This is a fascinating mystery story. As someone who loves books and has worked in publishing, I have long been perplexed by the massive sales of leaden conspiracy 'thrillers' (as I have to write it, being really very ungripped) and of pseudo-histories.

These are strange alien artefacts in the literary world. They appear to be books, having the same physical manifestation. Yet the words in them have no rhythm, and make no sense, the world they portray is all surface, all banality: all invented, but paradoxically without imagination.

The familiar book, grounded in fact or rich in fiction, sells (mostly slowly) to an audience that comes back for more books. These... I need another wordname... reads are bought in vast numbers by people who do not otherwise read. You see them swarming on the tube, at bus-stops, in advertisements as book-club special offers, everywhere. And then they are gone. Where?

Few have the life-span of a book, it seems. But where do they go to die? They are seldom seen in second-hand shops. And why are they so successful when they are plainly so inbred?

The genus is so narrow that there's always been some doubt in my mind whether it is two species or one. Now a strange court-case may inform us on that matter (if not why the infernal things are so popular). It appears that two of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, a "non-fiction" work of non-history, are suing in the High Court the writer of a fictional read called The Da Vinci Code for copyright infringement.

If the author of a history book were to sue an historical novelist, then we would expect it to be on the ground that passages of text were quoted without permission. For use of expression, not content. There is no copyright in facts.

But weirdly that's not what is going on here. Jonathan Rayner-James QC for the plaintiffs said:

HBHG is a book of historical conjecture setting out the authors’ hypothesis. The authors’ historical conjecture has spawned many other books that developed aspects of this conjecture in a variety of directions. But none has lifted the central theme of the book

Which is what Dan Brown is accused of.

What could make "historical conjecture" original work capable of copyright protection? Only that it bears no relation to history, it seems to me. Can it really be the plaintiffs' case that the novel is not novel enough, because their read - sold all over the world labeled 'non-fiction' - is in fact a fantasy?

If that is their case, and that case prevails prevails, then I am interested to know what the publishers of HBHG, HarperCollins who also published The Da Vinci Code and are joint defendants, might do. Did their contract with the plaintiffs contain that standard apotropaic against libel, a warranty from the author that "all statements purporting to be facts are true"? The consequence for the pseudo-historical read as a genre could be interesting.

Extinction of the species would be too much to hope for, I suppose. But for once a thriller has me gripped.

This is a poster I saw the other day, outside St James the Less, which is a church very near to where I live. And no, I am afraid I do not know what "the Less" means, although perhaps a commenter will.

What I found bizarre was how they describe God. They do not come over as monotheists. They make it seem like there are lots of gods (with a small g) to choose between, and they chose a big one. Or maybe they have a big god of their own stashed away somewhere.

Interested? Here is the website. Although "equipping through ministry for mission" does not sound like much of a slogan to me.

'Stoatman' from 'Zuid Holland' writes in with a remarkable bit of hypocrisy from the Human Rights Industry

Amnesty International, as part of its ongoing struggle for universal human rights, is looking to employ a Discrimination and Identity consultant for its Dutch branch.

The Discrimination and Identity team consists of three paid and two volunteer positions and is concerned with influencing government policy and societal views regarding discrimination on grounds of skin colour, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. ... In this position you will develop policy and strategy in the field of Discrimination. This includes research into discrimination, and the development and organisation of lobbying regarding the fight against discrimination in the Netherlands. You will also be responsible for the development and implementation of actions and campaigns concerning discrimination worldwide and in the Netherlands

Before you dust off your CV which bulges with non-jobs in local government and crack open the Dutch taped course, there is just one problem before you can claim your £21-26k salary:

Considering the composition of the team, we are seeking someone from an ethnic minority group

Has it reached the stage now that such discrimination has become so mainstream that nobody even bats an eyelid to such brazen hypocrisy?

(hat tip - The Amazing Retecool)

You may have already heard this but I laughed out loud when I came across this: an officer involved in Dick Cheney's recent difficulties is called Captain Kirk.

Phasers off, gentlemen.

Heh. Who was that speaker again?

From an email circular promoting think-tank events around Europe:

London

21/02/06 Policy Exchange "Why the Agenda of the Future cannot be delivered by a person stuck in the Past" - William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary

RSVP: info@policyexchange.org.uk

Lynn Sislo:

Some people might find this site disturbing but I trust that there will be no rioting.

Indeed.

So if hippophobia is a morbid fear of horses... what would a morbid fear of hippototamii be known as?

I wrote to the Department of Culture, Media & Sport (!) back on 10th January to nominate the CCTV camera as an 'icon of England'... and they have just written back accepting the nomination.

Interesting.

... in October of last year and nothing happened.

So obviously it took a while for the people who wanted to blow this up some time to get all those highly inflammable Danish flags made and organise the outrage. Maybe we are looking in all the wrong places for the people behind this. Radical Islamic clerics? Nah, it was all a conspiracy by Middle Eastern flag makers.

Exhibit A from the United States. That 100 pattie burger looks tasty...

(Spotted on Marginal Revolution)

Exhibit B from the United Kingdom - wait a few seconds to be diverted.

Both sites for the epicureans amongst us, most certainly.

Fire up Google and type in "chav stakhanovites"... and you get us!

As befits his role as grand pyjama person of external trade, Peter Mandelson has paid great attention to his image and position. There are a whole series of photographs of Peter meeting other responsible dignitaries as he promotes the European interest throughout the world. The jolly capers with the Chinese Minister of Commerce, Bo Xilai, are especially heartwarming.

Peter makes great play of his distinguished career at Westminster, detailing the achievements of his tenure at Trade and Industry and Northern Ireland. A mere snippet suffices...

In 1999 Peter Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Between 1999 and 2001 he negotiated the creation of Northern Ireland’s power sharing government and the IRA’s announcement that they planned to put their arms beyond use. He also introduced the radical overhaul of the police service in Northern Ireland.

A mere bagatelle of an omission and I am sure that it is unintentionally overlooked. But didn't he resign a couple of times?

It would be fair to say that telling the truth often makes you no friends, and thus the need to protect 'whistleblowers' from being penalised for telling what they know is an issue that should be close to the heart of any who value truth above all else. It is often only people on the inside who can reveal the dirty deeds and malfeasance that would otherwise never come to light. Therefore when I read of a person losing their position because not only did they tell the truth, they refused to allow the truth to be forgotten, it just makes me sick as a parrot.

I came across this "Oddly Enough" item over at Reuters this afternoon. It seems that the straight-laced culture of Norway is alive and kicking:

The Church of Norway forced a priest to resign on Friday from a panel set to judge bikini-clad women competing to be the country's Miss Universe contestant.

Einar Gelius, an Oslo Lutheran vicar, has said it was his right to do as he wished during his spare time, but church members said that as a clergyman he always represented the Church and should not be seen to be judging other humans.

But the priest was not judging the moral worth of women, he was judging just how physically attractive they are, which is not the same thing at all. Dearie me, standards of logic in the churches these days seem to be on the skids.

Not that I am remotely interested in such shallow contests, you understand.

Since I live in Australia, I am not particularly up-to-date with the ins and outs of British reality television. Hell, I am woefully uninformed regarding television produced in my own country. So it came as a surprise to see Scott Burgess poking fun at George Galloway, who is appearing as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother. What is Galloway playing at? I do not doubt that for washed up entertainers and discarded spouses of stars, something like Celebrity Big Brother is a potential second, third or fifteenth chance. However, I cannot understand the benefits for someone like Galloway (or anyone in a position requiring credibility) of becoming involved in such a tacky programme. Contrary to popular belief, not all publicity is good publicity - especially in regards to politicians. Surely this must be mightily unimpressive to Galloway's constituents. Shouldn't he be representing them rather than swanning around some birdcage with a microphone strapped to his belt, making a tit of himself? Admittedly, he probably does less damage surrounded by morons in "The House" than in the House of Commons. Three words spring to mind - why, why, why? The only answer I can think of is that the man's a bloody fool and an egomaniac, to boot.

When I arrived home from work yesterday I discovered a package had arrived for me. I suspected that it was a Christmas present from my sister, and this was later confirmed. I opened it, and found this.

Yes, that's right. It's a clock that tells the time in binary, using flashing blue LEDs. To tell the truth, it has a nice "dawn of computing" feel about it, harkening back to the days when input devices were more primitive. Of course, they didn't have blue LEDs back in the dawn of computing (or even in 1990 for that matter) but I will forgive that.

Alas, I can only conclude that my sister knows me too well.

(Actually, it only sort of tells the time in binary. Each vertical row of LEDs gives the binary for one decimal digit of the time. So the time as shown in the photograph is 21:26:25).

This sounds like a fairly explosive sort of party!

Yes, it had to happen: a man has named a police dog in a lawsuit.

Woof!

(Thanks to the marvellous Overlawyered blog for the story).

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has announced that there will be no public inquiry into the London bombings of July 7th; instead the Home Office will publish what was described on the BBC 10 o'clock news as a "narrative of events".

Will this be formally known as the "official story", I wonder?

Granted his early appearances with Take That were aimed squarely at the pink pound, but that is a historic video persona. Robbie Williams himself is virtually a by-word for, how should I put it... cocky, pop-star heterosexuality. So much so, it seems pretty darn odd that even gossipy, downmarket, national newspapers should choose to print flimsy stories attributing to him a history of casual gay sex. The sequel, however is odder.

British libel law being what it is, the already wealthy Mr Williams has just received a large financial settlement and an apology. Good for him! Silly newspapers who should know better made untrue statements, and he took full advantage of the law to get compensation.

But there is something weird going on, nonetheless. Leave aside the peculiar way defamation puts the burden of proof on the defence. Here we have an example of the inflexibility of the common law. Why in early 21st century Britain it prima facie defamatory to impute homosexuality to a man (or, for that matter, un-chastity of any kind to a woman)?

This same week the British state directly affirmed (or seized control over, depending on your point of view) same-sex partnerships for the first time. And it is not just official recognition. Openly gay individuals are accepted and successful public figures. The most popular BBC drama series last year was the revival of Dr Who, mainstream family programming with a recurring supporting character who is a polymorphously perverse time-travelling conman, now liberated into his own series. The most imitated comedy turn in the nation's playgrounds is Little Britain's Daffydd*, soi-disant "only gay in the village", the joke of whom is his determination to be oppressed despite all the evidence around him that plenty of neighbours are un-dramatic queens, and nobody gives a toss anyway.

Likewise, who would give a toss if Robbie Williams had had homosexual dalliances? It wouldn't make him a less entertaining performer or his music less catchy. It would not make him a less engaging personality. Arguably more complexity is more interesting in a public figure. So it is hard to see how the libellous story, however wrong or personally hurtful, could either lower him in the estimation of his peers or significantly damage his commercial prospects, which is the theoretical justification for libel damages.

On the other hand, I can be disparaging about the content of his musical work, or his stage act, and if I am widely published, then I might do real injury to his sale prospects, as well as emotional hurt to the creative person and performer. That's not actionable, though. I am not saying it should be, but the comparison illuminates how archaic is libel.

[* I'm grateful for a commentator's correction.]

Switzerland is a bastion of efficiency and rationality surrounded by the boiling maelstrom of stupidity that is Europe... and yet even they are falling foul of idiotic political correctness and absurd defensive 'sensitivity'.

Swiss Santa Clauses have been banned from sitting children on their laps because of the risk that they might be accused of paedophilia [...] Large groups of St Nicholases parade through the streets that day before visiting children. They traditionally sit them on their laps before asking if they have been well-behaved. "We want to counteract any possible accusations of paedophilia involving our members," the Society of St Nicholas said in a statement. "We regret having to do this, but the public has become very sensitive about child abuse."

Hardly the end of the world but it is not a good sign that even the dependibly sensible Swiss have this crap to deal with.

"On sighting an elephant Selous would instantly remove his trousers as he found it easier to pursue them in his underpants."

As one does.

The quote is from Tom Quinn, Shooting's Strangest Days.

From a literal reading of this, one would think that the Citibank 24 hour banking centre is only open for six hours a day. However, I suppose the distinction between am and pm is subtle for people who are not used to the English language. In truth the Citibank 24 hour banking centre is open for a full 18 hours a day, which makes perfect sense.

(These photographs are of the Citibank branch just across the square from Brussels Central railway station in Belgium. They have read exactly this way for years, as I first discovered when trying to withdraw money at 1am in 2002).

Reading Perry's story below reminded me of the word 'canard'. In English, canard is a word often used to describe a hoax, or tall tale.

It comes from France, where the word also means duck. Now, it was a legend in my family that the reason this word came to mean a hoax was that there was a 19th century French farmer, who had twenty ducks. He killed one, and fed it to the other nineteen ducks, and then he killed another, and fed it to the surviving eighteen, and so on, until there was only one duck left, which had therefore eaten nineteen ducks. And that apparently, this tale was widely reported in the newspapers of the time, until it was revealed to be nonsense.

Hence, 'canard' entered the English language as a word meaning a hoax. Or so my grandfather told me.

Despite my best efforts, I have found no evidence of this story online. Perry's jog of my memory causes me to ask the wide knowledge of the Samizdata readership this question- was my Grandfather telling me a 'canard' about the origin of the word?

...this is rather odd.

The EU Referendum blog links to this fascinating article about the engineering history, so to speak, of New Orleans, referring in particular to this paragraph:

The lower Mississippi is in no way a natural river anymore. A law instituted in 1724 by a French colonial governor, whose name was Perrier, of all things, demanded that early homeowners in New Orleans raise the low natural levees upon which they all built. Three year later, Perrier declared the little city floodproof.

So there you have it. Do not blame Bush. Blame France.

Not really. The situation is a deal more complex than that. But it does seem to be true that once they decided on living lower than the Mississippi River, they found that the methods they chose to protect themselves from it only served to make it rise ever higher into the air, and themselves to sink lower and lower.

On Saturday evening I checked into a hotel in Odense in Denmark. The Danes are fairly relaxed, and I was not asked to produce my passport as I might be in some European countries. They did ask me for "something with my name on it". I handed them my "Barclaycard Premiership Mastercard" (ie a credit card with English soccer logos on it) and my English driver's licence. I did not show them my passport (it was in the car) and I did not mention my nationality.

However, the next day I got my receipt and it had "Michael John Jennings. Australia". written on the top.

I am intrigued as to how they figured this out. It is true that my licence does have the endorsement "70AUS" amongst the fine print on the back, indicating that I did not ever have an English driving test, but was issued an English licence on the basis of having an Australian one already. However, I did not see the hotel clerk study the fine print on the back of my licence, and I would have been impressed had he known what that endorsement means.

Perhaps it was my accent? However, I have lived in England for nine of the last thirteen years, and English and Australians often cannot figure out my accent. (Often they can, too, but mistakes are often made). The Danes are excellent linguists, but I didn't realise they were that good.

Or perhaps Australians just give off some vibe. Perhaps it is one that annoys British immigration officials, makes the French like us, and is instantly visible to Danish hotel clerks. Who knows?

I know what you are thinking. A piece of modern art type photography fit only for the Turner Prize and the dustbin. Here are a bunch of London pavement shapes that mean nothing, photographed by me this afternoon, outside a pub in Warwick Way, not far from where I live. No story here.

But click on the picture and it turns out there is a story in this picture after all.

But, I wonder what it was.

France has been attacked by an infestation of frogs! I know, the metaphors are even now exploding inside your head.

A campaign in France to exterminate frogs may sound like the beginning of a civil war, but these are no ordinary frogs.

The frogs are big, inedible, and Californian!

Since the frogs were first released, as a joke, on a private pond near Libourne in 1968, they have colonised ponds, lakes, marshes and gravel pits all over the département of the Gironde. They have been found in the Landes area to the south and in the Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne and Loir-et-Cher départements, further north.

Some joke.

It turns out that the only way to kill these fearsome and deeply un-French frogs is to shoot them.

Its enough to make you believe in parallel universes colliding, or something:

Doctors fear that the identity of a mysterious mute pianist found wandering on an English beach in April might never be known, a British newspaper reported on Monday.

[snip]

The so-called "Piano Man", a tall blonde-haired stranger thought to be in his 20s or early 30s, was found on April 7 on the beach at Minster, on the south coast of England, soaking wet but fully dressed in a black suit and tie, with no clue as to his origin.

He has not spoken since and has not responded to written appeals while being kept under observation in the psychiatric hospital.

But he has fascinated social workers, the British media and the general public over his one means of communication: playing classical piano music.

When given a pencil and paper by hospital staff, he drew a grand piano -- and then, when shown a piano at the hospital chapel, he impressed his carers with a remarkable virtuoso performance.

There are no leads.

Now, I am an imaginative guy, and I work with a major inner city hospital where all kinds of strange shit comes down, but I have a hard time coming up with any scenario at all that would explain this one.

Now this is what I call 'global justice':

A thirsty thief is being blamed for downing a bottle of water, valued at £42,500, at a literary festival.

The two-litre clear plastic bottle containing melted ice from the Antarctic was devised to highlight global warming by artist Wayne Hill....

The piece, entitled Weapon of Mass Destruction, vanished half way through the festival. Mr Hill fears the bottle was taken and then drunk.

"It was there and then it was gone," he said.

Just like dozens of claptrap, modish, end-of-the-world theories then.

I enjoy watching and playing a bit of golf - despite my rather large playing handicap (gulp) but a question that comes to me as I watch the British Open up in blustery St. Andrews, Scotland is this: why, for the sake of reason, why, do so many golfers were such daft clothes? One guy is sporting a pink shirt, pink eye shade and the sort of trousers that constitute arrestable offences in some parts of the world.

Why?

Thanks to this Instapundit posting linking to thi