Reasons to Love Britain 7

ClassicFM.

Hard as it may be to believe but almost everywhere in Britain it is possible to receive two distinct classical music radio stations.

BBC Radio 3 [Wikipedia: Radio 3]is almost certainly the best classical music radio station in the world. Not only does the BBC provide classical music around the clock, but the organization supports and pays for and supports five symphony orchestras.

But, to be frank, Radio 3 is sometimes a bit preachy. It wants to make you like songs by Michael Tippet even when they sound like screeching.

ClassicFM is indescribably perfect to just have one, at any time, in the background, to make life more acceptable.

Of course classical music has a higher goal and rationale than that. But making life acceptable is no bad thing.

More Liberal Than You

I took the test at YourMorals.org. [It's a current internet hit. See Andrew Sullivan on the subject here.]

Well, my results are as above.

Apparently I am more liberal compared to most liberals than most liberals are to Conservatives.

Hmmmm. Makes me proud.

The scale you completed was the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire," developed by Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt & Brian A. Nosek at the University of Virginia.

The scale is a measure of your reliance on and endorsement of five psychological foundations of morality that seem to be found across cultures. Each of the two parts of the scale contained four questions related to each foundation: 1) harm/care, 2) fairness/reciprocity (including issues of rights), 3) ingroup/loyalty, 4) authority/respect, and 5) purity/sanctity.

The idea behind the scale is that human morality is the result of biological and cultural evolutionary processes that made human beings very sensitive to many different (and often competing) issues. Some of these issues are about treating other individuals well (the first two foundations - harm and fairness). Other issues are about how to be a good member of a group or supporter of social order and tradition (the last three foundations). Haidt and Graham have found that political liberals generally place a higher value on the first two foundations; they are very concerned about issues of harm and fairness (including issues of inequality and exploitation). Political conservatives care about harm and fairness too, but they generally score slightly lower on those scale items. The big difference between liberals and conservatives seems to be that conservatives score slightly higher on the ingroup/loyalty foundation, and much higher on the authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations.

This difference seems to explain many of the most contentious issues in the culture war. For example, liberals support legalizing gay marriage (to be fair and compassionate), whereas many conservatives are reluctant to change the nature of marriage and the family, basic building blocks of society. Conservatives are more likely to favor practices that increase order and respect (e.g., spanking, mandatory pledge of allegiance), whereas liberals often oppose these practices as being violent or coercive.

In the graphs below, your scores on each foundation are shown in green. The scores of all liberals who have taken it on our site are shown in blue, and the scores of all conservatives are shown in red. Scores run from 0 (the lowest possible score, you completely reject that foundation) to 5 (the highest possible score, you very strongly endorse that foundation and build much of your morality on top of it).

Police: Sometimes They Tell Lies and Often They Over-Charge

CNN has put the Police Report on the arrest of the University of Florida student who was tased online.

It is quite possible to see on video everything that happened. Yet the police are trying to lay a felony rap on the guy for *resisting arrest.* And the reason given for the arrest - that he "was inciting a riot."

We need the police for social protection, but here is a basic truth. Some policemen and women lie like they breathe.

Even when, as in this case, they know there is a video of their actions, they cannot help themselves.

What's Wrong with America 3

Americans don't know when to stop wearing blond wigs.

A Commercial

My dad and Uncle Dave run a truly horrible business.

They sell hot sauces. It's such a straight thing, a gay man like me can hardly understand the concept. (We prefer hot Mormons.)#

But, since my dad managed to get hit on his motorbike while on his recent beer tour of Belgium, I have been helping him pack some of his sauces.

If you truly want the hottest hot sauce in Europe, try The D'Evil's Kitchen..

If you know straight boys who equate masculinity with burning their tongues off, my dad can help.

Very Upsetting Things about Britain 3

BRITISH TEETH



It's all true!

People with missing teeth audition for TV talent shows. Politicians have perfectly black lines between each tooth. Educated professionals flash crooked teeth. And a fair number of people seem to go shopping in ASDA without their teeth in.

Worst of all. Perfectly cute people in bars smile, and, well one doesn't want to be condemnatory, but....

Some things are better in America. Like Teeth.

More

What's Wrong with America 2

Mormons are taking over.

What's Wrong with America 1

They have too many gay websites.

Very Upsetting Things about Britain 2

WEIRD HAIRSTYLES



At least in Manchester, young people, and some no so young, have adopted a very odd hairstyle. The back, sides and top are short (or spiked with gel), but the front is long, cut in a wedge shape, quite possibly dyed, and plastered with gel to the face.

Britain did not win wars with it's young people looking like they had just fallen into a bucket of wallpaper paste mixed with bleach.

Very Upsetting Things about Britain 1

DEAD TWIGS



For some unknown reason, British people have taken to decorating there houses with vases (sometimes very big vases) of dead twigs.

I think the look is meant to be minimalist, but it all looks a little IKEA.

This is Just Wrong, but Right in a Very Odd Way II

So, YouTube took down the video of Jake doing drag.

OK How about Dr Who in Drag?



Also see here and here. [American readers please note that Catherine Tate is going to be the Doctor's new companion.

[Meanwhile, American readers should look up 'John Barrowman' on YouTube for some fun. Sandy - that means you.]

Athiest Brownnosing

Read Richard Dawkin's review of Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great.

A truly astonishing piece of brown-nosing.

There are lots of good arguments against religion, and those who want to read them should perhaps read Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian.

What is so annoying about Hitchens AND Dawkins is their belief that they are somehow rigorous and academic thinkers, and that the vast erudition displayed by thinkers of all religious traditions is simply tosh.

So lets get this straight: Hitchen's book is shallow (with constant flip comments and use of easy targets. Two examples within a few pages could be greatly multiplied: at one stage Hitchen's attacks a auxiliary bishop for denouncing condoms, two pages later the man has become "Archbishop of Rio"; a page later Hitchen's claims that most historians accept Jesus must have been born after 4 AD (in fact, the usual consensus is that he must have been born before 4 BC). These are, in themselves, minor points, but are entirely typical of the sloppiness and lack of erudition of both authors.

Same Sex Marriage

I have no idea who can really object.

Andrew Sullivan, with whom I often disagree, but always read, deserves to have found his Aaron.

Here are the pics

Congratulations, Andrew.

Pavarotti

Forget Nessun Dorma, but believe the hype.

Reasons to Love Britain 6

"Britain is a tolerant country with a widespread acceptance that prejudice has no proper place in civil society".

The Guardian

Now I am going to look at some of the bad things....

View of Winter Hill, Lancs, from My Window

Free Speech in the UK

In the UK there is a considerably greater range of commonly-expressed opinion than in the US, but one of the things I have noticed since I returned is that legal protections for free speech are rather less than under the US system.

For example "incitement to hatred" charges are used in the UK to prohibit all sorts of speech about racial and religious groups that would be considered protected in the US. In general, I prefer to know who hates me, and hence prefer the US system.

I am not, by the way, a liberal. I would define myself as a Democratic Socialist (in terms of class and welfare politics) with libertarian tendencies (in terms of personal behaviour such as sexual practices, drug use, etc.)

Dawkin's The God Delusion

Like a lot of people this summer I have read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.

My take? The books consists of lots of cheap shots, and an myopic idea of what rationality, erudition, and culture consist of.

And here is a problem: Dawkins rightly criticizes religious intolerance, and repeatedly refers with historical accuracy to Christian Antisemitism (for instance his peroration on the case of Pope Pius IX and Edgardo Mortara). But Dawkins' prescription - that children not be brought up as part of the the religious community in which they are born(*) - if applied to Jews would lead to the immediate destruction of all Jewish communities everywhere. If he wants a world without Jewish children, then he wants a world without Jews,

Now, what do you call a person who wants a world with Jews?

Of course, Dawkins is not "Antisemitic" in any vulgar way. It's just his prescriptions would lead to a Jew-free world. Nasty.

(*) In an odd oversight, Dawkins neglects to mention that the one group he attacks most often - American evangelicals (a group that, in general, I have little truck with) - do NOT teach that their children are Christians simply because their parents are.

Baptists and Pentecostals (e.g. Assembly of God, the Church of God in Christ) insist that all members must make a personal decision *at an age of sentience* to join their churches. The Amish, another group he attacks, specifically release their children into the world after high school and require them to make an adult decision. Dawkins on this issue has either not done his homework, or simply twists his facts to suit his agenda. Given the methodology of the rest of the book, it is likely he is doing both.

Reasons to Love Britain 5

Deep Fried Pizzas

This is Just Wrong, but Right in a Very Odd Way

Reasons to Love Britain 4

I had many fine friends in Florida, but the ability of the average Southern politician to be a homophobic bigot is massively greater than anything now possible in the UK.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Aug. 15 — The uproar began last month, when Mayor Jim Naugle said that installing a single-occupancy restroom on a local beach could deter “homosexual activity.”
Mr. Naugle's recent remarks have led to protests by local gay advocates and calls for a tourism boycott.
Mr. Naugle, a six-term mayor in this city that draws legions of gay tourists and residents, went on to tell a local newspaper that he preferred the word “homosexual” to “gay” because he believed many gay people were “unhappy.” Soon after, he criticized a plan to house a private gay book collection in a public library because it contained pornography.
Outraged local residents called for his resignation, started a “Flush Naugle” campaign and organized a protest rally that brought hundreds to City Hall in late July, a time of year when South Florida usually verges on comatose. That day, Mr. Naugle announced that he would issue an apology.
And he did — to “the children and parents of our community,” for not being aware of “how serious the problem was of the sexual activity that’s taking place in bathrooms and public places and parks.” He questioned whether Broward County should continue telling tourists to “come on down,” citing 2004 statistics that found it led the nation in new AIDS cases.

New York Times 17 August 2007

See it!

Moving Home is Like Learning a New Language

Moving back to Britain after twenty years has required me to learn what is, in effect, a new social language.

For example, one pays for things in the oddes tways here. For electricity I have a meter into which I have to insert a payment card which I can 'top up' at any convenience store: for pay-as-you go cellphones (called mobile phones in the UK), I can pay at my bank's cash machines. If you one doesn't have a credit card one can pay by 'SMS', which means your cellphone is debited for certain payments.

No one here grasps how odd all this is.

And don't get me started on SCART cards or how plugs, sockets, and fuses work.

Reasons to Love Britain 3

After 20 years in the US, you gain a new respect for the sheer local intensity of history in the UK.

I am now living around 6 miles from the centre of Manchester in an old mill town called Radcliffe. Just down the road is the Parish Church of All Saints Manchester. It's a spectacular early 19th century Church that in the US would be a major monument. Here, literally noone seems to notice it. In the centre of Radcliffe, a mile away in the other direction, is another spectacular 19th century church. And then a mile outside is another Anglican Parish Church - St. Mary's Radcliffe, which is on a site used as a church since Anglo-Saxon times and which today has a church building which dates from the 15th century.

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of such buildings within a 20 mile car journey. Very few people here seem to even notice them.

After 20 years in the US, I am stunned.

In fact I feel a new website coming on - a Medieval Manchester site to accompany my Medieval New York site.

Reasons to Love Britain 2

Everyone complains about the Royal Mail, But it's because it has reached only 90% next day delivery with standard first class mail.

You send a letter here for 34p and it gets to its destination the next day. Amazing.

Where You Live is Entirely a Matter of Choice

Here I am, at a desk, at a keyboard. The world around me is created by the media I consume.

Since I have moved back to the UK, I am sedulous in consuming/following the British media (The Guardian/the BBC/The Manchester Evening News etc.)

But, as a matter of FACT, I could equally choose to live in a US, or even Jacksonville, media world.

Right now in fact, I am listening to Diane Rehm (on WJCT, but from WAMU), and I can watch CNN/I, listen to NPR, read the New York Times and skim the Florida Times-Union. I can even watch CBS and NBC nightly news, and get the Jay Leno show. I choose to go with cable TV/Broadband, but if I had chosen Sky Satellite, I could also get the Fox News Channel in its full unabridged US glory.

For the time being, I have chosen to live in two worlds.

The Sub Prime Mess in the US

In one of my less successful ventures, I worked/trained as a mortgage broker in Jacksonville FL in the fall of 2006.

I could have predicted everything that is happening now to the US housing market, but, alas I didn't. What I can say is that I don't think even the tip of the iceberg has been touched

For instance, the press is still talking about sub prime new loans. What has not emerged yet is that on a local level mortgage brokers, when getting home-owners to refinance typically induced the homeowner to refinance the entire loan, not just get a second mortgage (since the payoff to agent was much greater in a complete loan refi). "Hey, I kept refinancing a crack user to bankruptcy" was one line I heard from a trainer.

The upshot is that a lot of mortgage brokers, and Mortgage Broking companies, were
taking massive immediate payouts while moving very marginal clients into very bad situations. The only thing that kept the whole near-Ponzi scheme afloat was rising house prices.

That now seems to be over.

Memories of Florida 1

An odd story from The Miami Herald 26 July 2007

Reasons to Love Britain 1

Dr Who.

Time to Start Blogging Again....

...After almost a year away (the less said the better), I am back in the UK.

Here goes.

Slow blogging

Posts have been sparse lately: I moved, and have been trying out as a mortgagor broker. More stuff will be coming soon.

Jo Jo Laine RIP

Jo Jo Laine, who died on Sunday aged 53 after falling down a flight of stairs, led a fast-paced life which bore witness to the dangers of too much beauty combined with an almost total lack of self-restraint.

Petite, wide-eyed and with waist-length dark auburn hair, Jo Jo Laine became famous as a model but notorious as a groupie who numbered among her conquests some of the most glamorous icons of the Sixties and Seventies rock scene.

Daily Telegraph 10/24/2006

Saddam's Death Penalty

I remain opposed to the dealth penalty in all circumstances. This trial should have taken place in the Hague, not in some hobbled together and inept Iraqi court.

The Observer 11/5/2006

Right Wing Gay Scandals

First Mark Foley, then Ted Haggard.

I don't really have any sympathy for them as Republicans, but I do have a great deal of sympathy for them as men enlosed and psychologically damaged by the closet. The Haggard case my be worse, since his wife and kids are now indubitably hurt.

Everybody's life runs by a different clock: when it's good time for one person to come out, its not necessarily right to another. Those of us who do come out do face a more or less limited form of public discrimination: on the other hand there is the basic freedom of being oneself. This "everyone is on their own clock" is the basic arguement against "outing."

The problem is when the hypocrisy becomes transparently foul. When people have accepted themselves as homosexual but continue to publically attack gay people, visit public gay places, and then expect the rest of us to conspire in their closet.

A Harpers Article on Ted Haggard and Colorado Springs 11/2/2006 [h/t Andrew Sullivan]

The Road to Delusion

Next week, George W Bush faces his last, critical electoral challenge. Niall Ferguson assesses a failed presidency.

In the aftermath of George W Bush's re-election as president two years ago, his campaign manager, Karl Rove, amused himself and his boss with a battery-powered "Redneck Horn". At the touch of a dashboard button, the device would yell insults in a raucous Southern accent, providing automated road rage for "red state" Republicans.

George W Bush and Dick Cheney face the possibility of defeat in the mid-term elections

The toy's abusive messages ranged from the relatively mild "Slow down, dumbass!" to "Hey, hogneck, who taught you how to drive?"; "What the hell was that manoeuvre?"; "Are you freaking blind?" and "You're a goddam moron!" How they all laughed in the White House, if the Bush administration's renegade court historian, Bob Woodward, is to be believed.

Today, however, the joke is on them. For the Redneck Horn could now just as easily be used by ordinary Americans to express their frustration not merely with Mr Bush but with the entire Republican Party. With a little over a week remaining until the congressional mid-term elections on November 7, some opinion polls indicate that "You're a goddam moron!" is precisely the message voters intend to send the White House.

Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph, 10/28/2006

Ferguson is a conservative.

The New Nuclear Age

Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age
New York Times 10/28/2006

Pretty much following my end of innocence post a week ago.

Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy RIP

Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy, who died on October 9 aged 75, was born Jacques-Charles Dufresnoy, but became celebrated as the French transsexual singer, entertainer and Marilyn Monroe lookalike, Coccinelle.

Coccinelle was the first Frenchman to have a sex-change operation and went on to found an association to help others who felt they had been born with the wrong sexual identity. The British transsexual April Ashley was one of her protégées.

Jacques-Charles Dufresnoy was born in Paris on August 23 1931. His mother sold flowers in the Pigalle district and, as April Ashley recalled in her memoirs, Jacques-Charles was "raised among strumpets so that the ethics of their system came naturally to him". By his own account, he became aware that there was something amiss at the age of four; as soon as he was able, he dyed his brown hair platinum blond and took to wearing women's clothing. One of his favourite outfits, a red and black polka-dot dress, earned him the nickname Coccinelle (French for ladybird).

Coccinelle made his debut in 1953 as a "showgirl" at Chez Madame Arthur, a Parisian cabaret specialising in drag acts. He later became a fixture at the more famous Carousel nightclub. April Ashley, who joined the Carousel troupe in 1956, recalled that Coccinelle (or "Coxy" as he was known) wore low-cut gowns which barely covered a pair of silicone-filled breasts which would occasionally sag and need to be "pumped up". He usually arrived on stage in one of a number of outrageous mink coats, all dyed different colours, and with scarlet lipstick. In the quest for his true self, Coccinelle had already had a "nose job". In 1958 he heard about Dr Georges Burou, a gynaecologist in Morocco who was known as a pioneer of vaginoplasty, or "gender reassignment surgery". He went to Casablanca and had the operation done.
***
After her operation the French modified the law to enable the details on birth certificates to be amended following a change of sex, and she duly changed her name to Jacqueline-Charlotte — "née femme".

In 1960 she contracted the first of three marriages, to a sports journalist called François Bonnet. "Being a faithful child of the Church," April Ashley recalled, "she booked Notre Dame Cathedral for the ceremony (which she attended in an off-the-nipple gown). When the newlyweds appeared on the cathedral steps for photographs, the crowd gave them a terrific send-off, apart from those who pelted them with tomatoes."

Over the next 25 years Coccinelle toured the world, making a particular hit in South America and even performing in front of the Shah of Iran. For 10 years she appeared in cabaret in Germany. Her last public performance was in 1990.
***
She also worked extensively as an activist on behalf of transsexuals, founding the organisation Devenir Femme, and helping to establish a centre for research into gender identity. Her autobiography, Coccinelle by Coccinelle, was published in 1987.

At her funeral, held at the Eglise Saint-Roch de Paris, Father Philippe Desgens reminded mourners: "All the children of God have a place in the Church", and noted that "by her marriage in church after her operation, and during her whole life, Coccinelle showed her faith."

Sunday Telegraph 10/29/30

There is a Coccinelle page at
http://www.dianeetlesexedesanges.ch/3colset008/_page-coccinelle-page-2.htm

President Bush Supports Civil Unions for Gays

Where is the "Movement"?

I need to check this more, but as far as I recall, at no stage during the Vietnam war was less than 50% of the public in support of the war. [And this was at a period of a better educated, and more news-paper reading public.] Now opposition to the War is vast, and the extent of the catastrophe, both for Iraqis, and general world stability, is evident to a majority.

So where is the "movement."?

Medieval Video from the 1980s

Noted by Andrew Sullivan 10/27/2004



Andrew has been running a whole series of links to YouTubes of Best and and Worst Eighties videos. Personally I found his link to Freddy Mercury and Queen's I Want to Break Free brought on many fond memories.

New Jersey

Damn, this gay marriage thing was tough to understand and to decide what was best outcome at this time in New Jersey.

I did not want to give Karl Rove anything to stop the GOP getting screwed on November 7th.

And when I heard it was a 4/3 decision, I thought "damn, even New Jersey has three judges against us." Until I realized that the three dissenters wanted full marriage for gays in name also. The majority "just" wanted all the rights and privileges, but allowed the legislature to decided what name to give the institution, and told lesbian and gay people to get to work persuading their neighbours to accept them.

NO JUDGE DISSENTED from the decision that gay and lesbian couples deserve equality.

It's a brilliant decision given the timing: nothing to rile the Christianists to get out to vite, but it will create another civil union state.

Andrew Sullivan's prediction of a patchwork of development for gay marriage, made eight years ago, is coming true.

As a historian I know that social mores can change within a matter of months: but the trend to accept legal gay unions is probably now unstoppable in Western Civilization.

In the long run, Western Civilization will die. Later civilizations will have different sets of familial institutions and rules (clones can't marry clones, perhaps). Who knows? But in our episteme, "Gay is Good" is rapidly becoming "Gay is Boringly Normal."

It's a WIN all round for gays and lesbians.

Until the next episteme that is.

Messing Up Iraq

The US and its sidekick the UK have messed up Iraq. Saddam was clearly an awful thug, and he and his henchmen perpetrated war crimes such as genocide against elements of the population.

Despite that, for the majority of people living there, life was a reasonably secure one, in which clans kept social order, and where there were highly developed educational and professional streams. There was almost no sectarian violence, Christians lived freely, urban women did not wear the hijab, could drive, and life could go on.

It's hard to imagine the most pro-American/pro-British Iraqi thinking that things have got better in any way since the invasion. Indeed, one proposal tossed around the US media is to try to find strongman (like Assad, Saddam, or Mubarak) to get the country under control.

Either the US and UK need to get out now, admit their screw up, and stand by guiltily as the Iraqis forge some sort of order. Chaos never goes on for ever. I suspect that the main reason for not doing this is that Iran will emerge as a greater regional power.

Or perhaps the US and UK need to go to war. I mean really go to war to win, and commit enough forces to suppress insurgents.

Without Bush's (or more probably Rumsfeld and Cheney's) messed up initial war, the situation would be so much better now. They could have followed Colin Powell and sent 500,000 troops in.

And the US had the troops: it just did not use them.

The United States Army as of 2004, consisted of 494,295 soldiers on active duty, 342,918 in the Army National Guard (ARNG) and 204,134 in the United States Army Reserve (USAR). [Wikipedia]

The Marines as of 2005 had 180,000 active duty and 40,000 reserves. [Wikipedia]

The U.S. Navy currently numbers nearly 500,000 men and women on active duty or in the Navy Reserve and operates 282 ships and more than 4,000 aircraft. [Wikipedia]

The Airforce has 352,000 men and women on duty. [Wikipedia]

Altogether that is 2,113,000 active and reserve duty military. Perhaps another half million were available in potential coalition partners.

A real war, using the power available has not been fought, and it is a prime duty of those who engage in war to commit to winning it. In this above all, the "easy" air-strike wars of the 1990s lead to a massive misjudgement by the US leadership. It is this leadership which thus bears the direct responsibility for Iraq.

The choice now is not to "stay the course", but to either fight the war with the resources necessary to win, or quit.

The big problem with all this is that it may be too late. If it is too late, there is only one logical conclusion. Withdraw. Admit yet another American defeat.

And then settle down to dealing with Iran.

Muslim Veils and Catholic Veils

Labour loses faith in multi-culturalism
At his press briefing yesterday, the Prime Minister made it clear his Government's approach to cultural diversity had changed. He may have couched his position in careful language, but the conclusion was inescapable: integration, rather than multi-cultural separatism, is now official policy. By saying that he "fully supported" the decision of Kirklees council to suspend the Muslim teaching assistant who had refused to remove her veil at work, and then reinforcing this point with the observation that the veil was a "mark of separation", Mr Blair removed any doubt about the Government's position.

He was, in effect, affirming that the contentious views expressed over recent weeks by Jack Straw, Ruth Kelly and John Reid were not maverick individual opinions, but part of a larger, concerted revision of the Cabinet's stand. Mr Blair, unsurprisingly, wanted to avoid the appearance of an outright volte-face: at one point, he suggested that there should be "a balance between integration and multi-culturalism". This would be a logical impossibility, since the policy of multi-culturalism, as it has been understood and practised, is antithetical to integration.

Ministers are now clearly ready to embrace the argument that they have attacked for many years as insensitive, even bigoted: if Britain is to succeed in absorbing diverse peoples, ethnic minorities must accept the mores of their adopted country. Private religious observance should always be respected, but its practices cannot be permitted to contravene either civil law or the social rules that make community life workable.

Most crucially, the Government's new stand implies that there is an obligation on the part of all those who settle in this country to relate to the larger society and to accommodate its expectations. As the shadow home secretary, David Davis, has said, we cannot afford to encourage a form of "voluntary apartheid" by allowing minority groups to withdraw into cultural isolation. Mr Davis described this as a "series of closed societies within our open society". In fact, such separatism, which the philosophy of multi-culturalism promoted, is a threat to the very existence of an open society.

Daily Telegraph 10/18/2006

With all the current fuss over Muslim women choosing to wear veils, I think it is also worth pointing out that many Catholic women wore veils until recently, and that a veil can be a source of womens' power.

I don't mean a burqa or a chador, but the kind of face-showing/hair-hiding veils nuns used to wear. They were largely thrown out in an orgy of destruction of Catholic symbols after Vatican II, and nuns started to claim to be "laity".

The end result was that a de facto Catholic female clergy in effect ended up giving up a kind of social power.

A moderate Muslim woman in a hijab (i.e. the recent Lebanese invention of a scarf like veil - one that looks just like a a Greek Orthodox nun's veil - could be seen as giving a certain social power and respect.

This is not a conflict of civilizations issue.

Animals are Just as Gay as Republicans

Oslo gay animal show draws crowds

Penguins regularly form same-sex pairs. Photo: Per Aas/NHM-Oslo
Curators say a Norwegian exhibition on homosexuality among animals has been well received, despite initial indications of strong opposition.
The Oslo Natural History Museum opened the show last week and says it has been well attended, not least by families.

Organisers reported early criticism of the project, and being told by one opponent they would "burn in hell".

But there has been strong interest in an aspect of animal behaviour the museum says is quite common.

It says homosexuality has been observed among 1,500 species, and that in 500 of those it is well documented.

BBC 10/18.2006

Animals can be queer as well - 10% or Penguins in fact. One could expect it of Flamingos, but Penguins?

10 Reasons to Vote Republican

1. Olympia Snowe

2. Any others?

St Theodora Guérin (1798-1856)

Wikipedia: St. Theodore Guerin

Pope Benedict XVI does not seem to be such an canonization-maniac as John Paul II (to whom over half of all canonized saints can be attributed). [It's worth pointing out, I suppose, that "canonization", i.e. papal naming as a saint, is a fairly recent development: most named Catholic saints have never been "canonized" in any formal procedure.]

Mother Theodora Guerin (I see no need to use the male form of the name) has won plaudits from the liberal media, such as NPR's All Things Considered 10/16/2006.

Why? Basically because she told the local bishop, in the nicest possible way, to fuck off when he tried to control her and her order.

In the history of sainthood this canonization of a loyal servant of Christ is nothing new.

What do you think my chances are? I think they are good. The Virgin Mary will get me in the back door, then St. John Newman, SS Sergius and Bacchus, St Sebastian, and all the other heavenly queers will work for my eventual canonization.

I am still working out what I want to become patron saint of.

Two Fathers

The Netherlands, a kid sings of his two dads. Very moving. [h/t Andrew Sullivan].

The French YouTube tag for this says:

Terrence a deux pères et les aime beaucoup et est fier d'eux et le chante. Un hymne d'amour montrant que l'homoparentalité est une parentaluité belle et pleine d'amour.Enregistré dans le cadre d'uen émission télévisée :Kinderen voor Kinderen song

Translation: Terrence has two fathers, loves them both a lot, and is proud to sing to them. A hymn of love showing that homoparenting is good parenting and full of love. Recorded from a transmission of the (Dutch) TV show "Kids sing for Kids."

The End of the 51st State

The comments from General Sir Richard Dannatt that he wants his forces to leave Iraq sometime soon have met with overwhelming support on the Army Rumour Service website, where officers can air their views anonymously via forums which promote lively debate.

Many express shock about the frankness of his words and there are several references to Sir Richard’s "moral" courage in speaking his mind, as well calls for the Prime Minister to take heed of his remarks. "I hope Blair is listening," says user "Nigegilb".

The Times 10/13/2006

British academics and members of the "chattering classes" have long been suspicious of British governments' somewhat slavish willingness to support US foreign policy. But so far the political and military elites have been keen to keep up the "special relationship".

This now seems to be changing, with most of the Labour Party long at odds with Tony Blair over Iraq; and the Tory leader defected from the US cause at the last election. Now the military has called it a day.

Flashback

Now we have all just had another communal moment.

I was with a group taking a lunch break, when CNN came on about the aeroplane hitting a building in New York. I wonder how many, as I, were on edge for 2-3 hours afterwards, waiting for the next hit.

Was this a new Al-Qaeda attack? Would this displace the Foley scandal? What about my friend who lives on West 70th St in Manhattan?

I expect nightmare to night. No other news event ever effected me like 9/11, and this was a very unpleasant reminder that it might happen again.

The Page Program

...what, one may ask, are "pages" - underage gofers - doing in Washington, in 2006, to prick the desires of dirty old congressmen and senators with their fresh young faces and limbs? Partly it's the American addiction to Old Europe's lifestyle - the same nostalgia that came up with "valet parking". Everyone's a monseigneur when you go to the local steakerie. The great republic likes the odd aristocratic frill.

Originally pagehood was the lowest rung on the steps of knighthood. At puberty, if you cut the mustard (and were prepared to cut a few throats when required), you made it to squire.

In Washington's seat of power, the page programme was devised by Daniel Webster, in 1829. He believed this touch of medieval chivalry would dignify the House. Pages - boys and (since 1971) girls - are selected from American high schools as a reward for high merit. The programme, one suspects, will not be around for much longer. It doesn't seem to dignify the place any more.

Having underage boys at the beck and call of powerful men was always risky. Probably it was at the round table of King Arthur - but then there was no www.thesmokinggun.com (smoking-lance?) to embarrass any naughty knight.

The Guardian 10/9/2006