Andrew Hickey

My friend Ed Whatley wrote this for me on the occasion of my 40th birthday, other than not not having an Avril or an Anne in my class and Jo liking Hawkwind for some unknown reason, it’s terrifyingly accurate.

“Here is your Birthday Poem per your instructions like TS Eliot The Wasteland about Girls at school liking Bros and Wet Wet Wet when you liked Duran Duran. ”

1) The Burial Of The Dead

Avril is the biggest cunt, I mean
Her and Anne and Jo, giving
Me a mouthful for, lurching
When I see Nick Rhodes
I’ve not ever said that she, really
Is crap for liking Bros, although
They are crap and that is true

How could they not like Rio, Really?
Or bless them for Save A Prayer?
Matt Goss looks like an angry dong,
Placed next to my Le Bon

I feel sorry for them really,
But more so for myself,
I’m here among these heathens who
Like Pellow, pillow, wept

2) A Game of Chess

The boat they rode on, like a battleship at sail,
Made her nascent ember glow, as she grew from a frail
A bedroom wall studded, bloodied, uncovered, here
Was John and Nick on Smash Hits poster, grinning ear to ear
Playing chess against herself, in one way or another,
And thinking ‘Roger is my favourite of/this dandy band of brothers’
Mother calls up ‘turn it down’, and she internal seethes
As DD passion trumps the need to keep the fam’ly pleased
‘Mum, it’s not even loud, and anyway, don’t be such a pill/
This is the Bond one, you said you like it – ‘ A View To A Kill’
‘You heard me, Sarah, turn it down, or I shall do you wrong
And dinner’s ready here, my love so, HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
So Heenan, crossly, picks up ‘phones and crossly plugs them in
O O O O that Birmingham Brag,
It’s so elegant
So intelligent

3) The Fire Sermon

And her friends, who loitered with airs are now City directors;
Departed, to NL address,
By the waters of Lehman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Delivered to men upon me they run,
The Fire Exits are hither, thither and thon,
And I hope I won’t be here for too long

Highbury Bore me, and I wrote a story,
Of Tony and Di and so on,
It undid me and hid me, and what could I do
But sail on the joy of my self-hewn canoe

Burning, burning, burning, burning,
The stage show has tuckered me out
Oh Lord please pluckest me out

4) Death By Water

Wild boys – Wild Boys! never lose it
Wild boys – Wild Boys! ever choose this way?
Wild boys – Wild Boys! Did you close your eyes
Wild boys which is mine?

5) What The Thunder Said

Barbarella didn’t turn up
No luck
And no rock, if there were rock,
As the rock rolled to 2014,
As the pop dreams of 30 years hence and ago,
Look more like a lurid dream
What was it what was it what did I say,
To the small girls long long ago?
To Avril I said that Duran is the best,
And I said that to Anne and to Jo

London Bridge is falling down
Under the weight of The Shard
We murmur our Sanskrit remedies
But our hearts still keep getting too hard
Oh for a taste of those days in the spring
When we thought we’d been dealt a bad card
Oh to just say let’s just like what we like
Because soon we pass out of the charts
So you like what you like, and I’ll like it too
Not because it brings joy to my ears
Because one day too soon we will miss what we knew
As we enter the Autumn of years

Now I'm no longer constrained by having to fight for every vote the Lib Dems can get I thought I would have a bit of fun with a hypothetical election result.

My sort of ideal result* in 2015 would look like this:

Conservatives: 35%
Labour: 32.5%
Lib Dem: 12%
UKIP: 13%

Now before you all accuse me of going mad, allow me to explain.

One of my overriding ambitions in politics is to get electoral reform for Westminster. And a result like above would damn the current system in two different ways. Here is what the Electoral Calculus seat calculator predicts from the above national result:

Conservatives: 295 seats
Labour: 302 seats
Lib Dems: 25 seats
UKIP: 0 seats

Labour 24 seats short of an overall majority.

So despite the fact that the Tories would have got 2.5% more of the vote than Labour they would have 7 fewer seats than them and even with the Lib Dems would be unable to form a majority. This would massively highlight the iniquities of the current system. It would be very amusing to see how excruciating this would be for the Conservatives who are so viscerally opposed to any change in the electoral system being hoist by their own petard in this way. Also knowing that the elevated UKIP vote would certainly have split the vote more on the right than the left and also knowing that if AV had won (that the Tories did the most to ensure failed) would also have saved their skin.

The other major point and the reason why I wanted UKIP to poll higher than the Lib Dems is because immediately we see that despite getting 13% of the vote, UKIP get no seats whereas the Lib Dems on 12% get 25 seats. This is of course utterly preposterous and would again be evident for all to see.

One of the problems in trying to persuade people of the merits of electoral reform is that it is difficult to talk in terms of theory. People need to see concrete evidence of what we are talking about and to actually feel the democratic deficit of FPTP in action. Even then I am not convinced that a one off election result like this would be enough in and of itself to provoke a big enough backlash to trigger a change in the system.

But it would be a good and very entertaining start.


*If we can't get the weird quirks we see here then I would rather the Lib Dems did better than 12% as I think they deserve to. As it happens though what I have predicted here is not beyond the bounds of possibility if the economy continues to recover and UKIP maintain their polling levels and manage to get in on the pre-election leaders debate.

In an article for Liberal Democrat Voice Norman Lamb says he will vote to make it a criminal offence to smoke when there is a child in the car.

That does not outrage me: if you think the health consequences of passive smoking for children are serious enough then it is reasonable to support a ban.

What I find really odd is what Norman goes on to say:

There would be no new police resource allocated to enforcing the ban proactively. But this would send a clear message out that smoking in cars with children is unacceptable, and I support the measure wholeheartedly.

So he thinks that a ban is necessary for the sake of children's health, but is comfortable that nothing is to be done to enforce it.

To me that makes it a pointless law, but for Norman it is worthwhile because it will "send a clear message".

I have never had any time for the idea that it is the job of legislators to send a message of give a clear signal.
As I wrote long ago when discussing a proposal to ban smacking:

Laws do not send messages: they involve people in worry and expense even if they are innocent or not eventually prosecuted.

I tend to oppose legislation that impinges on everyday family life because it is likely to be implemented in an arbitrary way. By announcing that no police resources will be devoted to enforcing it, Norman Lamb and the government make it inevitable with their smoking law.

Norman has also confirmed my suspicion that modern liberals only quote John Stuart Mill and On Liberty when they want to curtail our liberty. As everyone else does, he quotes the Mill's harm principle as though that trite little formula is what makes him worth reading.

The truth, as I once wrote for Liberator, the harm principle is only a small part of On Liberty:

The essence of that work is not concerned with curbing liberty at all but is a glorious hymn in favour of its expansion. 

Writing in Prospect magazine last year, Richard Reeves put it well: 

for Mill, liberty consists of much more than being left alone. It requires choice-making by the individual. "He who lets the world… choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation," he writes. "He who chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties." For Mill, a good life must be a chosen life. 

Or as The Levellers said more recently: "There's only one way of life, and that's your own, your own, your own."

On the whole I found Reeves more impressive as a Mill scholar than as Nick Clegg's strategist.

So if you want to ban smoking in cars when children are present - and as I have been writing this the news has come through that the Commons have supported the proposal - then do so.

But if you do, then have the courage to enforce the law and don't talk about "sending a message".

And please don't blame John Stuart Mill for your lack of courage.

Because. 

1. In the United States (at least), “Freedom of Speech” is a legal term of art, and means a specific thing. Please be aware of what it means. If you use the term incorrectly, you may be corrected, or thought ignorant and not qualified to argue the point. You probably won’t like that.

2. Replace “Freedom of Speech” with “Censorship” in point one. Proceed forward.

3. If you conflate editorial standards and procedure with issues of freedom of speech and censorship, particularly when you are able to, say, post whatever you like on a web site you control, you may not be taken seriously. You may not like that either.

4. If you conflate the ability to say what you want, how you want, with an immunity from criticism or consequence of the speech, you are likely to be surprised. If you are not aware of, or refuse to seriously consider, that many people who might in times past have not publicly objected to your speech now feel free to do so and in no uncertain terms, you may become unhappy. If you choose not to treat those responses and criticisms seriously, your reputation may ultimately suffer. Your reputation today is highly contingent on what you do now, not what you’ve done in the past.

5. If a petition is created that you are asked to sign on to, it makes sense to do due diligence to make sure the particular issue that the petition is designed to address is, in fact, an actual issue. If it is not, you may eventually regret signing on to the petition.

6. Likewise, if you sign a petition because you believe the petition addresses a high-level issue of concern to you, but the text of the petition itself (including various publicly-accessible drafts) is poorly-written, offensive, and contains several basic errors of fact and logic, you should not be surprised when your name and reputation are attached to the worst parts of the petition, rather than the high-level issue you intended to address.

7. As a basic rule, petitions should be drafted by a competent writer who serves your agenda, not his own. If the job is handled by the person in the group least qualified to write, and with the most to gain by his association with the rest of group, be aware that he will not be elevated by his association with you; rather you will be dragged down by your association with him.

8. “Political Correctness” is a catchphrase which today means one of two things. The first is, “I have done no substantial thinking on this topic in at least twenty years and therefore anything I say past this point cannot be treated with any seriousness.” The second is “It is more important for me to continue my ingrained bigotry than it is for you not to be denigrated or offended by my bigotry, because I am lazy and do not wish to be bothered.” If in fact you do not intend to convey either of these two things, you should not use, nor sign on to a document which uses, the phrase “political correctness.”

9. If in your rhetoric you deploy the existence of a friend with certain political/social/racial characteristics to shield you from criticism of your rhetoric, you should be aware that a) it doesn’t work the way you intend, b) it makes your rhetoric more offensive, not less, c) your need to deploy this erstwhile friend to deflect criticism, likely without their consent, implicitly signals the weakness of your rhetoric. Others, particularly those with similar political/social/racial characteristics as your shield, will advantage their own personal experience more than your accounting of the alleged experience of your alleged friend, likely to your detriment. Consonantly, if a document you’ve signed onto is written by someone who deploys a “friend” in this way, remember point 7.

10. The ability to express one’s self is ideally tempered with understanding that how one chooses to say a thing — and whether one chooses to say it at all — is often as important as the fact that one can say it. People of good will can and do have varied points of view; people of good will can and do argue and debate, sometimes strongly, about events and topics important to them. Choosing words wisely is not censorship or an impediment to free speech. What it can be is a way to make sure one’s intentions are understood clearly and cleanly. Choosing words poorly, on the other hand, can signal that one has no intention of treating those on the receiving end of those words with respect. One of these has a happier outcome for everyone than the other.

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In May of 2005, I was at the funeral of a dear friend of mine — Howie Morris, who'd co-starred with the great Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows and other programs. Sid was not there…and no one who knew how poor his health had been faulted him for not being there. At one point, I found myself standing with Andy Griffith and Aaron Ruben, and Aaron said wistfully, "You know we're going to be doing this for Sid any day now." Andy nodded and said, "Poor Sid."

Aaron Ruben, who'd been a writer for Sid and who'd produced The Andy Griffith Show, died in 2010 and Andy died in 2012. Sid outlived both of them. He died this morning at the age of 91.

Here's an obit that, as so many will, makes the mistake of thinking Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen wrote for Your Show of Shows. Since there will be so many others documenting his amazing career and achievements, I'll just write about my experiences with Sid. In the early eighties, when I was Head Writer on the infamous variety show Pink Lady, we were desperate for guests. Even before anyone had seen the show or its stars, no one who mattered wanted to be on it. But Sid Caesar was available so we had him on half the episodes. (That's where the above photo is from.)

He was a strange man…distant and distrusting. It didn't take long to realize a big reason why that was.

Everywhere we went — to lunch, to meetings, just walking together through the studio lot — he was approached by people who said the same thing: "You are the greatest comedian who ever lived." Compliment after compliment. Praise upon praise. And Sid would wince a bit and squeeze his eyebrows (he always squeezed his eyebrows when he was uncomfortable) and prepare himself because he knew the Painful Question was coming. It usually went something like this…

"Why don't you have your own TV show? You're so much funnier than [name of big current comedy star]!" Sid didn't have an answer for that.

He was polite to people who touched that raw nerve. He'd mumble something about idiot network executives, which is kind of an all-purpose excuse — often a valid one — for the odd things that transpire in television.

But the truth was he didn't know. He had once been the King of TV Comedy, dubbed "The Chaplin of Television" by none less than Steve Allen, who knew a little something about funny people. Too often though, he found himself unemployed or appearing in shows and movies that were, well, not worthy of him. Not many shows or movies were. Howie Morris used to say, with real sympathy, "Sid goes wandering through life wondering where his series went and when it's coming back."

Another thing Howie said. He took me once to a lunch group — a bunch of out-of-work actors gathering every Thursday afternoon at Cafe Roma in Beverly Hills. The "cast" was mainly folks who'd worked on Hogan's Heroes, which Howie had directed. As we got there, Robert Clary said, "Sid will be joining us today."

Howie said, "Really? Who are we going to talk to?" Because — and this was one of the big reasons Sid wasn't on TV more — there was no Sid Caesar when he wasn't in character. Give him a role to don, especially a role with a dialect, and no one was funnier. But Sid playing Sid? Nothing.

The best example I can give you of this came a few years ago at another funeral of a colleague that Sid outlived. It was at the memorial for Larry Gelbart and here's how I described it here at the time…

Perhaps the most touching moment came from Sid Caesar. I'll say this as delicately as I can: The great Caesar is not in great shape. He is frail and largely confined to a wheelchair. Unable to get up on stage, he delivered his speech from the front row of the audience, helped to his feet by an aide.

Now, in the best of health, Sid Caesar was never good at speaking as Sid Caesar. In fact, earlier in a clip that was shown, we'd seen Gelbart talking about how uncomfortable Sid was when not enveloped in some sort of character. Now, he tried…but the words just wouldn't come. He started a sentence, lost his way in the middle of it and just froze up. The audience squirmed uncomfortably…

…and then a smart person in the front row – someone said it was Mel Brooks but I don't think it was – called out, "Sid, try it in Italian!"

Instantly, Sid began speaking in the double-talk Italian for which he's so famous. It was utter gibberish but it was wonderful, eloquent gibberish that was somehow infused with love for his friend, Larry. The audience went crazy.

That day at Cafe Roma, Sid was seated to my right. He had only a vague recollection of working with me on Pink Lady, inviting me to his home a few times, seeing him on other occasions. Straining to make conversation, I asked him a couple of things about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'd discussed it with him in his more lucid days but at that lunch, he didn't remember anything that he'd remembered before. Plus, we were constantly interrupted by people who stopped at the table to tell him he was the greatest comedian ever and to ask why he wasn't on television every week.

(By the way: I had the exact same experience — minus the failing memory — whenever I was around Jonathan Winters. Everyone told him he was the funniest man who was ever on television and asked why he wasn't on all the time. Once, I heard Jonathan answer someone, "I will be the next time they revive Hollywood Squares.")

The problem with Sid, of course, was that he wasn't much of a TV star when he was Sid Caesar, sans outrageous character. Another problem was that no matter what anyone hired him for, he tried to turn it into a Your Show of Shows sketch. He was frozen in that era and that kind of comedy. On Pink Lady, we had a sketch where Sid had a line about Bo Derek, who was at the time the person you referenced in a joke to denote a beautiful movie star. Every time Sid said the line, it turned into Marilyn Monroe.

Patiently — and nervously, because Sid was a powerful man with hair-trigger anger — the director would explain to him that the name "Marilyn Monroe" no longer suggested someone men lusted after for her great beauty. Marilyn had been dead for close to twenty years. Sid would nod, say he understood…

…and the next take, it would still be "Marilyn Monroe." At some point, you just plain give up.

There are actors of his generation who work. Dick Van Dyke still works. Shelley Berman still works. Sid's sidekick Carl Reiner still works…a lot. In fact, all three of those men and others I could name turn down more parts than they accept. They've all learned that in the 21st Century, they can't insist on doing things the way they did in 1959 so they grow, they learn, they adapt. Sid just couldn't. He didn't work the last fifteen years or so due to failing health but he didn't work much for years before that due to failing evolution.

It was such a shame. I didn't start writing this to be such a downer. I should be writing about what a funny, clever man he was and celebrate the fine, innovative comedy he gave us. The trouble is that I couldn't look at him without thinking what a waste it was of one of the most brilliant comedians who ever lived. When that man was at his best, there was nobody better. Nobody.

Richard Feynman speaking:

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. And he says, “You see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is. But you as a scientist take this all apart, and it becomes a dull thing.” And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people, and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting: it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery, and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

I find in this passage a helpful argument for the value of close reading. Flower: poem. To look at a poem closely is to deepen its excitement, mystery, and capacity to inspire awe.

Here is Feynman speaking. I found my way to this clip via a Jason Kottke post unrelated to poetry. The transcription and punctuation are mine.

Related reading
All OCA poetry posts (Pinboard)
Richard Feynman on honors

I'm constantly bumping into things and I often have scrapes and bumps and bruises on my body but can't remember how they got there. It's the same for my kids and it's all to do with spatial awareness.

Spatial awareness, which is often also referred to as motor clumsiness is the ability to think about a figure, usually your own body, in three dimensions. 

Specifically it's about doing the mental calculations required to move your body through spaces without hitting other objects (unless you're hitting them on purpose, as in bat and ball games).  It's not always about your body though because sometimes it's about other moving objects, like catching a ball for instance, or "extended parts" of your body, such as  when moving furniture from one room to another without bumping into walls.

A lack of spacial awareness isn't one on of the defining criteria for autism and indeed I've seen some children on the spectrum with amazing ball control skills.  It is however one of the more common problems I've seen.

Testing for Spacial Awareness Problems
Obviously the easiest of the tests for spacial awareness is to throw a ball to your child and see whether or not he or she can catch it, more than once. In fact, ten times in a row is a good test.  Note that you're throwing the ball to them, not trying to make it difficult to catch.

Ball skills can be learned though, with practice and once your child has mastered these, it doesn't follow that their spacial awareness problems are "fixed", it simply means that they have better ball skills.

Another test is to test your child's ability to make their way through a maze.  Of course, mazes aren't easy to come by (except on paper) so unless you live near one, it's unlikely to be a test you can complete.

There's an online test here which I found very difficult and in which I only scored average. It could account for my poor spatial awareness.  I don't have enough information to say whether it's a good test or not but it is similar to other spatial tests I've seen. I would expect this test to be far too difficult for children.

Improving Spatial Awareness
Your spatial awareness isn't a static skill and even though it's common for people with aspergers to be a little "behind" it's something that can be improved on with a little effort. The best way to improve this skill is to use it. For children, this means getting off the computer and using this skill in real life.

Obstacle courses are a good starting point and you don't have to join the army to use one.  You'll find obstacle courses at scout centers and camp sites and of course, if you're savvy, you can make one yourself. Other things that can help to improve spatial awareness are things like climbing and body awareness sports like Karate.

If nothing else, improving your spatial awareness could save you a few bruises in the future.

This morning, commenter rrtucci pointed me to TIME Magazine’s cover story about D-Wave (yes, in today’s digital media environment, I need Shtetl-Optimized readers to tell me what’s on the cover of TIME…).  rrtucci predicted that, soon after reading the article, I’d be hospitalized with a severe stress-induced bleeding ulcer.  Undeterred, I grit my teeth, paid the $5 to go behind the paywall, and read the article.

The article, by Lev Grossman, could certainly be a lot worse.  If you get to the end, it discusses the experiments by Matthias Troyer’s group, and it makes clear the lack of any practically-relevant speedup today from the D-Wave devices.  It also includes a few skeptical quotes:

“In quantum computing, we have to be careful what we mean by ‘utilizing quantum effects,’” says Monroe, the University of Maryland scientist, who’s among the doubters. “This generally means that we are able to store superpositions of information in such a way that the system retains its ‘fuzziness,’ or quantum coherence, so that it can perform tasks that are impossible otherwise. And by that token there is no evidence that the D-Wave machine is utilizing quantum effects.”

One of the closest observers of the controversy has been Scott Aaronson, an associate professor at MIT and the author of a highly influential quantum-computing blog [aww, shucks --SA]. He remains, at best, cautious. “I’m convinced … that interesting quantum effects are probably present in D-Wave’s devices,” he wrote in an email. “But I’m not convinced that those effects, right now, are playing any causal role in solving any problems faster than we could solve them with a classical computer. Nor do I think there’s any good argument that D-Wave’s current approach, scaled up, will lead to such a speedup in the future. It might, but there’s currently no good reason to think so.”

Happily, the quote from me is something that I actually agreed with at the time I said it!  Today, having read the Shin et al. paper—which hadn’t yet come out when Grossman emailed me—I might tone down the statement “I’m convinced … that interesting quantum effects are probably present” to something like: “there’s pretty good evidence for quantum effects like entanglement at a ‘local’ level, but at the ‘global’ level we really have no idea.”

Alas, ultimately I regard this article as another victim (through no fault of the writer, possibly) of the strange conventions of modern journalism.  Maybe I can best explain those conventions with a quickie illustration:

MAGIC 8-BALL: THE RENEGADE MATH WHIZ WHO COULD CHANGE NUMBERS FOREVER

An eccentric billionaire, whose fascinating hobbies include nude skydiving and shark-taming, has been shaking up the scientific world lately with his controversial claim that 8+0 equals 17  [... six more pages about the billionaire redacted ...]  It must be said that mathematicians, who we reached for comment because we’re diligent reporters, have tended to be miffed, skeptical, and sometimes even sarcastic about the billionaire’s claims.  Not surprisingly, though, the billionaire and his supporters have had some dismissive comments of their own about the mathematicians.  So, which side is right?  Or is the truth somewhere in the middle?  At this early stage, it’s hard for an outsider to say.  In the meantime, the raging controversy itself is reason enough for us to be covering this story using this story template.  Stay tuned for more!

As shown (for example) by Will Bourne’s story in Inc. magazine, it’s possible for a popular magazine to break out of the above template when covering D-Wave, or at least bend it more toward reality.  But it’s not easy.

More detailed comments:

• The article gets off on a weird foot in the very first paragraph, describing the insides of D-Wave’s devices as “the coldest place in the universe.”  Err, 20mK is pretty cold, but colder temperatures are routinely achieved in many other physics experiments.  (Are D-Wave’s the coldest current, continuously-operating experiments, or something like that?  I dunno: counterexamples, anyone?  I’ve learned from experts that they’re not, not even close.  I heard from someone who had a bunch of dilution fridges running at 10mK in the lab he was emailing me from…)

• The article jumps enthusiastically into the standard Quantum Computing = Exponential Parallelism Fallacy (the QC=EPF), which is so common to QC journalism that I don’t know if it’s even worth pointing it out anymore (but here I am doing so).

• Commendably, the article states clearly that QCs would offer speedups only for certain specific problems, not others; that D-Wave’s devices are designed only for adiabatic optimization, and wouldn’t be useful (e.g.) for codebreaking; and that even for optimization, “D-Wave’s hardware isn’t powerful enough or well enough understood to show serious quantum speedup yet.”  But there’s a crucial further point that the article doesn’t make: namely, that we have no idea yet whether adiabatic optimization is something where quantum computers can give any practically-important speedup.  In other words, even if you could implement adiabatic optimization perfectly—at zero temperature, with zero decoherence—we still don’t know whether there’s any quantum speedup to be had that way, for any of the nifty applications that the article mentions: “software design, tumor treatments, logistical planning, the stock market, airlines schedules, the search for Earth-like planets in other solar systems, and in particular machine learning.”  In that respect, adiabatic optimization is extremely different from (e.g.) Shor’s factoring algorithm or quantum simulation: things where we know how much speedup we could get, at least compared to the best currently-known classical algorithms.  But I better stop now, since I feel myself entering an infinite loop (and I didn’t even need the adiabatic algorithm to detect it).

As you no doubt will have noticed if you’ve looked at a newspaper in the last few months, the Lib Dems are currently being ravaged by scandals concerning sexual harrassment, largely revolving around Lord Chris Rennard and Mike Hancock MP. I’m not going to comment on those particular allegations – I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said before. All I will say is that it’s a shame that some in the media and at the grassroots of other parties are trying to frame this as a Lib Dem specific problem. A culture of sexism and abuse of power exists across all major parties, and what I’ve heard about other parties in private is far worse than anything that’s now public about the Lib Dems. The other party leaders aren’t seeking to make political capital out of the allegations because they know they could rapidly find themselves hoisted on the petard of any criticism they make.

LDHQ is making changes – bringing policies and procedures up to date (which doesn’t affect any of the cases in progress as they can’t be applied retroactively), and appointing a pastoral care officer who can be a point of contact for all party members and staff. That appointment was one of the recommendations of the Morrissey Report commissioned by the party. The Report seems to have filtered into party culture – most people I talk to are aware of its existence, broadly aware of its content, and actively mention it in conversations.

Rock The Boat is putting pressure on the leadership from the grassroots, to make sure that the overarching problem isn’t ignored. However, as a party we’re naturally resistant to top-down edicts from the Leader or President about how we should behave, and that’s a good thing. For everybody complaining that Nick as leader doesn’t have the ability to impose his will on the membership on this issue, imagine how it would be if he had the ability to do so on other issues! Some people may be resistant to change because they themselves have skeletons in their closet – many of our members have been around for decades, since a time when it was more culturally acceptable (though obviously not morally OK) to behave in certain ways towards subordinates, women etc. and are concerned that their past behaviour will be judged by modern standards. Still, we should look at ways we can improve awareness from the grassroots of the party and reduce the risk of harrassment within our ranks.

One thing that’s clear is that the cases currently in the public eye have one thing in common – that complaints were made early on, but either ignored or not handled correctly. As a local party officer, I’ve not had training in how to recognise problems or handle complaints, and I believe this is common for volunteers across parties. I’m hoping that up-to-date training will become available post-Morrissey Report, but if it’s run only as a voluntary effort at Federal Conference, then only the people with the time and money to attend Conference, and the will to attend the training. The latter part is crucial – the kind of person who would voluntarily attend such training is probably the kind of person who doesn’t need to. Unfortunately, the Federal Party has no ability to mandate officers to attend training.

At the North West Lib Dems executive yesterday, I made a proposal which was accepted by the rest of the Executive. I think it combines the best of carrot and stick – making training on harrassment part of a wider package to increase its overall value, and providing an incentive to attend / disincentive not to. I also think that regional parties are close enough to local parties for this to work without seeming like a diktat from on high. In outline, we agreed that the region should:

1. Create a package of training for local party officers focussed on:
   1. Dealing with complaints and recognising harrassment
   2. Valuing and improving diversity
   3. Local party officer roles and responsibilities
2. Work with party trainers throughout the region to make it available as locally as possible
3. Advertise the package to local party execs and invite them to attend it (not until after the Euros this year; in Jan/Feb in future years)
4. Consider the local party’s attendance on the training when it comes to allocating support and resources from the Regional Party to local parties
5. Work with the party’s national Pastoral Care Officer and Training Officer on the above

I’m not sure how this’ll work in other regions – I get the impression that the NW regional party is particularly effective compared to others. But it’d be good to see other regions be proactive on this as well, and by working with LDHQ we can include whatever they’re doing in our work. I have offered to lead on this for the regional party and will make sure I monitor progress, and I hope we can begin to offer the training after the European elections and as ongoing work in future years. Everybody has a responsibility to challenge the harm done to our fellow party members by abuse of power – whether it’s the particular power afforded by elected office or employment, or the general power imbalance of the patriarchy. We must make sure that all party members, particularly those in positions of responsibility, have the tools they need to meet that responsibility.

At the weekend, I watched the film Billy Liar and then I went and sat in a pub and scribbled some notes on a piece of paper and then I typed them up and rearranged them a little bit to produce this blog post. It contains spoilers. If you have not seen the film Billy Liar, then do not read this blog post. Watch the film. If you have not seen the film and ignore this warning and read the post anyway, do not complain to me. I am not interested in anything you have to say. 

It wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed on that train to London.

I think my brother had mentioned it first. ‘Oh, there’s this film you might like on tomorrow.’ I suspect he’d first discovered it through Saint Etienne: 

I forgot about it, but then, sitting on a train to Waterloo, I saw it recommended on the TV and film page of the Melody Maker. Billy Liar. I wasn’t going to London for any particular reason – I certainly wasn’t planning to start a new life as a scriptwriter – it was just something to do. It must have been the school holidays. A Wednesday or Thursday. I often made the twenty-five minute journey into London just to wander around. Growing up in Worcester Park, London didn’t have the same mystique as it did for Billy Fisher. Living twenty-five minutes away meant that the city wasn’t an everyday fact like it would be for a true Londoner, but it was always an option. 

I got off the train, went home, set the video, then went back to the station and got the next train. I’m not sure how many times I’ve watched the film in the sixteen or seventeen years since then, but it’s a lot. I bought the film on VHS, and then when I got a DVD player, I bought the film on DVD. If at some point I get a Blu-ray player, I’ll buy it on Blu-ray. And whatever format replaces that, I’ll buy it on that too.

I’m not sure what it is about the film that I love so much. Everything, I suppose. The funny bits are very funny:

‘I hope my singing didn’t put you off’

And the sad bits are heartbreakingly sad:

You think that’s why I’m always going away, don’t you? It’s not that. Sometimes I want to go away. It’s not you, Billy. It’s this town. It’s the people we know. I don’t like knowing everybody. I don’t like becoming a part of things, do you know what I mean? What I’d like to be is invisible. I’d like to be able to move around without having to explain anything.

Liz would never get a free sandwich from Pret.

Originally a novel, then adapted into a play (with the action limited to a single set of the ground floor of the Fisher house), the film manages to be (largely) faithful to the original book, while celebrating the potential of film to the fullest. The use of sound and photography are just spectacular.

Set just before the grim, grey 1950s transformed into the colourful 1960s, the film documents the tearing down of one age and the building of a new one to replace it. The wrecking balls knocking down buildings; the constant sound of construction works in the background; Shadrack installing radio mics in his funeral fleet; the prototype plastic coffin he keeps on his desk (‘You know by the time we’re burying you, you’ll be going off in one of these? Plastic, you know that? Yes, you see people don’t realise, it’s all clean lines nowadays. All these frills and fancies are going out. It’s all old. Same as I tell Councillor Duxbury, you have to move with the times. No use living in one style and dying in another, is it?’)

I saw the film again this weekend at the Science Museum as part of their Only In England exhibition of photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr, two photographers whose work documents a sense of Englishness which is being erased (Ray-Jones dedicated one of his notebooks to the ‘Insanity of Modernity’),  however, Billy Liar is more ambivalent towards these changes than the more wistful work of Parr and Ray-Jones.

Featuring in the novel, but absent from the film, is a local newspaper columnist who writes sentimental platitudes about Yorkshire under the name ‘Man o’ The Dales’. Although Billy and his friend Arthur mock the journalist and his attitudes (‘I want progress, but a Yorkshire tradition of progress’), there’s the feeling that Waterhouse is not as comfortable with the changes that are about to happen as Schlesinger is and perhaps sympathises more with the columnist than with Fisher himself. Schlesinger was born in London, unlike Yorkshire-born Waterhouse and Billy Liar was his second feature film, having started out making documentaries like Terminus (1961), a day in the life of Waterloo station, made for British Transport Films:

With its jazzy soundtrack, snippets of overheard conversation, station announcements, blasts of steam and train whistles, interspersed with shots showing the wide variety of people passing through the station – different ages, genders and races all mixing together – the film earned Schlesinger his first BAFTA award. Schlesinger already had the life that Billy dreams of.

Or at least partly dreams of. In the book, Billy describes how he has developed two different types of thinking (‘Three, if ordinary thoughts were counted’):

I called them No.1 thinking and No.2 thinking. No.1 thinking was voluntary, but No.2 thinking was not; it concerned itself with obsessional speculations about the scope and nature of disease (such as a persistent yawn that was probably symptomatic of sarcoma of the jaw), the probable consequences of actual misdemeanours, and the solutions to desperate problems, such as what would one do, what would one actually do, in the case of having a firework jammed in one’s ear by mischievous boys. The way out of all this was to lull myself into a No.1 thinking bout, taking the fast excursion to Ambrosia, indulging in hypothetical conversations with Bertrand Russell, fusing and magnifying the ordinary thoughts of the day so that I was a famous comedian at the Ambrosia State Opera, the only stage personality ever to reach the rank of president.

Based on this scale, you could probably call Billy’s dream of working as a scriptwriter for Danny Boon in London a sort of 0.5 thinking. It’s a fantasy, but more realistic than his visions of Ambrosia. He has at least made some efforts to realise this dream by sending some scripts to Boon’s office. Tragically though, he thinks this is enough. This is a fantasy he actually believes he is going to achieve. Having sent his material to Boon, he appears naive enough to think that the form letter he receives in return is a genuine job offer. Or does he? Of course, with a story-teller like Fisher, it’s hard to tell what he really thinks – he’s an unreliable witness. But the way he shows the Boon letter to his mother over breakfast and the fact he offers his resignation at the funeral parlour suggests he does believe it, even if he does pretend to speak to Boon on the phone in order to impress Arthur.

There’s something incredibly schoolboy-ish about Billy’s full-on No.1 thinking Ambrosia fantasies. He sees himself as this beloved (though quasi-fascistic) ruler of a proud, war-torn nation. The single figure who can restore the country to its former glory. But even this is ridiculous. He can barely keep down a job as an undertaker’s clerk. In moments when I indulge in my own variety of No.1 thinking, I imagine myself as extraordinarily wealthy, with an enormous house. But the deeper I go into this fantasy world, the less comfortable I am. If I had a huge house, I’d probably have to get a cleaner. I don’t know if I’d be happy about that. It would be awkward. Not only that, but I’d probably lose touch with most of my friends too as our lifestyles would be so dramatically different and I’d have to become friends with a load of fellow billionaires instead, and I bet they’d all be bell-ends. So then I downgrade my fantasy to just being financially secure and having a nice enough house and a job I enjoy which isn’t too demanding. Having to rebuild an entire nation sounds like a nightmare. You’d probably have to work weekends and there’d be loads of travel involved. This, then, is the limit of my imagination: I am a man too lazy to be a fantasist.

Whether it’s 0.5 thinking or No.1 thinking, the obvious truth is that Billy wouldn’t last five minutes in London. He’s not like Liz. Liz is everything that Billy wishes he was but is too afraid to let himself become. She’s the 1960s in a 1950s world. She’s Julie fucking Christie.

Liz is Billy without any of the baggage; both metaphorically and literally – seemingly unrestricted by family or work commitments, Liz can come and go as she likes (‘She goes where she feels like. She’s crazy – she just enjoys herself. She does all sorts – waitress, typist, she worked at Butlin’s last year.’) and without Billy’s ‘Guilt Chest’, the name used in the novel to describe the suitcase kept under his bed (‘A long while ago, when it contained no more than the scribbled postcards from Liz and a few saccharine notes from the Witch, I had started to call this trunk my Guilt Chest. Any grain of facetiousness there had been in this description had long since disappeared.’ ‘The Witch’ being Billy’s unpleasant nickname for his fiancée Barbara, sensibly dropped from the film).

Julie Christie’s Liz is carefree, independent, intelligent, sexually confident, funny, creative and fearless in her determination to carve out her own path in life. Waterhouse’s novel might be about a deluded, cowardly, dishonest, pathetic, unpleasant, vulnerable man, but the star of the film is Christie. While Tom Courtenay’s performance is astonishing, capturing all of the complexities of Fisher’s character; from the moment she appears on screen, swinging her bag as she walks down the street, the film is about her.

After the screening at the Science Museum, the exhibition’s curator, Greg Hobson, and David Alan Mellor, who had contributed an essay to the exhibition’s catalogue, discussed the film. Mellor made the point that Billy Liar essentially killed off the northern-realist kitchen-sink drama genre (which it was only loosely part of anyway). With the Merseybeat explosion in the early 1960s, the focus of a lot of pop culture suddenly shifted north, but film seemingly moved in the opposite direction. There is probably some truth in this, and it is almost as if the film industry stayed on the train to London with Liz. Certainly Schlesinger and Christie’s next film together would appear to back up this theory:

But Billy didn’t stay on the train to London with Julie Christie and John Schlesinger. He got off the train. Of course he did. We knew he would. Liz knew he would. With just a few minutes left before the train departs, an increasingly panicky Billy decides to get some milk from a vending machine in the station to drink on the journey (I for one would welcome the return of milk vending machines). Resigned to the fact that he won’t be going to London with her, Liz leaves Billy’s suitcase on the platform waiting for him.

For Liz, the idea of going to London is something simple (‘You just get on a train, and four hours later, there you are’). But Billy doesn’t have her confidence. Instead, he hides behind excuses and fudges (‘There are all sorts of arrangements to make’). Both of them hate living in this humdrum town (this town will drag you down), but Liz’s solution is to keep moving, to stay alive, to move on to somewhere new, to start again. You could say she’s always running away, but at least she’s living her life, she’s not hiding from the world.

Billy dreams of starting a new life too (‘I turn over a new leaf every day, but the blots show through’) but his solution is to hide away from reality. Even when he’s telling Liz about Ambrosia; the first time he’s ever told anyone about his secret life; when he’s describing his dream of the future with the one person who actually understands him; when he’s making himself more vulnerable than he ever has before; the closest possible realisation of his only shot at true happiness – he still wants to hide. The very most he allows himself is a little room in their house together where they can dress up and play with toy soldiers, pretending to run a made-up country together (‘I’m supposed to be the Prime Minister and you’re the Foreign Secretary or something’ he tells her, only to have this mocked by that cunt Stamp).

Every other time I’ve watched this film, I’ve prayed that Billy will get back on the train to London. But watching it again, I felt something different. I think it’s the right ending for Billy. Though the circumstances of the train journey are subtly different in the book compared to the film, it’s important that he doesn’t get back on that train. The ambivalence shown towards the modern world and the prices we pay for progress is mirrored by the ambivalence of the ending.

It would have been easy to go for a ‘happy ending’ in which Billy and Liz get the train together and go to London, or a ‘sad ending’ where Billy walks back home alone, devastated after the day’s events. But the film manages something else.

Consider the day that Billy has had: in the single 24-hour period of Billy’s life which is featured in the story, on that single Saturday, Billy has had two women break off their engagements with him; his lies at work have been exposed; his lies at home have been exposed; his bedroom has been torn apart; his grandmother has died; he’s fallen out with his best friend; he has confessed his most intimate secrets to the love of his life, only to have them torn to pieces by his work colleague; he’s had his offer of resignation refused by the boss that he hates; he’s had the one fantasy that he actually believed in, working for Danny Boon, smashed in front of him, only for it to be announced to everyone at the Roxy, and he has messed up his only chance to go to London and start a new life with the one woman he truly loves and who actually understands him.

And yet, despite all this, he isn’t broken by what has happened. As he walks back home, suitcase in hand, he is joined by a troop of Ambrosian soldiers. Despite everything that has happened, he still has his fantasy life to protect him. It’s the ultimate act of defiance. A true celebration of the indefatigable human spirit in spite of everything the world has to throw at it. As he enters the house, we know he’ll be okay. Or at least the closest to okay that we could ever hope for him.

I’m glad I got off the train to London that day, and I’m glad Billy did too. 

It is the most infamous segment of time in American political history. It is the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap left on the Watergate tapes, the result of an attempted erasure of the material by then-President Richard Nixon himself. For over 40 years, historians, conspiracists, and Nixon’s friends and foes alike have puzzled over the contents of the mysterious gap, but the answer was thought forever lost.

Until now.

Modern advances in magnetic restoration technology, as well as great leaps forward in sound editing with the advent of the digital age, have at long last made it possible to reconstruct the conversation over the lost 18 1/2 minutes. For the first time, this site presents excerpts from the restored gap, a surprising series of moments between Nixon and his top aide, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman. Candid, revelatory and sometimes shocking, it is a remarkable portrait in sound of our most controversial ­ and notorious ­ leader.

***

“So, what do you think of that Joey Heatherton?”

“I don’t think about her, Bob. I’m a married man.”

“I saw her on that Hollywood Squares show last year. Whoo-ee! Quite a looker, I must say.”

“I’m sure she’s great, Bob. Now, what about these goddamn plumbers, squeezing us?”

“She was on Klimbim, too.”

“What the fuck is Klimbim?”

“Some German show. I saw it when I was over there with the Cubans. It’s like Laugh-In.”

“Can’t we concentrate on the matter at hand?”

“Do you think I have a shot with her?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You could pull some strings. You’re still the president.”

“This is really more of a Kissinger thing, Bob.”

***

“Do you like to do it like that, Bob?”

“Er…like what, Mr. President?”

“You know. From back there.”

“Um…do you?”

“What? Of course not, Bob! For Christ’s sake!”

“Uh…well, um. Me neither, then. I mean, too.”

“I bet Liddy does.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you know. He just seems like the type.”

***

“I didn’t even want to go to China. It was that fucking Kissinger’s idea. Those people stink, Bob.”

“Uh huh.”

“Nothing but noodles and ping pong and wall-to-wall Commies. I think that’s where dope comes from too.”

“Uh huh.”

“The only thing we got out of the whole goddamn deal was checkers.”

“Uh h…what?”

“Checkers! That’s all we got from those red bastards!”

“Checkers? Your dog?”

“No, for fuck’s sake, Bob, Chinese checkers! Christ! Why don’t you listen to me?”

“Sorry, sir.”

***

“So what do you call this again, Bob?”

“It’s called ’4’33″‘, Mr. President. It’s by John Cage.”

“Let’s listen to it now.”

***

“…and so, that’s how I authorized the break-in at the Watergate Hotel as part of my plan to interfere with the Democratic National Convention.”

“Sir…”

“I planned the whole thing. I had complete knowledge of it from start to finish.”

“Mr. President, I…”

“And, of course, ever since that time, I have been actively covering up the entire thing, as you are of course aware from these conversations we’ve been having, and are in fact still having at this very moment.”

“Dick, for God’s sake! Don’t you realize how incriminating this is?”

“Jesus, Bob, don’t be such a pantywaist. I’m going to erase all these tapes. Now quit being such a nervous Nellie and go tell Ford to put on the nurses’ outfit and get in here.”

Fred Kaplan writes about the impact of The Beatles first appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, which — hard for some of us to believe — happened fifty years ago today. I do not recall their appearances as feeling at the time like a seismic shift in our culture, an escape from the malaise of the Kennedy Assassination or anything that seemed to be lasting. At least at Emerson Junior High School, all it was was something that everyone was talking about the next day.

No one seemed to dislike them, not even any teachers. Apart from a few very loud girls, no one seemed to understand why we were all talking about them…but the point is we were talking about them. General consensus? They were four nice-looking chaps with a distinctive look who sang hummable, bouncy songs and made certain young ladies in Mr. Sullivan's audience shriek and cry. Even other girls of the kind shown getting hysterical in Ed's theater couldn't quite explain those ladies' reactions. Were they planted and paid to act like that? Or was it — more likely — that they were doing it because others were doing it? When you're that age, you often need no more reason to do anything than that others are doing it.

Oh — and why did no female performer ever foment the same crazed reactions from adolescent boys that Elvis or the Fab Four had triggered? Adolescent boys are, after all, supposed to have even more unstable hormones than adolescent girls. So that was an unanswerable question many asked.

In short: We at Emerson liked the four guys from Liverpool well enough. We just didn't see what all the fuss was about. Over the following months, the fuss seemed to have a life of its own. I thought a lot of kids my age — including, eventually, some males — became Beatles fans because adults were decrying and bemoaning them. That more than anything defined what they did as Our Music…and defending Our Music became, as it so often has, the battle we fought to establish Our Right to not become our parents or precisely what they wanted us to be.

In my world then, length of hair became a kind of beachhead for the boys — a line drawn in the sand. My friend Dan seemed to be growing his longer and longer just to stand his ground when his father or the boy's vice-principal at Emerson told him to go get a haircut. I don't know how many guys my age had arguments with their folks that included the phrases, "It's my hair" and "Not until you're 21, it isn't." That all really started, at least around me, when the Beatles did Ed's show.

It was a war I, personally, never had to wage. As I've written here, my father was most encouraging that I should not become like him. I did in many ways but in a key one — deciding what I was going to do with my life — I was free to do anything but follow in his footsteps. They led to a lifelong job in which he felt trapped and stifled. So I never felt any urge to grow my hair longer than my parents wanted or play music they hated. Actually, I don't think there was any music they hated but if there was, it wasn't the music of John, Paul, George, Ringo and My Generation.

Looking back, it's amazing how anyone argued over what they sang on Ed's show. It was so harmless and non-revolutionary. They even performed a tune from The Music Man. Eventually, The Boys would evolve as musicians and songwriters. They would do songs that most adults didn't "get" and a few which even seemed threatening or confrontational. That's why they became legendary. We wouldn't be talking about them today if all they did was things like "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Within months, you could get that kind of thing from The Dave Clark Five or Freddie and the Dreamers or hundreds of other groups.

I think what now impresses me more about that first show is Ed…and Ed Sullivan's appeal is now hard to understand. It's like why the hell did that guy have a prime-time TV show for 23 years? He was stiff and unfunny and always the least talented man on his stage.

There are two explanations for that. One is how he got his show in the first place and the other is his how he stayed on so long.

How he got his show in the first place is simple: He went on in June of '48. Back then, true professionals were in movies and on radio. There were a lot of guys on TV then who were as awkward and outta-place as Ed. He'd been a newspaper columnist at a time when that post conferred a lot of power. Performers didn't want to get on the wrong side of Ed or his competitor and sworn enemy, Walter Winchell. This gave columnists the power to get performers to perform.

Ed, who loved being on stage and hearing applause, used this position during World War II to organize shows for the U.S.O. and returning servicemen and to sell war bonds. He was good at recruiting acts but for reasons of self-promotion and ego, he never recruited a real Master of Ceremonies. He did it himself and he got away with it because as uncharming and unfunny as he was, it didn't matter. He was never more than a minute from bringing you someone who did belong on a stage.

In 1948, he carried that hosting over to a primitive TV show called The Toast of the Town. The premise was that Ed, as a columnist with his finger on the pulsebeat of the entertainment industry, would present the hottest acts then playing Manhattan. And even if he was stiffer than an overstarched shirt introducing them on the show, he was good at booking them on the show so his on-camera manner didn't matter much. It was a well-enough-booked show that he managed to stick around as television took off and the truly-talented folks from radio jumped in, displacing all the amateurish hosts and personalities.

Well, all but Ed.

He stayed on and he stayed on because he wanted so badly to be a TV star instead of just another newspaper columnist. Obviously, the money was a big reason but folks who knew Ed said that the real perk was being recognized in public. He loved it, they said. Absolutely loved it.

Each Sunday night, Ed did his show live from the theater in New York where Mr. Letterman now works. After the broadcast, Ed would do a little post-mortem, thanking most of his guests, discussing what went right or wrong with his staff, etc. Famously, there was the evening when he spent a half-hour or so screaming at Jackie Mason for kinda/sorta (but not really) giving the finger on camera. Rickie Layne, a ventriloquist who did Ed's show 87 thousand times with his puppet Velvel, told me that Ed would have to hurry through his post-show ritual because he had two things he had to do and dearly wanted to do.

One was to sign autographs at the stage door. There was always, even in the rain or snow, a crowd out there. It was vital to Ed to get out to them before they gave up and went home. Then he'd make his way to a waiting car that would take him to a post-show dinner with the biggest performer on that evening's show he could get to eat with him. Rickie said, "It wasn't always the biggest star on the show. Sometimes, that person had to rush off and catch a plane or perform somewhere else. But he always managed to find someone bigger than Velvel and me."

Ed and his guest would dine at a restaurant like Danny's Hideaway, which despite its name was a place celebrities went to be seen. Mr. Sullivan's night would not be complete unless he'd be dining there with someone like Tony Bennett and a fan would approach the table for autographs and treat them like stars of equal magnitude. Even better was when the approacher would ask Ed to sign his name and ignore Tony. Or Lena Horne or Alan King or whoever it was.

Toast of the Town became The Ed Sullivan Show and Studio 50, where he did the program, became The Ed Sullivan Theater. In-between those two upgrades of honor, there came a time when Ed's Sunday evening ratings supremacy was seriously challenged — by Steve Allen. Allen had been starring on the original Tonight Show on NBC and the network decided to put him on in prime-time. The premise was that Steve, as a performer who could so everything — sing, play the piano, tell jokes, even dance a little — could knock off Ed, the guy who could do none of those. So in 1956, the two men went head-to-head in a much publicized duel for 8 PM Sunday nights.

The smart money, of course, was on Steve…but it was Ed who emerged triumphant. Why? Probably because he wanted it more.

Allen was a guy who went from show to show all his life. When one Steve Allen Show was canceled, he knew there was another one in the offing…and indeed, there usually was. But for Ed, there was only on Ed Sullivan Show. He knew that once he lost that one, there would never be another…nor would there be much place for him in show business. Steve was fighting for the success of his current gig. Ed was fighting to stay on TV and to not go back to being a newspaper columnist that no one recognized on the street.

So he fought harder than anyone. He paid more for acts and/or used his power to get the performers he wanted to come in and do his show. From all reports, he was not above a little blackmail or threatening an agent: "You deliver this client of yours or I'll see that CBS never hires any of your people." That wouldn't be his opening move. He'd offer more money and a great showcase and even trade-offs: "You deliver this client and I'll book this other client of yours." But he was not reticent to use the threats or whatever else it took to get what he wanted…and he usually did.

Steve Allen was long since vanquished by the time The Beatles were the act Ed wanted to book but he went after them with the same determination. As you look back, it was so natural that his was the show that brought them to America. And he gave them such a big fanfare that he made it a major event. Give the guy credit for that.

People say there will never be another Beatles. I agree. But there will also never be another Sullivan. And February 9, 1964 would not have been a world-changing date without all five of them: John, Paul, George, Ringo and Ed. Some people called the disc jockey known as Murray the K "the fifth Beatle." Nonsense. The fifth Beatle was Edward Vincent Sullivan…and without him, I'm not sure we'd have had the other four.

Back in November, I wrote about how I had thought my way out of some free mash in a branch of EAT.

On that occasion, I turned down the offer of free food, but yesterday, I was gifted a sandwich. I had gone into Pret, as I do on most days. I stood in front of the chiller cabinets and chose what I wanted (a Classic Super Club) and went to pay. There was a bit of a queue, so I waited and then when it was my turn to be served, I put the sandwich on the counter and took out my wallet. At this point in the process, the other person usually asks if I want the sandwich to eat in or take away. I say “Eat in” (each time I say this, I always point down with my finger at the same time to emphasise the point. I don’t mean to do this, but it happens every time), and then I pay, the sandwich is put on a tray, along with two paper napkins and I go to find somewhere to sit.

This time, however, things didn’t follow this pattern. I placed the sandwich on the counter and as instead of asking if I wanted to eat in or take away, the woman said “It’s on the house”. I paused. “It’s on the house” she repeated. “Eat in” I said in panic. “It’s on the house” she said again. I put my wallet back into my pocket, took my sandwich and slowly walked over to a nearby table.

Today, I went back. I stood in front of the chiller cabinets. I made my selection (Tuna Nicoise Salad) and queued up. I got to the counter and saw same the woman from yesterday. I placed the salad on the counter and assumed everything would be back to normal. “Is that to eat in or take away?” were the words I hoped to hear from her. Instead, she said “It’s on the house.” The second day in a row. I went to sit down and eat my salad, confused by what was happening in the world.

Pret are known for the enthusiasm of their staff. Sometimes this enthusiasm can be intimidating:

I find the people who work in Pret a Manger truly terrifying.—
James Ward (@iamjamesward) November 04, 2009

Sometimes their enthusiasm can be over-bearing:

I'd like to see Mary Portas go into a branch of Pret and say "OK guys, tone it down a little. You're selling fucking sandwiches".—
James Ward (@iamjamesward) January 25, 2011

As this article in the New York Times explains:

Every new employee gets a thick binder of instructions. It states, for example, that employees should be “bustling around and being active” on the floor, not “standing around looking bored.” It encourages them to occasionally hand out free coffee or cakes to regulars, and not “hide your true character” with customers.

So I have been identified as a regular. This makes me uncomfortable. When I was in sixth form, we would go to a shop across the road during our free periods or at lunchtime. I’d always buy the same thing. A packet of Jaffa Cakes and a can of Dr Pepper. I did this for several months until one day, the woman behind the counter said “Oh, the usual is it?” As soon as she said that, I knew I could never go back to that shop. I started going to the newsagents two doors down instead. But not only that, I stopped buying my “usual”. I started buying two packets of Salt & Vinegar Discos and a can of Cherry Coke instead. I didn’t want the two shopkeepers to somehow identify me. Possibly during a late-night meeting of the Malden Manor traders association, where one shopkeeper complains that one of their regular customers has disappeared and discovers that I’d changed allegiances. I wanted to disappear completely. I wanted to be invisible.

If I get a free sandwich on Monday, I’m never going back.

UPDATE: I went to Pret on Monday. The same woman served me once again. I paid for my sandwich.

It's vital to pay attention, amid all the glitz and Olympic glamor, to what's going on under the surface in Russia. The show we are seeing in Sochi this month is all facade, and what's beneath, as I've been saying, is profoundly disturbing.

The British documentary Hunted, released just in time for Sochi, reveals explicitly the nature of the beast beneath the facade, a political pathology that is being unleashed in Russia now, today: fascism. Honest-to-God, unadulterated fascism.

One of the reasons I have railed in the past about right-wing efforts to confuse the public's understanding of the meaning and nature of fascism -- embodied in Jonah Goldberg's travesty, Liberal Fascism -- is that people would cease being able to distinguish the real thing when it came along. Well, it is on our doorstep in much of Eastern Europe now, as we speak, and particularly in Russia. And hardly anyone, it seems, recognizes it.

As I've noted previously, the real red flag when it comes to fascism isn't merely the spread of scapegoating politics (focusing for now on gays and immigrants), producing eliminationist thuggery in the classic Brownshirt mold -- it is when officialdom, the government authorities and church leaders, not only condone such behavior but encourage and reinforce it.

Watch the entire documentary [below]. I am particularly struck by the observations of the Russian woman -- a schoolteacher who is herself a straight woman -- who has decided to stand up to the thugs as a matter of conscience and "self respect":

Right now it suits the state and the regime to organize this witch hunt, because our economic situation, our pensions, our salaries, our healthcare, and our education are all getting worse. Understandably people need someone to blame. To stop people from focusing their anger at the authorities, the regime is igniting and maintaining this conflict and hatred. They are making people fight amongst themselves.

When you see, day in and day out, what’s happening, and how people are being beaten, hounded, how they fear stepping outside alone, how can you not realize this is a serious turning point for the country? This is a turning point toward fascism.

One of the more chilling moments in the documentary comes when the "Occupy Paedophila" people -- who claim not to be anti-gay, only anti-pedophile, even though they are clearly entrapping their target with an adult man as bait -- threaten their gay victim by suggesting that he is likely to be raped if taken to a police station, because they had heard someone at one of the stations had been brutally raped in the jail. Talk about the complicity of authorities.

And you'll notice how the man who runs the website that harasses teachers and gay-rights protesters describes what motivates him -- that is, having children and a family: "You become concerned with purity."

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—is the claim that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national security.

Because it is about "purity" and "Russian tradition" and nationalistic fervor for them, this is not a short-lived and limited phenomenon. It is not just the LGBT community that is under siege by the young Russian thugs and neo-Nazis, whose numbers swell every year in Russia. There have also been significant violent attacks on immigrants and Muslim communities. The far right has been making its presence known in public displays of fascist nationalism, all condoned by the Russian Orthodox Church and, most of all, the authoritarian government led by Vladimir Putin.

I am glad that most Western leaders did not come to Sochi. But that will not be enough to stand up to what is happening to Russia. Because fascism, once it comes to power, is never sated. The LGBT community is just the beginning.

Here is the entire documentary, Hunted.

Last summer I discovered that the Kinks' David Watts was a real person and came from Rutland.

Psychobabble has a good version of the story:

The Kinks first encountered Major David Watts while playing a gig in the tiny English county of Rutland. Ex-military man Watts was the promoter of the show, and after the Kinks finished performing in the humid open air, Watts invited the boys back to his cottage to change into clean clothes. It was at this moment that Mick Avory’s gaydar began flashing, and he proved his point by dropping his drawers in the major’s presence. When Ray asked Watts if Mick was his cup of afternoon tea, Watts responded, “Oh God, no, not that slut. I’m more interested in that little whore.” 

The “little whore” in question was Ray’s little brother, Dave. Ray then spent the rest of the evening attempting to trade his brother to Major Watts for his country cottage. Sadly for the major, the negotiations collapsed, but as consolation, Ray composed a song in his honor. 

The deliciously envious “David Watts” is one of the Kinks’ most beloved songs, and inspired a fierce cover by the Jam on their excellent All Mod Cons album. Still, one has to wonder what Watts thought of lyrics like “And all the girls in the neighborhood try to go out with David Watts/ They try their best but can’t succeed, for he is of pure and noble breed.”

Here is that fierce cover by the Jam.

@DanSilverSARF talking abt human nature. Humans like living around people similar to them. Of course, socialists resent this. They know best

— Ryan Bourne (@MrRBourne) February 5, 2014

@Niaccurshi @DanSilverSARF This is what debate is all about: should govt build a load of houses and tell people where to live? I say "no".

— Ryan Bourne (@MrRBourne) February 5, 2014

It seems strange to me that anyone would seem to think that the reason that we "choose" where we live is down to anything other than simple economics, rather than human nature. If there is a human nature in anything about where we choose to live, it's that we always want the best we can afford. Capitalism is built on the fact people want to maximise what they get from the money they have to spend it on, we see this human nature all too regularly.

But when it comes to housing, do we choose anything? If we are lucky maybe we have plenty of different options to look at, but the reality is that you'll have a budget, and this will give you a radius around your desired area to buy from. We go for the best we can afford, and this generally means we live with people who have similar earning potential to us...though there are still a legacy of 1980-1990's home buyers that live in areas that are no longer within their pay grade due to the crazy rise of the housing market over the last several decades.

Are these people like us? I guess there is a chance they are, more so the further up the scale of expense you go when owning your home. But is this your active choice, or just a coincidence? Do you vet your neighbours for their views on free markets? the EU? Their religion? hobbies and activities they enjoy? Of course not.

We make some assumptions, if we're moving in to a city center location then we assume our neighbours will be professionals with a penchant for some evening partying. The 'burbs? Family folk. A house in a village? Friendly retirees and those trying to enjoy the slower life. But we don't *know* do we?

In fact let's look at that list again. City center living? You're moving there because YOU want to be in the nightlife, and a quick roll out of bed to your work's doorstop. Does it matter that everyone else may be like that too? Not at all. In the 'burbs? You're probably moving there because you can't quite afford the out-of-center life, because you have an eye on that school near by. Does it matter to you that other people might be doing the same? No, you're moving there because of what YOU need. And moving to a village? YOU want the quiet life. YOU want to be away from the hustle and bustle.

This isn't about what other people are like, because unless you can visibly see that your neighbours are likely to trash your garden, or hold all night raves, or bug you to do some civic duty when you just want to sleep off a hangover, you choose a place because it suits your needs, within your budget. Location, Location, Location.

The problem right now in the housing market is that the choice for where you can live, affordably, is dwindling. School places are too few, and it's driving the price of housing nearest the best schools sky high, creating a defacto social rift that means over the next decade or so your parents' wealth is one of the key factors that will decide how well educated you are. Snapping up property in estates in new psuedo-towns and developments is an art-form in order to keep your commute down to around about the hour mark, if you're lucky, because it is the nearest place you can get to your work. There is no choice here, there is only inevitability.

Meanwhile housing benefit is reformed, those who are poor are being kicked out of homes in areas that allow them to be close to work and schools and forced into these non-choices to live much further away than they need to be, with the extra costs that entails, creating slightly more choice for those on middle incomes and above, but less choice for those below. Surely if this were all human nature, those poor people wouldn't want to live where they are being kicked out of anyway, those around them "aren't like them" after all, are they?

It's sad to see how humans compare themselves reduced to a single factor.. the repayments they can afford each month based on a lump sum of cash they've managed to save.

I for one think that this doesn't tie us together at all. We can find great affinity with those who are running FTSE 100 businesses just as well as those who are struggling to raise 3 kids and are unable to find jobs...because our lives and our loves are not defined by what is in our wallet. And worse than this, we *know* that diversity in demographics is a positive when it comes to progressiveness and equality. We know, for example, that a lack of women in tech jobs is actually hampering the progress of creation of ideas...the extra diversity of a group helps drive the group to more and better solutions.

The same can be said for the rest of our life. Benefit hate, banker hate, immigrant hate... how much of this is because we just don't realise how similar we all are any more? If more of us had to live next to one another, regardless of our job, our status, our wage... would we perhaps spend more time focusing our frustration and anger on the real problems facing us, instead of the scapegoats of these various groups of people we never see because a faulty housing market has conditioned us to all be separate?

Our human nature is to fear the unknown, I think I'd welcome any move that helps us know each other better, and nurture that other bit of "human nature"... compassion.

Fandom can take you to some terrible places, can't it? Just as every really enthusiastic Doctor Who fan eventually ends up watching stories like The Twin Dilemma or Warriors of the Deep, knowing full well that they are terrible, because they love the series as a whole so much, it seems that sooner or later the avid Hammer Dracula fan finds themselves face to face with The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. I've gone down this road once before in my life, and had hoped to avoid ever retreading it. But now that I've got the idea in my head of trying to make the entire Hammer Dracula franchise fit together into a single coherent canon, it had to be rewatched. ms_siobhan was kind enough to accompany me in the endeavour, fortified in her case by the prospect of some Peter Cushingy goodness. I, alas, had no such comfort, since Christopher Lee was noticeable only by his absence - but even as a massive fan of his Dracula, I have to admit that he called this one right.

The film is a co-production between Hammer and the Hong Kong-based Shaw Studio, filmed entirely on location in Hong Kong, which attempts to marry up the '70s kung-fu craze with the successful Dracula franchise for Much Box Office Win. Apparently (according to this book about Peter Cushing from which ms_siobhan emailed me some relevant details), Shaw insisted on the Dracula character appearing within the film, even though Christopher Lee has refused to do it, as they believed it would pull in the audiences. I guess Hammer weren't so convinced, as Dracula isn't actually mentioned in the UK release title (The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires), but he was in some of the foreign release titles (e.g. the USA, Singapore).

In my view, the Hungarian title, Van Helsing és a 7 aranyvámpír, is actually what the film should have been called everywhere (with appropriate translation, obviously), because essentially that's what it is - a Van Helsing adventure which takes our man to China, rather than any kind of Dracula film. I found myself opining in a comment on my Brides of Dracula review that although personally I'm glad that Hammer (mainly) used Dracula as the thread to link their sequels together after the first film, as far as story potential goes it would have been equally valid to do the same with Van Helsing. That's essentially what Brides of Dracula does, in spite of its title, and it's also what The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires does, in spite of including a character called Count Dracula. ms_siobhan's book also reports that a further film entitled Kali, Devil Bride of Dracula was planned for after Legend, and presumably this would have been much the same, but this time taking Van Helsing to India. Indeed, Google informed me that Hammer got as far as mocking up promotional posters for this film, and Peter Cushing is certainly on them.

In Christopher Lee's absence, and with a production partner insisting that Dracula should be in the story, a replacement had to be found. Dracula is played by John Forbes-Robertson but dubbed by David de Keyser, which already doesn't say much for anyone's commitment to the character. He is also completely side-lined for most of the story, appearing only in a pre-credits sequence set in Transylvania in 1804, and then again at the very end of the film. The set-up is that in the 1804 sequence, a Chinese traveller named Kah comes to his castle, explains that he is the high priest of a band of seven Golden Vampires, but that they have fallen 'asleep' (why is never explained), and that he wants Dracula's help to wake them up again and get them back to terrorising the local village. Dracula replies that he is not in the business of helping people, but since he is trapped in the confines of his miserable castle (why and how is again never explained), he will take possession of Kah's body, go to China and lead the Seven Golden Vampires himself. For most of the film, the chief villain is then Kah-possessed-by-Dracula (essentially just Kah as a vampire), rather than Dracula himself, who only reappears at the very end when Van Helsing turns up. At this point, he decides to abandon Kah's body and transform back into his normal self in order to confront him - for all of about one minute, that is, before he is disappointingly easily killed with a silver spear, and the film ends.

This is a godforsaken mess, both for this individual story and for the whole Hammer Dracula franchise. Within the story, Dracula is a big camp cliché with terrible make-up, who comes across as nothing more than a parody. All he really does is distract from and confuse the main story, which would have been quite coherent and compelling if it had just cast Kah as the evil high priest of the Seven Golden Vampires in his own right, and focused on Van Helsing's mission to put an end to their village-terrorising ways. Meanwhile, beyond the story, we're suddenly confronted with the idea that Dracula was off having a jolly in China from 1804 right up to 1904, thus missing the events of the original Dracula (which is explicitly set in 1885), Prince of Darkness (which is explicitly set ten years later) and the coach-top fight in Hyde Park at the start of AD 1972 (which is explicitly set in 1872). I'm going to tackle all of these problems separately and in fuller detail in what I think is now going to be a whole series of posts on canon and continuity issues in the Hammer Dracula films, but suffice it to say for the present that I think the best way of rescuing Hammer from their own mess here is to say that the character shown in this film isn't the same vampire as Christopher Lee's Dracula at all, but some other vampified member of the really quite extensive Dracula family. It's really the only humane way of dealing with the problem.

The sad thing is that if you ignore the bodged-on Dracula bookends, the Van Helsing film in the middle actually isn't that bad. Peter Cushing is certainly as excellent as ever in the role, and transferring Van Helsing to a setting where he is outside of his usual comfort zone gives him some good character moments. There is quite a lot of emphasis on the idea that his knowledge of European vampires can only take him so far, that he needs help from Chinese experts to understand the peculiarities of their local vampires, and that he must acquire new knowledge and face new challenges in order to prevail. This is actually very much in keeping with the first two films in the series, where he is also portrayed as still learning new things about vampires even as he fights them - e.g. from Jonathan Harker's diary in Dracula, or when he asks Marianne Danielle to write down every detail of her experiences at Chateau Meinster in Brides. It's easy to forget this aspect of his character, as we tend to think of him mainly as the fount of all vampiric knowledge, but he would get pretty dull pretty quickly if that was all he was. Giving him a son (Leyland Van Helsing) whom he can be worried about, exasperated with and occasionally proud of is also good value - just as it was with the character of Jessica in AD 1972 and Satanic Rites.

Some pretty good value is got out of Chinese vampire lore, too. The basic premise, as it had always been with Dracula, is that China's legends of vampire-type creatures are true, Van Helsing realises this even when more sceptical authorities scoff, and of course his willingness to believe the unbelievable is vindicated and indeed shown to be an essential survival tool by the end of the film. ms_siobhan and I particularly enjoyed the depiction of the jiangshi, or 'hopping vampires', who were apparently the former victims of the Seven Golden Vampires, but behaved more in line with we would expect from zombies - rising up out of their graves and shuffling / hopping along in a big horde (complete with pitchforks and axes) at the behest of their vampire masters.

That said, the film is probably quite a lot easier to enjoy if you like chop-socky action sequences - which frankly, I don't. I spent quite a lot of time looking at my watch and waiting for the latest tedious extended fight sequence to finish, so that we could get on with some actual plot and characterisation. It's also disappointing that while the European characters are (for a film of this type) relatively well-characterised and given plenty of dialogue, the majority of the Chinese characters are essentially non-speaking roles. I felt particularly annoyed about this on behalf of Mai Kwei, the sister of the seven human brothers who enlist Van Helsing's help to fight the Seven Golden Vampires. It's very clear from the fight scenes that she is the equal of her brothers in martial arts, but after she has become a mutely demure object for Leyland Van Helsing's romantic intentions, and he expresses admiration for her ability to both fight off vampires and look feminine, she finally gets to speak for the very first time in the film, only to voice the hesitant enquiry "Is it please you?" Ugh! Still, she fares a lot better than the multiple anonymous girls whose job in the film was to get attacked by the Seven Golden Vampires, have their breasts exposed, and scream a lot, which felt very exploitative indeed.

It is not like the only European woman in the film gets to be a feminist icon either, though. Early on, we meet Mrs. Vanessa Buren, a Scandinavian lady whose husband died a couple of years earlier, and who is now travelling the world as an independently wealthy widow. There is a lot of dialogue early on about how emancipated and well-read she is, but it's all a smoke-screen really - the character is partly a tropish object lesson in how women would be better off keeping in their place, and partly a convenient plot device. Exactly like Jessica Van Helsing in Satanic Rites, she says she wants to come along on the vampire-hunting expedition to Ping Kwei because it will be such a ripping adventure, all the men tell her it's too dangerous for her, she insists on coming anyway, and sure enough she ends up screaming and being attacked a lot, and eventually getting turned into a vampire and causing lead brother Hsi Ching to die in the course of destroying her. Even worse, though, the entire expedition is funded by her, and it seems a lot like that's basically the main reason she is in the film in the first place - as a convenient source of money for the male characters to draw on.

I think a few elements in the plot were probably (somewhat half-hearted) nods to The Seven Samurai, although of course because I haven't seen that, they looked to me like nods to The Magnificent Seven. Certainly, the basic idea of villagers seeking a skilled outsider's help against local terrorists is the same, although Van Helsing is only one person, and it's the villagers instead who are represented this time by a band of seven (brothers). There are also some training and fortification-building scenes in the village which looked a lot like their equivalents in The Magnificent Seven, as well as budding romances between villagers (Hsi Ching, Mai Kwei) and outsiders (Vanessa Buren, Leyland Van Helsing). Apart from the obvious links with previous Hammer films, ms_siobhan and I also noticed that Dracula's castle at the beginning had an implausibly-long curving staircase a lot like the one in Carfax Abbey in Dracula (1931), and that he also rose straight up from his coffin just like Count Orlok does on the ship in Nosferatu (1922). But that is all just part of this Dracula being a hideous screaming cliché, so rather than giving the film extra resonances by acknowledging its roots, it just made this Dracula look all the more like a poor shadow of his illustrious predecessors.

OK then - so I'm properly done with watching and reviewing every possible entry in the Hammer Dracula franchise. Next to ramp up the geekiness yet another notch while I rake over their in-story canon and continuity in immense and obsessive detail.... *rubs hands with anticipation*

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February 4th, 2014: Hey you know what happened on Saturday? Saturday was February 1st 2014 ALSO KNOWN AS the eleven-year anniversary of Dinosaur Comics! Is that not nuts? It is ENTIRELY NUTS. When I started Dinosaur Comics on February 1st, 2003 I thought the comic would last a month, and at the end of that month I'd change the template to something involving astronauts. But then I ended up liking T-Rex and Dromiciomimus and Utahraptor and thought, "okay, maybe I'll change templates every two months instead of every month". And now here we are 11 years later! The moral is: changing templates is a lot of work that can be easily postponed, THE END. Thank you guys for letting me have the best job(s) in the world! Dinosaur Comics has been great, and it's let me do things like write the Adventure Time comics and do projects like The Midas Flesh and To Be or Not To Be and Machine of Death - two of those have their direct origins in Dinosaur Comics, actually. Nuts! Anyway this is awesome, and you are awesome, and I thank you. One year ago today: hope you weren't planning on being surprised at how each and every movie ends from now on – Ryan

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February 5th, 2014: Hey you know what happened on Saturday? Saturday was February 1st 2014 ALSO KNOWN AS the eleven-year anniversary of Dinosaur Comics! Is that not nuts? It is ENTIRELY NUTS. When I started Dinosaur Comics on February 1st, 2003 I thought the comic would last a month, and at the end of that month I'd change the template to something involving astronauts. But then I ended up liking T-Rex and Dromiciomimus and Utahraptor and thought, "okay, maybe I'll change templates every two months instead of every month". And now here we are 11 years later! The moral is: changing templates is a lot of work that can be easily postponed, THE END. Thank you guys for letting me have the best job(s) in the world! Dinosaur Comics has been great, and it's let me do things like write the Adventure Time comics and do projects like The Midas Flesh and To Be or Not To Be and Machine of Death - two of those have their direct origins in Dinosaur Comics, actually. Nuts! Anyway this is awesome, and you are awesome, and I thank you. One year ago today: if i ever make cookies but stop when they're just dough and eat the entire bowl of dough, six-year-old me is going to be way into his eventual adulthood – Ryan

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February 6th, 2014: Hey you know what happened on Saturday? Saturday was February 1st 2014 ALSO KNOWN AS the eleven-year anniversary of Dinosaur Comics! Is that not nuts? It is ENTIRELY NUTS. When I started Dinosaur Comics on February 1st, 2003 I thought the comic would last a month, and at the end of that month I'd change the template to something involving astronauts. But then I ended up liking T-Rex and Dromiciomimus and Utahraptor and thought, "okay, maybe I'll change templates every two months instead of every month". And now here we are 11 years later! The moral is: changing templates is a lot of work that can be easily postponed, THE END. Thank you guys for letting me have the best job(s) in the world! Dinosaur Comics has been great, and it's let me do things like write the Adventure Time comics and do projects like The Midas Flesh and To Be or Not To Be and Machine of Death - two of those have their direct origins in Dinosaur Comics, actually. Nuts! Anyway this is awesome, and you are awesome, and I thank you. One year ago today: self-interest is at 2% per quarter – Ryan

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Jack Kirby died twenty years ago today. And since then — and I know I speak for a lot of people in this capacity — there hasn't been a day when I haven't thought about him, talked about him, answered questions about him and done something that would not have been possible had I not been exposed to him and his work. He was a lovely man and a brilliant man and the older I get, the more I realize how lovely and brilliant he was.

I don't know where it all came from but from this little man with the tough New York accent had idea after idea, concept after concept, insight after insight…and not just about comic books. If you mentioned yogurt strainers to Jack, there was a good chance he'd have something interesting to say about yogurt strainers. And if he didn't, there was a good chance that the next time he saw you, he'd lead off the conversation with an amazing idea concerning yogurt strainers.

Those who never met him sometimes, I think, have a hard time understanding why those of us who did feel as we do about him. After all, to them he was just another good comic book artist, right? Well, not really. Not to take anything away from other great comic book artists but I never met one who could think as large as Kirby or who tried to think as large as Kirby. Every drawing he did, every story he wrote was a part of something much, much bigger.

He was a very kind man and very trusting…too trusting, we all felt at times. He always treated you as an equal even though you never were.

When people hear that I was for a time his assistant, a lot of them think I was there to learn to draw like him. I wasn't, in part because I couldn't; not in a million billion years of practice. But there were things to learn from this man about almost everything else and I was fortunate to maybe grab a small handful of them. I wish he was still around so he could reap some of the financial benefits that his former collaborator has achieved by surviving. I wish he was still around so that every one of you could maybe have the chance to meet him for yourself. And — getting selfish now — I wish he was still around so I could learn even more from him.

We miss you, Jack. And by "we," I mean just about everyone you ever touched, in person or on the page.

I was asked via email if I had any thoughts on this year’s Winter Olympics. The short answer is yes: I’m sitting them out. The longer version is that the unfathomable graft and incompetence and horrible homophobic bigotry that surrounds this particular iteration of the Olympics has massively swamped my usual benign indifference to the thing. Usually I don’t care about the Olympics, but I see them as harmless and don’t mind if they occasionally impinge on my consciousness. This time I’m actively disgusted by them and will go out of my way to avoid them. I’m not going to be entirely successful because I live in the modern world, where unless you choose to crouch in a hole, information will find you. The difference is that the information is going to have to work to get itself in front of me, and I will resent it when it does.

This is the point at which one swans about the need to reimagine the Olympic games, to get them back to their ideal of friendly competition between nations, blah blah blah insert Chariots of Fire soundtrack here, but, come on. It’s too late for that. The Olympic Games are what they are: a floating, rotating boondoggle-shaped shitcake of graft, venality and cronyism, with a spotty icing of athleticism spread thinly on the top to mask the taste of the shit as it goes down the gullet. Barring some sort of active revolution, that’s not going to change. Sochi’s problem is that this time, they heaped extra shit into the cake and skimped on the icing, and what icing it has is also made of shit. You can’t mask the taste. At this point it’s not worth it to try.

So I’m out. The Olympics won’t miss me, to be sure. The feeling is mutual.

For those who have not followed the long-running saga of this, there has been pressure on the passport office for some time to consider allowing the use of X (Unspecified) in place of M or F for the gender marker on passports. This is of benefit to quite a few people, as society becomes more accepting of people who do not fit within the gender binary and a number of countries already permit this. It is also of potential use for someone who might travel under one gender but work under a different one, for example.

X as a marker is part of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard for passports, although it was originally intended for the handling of refugees where a large number of passports needed to be issued in a short space of time by someone who was not familiar with the gender of names in use in a culture. That’s less of an issue now than it used to be in the 1950s, but the standard remains.

Back in 2011, the Home Office and Passport Office promised to look into issuing UK passports with an X marker on them as part of the transgender action plan and partially in response to Australia doing the same. The resulting report was suppressed by the Passport Office for some time, but as a result of questions in the House of Commons last week and this week by Hugh Bayley, Julie Hilling and Stephen Doughty it’s now been released.

For some reason, the document is not on the online listing at the time of writing, but you can email the House of Commons Library to ask for a copy – I have uploaded a copy of the report here. (PDF link)

It is clear on reading the report why the Passport Office did not want it released, as it is written with little critical thought and with the obvious intention of trying to justify existing policy rather than explore new options.

Let’s skip ahead in the report to the most damning section first, option 5 on page 7 which gives the reasons they don’t want to allow X markers. Taking each point in order, we can quickly demolish the entire argument:

• Mother-knows-best, because X markers would single out individuals (correctly) as having “no gender” and thus cause offense. It would appear the Passport Office are worried that people will be offended if they are treated appropriately.
• People filling out forms are stupid, and might get it wrong. This is the same argument used to justify erasing poly households in the census when if it happens it really just suggests the form was poorly designed.
• If someone’s gender is not obvious, they don’t know who should search a person at the border. The police already figured out how to handle this and the solution may shock you: They ask who you’d prefer to be searched by if it’s not obvious.
• Apparently it’s expensive, although this is only an argument why it should be delayed until computer system changes are happening anyway rather than why it should not happen at all.
• “Other customers may request ‘X’ in their passports or in fact question whether HMPO should be asking what their gender is at all for the purpose of passport issuance and whether this is proportional“, i.e. if we allow unspecified as a marker then people might realise putting gender on passports really isn’t necessary. This phrase alone makes me fairly sure the document was not intended for public release.
• Trans or non-binary folk might require “additional consular assistance” if they are stopped in certain countries. Like this doesn’t happen already if you visit the wrong place.
• Section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 prohibits them from outing trans folk. This is an argument against forcing people to have an X marker, not an argument against requesting an X marker.
• “Evidence of gender diversity needed for an applicant to be able to select ‘X’ as a gender marker would be difficult to produce“. This is only the case because the civil service wants to make it hard to produce and they say themselves (Without justification) that “self-identification would not be appropriate”. A simple ticky box on a form to select unspecified gender would be sufficient, or a statutory declaration of some form if they want to make things complicated. This is what GIRES suggested.

What follows is a fairly detailed deconstruction of the remaining points, which you may like to skip if you are not interested in the minutiae.

Section 1, page 2 is just a recap of existing policy, but as soon as we get on to paragraph 2.1 and 2.2 (Calls for change and petition) it becomes clear whoever wrote the report was poorly briefed. Both paragraphs talk about the old Identity Cards scheme allowing trans folk to have two passports, one per gender, which is not the same as having one passport with an unspecified gender marker on.

We do start to get a hint of another theme that runs through the document in 2.2(c), however, as the Passport Service adopts a mother-knows-best approach and apparently is a better judge than the trans and non-binary communities what would be in their best interest: The Identity Card Scheme provided for a transgendered person to have two ID cards…it may also create difficulties for the individual and may increase the potential for their involuntary outing.

According to section 2.3, the Passport Office “sought to speak to key stakeholder groups and to relevant parts of Government“. They did not seem to try very hard, given they only spoke to one internal civil service group, one campaigner (Christie Elan-Cane) and one external organisation. (GIRES) They completely forget to mention that it was included in the transgender action plan by the Government Equalities Office.

The next section, 2.4, points out “there are no outstanding applications in which the applicant has sought either change to the process of considering applications from transgendered people or of changing the passport itself with the gender marking“. Quite apart from being an appalling piece of English and nearly incomprehensible, what it appears to be saying is that nobody has applied for a gender-non-binary passport. This might be because, I don’t know, the forms don’t give you an option to apply for it?

And section 2.5, we’re back to mother-knows-best: “We remain open to suggestions for change but such a change would be on the basis that it was either required by law or that it provided additional benefits to the applicant. Choice is an important factor but we have received feedback that would suggest that enabling that choice may be more detrimental than beneficial.” It is not clear what feedback they are referring to, given the lack of scope of their consultation.

Just to be clear, there is quite a bit of emphasis in section 2.6 on the fact that because they have not been listening they have not heard the calls for X markers: “There have been very little public calls for the ‘X’ provision in the passport. … There are no calls for change from gender representative groups or civil liberties groups.” Even ignoring the political pressure to change, yhe only external group they consulted, GIRES, also asked them to change the current system. It is not clear why they make reference to “civil liberties groups”.

Section 3 is a worrying graph on “Gender in the life of a passport” that repeatedly asserts that any mismatch in apparent gender presentation could indicate potential fraud. It has clearly not occurred to the passport office that they are actually arguing against their own position here: If someone has a non-binary gender or variable gender presentation, then without an “X” marker they are more likely to face problems due to their appearance being taken as fraudulent.

They also miss the obvious point that is frequently raised in such situations that gender is at best a 50/50 discriminator and thus not particularly powerful. They even note elsewhere in the document that not all government-issued ID in the UK has a gender marker on it.

Section 4 covers legislative issues. They should probably have left this well alone, given it goes a long way to arguing against their position.

Firstly, (section 4.1), they state “legislation in other areas recognises only the genders Male and Female“. Whilst this might be true, there is an increasing move towards removing gender from legislation as it just gets messy when you start dealing with same-sex marriage, people transitioning and anyone who does not fit nearly into a male/female binary world view. A good example of this would be amendments to sexual offenses legislation which now defines rape not by the gender of the attacker but by use of a penis.

Section 4.3 talks about nationality, adoption and how nationality can only be passed on by a mother or father or, in certain cases, by the father. This is already complicated by same-sex marriage and the ability of people to transition. I am more than comfortable with the ability of the courts to quite simply handle what the Passport Office call “a complex undertaking”.

Section 4.4 talks about banks establishing identity. This really isn’t the Passport Office’s problem, but if it is then the same point as in section 3 stands: If someone has a non-binary or variable presentation, having the X marker on a passport helps rather than hinders.

Section 4.5 uses the phrase “third gender”. I am not comfortable with this language, as turns gender from binary to trinary. The whole point of this is that gender is fluid and on a spectrum, and not subject to being placed into little pots. Some people may identify as third gender, but not everyone. Both this and the following section, 4.6 start talking about issues outside the scope of the Passport Office.

Section 4.7 claims that a passport bearing an X gender marker might not be “recognised by other parts of government of wider UK society“. This implies that existing legitimate passports bearing an X gender marker, either because it is an old passport belonging to a refugee or because it is from a country that does issue them would not be accepted. I find this surprising, especially given that failure to accept such a passport would be a clear-cut violation of the Equalities Act 2010.

Section 5 details their options. Mostly, these cover choices not being campaigned for such as multiple passports with different gender markers so are not relevant, but there are enough egregious errors that it’s worth pointing some of them out:

Option 2, issuing two passports, mentions “One passport, one person“. This is not a strict rule, as many frequent travelers hold two passports. Typically, this is because they are traveling in parts of the world where it is not a good idea to reveal who else you have been visiting in the region and thus they can choose to use a passport without any incriminating entry/exit or visa stamps. The argument about creating two identities could apply to anyone changing their name (e.g. through marriage) or gender, and could happen anyway if someone obtains a new passport and retains their old one. Some parts of government remain obsessed with the idea that people transition just to commit fraud.

Options 3 and 4, removing gender from passports, gets hung up on the idea of violating international standards by removing the field and overlooks the obvious choice of simply replacing gender markers on all passports with X. It also goes on about it being a “security risk” for unsubstantiated reasons and makes the bizarre observation that might still ask for it on the forms, even if it is not on the passports.

I’ve covered option 5 above and I won’t get into section 6, costs, save to say that they are at best giving justification for not doing this now, rather than justification for not doing this in future. Forms will be reprinted and redesigned at some point anyway, as will computer systems, and the costs will be much lower if rolled into the normal update cycle of such things rather than being done immediately.

Section 7 covers notes in the informal discussions they held on the issue. The internal discussion with a:gender appears to have actually taken place with Sarah Rapson, the ex-Chief Executive of the Passport Office but this may be an error.

Section 8 covers the situation in other countries, although is of little real relevance. It mentions some countries are not safe for trans folk to travel to (This is not news, and is the case regardless of gender markers) but I did find it interesting that Argentina allows people to have an X marker on their passports simply by requesting it, with no other documentation required. Malaysia are reported to be considering removing gender from all passports, allegedly in violation of ICAO standards although it would be easy to just put X for everyone as I’ve noted. Oddly, the report does not mention that India is technically violating standards by using “E” (Eunuch) to identify Hijira on their passports. I find this omission odd because if anyone is going to have found problems with unusual gender markers on passports, it is going to be India, given the hijra community is estimated at being 5 million. (The number is not that surprising given the size of India – 5 million people is only around 0.4% of their population)

Welcome one and all to Group D! England are probably the biggest pop name in the group, but they haven’t won the Pop World Cup since Revolver came out. Can manager Ronald change that? Two other countries have gone for experienced hands – PWC ’10 finalist Andrew Hickey takes over Italy, and minnows Costa Rica have recruited Europop 2008 winner Pete. Perennial dark horses Uruguay, under manager Matthew, make up the group.

As usual, perm 2 from 4 in the poll below the cut.

URUGUAY: Dani Umpi ft Marabish – “3 Pasos”

“Sambayón,” the latest single by genderfucky Uruguayan Dani Umpi, has a wonderful and trippy video that’s worthy of far more than the 10,145 views it’s scored thusfar on Youtube. Sadly, though, the song itself isn’t so hot. This song, on the other hand! This song is hot. There’s counting! Counting is always good. “3 Pasos” was the lead single from Mormazo, the follow-up to Umpi’s kooky 2009 covers album, which featured folksy, chaotically pronounced renditions of classics like “Rent,” “Lovefool,” and “The Sign.”

COSTA RICA: Colornoise – “Button”

“Costa Rica, home of the Resplendent Quetzal, Three-wattled Bellbird and the Bare-necked Umbrellabird, has never been renowned for its indigenous music scene. Over-shadowed by the other Rico – Puerto that is – there is still no end of folklorica, reggae and a surprisingly vibrant strand of death metal. But when looking at the bench, there was really only one group straining at the bit to represent their country – the experimental noise pop post punk angular shooting styles of Colornoise. Button is a no nonsense short blast of Dry era PJ Harvey shoutiness – an oddly compulsive earwormer. We are rightly seen to be the minnows in this group, but we are coming out all guns a-blazing, enjoy Alison and Sonya: Colornoise.”

ENGLAND: Disclosure – “You And Me (ft Eliza Doolittle)”

“Disclosure takes a classic garage beat and updates it for today. This song fluctuates between a cool, polished gleam and feverish energy. It makes you want to dance but also gives you some room to breathe. They’re definitely one of the bright lights to emerge on the music scene recently. They have such a musical touch that belies their ages (19 and 22). For me personally, You & Me is the song that best illustrates their ability to meld dance and pop sensibilities into something beyond your run of the mill dance pop.”

ITALY: Radio Days – “Don’t Break My Heart”

“Don’t Break My Heart is by Italian powerpop band Radio Days, whose single Love & Fun was listed in Andrew Loog Oldham’s “Coolest Songs In The World 2013″. This is less powerpoppy, and less McCartneyesque, than most of their stuff, but still has as many hooks as their more uptempo tracks.”

THE POLL:

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RESULTS: A dominant win for the Netherlands in Group B, taking home 3 points thanks to a home crowd-like enthusiasm. They really acted as a 12th man here.* Australia’s dreampop trailed some distance behind, but 2nd place is 2nd place, and they grab 2 points. Chile get off the mark with a single point – scant reward for the extreme length of their track, some might say. And finally Spain have had a rocky start to their PWC campaign, with their traditional tactics getting them only “a Eurovision” in this match.

*Just to reiterate what I said in the comments thread: please do NOT directly bring the PWC to the attention of the artist or their label. One RT from a featured act can break a match completely, especially as – if the Holland experience is anything to go by – none of the influx of fans bother listening to the other records! This result stands, though, cos I didn’t formulate the rule until after the match.

When I realized that my Wonder Woman book needed to be called something other than Paradise Dungeons, the title that sprang to mind first was A Golden Thread, which on the one hand refers sensibly to Wonder Woman’s lasso and to the sort of historical approach I take to her, tracing a single strand of feminist utopian culture through decades of history, and on the other refers to a Pete Seeger song, “Had I a Golden Thread,” about utopianism in general. I spent weeks seeing if I could come up with other good titles, but it was a mug’s game. The book was obviously called that, and I use two verses of it as an inscription before the first chapter.