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Bill Quick puts up 11 excellent reasons for limited-government types to be pissed off at the current administration. I found little to quibble with. Generally, I have found George W. Bush to be good, very good, on foreign affairs, and mediocre to bad on domestic issues. March 28th, 2005 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
 It is often said that, in polite company, one should not discuss politics and religion. Samizdata does not pay heed to the first one and Brian and Jonathan have blown the second one, so I should be on safe ground. Every year, at the Easter Vigil, a most spell-binding melody is sung during the liturgy. Last night, as every year, I listened to Exsultet chanted, this time at the church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St Thomas Moore, in the darkness with only candles illuminating the entire church. Its purpose is to rejoice in the resurrection and marks the begining of Easter Celebrations. (Let’s hear it for the barbaric Christian rituals.) Exsultet of Easter Vigil is certainly my favourite piece of both poetry and music, with Allegri’s Miserere coming close second. The orignal text, going back as far as St. Ambrose (4th century), entered the Roman tradition around the 9th-century as part of Gregorian chant tradition. It is a masterpiece of the liturgical tradition.  It is said to be the sublimest expression of joyful sound that has ever come from the human heart and mind. Mozart once said that it is the most beautiful music ever written and that he would have given all his works to be able to say that he had written the first line of the Exsultet. I could not find a decent audio file that conveys its full beauty and impact, but I found the text and the music score. Update: Here is an audio recording of the Latin version.  March 27th, 2005 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am watching the televised appearance of Pope John Paul at the Vatican at the moment. The old fella has only been able to say a few words for his regular Easter message to the masses thronging below in St Peter’s Square. It cannot surely be very long before he steps off this mortal coil. How should yours truly, a lapsed Anglican, think about what this man represents? Well, I am going to put any reflections on his contribution to the Catholic church, or his views about abortion, etc, to one side and focus on a more worldly fact about his extraordinary life and career. The Pope was, in my view, one of the three or four great men (and one great woman) who helped bring the Soviet Union, that evil and decrepit empire, crashing to its knees. Along with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Gorbachev and arguably, the power of cheap television advertising, the Pope helped bring about communism’s demise. I do not share the Pope’s faith, but in reflecting on his life on this Easter Sunday, it was hard not to suppress a lump in the throat. In my book, he is one of the giants of our age. March 27th, 2005 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is late but I simply must share this tale with you.
The battle results are described later:
The story has probably been covered in the US. We all know how knowledgeable most journalists are about military matters… so read a real battle report. It is really quite an awesome little vignette. It shows just how good our military folk are at their job. March 27th, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Line of Beauty is the name of the Booker prize-winner, a book about gay sex, snorting coke and a Thatcher-worshipping MP who indulges with his secretary. The book is a good read, and I’d recommend it highly. But The Line of Beauty also the name of a new cultural blog, inspired by the book. It is early days yet for the blog, but it is already showing some promise, with snippets about graffiti, Sotheby’s, and a discussion of memoirs written by ‘ordinary’ people. Do check it out. March 26th, 2005 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I will start this posting, having written the rest of it already and therefore possessing foreknowledge of what it contains, with a warning to easily offended Christians. This posting contains ideas that may offend easily offended Christians. So, if you are an easily offended Christian and sincerely do not wish to be offended yet again, best to stop reading now. Christians are perfectly free to be offended by my anti-Christianity, just so long as they realise that I am likewise disgusted by many of the things they keep on proclaiming, mostly with no objections from me, both for its barbarity and for its contempt for normal standards of truth-seeking or logical argument. The offence is mutual. Okay. Today being Good Friday, I have taken it upon myself to give the talk at my last Friday of the month meeting. Getting another speaker at such a time, and then perhaps having to soothe him or her because only three other people showed up, is more bother than the looks-bad factor of me doing the talk myself. (I did the same on the last Friday of December 2004, which happened also to be New Year’s Eve. That went okay.) And since it is Good Friday, I will be talking about Pain: its history; how that history might explain why Christianity, and in particular the crucifixion story, has done so well down the centuries; the fact that recently pain has abated for lots of lucky people in lucky countries like mine, and the fact that this might do something to explain the recent decline of Christianity in lucky countries. Christianity thrives in adversity, but wilts in comfort, not least physical comfort, which is why completely wiping out Christianity has proved so hard. Communism tried, but the more you torment Christians the more like Christ they feel. Meanwhile Communism, lacking a story that makes any sense for those unfortunates caught up in its numerous failures, is itself rapidly crumbling, not least at the hands of Christians. Most histories of pain seem to be histories of pain relief, which is understandable. But what effect on life generally did the prevalence of pain have, in all the centuries when pain was prevalent? And what has been the effect of the recent and remarkable abatement of the pain, for millions upon millions of fortunate people, like me, and very probably, you too, for decade after decade? → Continue reading: Some Good Friday thoughts from an atheist about pain and its history March 25th, 2005 | 146 comments - (Comments are closed)
Airport security gets ever more surreal. Yesterday, I set off with my fiancee for the lovely island of Malta to spend the Easter break. At London’s Gatwick airport I had my first real experience of the wonderful charm for which security staff are famed, having never really had a glitch before. My hand luggage was seized by a woman who asked that I opened the bag. I was happy to do so. She fished out three novels from the bag, and after loudly making some rude comments about them and sniggering to a colleague (which was thoroughly unprofessional on her part) she picked up a small hair brush, and put it through an X-ray machine. She handed it back and with a grim expression pronounced that a hairbrush, at a certain angle, looked like a gun. Yes, a gun. In future it is definitely going in my heavy luggage. It really makes me wonder about what your average security guard thinks a gun is actually supposed to look like, let alone as to whether any of them have used a gun. Or maybe they comb their hair with an automatic. Oh, and the next time I fly down I’ll take a couple of porn magazines to really give some security jobsworth the vapours. Heh. March 25th, 2005 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Though the pictures seem pretty, as a Christian, I probably would not care for the new book by Gerhard Haderer, an Austrian cartoonist. He depicts Christ as a “binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis.” What daring iconoclasm! In 1905, maybe. In 2005, apart from six nonagerian nuns living in enclosed orders and a few hobby-protesters, nobody gives a monkeys. Yesterday if anyone had made the slightest suggestion that the furore that results from writing such a book qualified a man to be regarded as some sort of martyr for free speech, I’d have retorted that the “furore” had probably been budgeted for to the last euro by the publishers. “Regrettably, Herr Haderer, the market for Christian outrage is not what it was, and we cannot agree to your suggested advance.” Or I’d have suggested that if he wants to play martyr he could try it with the Muslims, who are more likely to enter into the spirit of the game. But by the holy bowels of Jimi Hendrix, the poor little poseur really is in danger of arrest. And do you know why? Because of the European arrest warrant, that’s why. An Austrian cartoonist and writer faces extradition to Greece (Greece: why does that not surprise me?) for something he wrote in Austria. I assume that Austria has no law, or dead-letter law, against blasphemy. So he wrote something that was legal in Austria but not in Greece, and now he faces extradition to Greece. He did not even know his wretched book had been published in Greece. I found this via Public Interest. Peter Briffa points out that when this law was introduced much was said by its sponsors about extraditing foreign criminals to Britain … and very little about the extradition of British people to foreign countries for “crimes” that might well not be crimes at all in Britain. Perhaps some legally knowledgeable reader can tell me if there is anything at all to stop this happening to, for instance, a British Samizdata contributor, if the authorities in some foreign capital should take a dislike to something he or she had written. March 25th, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some readers may have heard of the Institute for Justice, a U.S. organisation which fights the legal battles of property owners resisting the odious power of what is called eminent domain. Eminent domain powers, which were originally designed to give governments the ability to seize private property to build facilities for so-called “public use” like an airforce runway, prison or road, have also been used by said governments to build things like condos purely in order to boost tax revenues. It goes without saying that such a power is a powerful force of corruption, since a large property developer who wants to build a supermarket or whatever can get his political chums to use ED to kick small businessmen and homeowners out of their property. The politicians get lots of campaign contributions. The whole business stinks, and flagrantly abuses property rights. In any event, if the re-development of an area really made financial sense, that would be reflected in the increased prices of the houses and shops targeted for demolition, in which case the issue can be left to the market. The Institute for Justice is, quite possibly, the most important libertarian organisation now in existence. I can also recommend the Free Space blog for regular updates on this issue and I also love the book, Defending the Undefendable, by Walter Block, on the same subject. March 24th, 2005 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Long ago, when I was “reading architecture” at Cambridge University (it turned out that you had to do more to architecture than merely read it if you wanted to become an architect), I remember noting the name of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. The majority of the architectural gods we students were then offered as objects of worship turned out to be deluded fools, but Tange was, I believe, the genuine article. And now he has died, at the age of 91. I had no idea that he had lived this long. I think he deserved to, and that if for some reason he did not look back on his work with a sense of pride and accomplishment, he should have and was entitled to. I know that many readers here loathe the architectural modernism that is being done now, just as they loathe the architectural modernism that was done in the sixties and seventies. But for me, there has been a sea change. Style is back. Expressiveness is back. The Great Lump style is being abandoned, and often dynamited. If they look at these pictures, I think that at least some readers here may agree that this man was way ahead of his time. Now, modernistic buildings which look interesting rather than deadly dull, which celebrate the expressive possibilities of modern building technology instead of merely using it to erect giant blocks of boredom, are all the rage. Tange did perpetrate quite a few concrete lumps, but on the whole, he did better than that. How many other architects were making buildings as interesting and dramatic looking as this, in the nineteen sixties? Not many. March 23rd, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Personally, I have long wanted a CPU socket and PCI bus built directly into my cranium, but it has not been possible until now. Already, though, I am getting upgrade envy. It really needs to be Socket 939 and PCI Express. (seen in a Chinese electronics market on March 20, 2005) March 23rd, 2005 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
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