra. The premier of the Ninth differed from a classical concert nowadays in that the audience responded to the music more in the manner of a jazz audience nowadays, but nevertheless it was a much more modern occasion.

Not that Sachs spends much time describing that concert. He describes the music itself, in English, but now so much how the audience first received it. Describing classical music in English is a lot like writing about sex, being awfully liable to provoke unintended mirth, but Sachs does it pretty well. However, I learned more about the actual event itself, as opposed to the music, by reading the sleeve notes of one of those Ninth CDs of mine. Sachs is more concerned to describe the Ninth itself, the world that gave rise to the Ninth, and the impact upon the world that the Ninth then had. He writes about a great many years besides the year 1824, and many more afterwards, and includes a very good short biography of his hero.

As far as Beethoven's and the Ninth Symphony's impact is concerned, the personality who, for me, came most alive from reading the bits in this book about the decades after the Ninth Symphony was created was Richard Wagner. Sachs (perhaps his name got him paying particular attention to Wagner from an early age) entertainingly quotes Wagner patting Beethoven on the back for showing the world the way towards the artistic perfection that was "Music Theatre" (which is something entirely different from the Italian trash known as "opera"). Beethoven dipped his toe in the process of setting significant Words, expressive of profound philosophical ideas and profound spiritual and emotional sentiments, to music. Wagner perfected the process. According to Wagner, that is. Fair enough. When Wagner said the things Sachs quotes he was well into creating his great body of op … sorry, works of Music Theatre. Wagner's Great Artist posturings were all part of what made him a great artist, just as such ambitions did the same for Beethoven himself. Had Beethoven not stormed the musical heavens, would Wagner have been able to? We will never know, but the question is a good one, because it gives us a sense of Beethoven's colossal influence on everything that followed.

What I hadn't really taken in before, although I am sure I read through such things in all those CD sleeve notes of mine, was just how obsessed Wagner was with Beethoven's Ninth, his Ninth in particular, mentioning it constantly in his voluminous writings, and being constantly mentioned talking about it, right up to his own death, in the diaries left to us by Wagner's wife. Wagner launched the building of his brand new Bayreuth … Music Theatre in 1872 by performing this symphony, his point being: this is where Beethoven ended, and where I, Wagner, have taken over.

For somewhat different reasons, when the Bayreuth Festival was relaunched (following that embarrassing Nazi interlude) in 1951, Beethoven's Ninth was again performed. The point of that being that the impeccable Beethoven brand, as we would now say, would help to purge the much sullied Wagner brand.

As Sachs notes at both the beginning of and at the end of his book, Beethoven's music generally, and his Ninth Symphony in particular, is felt by almost everybody who responds to it to communicate and to represent all that is good about humanity and human aspirations. Every good cause of our own time (by which I simply mean a cause that thinks it's good) that can afford to (EUrope being the most famously obtrusive current example) basks in the moral aura cast by the Ninth. That so many of the great political villains of the twentieth century, of the sort alluded to in my previous paragraph, who between them did so much (as Sachs notes) to make us all think again about worshipping Great Men, used this music to confer moral grandeur upon their mega-slaughters, seems to do nothing to change this.

Sachs concludes his book with a little autobiographical essay along the lines of: What Beethoven Means To Me. Way back when he and his friends were protesting against the Vietnam War, Beethoven provided Sachs with his inspirational soundtrack. Again, fair enough, given that, crucially, Sachs does not say that Beethoven would, had he been alive now, have been on Sachs's side. Sachs merely says that it felt like that, as I am sure it did. Beethoven still sounds as if he is on your side, whoever you are. And no piece of his music did more to make this true than the Ninth.

(14)

In my youth, we libbos used to go to P.J. O'Rourke for American libbo laughs. Now that mantle - of American, deceptively profound, politically right on the money laughs - has passed on to IMAO man Frank J. Fleming, whose book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything is coming out quite soon now.

Good recent Frank Jism:

Things often overwhelm and underwhelm, but seldom do things just whelm.

You see? It's funny (I think), but it also gets you thinking. Where did the word "overwhelm" come from, from which the word "underwhelm" has recently been derived (because as soon as you say "underwhelm" everyone immediately understands)? "Overwhelm" means that "whelm" must once upon a time have meant something too. But what? Is it an upper class mispwonouncing of "realm"? Does "whelm" have a future, as a word? I'm not trying to be funny (although that is one of the standard methods of actually being funny). I'd really like to know.

This is good too:

I support double standards. I expect better behavior out of conservatives than I do liberals.

And this:

You know how everyone has their idea of what a fair tax plan is? Well, I have now unveiled the "Frank J. Fleming Super Double Extra Fair Tax Plan" at PJ Media and it is the fairest of them all. I mean, it’s crazy fair. You’ll recoil in horror and scream, “No! Too fair!” That’s how fair it is.

I need something to end this with, now. I know. Here's my funny yet deceptively profound and right on the money tax plan: The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut To Zero. If FJ's tax plan is too fair for you, that might be just right.

(6)

I'm now reading that book I mentioned here earlier, by Harvey Sachs, about the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth.

The event itself was nearly shifted by Beethoven, for both financial and organisational reasons, from Vienna (where Beethoven lived for all his adult life) to Bonn, which caused a great gang of Viennese high-ups to write Beethoven a public letter, begging him to keep the show in Vienna. Of this letter, Harvey Sachs writes (pp. 30-31):

The letter-signed by seven aristocrats and various well-known local bureaucrats, musicians, music publishers, and the piano maker Andreas Streicher - is valuable not only as proof of the esteem in which Beethoven was held in his adoptive city but also because it demonstrates how deeply the notion that great music could be both "immortal" and widely disseminated had taken hold in Europe within Beethoven's lifetime. Pre-nineteenth-century audiences had tended to lose interest in music that failed to follow the dictates of fashion. Bach, who was born in 1685 and whose works were already stylistically passé at the time of his death sixty-five years later, would have been delighted but astonished to learn that his music would be venerated and widely performed nearly three centuries after it was written. He may have believed in the hereafter, but he wrote for the here and now - for the church ceremonies and court occasions that took place as his life unfolded and for the instruction of the musicians of his day. Haydn (1732-1809) and even Mozart (1756-1791) still worked within the specific-piece-for-specific-occasion system, although the fact that Mozart began at the age of twenty-eight to keep a catalogue of his works, and the even more significant fact that he and Haydn published as many of their compositions as possible, demonstrate composers' dawning ambition to have their works survive them, perhaps even for a considerable time.

Not until Beethoven's day, however, did winning a place in posterity become a major goal - the greatest goal, for many composers. With the rise, in his lifetime, of the bourgeoisie, middle-class families were able to give their children music lessons, and Hausmusik - music in the home became the home entertainment system of the 1800s. The equipment required for making it comprised a piano, one or more other instruments and/or voices, and printed music, the demand for which increased almost exponentially. This phenomenon occurred just as the figure of the Romantic genius - the artist as a being unhampered by normal constraints - was taking hold. The music of the brilliant, eccentric Beethoven circulated widely, and the conviction that this music would become "deathless" was a logical consequence of both his persona and the diffusion of his works. In the letter from his Viennese admirers, the reference to "the many who joyfully acknowledge your worth and what you have become for the present as well as the future" is an exceptionally significant sign of the times: The arts were no longer to be considered mere "means and objects of pastime." Composers were becoming the high priests, perhaps even the gods, of a secular religion; the best among them were expected to create works that would endure, . . .

All of which reminded me of something Benjamin Britten once said:

The rot set in with Beethoven.

Meaning, Beethoven was the first of a huge tribe of artists who from then on took themselves, and were also taken by others, a whole hell of a lot too seriously. Beethoven was, of course, entitled to think of himself as a genius. In his case, it helped to turn him into the genius he became. Most of his imitators got the trappings of genius off pat enough, but neglected the bit in the genius rule book where it says that you have to produce works of genius.

After writing that, I tried googling that Britten quote, and look what I found, almost immediately. Yes indeed, a review of The Ninth by Michael Henderson, which begins thus:

'The rot set in with Beethoven’, said Benjamin Britten, who, cold fish that he was, could never understand the idea of the artist as hero (though he admired Mahler, whose music is nothing if not attention-seeking). He had half a point, because the past century has been chock-full of artists, or ‘artists’, who have asked us to soothe their fevered brows. They are still around today. No matter. Their egotism cannot disguise Beethoven’s greatness, . . .

Snap.

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I don't often do that LOL thing, but I did yesterday, in a crowded café, when I read this:

Beethoven's contempt for most human beings conflicted with his all-embracing love for humanity.

That's on page 54 of a book by Harvey Sachs entitled The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, which is about the composition and first performance of the Ninth Symphony, and about the world and the time in which this happened.

Remembering that I had written here before about Beethoven, I just reread an earlier piece I did called Eroica (at first mis-read by some as Erotica - what can you do?). It still reads well, I think. And it tells you all you need to know to enable you to forgive Beethoven a hundred times over for preferring humanity to humans.

I haven't read this Sachs book yet. Yesterday I was just doing a preliminary flick-through, and came across the above sentence only by the sheerest good fortune. I certainly now want to read to rest of it.

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This is interesting:

"In the past 30-or-so years, hip hop has tried politics and it has tried gangsterism. But in the end it settled for capitalism, which energised it and brought it to a position of global dominance. American rappers like Puff Daddy and Master P, men who fought their way into the big time, did so by selling a vision of independence, empowerment and material success. That vision is also found, if less vividly, in Britain’s rap music. And though hip hop retains unpleasant features, the core message, that people can have better lives, is incontestably a good one."

Prospect Magazine.

A point for we pro-market zealots to remember is that defending the market is not the same as defending all of the stuff that gets bought or sold in a market. The freedom to produce and sell products and services is emphatically not the same as saying that all of these things are splendid. Some are mediocre. Some are bloody awful, like rap music, in my opinion. Musical taste is, in any event, notoriously subjective. (I even know of friends who hate music, period). But it is interesting how even a lefty magazine such as Prospect points out that how the profit motive can have its own benign effect on a genre as aggressive as rap. You can tell that capitalism is weaving its magic when people start moaning that a certain once-rebellious arts and music genre has lost its "edge" (ie, it is no longer downright nasty).

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Here is a website that I have come across about the late, very great John Barry, the composer best known for all those superb James Bond tunes, as well as films such as Out of Africa.

He was never nominated for an Oscar for any of his 007 tunes. As Mark Steyn has observed, a classic case of snobbery at work.

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"For as long as the culture of business has been an integral part of American life, it has also been frowned upon by important sectors of our society. Among our intellectuals especially, the business world has been the subject of many brutal caricatures, portraying corporations large and small, and the people who run them, as heartless, soulless agents of greed. These caricatures have shaped our implicit understanding of the nature of the business world, so much that they have come to pass for conventional wisdom."

- Algis Valiunas

An interesting piece, although its caricature of Ayn Rand is a duff note.

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“But even if there had been no march, the Okies would have been made obsolete by the depression. The histories of depressions show that a period of economic chaos is invariably followed by a period of extremely rigid economic controls – during which all the variables, the only partially controllable factors like commodity speculation, unlimited credit, free marketing, and competitive wages will get shut out.”

Cities In Flight, by James Blish, pages 421-422. From the multi-edition book published by Gollancz. Copyright 1970.

The book has many interesting themes for science fiction fans and interestingly, commodity-based money is a key plot device. The date of the copyright is interesting – it is just a year before Richard Nixon finally severed any link between the dollar and gold, to his everlasting shame.

Here is a nice appreciation of Blish over at "Templeton Gate 3.0".

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A regular commenter and occasional writer for Samizdata, Paul Marks, has recently, over at the Counting Cats blog, taken aim at the output of John Le Carre and in particular, the George Smiley character that got one of its most famous outings in the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy novel (now a film starring Gary Oldman). I remember watching the old TV series starring the late, very great Alec Guinness. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the series a lot and how it showed George Smiley, with a few associates, track down the identity of the mole inside UK intelligence. (If you don't want to know who the mole is, Paul Marks' item gives him away immediately, which is a naughty thing to do without a warning).

Of course, the role of spies, the nature of spying and the Cold War confrontations in which they were involved produced an interesting genre of work that continues to appeal even now that some of the issues have changed. I always felt that Le Carre tried a bit too hard to show how he wasn't a vulgar entertainer such as Ian Fleming, say, or for that matter, John Buchan. And I imagine he positively disdains such thriller writers as Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy or Brad Thor. (These are more overtly about action rather than spying, anyway).

For me, my favourite spy stories of all time are as follows:

From Russia with Love (Ian Fleming)
Journey into Fear (Eric Ambler)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John Le Carre);
The Ipcress File (Len Deighton)
Under Western Eyes (Joseph Conrad).

The "Hook, Line and Sinker" trilogy by Len Deighton is also wonderful, by the way. And anything by Eric Ambler is good.

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"If feminism ever succeeds in making men and women full-fledged equals (for what else might?), we will be able to stop talking about whether women genuinely belong to the literary canon. Maybe there will even come a time when we can speak of Jane Austen without thinking of her as a female. Then comments like Naipaul’s will be universally mocked as the sexist “tosh” they so obviously are. Whenever this comes about, Jane Austen will still be a great author."

- Audrey Bilger.

She is having a go at VS Naipaul, and even though I dislike aspects of feminism, I think her argument deserves respect. An interesting piece.

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Nick Gillespie, who when he is not pointing out how American politics is changing rapidly with his fellow Reasonoid Matt Welch, has an interesting essay up about how much of what passes for the "artistic community" was left looking pretty lame in how writers, painters, sculptors, film-makers and even poets responded to 9/11. (Yes, it is almost a decade ago). He makes a number of good points. Tim Sandefur weighs in with some thoughts of his own and makes this pretty blunt point:

"That is largely due to two factors: for one thing, much of the artistic community, and especially its elite, sympathize more with the perpetrators of the attacks than with a United States that they hate for its “commercialism,” “materialism,” dynamism, secularism, industrialism, and so forth. The artistic world is dominated by romanticist ideologies that see science, technology, free markets, and human progress as essentially evil things—precisely the ideology that produced the September 11th attacks. What is an artist, who has spent his or her career producing work to condemn capitalism, going to produce to mourn the loss of the World Trade Center at the hands of anti-capitalist terrorists? They certainly aren’t going to produce a second Mourning Athena. As Robert Hughes says, American artists particularly are obsessed “with creating identities, based on race, gender, and the rest. These have made for narrow, preachy, single-issue art in which victim credentials count for more than aesthetic achievement. You get irritable agitprop…. The fact that an artwork is about injustice no more gives it aesthetic status than the fact that it’s about mermaids.” Relatedly, the artistic world is dominated by aesthetic notions that preclude powerful artistic commemorations of anything, really. The elite artistic world produces work that is simply not accessible to average people—the people who actually do mourn September 11th and rightly see it as an attack on everything America and they stand for. This is especially true in public monuments, which, since Maya Lin, have been minimalistic, sterile, and unmoving. (As is often true of art, Lin’s Vietnam Memorial is damn good—powerful and effective and brilliant; it’s her followers and imitators who have mucked it up.) Since the artistic elite have abandoned representationalism and powerful emotional appeal for cold abstractions, they also belittle the works of representational artists who might produce works friendlier and more moving to general audiences—and the political leaders are going to listen to the elite, not to the remaining believers in representationalism."

For me, the only really telling film made about 9/11 has been Flight 93. I watched it several years ago and remember it as a powerful, if flawed, production.

As Sandefur says, the inadequacy of art in relation to a terrible event such as 9/11 is a broader reflection of how art has arguably, degraded in recent decades. For what it is worth, I am one of those old grouches who finds a lot of what passes for Modern Art to be mind-erasing garbage. But then again, my "modern" tastes in things like science fiction, and all the whizz-bang art that can come with it, don't necessarily make me old fashioned, either.

As an aside, I came across these photos of Civil War memorial art. Worth a look. It adds to Sandefur's point on representational art, I think.

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"Recent theater encounter: Trailer for "Battle Los Angeles". Some fat angry looking woman starts hissing. I shout "I didn't pay $10 to listen to you. Save your opinions for that blog no one reads. Not even your friends.". After that, not a peep. If you want to save our culture you've got to stand up to the barbarians."

A commenter called Guan-ju, writing about an article at the Big Hollywood blog concerning the oafish behaviour of some cinema-goers. Well said indeed.

In my fortunate experience, I have generally not suffered from chatty couples, paper rustlers or smelly eaters. However, I often will be sitting in front of someone who keeps kicking the back of the chair. My usual response is to turn around slowly, and give the offending idiot my best attempt at the "Clint Eastwood stare". Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. (Alas, the use of something handy, like a taser is banned in the UK. Shame. It would be brilliant). The trouble is, of course, is that if you go to a cinema quite late, a lot of the audience will be fairly merry, indeed drunk. At least in the UK, anyway. And of course the type of film will affect this: if you are watching a French art house film, it is probably less likely to be an issue than if you are watching something like Transformers or Dumb and Dumber, or somesuch. On the other hand, the louder the movie (think Iron Man 2) and the more crazy the action, the more the usual pin-heads are dumbstruck into silence.

Of course, while watching a Michael Moore "documentary", I reckon that loud heckling is mandatory.

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Anger at failure of £2bn fund to help bands, writes Mark Sweney in the Guardian. He is concerned that:

A £2bn government-backed scheme partly aimed at helping musicians and promoters launch new bands and other music ventures has approved just two music-sector loans in more than two years. One of the successful applicants received money only after making nine attempts.

Brian Message, co-manager of Radiohead and Kate Nash, tried repeatedly to obtain money under the enterprise finance guarantee (EFG) scheme to finance an album and tour for rock band the Rifles. After trying for two-and-a-half years, he was loaned a quarter of the cash he had originally sought.

The poor performance of the scheme – which was broadened in March 2009 to include "music composers and own-account artists" (those not already signed to a record label) – has led to deep frustration in the industry at a perceived lack of government support in an area where British acts lead the world.

It was only because of generous government loans that "The Beatles" were able to get started. If not for such loans they would have ended up having to play gigs in German strip clubs and so-called "Cavern clubs" for pitiful amounts, an obvious non-starter.

Good as stewpot's joke was, Mark Sweney's is even better. So far I am the only person who has seen that it is an obvious wind-up. In these days of austerity, two billion pounds of taxpayers' money to be lent to wannabe rock stars? Come on.

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Brian Micklethwait of this blog has linked to a series of nice take-downs of the work of the "documentary" maker, Adam Curtis. I link to one rather nice video at that man's expense. One of Curtis' recent efforts was about Alan Greenspan and the dangers of giant computers or something. He's a sort of posh conspiracy theorist for people who would otherwise scoff at the sort of guy who rants that Man never really landed on the Moon, Jews bombed the WTC, etc.

It is arguable that the whole phenomenon of the "documentary" as an impartial piece of good journalism has been more or less hammered in recent years. After all, we have had the various efforts of Michael Moore, which, like Curtis's efforts, are not really designed to inform or ask difficult questions, but a form of propaganda, and a form that plays well to the smug complacency of fashionable opinion. But let's be fair, even a programme which said things with which I agreed, such as this Channel 4 Martin Durkin one about explosive government debt, used techniques to pull on our heartstrings, although I thought in that programme, it did make an argument - an extremely good one. With the Curtis stuff, it is more like taking a sort of drug.

Maybe the whole idea of a non-biased documentary needs to be junked. Perhaps the honest truth is that these programmes don't really lend themselves to a sort of "on the one hand and on the other" sort of fairness; in truth, a guiding narrative, with a punchline at the end, is what makes these things work. But then this is clearly advocacy journalism and a form that does not square with it being paid for by a state-privileged broadcast network such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Then again, the whole idea of a broadcaster financed via a tax needs to be ditched, so that Curtis will have to make such rubbish without my having to pay for it. I wonder if Curtis wants to do one of his documentaries on the idea of governments using state broadcasters to shape opinion? No, I did not think so.

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“The fundamental story about consumer taste, in modern times, is not one of dumbing down or of producers seeking to satisfy a homogenous least common denominator at the expense of quality. Rather, the basic trend is of increasing variety and diversity, at all levels of quality, high and low.”

- Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing The World’s Cultures. Page 127. First published in 2002.

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Counting the true cost of the arts cuts is the headline on a Guardian article by Mark Brown. It starts (emphasis added):

A very good thing, the Lost Arts website, was launched on Thursday in Westminster with the aim of of recording all the organisations, initiatives, projects, commissions, tours and more that will be lost due to cuts in public spending on the arts.

It will also keep a running total of money lost to the arts and the money lost to the Treasury as a consequence.

The initiative is a collaboration between eight unions: the Musicians' Union (MU), Equity, The Writers' Guild of Great Britain, the NUJ, Bectu, Unite, Prospect and PCS.

Money lost to the arts since 30.03.2011: £20,392,023.
Money lost to the economy since 30.03.2011: £40,784,046.

£2 out for every £1 in is really very modest as such claims go.

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In the post below, Jonathan quotes Theodore Dalrymple saying the following rather mind-boggling statement.

"[Journalists are taxed at lower rates than normal people] ... this is a considerable privilege, definitely worth preserving. It creates an identity of interest between the elite and the journalists, who are inhibited from revealing too much about anyone with powerful protectors."

He thinks this is a good thing? Seriously? Journalists have an incentive to cover up the wrongdoings of the powerful, and this is good?

Leaving aside the obvious corollary of this, that France effectively licenses journalists, I personally do not think that politicians and bureaucrats should have any right to privacy whatsoever. They choose to go into politics, and they are trusted with our money and are given considerable power over us. In return, everything they do up to and including going to the toilet should be subject to scrutiny. They should have some protection against being libelled (but even then a relatively weak right - the burden of proof should be on the politician and it should be necessary to prove both untruth and malice). In truth I am not that keen on extending much of a right to privacy to anyone else either. As long as you are telling the truth, you should generally be able to say it out loud, in any forum. This is one case where the Americans have it right with the First Amendment.

As for the vulgarisation of culture, London is the most culturally vibrant city in Europe. Culturally speaking, Paris today is about as interesting as English food circa 1955. At least, Paris inside the peripherique is. There are some interesting things going on in rap music, language and art in some of Paris' suburbs, but I doubt that Dalrymple is much of a fan. The price of cultural interestingness may be some vulgarity, but who gets to decide what is vulgar and what is art? Old men decrying the tastes of yoof today, I guess. The Nazis were very keen on doing this, too. As are the Chinese communists.

China is a deeply authoritarian place. As a consequence of that, the country is culturally pretty dead. The Chinese watch imported movies, and encourage their children to learn to play western classical music. What is produced domestically and gets wide distribution is frighteningly bland, which is what happens under authoritarian regimes. Interesting things can be going on underneath, which can sometimes lead to cultural explosions when the authoritarian regimes are gone (see Spanish and South Korean post-dictatorship cinema, for instance), but China is a way from that.

Who do you compare China with, though? There is one obvious rival.

In late April, a couple of days after some unspeakable barbarians had exploded a bomb in a restaurant in Marrakesh, I was sitting in a cafe in Fez, in a more northern part of Morocco. As in many cafes worldwide, there was a television in the room. This was showing a soap opera of some kind on a pan-Arabic TV channel. (There are many, many, many pan-Arabic TV channels. They are run out of Qatar and Dubai. Moroccan roofs have more satellite dishes on them than I have seen anywhere else on earth). This particular pan-Arab channel was showing a soap opera or a popular movie of some kind.

In any event, the program in question contained some Islamic symbols. There were mosques in the background of a few scenes. The TV was showing subtitles in Arabic. I am not sure if that was because the program was originally in some other language or if these were just closed captions in the same language as the original material, turned on because there was a lot of background noise. (It may have been that the program was in fact Pakistani, and the original language was Urdu, but I am not sure). In any event, though, the program contained musical dance numbers of a form that were familiar to me. And there were slightly more bare female midriffs than one expects on TV in an Arab country. I expect there were more than one sees on domestic Moroccan TV, too, which partially explains the satellite dishes. Morocco is authoritarian enough to censor its own TV, but not authoritarian enough to attempt to ban the dishes.

The program was not made in India, but the grammar of the program was entirely that of Bollywood. In North-West Africa, in the Arab world, one of the leading cultural influences is clearly India. This is hardly surprising. Go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Qatar and who does the actual work? People from South Asia; Indians and Pakistanis and Sri Lankans. Even when they are making programs for Arab markets, they use their own cultural reference points. Even when making programs for their own market, Pakistanis use Indian cultural reference points. However it happens, and however second or third hand it comes, the cultural influence of Bombay on the Middle East and North Africa is clearly immense

And is Bollywood vulgar? Oh Lord yes. More conservative Indians elsewhere in the country denounce its amoral wickedness as much as anyone in America has ever denounced Hollywood. The entertainment industries of India are run by gangsters at least as depraved as any who have ever run Hollywood or Las Vegas. It isn't any great coincidence that the most savage terrorist attack carried out by Islamic extremists in recent years was on the city of Bombay. This is the heart of wickedness and vulgarity, and they know where the enemy is. Indian culture is vibrant and vulgar. On the surface and in the mass market at least, Chinese culture is dead. And Indian culture is the country's greatest weapon against its enemies.

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"A cleaner (janitor) at a London gallery cleared away an installation by artist Damien Hirst having mistaken it for rubbish. Emanual Asare came across a pile of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays and cleared them away at the Eyestorm gallery on Wednesday morning."

I still treasure that story, which appeared in this item about the art world (thanks to Tim Sandefur for the pointer. He is on a bit of a roll at the moment).

In thinking of art and tracing out the trends, good and possibly not so good, you can do a lot worse than read this book by Ernst Gombrich.

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The film Alexander is playing on my TV at the moment - the Oliver Stone version - and despite some of the sillier aspects, the battle scenes are pretty good. Question: why do so many Hollywood films seem to insist that many of the actors talk with a sort of suppressed Irish accent? We have Alexander talking like Dave Allen. WTF? And of course recently there was Russell Crowe talking in the same manner in the Robin Hood film.

I am not complaining too hard, though. For as has been noted, Russell Crowe had to deliver a speech that was pure "Tea Party".

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Philip Goff is the founder of Art Uncut, an organisation which, in conjunction with UK Uncut, stages nights of music, comedy and short talks in opposition to government spending cuts. Mr Goff is a research fellow with the Phenomenal Qualities project at the University of Hertfordshire.

I think you should give his argument the consideration it deserves.

Here it is.

Art Uncut is founded on this principle, a belief about the kind of societal model that we believe to be better: a society with well-funded arts, well-funded public services, and where there is a certain amount of redistribution so that the gap between rich and poor does not get too wide. We began as a small group of artists and musicians involved in UK Uncut actions, but hope now to open up the anti-cuts movement to a broader audience: to those who are not temperamentally inclined to protest, or perhaps haven't made their minds up yet. If we are serious about building a broad, sustained coalition of opposition with the potential for political influence, we need to reach out.

A week before the March for the Alternative on 26 March, Art Uncut staged a sell-out creative preliminary for the march: a night of music, comedy and short talks, headlined by UK Uncut, Josie Long and The Agitator. On the day, Art Uncut and UK Uncut jointly occupied BHS on Oxford Street, turning it into an artistic space with musicians, half a dozen poets and a performance from the actors Sam and Timothy West.

To entice you further, there is hostile mention of Robert Nozick in the main article and, in the comments, an artistic creation of genius, Clarence the Anti-Cuts Octopus.

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Yes Lawrence of Arabia is showing on Channel Five, now. I've been only half or less paying attention, but I heard this loud and clear:

"Money. It'll have to be sovereigns. They don't like paper."

Said by Lawrence to Allenby, on how to pay the Arabs to fight against the Turks.

He would agree, as would all our mutual friends here.

This is a point of view which is now spreading rather fast.

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My Cobden Centre Radio colleague-stroke-boss Andy Duncan is enthusiastic about the latest Keynes v Hayek video. Guido Fawkes already has it up at his blog, and that's where I'm now watching it.

My first reaction is that Keynes was the bald one, while Hayek had plenty of hair right to the end. This video has it the other way around.

Lots-of-head-hair-to-no-head-hair is one of the most important variables in political propaganda, the bald guy typically being the wicked loser, and the one with the good head of hair typically being the virtuous winner. I therefore deeply regret this particular reversal of the truth. If Keynes had really had lots of head hair, but Hayek very little, fair enough. Hayek would still have been right and Keynes would still have been wrong. But why miss a trick like this, when the truth is on our side?

Otherwise, this video seems pretty good. The important thing is that Austrianism, approximately speaking, must now lose the economic argument and be known by everyone, everywhere, to be losing the economic argument. Austrianism is now being shunned by everyone of any significance in policy-making circles. Right thinking people all now agree that Austrianism is delusional.

And right thinking people are now driving the world economy over the cliff.

For a little more chapter and verse, try reading Detlev Schlichter's latest.

When the world economy lies strewn about the landscape at the bottom of the cliff, Austrianism turns around and wins. It reassembles the world economy, and then, slowly at first, but later with gathering strength, drives it back to its former heights and beyond, way beyond.

Well, I like to live in hope.

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Ayn Rand's classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957 and has sold vast copies, is released in a film version - or at least in a first instalment - this coming Friday in selected cinemas across the United States. I hope we can see it here in the UK. Interestingly enough, parts of the media are picking up on this. Here is an interview with an investment manager who is inspired by Rand's "radicals for capitalism" philosophy and worldview. I am definitely going to make a point of seeing this film, whether it comes out at a UK cinema, or via DVD.

The reaction to the Financial Panic of 2008, with its massive bailouts, calls for "unregulated capitalism" (!) to be regulated, banker-bashing, etc, has certainly given Rand's novel new resonance. I often heard it said that her villains are more convincing than her heroes, although Hank Rearden has always struck me as a well-drawn character. As for the likes of Barack Obama, Rand would have recognised what he stands for, instantly.

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Well, well. This will get some luvvies in a tizz: I knew a bit about the life and times of the great, late Liz Taylor, much-married Hollywood actress and drop-dead gorgeous to boot (those violet eyes, ye gods). But I was not aware that she was such a keen supporter of Israel. . She was definitely not of the "Michael Moore school" of Hollywood.

Somewhere up there, she's having a glass of bubbly with Richard Burton. RIP.

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I am not going to tell you much about it: only that it is one of the best SF movies I have seen in a long while and perhaps the best combat movie I have ever seen. The soldiers acted like soldiers. They were competently led by people who were very human and proud to be US Marines.

Go see it, and then tell all your friends about it.

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Fugitive Inklings is what the blog Fugitive Ink has turned into, and just over a week ago, it featured a delightful posting about a visit, by Madam Fugitive Inklings and her young son, to the Globe Theatre. This is one of London's most successfully idiosyncratic recent architectural additions, being a recreation, as authentically as they could make it, of the original Globe Theatre, pretty much where it originally was, where many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed.

Mother and son attended, not a play, but a stage fighting demonstration, done with the exact sort of weapons that would first have been used in these plays. Better yet, they got to hear about it from the man who contrived these weapons. This is one of those posting where you start out trying to pick a particularly good bit, but end up wanting to copy the whole thing. So, instead of copying and pasting any of it, I say: go there and read the whole thing.

Not long ago, I read a book called 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, which starts off with the tale of how they moved the original manifestation of the Globe Theatre from its previous home in north London, across the river to the South Bank, i.e. to where the Globe is now. And I think it was also in this book where I read that a great many of the people in the first audiences for Shakespeare's plays were soldiers, camped outside the city limits of what London then consisted of, waiting to go off to fight on the continent. Such audiences would have paid particular attention to fights, and to the weapons used in them. And of course they would have understood perfectly all the verbal references to weaponry that occur in the plays, many of which now baffle most of us.

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Here is a good piece by Rob Fisher about the latest episode of Channel 4 TV's 10 O'clock Live. Particularly good bit:

Another highlight was the interview with Stephen Dubner, a co-author of SuperFreakonomics. The interviewers Jimmy Carr and Lauren Laverne failed to say anything remotely intelligent, but it thankfully didn’t matter too much because they did at least let Dubner speak at length. He made some good (and downright subversive) points about the incentives of politicians. He suggested that they sign up for long term projects such as “improve education” and they get paid at the end of 5 or 10 years proportional to the results. The idea is to align success in politics with success at achieving goals, and he compared this to how businesses succeed and fail. Getting this kind of thinking into the mainstream - not necessarily agreeing with the specifics but just getting people to think about economics and game theory and how politics really works - is great stuff. Well done Dubner and Channel 4.

I agree with Rob. My preferred attitude to spreading ideas has always been to unbundle them, to try to spread them, at any rate in hostile circumstances, one at a time or at least only a very few at a time. Bundling among friends is also, if you think about it, often saying just the one thing or just the few things, that the bundling of this with that and maybe also with that makes sense - this, that and that having already been long agreed about separately.

I haven't watched 10 O'clock Live beyond episode one, but applaud Rob for doing so. We need our people everywhere, and watching (between us) everything.

(14)

Remarkable developments are in train at London's Royal Court Theatre, in the form of a play that is about climate science, but is not Watermelon propaganda. In a guest posting at Bishop Hill, Mr and Mrs Josh (Mr Josh also does the cartoons at Bishop Hill) provide a fascinating and enticing review of The Heretic, a new play by Richard Bean:

Book your tickets now, this play is a must-see comedy.

It has everything - more accurate climate science than a BBC documentary (ok, that's not exactly hard), brilliantly funny and wonderfully staged.

The drama centres on university climate scientist, Dr Diane Cassell, played superbly by Juliet Stevenson, whose research on sea levels in the Maldives shows no rising trend in sea levels.

This puts her at odds with Professor Kevin Maloney, Head of Dept Earth Sciences, played by James Fleet (sinisterly morphed from Hugo, in the Vicar of Dibley) whose main aim is to attract more funding to the department by toeing the consensus line on Climate Change.

When she publishes her research and expresses her skeptical views, notably on Newsnight to Jeremy Paxman, she becomes the focus of some very direct persecution.

Add in Phoebe, her daughter, and Ben, her carbon-obsessed first-year student, plus an ex-marine security guard and the stage is set. Pure comedy ensues as Ben follows the logic of his beliefs, refusing to keep warm, travel in any petroleum-based transport, and considering suicide since his vegetarian diet causes excessive methane production. Phoebe is ahead of him; severely anorexic she is at real risk of not making it. Both characters are played with worrying fragility that conveys lives overshadowed by fear, battling to understand the issues or find a set of rules to live by. Their plight is all too similar to that of Diane, struggling to work out if the death threats from environmentalists should be taken seriously.

In a feat of Montfordian proportions nearly all the major recent climate change stories are woven into the play: the lack of sea level rise, the politicisation of science by the IPCC, Glaciergate, the logarithmic effect of CO2 (in a way you will never forget), the misanthropy of some environmentalist groups, the 'one-tree' hockey stick, and, of course, Climategate. But the issues are put on the table, without arm twisting, encouraging the audience to go out and do their own research.

Maybe I am reading far too much into this, but this sounds like it could be something of a cultural turning point in Britain. For decades now, there has been a self-reinforcing feedback loop shutting out anything but left wing friendly dramas from the live theatre in Britain, or so it has seemed and felt to one of those who has felt shut out. No anti-lefty dramas - e.g. praising Thatcher or heroic entrepreneurs or working class vigilantes, or denouncing bossy social workers or manipulative communists or ridiculous civil servants or psychotic and tyrannical Islamists, or pointing at the state itself as the prime mover in the banking crisis - have made sense to the theatres, because the audience for such things hasn't been there, and because writers have been disinclined even to bother writing such things. What's the point? And because there is no non-lefty drama, the audience for such things never comes. It stays at home surfing the net or watching its preferred telly shows and movies. If it is like me, it blogs.

Crucial to the willingness of another audience to show up to see this play is that it can be urged to do so on the internet, despite the major official organs of British theatre publicity, notable the BBC and the Guardian, apparently trying, just as they have tried with Climategate itself, to be very sniffy and dismissive. If a new audience does show up in strength at the Royal Court to see The Heretic, then that could result in Britain's theatres saying: hey, I wonder if there are other non-lefty-friendly "issues" out there that we haven't done before, because the BBC and the Guardian haven't allowed us to?

Never forget that theatre folk love a big row, provided only that the row isn't too big, as it would be if they took at serious whack at Islam. They love to push the boundaries, not too far, but just that little bit beyond what is entirely safe. They love to make mischief, to get everyone shouting at each other. They love to take the piss out of whoever happens at any particular moment to be the pompous and hypocritical elite, because, potentially, maybe, that will sell tickets, contrive bums on seats. Okay, most British thesps are lefties themselves, but many of those lefties are theatricals first, lefties second, and in quite a few other cases, on the quiet, so I surmise, not actually proper lefties at all, really, even though they dress like lefties and talk like lefties.

A earlier key moment in British theatrical history happened in the late nineteen fifties. British live theatre was then the Conservative Party at play, watching third-rate Noel Coward imitations consisting of brittle, well-dressed upper middle class chat in implausibly opulent living rooms with big floor-to-ceiling French windows at the back, centre stage. That is a caricature but not that much of one. But suddenly, or so it felt, all that was smashed to pieces by John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, and all that followed from it. Look Back in Anger was also, by the way, first presented at the Royal Court. Perhaps my view of all that is a bit myopic, because the nearest theatre to my home when I was a kid was the Windsor Rep, which, I seem to recall, showed third-rate Noel Coward imitations just about all the time. But I suspect I have it about right, even if those closer to theatrical happenings then had felt in their water that the Angry Young Man upheaval had been coming for some time and thus remember it as a somewhat more gradual thing. I'm not saying that The Heretic is in the same class, as a play or as a culturally explosive event, as Look Back in Anger. I haven't seen The Heretic yet. But this new play may perhaps, with hindsight, come be seen as one of the bigger paving stones that paved the way for something that is more like Look Back in Anger.

Goodness knows, Britain certainly contains plenty of anger just now.

Conveniently for me, the Royal Court Theatre is in Sloane Square, which is only a longish walk or a short bus or tube ride from where I live. I'm giving a talk on Monday. As soon as that's out of the way, I will pop around to the Royal Court and fix to see The Heretic for myself.

(121)

I am, therefore I'll think

- John Galt

(3)

I've heard about this many times, and laughed at what I imagined it to consist of, again and again. But I've never actually seen it, until, a few days back, Instapundit linked to it.

"A few days" is a decade in Instatime, so forgive me if I don't trawl back for half an hour through half a dozen pages of Instapunditry until I spot his posting on the subject, and merely supply anyone besides me who is interested with the link to the thing itself, which I did make a note of.

Here.

(22)

I have seen some Sci Fi action scenes in my time, but for sheer, oh-my-god-that's-incredible-when-can-I-see it? sort of level, this India-made film is extraordinary. Another sign, by the way, of India's economic prowess, I think.

There are robots, lots of them, and of course, the all-important hot brunette in a tight costume. That's got your attention, Perry!

(H/T, Boing Boing).

(50)

"In the bubbled, hypocritical mind of some in Hollywood, the only reason Gervais crossed a line is because he went after them. Had he been as relentless in ripping apart Sarah Palin, her young children, Jesus Christ, or George W. Bush, today the comedian would be celebrated as “edgy” and “courageous” — because only in Hollywood is throwing red meat to a hard-left crowd considered “edgy” and “courageous.” But Gervais didn’t do that. Instead, he trained his satirical fire on Hollywood Power and today there’s serious talk about whether or not the comedian will be brought back to the Golden Globes next year as host."

John Nolte, at the Big Hollywood blog.

I think he has a strong point in his praise of Ricky Gervais's performance, but I have a slight reservation. Imagine if Gervais had said such insulting things about showbiz people that Mr Nolte holds dear, or causes he supports. I doubt we would get such applause. And I also note that in the Daily Mail newspaper yesterday (I quote from reading the print edition), the writer, Quentin Letts, raves on about Gervais's rudeness as if it was a barnstorming example of high wit. No it wasn't. I cannot imagine your average Daily Mail reader enjoying say, an attack by an American comedian on the Royal family, for example.

The sad truth is that yes, Hollywood is full of self-regarding jerks who deserve all they get. But that does not make gratuitous rudeness somehow clever, as far as I can see, and I don't see how we are going to get better movies as a result. And this does all rather cement the idea in American's minds that many Brits are little more than hooligans. (I'd like to know what Stateside commenters think of how this all comes across.)

Talking of good movies, has anyone yet seen The King's Speech?

(36)

This posting is about politics in the USA. Please realise that it is a simplification, what mathematicians call a first approximation, more true than false, and sufficiently true to be worth saying so that it may perhaps then be modified and qualified towards the actual truth.

I ought also to admit that I have never set foot in the USA, and that I got the notions that follow from the Internet, and before that from watching (as I still now watch) USA television shows (mostly comedy and cop shows). We here in Britain get lots of those. I freely admit that distance, instead of lending clarity to my eye, could merely have lent and be lending bullshit to it. In fact, I do admit it. But the bullshit it has lent includes the kind of bullshit that wins and loses USA elections. First approximation truth about what is being perceived, about what big bullshit picture is being believed in, is often sufficient to win or lose an election. For as we all know, a big part of reality in politics is perception. Voters in the USA get a lot of their ideas about politics in the USA from the Internet and from television shows, or so it says on the Internet and on television.

So here goes.

In political USA now, there are now four important groups of people. There are Democrats, Old School Republicans, Tea Partiers, and Voters. Political outcomes were determined by what the Voters decided about the first two. They are now determined by what the Voters decide about the other three.

Voters used to think that Democrats were good people with bad ideas, clever, but mostly only at excusing their bad ideas. Democrats sincerely believed in bloating the government, taxing, regulating and generally screwing things up. But they applied these bad ideas to all, without fear or favour. Personally, there had blue collars and were honest hardworking folks. They did not lie or cheat. They looked you in the eye and treated you right.

Voters used to think that Old School Republicans were bad people with good ideas. Republicans believed in business success, low taxes, less regulation, and generally getting the US economy motoring along. Trouble is that they were also rich and nasty snobs, and corrupt. They used their grasp of economics mostly to get rich themselves. Politically, they applied their ideas only in ways that suited them. If a tax or a regulation happened to suit them or their huge country club network of rich and nasty and snobbish friends, then they would, on the quiet, be for it. For them, business-friendly government meant a government friendly to their own businesses. If, on the other hand, your collar was blue, they'd deregulate and tax-cut the hell out of you, for the good of all, and for the good of themselves especially.

Hard to choose, wasn't it? No wonder it was a dead heat, decade after decade. Good but stupid idiots versus clever but sneaky bastards.

It still is a dead heat, between Democrats and Old School Republicans, but this is because things are now moving towards Voters thinking that Democrats are bad people with bad ideas, and that Old School Republicans are bad people with bad ideas. Democrats now look like (or are being revealed as always having been) greedy and malevolent bastards with the same old bad ideas as ever. Old School Republicans are the same rich and greedy snobbish bastards they always were, but are now seen to be infected by (or revealed as always having believed in) bad ideas much like those of their opponents.

Enter the Tea Party.

The Tea Partiers started out as people whom the Voters regarded as dubious people with dubious ideas, and are moving towards being people whom the Voters believe to be …

I need some way to emphasise this next bit. Pay careful attention. I know, I'll put the next five words into the title of this posting.

… good people with good ideas. The Tea Partiers have good ideas, which they sincerely want to apply to all without fear or favour. They are good people who work or worked for their living, will look you in the eye and treat you right, no matter what colour your collar, or anything else about you.

The Tea Partiers thus threaten to destroy both the Democrats and the Old School Republicans. They threaten to destroy the Democrats by destroying them, and to destroy the Old School Republicans by replacing them with different Republicans, Tea Party Republicans.

The Democrats say that the Tea Partiers are "extreme" Republicans, Republicans who are even nastier. They wish. The Tea Partiers are indeed creating a new sort of Republican, but not an even nastier Republican. They are creating nice Republicans. Electorally, the Tea Partiers are cleansing the selfish richness and snobbishness and nastiness out of the Republican brand, leaving the ideas that the Republicans appeared once to believe in untouched, and renewed in strength and quality. If the Republican brand resists too much, the Tea Partiers will destroy it and make another.

The recent financial melt-down is, of course, crucial to all of the above. In a crisis, ideas matter. And the Internet, the new idea spreader, is also crucial. USA citizens need no longer submit to being told what they think about bad times, by the bad people with bad ideas who are to blaim for these bad times. Democrats are being revealed as nasty, by the melt-down and the Internet. Old School Republicans are being revealed as stupid, by the melt-down and the Internet. The Tea Partiers are being revealed as being good people with good ideas, by the melt-down and the Internet. No melt-down and no Internet, and you are back to the old dead heat between nice idiot Democrats and sneaky bastard Old School Republicans. And the Tea Party? Without the melt-down and the Internet, there is no Tea Party. (According to television, there is, still, no Tea Party, only criminals.)

No wonder the Democrats and the Old School Republicans hate and fear the Tea Party and are trying anything and everything they can think of to make it seem like bad people with bad ideas. Trouble is, all that the critics of the Tea Party can now think of to say about the Tea Party just adds to the impression that such critics are nasty and stupid bastards.

This is a snapshot of now, not a prophecy about the next century. This is how USA politics is now and the direction that USA politics is moving in now. I don't say that things will continue this way indefinitely. In particular, how will the Tea Partiers take to being part of the government, to having to grapple face-to-face with the melt-down? The continuing melt-down and the Internet might then turn round and reveal the Tea Partiers to be just another bunch of good idiots or nasty bastards, or just nasty idiots. But, the melt-down and the Internet are not doing that now. They are doing the exact opposite of that.

(28)

Health and safety kills off the Lear of a lifetime. Jim White writes in the Telegraph:

Earlier this week, I went with my son to see Derek Jacobi in King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse. We were so close to the action we were almost in it. It was clear that the enthusiasm expressed in Charles Spencer's review for this paper was not misplaced: the actors delivered the poetry brilliantly, the pace crackled and fizzed.
For 50 minutes, we were entranced. Then: bang. Just as Kent had been sentenced to a spell in the stocks, the lights went out. For a moment, I thought this was a directorial ruse, and that the next scene would find him in some Tarantino-style torture chamber. But no. It was a power cut.
The house lights cranked into action, and for a minute or so, the actors carried on, the scene barely diminished by the reduced visibility. Quite right, too. As this was a show almost spartan in its freedom from special effects, there seemed no reason not to continue. The communication of the verse would have been as powerful in the gloaming.
But then a technician announced that since there had been an outage, the performance was being cancelled, for – you've guessed it – health and safety reasons. "Your safety," he said, "is our number one priority."

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.

(11)

Hello, what is this? BBC comedians (Armstrong and Miller, no less) making fun out of the failure of Global Warming to be ... warm?

Spotted by the ever-alert Delingpole, who has the video up at his blog. It's under a minute long and is a must-see, if you've not already seen it.

I wonder if it was that earlier viral video, the one in the classroom with the exploding kids, that alerted these guys to the comedic possibilities of this debate? The reaction to this latest piece of (I trust) internet virality will be interesting.

(12)

Culture is very important. That is why the government should never be allowed to have a role in it.

- NickM

(43)

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian back in July:

The return from a tiny government investment is probably greater in the cultural industries than any other – every £1 the Arts Council England puts in generates another £2 from commercial sources.

The UK Film Council, quoted in the Independent in August:

"But the UKFC doesn't waste money, it makes it. For every pound it invests, the country gets £5 back."

Ivan Lewis in the Guardian yesterday:

The National Campaign for the Arts estimates that every £1 of grant given to the arts brings a fifteen-fold return in investment into the county [Somerset].

(23)

Ken Loach made a good film in 1969. I gather he has made other films since. A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership, for instance, and something about a Glaswegian alcoholic.

My opinion of Loach as a human being was decided when I read this:

In Kes, probably Loach's best-known film, which tells the tale of a boy who befriends a falcon, the actor playing the boy believed the bird used in the filming had been killed for the final scene in which he discovers its death. In fact, a dead kestrel had been substituted for the live bird.

Loach felt that the ordinary moral rules against causing someone (particularly a child) intense suffering through a cruel deception did not apply so long as his deception was carried out in the service of his art. The old Independent article I linked to above goes on:

Surprise and integrity are thus at the core of Loach's purpose in life - as well as having a poke at authority whenever the opportunity arises.

His "pokes at authority" seem not to be incompatible with a not-very-surprising yearning to wiggle his way to a bit more power himself, the power, at least, to "do something" about all these people watching what they want instead of what is good for them. And him. And his friends. Here he is in yesterday's Guardian:

We could start by treating cinemas like we treat theatres. They could be owned, as they are in many cases, by the municipalities, and programmed by people who care about films – the London Film Festival, for example, is full of people who care about films.

Those of us who work in television and film have a role to be critical, to be challenging, to be rude, to be disturbing, not to be part of the establishment. We need to keep our independence.

(30)

The first I heard of it was here, where there was a piece about how this guy had been mocking this guy, guy number two being Tate Galleries boss Nicholas Serota. Serota faces cuts in state funding for The Arts, i.e. for himself and his enthusiasms, and he is not happy. He calls this "blitzkrieg", clearly having never heard of Godwin's Law. So, the pips are starting to squeak. Maybe this Cameron chap is not quite as bad as Perry de Havilland says.

The last time I read the Guardian very regularly was in those far off days before the internet, for its cricket coverage. Critics of pieces like Serota's might be allowed about one or two short letters, next to three or four longer and very supportive ones, or ones claiming that the idiot argument in question wasn't idiotic enough. How times have changed. What struck me most about this week's Serotage was the number of commenters who weren't impressed by his arguments.

Which can be summarised as: The Arts is (a) good, and (b) good in particular for "the economy". But if The Arts is so good for the economy, why does The Arts seem to depend for its very survival on state subsidy. If the economy loves The Arts so much, why can it not pay for it? Cutting subsidies for The Arts would be a mere pinprick for The Arts if The Arts was economically successful, not a blitzkrieg.

Subsidised art - The Arts - does indeed depend upon a continuing flow of subsidy, but art itself is a far sturdier thing. Many commenters said how much they dislike The Arts of the sort that Serota presides over. Fair enough. I dislike Serotanism not so much because I hate The Arts as because I love art, and think that The Arts gets in the way of art far more than The Arts contributes to art, in much the same kind of way that I think subsidised car companies were bad for the British car industry, or that I think that NASA has got in the way of and continues to get in the way of space exploration. The Arts crowds out art, in other words. Serota thinks that art depends on The Arts. Well, as several of those commenters pointed out, he would, wouldn't he?

If I understand Mr Cameron's attitude correctly, he will be rather pleased about this particular squeaking by this particular pip. You see, he will say to the poor, in answer to their squeaks about the cuts they are now facing. Consumers of and practitioners of The Arts are also suffering. We are spreading the pain.

But will Cameron contrive any kind of economic recovery, or merely a softer-than-might-have-been landing into the swamp of permanent economic stagnation, followed by more sinking? Are these cuts really cuts as in less state money, or merely cuts as in not as much of an increase in state money as had been hoped for? My opinion about that being that the first can, for those directly involved, feel a lot like the second, as more people get sucked into the state money business and away from having productive lives. Between them, all these people do go on getting more and more, but for many an individual state money chaser, it may really be a cut. And even dashed hopes must feel a lot like genuine cuts, if you have already spent the money you had hoped to get.

(8)

A half brick. That's about how musical I am as.

So I'm no judge of an orchestra, but Simon Heffer in the Telegraph seems to think the New Queen's Hall Orchestra is pretty good. The unusual thing about this orchestra is that it does not receive Arts Council funding.

I have to say that the fact that it gets some of its money from the patronage of the Duchess of Cornwall means that it cannot claim to be entirely independent of the State, since I presume she gets much of her money from the Civil List. But there you go. If one has to have state subsidies for the arts it is much more in the proper style that the dosh should come from the bejewelled hands of the former mistress, now wife, of the Prince of Wales than by filling in a grants form. I rather hope she hands over a velvet bag of gold sovereigns instead of writing a cheque.

I digress right royally. Here is what Simon Heffer writes about the orchestra's founder, John Boyden:

He has serious convictions about arts funding – in particular, he believes that the market for orchestral music is so distorted by public funding that innovation is almost impossible. Until the Arts Council's predecessor began funding orchestras just after the war, serious music depended on ticket sales and the patronage of the wealthy. Before the late 1940s, the LSO (a company owned by its players) paid dividends. Now it receives £2,355,836 (in 2010/11) from the Arts Council alone.

Mr Boyden believes that by keeping the price of tickets artificially low, the gap between an orchestra and its audience has become a gulf. He believes that other orchestras use their Arts Council funding to undercut orchestras such as his, taking up residencies in the provinces that are only made possible by the taxpayer's largesse. The state does not contemplate pulling the plug on these famous institutions and, as a result, everything in the orchestral world is static. Mr Boyden argues, with some justification, that the last piece of new music to seize the public imagination was Britten's War Requiem 48 years ago – because the music now written for these orchestras is created to satisfy not the musical public, but the taste of a handful of bureaucrats.

(11)

I see that former Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker was spotted at a Georgia Tea Party protest, telling a local reporter that she is “furious about the way we are being led towards socialism.” Prefix magazine calls this “depressing” news that will “bring you down” before the weekend, because it’s incumbent upon all musicians - especially those in seminal proto-punk bands like VU - to have roughly the same, boring lefty politics.

- Michael C. Moynihan, linked to and already picked out as a nice little nugget by Instapundit, which is where I saw it. I know, I know, who gives a defecation what ex-music-celebs think? Or for that matter current actors. Well, I like it when they talk sense, if only because the people who talk nonsense get so miserable and angry about it.

(10)

"I don't know what organically grown chickens are; I've never seen one."

- Tony Curtis, one of the greats, who died this week.

(94)

You never stop learning strange things, do you? For instance, this morning, I was (still am) listening to CD Review, and the presenter Andrew McGregor suddenly starts talking about how, in the year 1612, the heir to the throne, James I's son Prince Henry, rather foolishly went for a swim in the Thames, caught typhoid, and died. Cue an "outpouring of grief", which included songs about the death of the young Prince (aged 18), hence the CD angle.

And who became king of England instead? Why, only Charles I, who got himself executed in 1649, in the midst of a ferocious civil war between himself and his severely angered Parliament. That I had heard about. Prince Henry was apparently, and in fascinating contrast to his younger brother, a Protestant:

Henry was quite the Protestant - when his father proposed a French marriage, he answered that he was 'resolved that two religions should not lie in his bed'.

You can't help wondering: What If? What if Prince Henry had not gone for that swim, and had become the King instead of Charles I? How might English history have turned out then?

(21)

There is a new film out, with a fairly strong, leftie vibe about it, called Made in Dagenham, celebrating the campaign by women factory workers in the late 1960s to get the same pay as their male counterparts. It sounds such a self-evidently just cause that no doubt any film-goers will come out of the cinema nodding to themselves about the rightness of the cause and the evil of the chauvinist, exploiter bastards who presided over the previous, unjust state of affairs. Throw in lots of period costumes and some nice background music and this is a sort of feelgood movie, in a way.

The trouble is, as I suspect readers will tell, is that the situation is not quite as simple as all that. As Tim Worstall occasionally likes to point out, a lot of the supposed injustice involved in lower pay for women for doing the same jobs as men has a perfectly rational basis, however politically unpalatable it might be to say so. Here is another one of his articles over in the Guardian (brave man, is Tim).

In part, it is worth remembering that in the far more unionised labour market of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, a lot of the resistence to women entering the workforce to do the same work as men came from male trade union members, not from the firms. And companies, realising that many women are as talented, if not a damn sight more so, than the men, obviously realised that they could attract such workers willing to work for a slightly lower wage than their male counterparts. Outside unionised businesses, such a difference was likely to be even more marked. It reminds me of the fact that the labour movement, with such features like the closed shop, has often been at odds with the Left's alleged concerns for things such as equality between the sexes and races. I would be interested to know if this aspect of the labour movement comes out in the film.

I suspect that, absent labour market restrictions such as closed shops and other deliberate barriers to entry, women's pay would have approached that of the men much faster than it did, but for reasons adduced by the likes of Tim Worstall, there will remain gaps which cannot be blamed on the free market.

(24)

Here, via the Flickr blog, is this charming photo (click on that to see it as big as you want), which combines an ancient agricultural procedure with some much more modern civil engineering, somewhere near Treviso, in north east Italy:

Ideal circumstances, all here will surely agree, for a James Bond car chase. Goldeneye, which was shown on ITV2 last night and is on ITV2 again tonight, has a car chase early on, on just such a road. No sheep are involved, but there are cyclists. Bond didn't drive into them, like this, but he did drive past them and they all fell over.

Sadly, I think that the above road is probably too narrow for cars, and is actually a bespoke sheep track. I guess that sheep, in Italy, are objects of political worship, much as cyclists are here.

(40)

The UK Film Council has been scrapped. I am not sure why it was needed. According to a Guardian article, its inclusion in the quango scrappage scheme is a catastrophe. Presumably that is luvvie hyperbole for a bad outcome. Yet, who has come to this conclusion. Tony Hayward, Chief Executive of the UK Film Council. Not an impartial view then. More a biased testament of UK Film Council puffery helped by the Quango Support Group at the Guardian.

One must remember that any industry will gladly accept other people's money if it is doled out to them. It seems that the UK Film Council was indispensable, as a middleman, broking films to ministers:

History tells us that governments do not understand cultural industries: they are too complex, with too many moving parts and too many competing factions. When there was trouble in the film world, the UK Film Council acted as a translator to government and a critical friend to the industry: that function saved the film sector's bacon more than once. But no more – so in that respect, too, it's back to the dark ages.

Words missing from this epitaph include audience, profit, success, blockbuster, and popular. Another example of redistributing taxes to fund elite culture (unwatchable films) under cover of some utilitarian rationale for supporting an 'industry'. One less public sector vacancy to fill.

(17)

Germane to Michael Jennings' post below pertaining to Prince's declaration that the "Internet is completely over", I had a brief conversation with a decidedly winsome 20-something young lady, elegant yet edgy (she was a cut glass accented thoroughbred Sloane Ranger wearing 'All Saints'). She was sitting in a sandwich shop in a well-heeled part of town... expensive Apple laptop open as she availed herself of the free WiFi whilst having luncheon...

The following really happened, serious, not joking.

Samizdata Illuminatus "Did you read that Prince thinks the 'Internet is completely over''? He refuses to release any of his music on it at all"

20-Something-Young-Lady "Really? Umm... I did not even know he was a musician."

SI "Well, yes...he is. He is one of the great guitarists of our time."

20-S-Y-L "Hah, that's funny! I cannot picture that old foggy playing a guitar! I thought he just spent his time playing polo, messing with architects and hugging trees..."

SI "No, no, no, not Prince Charles... "

20-S-Y-L "Prince William? No, I am sure you must mean Harry! Oooo! Yummy Harry with a guitar!"

SI "No, the American musician called 'Prince'."

20-S-Y-L "Oh, I see. And this chap calls himself 'Prince'? That's hilarious!"

SI "He used to call himself 'Squiggle'."

20-S-Y-L "I'm sure I've never heard of him."

SI "I suddenly feel very... old'."

20-S-Y-L "I'll download something of his off Bit Torrent and see if he's any good."

I do not believe she immediately grasped the sheer transcendent irony of the moment.

(7)

Now I am usually harsh in my criticism of the National Health Service and indeed I wish to see it abolished entirely... but credit where credit is due. This was a very, er, uplifting example of 'Enterprise Thinking' by the NHS.

Carry on, Doctor!

(13)

I am addicted to the Jack Reacher novels of Lee Child (I have read practically all of them). On Child's website is a nifty collection of the cover art for his novels, taken from all around the world. Cover art is a much under-rated aspect of design, in my opinion.

A few weeks ago, I got my hands on an old Ian Fleming hardback - You Only Live Twice. It is a US first edition that I bought for £25, which I reckon is a serious result. It was printed in the early 60s, and its cover is deceptively simple. (Here is a collection of all the hardback covers of that novel.) The first edition Bond novels that were released first in the UK often go for a bloody fortune. The first edition of Casino Royale will cost tens of thousands. The cover art on those novels is great.

And SF cover art is often excellent. Here are some ones I like on this link.

(62)

Over at Counting Cats, NickM uses suitably salty language to say what he thinks of the actor Jeremy Irons for coming out with "there are too many humans on the planet" sort of comments.

I am not going to add to the post in question - I am pretty certain that we have trodden this ground fairly well already - but I wanted to ask the question as to why is it, that folk in the acting profession, or at least most of them, seem to hold such statist/Greenie views? Maybe it is an impression not based on a lot of hard statistics, but I'd guess that the acting trade is disproportionately full of folk who hold these kinds of opinions. Of course, there are actors who are a bit of a break from the trend - think Michael Caine, Clint Eastwood and the playwriter, Tom Stoppard, but they are often notable for being exceptions to the rule.

Maybe it is because, as actors, they view business, and people with cash, as somehow alien. Or maybe it is because, as actors, they often take on a generally adversarial view to the prevailing culture, and for many, being adversarial is still to be left-wing, to champion things such population control, government aid to Africa, or whatever.

Or maybe it goes right back to when they were at school. They probably were not on the same wavelength, emotionally or socially, with the kind of people who excelled at hard science, or who showed a flair for business and sport. Some may even have been quite badly bullied or put upon by the school "toughs" and took a sort of view that they'd take their revenge on society by the kind of plays/films they would get involved in, or the causes they would espouse.

Like I say, this is all very impressionistic. But the weakness for certain celebrities in the acting business for such causes deserves to have a sort of Phd thesis. I wonder if one has ever been written.

(15)

My old friend, Andrew Ian Dodge, now residing in the chilly US northeastern state of Maine, has a book out, And Glory, which is set in a near future where the EU superstate is in full power (not that far off, then, Ed). He mashes up a a bit of political speculation, SciFi and good rollocking drama to make an interesting read. (As if my reading list was not long enough, aaagrrrh).

I have been thinking about who else has written books where the EU is treated as a sort of malign feature of a novel. One that springs to mind is Andrew Roberts' novel, written a few years ago, called The Aachen Memorandum. I am a fan of Roberts the historian, so this hopefully would be a good read. Sometimes the EU crops up in the science fiction books of Ken Macleod, as in Cosmonaut Keep. And I recall that Peter Hamilton made some glancing, and unflattering references, to the EU in this recent novel, which was quite enjoyable, albeit with a rather unpleasant central character.

Of course, writing any speculative novel about the European Union carries the risk that reality keeps overtaking the story line. I mean, I wonder if either the two Andrews mentioned here or Ken would have envisaged the idea of a German politician suggesting that Greece flog off some of its islands to pay down its debt?

And as an aside, Henry Porter, the British journalist and scourge of this government over its dreadful civil liberties record, also had a novel out recently that I can recommend for mixing a powerful message and a cracking good storyline.

If commenters can think of other novels where there is an EU angle, let me know.

(13)

Rob Fisher, another occasional commenter at our threads who has his own blog, has this to say about a new TV show about border security guards (yes, that's right). On the basis of his comment, I think I will be watching the rest of Mad Men instead.

(7)

I bought a number of pirated DVD's in Malaysia recently and they all include unskippable piracy messages at the start. ...

- A commenter, who unsurprisingly preferred to remain anonymous, contributes to a discussion about how the crap at the beginning of legally purchased DVDs makes pirated DVDs, provided they are of sufficient quality, a happier watching experience. Not always, it would seem. I now copy all my DVDs from the television.

(5)

Over at the Adam Smith Institute blog is this nice item on a recent performance of s Tom Stoppard play, touching on the themes of oppression under the old Soviet Union. Apparently, as the ASI commenter notes, this makes some theatre reviewers a bit sniffy, since all this stuff about the USSR is so, well, dated, dahling. As the blog points out, it is not. The kind of issues that arose under the Soviet Empire are as relevant now as they were during the Cold War. Some of the names have changed a bit, that's all.

Talking of dramatists, here is an old post of mine about David Mamet, who has had a bit of a Road to Damascus political conversion.

(25)

Read about it here. Victorious Afghan Hamid Hassan blogs about it here:

After the match, I had to go to do a post-match media conference and they all wanted to know how it felt to beat USA, but the opposition didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to win another cricket match.

I love getting the chance to play against different countries and this was the first time we had ever played USA in an international match. I could never have dreamed when I was young, that I would one day play them in a cricket game.

I am a big fan of American television and movies and my favourite film is Rocky – I vividly remember watching it when I was growing up – and one of my heroes is Sylvester Stallone.

I think that there is a similarity in the story of Rocky and the Afghanistan cricket team – we both started at the bottom and gradually made our way up the rankings. ...

Gradually? I thought Rocky did it with one fight.

Seriously though, it's fun to see a guy so gripped by the American ideal of the common man excelling, and as a result ... defeating America.

The way Hamid Hassan writes about Rocky and Silvester Stallone and so on makes me also think of this piece, about how the imminent decline into relative insignificance of the USA is once again being oversold, in which Joshua Kurlantzick says:

Most important, the United States is a champion of an idea that has global appeal, and Asia is not.

Although my part of the blogosphere is very anti-Obama just now, what with Obama seemingly hell-bent on ruining the USA's economy, the rise of Obama to being President of the USA must look like a very similar kind of story to Rocky, if you are someone like Hamid Hassan.

(7)

This is an amazing example of one those archetypal political processes, which happens when a regime that still commands the present nevertheless manages to lose all control of the future:

One of the most fascinating aspects of the current phase of the Iranian revolution is that many of those arrested knew it was coming, had the opportunity to hide, but chose to go to jail. They viewed their arrest as a badge of honor, and (not to make light of the horrors of Iranian jails) perhaps even a good career move. They expect the regime to fall, and they are building up credits for the next government.

Recently a posting of mine here about an SD card was honoured by a re-run in the comments of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, where they take it in turns to boast with ever greater ferocity about the awfulness of their childhoods, or in this case about the vast expense and extreme non-capaciousness of their very first hard discs. You mean you had a hard disc? - We dreamed of having a hard disc, etc.

Soon, Iran will be entertained with similar jokery, in which Four Iranian Ex-Oppositionists indulge in similarly competitive boasting about their hellish sufferings under the previous regime, thereby justifying their subsequent social and political elevation.

Sadly, they may not need to exaggerate.

(6)

Pure genius.

By the way, here is an old post I did about a superb spoof on 1970s education programmes, which convey a similar sort of feel to some of those old Cold War public information items.

(16)

We should not forget, here in the UK, that dislike of the state-financed broadcasting network of the BBC has been going on for some time. Here is Kingsley Amis, the author and lecturer, writing in 1984:

"In television, as in other departments of national life, the consumer, the customer, the purchaser, is faced wiith a semi-benign semi-conspiracy to foist on him what is thought to be good for him, what other people consider he ought to have, instead of what he naturally prefers. In short, the public is brought education when it wants entertainment."

The point, however, is that the focus on entertainment has arguably increased since the late Mr Amis wrote those words back in the era of Mrs Thatcher. As a consequence, the paternalistic intentions of the creators of the BBC have been frustrated to a remarkable degree. When Amis commented on the BBC, he at least was part of a country in which it was assumed that the BBC's controllers felt that they had some sort of mission to educate and inform - not that this justified coercive funding even then. But the paternalism was at least fairly blatant. Now even that sense of mission appears to be more evident in the breach rather than the observance. The contradictions posed by the BBC's funding model are unendurable.

The quote is taken from The Amis Collection, page 257, published in 1990. I am not sure if the book is still in print.

(47)

"The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion, this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism."

- Boris Johnson, in fine form today, on the movie Avatar. I wonder if his mockery of Eden-worship among prosperous, middle and upper class Westerners is a veiled dig at David Cameron.

I am still trying to find a spare evening to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It may not be for purists, but it sounds terrific. I don't think I will waste my cash on Mr Cameron's (no relation to the Tory Party leader) latest flick.

(6)

Elvis would have been 75 today. I remember the day he died, and he was a megastar way before I was a twinkle in my mother's eye. But I watched a couple of TV shows last night about him, featuring some of his performances, and even with the grainy old TV, some of that amazing charisma comes across.

(56)

I pretty much endorse this list, over at Big Hollywood, of the 10 worst films of the past 10 years, although I am sure Samizdata readers will come up with some more for their own lists. I did not see No Old Country For Old Men, which is one of the derided films on the list, but the way that certain reviewers wrote about it, meant I just knew it was the sort of pretentious, nihilistic waste of several hours that the writer in the article I have linked to said it was. Plus I happen to think the Coen brothers are a bit over-rated anyway, although I quite enjoyed Fargo.

As for the best 10 films of the past decade, name your choices. For my part, I would say that two films I saw last year - The Wrestler and Gran Torino - deserve to be on such a list. Here are my other choices:

The Aviator - the biopic of Howard Hughes.

Serenity - Okay, it helps to have seen the Firefly TV series first, but even so, a fine film.

Casino Royale - Despite some flaws, it marked a triumphant reboot of 007 on the screen. Ian Fleming would have approved.

Sideways - A funny comedy set in California's wine country. My tour of Napa and Sonoma was not quite as eventful.

Spirited Away - Proof that Miyazaki remains one of the world's greatest animators and film artists.

The Incredibles - I loved this film and much of its sense of life. The "designer" character is a hilarious combo of fashionista and Ayn Rand.

Gladiator - "Upon my signal, unleash hell". The film that made Russell Crowe a megastar.

The Lives of Others - Brilliant film set in former East Germany, demonstrating the utter evil that is done in the name of the "surveillance state".

(38)

(1) A Cathay Pacific Flight between Hong Kong and Sydney - July 1987

Michael's mother: "I would like a Coke"
Michael "I would like a Coke, too
Flight attendant "Ah… Two".
(Three glasses of Coca-Cola arrive soon afterwards).

(2) An expat bar in Maputo, Mozambique - February 2007.

Michael: "Two-Em", please. Michael points to a beer tap marked "2M". Of course, the name of the beer is actually pronounced "Dos-Em", this being a Portuguese speaking country. The number "Two" is understood, as English is probably the predominant language spoken by expats in Maputo, which is unsurprising given the nature of the world and the proximity to South Africa. However, the beer is named "Dos-Em". That is different.

Two beers are thus placed in front of Michael. He smiles, and hands over a large enough banknote to pay for both of them.

(3) A (literally) underground music club, Cluj-Napoca, Romania - December 2009.

A heavy metal band has been followed by a slightly less heavy metal guitar band with a (good) female lead singer. This is definitely Dale Amon's sort of place. Michael is sitting at a table. He is approached by a waitress.

Michael: "Timisoreana, thanks". Timisoreana is a beer from the beautiful city of Timisoara, perhaps a hundred clicks away, but the beer is widely available throughout Transylvania.
Waitress: "Da". Romanian is a Romance Language, but contains a lot of vocabulary from the Slavic languages, including the word for yes. Given the history and ethnic composition of the country, it probably contains a fair few Germanic and Finno-Uguric words too, but I am not expert enough to know for sure. Michael sits for about two minutes. Another waitress approaches. She says something in Romanian, which Michael does not understand but undoubtedly translates as "What can I get you?"
Michael: "I have already been served by somebody else"
Waitress: "Ah, Ursus". Ursus is a beer produced locally in the city of Cluj Napoca, which (like Timisoreana, and for that matter 2M) belongs to the giant multinational brewing leviathan SAB Miller. The brewery does a rather good dark beer, too. The German ethnic minority have left their mark on this part of Europe. Michael waits another two minutes. Two waitresses return, more or less simultaneously, one with a Timosoreana, and the other with an Ursus. They look at one another in slight confusion. Michael smiles as broadly as possible - not generally difficult when faced with young Romanian women - pays a ridiculously small sum of money to each of them, and finds himself with two beers.

This sort of thing might happen slightly less frequently if I were not a monolingual Anglophone. Or perhaps not. And if it did, I am not sure if it would make things more or less fun. But I love traveling, and one of the most important principles of my kind of traveling is that it is important to have mastered the ancient Confucian principle of going with the flow.

And the problem of having accidentally purchased two beers instead of one is generally a relatively easy one to deal with.

(25)

Anything that p*sses off the mad mullahs is worth seeing twice in my book. In addition to seeing cool special effects you can set 10th century heads spinning in blind hatred as you enjoy a doomsday fantasy!

(4)

The "watermelons" - green on the outside, red on the inside - can sometimes be uncomfortable elements, prone to occasional frictions. The old left, with all its many faults, did at least favour industry and material wealth. And the cause of wealth creation can clash with the Green agenda, though let it be noted that the best way to tackle environmental problems, in my view, is for us to get as rich as we can.

Well it seems that the liberal-leftist film director and actor, Robert Redford, has caused some sharp intakes of breath among the climate change alarmists by airing a "denialist" movie at his Sundance TV channel.

Enjoy!

(H/T: Big Hollywood).

An earlier version of this item referred to the Sundance Festival, not the TV channel. My error.

(8)

Wise words have been heard coming from the lips of someone in the acting profession, to wit multi-talented MILF action babe Milla Jovovich.

"I think parents need to take a lot more responsibility than they do about whether it's OK for their children to go to Resident Evil or any other movie with violence or sex or whatever. It's really easy to blame Hollywood for violence having an effect on kids, but movies would have no power if parents would just set their own standards. And it's the same with video games."

Common sense of course and that she had to even say this is an indication of the extent to which civil society has decayed. Violent art forms are as old as art itself.

(63)

It's no secret. No secret at all. Every second or third blog I read has stuff about it. Film Director Roman Polanksi (Repulsion, The Pianist) did something bad of a rape-like nature to a teenage girl several decades ago, and lived in Europe from then on.

But now they are going to extradite him or not as the case may be, from France or Switzerland (somewhere European), and big cheese lists of Hollywood big cheeses are saying he's a great artist and therefore regular morals and laws and suchlike don't apply to him, ease up, forget about it, freedom of artistic expression, it wasn't really rape ("rape-rape" as Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost, Girl, Interrupted, Rat Race) has famously put it), it was her fault, it was her mother's fault, it was the judge's fault, blah blah, and the rest of us are saying: bullshit you evil bastards.

If you care about the details you now know them. I care about the details, a bit, and I too am of the bullshit you evil bastards tendency. Not my point here. No, what interests me about this ruckus is how the internet has so completely changed the rules of such debates, and so completely wrong-footed the big cheese evil bastard team.

Twenty years ago, regular people had opinions, but no obvious way to express them, unless they were paid to do it, or were obsessive opinion-mongers the way I was. But even I, an amateur opinion-monger more obsessive than most, had no easy way to say what I thought about the Roman Polanski thing. I had vaguely heard that he had been accused of something sexually bad and was being chased around the world by American cops, but so what? What was I going to do about it? Sit down and write a Legal and/or Cultural Notes piece for the Libertarian Alliance? Well maybe, but frankly, I didn't care to do that. Spend too long trawling through the details of some rape case on the other side of the world, and you risk being thought a bit too interested in the raping (or whatever it was) of underage (if that's what she was) girls yourself. Writing for the Libertarian Alliance in those days meant either writing something a bit serious, of some length, digging into all the details and making sure to get them right, or writing nothing at all. So, for practical purposes, I was in the same position as all those people in pubs saying: "How about that Roman Polanski then? What's that about? No, I don't know the details either. Hollywood eh? Nice work if you can get it. Well, anyway, who cares what we think, fancy another pint?"

At the time, and for many years since, I too guessed that it may well not have been "rape-rape". That is, I guessed that maybe this was one of those furores where the legal age limit had definitely been transgressed (hence the fuss being made by all those puritanical US cops and judges), and Polanski was indeed a bit creepily old, but that otherwise, well, whatever turns you on and whatever you agree to. Silly girls in Hollywood will consent to all sorts of stuff to get their careers cranked up, and it should be their choice. But more fundamental to my point here: I didn't know, and I didn't care to go to the trouble of finding out. Me and millions of others.

The internet has changed all that. What the internet supplies is a vastly higher class of gossip. Before the internet, finding a piece which listed what you considered to be all the pertinent facts of a complicated, foreign and creepy matter such as this one could take weeks, and the chances were that if you really, really wanted a piece like that, you'd have to write it yourself, and risk being branded a creep yourself. Which would anyway probably never be read by anybody in significant numbers. Too creepy. Now, a few links, and you have all the facts you want.

Facts like: she was thirteen, rather than sixteen or seventeen. Facts like: he drugged her. Facts like: She said no!! Several times!!!! In every respect short of the use of a chair leg or crowbar and there being blood all over the place alongside all the other rape-fluids, this was most definitely rape-rape, and we all now know it.

All over the world, blog postings and think pieces like this one, this one, and this one, and of course this one, are now being penned - in America, by people who have long doubted the accuracy and quality of the Hollywood moral compass, all over Europe, by people who don't want it thought that all Europeans are as "sophisticated" as their damned Culture Ministers are about child rape, and all over the world by people who think that child rape is wrong, dammit.

Who the hell knows what should have been done about all those damned collapsing banks? Who's fault was that? What does that all mean? Not even the internet can sort that out for you in half an hour. But it can sure as hell tell you in fifteen minutes what bloody Roman bloody Polanski did to that poor girl, and admitted to doing to that poor girl, and how old she was, and how she said no no no no no, and it can tell you that it was wrong, and that he should be punished, and that how long it takes to catch him and how good or crappy The Pianist was are absolutely not the issues, and that if Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence, Shine a Light) thinks otherwise then Martin Scorsese, fine film maker though he may well be, is a piece of shit who deserves to have his moral compass wrapped around his neck.

It took me way less than two hours, in among boiling a couple of eggs, having a couple of coffees, setting the video to record the Japanese Grand Prix, listening with a half an ear to Martinu's Sixth Symphony, and scanning several other things on the internet that I've already forgotten about, to say all that. Having read and thought, a bit, I then wrote and posted it, a bit, in, for all practical purposes, no time at all, and it's now being read by Americans, maybe even including Instapundit, and maybe even including Martin Scorsese's press agent. A comment on some other think piece or blog posting would only have taken me a minute or two, as many, many others have been demonstrating. It's a different world, my friends.

A final point. Not every member of the Sophisticated Class is being as dumb about this as a lot of them are. Luc Besson, it seems, is not on any of those stupid bastards lists:

But support was not universal; Luc Besson, a prominent French film director and producer, was not on the list, though he describes himself as a Polanski friend.

“This is a man who I love a lot and know a little bit,” Mr. Besson said in a radio interview with RTL Soir. “Our daughters are good friends. But there is one justice, and that should be the same for everyone. I will let justice happen.”

Well said.

(14)

Even though I dislike most Oliver Stone films, Wall Street is one of my favourites, precisely because the "Greed is Good" speech is essentially correct even if the word "greed" is a bit misleading. Which is why I might just take a risk and watch this sequel when it hits the UK.

(10)

"Part of me hopes that Michael Moore’s movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars and that he suddenly wakes up from the slumber of logic he has been in for many years while the opportunity to choose to help the downtrodden and poor has passed him by. But I now see what Moore truly is in a different light, and success will only encourage him to lie to more people and mislead them about the opportunities that await them, should they only dream. After all, he’s a rich and powerful capitalist. The same thing he’s teaching his audience to hate. Irony, in a word."

Michael Wilson, who has made a film about the rotund limousine socialist. If he ever imagines Mr Moore, a truly revolting character, is likely to have an epiphany when his bank account gets ever bigger, he's in for a long wait. Of course, such things do occasionally happen: to wit, the case of playwright and film-maker David Mamet.

(62)

"Mock the Week tells me something about the British I would rather not know. It commands an audience of about three million. As I watched, it occurred to me that Britain may well have three million people who would happily go along with the mob if we ever had a government that incited violence against the vulnerable."

Nick Cohen, who loathes the alleged "comedy" programme Mock The Week as much as I do. An interesting theme, that Cohen does not explore much after raising it, is how entertainment thugs such as Frank Boyle consider it now acceptable to be extremely unpleasant about the elderly, and why this might be. Now that so many groups of humans are considered politically off-limits for jokes, only the old are left, provided they are middle class and white. Cohen muses that this trend of being vile about the old might be a sort of pent-up frustration about the rising costs of paying for an elderly population. He may have a point. But Boyle should remember that he is going to be old one day. And by the time he is in his dotage, who will remember him?

Cohen evidently loathes Mr Boyle. I rather enjoyed this piece of invective:

"Boyle is the show's strutting cock. A gaunt, aggressive, slit-eyed Scotsman with a neurotic determination to be heard first and always, he seems to have grasped that the critics will hail him as "edgy" if he courts the porn market."

Dearie me. Oh for the days of Dave Allen, a real comedian who understood that making people laugh is not the same as drawing blood. Well, at least I now have Family Guy to look forward to later on. Right now, Britain does not produce many funny people, in my view, with the possible exception of the cast of The Fast Show. There is a seething sort of anger and thuggery too much in evidence. I struggle sometimes to wonder where it has all come from. Explanations?

(14)

ELSPA director general Mike Rawlinson said:

The discovery that the Video Recordings Act is not enforceable is obviously very surprising. In the interest of child safety it is essential that this loophole is closed as soon as possible.

In this respect the videogames industry will do all it can to support and assist the government to that effect. ELSPA will therefore advise our members to continue to forward games to be rated as per the current agreement while the legal issues are being resolved.

FFS!

(21)

James Bowman on the latest work of Quentin Tarantino, a sort of cartoon treatment of WW2:

"It is important for us to remember that those known to history as Nazis were not cartoon characters. Nor were those who fought and finally defeated them. Nor was that defeat accomplished by a gang of bloodthirsty, free-lancing American Jews in search of revenge who manage to commandeer a ludicrously implausible scheme to assassinate the entire German high command, including Hitler and Goebbels, in a small Parisian cinema by setting fire to a pile of nitrate film. I know, I know. Mr. Tarantino's are not real Nazis, any more than these are real historical events. But that doesn't seem to me enough of an excuse for them when American schoolchildren -- for whose eyes this film is principally intended -- may scarcely be supposed to know what was real."

I think I'll give the movie a miss, having never cared for any of Tarantino's output. A friend of mine once told me that he thought T's films were brilliant, but wicked, morally empty. For balance, here is a slightly more favourable review by Roderick Long.

(20)

You simply have to watch this to believe that a bit of sand could be turned into art of such emotional depth.

I am simply left speechless by the performance artistry of this young Ukranian woman.

PS: I owe many thanks to Sharon Shannon for making me aware of this.

(21)

Like his blogging Highness, Glenn Reynolds, while I love the visual cleverness of Mad Men, the TV series, and the brilliance with which this show has caught the mood of the time, I find the series rather depressing. I mean, the guys who are portrayed as "having it all" in an age of heavy smoking, drinking in the workplace, womanising and the rest seem to be, a rather depressed bunch. It is a series that certainly plays to the stereotype of business as venal and zero-sum - which is what anti-capitalists like to think it is. But these guys and gals certainly knew how to dress snazzily for work.

But whatever one thinks of the sense of life communicated by the series, Jon Hamm, who plays the main character, Don Draper, is unquestionably a compelling actor who has created one of the most memorable characters in TV drama for a long time (he certainly seems to have quite an effect on this lady). It will be interesting to see what he does next.

A thought occurs to me: Hamm makes a potentially good James Bond and even looks more like the character of Mr Fleming's books than Daniel Craig, even though the latter actor did a very good turn in Casino Royale.. But the last film, Quantum of Solace, while brilliant in its stunts, was awfully humourless and bereft of character development. And it would not be that big a shift to cast an American in the role: our Jim is an Anglosphere character, anyway.

(7)

House of Dumb is as sympathetic as ever to film director Steven Soderbergh.

It seems that the viewers of Soderbergh's latest biographical work were indeed inspired to follow the example of the subject of the movie:

The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for [Eutimio], so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe]. He gasped for a little while and was dead. Upon proceeding to remove his belongings I couldn't get off the watch tied by a chain to his belt, and then he told me in a steady voice farther away than fear: "Yank it off, boy, what does it matter." I did so and his possessions were now mine.

(23)

A nice piece by Jesse Walker at Reason about the late Michael Jackson. I think Off the Wall was one of the first pop albums I remember listening to, and of course Thriller, with that unbelievable video, was the one that helped propel MTV as a vehicle for music. Those two records remind us not only of what a great performer Jackson was in his heyday, but also of the musical genius of Quincy Jones. Yeah baby!

I also sympathise with Jonah Goldberg, who is a bit caustic about the whole spectacle of mourning. The weirdness and the allegations of criminality that swirled around Jackson in his life are well chronicled, and should not be brushed under the carpet. And remember that people, who are unknown to all but their family, work colleagues and friends, die of heart attacks every day. The truth is, that unless we take a bet on cryonics and join the Singularity, that the Grim Reaper gets us all eventually.

(23)

This report says that the debut of the latest Star Trek movie has set box office records. I am not a big ST fan - I prefer series such as Babylon 5, Battlestar G., Firefly and so on, but the trailer for the new film looks pretty good.

(24)

Michael Caine, one of the UK's best-known actors, is thinking of emigrating due to the UK government's recent decision to impose a new, top-rate income tax of 50 per cent, which once other changes are taken into account, will be nearer 65 per cent. Iain Martin, writing in the Daily Telegraph story that I linked to, points out how Caine is just one of the more recognisable examples of the sort of person looking to hit the exits. It is often useful, if one's constitution is strong enough, to read the Daily Telegraph comments sections these days, which are sometimes even worse than those of the Guardian. Several people moan about Iain Martin's article that the 76-year-old actor has made his fortune so he should shut up and be grateful, etc. How lovely. The fact is that Caine, while he may not employ philosophical abstractions to denounce the looting intent of such a tax rise, is at root repelled not by the economic stupidity of such a tax hike, but its essential injustice. What a top-rate tax like this says, in effect, is that no-one should be allowed to rise above a certain level of wealth because it might make others envious. It makes a mockery of all that progressive-leftist talk about removing "glass ceilings" to advancement, etc.

Funnily enough, it was Caine, along with his UK film star buddy and working-class-boy-made-good pal, Sean Connery, who first legged it out of the UK back in the 1970s when the-then governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan introduced tax rates of more than 80 per cent on the "super rich". He's done it before, and he is quite prepared to leave again. Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal FC, has warned that many foreign footballers will think twice about playing in the English Premier League. No doubt football fans of a nationalistic bent may applaud this trend if it gives local players more of a chance to play for their clubs, but it arguably will roll back one of the benefits to domestic sport in having talented overseas players strut their stuff here in the UK.

It will be interesting to see whether the acting profession's traditional love affair with the Left shows the strain. I remember reading that Ray Winstone, another English East End boy to have cracked Hollywood, is running out of patience with the tax situation in the UK. And a few years ago, I watched a chat show when David McCallum, who used to star in the 1960s Man From Uncle TV series, vowed that he would only return to the UK when it spurned socialism. And for whatever reason Peter Sellers or Richard Burton chose to live in the Switzerland, it was not for the cuckoo clocks.

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Roderick Long links to some good material about The Watchmen, both of the graphic novel and film made out of it. I saw the film at an IMAX cinema a few weeks ago. Stupendous in some ways; very violent, an interesting morality tale to boot. And not to mention one of the hottest female heroines I have ever seen and er, a blue guy in the buff. (A girl sitting next to me went bright red watching the enhanced Dr Manhattan and she got such a fit of the giggles that it proved dangerously infectious).

Here is a pretty good collection of reviews.

Mr Long also has wise words on the Tea Parties. Talking of which, here are some related thoughts from Maine.

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"There’s something deeply amusing about egalitarian snobbery and its assorted conceits. The functions of the welfare state apparently include saving unprofitable drama productions from a disinterested public. Mere commercial forces and popular appetite must not impede work of such tremendous cultural importance that no bugger wants to see it. There’s an inescapable arrogance in the assumption that a given artistic or theatrical effort should somehow circumvent the preferences of its supposed audience and be maintained indefinitely, at public expense, despite audience disinterest or outright disapproval. And when that same disinterested public forks out its cash voluntarily for something it wants to see, this is something to be sneered at and blamed on former Prime Ministers."

David Thompson.

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The current Guido Fawkes Quote of the Day features Andrew Neil saying, in yesterday's Observer, how very hated the ridiculous Derek Draper (a particular Guido aversion) seems to have become, amongst the sort of people who think it worth sharing their hatreds of public figures with the likes of Andrew Neil.

But I found more interesting what Neil says about The Boat That Rocked, the new Richard Curtis movie about the pirate radio stations of old:

The pirate stations were not killed off by a Tory public-school prime minister (as in the film), but by a grammar school boy and Labour PM, Harold Wilson, and the destruction was not carried out by a Tory toff minister (as in the Curtis version), but by a left-wing toff, Tony Benn (then Labour minister in charge of the airwaves).

Yes, that's certainly how I remember the story.

. . . the pirate stations were shut not by a stuffy Tory establishment, but by a supposedly modernising Labour government. Fact really is stranger than fiction.

I don't think that strange, any more than I think that the lies built into Curtis's plot are strange. "Modernising Labour governments" think that they know best how to do modernity, and are a standing menace to the real thing. Having ruined whichever bit of modernity they were obsessing about, they and their supporters then lie about that, blaming – for as long as they plausibly can - capitalism.

See also: the USSR. That was run by people who were absolutely obsessed with modernity, which they thought they could improve upon by dictatorial means. With the result that they stopped pretty much all of it dead in its tracks, apart from the stuff like concentration camps. And for decades, people like Richard Curtis told lies about that too.

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I came across this fine tribute website to John D. MacDonald, the writer of many crime/mystery novels, most of which were set in the area around Florida, the Bahamas and Caribbean. If you have not come across his writings, which are a sort of mixture of Lee Child, with a twist of Raymond Chandler, a shot of Ian Fleming, a light coating of Eric Ambler and a tincture of Robert Parker, then you should correct that oversight. One thing I love about these old 1950s and 1960s novels is the artwork on the covers. I love those "pulp" covers with pictures of hot dames, tough private eyes, guns, boats, gambling cards with smudges of coffee or whiskey on them. There is a whole genre of design and artwork that went into making these covers that deserves more credit than it usually gets.

Even today, the MacDonald books, especially his Travis McGee stories, which later got a hilarious echo in the crime capers - also set in southern Florida - of Karl Hiaasen - read as freshly and sharply today as when they were first written. Reading them makes me want to jump on a plane and head on down south for a spot of marlin fishing off the Keys. Bliss.

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I am not exactly a great fan of Richard Curtis' films - here is a hilarious spoof of the film, Notting Hill - but this looks like a bit of fun to watch. Radio Caroline, the radio station that was based on an old lightship vessel off the Suffolk/Essex coast in the 1960s, embodied that glorious, British two-fingered gesture at overweening authority that, when allied to a bit of entrepreneurial dash, often explains the rise of many a business sector. It is hard to believe that in a world where radio was dominated by the BBC, that listeners to rock and pop music of the time had to resort to listening to stuff broadcast by a bunch of sea-sick DJs on a boat. Radio Caroline, alas, closed in 1967 when the BBC unveiled what was to become its Radio 1 station. On the television last night, the-then government minister who presided over the old monopoly, the "national treasure", Tony Benn, claimed that shutting the station was necessary since the buccaneering RC station was "messy". It is an example of the Soviet mindset that lurks beneath the infantile grin of that old man.

There are obvious parallels with the current assault on the citadels of the MSM by Internet-based writers and broadcasters. As Patri Friedman, grandson of the great Milton Friedman, prepares to head out East to tell us all about seasteading, the story of how a group of DJs briefly enlivened the airwaves via the North Sea is very timely.

Meanwhile, on the whole subject of radio and the rebellion against state-backed monopolists like the BBC, here is a good American perspective from Reason magazine's Jesse Walker. Recommended.

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I do not like all of Will Farrell's movies. But this one, about a nutty US TV anchorman, is wonderful. I wonder if any actual broadcasters have ever dreamed of doing this? I bet Jeremy Paxman has.

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I guess this is an issue that will not register much outside of this little damp island of the UK, but there has been a small media flurry of interest over the amazing quiz-answering skills of a young woman, Gail Trimble, on the BBC show University Challenge. She has had the outrageous nerve of being very good at answering the questions, and worse, she smiles a bit on camera when she gets the answer correct - which is most of the time. For this, she has been variously attacked for being "smug" etc. It makes me wonder why those who are offended by signs of intelligence bother to watch the programme in the first place. Surely fare such as Celebrity Big Brother might be more their style. They are welcome to it.

As humans, we surely have evolved as creatures to feel pride and happiness in accomplishment. The first human probably grinned when he figured out how to shape the perfect flint arrowhead. Pride, and showing happiness at cracking a problem, overcoming an obstacle or winning a prize is not just right, it is natural to any person of healthy self respect. Pride is the reward one gets for achieving something of value. Smugness or arrogance are unfair charges to make in this sense. Of course, there is a lot more to life than being able to store lots of facts and figures in one's head and answer correctly to a bumptious quizmaster such as Jeremy Paxman, but I find the attacks on this pleasant young lady to suggest a lack of comfort with intellectual accomplishment that is rampant in parts of our culture. In fact, those who wished that the lady could look stony-faced or even miserable are showing a level of aggression, even hatred, for accomplishment. And that I think speaks to a neurotic condition that the abusers of this woman might like to reflect on.

And then again, I will openly confess to having a weakness for brunettes with brains and a cultivated voice. I see the young lady has a few male admirers on the web. Good for her.

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The movie "Pride and Predator" has just gone into production. And yes, the plot is exactly what you think it is.

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This is on my Amazon wish-list. I love the mad, over-the-top style of the late Terry Thomas and from a young age, was delighted by his crazy turns of phrase, his hilarious demeanor and wonderful portrayal of the upper class cad. I must say that every time I am unfortunate enough to see Gordon Brown, The Community Organiser or Sarkozy on the television, it is hard not to shout out in true TT style: "What an absolute shower!"

Where did the expression "absolute shower" come from, by the way?

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Taking a break from the financial tsunami and idiotic politicians, here are some wonderful infra-red photos. (Via David Thompson).

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The UK's National Gallery - a state-backed institution - and galleries in Scotland have secured £50 million to pay to keep a Titian painting "for the nation", using state - taxpayer's money - for this purpose. A Scottish Labour MP has criticised the use of taxpayers' funds on this painting, arguing that such money would be better spent on supporting arts eduction for school children instead. The story is here. Naturally, the idea that a work of art that has been loaned by its owner is private property and should not be thought of as a something that belongs to "the nation" is not addressed in the article I link to, since that is outside the intellectual frame of reference either of the arts bureaucrats who spend this public money, or indeed the Labour MP who criticises them.

Leave aside the hopefully temporary problems posed by the credit crunch. For the past decade or so, there has been a huge amount of money swirling around among the rich and even not-so-rich to be spent on the arts. There is no need, in my view, for a penny of taxpayer's money to be spent on the arts. Leave aside whether you love or loathe the things that public funds are used to support: the point is that these things should not be receiving tax-raised funds at all. Let the rich of today patronise what budding Titians, Raphaels or Turners that might be out there.

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I occasionally will read a big novel, such as a "classic", because I think that it is a mark of a reasonably intelligent person to be on nodding terms with some of the high points of our literature, although I often wimp out and pick up an old R. A. Heinlein or the latest John Varley science fiction novel instead. But I certainly do accept that there is nothing more tedious than plodding through acres of text as if it were somehow proof of moral virtue or literary stamina. Tolstoy's War and Peace is a bit like climbing the North face of the Eiger - more of an effort than I think it worthwhile making right now. And James Delingpole thinks the same. His article on the late John Updike is caustic, if not disrespectful.

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One of my favourite actors, star of the great series, The Prisoner, has died. Here's a great appreciation of that cult 60s television series by the late Chris R. Tame. It goes without saying that the message of that series - the dangers of an all-encompassing state - are more relevant now than ever.

Patrick McGoohan, rest in peace.

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This guy clearly is not impressed by the recent Hollywood film about 'Che' Guevara, which I will not be watching:

I wish that Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Del Toro could live in Cuba, not as the pampered VIPs that they are when they visit today, but as Cubans do, with no United States Constitutional rights, with ration cards entitling them to tiny portions of provisions that the stores don’t even stock anyway, with chivatos surveilling them constantly. How long would it be before Mr. Soderbergh started sizing up inner tubes, speculating on the durability and buoyancy of them, asking himself, could I make the crossing on that? How long before Mr. Del Toro started gazing soulfully at divorced or widowed tourist women, hoping to seduce and marry one of them and get out? Only then could they see why this insipid, frivolous and pretentious movie they have made is nothing less than an insult to millions of people, who really do live like that, and who’ve lived like that their entire lives.

The quote was seen at the blog of David Thompson.

I have said it before and I will repeat: for all its possible charms, I am not setting foot in Cuba until it becomes a haven of capitalist decadence. Not a minute before. Even if that means paying more for cigars and the booze.

Here is a film about Cuba, starring Andy Garcia, which is much more worthwhile.

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A victory has been achieved in the fight against the disgracefully threatening letters sent by the BBC's TV Licensing arm. The company responsible for sending the letters, Proximity London, was fired by the BBC on Friday after it was found that millions of letters had contained false statistics.

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I love the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle book, Lucifer's Hammer, which is in my view the best "disaster book" every written.

What is your favourite disaster movie/book?

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Check out this site for some superb photographs.

I was going to think of something profound to say about the news headlines, but every time I read the words "Gordon Brown" these days, a small part of me dies.

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Last night I watched Have I Got a Bit More News for You?, which is the extended Saturday night version of the BBC's popular current affairs and comedy quizz show. Something interesting was said, and even more interestingly, not contradicted. HIGN4Y regular Ian Hislop was commenting on the Mini- Pre- Budget that isn't really a Budget, but really is. He said that the country had got into terrible trouble because of everyone borrowing too much money. And the government's answer is that the government is going to borrow lots more money. General derision, and no contradictions from anybody. I don't know what Germaine Greer's economic policy prejudices are, but going by her other opinions, I thought maybe she might make some attempt to defend the government's economic policy, if only by quickly changing the subject. No. Nothing like that.

Come to think of it, I have all this on my telly hard disc. Bear with me. Yes, here we go:

Hislop: "It's a whole package of measures to save us all! We've got into terrible trouble for years by excess borrowing, so we're going to ... borrow!!!!!" Derisive hand gesture. Derisive laughter from studio audience. "That's it, that's the whole report."

Young Comedian sitting next to Hislop: "Isn't it that we're going to be a trillion pounds in debt, after this?"

Hislop: "Yes."

Young Comedian: "That is an awful lot ... If you bring up your bank balance and it says that, you'll feel pretty crushed, I think."

Hislop: "It's bad, isn't it?"

Young Comedian: "I don't know how I'm going to make that back, Ian."

Hislop: "Well, you're young enough that you will have to make it back. We'll all be dead."

Young Comedian: "I suppose so. I thought no one else looked as worried about it as I was. What was Damien Hirst doing in the middle of that?"

Damien Hirst has been laying off art workers. When the silly price of silly art slumps, you know the economy is tanking. Later, they had a reference to the fact that the bail-out is costing us twice what World War 1 cost us. Paul Merton said that this won't be over by Christmas either, to general laughter. And, as I say, not a peep out of Germaine G about this catastrophe.

The central point is this. We borrowed far too much - Now the government says we must borrow far too much more thereby making our children and grandchildren into tax serfs - How idiotic is that? This is fast becoming the Grand Narrative here. If so, and given that the Conservatives are saying this too, that Labour melt-down is becoming a real possibility.

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Today I am going to do duty as a background extra in a short vampire movie that a friend of mine is starring in. I am to be one of a number of diners in a restaurant. I won't be paid but I will be fed, and I already know that it's a very good restaurant because I've already been there before.

Today I got a look at the email sent out by the production to all whom it concerned, about today's activities. This was, for me, a glimpse into a whole new world of complexity and managerial drive. Here, just as a tiny for-instance (there are three whole pages of stuff like this), is a list of the kit that will be used by the DOP/Grip/Lighting Department:

2 X Sony EX1 (with S XS cards) - 1X Intel Mac Book - 1X S XS card reader & firewire cable - 500GB EXT HD (or equivalent space for backup) - 1X Letus Ultimate Adapter & photographic lenses - 6 X Prime Lenses & PL Adaptor - 1X Manfrotto Tripod - 1X 32in LCD TC & Composite leads - 1X Steadicam Junior - 1X Manfrotto Fig-Rig - 1X 8in Camera Monitor with composite leads - 1X 25m BNC cable drum - 1X Mini-Jib with Tripod & Fluid Head - 2X Paglights and battery packs - 3X Redheads with stands, diffuser/gel kit - 1X Set of 3 dedo lights with stands - 1X 2ft 4-bar Kino-flo with stand - 1X 200W Handheld MSR lamp - Reflectors, gels, diffusers, clips and stands - Blacking for windows

I am looking forward greatly to seeing what this all looks like in practice. I suspect that, in reality, it won't amount to very much at all.

My favourite is the "Manfrotto Fig-Rig". Time was, when faced with a splendid name like that, you just read and wondered. What kind of Rig would that be? And why "Fig"? But this is the age of the internet, and I can immediately tell you the answer:

From initial conception to finished product, Manfrotto worked alongside director Mike Figgis, whose films include Leaving Las Vegas and Cold Creek Manor, to develop a hand held DV camera support system that offers the shake-free stability of a tripod with the framing flexibility of handheld shooting. A circular frame with a crossbar to mount most mini DV cameras, the FigRig mn595 becomes part of the body to produce smooth, steady travelling shots. It is this very fact which is the secret to the Fig Rig. As the operator walks, his/her muscles and tendons absorb all the shocks, transferring only fluid movements to the camera. As there are no straps or harnesses attached to the Fig Rig, quick and wide movements can be made within the same shot from ground-level to overhead, in one smooth movement. The camera, accessories and operator become one, allowing you to film scenes quickly and unobtrusively.

So hats off to Manfrotto, and it is called "Fig" after Figgis.

This piece of kit costs around £150 quid. I still don't quite get how it works, but here's hoping that I find out.

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by Liberty Fitz-Claridge

I am the very model of a modern libertarian;
I'm at the Diamond's farthest corner from 'Authoritarian'.
I'm of the view, in short, that we should do away with all the laws,
Except the ones that thwart the sort who'd harm or take my things by force.

The socialists demand that we ought really to redistribute
The money made by businessmen to help support the destitute.
But those of us who set less store by looting than by Liberty
Would say a man's well-being is his own responsibility!

Would say a man's well-being is his own responsibility,
Would say a man's well-being is his own responsibility,
Would say a man's well-being is his own responsibili-bili-ty!

Ideas which stem from this include that school is not compulsory.
When older, children may attend free-market university.
In short, it is the opposite of life totalitarian,
With free adults and children in a climate libertarian.

In short, it is the opposite of life totalitarian,
With free adults and children in a climate libertarian.

The hoi polloi have rolled their eyes and left us to obscurity,
Since fans of David Friedman cry, "The state, the state is after me."
Indeed, there are among us those who dream of a utopia.
For this they are thought madmen, though it's only hyperopia.

We liberals won't rest until all state-run works are privatised;
From ports to courts, from wealth to health, we want the state to be downsized.
These things are not done well by even loving, caring government;
It loves us at our own expense - and what when all that love is spent?

It loves us at our own expense - and what when all that love is spent?
It loves us at our own expense - and what when all that love is spent?
It loves us at our own expense - and what when all that love-is love-is spent?

And surely no one's worthy of the job of politician
Who does not see the value of untrammelled competition.
In short, you should repudiate the crude authoritarian
And study to become a far superior libertarian.

In short, I should repudiate the crude authoritarian
And study to become a far superior libertarian.

When I have read von Mises' massive tomes from end to end firsthand;
When I've the nerve to voice in English classes that I like Ayn Rand;
When I have studied economics and gone earnestly to FEE;
When I have learnt what progress has been made in private law theory ...

When I've read Hayek, Mill and Smith, my expertise evincible;
And when I know exactly what is meant by 'homestead principle';
In short, when I know politics and all the right philosophy,
You'll say a better libertarian there never was than me.

You'll say a better libertarian there never was than she,
You'll say a better libertarian there never was than she,
You'll say a better libertarian there never was-than was-than she!

Though mainstream folk are loath to recognize or even tolerate
These vital, timeless principles that libertarians venerate,
And though the ignorant consensus is authoritarian,
I am the very model of a modern libertarian.

And though the ignorant consensus is authoritarian,
She is the very model of a modern libertarian.

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The Sunday Times today reports that certain celebrity TV license fee refuseniks are not being harassed, on account of being too famous and too keen on getting the splurge of publicity that they would get if arrested, taken away in chains, thrown into a government dungeon, etc.. Vladimir Bukovsky, noted dissident against an earlier evil empire, thinks the BBC is too biased. Charles Moore doesn't like Jonathan Ross.

Noel Edmonds thinks the TV licence televised threats are too threatening. Personally I don't see how those threatening 'adverts' could do their job if they were not threatening. After all, their purpose is to threaten. If, instead of threatening, and as Edmonds would apparently prefer, they emphasised what very good value the BBC is, and then only slipped in as afterthought that, oh-by-the-way just-thought-we'd-mention-it, you have to pay the license fee whether you agree with all that or not, this would be at least as obnoxious. The threatening messages Edmonds objects to at least tell the story as it is. But, he doesn't like them, and objects to being made to pay the license fee. Fair enough. He shouldn't have to, no matter how unreasonable his objections may seem to others. And nor should anyone else, whatever their disagreements with the BBC may be.

Meanwhile, guilty but too famous is an interesting verdict, nicely calculated to elicit contrasting reactions. On the one hand, one law for the famous and another for the rest, and that's bad. But, at least someone is making this point, and at least some of those doing this are not just getting away with it, but willing to say so in public. I am sure that we all await the BBC's response to this public defiance with great interest.

If the BBC does nothing, then here, surely is a great opportunity for people not just to get more famous, but to get famous from a starting point of more or less complete obscurity. It will not have escaped the attention of obcurities thinking along these lines that one of the refuseniks the Sunday Times reports on is a UKIP guy by the name of John Kelly whom you have probably never heard of in any other connection.

In particular, here is a great opportunity for a blogger. All it needs is for one of our tribe to say, there, I am still watching my telly, but have not paid the license fee, and screw you BBC, and get his mates around to video everything that then ensues, and for the rest of us to link to all the hoopla and make sure that Instapundit and Guido link to it also (the latter being a certainty because it was at Guido that I learned of this Sunday Times piece in the first place), etc. etc., and, well, ... there is surely a big slice of anti-authoritarian pro-libertarian anti-nationalised-industry fun to be had here.

Personally I like the BBC and feel that I get rather good value from it, much as people on the dole (at my expense) and bankers whose jobs have just been saved (ditto) must likewise feel satisfied. I like the classical music. I also like to copy telly movies onto DVDs and much prefer the BBC's output, because it is so much easier not to have to edit out all those annoying adverts. I even like Jonathan Ross. I regard his regular outbursts of rudeness as the price we who like him must all pay (and people like the unfortunate Gwyneth Paltrow especially) for the sake of the less tasteless and more interesting conversations that his wacky/rude style also precipitates.

I do not think that there is much future in the notion that the BBC might one day become less biased. It is a nationalised industry. Only those who favour or at least tolerate that are likely to apply to work for it in any numbers. And those who do not fit that mold but who do show up in the BBC's output are more likely to be caricatures of pro-capitalism than the real thing. No, the only answer is to dump the whole principle of compulsory payment for telly, and in the meantime for all who despise that principle to stir up as much trouble around it as we can. And here is a fine chance to do that.

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Well, I reviewed the previous effort by Daniel Craig, so here we go with the next instalment: Quantum of Solace, with Daniel Craig in his second outing as Ian Fleming's hero. It is the 22nd film in the series, which is quite something in itself, when you think about it. I went to see the film with pretty high expectations after what I thought was a great debut by Craig in Casino Royale.

Quantum of Solace - which has absolutely nothing to do with the short story Fleming wrote in a collection - is a sequel to the first Craig film. Having been betrayed and left heartbroken by the death of Vesper Lynd, 007 goes after the organisation that is behind the death of Lynd. We are led on a series of furious chases and action scenes in Italy, the Caribbean and Latin America. The direction of the movie is handled at an incredibly high tempo, much in the manner of the Bourne films starring Matt Damon. (Poor Matt, I haven't been able to think of him in the same way again since watching Team America: World Police).

This is a very violent film. Craig did several of the stunts himself and got quite badly hurt in some of them. If you want lots of fight scenes, with minimal dialogue and no gags, this is for you. The problem, is that I think that Craig and his directors are trying far, far too hard to react against what they rightly regarded as s the foppish versions of Bond served up by the likes of Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan. QoS is a still a good film but it could have been much better with a bit more variation of pace, and a bit more opportunity for Craig to show how 007 is developing as an agent and as a person.

Supporting actors are generally good, if not as strong as in Casino. I like the chap who plays Felix Leiter, who is not the character of the books but I reckon is going to be a regular feature of future Bond films. Judy Dench is wonderful as M; in fact she holds much of the film together. But the other women in the film are not very strong characters and not a patch on Green's Vesper.

I will give this film seven marks out of a possible 10. I would give Casino Royale 9 stars. The Bond franchise has definitely been rebooted by Craig, but the film-makers must not turn Bond into a humourless brute. The character created all those years ago was a tough bastard all right, but he was a bit more than that.

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I have started reading The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by economist Don Thompson, and it mentions (on page 11 of my 2008 hardback edition) an episode I vaguely remember:

In 2003 a 25-year-old student named Clinton Boisvert at the School of Visual Arts in New York was asked to produce a sculpture project showing how the emotion elicited by art could impact on life. Boisvert created three dozen black boxes each stenciled with the word "Fear." He had just finished hiding the last of these in New York City subway stations when he was arrested. A dozen stations were shut down for several hours while police squads retrieved the sculptures. Boisvert was convicted of reckless endangerment, but received an "A" for the project.

I googled this Boisvert character, but found nothing else except this one episode. I guess there is bourgeois respectability, in the form of lots of things that the imaginary bourgeoisie are imagined still to take seriously and to get outraged about, which art has traded on by treading on for over a century. And then there is actual respectability, the outraging of which causes the actual bourgeoisie - the sort that likes, exhibits in galleries, and buys contemporary art rather than being outraged by it - to want nothing to do with you on account of you being just too much trouble.

More generally, I am reading the book quoted above because I find myself wanting to know more about the phenomenon of Modern Art/Contemporary Art (Thompson says Modern is before 1970 and Contemporary is after 1970). My first thought is that what caused and causes Modern Art etc. - what is Modern art - is complicated, and that there is no one thing that can explain it or describe it properly. See my cascade of self-commenting here, which was where I first blogged about Thompson's book. The rise of photography and then of the cinema and television, the rise of and nature of the modern news media, the demoralisation afflicting European culture as a result of the World Wars, WW1 in particular, the Baby Boom and its serial obsessions, lots of new money, etc. etc. etc. ... there are many reasons why the visual arts in the twentieth century and since have turned out the way they have. The temptation to reduce Modern Art and all its works to one particular sort of annoyingness – modern art is nothing but ... !! – is, well, very tempting. But such temptation should be resisted, because whichever single cause you choose is just not going to be the whole story.

It would not be true, for instance, to say that Contemporary Art, or Modern Art, is only about winding people up and getting lots of outraged publicity, although of course that definitely is part of the story. But, all comments on the above ruminations will be most welcome to me, even foolishly reductive single cause comments, but citing single causes which I had not thought about before.

Just now, my personal favourite contributory cause of Modern/Contemporary Art (because so often neglected in amongst all the complaints about dead sharks) is the demand for quiet spaces which one may visit without being bombarded with multiple advertising messages and reminders of one's disappointing place in the rat race, and where one may consort with other rats who likewise don't like to be reminded of their insufficiently ratlike ratness all the time, for example by portraits of self-important rat race winners of the past. But all this without having to doff one's cap to a religion that one does not believe in. If that's your problem, an art gallery adorned with blank canvasses, or canvasses consisting of big coloured rectangular blobs, could be just what you want. Which means that the very same art objects which outrage some with their meaninglessness can simultaneously soothe others, with that very same meaninglessness.

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Lower Marsh, just beyond Waterloo Station from me, is one of my favourite London streets. It has carts loaded up with goodies from vans, and amongst these goodies are classical CDs sold by a bloke called Neil. A few yards due west from where Neil plies his trade, there is Gramex, a regular shop, which also sells an abundance of classical CDs. These CDs cost far less than downloads from the internet, and unlike downloads they are things, which I prefer. When you drop a Wagner opera on CD on your foot, it hurts. That's what I call real value.

Anyway, yesterday, in the autumn sunshine (finally!) I came across this, which surely says something profound about the current state of the financial markets, although I am not sure quite what:

There was another one next to it, the same only black. These pigs are quite big and very solid, made of cast iron I suspect. Don't drop one of them on your foot. They were going yesterday for a tenner each. Hurry while stocks last.

More banking and piggy banking photos by me here, and further market speculations here. The smiling china pigs are currently on show in the window of a fancy goods (I think they call such places) shop in Strutton Ground, another market street in my part of London, just off Victoria Street.

For some further commentary on what things cost these days, try this very Dail Mail piece by Robert Hughes. Hughes ought to realise that 'artists' these days are like small and badly behaved children. The more you complain, the happier they are, because what they crave most is attention.

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The BBC is running a television series called The Tudors, I believe that the show is in its second series. They seem to think that the Tudor dynasty started with Henry VIII as there were no episodes on his father Henry VII, and the show still seems to be stuck on Henry VIII. Indeed his second wife, Ann Boleyn, has not even been executed yet - sorry if this is a 'spoiler' to people who think the fate of Ann is a cliff hanger.

"Sneer as much as you like about how slow paced this series is," I hear you say, "the BBC is concentrating on telling the story correctly".

Really?

Today I channel hopped and came upon the point in the show where the actor playing Thomas Cromwell was introducing a new invention - a secret weapon that would win the propaganda war with the Roman Catholics. The printing press (spoken with special stress) - introduced to the show with cries of "by God, what is that?", and other such, from the actors.

Sadly the printing press was introduced to England during the reign of Edward IV - some sixty years before the time the scene was set, so everyone would have known exactly what a printing press was.

The excuse for the special tax that funds the BBC is that the organization 'educates' the population. This excuse just does not stand up.

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We have of course already alluded here to the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Here is another tribute to this great man, from Theodore Dalrymple twelve days ago, which I think is spot on:

Contrary to popular belief, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died last week at 89, told the world nothing that it did not already know, or could not already have known, about the Soviet Union and the Communist system. Information about their true nature was available from the very first, including photographic evidence of massacre and famine. Bertrand Russell, no apologist of conservatism, spotted Lenin's appalling inhumanity and its consequences for Russia and humanity as early as 1920. The problem was that this information was not believed; or if believed, it was explained away and rendered innocuous by various mental subterfuges, such as false comparison with others' misdeeds, historical rationalizations, reference to the supposed grandeur of the social ideals behind the apparent horrors, and so forth. Anything other than admission of the obvious.

Solzhenitsyn's achievement was to render such illusion about the Soviet Union impossible, even for its most die-hard defenders: he made illusion not merely stupid but wicked. With a mixture of literary talent, iron integrity, bravery, and determination of a kind very rarely encountered, he made it impossible to deny the world-historical scale of the Soviet evil. After Solzhenitsyn, not to recognize Soviet Communism for what it was and what it had always been was to join those who denied that the earth was round or who believed in abduction by aliens. Because of his clear-sightedness about Lenin's true nature, it was no longer permissible for intellectuals who had been pro-Soviet to hide behind the myth that Stalin perverted the noble ideal that Lenin had started to put into practice. Lenin was, if such a thing be possible, more of a monster than Stalin, not so much inhumane as anti-human. Solzhenitsyn was always uncompromising - and, of course, quite right - on this point: no Lenin, no Stalin. Insofar as Solzhenitsyn finally destroyed the possibility in the West of intellectual sympathy for the Soviet Union (which inhibited the prosecution of the Cold War), he helped bring about the demise of the revolutionary, ideological state, and for that he will be remembered as long as history is written.

But I suspect that this may also be right:

The problem for Solzhenitsyn's literary reputation is that the subjects his books address no longer seem so compelling to younger readers. Astonishing as it may seem to people who lived through the time when Solzhenitsyn appeared as a colossus, many people younger than 30 - not only in America and Western Europe but in Russia itself - have never heard of him or do not know what he did. Of course, literary reputations wax and wane; but his disappearance from the consciousness of young people at least raises the question of whether his achievement was more political and moral than literary.

Ever since I read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (out loud on the University of Essex radio station as it transpired), I always had Solzhenitsyn clocked as: Great Writer? - not sure; propagandist – all time great. In this respect, I particular recommend his memoir called The Oak and the Calf, which is about how he did his propagandising, which was all mixed up with how he managed to keep himself alive to go on propagandising, which was a mighty achievement in itself under the murderous circumstances that he described and publicised so well.

Quite aside from the fact that I don't read Russian, this judgement of mine surely has much to do with the fact that I have no very definite idea what a great writer is in any language (although I know very approximately what I like) and am myself scarcely a published writer at all. I'm not saying he was a great writer of literary fiction, and I'm not saying he wasn't. On the other hand, I know quite a lot about propaganda and have myself done it with some glimmerings of success. In rather the same way that if you actually play football in some very lowly division you are an order of magnitude better than I am at knowing just how good Pele was or Ronaldo is, I can tell you that Solzhenitsyn was, when it came to spreading ideas, awesomely good, and that this was no accident. He brought skills like those of a chess grandmaster to the ideological struggle between him (and all his Samizdat allies) and the USSR. and his industry and attention to detail (to say nothing of his sheer courage) was extraordinary. The notion that he won his ideological battle without any hard graft besides the hard graft of just writing it down in some isolated dacha is quite wrong. He was the spokesman for an entire generation of other writers and record keepers. He was the leader of an entire underground movement. He created a fact-shifting machine as surely as any Western press magnate. He quite consciously set himself the task of destroying the USSR using only the power of the written and published word, and more than any other man - with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, who also had the awesome military clout of the USA at his disposal - he succeeded.

Not that Solzhenitsyn was himself indifferent to or ignorant of military affairs. Towards the end of his life he wrote several novels about the First World War. He was in the artillery before being swallowed up by the monster that he named the Gulag, and he thought of all the truths that he gathered about the Gulag as ammunition, and the publishing of them as the launching of artillery barrages. If Dalrymple is right, it will be for the war of words that Solzhenitsyn conducted against the USSR, and for the fact that it succeeded so brilliantly, that he will be most admiringly remembered. But now that he is gone, fresh looks will surely be taken from the purely literary point of view at Solzhenitsyn's achievement, and posterity may arrive, as Dalrymple says, at a somewhat different conclusion.

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A new film is out later this year in the US taking the p**s out of Michael Moore. It looks quite amusing. Here's the trailer. Some of the one-liners are excellent.

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"We live in a world where Ben Affleck won an Oscar and Robinson didn’t. Where’s your god now?"

Dirty Harry's Place, talking about the late, very great Edward G. Robinson.

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I definitely want to see the new Batman film (it pays to book well in advance, Ed). Here is an interesting take on some of the politics of the film. Another useful review - without spoilers - is over at Bob Bidinotto's blog. In a nutshell, he says he liked the film a great deal but felt the film tried to cram too many themes and plotlines into it.

Mind you, I am looking forward even more to the film based on the Watchmen story series. Bring it on!

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Maybe I'm the last one around these parts to have clocked Pat Condell. If so, apologies. But just in case I'm not and you still haven't heard of this man, well, clock him for yourself, now. He has a YouTube homepage, and I particularly recommend the performance featured here, at the Ezra Levant blog (remember him?), which is how I found out about Condell.

The thing that strikes me about Condell is that if you were to read a transcript of the talk that I've just heard, you might dismiss him as, well, some kind of obsessive, in a word, as a crank. Certainly anyone wanting to dismiss him thus would find it fairly easy. But his manner of talking makes him seem a lot more sane than that, and that makes him a potentially huge threat to the forces of darkness. If I were them I'd be quite bothered, and anxiously trying to think of a way of shutting him up which doesn't risk him becoming a hundred times more famous. Killing him springs to mind, obviously. But what if they fail? And what if they succeed, but turn him into a very, very eloquent cadaver?

Here is an interview he did with The Freethinker which they called Laughing religion off the planet, which I am right now about to read.

UPDATE: On the other hand ...

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There's no doubt that one of life's pleasure's is abuse, both dishing it out oneself and seeing it dished out by others. And here, and again in the comments attached to that posting, some excellent abuse is dished out, to one Thomas Disch, and to a chap who defends Disch. Disch has apparently just committed suicide. He was not so much a science fiction writer as an anti-science fiction writer. He wrote the kind of "science fiction" that was intended to put the world right off the real thing. Good riddance, says whoever it was who wrote the posting.

Jeff Read defends Disch thus:

Most literature is about people. That's a topic that the Asperger's-afflicted bulk of the hard SF audience has great difficulty with. And I don't think you can truly write about people, especially modern people, without a certain anguish that comes from grasping or glimpsing the terror of the situation.

And with more in a similar vein. Eric S. Raymond ("esr") responds with, among other bon mots, these ones:

This is the kind of self-indulgent, self-pitying crap I expect from English Lit majors in the throes of an excessively prolonged adolescence. The "especially modern people" is particularly silly, considering the conditions of pain, oppression, disease, and early death that almost all premodern humans endured. Aesthetes in air-conditioned rooms who’ve never had to worry about where their next meal is coming from have no fucking business talking about "the terror of the situation".

The subject of "peak oil" then comes up. This catastrophe has arrived, says Read, "right on schedule". Replies Raymond:

Another myth. M. King Hubbert originally predicted that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. Later "Peak Oil" models pushed back the date at least four times as it unaccountably failed to materialize.

In any case, the relevant economic issue is not when oil peaks but if and when when oil and its functional substititutes become too expensive to run an industrial civilization on. Given the rate at which entrepreneurs are making progress on synfuel from photosynthetic algae, I'm not at all worried. The remaining problems are just engineering.

As for copper and platinum - they're not destroyed by use, you know. We can mine landfills and junkyards for them; in fact that's better quality "ore" than we could find when we had to pull them out of nature. And when those run out, asteroid mining.

Which is all as maybe, but I particularly like this:

The trouble with doomsaying is that it leads to perversely bad prescriptions. We don't need to slow down capitalism, we need to speed it up so it can innovate our way out of resource traps more quickly.

Had I been in a hurry, I could have just slapped that up as a SQOTD.

Read then alludes to some arguments against Raymondism, here. So, Raymond, did you read them?

I did. They're staggeringly dumb, in large part because they assume that the problems they're describing are things that government action can actually fix reliably. Reality would be better described as follows: there is no form of market failure so egregious that political failure can’t make it worse, and such failure is the normal outcome of politics.

In among that there's another potential SQOTD, I think.

There are intelligent arguments against libertarianism, ...

And so it goes on. I've lost the taste for this kind of argy-bargy-ing myself. But it still pleases me to see it being done. Later Raymond links to his essay entitled A Political History of SF, which I intend to read Real Soon Now. I also intend to add, Even Sooner, Eric Raymond's Home Page to my personal sidebar, here. It should have been there years ago.

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I was intrigued by this:

American movies have forgotten how to portray heroism, while a large part of their disappearing audience still wants to see celluloid heroes. I mean real heroes, unqualified heroes, not those who have dominated American cinema over the past 30 years and who can be classified as one of three types: the whistle-blower hero, the victim hero, and the cartoon or superhero. The heroes of most of last year’s flopperoos belonged to one of the first two types, although, according to Scott, the only one that made any money, “The Kingdom,” starred “a team of superheroes” on the loose in Saudi Arabia. What kind of box office might have been done by a movie that offered up a real hero?

Up to a point. There is no doubt that much of what James Bowman says here is true. John Wayne-style movies just do not seem to get made any more, but I am not sure that heroism is dying out completely. I love the film, Apollo 13, for instance, for its realistic portrayal of the mental as well as physical heroism involved in getting the Apollo craft safely back to Earth after the craft suffered a massive loss of oxygen.

His point about "superheroes" is true: I thought the recent Iron Man film had some heroic as well as downright funny moments. As for other stuff, the last James Bond film, Casino Royale, while also not totally realistic, was a much grittier, tougher 007 film than recently, has at its core the fact that Bond is a hero who takes on the baddies.

The trouble is that heroism is often idealised, but I don't have a problem with this if it involves "supermen" characters, like the last Batman film, which was pretty heroic, not to mention 300, the re-telling of the doings of ancient Greece. Outside of Hollywood, there are all those heroic Hong Kong action movies. Not to mention a film that was actually called Hero. Some of the Japanese anime films also are full of strong, uplifting moral themes.

So I do not think the cupboard is bare. But Bowman does make a good set of points about the lack of "real-life" hero films. I suspect that if there is a dearth of heroic figures on screen, some of it is down to how people, in their revulsion against war in general - a perfectly normal reaction - have taken against the military virtues. But as I hope some of the examples show, there is more to heroism than courage under fire.

Where I think there is a real problem, which the article does not really touch on, is the lack of any heroic characters in movies about business. I keep banging on about this, but it is a real pity that almost all businessmen and women are potrayed as morally sleazy or downright evil. A shame: I regard some entrepreneurs and their willingness to take big risks as heroes.

Quiz: name your top 5 most heroic films, of any genre.

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The State of Pennsylvania has made a very old CMU Fine Arts Department tradition untenable. The 89 year old quadriennial Beaux Arts Ball is so well known in the arts community that its passing rated a New York Times story. They call it "the original toga party". That is putting it mildly.

Although the article presents a number of reasons for the passing, the biggest one is Statist intervention. They grey minded, grey suited, grey souled clones killed it:

'The off-campus establishments have liquor licenses and are prepared to uphold the state's liquor laws,'' the dean said. ''Responsibility for alcohol is the main reason the ball was moved off campus.''

At the 1985 ball, which attracted more than 1,200 people, the building received more than $50,000 in damage. The Student Affairs office reported open drug use and under-age drinking. Since then, Pennsylvania passed a law requiring universities to be responsible for drinking on their campuses.

I might add I was costumed as sort of 'Retief' type interstellar adventurer at the 1985 affair, complete with cape, tights, a chestpiece glittering with LED's and a mean looking laser side arm in my quite real holster.

And yes, it was ... quite a party.

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I am very sorry to hear this. I could not give a damn about what his political views are. Fact is, he has been one of the acting greats. The Sting, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, Harper, The Road to Perdition....that is just a few of them. And he was a pretty mean motor racing driver as well, like his old pal, Steve McQueen, who succumbed to cancer at a much younger age.

At 83, he's already put a lot of miles on the clock, but I hope he can make a few more.

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I watched Iron Man a few days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Downey is excellent, as are the rest of the cast. And how can you not like a film that starts off with a bunch of US soldiers driving along in a truck listening to AC/DC?

One thing I noticed is that Audi must have wangled some kind of product placement thing: all the main cars that feature are Audis. One of two aspects do not quite work and the physics of the energy system that powers the suit is not something I am fit to judge, but it seems a bit far-fetched. But what the heck.

Jim Henley, a comics buff, has a good review of the film. Mind you, I still have not entirely forgiven Jim for sliming Mark Steyn over the recent Canadian free speech kerfuffle a few months ago. Not his finest hour.

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The other day I referred to a PJ O'Rourke gag which made the crack about a guy marrying Angelina Jolie for her brains (as opposed to her looks). Thinking about it, it was actually not a very good joke, even though it did not imply that Jolie was unintelligent, far from it. Anyway, it turns out that she is indeed smart and has a fair amount of guts as well:

"The pregnant mother of four told the U.K.'s Daily Mail that she owns guns similar to the ones she used in "Tomb Raider." Jolie and partner Brad Pitt are not against having weapons in their house for security reasons, she says."

"If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I've no problem shooting them," she said.

Jolie, 32, has starred as a heat-packing vixen in several action movies - two "Tomb Raider" films, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and the upcoming futuristic thriller, "Wanted."

"I can handle myself," she said. "There's a side to me that people know is humanitarian, and there's a side to me that's a mommy. But there's also the side that likes to get down and dirty and run and jump around and fire guns."

If the NRA wants a replacement for its former figurehead, Charlton Heston, they could do a lot worse than Ms Jolie.

Do readers have any other examples of Hollywood/other actors and actresses who have come out in favour of self defence like this? There must be some, surely.

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Ask anyone under a certain age as to whom Bo Diddley was, and you will get a blank stare. But for the generation that grew up listening to the likes of the Rolling Stones - heavily influenced by Bo, as well as Chuck Berry - they will definitely know. As an early 40-something, I grew up in a very different era but I also had heard of the guy and was encouraged to listen to a few of his tunes by an old friend. He's great. I particularly like the tune, "Roadrunner" - ideal fodder for the car stereo, blasting at full volume while you are driving a convertible with the hood down and driving fast.

Sadly, the maestro died a few days ago. Those hipsters at the Reason Hit & Run blog have put up a nice set of links to music of the master. He will be greatly missed.

Here's an album of some of his greatest hits.

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If a Mafia don forced you and your neighbours to pay him protection and he later had the brass neck to claim that you were getting great value for money instead of the services offered by free marketeers, I think you would, humble reader, suspect a bit of a flaw in the logic. Well, that flaw appears to be lost on the author of a piece that carries the headline, "Why Jonathan Ross is worth the money". For people who have been blessed with ignorance as to whom Ross is, he is a foul-mouthed, extremely well paid late-night chatshow host and movie pundit who, among other recent glittering performances, told the US actress Gwyneth Paltrow and mother of two children that he'd like to f**k her. Classy.

Excerpt:

The most important thing is that in everything the BBC does, the trust is looking for it to demonstrate as often as possible an understanding that it must justify the licence fee by striving constantly to deliver the highest standards and programmes that stand out from the crowd.

The public values talented performers - but expects, rightly, that it will get the best possible value when paying for them.

The author of this piece forgets that value is in the eye of the beholder. If I think that I get value for money for shopping in Tesco's, Sainsbury's or Walmart, that is my judgement, made on the basis of my choice, for specific goods that I happen to buy. If one of those supermarket chains demanded that I pay them a flat fee every year regardless of whether I shopped there or not, and claimed that its services/goods were "great value for money", and employed loutish staff, I think I might be a tad unimpressed by that logic.

The only way to know if the BBC offers value for money is to let customers pay for it out of their own free will. Everything else is special pleading.

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"At 7.30 on the morning of Thursday, August 12, Bond awoke in his comfortable flat in the plane-tree'd square off the King's Road and was disgusted to find that he was thoroughly bored with the prospect of the day ahead. Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned."

From Russia With Love.

It is a measure of the achievement of what Ian Fleming produced that, for all the criticisms hurled at his 007 adventures for their supposed snobbery, sexism and violence, that no-one ever accused his output of being boring and that he ended up producing the most famous fictional British character of all time, apart possibly from Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes. Born on this day in 1908, Fleming died at the relatively young age of 56 in 1964, just when the movies made out of his books were going into overdrive. Goodness knows what he'd make of the hoo-ha marking his centenary.

Sebastian Faulk's new book, which he has tried to write in the Fleming style, is in the mail. I'll put up a short review when I get it. With any luck, the book will be fodder for another great film with Daniel Craig.

Update: here is an article in the New York Times about Fleming and the new book. It is pretty harsh about Fleming, calling him a nasty piece work, including the sin of anti-semitism. Really? I cannot remember anything in the books that refers to Jews in a clearly disparaging way. Considering his depiction of the Nazis in Moonraker, I'd say that Fleming was pretty sound, in fact. As far as I know from reading his books or the excellent biography of him by Andrew Lycett, this was not an issue that came up. Was he a racist? Well, his portrayal of blacks in Live and Let Die is a bit condescending. He writes about people of different races, such as Koreans and Turks, in ways that sometimes paint too broad a brush, but I do not get the sense that he damned whole swathes of humanity because they had different skin colour. The NYT reviewer also refers to Fleming as a "failed" journalist. That is flat wrong. He worked for several years at Reuters and covered the Moscow show trials of the early 1930s with considerable aplomb; after the war, he worked as a senior executive at Kemsley Newspapers, responsible for running foreign news and training up staff as well as checking copy; he also had a column at the Sunday Times. Yes, he was not, by his own frank admission, one of the "greats", but to say he was a failure is grossly unfair. At least - unlike the NYT - he did not make up news stories and kept his fictional skills for his novels.

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There are certain things you have to be realistic about. Dirty Harry would not be on a police department at my age.

- Clint Eastwood. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival.

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"Biopics", or films about the lives of the famous, have their place. According to this report, the US actor Leonardo di Caprio, who played Howard Hughes in "The Aviator" - which I thoroughly enjoyed - is lining up to play Ian Fleming, who would have been 100 on 28 May (the same birthday as your humble blogger). Hmm, not sure whether that is great casting. There was a film made a few years back with Charles Dance that did the job rather well.

For Fleming fans, this biography by Andrew Lycett is strongly recommended. John Pearson's biography is also good.

Talking of famous writers, though, here are some people I reckon would make for quite good biopics:

Victor Hugo
A. Dumas
Tolstoy
Dickens
Saki (Hector Munro)
Robert Byron
Voltaire
Evelyn Waugh
F. Scott Fitzgerald
E. Hemingway
James Baldwin
Jonathan Swift
Shelley
Patrick Leigh-Fermor

By the way, my list does not imply that I necessarily admire or like all the writers, only that they are interesting as subjects of film.

So give your suggestions if you have others.

Update: several writers are unimpressed by di Caprio. I think he was okay as H. Hughes but as I said, I have my doubts as to whether he will be able to play Fleming well. Fleming was an old Etonian, a bit of an eccentric but despite all his possible foibles and failings, a first-class writer and journalist with a great eye for detail. I fear the Hollywood movie-makers will want to focus on his womanising. I suppose this is inevitable.

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Finding myself uncharacteristically unable to give a flying fuck about what is in the news today and therefore unable to murder helpless pixels merely to write about politics or world events, I took advantage of my inamorata being away on business to escape the Ivory Tower and go bathe in the blood and beer of popular culture... yes, I just saw Doomsday, a post-Apocalypse Mad Max-meets-28 Days Later action splatter flick.

It is a movie that sets its sights low and consistently hits the target. Okay it does get a bit wobbly when any character has to speak for more than fifteen seconds, which thankfully occurs rarely. That said, much as I enjoyed this exceedingly low-brow gore-fest, Rhona Mitra is simply better than the movie. She is superb as the quipping but mostly taciturn harder-than-nails action chick with the one thing so many action heroines lack: physical presence. Also this movie has the best and most brutally ended action-girl-on-action-girl fight scene, well, quite possibly ever.

And the 'eye thing'... very cool.

But I am not writing this to praise Rhona... well, actually I am...

...no...no... the purpose was to repeat what an old Scottish chum of mine said to me on the phone this evening when he unexpectedly called me up and I told him I had seen Doomsday.

"Oh yes, that film is a hoot!" he replied, "but it just made me wonder, maybe the Apocalypse is just Glasgow at chucking out time on a Friday evening, only it never ends. And people who can eat deep fried Mars Bars will eat anything."

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I just came across this. What's happened is that they've discovered another Vivaldi opera, and classical music blogger Jessica Duchen is less than thrilled:

Vivaldi was an astonishing character with a hugely colourful life. But isn't there a limit to how many of these rattly, twiddly baroque things the market can take? After all, most of them feature either a one-name title (eg Tomasso, Soltino, etc) or a massively long one (Il trionfo del blogorissimo classicale di Madamina Duchene), arias da carping hell for leather for several hours trying to sound inventive on the reprise (my favourite carp is to be found in halaszle, Hungarian fish soup), not to mention recycled bits and bobs from other works, a harpsichord sounding as harpsichords do, a swarm of wasps where the violins ought to be and a reluctance to cut even one note leading to hellishly uncomfortable theatrical experiences as the reverential principles of Richard Wagner are applied willynilly to music that was actually designed as background entertainment to business meetings, illicit love affairs and the odd bit of orange throwing.

Well said. Or to put it another way, the trouble with the authentic movement is that it isn't actually very authentic. But the real point here is not the alleged tedium of Vivaldi operas, so much as the exuberantly self-centred relish of her own eloquence with which Madamina Duchene writes about them. Lovely.

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This is what I call gratitude.

On the subject of rare musical instruments, and as a sign of how desperate some investors are to make money away from the standard stock and bond markets, you can even invest in violins. I can see the jokes coming: "So, what do you invest in?" "Violins". "Hmm, I've been on the fiddle myself".

Groan.

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Just straying off the Samizdata reservation for a moment...a pointer for Nine Inch Nails fans: Trent Reznor is giving away his latest record The Slip, and it is 100% free... to download it, go here. Reznor has released it under Creative Commons, which is a very interesting development.

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John Derbyshire, who writes for National Review, the conservative publication, is not a man I always agree with. On the issue of creationism, however, he is wonderfully scornful of some of its advocates. In commenting on the movie, Expelled, put together by Ben Stein, he has this to say:

Our scientific theories are the crowning adornments of our civilization, towering monuments of intellectual effort, built from untold millions of hours of observation, measurement, classification, discussion, and deliberation. This is quite apart from their wonderful utility - from the light, heat, and mobility they give us, the drugs and the gadgets and the media. (A "thank you" wouldn't go amiss.) Simply as intellectual constructs, our well-established scientific theories are awe-inspiring.

And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world - that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: "Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!"

Update: Ben Stein has lost it totally.

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My wife, during a business trip to Arizona, once sat in an aircraft next to the guy who now owns Southfork ranch, the place that achieved legendary status in the hit TV soap Dallas. Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have this rather whimsical piece on how the show, despite portraying most people in business as either predatory villains (JR Ewing), or often losers (ie, anyone up against JR), was effective in inadvertently demonstrating the sheer, material wealth of US capitalism. I remember, as a teen, wanting to have a red Mercedes like Bobby Ewing.

Well, I don't know how much you can really read into shows like this. I must say that Dallas was so full of outrageous storylines and crazy characters that it was compulsive viewing. My mum, bless her, was addicted to it. Watching it today is a bit scary - it reminds me of how far ago the early 1980s now seems.

What is true, though, is that the sort of aspirational message embedded in shows about rich people stands a universe apart from the depressing, tragic vision embodied in UK soaps like EastEnders. I once watched about half an episode of the latter show the other day. It is about 20 minutes of my life I shall never get back.

Meanwhile, here is an old post of mine about Italian daytime TV, which is, er, a phenomenon.

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People say: Is classical music dying? Go to Covent Garden and you can view the corpse.

-Joe Queenan reacts negatively on Newsnight Review earlier this evening to Sir Harrison Birtwistle's new opera The Minotaur

(4)

This is a must-visit for fans of 007 and his literary creator. There are a few events this year to mark what would be Ian Fleming's 100th birthday, 28 May, which also happens to be my own birthday, by weird coincidence. Sebastian Faulks is bringing out a new Bond novel on that day. Most of the attempts to carry on the character by other writers have not really worked, although Kingsley Amis had a good shot at it. I quite enjoy Faulks' writings, so this might be good. Let's face it, the movie-makers have already used up all the original Fleming story lines so they could use some decent new ones without too many corny one-liners or implausible villains.

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The other day I pointed to an article by David Mamet, the US playwright who has become drawn to classical liberalism in his later life. As the Cato Institute blog points out, the great British playright Tom Stoppard has been, in his quiet way, thoroughly sound for years.

This quote is great:

“The whole notion that we’re all responsible for ourselves and we don’t actually have to have nannies busybodying all around us, that’s all going now. And I don’t even know in whose interest it’s supposed to be or who wishes it to be so. It seems to be like a lava flow, which nobody ordered up. Of course, one does know in whose interest it is. It’s in the interests of battalions of civil servants in jobs that never existed 10 years ago.”

Definitely an improvement on Harold Pinter.

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Gary Gygax, super nerd, all around great guy and hero to a generation of bored collage kids, has died. I weep 2d6 of bitter tears.

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I quite enjoy going to the Proms, the renowned series of concerts held in the Royal Albert Hall, west London during the late summer. As many readers know, the last night of the Proms ends with a rousing performance of some of the best-loved works of Edward Elgar, such as "Land of Hope and Glory". A government minister has claimed that the event does not fit in with the bright, shiny vision of Britain that the Gramiscians of New Labour believe is the one to which we should all aspire.

I could not agree more. It is time to face the fact that Britain, or indeed just England, is no longer a land of hope or much glory. Far better that the symbols of modern Britain be such things as state ID cards, unfunny standup commedians like Ricky Gervais and lumps of dead animals at The Tate.

Ok, rant over.

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Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Marion Cotillard, Oscar-winning actress and qualified electronic engineer:

Marion Cotillard, the Oscar-winning French actress, will not apologise over remarks she made describing the 9/11 attacks as a conspiracy and believes that the comments had been taken out of context and misunderstood...

Cotillard said that the towers were destroyed not as part of a terrorist plot, but because it would have been too expensive to rewire them. She also reheated an old conspiracy theory about the 1969 moon landing never having happened.

Of course, working in the entertainment industry does not disqualify Ms. Cottilard from having opinions, nor (heaven forbid) should she ever be restrained from expressing them. However, and equally, I am not disqualified from calling her an ignorant jackass. I hope she spends the rest of her career in French dinner-theatre emoting pointlessly before an audience of coughing, hawking, shouting, farting, senile old-age pensioners who are slupring down a mediocre bowl of bouillabaisse before shuffling home to die alone in a heatwave. How do you like them pommes, Ms. Cotillard?

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A novel based on the Joss Whedon cult SF series, Firefly, which was one of the very best in recent years in my opinion, has been released and you can view it online, thanks to a Creative Commons platform, here.

If you have not seen the TV series, correct that ommission immediately. It beautifully blends western-style cowboy drama with its strong individualistic, screw-authority ethic with science fiction, nifty and authentically grimy spacecraft. There are plenty of dashing men and gorgeous women to please both sexes. And there are sword fights and lots of shooting. What's not to like?

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Oscar for best documentary feature goes to a film, 'Taxi ride to the Dark Side', about how evil Americans torture people to death in Afghanistan - no doubt at the command of the evil Darth W. Bush.

And Oscar for best documentary short goes to a film about lesbian pension rights.

Hollywood has become a parody of itself.

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A friend of mine in San Francisco passed along this video of a marvelous arrangement performed by a classical Japanese orchestra.

It is well worth four and a half minutes of your time.

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I never have seen any of the Rambo movies and who knows if I ever will? Probably not. The day is always full, and they're not on any priority list of mine. Despite all this, the latest picture from Mr Stallone has given me one moment of pleasure. How so? Well, it's being reported here and there that the movie, in which Rambo takes on Burma's military junta, is making an impression with some of the junta's opponents. And this has caused Marina Hyde a moment of irritation. 'Oh, please!' she exclaims. I don't know why I should take satisfaction from it. After all, I have no interest in the quality of Marina Hyde's day; in the normal way of things I'm happy for it to be altogether fine. But there you are: opponents of the Burmese regime don't have the name of some smug little metropolitan liberal on their lips. They enjoy seeing the discomfiture of a tyranny at the hands of ... Rambo. Dearie me, how gross.

- Norm Geras

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There are lots of posters on the Tube and other places about this exhibition of Russian-owned art at London's Royal Academy. Henry Matisse's "The Dancers" is shown in the adverts; I am not a massive Matisse fan, but the sheer variety and quality of the work on show is tempting.

A problem I have, however, is that these works were stolen from their original buyers back in the Russian Revolution or in the 1920s (ironically, Stalin wanted to destroy some of this stuff because he considered it to be "decadent"). I am not really comfortable in looking at something that has been stolen from a private owner; I feel slightly the same way about taking tours around ancient buildings that are no longer owned by their original owners because they have been forced to sell up due to massive death duties, now transferred to such bodies as the National Trust. One might argue, of course, that aristocrats who own massive stately piles are not worth too much sympathy since their families may have come into these lands as a result of earlier hand-outs.

Oh well, I fear my curiosity will overcome my squeamishness. It pays to book early: this exhibition looks to be a sell-out. Thanks to regular Samizdata commenter Julian Taylor for suggesting that I write about this topic.

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We’d all play like that... if we could.

- John Coltrane, no mean saxophone player, talking about arguably the greatest of them all, Stan Getz. His cool, silk-like style is the perfect cure for a stressful day at the office.

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A long time ago, when I was a wee nip of a lad, my parents would keep me quiet by turning on the television and having me watch such classics as Sesame Street. Little did they know that what I was watching was not suitable for children! I know that now, because the early seasons of Sesame Street have come out on DVD and they have been given a parental advisory, no less.

The first few seasons have just been released and come with, of all things, a warning.

"These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grownups and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child," the warning reads.

"Sesame was created in the '60s, and it was a bit edgier, if you will," said Sherrie Rollins Westin, executive vice president of Sesame Workshop.

What parent today would want their child to see kids running through a construction site or jumping on an old box spring? Scenes like the ones included on the new DVD would probably not make it into today's program now.

"We wouldn't have children on the set riding without a bicycle helmet," Rollins Westin says.

And what's that little girl doing with that man?

"In the very first episode, Gordon takes a little girl's hand who he's just met on the street, befriends her and takes her into his home to give her ice cream," Rollins Westin said. "That's something we wouldn't do on the show today."

And rightly so. You wouldn't want your kids to turn out like us dreadful Generation X old fogeys, after all!

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I have just chanced upon a copy of the Review section of the Observer of a week ago. In it there is a double page spread, entitled Is this the best way to run the arts?, which is about how various performing enterprises have now got grants they used not to have or who have had their grants increased, and how various other performing enterprises have had their grants cut or abolished.

As is the way in politics, the ones who are suffering are the ones now making the most noise. They blame horrid men in suits who do not understand art. Politicians in other words.

This almighty row has been brewing since just before Christmas when the Arts Council announced the most radical funding shake-up in its history: 194 organisations and individuals would have their grants substantially cut or completely withdrawn. While some cuts may be sensible, others seemed barely thought through, such as the proposal that the Northcott theatre in Exeter lose its entire grant (£547,000) from 2009. Clarie Middleton, acting chief executive, heard the news the day before reopening the theatre after a major refurbishment - funded in part by an Arts Council grant. 'It's like planting a bulb but as soon as a shoot appears, you cut it off,' she said.

Other victims include new writing powerhouse the Bush (a 40 per cent cut), the London Sinfonia chamber orchestra (100 per cent) and Sheffield's Compass Theatre Company (100 per cent), which had 'absolutely no idea the company was in a precarious position with Arts Council Yorkshire' and has since had to cancel a scheduled tour.

Politicians, especially the ones making the running now, like inflicting a radical shake-up every so often. To feed their friends, they are willing to make enemies, and their "cuts" (i.e. decisions to stop giving you money) are often hastily decided rather than "thought through". And if they do decide to slash or abolish your grant, why would they warn you about this? As for those among them who are genuinely trying to shun mediocrity and to fund only "excellence" etc., how are they supposed to know what that is, or worse, is going to be next year or the year after? Arts funding is either politics, or a lottery.

The bottom line here is: if you place yourself at the mercy of politicians, they are all too liable to behave just like the politicians they are and show you no mercy at all. The way to avoid being at the mercy of these horrid men in suits is not to depend upon them for any of your income. Oh, it takes far longer to build up an arts enterprise which relies on voluntary support from eccentric or socially aspirational donors, and from customers who are actually willing to pay in sufficient numbers for your efforts. But once you have done this, you are far less vulnerable to politics, and you will have to waste far less of your life doing politics. True, the politicians might still shut you down or rob you blind, blinder than usual I mean. We must all live in the shadow of such threats. But at least, if you are not getting a government grant, closing you down ceases to be a routine decision that the men in suits are liable to make at any moment.

Some while ago now, I wrote this and this (also available as an .htm) on the above subject. Both still stand up pretty well, I think.

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There is a new book about Tom Cruise, the American movie actor. Normally this information would not elicit even a groan from me. I simply have no interest in Cruise, movies, Hollywood and the pampered, pathetic world of the modern celebrity. But this new book, on the other hand, seems to be much more interesting then its subject matter.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian bookstores have been denied access to sell the book, not because of any government ban, but because the US distributor has decided that it will not sell the book outside the US or Canada. The distributor, Ingram International, will fulfill existing orders, but will not accept any more orders.

This is a very curious story. What is not said but is left implied is that the most controversial aspect of the Tom Cruise story is his adherence to the Church of Scientology. It seems that the Church came to some sort of legal arrangement with the distributor.

US-based Ingram International, described on its website as "the world's largest wholesale distributor of book product", sent an email to its Australian customers this morning citing unspecified legal reasons for not being able to distribute the book outside the US and Canada.

"Although I recently e-mailed stating Ingram's ability to offer the book to international customers, the position has now changed that we will not sell it outside of the US and Canada," Asia, Australia and New Zealand sales representative Jonathan Tuseth wrote in the email.

However it is another sad retreat from the old position of 'publish and be damned'. The publishers of Salmond Rushdie's book showed some courage in the face of Muslim rage in 1989, but now publishers seem to be willing to retreat at the first hint of a lawsuit.

This is just the sort of case that an aspiring young political figure with a passion for freedom should take up as a rallying cry for liberty, freedom and rationality. Do not hold your breath.

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IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

- The Economist reports on the decline and fall of the music studios.

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I have quite liked the music of Joe Jackson but I did not realise he had such sound views on things like personal liberty. Check out his site.

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Christian Michel holds talk-and-discussion evenings at his London home on the sixth and twentieth of each month. If you want know more about these events email him at cmichel@ cmichel.com. I am doing the talk at the next one, the first of 2008, on January 6th. My chosen subject will be: the history of music making in the twentieth century. I have just sent an email to Christian about my talk, from which he will concoct his email invite to all his regulars. I am still thinking about what I will finally say and would greatly appreciate input from the Samizdata commentariat on the subject. So here is my email to Christian:

An extraordinary interlude - an aberration, you might say - in the history of music is now drawing to a close.

The musical opportunities created by modern electronics, in the form of electronic recording, radio, and then later of actual electronically powered musical instruments, were responded to by the music profession in two profoundly contrasted ways.

The "classical" fraternity concentrated first on popularising - and then on recording in opulently perfect sound – their resplendent back catalogue.

"Pop" music has been just as profoundly shaped by electronics. Indeed, it is the creation of electronics.

The most fundamental effect of electronics on "pop" music has been that popular music (by which I mean the old folk traditions) has no longer been obliged to rely either on musical literacy skills, or, for those in whom such skills were lacking, memory. "Folk" music always teetered on the edge of oblivion, relying as much of it did on the human brain as its hard disc, so to speak. And folk musicians were forced to concentrate on remembering the old songs, having little brain space to create new ones (folk music before recording was rather like literature before printing. Written manuscripts were about as perishable as the people who created them, for they lasted about as long).

Recording, for folk/pop musicians changed everything. No longer did the lowest class of musician depend upon their own memories to keep their previous creations and inherited repertoire alive. They could compose at their instruments, and record it, confident that it would then survive, and they were thus liberated to get on with creating the next would-be hit. And pop musicians were as uninhibited in their use of new, electronic instruments as the classical fraternity were mostly stand-off-ish about them (I know: Boulez, Stockhausen etc. They're worth a mention).

This is a complicated story. Technology takes time to develop and get cheap, and it's still hurtling along of course. Electronic recording (and CDs) took nearly a century to get good enough to do justice to Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler and Wagner. At it took a similar time to get cheap enough for working class teenagers to play with it in bedrooms and garages.

The classical recording enterprise is now basically concluded. Oh, there are still occasional gems to be found in among the dross at the battle of the barrel. But, the great works are now recorded, and re-recording them again and again cannot count for as much now as making similar recordings did fifty years ago when classical fans were still hungry to hear their core repertoire. "Classical" musicians must now look to create new repertoire of a sort that can earn them a living, the inverted commas there being because a lot of them won't really be "classical" musicians anymore and are becoming a lot more like pop musicians, from whom they have much to learn. The music profession will once more be a single (if huge and sprawling) entity, full of varieties of taste and of technique, but without that cavernous gulf that divided it during the twentieth century (in this respect it resembled and resembles politics. Discuss).

I could go on, and on the night I will, but I'll end by briefly discussing my qualifications to do this talk. Well, first of all, I am a music fan, possessing an small-to-average sized pop CD collection and a gargantuan classical CD collection, having been a classical collector and listener all my now long life. I was a teenager during the sixties musical revolution. I have also been studying the history of the means of communication and information storage for as long as I can remember. I am no great shakes as a musician, although I did play the flute in my school orchestra, and I had a fabulous treble voice as a boy, which I used to sing in choirs of various kinds, at home around the piano and at school. But in the end, I'll just have to hope that my audience finds my talk illuminating and enjoyable. For the truth is that they know most of the facts pretty much as well as I do. The question is, will I make more sense of those facts for my listeners? I'll try.

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Bryan Appleyard has some interesting things to say about science fiction (hat-tip, Glenn). As a commenter said in the Times' letters section though, Bryan focuses a little too much on the dystopian side of SF, on science-out-of-control. There are some nice touches though: he is right to examine how SF has affected the course of science, as well as the other way round.

The problem with a newspaper article like this, unfortunately, is that you can only really skim the surface of the subject. SF is pretty vast - hey, like the universe itself! There are bound to be vast tracts of land that get overlooked. Appleyard does not mention the more positive, life-affirming side of hard science fiction in the works of people like John Varley or Vernor Vinge, for instance (two of the best writers of the lot, in my opinion). And he barely mentions Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson, Ken MacLeod and R.A. Heinlein. Mention of the latter, of course, brings us onto the fact that SF has often been quite daringly political; it has used imagined futures to play around with cultural, social and ideal political scenarios (regular readers of this blog will know what I mean, such as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or Stephenson's Snow Crash, etc).

But, to be fair to Appleyard, he takes SF seriously. As he points out, there seems to be more interest in fantasy instead: the enormous popularity of Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett, being just two examples. Maybe I am missing something, but I have never been interested in that side of the genre. My wife keeps badgering me to read Pratchett. Another sub-genre is what one might call "techno-military" SF; Heinlein wrote some of this in things like Starship Troopers; a good current example are the writings of John Scalzi.

Here's a pretty good dictionary of science fiction.

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For most of my life I have been fascinated by two-man teams. Much is written in the management books about the decision making and leadership skills of individuals. Much is made of teams, of about six to a dozen or so people (a dozen being reckoned by most to be about the upper limit before factionalism sets in), and about the skill of building effective teams. But less, it seems to me, is made of the partnership of two, despite the fact that everywhere you look in the world of human accomplishment, you see two-man teams, often famously named: Rolls Royce, Gilbert and Sullivan, Laurel and Hardy, Powell and Pressberger, Pratt and Whitney, Rogers and Hammerstein, Flanders and Swan... trust me, the game of naming two man teams goes on for as long as you have time to devote to it. I could have machine-gunned this posting with links, but Google is Google - another now famously accomplished two-man team runs that, I believe - and I could not be bothered. Partly this is because this is, be warned now, a rather long posting, and doing proper links would have taken me the whole day.

Even when a single creative genius seems to stand in isolated splendour, more often than not it turns out that there was or is a backroom toiler seeing to the money, minding the shop, cleaning up the mess, lining up the required resources, publishing and/or editing what the Great Man has merely written, quietly eliminating the blunders of, or, not infrequently, actually doing the work only fantasised and announced by, the Great Man. Time and again, the famous period of apparently individual creativity coincides precisely with the time when that anonymous partner was also but less obtrusively beavering away, contributing crucially to the outcome, and often crucially saying boo to the goose when the goose laid a duff egg. If deprived, for some reason, of his back-up man, the Lone Genius falls silent, or mysteriously fails at everything else he attempts. Think Elizabeth the First and ... damn, I can not remember his name, but he was crucial, and Elizabeth was never the same after he had died. Cecil, that was him.

That literature and showbiz are so full of two-man teams is evidence of the enormous emotional importance that we all attach to these partnerships. Every TV detective, for instance, seems to have his Dr Watson figure, less inspired, but perhaps emotionally more adult, who buys the pint afterwards, soothes the frazzled nerves of the great detective, and who generally carries the can and tidies up after. For every Holmes there is a Watson, for every Morse, a Lewis. And for every Regan, a Carter. Major kudos to the late John Thaw for having participated in – having lead, actually - two very different but equally famous two-man teams of British TV coppers.

Sport is full of two man teams, often because there actually are two men in the team, as with tennis doubles or two man rowing teams. But equally fascinating are the famous two-man teams that flourish within bigger teams, like striking partnerships in soccer, half-back or centre three-quarter pairings in rugby (Sella and Charvet), or opening batting (Hobbes and Sutcliffe) or bowling partnerships (Trueman and Statham, Lillee and Thompson, Ambrose and Walsh) in cricket. England's cricket team has never quite been the same since Trescothick and Strauss were numbers one and two in the batting order, as they were in 2005 when the Ashes were last won. Trescothick left the side, and Strauss went from being a huge force to a huge disappointment. In cricket see also the Middlesex "twins", Compton and Edrich.

Comedians often come in pairs: Martin and Lewis, French and Saunders, Morecambe and Wise, Laurel and Hardy I have already mentioned, and many more that you are no doubt astonished that I have neglected to mention. Comic duos are able to explore the endless conundra involved in being part of a more or less functional or dysfunctional partnership. Because, as most of us know, partners often do not especially like each other. Simply, they both need each other for either of them to accomplish anything. Gilbert and Sullivan could hardly stand the sight of each other by the end, and had a long period when they each tried to make a go of it separately. Only the need for money, and the less well remembered crutch to their two legs, Richard d'Oyly Carte, brought them together again.

In my own line of business two-man teams abound. In the free market activism, think-tank trade, it is noticeable that success and successful partnership have a habit of going hand in hand, if you will pardon that mostly very inappropriate way of putting it. IEA: Harris and Seldon. Rumour had it that they never really liked each other that much, but the IEA has never been the same since age put an end to their partnership. ASI: Pirie and Butler...still going quite strong, but are their glory days over? And, though I say it myself, Libertarian Alliance: Tame and Micklethwait. This latter two-man team got under way in the early 1980s and lasted for somewhat more than a decade. Much of what I know about two-man teams – what they are, how to become part of one, how to operate within one, how they end – I learned from being half of that dynamic (at any rate as I tell it) duo.

I have been calling these teams two-man teams, but of course by man I really only mean person. Many a showbiz team has consisted of a man and a woman, often portraying a romantic magic that was singularly lacking in their real relationship, or which faded far faster than they pretended in public. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were never romantically involved for real. And I often read, although I have never dug into the details, that the real-life relationship between Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn was a whole lot more, er, convenient than it looked on the screen.

Okay, two man teams are very important, but so what? Well, that is it really, they are very important. If you can have a good one in the centre of your life, lucky you, because your life will work a whole lot better and, with further luck, will be a whole lot more fun. But a little more than that can be said, and in this posting, I will end by saying how you can analyse the future prospects of an enterprise by asking a few two-man-team-related questions. Questions like: Is there a two man team at the top at all, or is the boss up there on his own? And, if there is a two man team bossing the enterprise, what sort of two man team is it?

Actually, those two questions merge into one. I recall reading something by the late great management thinker and writer Peter Drucker, to the effect that the only current measurement of the working of a big business enterprise that had any predictive power was the ratio of the top two salaries. The closer that ratio is to one, Drucker said, the better. The absolute level is unimportant. What matters is whether the top two guys are paid roughly the same, or amounts that are seriously different. If the top salary is way above the number two salary, watch out. The top guy probably thinks he is God, and there is no one around to tell him different. Expect hubristic catastrophe. If, on the other hand, the number two man gets three quarters of what the number one man gets, that probably means that number two man can look number one man in the eye and tell him, as and when, that he thinks whatever it is is daft. There is a degree of mutual respect in place. The load is being shared, and each tells the other the truth as he sees it.

Many books have been written that emphasise the similarities between Hitler and Stalin, but during the war, there was, I recall reading recently, one huge difference. Hitler never had a single respected number two figure, but Stalin did. Once again, I do not recall the name. Something-ishitskty or -ishinsky or whatever, but maybe quite different. He was the military chief of staff or some such thing, and Stalin talked everything through with him behind the scenes, and never at any point in the relationship had him shot. Churchill had his Alan Brooke, who, when push came to shove, he allowed to keep him on the rails. Roosevelt? I do not know, but I bet there was someone. Harry Hopkins was it? But the point is: Hitler had only insignificant flunkeys – Keitel, known as "Lackeitel", lackey, was one of these creatures, I believe - who dared not tell him any truths at all.

To switch to our own time and our own excitements, and on the clear understanding that I am not calling either of them Adolf Hitler, is it too fanciful to speculate that the fortunes of the New Labour regime have moved from the Blair-Brown era, which, for all its faults and oddities, basically worked, to the Brown era, when the whole box of tricks caves in on top of everyone?

The first half of that equation will be very controversial here at Samizdata. If that Blair-Brown relationship "worked", it did so in the sense that it achieved things that most of us here loathe. It presided over a relentless degradation of the quality of the public sector and an equally relentless increase in its cost. Between them, these two put in place, as Sean Gabb has been saying for a decade, the machinery of a police state. But, for as long as the two of them were in office, they got away with it, more or less. Politically, that means that their relationship worked. Meanwhile, an equally unlovely two-man team of another kind, involving Blair and Campbell, also worked successfully.

Now, politically, the Brown era is a disaster. And I think it entirely reasonable (a) to speculate that Brown's basic problem is that he has no one beside him whose judgment he respects and who is doing anything resembling half the job, and (b) to predict that if Brown does manage to pull it together again and survive his current travails, it will be because he acquires someone to stand next to him who is able to look him in the eye and tell it like it is, and to share the load and the big decisions, not just about the country, but about how Brown conducts himself in his day-to-day politicking.

Maybe Brown's understanding of his current place in the world will make such a relationship impossible, in which case, politically, he is now doomed.

Much more could be said about two-man teams, indeed I have a whole new gob of two-man-teamery already written, but I will leave that to another posting.

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Grayson Perry to be exact, a Brit artist, of the sort that makes you want to reach for the sneer quotes. But, I do give this Other Perry two cheers if not three for saying even this much:

"I’ve censored myself," Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. "The reason I haven't gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat."

This may seem like a half-arsed attack on Islam and/or Islamism, but it is way better than nothing, I think. Half an arse is better than no arse at all. These kind of remarks are adding up. The project of denouncing Islam as the evil crap that it is gradually gains ground, inch by inch, and what Other Perry says is another inch advanced. And I do mean attacking Islam, rather than merely those accused of 'betraying' it by... doing what it says. The word is gradually spreading.

If you are a serious Islamist, who does believe in doing what Islam says, we infidels, even our artists, are starting seriously to understand you. Watch out. We take our time to understand these kinds of things, but we get there, and when we do... On the other hand, if you are, as so many Muslims are, a nice person, and accordingly not a serious Islamist, but if you merely say periodically in a self-hypnotic way that you do believe in Islam, then for goodness sake read the damn stuff properly and stop saying that you believe in it. You are trying to have it both ways. Stop this. Stop encouraging something that you say you don't believe in. Make up your mind.

A good first step in denouncing Islam as the scary stuff that it is is to admit that you are scared of it, and not in any 'phobic' way but for good solid reasons. Grayson Perry has admitted this, and rather than complaining that he goes no further, I say, good on you mate, for at least going this far.

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One of my fellow Samizdatistas recently told me that whatever business model the porn industry is following now is what Hollywood is about to follow. To see the future of Hollywood, look at porn now. Porn, so I was told, now, already, distributes itself by being given away, and then if you like something you see for free you go to the originating porn site and pay a bit, either in cash or in advertising attention or for individual products, because that turns out to be an even better deal, and worth paying a bit for. Hollywood is slowly learning this lesson.

But is it actually too late for them to learn? Look what is apparently now happening to the porn industry:

DVD sales are in free fall. Audiences are flocking to pornographic knockoffs of YouTube, especially a secretive site called YouPorn. And the amateurs are taking over. What's happening to the adult-entertainment industry is exactly what's happening to its Hollywood counterpart - only worse.

So, is that what is about to happen to Hollywood also? Will movie and TV entertainment of the clothes-mostly-on sort also be overrun soon by amateurs?

WIth thanks to Instapundit for the link.

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I keep telling my wife that she bears a certain physical resemblance to this eyeful. I am not sure if Mrs Pearce wants to spend her life as an opera singer, mind. (Latin dance is more her thing). Anyway, compared with most of the over-rated warblers of modern music, Cecilia Bartoli knocks the competition into the proverbial cocked hat. Her continued excellence helps assuage music-lovers' grief at losing Luciano Pavarotti earlier this year. It is one of my regrets I never saw him live.

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Here are some wonderfully good photographs, ideal browsing for a grey Sunday afternoon.