Internet Commentator

Master of the Routes

Perusing the Architects' Journal earlier I note that Sol Campbell's new house - designed by architect Richard Reid - has garage space for "only" 5 from the erstwhile Arsenal defender's dozen strong collection of Routemaster buses. I can understand football players collecting cars, most tend to have at least one Range Rover, Mercedes Benz saloon and a Ferrari or Aston Martin for use depending on the occasion. But a fleet of identical buses?

Twist and Sh*te

The Onion A.V. Club has a nice roundup of some of the most notable film "twist" endings, good and bad. I thought this really nailed The Village:

The Village (2004)

Plot: The inhabitants of an old-timey village never leave proscribed boundaries so as not to run afoul of terrifying beasties that take their fashion cues from Little Red Riding Hood.

The big twist: Oh my God! It isn't an old-timey village at all! The movie is actually set in the present! (Cue melodramatic organ music.) The beasties are just villagers in silly costumes, and the senior villagers are modern-day folks who, perhaps horrified by the ubiquity of cheesy plot twists, chose to opt out of contemporary society.

Does it work? Put it this way: If you freeze-frame the moment when the climactic twist is revealed, you can actually see a leather-jacketed villager on water-skis leaping over a shark in the distance.

Could it work today? Unlikely

Neutrality and the "triple lock"

Planet Potato has a post about Ireland's "triple lock on neutrality" which quotes the Minister of Defence:

I want to make the absolutely clear again today: In any consideration of Irish troops acting overseas that this Government will not allow our policy of military neutrality to be eroded. The triple-lock will remain. Ireland will only participate in military activity overseas with Government, Dáil and UN authorisation

I have to agree with Mr Potato. Stated thus, the triple lock* is preposterous, regardless of the composition of the UN security council. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of obtaining UN approval is - if there's an action that the government wants to do, how does it further Ireland's interests in any way that it be prevented from doing so on the whim of any of the countries who fluke a seat on the council. The thing is, this is a separate issue from neutrality. I'm against neutrality anyway** but even if I was in favour of neutrality, this triple lock would surely contradict it unless "neutrality" is taken to mean "allied with the UN ".

* incidentally, shouldn't it be the double lock? The first two "locks" kind of go together, the government generally governs only by consent of the Dail.

** One of the many reasons not to favour neutrality is the nauseating moralising associated with Ireland's neutral stance. This moralising is doubly nauseating because it's not based on any substance, but is an inversion of the truth. There is no moral high ground in refusing to take sides. I'd be a lot more tolerant of neutrality-boosters if they admitted that neutrality is a piece of amoral realpolitik - given that, thanks to our proximity to the UK, we aren't in any direct danger, it's much cheaper to "free-ride" off others than contribute to any military alliances.

Wonk doppleganger

Thanks again to Reason's Hit and Run for inspiring more content. This post features a picture of social democrat* blogger Matt Yglesias (on the, er, left):

Perhaps taking a break from filming Law & Order: Criminal Intent?

* - Like his fellow American "liberals", Yglesias is no liberal.

Police and thieves

Jesse Walker over at Reason has a post about Radley Balko's paper about heavy-handed policing, particularly as part of the disastrous "war on drugs". The topic itself is certainly of interest, but what caught my eye was the title - a quote - Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition - from the above titled reggae classic by Junior Murvin (although it's probably the Clash version most people are familiar with). Just reading the words summoned that great tune into my head (It's like I have an iPod in my mind, man!) and for that I'm grateful.

Selection

So, I get the blog-train back on the tracks and it ends up getting derailed into a comments discussion over at Most Sincerely Folks.

The original topic was how we think of children and made reference to education league tables. One observation I made was that for some schools - and the example I used was Irish-language schools, or gaelscoileanna - which feature highly on such tables and appear to outperform their rivals, their success might be due to an intake of smart, conscientious pupils and might not be to do with anything special about the school itself. The hypothesis goes that to enrol in a gaelscoil presumes an interest in the Irish language, an interest in education and some sort of home environment which would be conducive for learning.

Apostrophic

Looking for the Frank Fitzgibbon piece mentioned below I came across a nice little counterpoint on the Sunday Times' front page between an advertisement and the free audiobook:

Division of labour

Frank Fitzgibbon suggests that a certain priest/political activist might find an occupation more suited to his expertise.

Maybe I missed something, but don’t we elect politicians to devise social policy? Given the crisis in the vocations business, wouldn’t Fr Healy be better employed signing up to run a parish? Of course, he’d have to give up those trips to Government Buildings, not to mention all those appearances on Questions & Answers, but surely saving souls for the next world is a worthwhile alternative.

An Antarctican writes

Following up on the discussion here a couple of months ago about the status of Antarctica I received an email from someone working in Antarctica (who has asked to remain anonymous) and obtained his permission to reprint it below:

Unbanjaxed!

So, yesterday I decide to finally get round to upgrading my OS to 10.4. The version on the disc was 10.4.6 so I thought I'd upgrade to the latest using software update - bad idea. Software update quit unexpectedly so I downloaded the update manually - even worse idea.

By the time the installer was finished, I was left with little more than a grey screen and a pointer and nothing happening. When I tried to reinstall from the disc, I was told that it wouldn't install over the newer version that had (supposedly) just been installed but I could archive the newer system and install the "old" system alongside, if I had 5 Gb or so to spare on my HD, which I didn't - and seeing as I couldn't see my HD I couldn't free up any space! Aaargh! If I had much hair it would have been all torn out. No matter how many times I restarted and kept fingers crossed that "this time it's different", it still wouldn't come back to life. It seemed as if my 17" Powerbook was well and truly banjaxed.