From an article describing Trowbridge, the county town of Wiltshire:
In 2000 a local district councillor, Mr. Osborn, famously claimed that Trowbridge ‘was just like Ibiza’. This comment drew widespread surprise as Mr. Osborn had never visited Ibiza, and caused some residents to suspect he had never visited Trowbridge either.
Claire just mentioned that she’s conscious of being called ‘Mrs Harris’ over here, rather than Claire. As well as summoning up images of being my mother (which neither of us would want for all sorts of psychologically scarring reasons, as lovely as my mum is), this just seems wrong as a matter of routine. While the familiarity in the US seemed a little odd at first, I’ll take it over this any day.
Over on the Intersection there’s an article about a journalist who doesn’t seem to understand his role regarding climate change. I posted the following response (the bits in italics are hypothetical questions posted by the ‘journalist’).
Well, as he asked me:
Are these convincing arguments?
To not question what you’ve been told? No, they’re not convincing at all, that’s why you should question them.And directed at journalists, who are natural questioners and skeptics, of all people?
Well I doubt the assertion, but still no.What happens when you are told not to eat the apple
You eat the apple, and to extend the analogy you find it was rotten, and you get sick, and you gain a new appreciation for why you were told not to. As a journalist that’s what you do, so that others don’t have to.not to read that book
You read the book, and to extend the analogy you find it was a Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and you want those hours of your life back, and you gain a new appreciation for why you were told not to. As a journalist that’s what you do, so that others don’t have to.not to date that girl?
You date the girl, and to extend the analogy you find she has an interesting collection of social diseases, and you want the itching to stop, and you gain a new appreciation for why you were told not to. As a journalist that’s what you do, so that others don’t have to.What am I not supposed to know?
That the argument against climate change is based on questionably funded hand-waving, and you’re being played for a chump. And played well, I might add. Go, see what they have to say, but then think. Apply your critical faculties, the ones you alluded to when you claimed that journalists are ‘natural questioners and skeptics’.
My uncle, who we are staying with, bought a TiVo-like device recently (allegedly so that we can record good stuff for the kids, though that sounds like a ruse to me). Naturally I’m very relieved to have such a device back in my life (though I bought an Elgato DTT stick recently, with a review to follow). This particular unit, from Sagem, has 2 tuners so you can record one program while recording another, and enough storage for about 80 hours of TV (recording the mpeg-2 stream natively, which gives literally broadcast-quality storage). Early days, but if you can’t have a TiVo this looks tolerable.
All good, you might think. Unfortunately it also flagged my increasing age, in a way you may not expect. Responding to my uncle’s initial enthusiasm at pausing live TV I mentioned that Claire is not much of a tech fan, but it takes an event as serious as a trans-Atlantic move to pry her TiVo from her resisting fingers. And then I realized that this is the story I always tell about TiVo. Which is fine, I guess, but I’m aware that telling the same set of stories over and over is something I recognize in people who are older than I consider myself to be.
One of the big things missing in the discussion of the ‘war on terror’ is perspective. Of course you can’t apply too much perspective, because then you’d start to realize that nobody in the history of, um, history, has defeated terrorism. To me that counts as pretty good anecdotal evidence that we’re unlikely to be the first ever to do so, and even more so that concentrating on bombing the terrorism out of people is a pretty limiting approach.
If you have similar thoughts, then, you may enjoy this article on perspective:
FDR: Oh, I’m sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we’re coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How’s that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We’ll be in the pub, flipping you off. I’m slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I’m sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike … NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!