The effusions of M. Julius Beezer

no more tunes from Painter Babu

2012-01-22T23:02:00.000-08:00

It was always nice to say hello to Wull, who spun discs for pimusic nights ("Free music for a better world") with a classic Glaswegian twinkle in his eye. I didn't even make the connection that this guy putting on the records in between the live acts was Painter Babu for quite a while. This was great, because I could have my fanboy moment with someone I already knew to talk to when I realised.
Anyway, now he is dead. Details are pretty hazy: I only found out when I went to check out the pimusic site in an idle moment back before Christmas, by which time the news was already months old. I knew Trevor has been a fan, and he confirmed the news. Lung cancer apparently. He was 48. He did not suffer long. It was a good excuse to get in touch with Paul again, who characteristically offered me a download of Wull's hard drive with all his Cubase files, should I wish to do a remix. I wouldn't presume to touch a note, so here are links to my two favourite tracks: Into Reality a vinyl mashup that includes samples of AJP Taylor reading from his history of the second world war, and It thought, it thought, which features Wull himself. It's sad there will be no more Painter Babu tracks. What a talent! He will be missed.

Interesting typo in the New York Review of Books

2012-01-03T13:00:00.001-08:00

Untitled
Originally uploaded by Julius Beezer

Like anyone who has edited articles for the press, I fancy myself good at spotting typos.
In a publication as august as the NYRB such errors seem vanishingly rare, so when they do occur, they are interesting.
Of course, automated spellchecking will catch malformed words that appear in no dictionary, but there is no substitute for the human eye for misplaced valid words—in this case an extra "a" in Louis Begley's review of a newly translated biography of Simon Wiesenthal by Tom Segev. (NYRB Dec 8-21, 2011, vol LVIII, No 19, p46, col 4, line 69).
This has the look of a remnant of a hasty (and partial) deletion of a few words from the offending sentence, most likely as part of a last minute tweak to get the text to fit nicely into the allocated space in the editorial plan. The nature of the content makes one fantasise about last minute legal or political pressure on the editorial team, but this is sheer fantasy. A Freudian slip?
I once met a young man whose team at a big bank spent its days tracking missing millions. This happens all the time apparently. He assured me that cock-ups outnumber conspiracies by a huge margin. This is probably the case here, but it seemed worth adding to the mysterious disappearance sequence anyway.

dangerous bed rest

2011-08-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

Bed rest is more dangerous that you might think, so while John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Bed-ins" of 1969 may have been derided at the time, indeed still are today by some, I consider their action to have been courageous.
I was four years old then, and black and white images and grainy colour film footage of the event have been a small part of the media firmament I have gazed on ever since. So it was nice to find that Yoko Ono (now 78!) has decided to make the film they made about the happening available on YouTube for a little while (until 21 August apparently), and I watched the whole 80 minutes with interest.
There is much to appreciate: the obvious charisma and intelligence of John Lennon; seeing Instant Karma and Give Peace A Chance in their original contexts (and imagining their gestation); the bespectacled fashions; the frank hostility of some of the media representatives. It's interesting that I've never really had the chance to hear John Lennon speaking at length before, and I guess that's because he was sincere in his revolutionary beliefs, and never failed to promote them when interviewed.
Reportedly only otherwise available on VHS, it's perhaps a bit too much to expect an elderly person to "get it," and "turn on" to the internet by releasing the work less restrictively, so the gaping blank that will appear in the embed hole below after the 21 August can stand as a testament to the shortsightedness of the bourgeois(e) artist who does not realise that the point is to communicate...
Oh, and it's a bit dark, so turn up your screen contrast. And very tediously, this embed seems to have been automagically made too narrow, and I really can't be bothered sorting it out. If this troubles you, click through to youtube. Still, camerapointyman guy who shot the thing in the first place seems to have done a pretty good job at keeping the important stuff in the middle of the picture, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

On the strange disappearance of Barry's Universal Gronkulator

2011-07-09T23:50:00.000-07:00

I've physically hosted my own website in the past, so I know how much of the heavy lifting Google and other similar services are doing. It is also a regrettable consequence of this that smaller websites hosted by independent technically minded people have a tendency to disappear, just when you want to go back and cite them.

One such concept which comes to mind every so often is that of Barry's Universal Gronkulator, not to be confused with the Gonkulator that Google's search now offers as the default result when you enter the word into the search engine. There are still traces of the concept hanging around in the indexes, but not at archive.org, which in any case does not tend to preserve images very well.

Well, as far as I can recall, the Universal Gronkulator was based on a Sharp Zaurus, which ran Linux, and therefore potentially at least, could be kept free from proprietary malady, and users fully in control of their data. But this was not the most important thing. The most important aspect of the Universal Gronkulator was the case, which converted it from a geeky desk toy to a real world field tool for the aspiring truthteller. The case was important because it kept spare power, spare memory chips, and spare connectors stored conveniently alongside the device.

Now, you may contest that the average smartphone exceeds the functionality of the original gronkulator, but in fact it fails for several reasons. Firstly, it is proprietary, so if a central authority insists that it phones home somewhere other than the user intends, there's not a lot the user can do about it. And even if the smartphone is free software based and jail-breakable, this functionality is notional rather than actual for the vast majority of users.

Also, you need to keep the thing charged up, an important limitation for field use compared with just carrying some spare batteries.

The importance of generic connection, the ability to pass recorded material off on discrete (and discreet) memory chips, and to connect in manifold ways to the network was equally crucial to its potential. And if you don't have a nice case, you'll lose all those important bits and pieces.

So here's to the memory of Barry's Universal Gronkulator. I guess I should devise its successor and post a picture here to help keep the concept alive, but I really should be getting on with the day job, so this note will have to do for the time being. If anyone out there can help in the restoration of the original, feel free to post appropriate links in the comments.

A star is dead

2011-06-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

He was a bit of a star was Barry Mason. A delightfully enthusiastic presence. A tireless activist for the cause of cycling. And a very nice man. So it's sad news that he's dead, aged only 60. Still, what a great way to go: swimming off a beach on a cycling trip to northern Spain—in June. Somewhat reminiscent of the death of the great Roy Porter, who died, at a similar age, cycling home from his allotment with a bunch of fresh daffodils in the basket.
Bazza (as I once rather disrespectfully called him, to his obvious horror) will be fondly remembered by a great many people as one of the good guys. There is no higher accolade in the Beezer thesaurus.

The call of the Mac: proprietary freedom postponed

2011-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

It seemed only fair to replace the old Mac after I finished it off with a full cup of coffee versed amidships into its already battered and grubby keyboard. Within a few seconds it was dead. I let it dry out for a few days and then tried booting it off the mains power supply, but it wouldn't boot--and still smells very strongly of coffee. It was a nice tool for curating CD/DVD/internet playback reclined in bed of an evening, so we missed it when it was gone. Hopefully the data will be retrievable onto another machine. I'm just waiting for the USB 2.5in SATA hard drive enclosure to arrive, and we'll see.

Anyway, I decided to introduce Mme Beezer to the delights of the comedy roast, and found this rather fine example of the genre: a general mocking of Pamela Anderson surrounded by her comedy entourage, posted in eight parts to YouTube.

It's almost 90 minutes of viewing, and eventually rather exhausting, but there were some very good bits indeed, amongst a considerable amount of what I think my late grandmother might have called "blue banter." Still, it was quite charming, and M. Lee-Jones's musical intervention was competent, thanks to his super backing musicians, and we watched it to the end quite content, having had to brush tears from our eyes on occasion. There is anthropological interest in its representation of American taboo in the early twenty-first century, and a lot of quite immaculate American English spoken word stuff, which is of considerable interest for the linguist.

a very nice haggis recipe

2011-02-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

It's now the middle of February, so enough time had elapsed to contemplate getting the leftover uncooked haggis ingredients out of the freezer, and enjoying another winter dose of protein, fat, and vitamins.

The formal farce de panse de brébis that I prepared on the 25th with the French palate very much at the foremost of my mind was proclaimed "très bon" on the night, but to my mind was a trifle bland.

We began by thawing the 250g or so of chopped pluck, already mixed with some salt, very little pepper, whizzed onions, and the st. doux first thing this morning. It was completely thawed with just a little blood at the base of the container by 1800h.

Still using the original container used for freezing, I added: parsley rescued from the dumpster at the MIN, finely chopped, a very expensive hand-picked Cevennes oignon doux, also finely chopped, 1 clove of garlic (chopped); an eighth of a nutmeg, finely grated; and finely ground turmeric, black pepper, cayenne. Then 5 drops of Worcester Sauce which is just a splash, but does add a dash of umami

I added a bit more oatmeal and rolled oats to the mix to try to encourage it to firm up a bit, but it was slightly too liquid all along, giving a final consistency similar to the Dutch kroket. This is fine as long as it remains in your hand cooked but unbitten, but can explode in nasty gobbets of hot grease down a party shirt at the end of a long evening on the beer. The latter outcome is naturally best avoided if possible.

Still, it smelled very nice and fresh, and the 50g spoonfuls were just manageable making the burgers à l'ancienne, using, again oatmeal and rolled oats as the dry outer layer, bound with a couple of eggs to which a bit of salt, black pepper, and moutarde à l'ancienne had also been added.

Then it remained only to fry them in a shallow pan with a close fitting lid for about 10 minutes each side (which crisped them up nicely) and pop them into a 150°C oven to cook a little more while preparing the mash and the covers.

The final blow for kitchen experimentation was the pancake/omelette/fritter/rissole concoction that I made with the last of all the ingredients, thoroughly mixed.

The recipe does generate a fair amount of washing up, but I kept the kitchen tidy as I went along (starting with an empty dishwasher is a great luxury).

There were more pancakes/omelettes/fritters/rissoles than we could possibly eat in one sitting, and my lovelies each exclaimed their satisfaction with the results aloud. But the greatest pleasure was mine: they were well-cooked (not at all bloody, and not over either), and seasoned to perfection.

If I were doing it again I would stick with the proportions outlined above, but leave the oatmeal in the mixture longer to let it soak up the fluid for longer (and consider pearl barley as a possible substitute), or maybe experiment with upping the lard content.

Burns night Hackney style: images

2011-01-24T13:45:00.000-08:00

Nice to get off the phone from the HoxtonHopper to roll up to this very fine display of pictures taken at the Hackney LCC's annual Burns bash. Looks like a fun time was had by all, with John Campbell very ably MCing the night. Notable turns this year included the Muckers unplugged along with the other traditional after-dinner recitations, including of course, an Immortal Memory speech which traces for the assembled company Burns' development as a cyclist.

The Muckers plugged in for a couple of sets of dancing, and despite a few intial difficulties with the lighting, a fine time was had by all. The 25 dance-only tickets had happily been appropriated by some hipster youth, who apparently much appreciated their initiation into the finer points of Scottish culture.

Not too late for a new year's resolution

2011-01-10T06:01:00.000-08:00

I very much prefer not to hit the ground running, so I've been tapering in my activities since the festive break. But here we are on the second Monday of the month, and as yet no new paying clients have been found for the cabinet.

This is not too serious in the short term, but it would be nice to hit five figures of gross income well within the first year of operation, so I've been strolling around the internet "networking". I also started my studies in German, and thought about brushing up my Russian and Spanish. Proper translators it seems, have at least four languages in their quiver.

My German blog is a joke. For the time being the unfortunate Herr Julius Beezer operates a wordpress blog in that language, which consists of machine translated paragraphs from the original English. Well, it's one way to learn. Fortunately I have no other immediate choice as I ditched all the kilos of dull grammars and dictionaries in Switzerland a while back, and it's a long ride down there to pick them up (though they also have my tent, and some low-rider front pannier racks that I miss from time to time).

Herr Beezer is certainly not best pleased with his service provider: wordpress seems to barf on straighforward textual postings with alarming regularity, though they send cheerful notices confirming the receipt of an automated bug report, so he hasn't quite abandoned them in disgust for the timebeing.

Anyway, those are my new year resolutions: to brush up my languages, and find clients who need the fr>en professional service.

The mysterious workings of Jehovah

2010-07-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Jehovah's witnesses came today. Or rather I came upon them as they were rather snoopily examining all the names on the buzzer board at the foot of the flats "for Romanian names." I came up behind them and asked them if they were looking for someone. They said, "O that's a pretty accent, where are you from?" To which I replied (not yet knowing they were Jehovah's witnesses) "It's a secret. In fact, I'm Belgian." I get rather tired of having an accent when I speak French. I suppose I should work on it. It turns out one of them speaks Romanian, so they are looking for Romanian names on buzzers to practise on. Or at least that's what they tell me. I suppose they could be Petainist collaborators identifying immigrants. That's me. British, in France, slightly paranoid. They looked harmless enough: two French ladies in their late middle years, smiling, un-botoxed.

I like it when the Jehovah's witnesses call, because it is an opportunity to get them to mend their fundamentalist ways, in particular their strict adherence to the Bible as the source of authority on all things, which if it was ever a good idea, even some thousands of years ago, is certainly not today.

My method is as follows: I explain to them that I was brought up a Quaker, which some of them have heard of, and some not, and that the one thing that Quakers and Jehovah's witnesses certainly share is being pacifist. Furthermore I add, with my greatest charm, when I lived in London, the Jehovah's witnesses were just about the only people who would come and knock on your door for a chat, an action which increases conviviality, however misguided the ideas which give rise to the behaviour. A woman from the council did come to suggest I make compost once, but I'd already been making my own for about five years at the time. I lived in a safe Labour seat in London, so certainly no political party ever darkened my door, ever. You have to go out for your politics in London.

Anyway, having gained the witnesses' attention, and assured them that I am friendly--the amount of surly knockbacks they must receive on each evangelical canvassing session must be considerable--I improvise.

Tonight, I satisfied myself by saying I certainly have a bible upstairs--in fact I have several--but I also have a koran, and several hundred other books besides. But I like the Jehovah's witnesses' action, because it makes me think "If you could only have one book, what would it be?" And to consider the days when books were so precious that the average number of books owned by an ordinary person would be approaching zero. "Religion is the scaffold of thought," I say, because I honestly believe that without religion in the past we would have no intellectual heritage today. The French are very keen on harking back to the Greeks and the Romans (wisely leaving out about 15 centuries of medieval stasis til the Renaissance) but anyway, it's a long story, but religions that today insist on the primacy of a single text, without weighing it against others, or considering how texts come into being and are valued, are basically just adding to the smokescreen, not trying to blow it away.

So that's me and the Jehovah's witnesses. I am always very nice and polite, and so are they, and usually they end our interview by giving me a leaflet, emboldened with biblical citation, and sometimes illustrated with pictures of nice multiracial gatherings with a lion lying down with a lamb in the background or somesuch. They definitely have a house style.

I'd like to know more about what leads Jehovah's witnesses to their faith. I suppose in entering such an out group, and believing so strongly in heaven helps certain kinds of humans to deal with being human better than if they were not Jehovah's witnesses, and so, I suppose, good luck to them. Apart from the nagging doubt that their canvassing is designed to detect and exploit minds less robust (hah!) than my own. Knowing that they must have doors slammed rudely in their faces pretty often, but dealing with them in a convivial manner myself gives me a rosy internal glow of virtue, and so for me anyway, they are very good, and a welcome element on the social scene.

I'd quite like to quote from their leaflet to round off this post, but it seems to have disappeared into the literary compost with which I surround myself, or perhaps it's still in my shirt pocket, which is next door, and the baby is now sleeping and a bit poorly, so I'll just have to content myself with quoting my favourite line from the bible, which is this: Ecclesiastes 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Sorry about that.

It's a wonderful life

2010-06-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

I do like films, but for a long time in my former existence as a general practitioner I felt that it was not a time efficient medium for upgrading the cultural programme going on in my head. I certainly didn't have time to watch bad films. For several years I delegated my choice of cinematic experience to my then partner, and a good job she did too. It is a great luxury to see a good film completely unaware of its reviews.

But I do have gaps, especially because I don't watch much telly. Now I've got more time, DVD is a seductive format for catching up, but which films to watch? Filmaster.com is a new site with web 2.0 features that enable you to enter your favourites and then, by FOAF magic, find people with similar tastes, and therefore useful suggestions to make about the kind of thing you might like that you haven't seen yet.

Full of youthful enthusiasm I moseyed on over to this corner of the internet, and started furiously entering data in order to receive its recommendations. Unfortunately, by some quirk of the interface I was using, I thought that one had to review each film before one could receive recommendations, and naturally, after 65 entries, they were getting somewhat concise...

This irritated regular users of the site: new reviews show up on all kinds of public timelines, and one in particular, a M. Sketchbook, was somewhat scornful of my admittedly brief reviews. Inspired by him (or her), I wrote this:

***

I am sorry to tell you, M. Sketchbook, that each of the first 65 or so films I reviewed on the site, anxious for its automated recommendations, now has a review of similar brevity...

Horreur! Au boulot.

"You've never seen "It's a Wonderful Life"?
"I'm afraid not."
"But it's a wonderful film. It's on the telly every Christmas."
"Oh."
***
"Let's watch "It's a wonderful life" on the video."
"What, you haven't seen it?"
"No, just never have."
"Can't we watch something else? It's on every Christmas."
"Oh, OK."
***
"Let's watch "It's a wonderful life" on the video."
"What, you haven't seen it?"
"No, just never have."
"Oh, but you have to watch it at Christmas."
"Look, we didn't have a television, and then when we did, we certainly didn't watch it at Christmas."
"Oh. No, let's watch this one."
"Oh. OK."
***
"Oh great! you've got "It's a wonderful life" on DVD. Can we watch it?"
"What, you haven't seen it? But it's on every Christmas."
"So I understand. But I have somehow managed to get the age of 44 years old without ever watching it, and many people have spoken to me about it over the years, even quoted it, told me how great it was, but a viewing has always eluded me. Please can we watch it?"
"But it's April."
"I know. But, please, can we watch it?"
"Oh, alright. I don't mind watching it again I suppose. Can't you wait til Christmas?"
"Can't we just watch it now?"
"I guess so."
"Great. Would you like a cup of tea first?"
***
I watched "It's a wonderful life" in the sixth month of my forty-fifth year as a screen-dwelling inhabitant of the third planet out from an undistinguished star somewhere in a not much more interesting spiral galaxy.
It is undoubtedly a well-made film. I hope the male lead, James Stewart, was rightfully proud of a fine performance. I can see why people like it. Religion and suicide are meaty topics that artists must address. I am glad its simple moral falls 'gainst self-slaughter. The Everlasting would have it so.
But it is somewhat mawkish, and its politics arguably bollocks (big capitalist/little capitalist FFS), and though I watched it with interest and enjoyment to the end on this occasion, I doubt if I would do so again. So yes, a charming film for the popular canon, if somewhat over SENTIMENTAL. In my humble opinion.
***
Keep goading me M. Sketchbook. You inspire me. I will tighten my belt and give you my words for free, for as long as people are willing to read them. But like George Bailey, I too have a family, and a living to make in the capitalist system [spits], and life is short even if you don't kill yourself, and maybe there are other things to do, apart from gawp at the telly, and then writing about it after on the intertube. Bisous.

***

on boredom while cycling

2010-05-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

That's twice I've been told now, in the last year, by people I care about—my nephew and my lovely—that they can be bored when they are riding a bike. This has happened to me in the past, but very rarely—I hesitate to say never—does now.

I've made a start on trying to explain why that might be:

Con Dem gov? Same old, same old

2010-05-13T00:39:00.000-07:00

M. Cameron and M. Clegg's love-in was most moving and affecting. We watched the complete press conference coverage as part of an hour on the UK election I curated for Madame Beezer yesterday evening.

I have not seen M. Clegg speak at any length before, and he is most able and inspiring. Madame Beezer accused him of being a mumbler, but he was clear enough to me. He does say "you know" a lot in unscripted speech, a verbal tic that is irritating if pronounced. This is occasionally shortened to yeena and then abruptedly swallowed, presumably because some political coach has advised him not to say "you know," and he tries consciously to suppress it, not always succeeding. It is perhaps an irony that his accent, if this is possible, sounds posher than Cameron's.

As after M. Obama's inauguration, one left with an impression of intelligence, ability, and good intentions, even if these are mired in false ideology and bankrupt culture. My mood after watching them was better than before I started, which is pretty rare praise I assure you.

Whether the first coalition government of the UK for sixty-five years can endure is still an open question. Their differences on many issues, and particularly on electoral reform and Europe, could not be greater. M. Clegg does indeed hold an axe over M. Cameron's continuation in office, but it is an axe he can only wield once. The announcement that their package of electoral reforms will include introducing fixed term parliaments is in fact a concession that secures M. Cameron's position rather more than it does M.Clegg's, though he has played a very good hand in the negotiations since the election. One undoubted effect of coalition government is that formal decision-making returns to the place it properly belongs in the UK system: in its Thursday morning cabinet meetings. This should be an advance on the sofa slackness of recent years.

Both men were full of the need to govern with "fairness" in the "national interest", each man repeating the phrase at least twice, as though that were some uncontentious catechism. I prefer the term the "public interest." Although on an island it is easy to make the fundamental error that the two concepts are contiguous, they are not. In an age of atmosphere change and peak oil, perpetuating the error will doubtless have grave consequences.

It will be interesting to see what the new administration makes of the results of the Chilcot inquiry. M. Clegg's party will hopefully ensure that no part remains buried. Whether we shall have legal opinion thereafter advising that the prosecution of the key players would be in the public interest is another question. The political class naturally reject this option with horror. Peaceful transition between successive administrations (rather than bloody coups) IS the hallmark of democratic government. Threatening to jail your opponents if you win the election has an understandable chilling effect on the political discourse. The world finds that sleeping dogs must be left to lie.

But we do not, of course, have to accept their lies. The point of prosecution is above all to state society's disapproval of the crime, not necessarily to punish any individual involved.

Well, we shall see. I wish Mssrs Cameron and Clegg bon appetit! as they consume their miel de noces and await further developments with interest.

In praise of... M. Dennis Skinner MP (with an eye to his successor upon retirement)

2010-05-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

If there is ever a wikipedia page more entertaining than this one do let me know. M. Skinner's catalogue of parliamentary heckles down the years are most amusin' and affectin'. He is like a trusty family retainer, charged with the supply of shafts of wit on state occasions, Black Rod's very own poet laureate. It is sad that one day he will have to retire, but nevertheless the rest of us must give some thought to his eventual successor. I saw no reason why this online Guardian article should be so down on the estimable M. Brand as a contender for replacement "Beast".

a few things I've discovered about myself

2010-03-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Occasionally people who knew me from before ask me, by email for example, "Who is Julius Beezer?" I could point them to an earlier somewhat cryptic post but I generally don't bother. I thought it would be amusing, if rather up my own arse, to look for those emails I sent, and publish the edited highlights here see if any pattern emerges.

In fact there were only two emails.

[For T. ]

Julius Beezer is my nom de plume online. He writes a blog in English and one in French, which may be already one too many.

He is a grumpy old man who has retired from London society to better
direct his ire at the many failings of his former culture :-) He has a
special green ink hotline to the Guardian's comments pages.

Actually, I'm really not at all grumpy. It would be a lie to say anything else. I'm much less grumpy as a French person; though it would be socially acceptable for me to be grumpy, it doesn't really work for me, and I don't enjoy it. Better to eschew grumpiness and guard your sense of humour.

[For A.]

Someone has been telling tales about Julius Beezer though: I did hear tell of a retired French provincial lecturer determined to spend his retirement studying and eventually enlightening British culture (which he naturally detests). In order to achieve his ultimate goal, he maintains a blog in English as a cultural and linguistic exercise in his adopted tongue. His grammar is almost always impeccable, though his posts suffer from occasional literals during rapid editing. I hope he is slightly stiff and uncomfortable in his new intellectual posture, and attempts to submerge any possible offence in a politeness that can be icy, but is most often warm.

He can't be both, for this would be to depart into the realm of fiction, deprecated not least by 17th century puritans. Putain! It's a problem. For now anyway it's all as true as wot I can make it, artistic exceptions and deviations aside.

Through a Lentz darkly

2010-02-06T00:24:00.000-08:00

Some underling has told poor old Jim Lentz (of sticky accelerator fame) he is going to have to explain it all to the intertubes.

The process chosen for this God-like dialogue with the screen-dwelling inhabitants of the third planet out from an undistinguished star somewhere in a not much more interesting spiral galaxy is a Digg survey.

I must confess, I generally can't be arsed with all the tedious repetitions involved in gaming such systems manually, and sending some bot off to do my evil bidding is a) beyond my competence; and b) hardly sporting.

But nonetheless, it did strike me as a potentially democratic methodology, and I did have a naughty little giggle of glee at the thought of M. Lentz being forced to answer such questions as:

"Do you own a samurai sword? or "Where can I get corporate hair?" or even "Should I be concerned about the accelerator on my Toyota bicycle?"

It's cruel to mock the disabled. Interpret the tears rolling down my cheeks as you will. If you're still reading this in a gaping hole of idleness, "Have there been any problems with Toyota bicycles?" is my pick for the question that will have maximum comedy value if included in {accent_en_us} the top ten questions Lentz MUST answer Monday 2pm PST.{/accent_en_us}

My contribution to the Chilcot inquiry

2010-02-04T14:06:00.001-08:00

world scientific literature roars free online

2009-10-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago I tweeted "It is high time the world scientific literature was made freely available to anyone who cares to read it" and linked to Peter Suber's updated overview of Open Access--just as he stepped back after nearly a decade of titan effort on the issue.

Like most anonymous cowards on the internet, my initial pronouncement was based on irrational prejudice rather than any extensive research. Although Suber's site alone has an immense richness of links, I decided to use "web 2.0" social networking tools as I updated myself on the effort, fully ten years since I had last looked at the subject.

The problem updating yourself in these circumstances is what you don't know you don't know. To use a search engine--I'm still a fan of Google, though it increasingly pops up links to toll-access papers and in-copyright book material that are not immediately accessible--would be to limit myself to terms that may be outdated or already well-travelled.

So, using Twitter, RSS feeds linked to Google reader, and Delicious, I followed my nose for a couple of months, and built a rich information environment that finally led to this.

Finding, with these tools, the online personae of researchers, librarians, and journalists who have shared their own journey through the literature online, I have a congenial, idiosyncratic, ragged plethora of sources I can view in my browser, that is wider and more immediate than any process I can imagine in a traditional dead-tree library.

Back to school for M. Beezer too

2009-09-19T15:47:00.001-07:00

The London Vegetable Garden: Back from Holiday!

M. Mandelson on "intellectual property": #fail

2009-08-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

Rejuvenated no doubt by his summer holidays with his billionaire bosses, M. Mandelson returns to his duties determined to save the cultural industries from the depredations of illegal downloaders. His simplistic article argues "that taking something for nothing is wrong," with no consideration of the changed reality of the public interest when that "something" has in fact a marginal cost of distribution that approaches zero.
If he informed himself elsewhere than the decks of media moguls' yachts, he might find that the public interest actually lay in shortening copyright terms, and restricting the grant of (often ludicrous) patents. Duke University law professor James Boyle's book The Public Domain outlines the case for a radical reform of intellectual property law from its present corporate hegemony. It's a free download licensed under Creative Commons, yet its publisher, Yale University Press expects to sell more physical copies of the book as a result. Go figure, M. Mandelson.
Naturally M. Murdoch's lackeys didn't see fit to publish my comment to this effect alongside the article.

English anarchists at forefront of battle against climate change

2009-08-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

How to change the climate, WAG-style.
Get drunk.
Shout at the cops.
Accuse everyone around you of counter-revolutionary compromise.
Go home.
Well done chaps!

Racism in Europe: Polish shame

2009-08-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid it's my dismal experience of many eastern Europeans (and Italians) that they are capable of a kind of crude racism that you might have found in Britain in the 'seventies, but which, hopefully, thankfully, as we become less parochial, is dying out.
I was reminded of this a couple of months ago on a Midland train between Sheffield and London, when the Polish tealady served me (white) nicely enough, but was frankly rude to a black lady at the next seat, making all kinds of problems about her change. The tealady's evident distaste for the position she had found herself in--serving a murzyn--was evident in her sneering manner, made all the cruder for her somewhat basic command of English. It was ugly.
More ugliness, this, from Microsoft Poland.
And an orthogonal, but valuable perspective (from UK football fans).
But what to do? One could google. An excellent page; but the measures described rely on having a minority culture to interact with. Hence the eastern/southern european hideousness, derived from their lifelong inhabitation of monoethnic cultures. Take a lot to break that; better get started.

Update 3/09/09: Another example of the phenomenon with illuminating discussion.

French curiously absent from European medical associations

2009-08-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

Looking round the European medical scene, I find the RCGP is affiliated to UEMO who curiously lack the French. There is also the CPME, again, without the French.

What is going on? The French are usually keen citizens of the European ideal. Very strange, and worth further investigation.

Update 17 August 2009: CPME functionary Irene Klepinine kindly forwarded a 22 July 2008 letter sent by the CPME executive to its members. It appears a number of issues led to the resignation of the French, Italian and Spanish delegations, but at heart this was a Romance/Anglophone split, the Latins accusing the CPME of lack of commitment to the multilingualism at the heart of the European ideal, which "should not be perceived as a cost or a constraint." Though plainly it is. Ho hum!

Reading between the lines, the "rump" of 27 countries who remain are those who are either anglophone (UK, Ireland, Malta), seem to have no difficulty acquiring English (Netherlands, Germany, Sweden) or the new eastern European states (Lithuania, Latvia) who, looking for a standard for a working language, (obviously) gravitate to English rather than French.

English is a dreadful language in many respects: I have recoiled in horror from even its simplest grammar. I'm certainly glad I learned it at my doting parents' knees and not in some sultry classroom where the sound of the bluebottle dotting the walls competes in monotony with the incorrectly stressed rhythm and fudged consonants of modern Latins, and the teacher tediously outlining a long list of exceptions to some rule or other. It could be taught much better of course. At base: the Romance idea that you can legislate for language, impose a grammar, rather than considering it a description of what actually is, and just get on with it. Poor things.

Anyway, along the way I have the answer to the question that started this train of enquiry, which is that it seems to be the Conseil National de l’Ordre des Médecins Français which forms the homologue to the RCGP in France.

Time for real justice on Iraq

2009-06-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

M. Gordon Brown announced the long awaited inquiry into the Iraq war yesterday. Sir John Chilcot (the chairman), Baroness Usha Prashar, Sir Roderic Lyne, Sir Lawrence Freedman, and Sir Martin Gilbert will meet in private to "identify the lessons learned" from the conflict. There will be no obligation for any witness to attend, nor will there be any attempt to apportion blame, or any civil or criminal liability.

In other words, it is pointless. Yesterday's announcement merely serves to make clear to Britain's politicians, civil servants, and military that whatever international conventions and treaties are breached, they can always be assured of a cosy and recrimination-free cover-up when all's said and done.

The terms of the inquiry should have been:

1) to consider in public the process by which the 414 members of parliament who voted for war were influenced to do so, though public opinion, as evidenced by opinion polls and demonstrations, was so clearly against;
2) to review the circumstances of the deaths of Dr David Kelly and Mr Robin Cook;
3) to provide a clear and concise statement of all treaties and conventions relating to the conduct of war that have pertained in the UK since 1945;
4) to consider whether UK conduct since March 2003 has led to any breaches of those treaties and conventions;
5) to consider whether, in the event of any breaches of those treaties and conventions being found, such breaches are best tried in a court in the UK or the International Criminal Court."

So how to take this forward?

What is so vexing about Iraq is that public opinion was so clearly against the war: not at all indifferent or apathetic. The biggest demonstration since VE Day in 1945 took place in London in February 2003 with more than 1 million marchers. Opinion polls showed 70%+ of the public against the war. There was no UN resolution, there was no agreement in NATO, there was no agreement in the EU. Without that agreement, an invasion of one state by another is a crime: an illegal war of aggression. This principle is clear from the Nuremberg trials (1946), the United Nations charter (1948), and the Rome statute (1998). The UK is party to all of them.

My opposition to the war in February 2003 was not based on this. What I did think was if a foreign power invaded Britain, do you think we would have any trouble finding a few thousand nutters to join the resistance? Answer: no! So why do we think it will be any different in Iraq? I predicted a bloodbath, and without knowing any of the complexities of the situation there, merely from common sense. I was not alone: I was apparently in the majority.

So why did MPs fail to reach the same judgement? I would really like to know. I hypothesise that their acculturation to the political system warped their basic judgement in some important way. We could talk about the whips, or the greasy party pole, or the professionalisation of political representation, or the likelihood of sociopathic personalities being drawn into politics, or the dysfunctional lobby, or Sir Humphrey, or the royal perogative, or prime ministerial patronage, or sofa government, endlessly. But somewhere along the line, there was a disconnect: the man in the street was stating the bleeding obvious, yet 414 MPs walked through that lobby and did exactly the opposite of what was sane.

This was a major error. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead as a direct consequence of this error, and it was paid for with my taxes. Well, I thought, they will pay at the election. But in May 2005, the British electorate (well, 22% of it) returned M. Blair with a thumping parliamentary majority. And then we had the stories of both British and American forces' involvement in torture, extraordinary rendition, Abu Graibh, Guantanamo Bay and so on. This pre-emptive war has clearly been found to be baseless, even on the terms chosen by the M. Bush and M. Blair themselves.

The natural loyalty of British people to British troops serving in a theatre of combat has had a chilling effect on political protest. Now they are home.

The inquiry Gordon Brown has announced will lead only to cover-up. But the point of prosecution is above all to state society's disapproval of the crime, not necessarily to punish any individual involved. If there were errors of judgement, a public record of them will serve best to instruct those who must navigate the difficult waters of international diplomacy in future. There is no need to be vengeful.

If the government won't do it, then it seems the only recourse that has actual legal traction is a private prosecution, funded, hopefully, by numerous modest donations from the public. If the one million who marched each give ten pounds I am sure a set of lawyers and a courtroom in London can be found who are willing to give it a try.

If not, then to the International Criminal Court at the Hague we must go.

crunch|future|post

2009-05-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

in February 2003... the anger which was being expressed during that month was not against the war as a military crime as such, but against the clear intention of the government to ignore or crudely manipulate public opinion in the pursuit of a manifestly unpopular policy. Consequently, it was the failure of a massive exercise in peaceful democratic protest to alter this course of action which provoked such disappointment.

We're in a post-democracy it would seem. But the need for regulation and justice between individuals and groups does not disappear.

Guardian blogger GP Wayne paints a depressing (but grown-up) picture of the collapse of civil liberties, and the outbreak of civil war as the unsustainable Western lifestyle caves in.

Can big picture sentience trump narrow personal and sectional interest? Expect grumpiness and tantrums from the toddlers of this world.

Nantes: resistance to proposed airport

2009-05-23T03:28:00.002-07:00

Le Camp Climat concept is taking off over the channel, just as it is in the UK. Activists campaigning against the proposed construction of a new airport 16 kilometres north of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique, 44) have announced a camp from the 3 - 9 August 2009.

The airport plans—a "hub" for north-west France—have a 30 year history. The proposed airport will concrete over 2000 hectares of traditional bocage: pastoral land divided by traditional hedgerows. By contrast Britain's second busiest airport Gatwick occupies a site of only 300 hectares. And all this despite 3 airports already operational (Nantes, Angers, Rennes) within 100 kilometres of the proposed site. None of the existing airports operate anywhere near full capacity, nor will they in the future if current air ticket sales continue their present downward trend.

Despite being beyond any reasonable concept of utility, the pharaonique project rolls forward, with forced sales of farms, homes, and land. Surveys and geological sampling of the site began in October 2008.

Opposition to the project is centred on two main organisations: the Camp Climat, and a coalition that unites resident groups called ACIPA, which has long pursued a civil campaign amongst the French bureaucracy.

As the threat becomes more imminent, many acts of resistance have already occurred: with tractor roadblocks and sabotage of survey works. A visiting official from the prefecture, come to announce the loss of land and homes, was flanned. The survey workers now work alongside an escort of up to sixty gendarmes. Eight activists face fines of up to 15,000 euros and sentences of 2 - 4 months for their part in the resistance.

The basic principles of the autonomous camp will be: a minimal ecological footprint, strong local links, strong media impact, educational activities and exchanges, development of networks, and communal living with food at prix libre (contribute as you can afford). The camp forms part of a week of resistance at the site with a music festival on the 1 August, and an annual local picnic on the 2 August.

2009-05-23T03:28:00.001-07:00

Spain: the reactionary backlash begins

2009-05-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

According to the New York Times, the Spanish executive is considering limiting the powers of its courts to try international crimes. A team of Spanish judges led by Baltasar Garzón recently accused six senior Bush officials, including former US attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, of violation of the Convention Against Torture.

Revolution in England proclaimed

2009-05-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

You know things are changing when it's the Daily Telegraph proclaiming the revolution.

Keeping track of citations

2009-05-20T12:54:00.001-07:00

In the old days when people had PCs with data on, they'd pay money for reference manager software like Papyrus. Now there's CiteULike. We like.

[update 17/06/09]
And better still, for internet materials, the excellent Gunther Eysenbach has devised WebCite which also archives a snapshot for posterity.

The (not-so) strange disappearance of M. Elizabeth Filkin

2009-05-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

It was surprising that there was no wikipedia page for Elizabeth Filkin, the former parliamentary commissioner for standards until yesterday...

The mysterious disappearance of M. Julius Beezer

2009-05-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

One of the links to the right reads juliuzbeezer.

Of course, at first I had an s as would be conventional in choosing the name "Julius." The conversion occurred for a couple of reasons: I did want to make a slight inflection in my blogging style. For the last ten years or so, my on-line persona was, deliberately, as faithful to my real world identity as was humanly possible. Of the first few things I wrote, one in particular yielded personal information to the internet in a way that I judged would compromise my already flimsy tissue of anonymity to the point of pointlessness. So I retired juliusbeezer into what I'd hoped'd be, by internet standards, relatively quiet obscurity.

But my new identity: "M(onsieur). Julius Beezer" has been constructed to maximise my freedom of expression without compromising any desires I might have for privacy. There is also the issue of my former patients' confidentiality to consider.

You can probably still find out who Julius Beezer is without too much difficulty, but I've tried to separate out my online identities as cleanly as I can. If you do know/work out my true identity feel free to keep it as quiet as you like.

Anyway my juliusbeezer comments at the Guardian weren't backed up locally, because it was so convenient to nip back to the Guardian site and look it up. I may even have made a bookmark (control-D folks). Tonight I'm using another machine, I go to look... juliusbeezer is gone! His handful of textual comments on Guardian material seem to be have been retired from the Guardian site, though a single summary page of interests exists that at least acknowledges he once existed. The Ministry of Truth parallels are a little alarming. What else can I say? Put it back? You've got my email. You could at least give me a little notice so I can go and scoop my own jewels before you cast them into complete obscurity.

Kids! If it ain't backed up, it ain't worth crying over. Dive into the cloud and do no wrong! But ALWAYS ALWAYS backup! See you on the road!

The Priory

2009-05-14T17:20:00.001-07:00

The Priory
Originally uploaded by Julius Beezer

I was propelled along to a Stella Vine show by a friend back in the summer of 2007. I like her paintings. They are colourful and naive but none the worse for that. I think I will always be interested in looking at her new works.

On not going to the Priory

2009-05-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

By July 2007 I was feeling thoroughly bad-tempered. My sense of humour had failed. Various adventures had left their scars. I doubted my commitment to a considerable vocation. At least I was in need of a sabbatical. Some time off to reflect. I entered the faculty in October 1983. That would be 24 years man and boy. For the last 5 years I can't say anything I've read or seen professionally had truly given me joy or inspiration.

I had to make a move, simply for the sake of making a move. I wanted to move out of the war zone, set myself at one remove from Babylon. Count the ways it displeased me. But I was also, truly, a Babylonian. Exile is never easy. I had few local allies, perhaps enough, to survive a bit longer at least.

So I sold my house in London, and moved to France. "It's not a bad time to have cash," said my solicitor, pocketing her cut, a cheque for a flat fee of about five hundred pounds.

"I don't know why this transaction didn't cost me 50 pence on the internet," I replied. Perhaps not an entirely just remark (leasehold transactions can be complicated) but heartfelt. Anyway, the thing was sold, and the mortgage repaid, and the liquidation of navarino.net almost entirely complete. Along the way I had discovered all the cons of the internet, and some of the pros. If I did not suffer personally, I had had at least felt the joy of my initial liberty of expression dulled by both fear and boredom, the attendent need for "security." I nevertheless persisted, as much to goad colleagues as for any narcissistic gains. I do have an urge to perform, it's true, and the internet does offer many creative attractions.

And so, richer than I'd ever been, I packed my affairs into 9 cubic metres of cardboard cartons, and hoped they would survive on the truck to France.

I enter anglophony

2009-04-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

thoughts on english culture

That'll do it.