Saturday, September 26, 2009

2009 AFL Grand Final - Geelong v St Kilda

All photos are courtesy of The Herald Sun Online and The Age Online.


Luke Ball neatly summarised the grief that washed over the St Kilda rooms after their loss of a desperately close 2009 AFL grand final to Geelong on Saturday.



Tears were plentiful - not least from inconsolable captain Nick Riewoldt - as the Saints came to terms with the fact that this was a year in which they carried all before them except the premiership cup.



"Half an hour ago was the worst feeling I've had in my life, to be honest. It was shocking," Ball said. "Just looking around at a few of the older guys as well, it was as bad as I've felt.



St Kilda's efforts in 2009 were inspired by how the Cats had raised the standard of the game over the previous two seasons, and Ball said the league owed much to the Geelong club for their combination of class and unstinting application.



"Full credit to them, they're a fantastic team," he said. "The competition as a whole has a lot to thank Geelong for over the past three years, the way they've gone about it. We certainly chased them pretty hard and tried to model ourselves on them a bit, but they were just a bit too good when it mattered."



A word of explanation about this. The AFL instituted, in the early 90s, a new policy which evened up the competition. Until then, the moneyed clubs [the Man Us of the world] usually won or were thereabouts and consequently had the largest number of fans. The also-rans, like St Kilda, were the perpetual whipping boys and some of these clubs broke up in the reorganization.



St Kilda, one of the original teams, did not break up and slowly, over 5-7 years, built itself up until this season, when they swept all before them, including Geelong. In Australia, there is great affection for St Kilda and many rate them as their "second club", along with the old Fitzroy. No one dilikes them.



So, in 2009 unfortunately, Geelong were cast as the party-poopers and yet theirs too, many forget, was a rags-to-riches story, some years earlier.



Geelong was one of the two original teams, with Melbourne, in 1859 and is from a coastal town [now a city], often referred to as "sleepy hollow". Let's face it, they can be a bit provincial down that way and the city slickers make a lot of fun of the town's reputation as "hicksville" though this was far from the truth.



For all that, over the decades, they've produced some stunning teams, country boys, farmers' sons and while discipline was never their catchcry, exciting, free-flowing football was their motif, not unlike the southern hemisphere clubs and the Barbarians in rugby.



As the outsiders in the competition but never one of "the city clubs", not unlike me in the Britblogosphere, they rebuilt and had some hearbreaking losses in the past five years, despite co-opting a coach [manager] from one of the city teams, a proven champion and a hard taskmaster.



He taught them self-discipline and dedication and two years ago, the result came - they took the flag after a 44 year layoff, that previous flag itself after an 11 year layoff. You get the idea - always up there but never getting the cream.

In 2007 though, they were the champs.



In the modern system, teams tend to be up for three, maybe four years and any flags have to be won during that time, before players age too much and the machine shows signs of cracking. That's why, last year, having won almost everything during the 2008 season, often grinding other sides into the dirt, they were pipped on the one day which counted - the last day in September.



As you can gather from the opening remarks in this post, that hurt. That really kicked them in the guts. Would they recover in 2009?



Well, they did and they didn't. The new golden boys, St Kilda, all praise to their coach and to them, were now sweeping all before them. After Geelong lost to them mid-season, they fell apart a bit and it was touch and go if they'd even see the grand final.



As you know by now, they did manage to get there but as the underdogs to St Kilda and throughout the game, that's how it was panning out - St Kilda having far more scoring shots but Geelong pressure and their nerves not helping them in their cause.



Geelong, now an ageing team, would surely succumb to the fresh youngbloods but in the end, it was sheer grit and experience which saw them over the line in a very close battle all day.



Relief, more than elation was the prevailing emotion, some sort of redemption after 2008 and the coach, Bomber Thomson, made that point in the after-match press conference. The other coach, Ross Lyon, stoical, put it down to those small percentage things on the day.



What next?

Can St Kilda show real character and bounce back next year to "avenge" their loss?

Can Geelong do it one more time, after their sell-by date? Will they still have the hunger?

There are 14 other teams who'll have a say in that matter as well.



... for now.

[britblog roundup 241] and other matters

First up, get your entries in to the Britblog for this weekend - that review of all things British over the past seven days and for those still not aware, the way to go is to send the url of a post which has struck you as being particularly fine this past week to:

britblog@gmail.com

I'll go in there and check it out, write a little screed around it and you'll see it in the next roundup late this Sunday. I notice that many are submitting entries at the last moment so why should you be any different? If you'd like to see the site itself, click here.

Update at 11:10

Right, the Britblog is now written and in draft form. Any final entries I receive between now and midday tomorrow will be slotted into the various themes, as appropriate. I'm hoping you're going to enjoy this edition.

So sorry for the slow blogging this morning [Geelong victory et al]. I'll have a little kip then get back into the posts.

Stop Press - Geelong Win AFL Grand Final

Result only just in from Australia - Geelong have overcome the odds to snatch a victory in the dying minutes, haivng trailed all day. My maddening, infuriating team whom I'm also so proud of, have done it!!!!!

I don't expect anyone of you out there in the UK or American spheres to feel that in the same way I do but it's as if Wimbledon won the FA Cup or the LA Angels won the title.

I'm still stunned and how it affects my blogging today, I don't know. Might even go out and have a beer or three.

[photo feature] the illusion of beauty


Detractors would call it contrived and yet Francophiles would call it designed. The Anglo-Saxon and Russian would say the Frenchwoman is not "naturally beautiful" with that dark-haired, chisel-jawed slight masculinity which they try to overcome by heavy emphasis on deportment, the tricks of the trade, grooming, dress and cosmetics.

Some of those tricks can be seen in the photo on this post, where the girl is actually wearing a dress and a modest one at that [I know this from the other photos] and yet, photoshot in that way ... well, you see what I mean. The bare lower legs and the cheeky smile do it for her.

That's why most women admire the French and the Italians, the way they do it, with that panache, that style. Interesting that in the current retrospective on Bardot, le Figaro mentioned:




C'est vrais - la France créa Bardot. Celle qui fut vingt ans durant une star internationale et un symbole de la France des années 50-60 fêtera ses 75 ans lundi prochain.

N'oublions pas, par exemple, Edwige Feuillère dans Lucrèce Borgia - elle est aussi une rétive, une insolente, une fille qui a beaucoup d'esprit, le sens de la repartie.


Audrey Tautou - too twee for French tastes?

For those who don't read this language, it roughly means that she was both a creation and a symbol of France, of what she stood for but we shouldn't forget that there were others and Bardot wasn't the first.

Interesting, to me, was "une rétive, une insolente, une fille qui a beaucoup d'esprit", much admired in France, just as the Italians admire "furbo" and "bella figura" or looking and playing the part with panache.



The cosmetic and fashion industries would maintain that beauty can be manufactured or at the very least, greatly enhanced but I would argue that lack of cosmetics and well cut clothes, along with deportment and that indefinable character can carry all before her.

A woman I saw the other day would have been described by the English as "without artifice" and by the French as "without style". She was quite gauche but at the same time, seemed a fun loving person. As I live in the land of my ethnic group, then its take on what constitute good and bad qualities must rule. Solid values and sensible shoes also tug at my heart strings, along with the tweed and the Barbours and so on.




Zeroing in on the French concept of beauty


The French fixation with Bardot seems strange to me. For a start, she looks more nordic, more Britt Eklundish than French but it was the sensuousness really, with her - Carla Bruni also practices the studied look into the eyes, the deep, sensual voice and so on.

Far more seductive, IMHO and far more Gallic, was Françoise Hardy, [don't forget to sound the s, drop the h and sound the last syllable] who perfectly embodied the sultry, melancholy and reserved femme fatale. An example of one who was almost completely Frenchified was the English Jane Birkin. No beauty in a classical sense, she adopted the whole culture as far as she was able and so produced this with Serge Gainsborough:



While real Frenchwomen like Sophie Marceau, Eva Green and Clémence Poésy could never be taken for Anglo-Saxons, they've diluted their Frenchness to appeal to a wider public and in In Bruges, Poésy, in the restaurant scene, sounds "American youth".



Less so in France and more in Russia in my experience, there've been women who've filled the space the eyes take in and later, I've always wondered what it was that that particular woman had which overpowered the senses. I could only conclude that it was the little gesture here, the disconcerting but flattering way she studied you and the attention to detail - everything had to be perfect in order to make demands herself.

So now I'm back here with an eye out for the English Rose but I suspect the English Rose has finer fish to fry than your humble correspondent.

Beauty - what is it?

[honda u3-x] silent white

Friday, September 25, 2009

[the eleventh hour] things which have happened

Seriously, I don't know what you'd call it - bad karma, gremlins, spooks - but we've all had this. A fellow blogger [I'll put the name and link after I've been round the blogs tonight] wrote about teaspoons always being found in the wrong places; at the tennis court, the balls go missing - you know the type of thing.

There's an intersection not far from my place, on the way to the station and it involves cycling under a flyover [see diagram] and reaching a point marked by the red fuzz. Now, obviously that's the wrong side of the road so perhaps I get off the bike and walk it, all docile like, to that spot, where it involves stepping on the road and crossing to the roundabout.

Right, this is no exaggeration - even at peak hour, this part of the world is out of the way and you'd be lucky to get two cars at any one time, more usually none. That is, until reaching that red fuzzy part. Suddenly, traffic comes from nowhere and blocks the road.

I mentioned to my mate that on every single occasion I'd travelled to his place over the previous two weeks, I'd reached that point, [never before the point and not after I've stepped onto the road], when the traffic would suddenly appear.

Yesterday took the prize.

The narrow road, lower right, is a sliproad off the flyover but all the others are minor. I reached the dreaded spot once again, having checked over my shoulder that there were no cars, I listened intently to what might appear from around to the right and so on. One car did appear and went by.

Fine.

As my foot went to step onto the roadway, two cars came off the sliproad, at pace, into the roundabout, just as a little blue car came from my right, a white van came from ahead and a beige Volvo came from behind. I just stood there with my bike, staring at it all unfolding and then the car horns began - b-l-a-r-e-e-e-e-e-!!!!!

Thirty seconds later, it was all over, I hopped on my bike and had the road entirely to myself for the next half mile. That is not an exaggeration.

Always at that same point on the footpath. I should write a story based on that.

Why would such things happen? It's uncanny.

[nursery rhymes] and their possible origins


1. There are references to a certain children's game from the sixteenth century, including one in Shakespeare's King Lear (Act I Scene iv), but little evidence that the rhyme existed. Which rhyme?

2. There was a square-four-eight-dance, published in Playford's Dancing Master in 1665, but it is not clear if this relates to this rhyme. Which rhyme?

3. Pawning your coat when times got hard might have given rise to which rhyme?

4. Which rhyme might have been referring to the necessity for Catholic priests to hide out in a priest hole or in a chamber?

5. The border between the two lands and the accommodation the English and Scots found with each other for some time might have given rise to which rhyme?

Answers


Little Bo Peep, Oranges and Lemons, Pop goes the Weasel, Goosey Goosey Gander, There was a Crooked Man

[late evening listening] bad boy, great group

What is it about some artists? Not particularly nice people or rather - angry young men with harsh voices - and yet their backing groups were superb musos.

Cockney Rebel [with Steve Harley]:



Can't get over the Top of the Pops kids - Steve Harley was definitely not a kid's artist: Sebastian is an example of that.

The Rumour [with Graham Parker]:



Hotel Chambermaid - my favourite of theirs.

The Blockheads [with Ian Dury]:

[odd one out] can you pick him

[self defence] citizens doing it for themselves

M1911

Angus reports on the ammunition shortages in the U.S.:

The shortages are so bad that retail globocorp Wal-Mart has been forced to introduce rationing at the ammo counter in many of its stores. Depending on calibre, customers may be limited to purchases of just 50 rounds at a time.

Apparently, classic .45 ACP pistol ammunition is especially scarce - a fairly good indication that it is in fact conservative Middle America rather than, say, inner-city criminals buying up all the ammo.

Joe Huffman does the mathematics on the issue:

Nine billion rounds in one year with about 80 million gun owners in the U.S. works out to about only about 112 rounds per gun owner. I went through that many rounds both last night and the night before.

I'll go through probably another 200 rounds tonight and then another 150 on Sunday. What the heck is going on here? I'm figure I'm just doing my civic duty here and it turns out I'm doing the job of about 100 other people as well.

If every gun owner were going through just 100 rounds a month that would be nearly 100 billion rounds a year. That is a way to stimulate the economy and have something to show for it afterward--an armed and well practiced citizenry and respectful politicians.

To say that we, in the UK, are not doing the same thing is partly so but there are still a lot of people on the ground that are quietly preparing. To not allow a citizen in his own home to defend his family, on pain of criminal charges being brought and the intruder getting off scot-free is the UK way these days but it can't last forever.

The pics top and bottom are my weapons of choice.

UMP SMG

[israel ministerial crime] good precedent for the u.k. and u.s.


Lots of fun in Israel:

A former finance minister and Olmert associate, Avraham Hirshson, recently began a five-year prison sentence for embezzling funds. A former health minister, Shlomo Benizri, is serving a four-year term after being convicted of bribery, fraud and obstruction of justice in the spring.

The former president of Israel,
Moshe Katsav, is on trial, accused of rape and indecent assault against women who worked for him when he was the tourism minister and president. Mr. Katsav resigned the presidency in mid-2007. Benjamin Netanyahu was suspected of fraud during his previous term in office in the late 1990s but was never charged.

Into this steps Mr. Olmert, of Kadima, looking as if he could be in some trouble. Of all of them, Netanyahu is the one who seems the greatest worry:

On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: “It’s very good….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel).”

What's in a name?

He held dual citizenship, which enabled him to travel freely between both countries, study in the U.S., receive federal loans to cover his education costs at MIT and work legally. Like every U.S. citizen, Netanyahu has a social security number, a credit account, and numerous other files in a variety of government offices.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s files differ from those of most U.S. citizens. The Israeli weekly Ha’ir reports that four requests for credit approval appear in U.S. social security file number 020-36-4537. Under each request one finds a different name: Benjamin Netanyahu, Benjamin Nitai, John Jay Sullivan and John Jay Sullivan Jr.—one man, four names.

Biranit Goren and Einat Berkovitch from Ha’ir tried to find out about him.

Netanyahu’s security file [in the U.S.] has a different classification than most ... a “confidential” classification. Goren and Berkovitch have explained that such a classification only applies to five categories of people: those who work for one of three federal agencies—FBI, CIA, IRS—or those who are considered to be terrorists or criminals. Since it is unlikely that Netanyahu fits the latter two categories, or that he worked for the IRS, it appears that he was on the payroll of a security agency—the CIA or FBI.

July 7th, 2005

Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7 ... The Israeli Embassy ... ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7.

Amy Teibel, of Associated Press, wrote on the day:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

His criminal charges themselves are no different to those which would be brought against our crooked pollies, if the law in the U.K. and U.S. were to be enforced as it should be and as it seems to be in other countries. Just bribes, corruption, dodgy appointments to office - that sort of thing.

Finally, what's the difference between the Israeli politicians and the Arab politicians? The Israeli politicians are subject to due process and can serve time. The Arab criminal leaders are lauded as heroes.

[reverse osmosis] the words on everyone's lips today

The weekend's coming and that means it's time to explain Reverse Osmosis to those who still don't quite get it. Of course, this just draws on the excellent How Stuff Works article on the topic:



On the left is a beaker filled with water, and a tube has been half-submerged in the water. As you would expect, the water level in the tube is the same as the water level in the beaker.

In the middle figure, the end of the tube has been sealed with a "semipermeable membrane" and the tube has been half-filled with a salty solution and submerged.

Initially, the level of the salt solution and the water are equal, but over time, something unexpected happens -- the water in the tube actually rises. The rise is attributed to "osmotic pressure."

A semipermeable membrane is a membrane that will pass some atoms or molecules but not others. Saran wrap is a membrane, but it is impermeable to almost everything we commonly throw at it. The best common example of a semipermeable membrane would be the lining of your intestines, or a cell wall.

Gore-tex is another common semipermeable membrane. Gore-tex fabric contains an extremely thin plastic film into which billions of small pores have been cut. The pores are big enough to let water vapor through, but small enough to prevent liquid water from passing.

In the figure above, the membrane allows passage of water molecules but not salt molecules. One way to understand osmotic pressure would be to think of the water molecules on both sides of the membrane. They are in constant Brownian motion.

On the salty side, some of the pores get plugged with salt atoms, but on the pure-water side that does not happen. Therefore, more water passes from the pure-water side to the salty side, as there are more pores on the pure-water side for the water molecules to pass through. The water on the salty side rises until one of two things occurs:

* The salt concentration becomes the same on both sides of the membrane (which isn't going to happen in this case since there is pure water on one side and salty water on the other).

* The water pressure rises as the height of the column of salty water rises, until it is equal to the osmotic pressure. At that point, osmosis will stop.

Osmosis, by the way, is why drinking salty water (like ocean water) will kill you. When you put salty water in your stomach, osmotic pressure begins drawing water out of your body to try to dilute the salt in your stomach.

Eventually, you dehydrate and die. Isn't that nice?

In reverse osmosis, the idea is to use the membrane to act like an extremely fine filter to create drinkable water from salty (or otherwise contaminated) water. The salty water is put on one side of the membrane and pressure is applied to stop, and then reverse, the osmotic process. It generally takes a lot of pressure and is fairly slow, but it works.

[war games] the players are jockeying for position


The Madalene [whose link leads to a photo of Madame Lash and therefore undercuts his position] points to this, from Bloomberg:

Iran and Venezuela signed a memorandum of understanding to build a $1.5 billion oil refinery in Syria, the Regional Press Network reported in a story published on the Web site of Lebanon’s The Daily Star.

Venezuela would hold a 33 percent stake in the project, Iran would have 26 percent, Syria 26 percent and Malaysia 15 percent, the report said, citing Mohammed Ali Talebi, an official at Iran’s Petropars Ltd. The plant would have the capacity to process 140,000 barrels of oil a day.

Neither Iran nor Venezuela said when construction would start, according to the report.

It seems to me that the forces in the known world are aligning themselves, whether or not this refinery ever gets built. On one side are the communist leaders of China and North Korea, along with the Saudi princes, Gaddafi, the Iran nutter, Malaysia [which also has a dicey record] and so on - the pariahs of the sane world.

On the other are Obama, Brown and Sarkozy, Mandelson, the Bilderbergers et al. Russia is playing its own game but the top is aligned with the club.

Nothing whatever to do with us, the ordinary people. I'm no socialist and yet there is this niggling point that the battle is between two sectors of this ruling club who decide when it's time to stir up a war. The economic crisis is one thing, people out of work, people on benefits, loss of homes, pressure on available homes for rental and so on.

That's bad but much worse is the inevitable result of these things - war. This is the mentality which has come down through the past few centuries, the same dialectic, the same militaristic motif - finding the issue on which to wax rhetorical so that the MIC can be set into full swing.

They want war. That's all there is to it. I keep coming back to John Buchan MP who was kicked upstairs or put out to pasture, whichever term you care to employ, for speaking truths and even putting them in books. In The 39 Steps, he has his little agent say:

The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing a war. That was coming, as sure as Christmas: had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February 1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion.

He was booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June 14th, two weeks and four days from that May morning. I gathered from Scudder's notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of Epirote guards that would skin their own grandmothers was all billy-o.
The second thing was that this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. Karolides' death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum.

That book was published in 1915 and was therefore written earlier, by a British MP who later wnet on to become Governor-General of Canada, as Lord Tweedsmuir. The work is fiction and yet the man had a closer knowledge than most of the goings on at the time.

These days, the doings are better concealed but around the turn of the century, in Buchan's day, things were far easier to glean. The Jeckyll Island meeting was observed, Colonel House's and Warburg's machinations seen for what they were and it wasn't such a big deal understanding how these things work.

Today, with the power of the net and with Google at hand, you'd think we would all be au fait but it seems we're still light years away from understanding, simply because we're accepting the pap we're fed by the MSM, we wish to have it that way in fact and it's an uphill battle getting people to join the dots.

Those who do join the dots see something we can't deal with - too organized, too interlocked. How did I get here from a Venezuelan/Iranian oil deal? Chavez, Mugabe and Hitler have shown how one man with a rampant ego and a desire to straddle the world like a Colossus can cause such enormous damage because everyone kowtows and similar megalomaniacs in the world recognize him and can play him at his own game.

It only takes one man, one forceful and yet insane person to achieve this mayhem. Have you ever wondered why this happens - this constant churning out of and pushing up of this type of person into positions of genuine power in their land and therefore on the world stage? He couldn't do it on his own. Clearly he is piggybacked by others seeing his potential for them.

The essential thing that anyone representing the interests of the majority of people desiring a comfortable life, free from the ravages of war and pestilence, must try to do is to find a way to break this stranglehold on world events. As for your humble correspondent, I don't particularly care to be swept along by the tide of events these nutters set in motion.

Web bots predict collapse

Good article in the Telegraph today. Of course the sceptics are right here - there are cogent reasons for these results. You don't need web bots to do simple research and equally, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

[britblog roundup] hosted here this sunday, september 29th

Some of you may already know that Nourishing Obscurity will be hosting the:

Britblog Roundup

... this Sunday, September 27th and your humble blogger has every intention of having it posted by mid-afternoon. I shall be relieving Mr. Eugenides who is on holiday.

So, get your nominations in to:

britblog@gmail.com

... tout suite.

I say "every intention of having it posted" but the question is - where? This blog passes into history on Tuesday, September 29th and the new blog:

http://nourishingobscurity.com

... will carry on from where this one leaves off. The solution is clear - the Britblog Roundup will be posted both here and at the new site.

[yesterday's news is old news] see how you do


1. July 2008 - last month, the news broke that Gordon Brown was making phonecalls to unsuspecting members of the British public. Now, the News of The World has reported that The Queen had been thinking about setting up premium rate phone lines to allow the British public to call and get a message from the Royals - for what purpose?

2. September, 2008 - a "lady' burst on to the scene, calling Paris Hilton "a piece of sh-- who looks like a tramp". Then she impersonated a presidential hopeful. Who is she?

3. October, 2008 - there was a real stink when a prank resulted in one man having to depart but the other golden boy only got 12 weeks. A lady called Lesley also had to resign over the affair. Who was the prat who got 12 weeks?

4. November, 2008 - one which has died away of late but at the time, this sort of thing was said - it is better for Saudi Arabia and the company to pay out a few million in ransom and save the 995 million left over. What was the issue?

5. December, 2008 - someone significant connected with Watergate died. Who?

Answers


To help pay for the double glazing at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, Tina Fey, Jonathan Ross, piracy, Mark Felt

[late evening listening] songs we love to hate





[clearstream] a pandora's box for the ump


It's flowing strongly, the Clearstream biz, churning up mud along the way:

Les avocats de Dominique de Villepin ont jugé mercredi soir «scandaleux» les propos du président de la République au sujet des prévenus du procès Clearstream, propos qui selon eux violent les règles relatives à la présomption d'innocence.

To put the issue in perspective, the Grauniard called it:

A case of paranoia, slander and vengeance involving:

a) Dominique de Villepin, an ex-prime minister who dazzled the world on 14 February 2003 with a historic speech at the UN against the war in Iraq, a Gaullist with a taste for history and poetry and a penchant for Bonaparte;

b) Nicolas Sarkozy, former Chirac minister, today president of France, whose permanent agitation has transfixed his compatriots, and amused, irritated and awed the world in equal measure since his election on 5 May 2007;

c) the French intelligence services.

Naturally, the socialists are lapping it up, hardly abel to believe their good fortune, after their own infighting:

Le Monde concludes: “The involvement of the head of state unmistakably emerges from the testimony. Contrary to official statements it is very probable that Jacques Chirac issued ‘instructions’ in this affair... Irrespective of what the prime minister has said so far, the almost obsessive search for elements which could compromise the UMP president is unmistakably clear.”

The French love a good scandal but not of this sort, at this time and indications are that most French, for either reasons of boredom or reasons of fear for what it might do to UMP, vis-a-vis the next election, ushering in the truly loopy and perpetually infighting French Left, do not think it should have gone this far.

If UMP have plans to remain in power, they'd best get Sarkozy to close this thing off out of court. But that's not in the nature of Them, is it?

Let me wax religious for one moment. What the Clearstream affair revolves around is someone's knowledge that something was false and his willingness [however true or not is it of Villepin in this case] to remain silent on it and to allow things to come out which would damage the other.

That is no different to the exhortation, in Christianity that "blasphemy against the spirit can't be forgiven". Translated into Secular, it means exactly as stated - knowing something to be based on a false premise, namely the way the Pharisees and Saducees were going about things, they chose instead to bring down the accuser and rival with false testimony.

[thoughtful thursday] sign of the times


Those made up signs are not so funny but this seems genuine. The huts in the background seem Russian to me but the vehicles and language sure ain't.

[airbus] here we go again


There are references to Airbus problems:

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

... and now here:

The EASA airworthiness directive concerns carriers that fly Airbus A330/A340 jetliners equipped with Goodrich pitot probes stamped with the part number 0851HL.

"Several reports have recently been received of loose pneumatic quick-disconnect unions" on the probes in question, the agency said, adding that the problem might lie at the "equipment manufacturing level."

The fault could result in an air leak that could in turn provide false airspeed indications, the statement said.

Ah yes - good luck with your Airbus flight if you have once scheduled.

[war games] meanwhile the empty rhetoric continues

Hezbollah

The parallels with Kennedy are eyebrow raising:

US President Barack Obama has said the world must tackle stark challenges, and the US cannot face them alone. In his first speech to the UN General Assembly, he said global problems included nuclear proliferation, war, climate change and economic crisis.

There's something of the murky way to power [JFK's daddy bought him Illinois, according to some, Obama concealed his Kenyan birth], something of the rhetoric which is based on nothing but catch phrases used by politicians since the Year Dot and now the critical question - is he starting to believe in the rhetoric the national "Tammany" Machine has written for him?

If he does see himself as the messiah, as Kennedy began to, doing this Great Work of Ages which was starting to be something quite different to that envisaged by the Machine, is he heading for a fall? He's playing with an impacable set of forces in the Washington lobby, in Israel and in the pathetic excuse for political life which Hamas and Saudi et al are pursuing with such quiet vigour.

Depends how aggressively he pursues the policy. Asia Times observes:

When President Barack Obama spiked plans for a missile shield in Europe, the international community was taken aback. Yet, Washington is leaving nothing to chance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently spoke of a "defense umbrella" in the Persian Gulf if Iran refuses to agree to nuclear inspections. Most likely, this "umbrella" will be a quick-striking military force overseen from US bases in Afghanistan.

Contrast that with his speech to the UN:

All nations bore responsibility for addressing these problems, he said. Mr Obama said "no world order which elevates one nation above others" could succeed in tackling the world's problems. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he said.

Really pushing this one, isn't he? And that talk of world order. Fashionable to seize on any talk of new world order as OTT and yet they keep mouthing about it, all globalists like Obama. And the Washington Club with members like Maurice Strong and Gore keep mouthing about shamballa and climate change as a religious phenomenon.

If you still feel that Obama supports the U.S.A. as a separate entity, then, with respect, you haven't been reading the material brought to this site by various students of the international situation or anywhere else on the web where think-tanks like American Thinker write:
Meanwhile our own president is proclaiming the end of Pax Americana, the most successful peace-keeping policy in human history. He publicly denies the plain and obvious lessons of history. The fascist regime in Tehran would not even exist were it not for the abject failures of another president in exactly the same mold, the blighted Jimmy Carter.

Carter had this "let's all love each other and just peanut farm" mindset, he had the leftist notion that if we all pull together [no comments], we can achieve miracles, which is true but not if we all pull together in the direction they mean. Brown mouthed this off in his own U.S. speech. It takes no account of realities - bloodythirsty guttersnipes, Churchill called them.

The left then says well that's the type of confontationalist rhetoric which got us into the mess.

No it isn't - what got us into the mess is:

1. the Machine which has determined American foreign policy for the past century, with its stranglehold on the three arms of government in the U.S. and international in complexion and the ripple effect on British polic;

2. using the natural patriotism of the American people, distorted and fuelled by the bought media, to support something quite un-American in nature but masquerading under the American flag, to the point that anyone who questions it, as many of the General Staff in the U.S. and in the UK have, is a dirty traitor and not supporting "our boys" over there and for tacitly supporting terrorism.

Look, the bottom line is that these globalists, by the very definition of their stance [how many quotes do you need from your hmble correspondent], are playing the same game, only with a newer generation which can't remember the last time on account of not having been born.

The end result is war.

Where does the natural need, which many heartily agree with, to defend the cause of freedom and free enterprise in the world, cross over into furthering the agenda of the globalists? Look at the pic of Hezbollah above and see if we're not playing the same crazed militarization of the peoples of the world, organized into rank and final and directed to destroying one another.

If this post seems to give out mixed messages - first defend the nation, then don't go to war, that's because the truth is in the middle. Yes we need to be strong but no we don't need to march off on a global financiers' war game which will make a killing of us and a killing for them.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

[ladies and gentlemen] adjust your urls 2



Remember that the new url is:

http://nourishingobscurity.com

... and the date it goes active is September 29th. If you change your link to this site [that's if you ever did link and plan to continue, I mean], then the new link will also bring you here until the changeover date and then will automatically switch to the new site.

For those interested, I'm on Wordpress.org and am [almost] self-hosting. The themes have been the main problem - I must have been through about 1500 of them and the two left at the end [which I can't decide between] are:

1. a three column not unlike this site's [but I've made the sidebar's much wider so that the whole is now a three column magazine, featuring certain posts];

2. a true magazine/news layout which has layout problems with the blockquotes and images, the latter having been solved.

Both are quite configurable [a major factor for me] and now it's down to the cosmetics and widgets. I'll get both themes ready and decide which one later. I've even been thinking of running one of them for two days and then the other and seeing what you think of each.

[thought for the day] wednesday evening

First, a journo:

The body managing the government's stakes in bailed-out banks has fired headhunters charged with finding its new boss after they recruited a disgraced top banker from RBS.

Eh? Anyone care to explain that one to me? How does it rate against a politician getting down to specifics?

But sometimes the reality is that defining moments of history come suddenly and without warning. And the task of leadership then is to define them, shape them and move forward into the new world they demand.

Or political foot shooting?

“I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Any idea who wrote or said these?

[wordless wednesday] life

[politicians] the unpopularity quiz

I'm sure you can name all of them but who are the most unpopular, 1 for most unpopular of the four and 4 the least unpopular?

[late evening listening] dearieme presents the two seasons

Entirely out of season, of course - echoes of spring:



and just for good measure, summertime:



Is Dearieme trying to tell us something?

[this saturday] three hours of ritual masochism


This is not really the post to return with but there are a number of things weighing on my mind. Some might think it is getting hassled by phone [I don't answer it] or the Blogger thing or the way someone close backstabbed me recently - nope, it's none of those. Nor is it the economic situation or the way my particular situation could go pearshaped pretty soon.

No, it's mainly someone I realize I still haven't got over, getting married and while officially I'm happy, inside it seems that part of my life is now over and that's not a pleasant thing. That's the main downer but there is one other too and that's nervousness.

Whoever said football's just a game obviously never supported Geelong Football Club, the team of whom it was said:

Some people are destined never to find happiness in life. For such people, G-d provided the Geelong Football Club.

If ever there was a bunch of frustrating, impossible yet brilliant players who, on their day, can't be beaten, then this is them.

It's a mark of the Australian football scene that the grand final rated the greatest was that of Collingwood in 1937, not to mention Richmond in 1967 and Hawthorn in 1989. All of these involved Geelong as the other team - they seem to have a way of lifting a game into a spectacle, even if they don't win.

Last year they were odds on favourite ... and lost.

Now they're back again this coming Saturday and this time their opponents are the perennial whipping boys, St Kilda, only this season they've taken all before them, including Geelong. So, not only is this a lip-licking festa of two very attacking teams with great defences, the two who have dominated all season but there are no losers.

If St Kilda win [and almost the whole football world will be behind them], then it will be like the England World Cup victory. Hell, I don't even mind if they win. Well, actually I do. If Geelong win, having thrown it away last year, then a few of us will be very happy. This Saturday though, for three frustrating hours, the heart-attacking playing style of my team will be trying to keep out the current champs.

Why do I have to support teams like this or Wimbledon in England? Masochism?

Go, Pussies!


[housekeeping] two day hiatus

Back soon. Moderation on, sorry.

[ladies and gentlemen] adjust your urls


The state of play is this, ladies and gentlemen - it's been a learning curve and widgets are doing strange things, pics are not appearing where they should and so on at the new site. The url of the new site is:

http://nourishingobscurity.com

However, for the present, until September 29th, things have been so configured that the dotcom url, as well as the usual blogspot url, will both lead you straight back here.

On the 29th, the dotcom automatically switches itself over to the new site - you needn't do anything. If you change the url in the next week, it just means that you needn't change it again. Don't know if that was as clear as mud.

This site will still be active, in the sense that comments on previous posts will still be answered and the site will be maintained but the new site will be for all new posts. More closer to the time.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

[late evening listening] tanita tikaram

Time for some of the songs I like, even if the lyrics are meaningless:



[the host] a cut above your average horror

The Korean film, The Host, suffers from the wooden English dubbing and very Asian style of acting in places but it has some excellent parts - the monster himself and how the little girl who is taken by it and kept in a narrow pit under a bridge and how she manages to outwit it. It's all about how authority reacts in an emergency by denial and by turning on its own people.

This part in the clip is not the very best - later scenes of despair are quite moving, how the grandfather re3acts to the loss and so on. Definitely a cut above the average, this one. You can read up on it here.

[beyonce] uncultured idiot


Why has no one ever told her that it's not what you reveal but what you conceal which makes you more alluring. However, that's not even the issue here:

Beyonce Knowles says she will perform in Malaysia in October, two years after canceling a show in this Muslim-majority country after protesters threatened to disrupt the concert because of her sexy image and clothing. The R&B superstar's upcoming show is already drawing the ire of conservatives in this country, where female performers are required to cover up from the shoulders to knees with no cleavage showing.

"We are not against entertainment as long as it is within the framework of our culture and our religion," Sabki said. "We are against Western sexy performances. We don't think our people need that."

There are different issues here, all being mish-mashed into one. The issue if decency is one thing and the issue of killing off fun is another. The story of Inul in Indonesia is a case in point. Vilified by the Imams for lascivious conduct, nevertheless follow that clip and see the attire she's wearing. She does not let it all hang out, as the western woman does.

It doesn't have to be a Muslim society either. When we were in Cypress, my gf had to change into something which revealed less before going into a Makarios church. She was up in arms about that but I pointed out that that was their rules, they were well within their rights to ask that and so it should be. I went into a mosque without footwear and I went into a synagogue wearing kippar on the head.

So what?

That she should wish to bowl in, promoting her slatternliness in a culture which does not appreciate it is beyond that sort of person.

And another thing - if we are to fight back against the imposition of Muslim life on us by means of spreading our own culture to Muslim nations, then let it be our higher culture that gets exported, not something which reveals our cultural ignorance.

Let it be something which edifies them and let's them see something higher to aspire for.

[cayman islands] hedging one's bets

Hedging over the Cayman Islands

Karl Denninger today:

Senior officials of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, are facing claims that they pocketed millions of dollars by dishing out loans that were impossible to repay.

Impossible to repay? What's the judge say about this?

Credit Suisse has now been accused of loaning the money in an unorthodox and lucrative deal for the bank that federal bankruptcy judge Ralph B. Kirscher described in May this year as a case of “naked greed” that “shocks the conscience of this court.”

This was a bunch of low-level employees, or even middling staff, right? Uh, wrong:

Brady Dougan, the Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse First Boston, and Hans-Ulrich Doerig, Chairman of the Board of Directors, received the subpoenas along with past and current Executive Board officials and Credit Suisse’s Board.

“Bank officials have testified that Credit Suisse created a Cayman Islands ‘branch’ in 2005 to sell these loans.
“In reality, there was no phone and no staff in the bank’s phony branch. “They used the Caymans to circumvent US banking laws and to issue inflated loans that Credit Suisse executives called a ‘gravy train’ in internal memos.“

What's it all about? Yes, of course it's about a naughty bank which did what comes naturally to them and adds fuel to the fire of opinion quite willing to accept restructuring of the financial system of the world [and why does everything always have to be global?] in the image of Them.

Why all the media attention? The MSM is controlled, it's not even an issue, so why no D notices on this? Why are Credit Suisse left unprotected? To hit back at the Swiss releasing personal details on clients? It would be nice to know what's going on here.

[writers] and the near impossibility of becoming one


Vox on writers:

John Scalzi attempts to explain, again, why established writers are seldom interested in reading the work of those hoping to break through the publishing barrier:

Dear currently unpublished/newbie writers who spend their time bitching about how published/established writers are mean because they won’t read your work/introduce you to their agent/give your manuscript to their editor/get you a job on their television show/whatever other thing it is you want them to do for you: A few things you should know....

It's ironic that Scalzi has to point this out so often, considering that he does more for beginning writers with his Big Idea posts than any writer not named The Original Cyberpunk.

My reasons for not reading unpublished fiction are a little different, however.

First, I simply don't have the time. I don't even read much good published fiction these days; I prefer to spend my reading time on history and economics. For example, yesterday afternoon I was reading Bernanke's The Great Depression, about which more will be said anon, and finished with Demosthenes's Orations as the nightcap.

I'm not saying I don't plow through my share of mind candy, having just read Conn Iggledon's four Emperor books last week, but unless a novel is particularly good or original, I find that I'm less interested than I used to be.

Second, after two spells on the Nebula novel jury, a year participating in the Critters Workshop, and six months working as the de facto gatekeeper for a fantasy publisher, I never, ever, want to read any new writer's unpublished fiction ever again. Still less do I feel like arguing with a writer over why my opinion of his writing, which he sought out in the first place, is wrong.

If you think much of the fiction that is published today is pretty awful, you're correct. It is nevertheless markedly superior to the stuff that is being rejected. I don't care if you think your first scribblings are brilliant or not, the probabilities dictate otherwise and I'm quite willing to swap the chance to be the first to recognize an unpublished masterpiece for the privilege of not having to read three dozen attempted crimes against the reading public.

There are some talented writers out there who are just beginning their literary careers. I occasionally read them over at the Friday Challenge and wouldn't mind publishing two or three of them someday if I ever find myself in a position to do so. If you want advice and constructive criticism, I strongly recommend participating in the activities there.

However, since I don't use an agent and at least half the publishers in the States and UK would rather chew off their fingers than sign a publishing contract with my name on it, you'd probably be much better off not doing things my way anyhow.

Now, I have certainly had the benefit of help from established writers such as Bruce Bethke, Joel Rosenberg, Lois Bujold, and Pat Wrede. But keep this in mind. At the time the OC was kind enough to look over my work and tell me to throw away my second novel attempt - which a few of you may be interested to know was set in the world of Summa Elvetica, albeit a version sans religion - I was already a nationally syndicated columnist.

The lesson is: if you have the talent or the ambition, or preferably, both, and you are willing to be persistent, you'll eventually find a way.

My comments

I find Scalzi a prat and have made a mental note never to read him - those comments of his were nasty. However, he does have a point, as Vox mentioned. The grim reality of the writing scene is that:

1. The majority of it is dire and yet the new hopeful only wants someone to read him/her, just wants someone to give him a break.

2. Every writer a bit further up the ladder is wanting him/herself read instead and is not, no matter how altruistic in nature, vitally concerned with a newbie of unproven and maybe unskilled writing talent - there are how many million of them out there.

Thus we have a, "Will you just look at this piece I've written?" which gets, in reply, "Well OK, if you just look at my piece on intergalactic travel first. Now, funnily enough, I thought of the theme in the bathtub some years ago and some people have been kind enough to suggest ..."

The first budding writer left five minutes ago.

3. Quite frankly, in the writing game, no one is going to give you a break.

4. Some put their scribblings on their blogs, as I do and a few others on my blogrolls do - one blogger's whole site is given over to his writing.

Vox's idea of writers' workshops and sites where you can run the gamut of criticism is a good one but it flies in the face of the artistic temperament of the would-be writer - his is a masterpiece, misunderstood by the critics, consummate and whole as it stands. It's humble pie to go through a process of "wasting" time on other budding writers when all you want is to have yourself published.

The writer who does initially get published knows how hard the road is and goes through a lot of s--- before getting to anywhere near "known" and during that time, he is honing his technique, learning the ropes and finding out which genres will be read and which won't. He sends pieces to magazines and news services, hawks himself to agents or else finds one and builds on that and so on.

That's the reality.