Andrew Hickey

I took this walk, to ease my mind.

To find out what’s gnawing at me.

I couldn’t stay at home. I had to go, although I knew it would make me feel worse. I just had to go.

I need to contextualise. This is a blog post about the death of David Bowie. But it isn’t about that. It’s more selfish than that. It’s embarrassingly self-indulgent. It’s about the death of David Bowie and the way that I reacted to that horrible fact. I’ve never experienced grief like this about a public figure before. But I have experienced grief. And I recognise that this is grief. And it hurts. It hurts so much. Millions of people around the world are all experiencing the same unique and personal pain. And there are two options. There is the option of respectful observance or there is total absorption. And I realise which option I will choose. I will choose the one that includes me. Of course I choose that one. Me. Because this is about me. Because he is part of me. Because he is part of everyone. Because he is part of everything.

The majority of this post will consist of things that I posted on Twitter or Facebook as I learned of the news and attempted to accept it. The rest will be thoughts and fragments and shards of memories: moments when he splintered into my life. He was always there, acting as a filter to everything I saw and everything I thought. And that is how he will continue. He added a layer to my life. A layer of fascination.

I do not apologise if what follows is disjointed, confused, upsetting, offensive, awkward, contradictory, falsifiable, subjective, inaccurate, ungrammatical, emotional, naive, sad, selfish, mawkish, helpful, cathartic or comforting. It is what I thought and felt and right now I don’t care about anything else.

How to begin?

My first memory of pop music is seeing the video for Dancing In The Street.

I am four years old and think that they are wearing pyjamas, perhaps because the video was filmed at night. Bowie’s trench coat I mistake for a dressing gown. Two grown men jumping around in their pyjamas in the middle of the night. All they need is music, sweet music. The idea excites me.

Monday morning. I check Facebook before leaving for work. I see a post by Alexis Petridis:

Jesus, he must have known all along. Fucking hell. Fucking hell.

In the comments below, I see someone mention the name Duncan, and suddenly I know. I open the BBC News app and there it is. Cancer. Eighteen months. The words “it has been confirmed”.

When I was fourteen, I borrowed two tapes from my brother. One had Ziggy Stardust on one side and Diamond Dogs on the other. The second one was Heroes and Scary Monsters. I listen to them over and over and over again. A couple of years later, I get my first job. Working Sundays at Kingston Library. I am paid £25 for each shift. Each week this money is spent in Virgin Megastore buying Bowie albums on CD, with some saved over to spend in KFC after work. There is no logic to the order in which I buy the albums. My collection is haphazard and disjointed. It jumps through time. One memory springs to mind – stepping off the bus to go to KFC, it is cold and I am blasted by the wind.

I walk past a deserted building site while Sense Of Doubt plays in my ears and I stand and look at the concrete, at the half-demolished buildings, at the destruction and I am scared. Here I am, a sixteen year old boy, listening to a Walkman in a small, lower-middle class suburban town, on his way to KFC, having just finished a shift in Kingston Library, but I am transported into a different world. What a twat.

Back to that horrible day. I get on the bus to go to work. The news is still buzzing in my head. No, not buzzing. That’s not right. My head is numb. Just stillness and silence after the explosion. I listen to Blackstar. It is a completely different album compared to the one I’d listened to the night before.

Lazarus deals with it most directly of course. “Look up here, I’m in Heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.” But it’s the last line that makes me stop and actually smile, something I didn’t think would be possible at that moment.

I have to stop listening to the album because I realise I am crying.

I only really caught up with Bowie in real time around the release of Hours… It’s certainly not his greatest album by any means, but I fall in love with Thursday’s Child.

I discover yet another Bowie. One who only rarely makes an appearance, but when he does, he is beautiful. The sincere Bowie, the honest Bowie, the human man with the human heart behind this superhuman music.

As long as you’re still smiling, there’s nothing more I need.

And your big fat dog.

And he jokes about his broken English, tries to be a friend to me.

I care for no-one else but you, I tear my soul to ease the pain.

Tuesday night. A lot of the world have moved on. Julie Burchill writes what I can only assume is meant to be some kind of ironic Bowie-inspired meta-textual tribute in the Spectator, telling people to stop “sob-signalling” and which contains a head-swirling, Ouroboros of a complaint about feeling:

a revulsion with a sub-section of my fellow hacks who – for a fee – will say something even if they have nothing worth saying.

Meanwhile, Camilla longs for some of the attention herself.

And I know it must look weird from the outside. Like this all just performative, social media driven, pretend sadness. Last week it was Lemmy, this week it’s Bowie, next week it will be whoever. But for us it’s not that. This is real grief. And obviously, it’s nothing compared to what his family and friends are going through. We know that. We don’t need to be told that. We are not stupid. But still, it is real pain that people are feeling. And it’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. I’ve lost people close to me, very close to me. And I saw people laying flowers for Diana and I thought they were mad. But if what they felt is what I feel now, then I get it completely.

I buy the Guardian, with its beautiful cover and twelve-page tribute.

I buy it but I have no intention of reading it, although it does seem fitting that the same person who broke the news to me on Facebook has his name on this front page. I don’t read it because right now I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I don’t watch any of the tributes on TV. I don’t listen to anything on the radio. I barely even read the posts my friends write on Facebook. I simply don’t care about what anyone else has to say right now because this feels so weirdly and intensely personal that reading what anyone else thinks just seems irrelevant, and yet here I am writing this.

I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do,

So I’ll just write some love to you.

October 2014. I move into a flat in Brixton. The night after I move in, my flatmate comes home to find me sitting in the front room reading a book by David Icke. The following night, she comes home to find me sitting in the front room reading my own book. I am unable to find the words to explain that the David Icke book is preparation for a piece I am writing for the New Humanist and I was reading my own book in preparation for a talk I was giving. Instead, I decide that she thinks I am a lunatic and hide in my room for the rest of my life. The book I had written was about the history of stationery. The talk I wrote about that book begins with the song Rubber Band.

Tuesday night. I have the realisation that it was a magic trick. That last album. He performed a magic trick. He gave us this album, and then just a few days later, he silently transformed it into something entirely different. What was confusing and obscure and frustrating and invincible suddenly becomes direct and honest and open and vulnerable. The Pledge, the Turn, the Prestige. It’s all there. It is the greatest concept album of all time. He won. He beat us all.

Part of me hates him for being so David Bowie about it that we had no time to prepare. But then that goes away and I am filled with love for him for being so David Bowie about it that he did give us time to prepare, except none of us realised that because none of us are David Bowie enough to be David Bowie.

And we should have known because the bastard had done it before. Making us think he’d gone quiet and spent a decade daydreaming about Potsdamer Platz and pining after Hermione, when really he’d been stomping around, yelling about women dressed as men for the pleasure of a priest. But even those of us who knew he could do anything didn’t know he could do this. First he gives us everything that we want, then he takes back everything that we have.

Monday night. I walk up to the Ritzy.

There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people everywhere. No-one knows what is happening. Some people have speakers and are playing music. There are people with guitars. There are pockets of people standing around singing different songs. Strangers hug each other. There are people in tears. I am in tears. I leave after five minutes. I just can’t take it. Not right now. Maybe not ever.

I go to the Prince Of Wales, it is packed. I stand in the corner with a pint of Amstel. I am shaking. It is overwhelming. I need somewhere quieter. Every pub in Brixton is filled with people singing this glorious man’s glorious music. Eventually, I reach the Crown & Anchor. It’s a bit further out and not so crowded. Of course they’re playing Bowie, but not quite as loud. I go to the bar and the barman can see it in my face. “How are you holding up?” he asks. We talk briefly about how sad it is, about how the only source of comfort in this is the sense that he seems to have made peace with what was happening. I’m reminded of seeing my dad’s face when he was told he only had two weeks to live and I remember knowing that the doctor was lying because she’d told me he only had one week and I remember him living for four weeks. I cry. I apologise. He seems to ask me out on a date of some sort. I politely decline but accept the can of Strongbow he gives me as a parting gift, and it all seems appropriate somehow.

There is no conclusion to this because there is no conclusion to grief. It stays with you but it gets better. In fact, you learn to love the grief because the grief is love. None of this makes sense and there was no point writing any of it because you all already know it, and if you don’t already know it and understand it and feel it, then there is no point in me trying to explain it. There are those who get it and those who don’t, and as long as we’re together, the rest can go to hell.

For, in truth, it’s the beginning of an end.

And nothing has changed.

Everything has changed.

 

Robot Wars is coming back, and given my past associations with it I was immediately inundated with messages from friends asking me if I’d seen it (after the first one: yes), if I was excited (a bit, I guess) and if I was going to be it again. This question being dependent on my dad, who actually built the robots, I said I’d ask him. He didn’t seem very keen, and has expanded on that a little here.

In fact I’m beginning to feel that fighting robots isn’t as much fun as it used to be, chiefly because they are now being used in combat to kill people.

:(

I can think of about a hundred people who’d argue that writing this post is the dumbest, most counterproductive thing I could possibly do— that I’m not only burning my bridges behind me, but burning others before I come to them. These people would tell me to keep my opinions to myself, for the sake of my career.

They’re probably right.

The thing is, though, it’s not always about hustling the next book or making the smart career move. Sometimes it’s about being able to look at yourself in the mirror.

*

Well, that was fast. Turns out I’m not doing a “Person of Interest” novel after all.

I did warn you. I told you that the whole thing might get junked if they didn’t like the outline. As it turns out, though, the project is dead for a different reason entirely.

It turns out they didn’t like my last blog post.

For my part, I was rather fond of it. I’d been sitting on the news ever since last summer, unable to share; even after the book ended up on Amazon I still figured I should get explicit permission from Titan before going public. Permission in hand, I framed the story as a bit of good news, albeit hard-won good news that had to be fought for; I talked about the inevitable delays that gum up the works when multiple corporations, all with their own vested interests, have to get on the same page. As far as I was concerned it was like pointing out that Canadian winters are cold— not an insult, just an unpleasant fact. The way things are.

Evidently that’s not how certain other parties felt. (Exactly which other parties remains unclear, other than they obviously live somewhere in the Titan/Warner Bros./Bad Robot triumvirate. No one has communicated directly with me on the matter, so this is all coming via my agent with the serial numbers filed off.) They saw it as an extensive and detailed list of my own personal irritations and frustrations, name-checking of the characters involved, and complaints about remuneration. The most egregious sin, in their eyes, was the fact that I spilled “confidential” information— to wit, the title. That was enough to cancel the contract outright, Japan’s apparent interest notwithstanding.

If you go back and review the post in question, you’ll see that none of these claims stand up to scrutiny.

For example, if I’d wanted to “list my irritations and frustrations”, I would have mentioned the fact that I was given three months to write a novel, then put on hold for almost a third of that time while waiting for someone to approve a 5-page proposal. Or the contractual clause obligating me to return my signing installment if the project were cancelled up to the detailed-outline phase— in which case I’d be the only person on the project expected to work for free (unless Titan and WB employees routinely hand back portions of their salaries every time a project goes south). I’d have talked about the uncertainty of working up ten thousand words of prose, scaffolding, and outlines— without a contract and without payment— purely as a show of good faith, because I knew time was pressing and I didn’t want contract negotiations to slow things down even further. The teleconference that answered nothing; the makeup conference promised, but never delivered. There’s no end to the “frustrations” I could have “detailed”.

What I actually wrote was “There were contractual issues, but I figured we could work those through— because sometimes, as my buddy Mike Skeet opined, you just gotta tell the story.”

Name-checking the involved parties? The only person I named was JJ Abrams (who, let’s be clear, I’m pretty sure was not involved)— and unless his role as head of Bad Robot is supposed to be some kind of trade secret, I’m unclear as to how this constitutes any sort of breach. I didn’t mention remuneration at all until someone in the comments talked about a dream come true. My response— “You haven’t seen what they’re paying me”— was intended more as a wry commentary on general midlister income than anything else. (Titan was actually paying about a third of what I’d received for my previous tie-in, so in this case the remuneration was especially low. Which was, ironically, why I didn’t mention it.)

As for the real deal-breaker— spilling the title—to which title are they referring? “Person of Interest Novel #1”, which someone had already plastered across Amazon websites the world over? Or “The Hephaestus Iteration”, working title for an outline that had already been scuppered from above because it didn’t reflect the latest state of the narrative? A title, and an outline, submitted months before I was even signed?

Nothing in that post was factually inaccurate. Nothing breached contract. Nothing was even really all that negative, especially in light of the things I could have said; basically just generic grumblings about the speed at which corporations move. So why, after alternately working my ass off and twiddling my thumbs for extended periods over the past several months— after having had the work I submitted described as “brilliant”, “really cool”, and “fantastic”— after seeing myself described as “the perfect person to write this book”— why am I suddenly out of a gig?

The reasons that have filtered through to me simply don’t hold up (the claim about name-checking is pure fabrication). I’ve seen grumblings about “lost trust”, but the foundation laid out for such a claim is so insubstantial as to be meaningless—mealy-mouthed evasion to mask some other reason, some real reason, that remains unspoken. So, in the absence of first-hand information, we are left to speculate.

We could speculate that this was a diversionary tactic meant to distract from whoever jumped the gun and released the novel info in the first place.  Maybe someone, red-faced, figures they can take cover behind related collateral.

Maybe.  But I doubt it.

I think this may have more to do with the prevailing power dynamic between publishers and authors in general, the reason my hundred advisors would advise me to keep my mouth shut. When you’re a midlist author, you just don’t talk about this shit. Whatever the merits of your complaint, whatever steps you’ve taken behind the scenes, there’s a kind of gentleperson’s agreement that publishers never get called out in public. It’s partly decorum (no one wants to look unprofessional by airing their dirty laundry) but it’s also fear, a fear informed by the fact that there are so very many writers and so very few publishers, fewer with each passing year. You make the wrong person look bad and you just may never sell a book in this town again.

The threat is by no means universal— at a rough count I’ve had dealings with somewhere around thirty publishers over the course of my career, and working with most of them has ranged from hassle-free to downright joyful. Still, the power imbalance weighs more heavily than you might expect from reading the relentlessly upbeat blogs of your typical midlist author. I belong to a couple of online writers’ lists, those private communities where they say things they’d never be dumb enough to express in public. The nickel-and-diming, the questionable accounting, the deliberate cutting of authors out of every relevant loop. The manipulative editors, the incompetent agents, the endless ass-covering. Writers bitch about it behind the scenes, and ask each other for advice; they compare notes about this potential career-killer or that potential career-savior.

Never in the open, though. We hide in the closet and we commiserate over our mutual misfortunes, but everything’s prefaced with Obviously this is in strictest confidence and Don’t tell anyone, it’ll only get him mad…

So I’m thinking, maybe I told someone.

I wasn’t trying to. I wasn’t on any kind of crusade, wasn’t trying to Speak Truth to Power or any of that shit. I kept carefully mum about all my real gripes. The stuff I did mention— the glacial pace of corporate decision-making, the top-down creative control exerted on media tie-ins— just weather reports, as far as I was concerned. Generic stuff, impersonal, elements for the protagonist to endure on his quest for a cool sandbox and a happy ending. I named no names— hell, I didn’t even know any.

But perhaps even that mild, good-natured grumbling is still a bridge too far. I guess, without even meaning to, I called them out.

*

At this point, the smart thing would probably be to make some brief announcement— couldn’t come to terms, creative differences, yadda yadda yadda— but that would be horseshit.

So here’s something that isn’t. I am bummed, and I am pissed— because while the gig may have been frustrating, the book would have been great. I was really excited about writing it, and I was honored to be invited into the coolest AI sandbox TV has ever seen. But that doesn’t change the fact that these guys got me to put my life on hold and then dicked me around for a third of a year. I wasted months, turned down other gigs that would have paid more. I was happy to. Sometimes you just gotta tell the story.

There will be other gigs. There already are. My royalties alone for last year were almost four times what this book would have netted me (admittedly, it was a good year for royalties), so I’m not ending up on the street any time soon. Even if I did, there’s little joy in a relationship that lets one party piss with impunity into the punch bowl while giving the bum’s rush to anyone with the temerity to remark upon it.

The problem, my hundred smarter advisers would say, is that most of the industry operates exactly that way. Maybe all.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe any other publisher who passes this way will read the tale and say, “What a fucking diva. Can’t trust him. Put him on the list of Difficult Authors to Never Work With.”

But maybe, some will say “Huh. I guess I’d be pissed too, if someone kept jerking me around like that. Since we don’t treat our people that way, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

There’s cause to hope. Like I said; thirty publishers, and most have been just fine.

But if I’m wrong— if the entire industry does, in fact, think it’s the author’s job to just shut up and smile, regardless— well, then I’ve already lasted in this business far longer than I should have.

‘Bye, PoI Novel #1. Too bad we couldn’t make it work.

It would have been glorious.

Please excuse the shortage of blog posts. I'm up to my elbows in a novel that's eating all the keystrokes I throw at it then belching and asking for more: it should be done—at least in first draft—in another week or so, but in the meantime I don't have much energy for other writing.

Novels are pretty much the most complex form of written fiction you can work on, unless you're the kind of glutton for punishment who goes in for long series works in which each novel is an episode. Of which I'm guilty: the current millstone tied to my neck is book eight in an ongoing series with a lot of back-story, so I'm constantly weaving long-term plot threads together. And a side-effect of scale is that with seven earlier books and nearly a book's-worth of short stories to draw on, there are a lot of loose strands that ought to tie in somewhere later on. One of the cruel paradoxes of such series works is that they take so long to write that the author is doomed to age-related declining memory function just as the work becomes so complex that they need the voracious retention capacity of a young adult to grapple with it. I wrote "The Atrocity Archive" when I was 35; I'm now grappling with "The Delirium Brief" at 51, and I reckon I need to finish the core of the Laundry Files series before I turn 60 lest I lose the plot completely somewhere in the final volume—provisionally titled "The Alzheimer's Tract".

(That was a joke, by the way. Ha. Ha. Ha.)

Another problem with series works is that, unless you were at pains to plain the thing as a unitary whole when you started it, the background expands like Elephant toothpaste (or maybe Mercury(II) thiocyanate decomposition in the case of the Laundry Files). "The Atrocity Archive" wasn't so much planned as it just happened—a one-shot short novel written with no thought of sequels. In fact, the only way to make sequels work was to make Bob a horribly unreliable narrator (a role at which he excelled). By the time I introduced other viewpoints into the series (Mo in "The Annihilation Score", Alex in "The Nightmare Stacks") I had a pretty good perspective of what the world was about, and a rough idea of the trajectory of the 12 book story arc. But I also had so much back-story to keep track of that bits kept dropping off my radar, because middle-aged memory is not my friend.

Do you want to know the real reason George R. R. Martin's next book is late? it's because keeping track of that much complexity and so many characters and situations is hard work, and he's not getting any younger. But George has pioneered some fascinating coping strategies for the authors of long series works, which can probably be summarized as Martin's Law: "When the plot metastasizes, the best form of chemotherapy is to massacre your protagonists". (Personally I find a bijou nuclear apocalypse works best, or failing that, having an Elder God return to dine on everybody's soul.) Next, you've probably heard of playwright Anton Chekhov's rule: "if a gun is placed on the mantelpiece in the first act, it must be fired in the third". To which I'd like to add an observation of my own: if you're writing a series work you're allowed to leave the guns on the mantelpiece between books, but sooner or later you need to pull all the triggers or your readers will forget about them.

So that's what I'm doing right now: I'm running round the metaphorical house, pulling guns off all the mantelpieces and firing them wildly. Ahem: most of them. And I'm taking care to position a couple of new guns where I can find them for future books (or, in one case, a Chekhovian tactical nuke). And that's why your weekly blog essay is delayed.

[content warning: discussion of violent crime, including sexual assault]

I plan to write an article on misuse of statistics by online news organizations, but looking back through my archives most of the examples I’ve got are from a couple of liberal sites that aren’t the worst offenders so much as the only ones I can even bear to read. I’m worried that some of my readers have gotten the impression that liberal sites are the only ones that routinely misuse statistics, which would be grossly false. So before I write the article, I thought I’d give one example of how a lot of conservative sites have statistics that are so bad they’re not even fun to dissect.

I chose Breitbart’s “Rape Deniers: 9 Facts About Illegal Alien Crime The Media Covers Up” because it sounded promising – talking about rape and calling people who disagree with you “deniers” are two pretty reliable red flags that an article will be terrible. It’s a series of 9 facts meant to show that illegal immigrants to the US are involved in a lot of crime, especially sexual crime.

I’m skipping Fact 1, which is just a methodological point I don’t dispute, Fact 2, which just says some native-born Americans are unemployed, and Fact 3, which says that a lot of our heroin comes from Latin America; I don’t really disagree with any of these. I’m also skipping Fact 7 because it’s a repeat of Fact 6 and the same points apply. That leaves Facts 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9.

4. Because local and state prisons don’t track legal status, we don’t know how many illegals are in those prisons. As my colleague Ben Shapiro points out, the lack of this number is being used dishonestly by the media against Trump…Trump’s repeated statements about immigrants and crime underscore a common public perception that crime is correlated with immigration, especially illegal immigration. But that is a misperception; no solid data support it, and the data that do exist negate it. Trump can defend himself all he wants, but the facts just are not there. Except the facts are there. The Feds do track legal status, and the numbers are startling. Of 78,022 primary offense cases in fiscal year 2013, 38.6 percent were illegal immigrant offenders. The majority of their cases (76 percent) were immigration related. Of total primary offenses, 17.6 percent of drug trafficking offenses and 3.8 percent of sex abuse were illegal immigrants. Of 22,878 drug crime cases, 17.2 percent were illegal immigrants.

The first part of this is a really weird complaint. They’re saying that 38.6% of federal prisoners are illegal immigrants, which is true and indeed very high. Then they’re admitting that 76% of their cases are immigration related. That is, the Feds are imprisoning them because they immigrated illegally. I think that most people would be willing to concede that illegal immigrants are more likely to have immigrated illegally than other populations.

The second part, the part about federal drug trafficking, is complicated; it’s different from “drug having”, “drug dealing”, and even “drug trafficking” as a broader non-federal category. To get a federal drug trafficking arrest, you have to move really large quantities of drugs “across state or national borders”, preferably in a “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area”. That is, crimes that would give you state charges in a normal place become federal charges in one of these areas. Where are they? The entire US border with Mexico is a gigantic High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (see this map). So a high rate of illegal immigrants among federal drug trafficking prisoners just means that they’re more likely to be involving in transporting drugs across the US-Mexico border than, say, a lumberjack in Wisconsin is. I am prepared to believe this.

Finally, illegal immigrants do commit 3.8% of federal sexual abuse cases. I give Breitbart credit for finally getting a number that is entirely correct and not biased at all. Unfortunately for them, illegal immigrants are 3.8% of the US population.

5. According to the Justice Department…There are 94 federal court districts in this country and the five located near the southern border see a large portion of criminal cases, according to the Justice Department’s annual report on criminal prosecutions. The five federal districts also have the biggest number of defendants actually convicted of federal crimes. Of the 61,529 criminal cases initiated by federal prosecutors last fiscal year, more than 40%—or 24,746—were filed in court districts neighboring the Mexican border….Nearly 22% (13,383) were drug related, 19.7% (12,123) were violent crimes and 10.2% (6,300) involved white-collar offenses that include a full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals. Read those stats closely because the media will lie and claim the crimes involve border enforcement. As you can see, over 40% involve drugs and violence.

So here’s some interesting math. “More than 40% – or 24,746 – were filed in court districts neighboring the Mexican border.” Ellipsis. “13,383 were drug-related, 12,123 were violent crimes, and 6,300 were white-collar fraud.” Wait a second. Those three numbers add up to 31,806, more than the total number of cases. Apparently we can’t trust illegal immigrants to obey any laws, including the laws of mathematics.

Breitbart’s reference goes here and their reference is here. When I look it up, these turn out to be the numbers across the entire US, not the numbers for southern border regions. This makes sense – do we really think illegal immigrants commit 6,300 cases of white-collar fraud per year in their dynamic illegal immigrant megacorporations?

But this is really embarrassing for Breitbart’s case. Their whole point is that the disproportionate number of crimes committed in immigrant-heavy areas are not just immigration offenses, but in fact representative of the country’s crime load as a whole. But that’s only because they’re accidentally looking at the country’s crime load as a whole instead of at crimes committed in immigrant-heavy areas! I can’t actually find the immigrant-heavy-area data, but I’d be willing to bet that the disproportionate number of federal crimes along the border do in fact involve border enforcement, exactly the argument they claim to debunk.

6. There are more than 2,000 sex offenders deported by ICE every year in Texas alone…of the 862 alien sex offenders deported by the Texas-based offices, about 27 percent were convicted of sex offenses against children?

Quick, how many illegal aliens in Texas? If it’s 10 million, then their sexual offense rate is far lower than that of any other population. If it’s 10,000, their sexual assault rate is far higher than that of any other population. Not only does Breitbart not give these numbers, but they don’t even seem to understand that they should give them, or expect their readers to care.

I can’t actually figure this number out because it depends on knowing what percent of immigrant sex offenders are deported each year. Consider: there are 86000 sex offenders in Texas. About 6% of Texans are illegal immigrants, so by chance we should expect about 5000 sex offenders total. Given that more than 2000 are deported per year, and that this has been happening for more than three years, that sounds like there are (or were) more than 5000, unless some deportees came back, which we know some do. But I don’t know that the sex offender registry is measuring the same kind of sex-offenderness as the illegal immigration numbers, so I can’t be sure of this. Also, the Texas statistics for immigrants include Oklahoma and possible other areas, so it’s hard to directly compare.

According to this page, there are 5017 arrests for illegal aliens for sexual assault over 4.5 years, so about 1100/year. That should be the sort of number we can work with. But it’s well above the total number of Hispanics arrested for sexual assault given here, immigrant and native-born alike, which doesn’t make sense. So I don’t know what to do.

The only good source I can find for percent violent crime by illegal immigrants in Texas is this one, which says that they commit 7.5% of murders. But they’re 6% of the population, so that’s pretty much what we’d expect. This accords with the numbers mentioned above, where in federal prisons the percent illegal immigrants serving time for sexual assault was proportionate to their percent of the population.

I can’t find good numbers here. A very rough inference from one source of Texas sex offender numbers would suggest that the number of sexual offense deportations is unusually high, but inferring based on the murder and sexual abuse numbers suggests that sexual offenses are about average. I’m not sure which method is more correct – but in any case, whatever the truth is there’s no way Breitbart’s numbers could be expected to get anyone any closer to it.

8. In 2013 the Obama administration released 36,007 criminal immigrants who had nearly 88,000 convictions between them. Those convictions included 193 homicide convictions, 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, and 1,075 aggravated assault convictions In January, the DHS admitted to Sen. Grassley that 1,000 of the 36,007 released had gone on to commit more crime including: terroristic threats, lewd acts with a minor, various types of assault, DUI, robbery, hit-and-run, gang activity, rape, and child cruelty.

Politifact rates this half true. All immigrants involved served full prison sentences appropriate for their crime; the concern isn’t that they didn’t serve their time but that after their time was up they didn’t get deported. The DHS says that their policy is that if they haven’t finished a deportation case by the time a criminal gets out of prison, the criminal may be released until the deportation case is finished, mostly because the prison system won’t keep them and the DHS doesn’t have enough immigration-related prisons of its own. These people are subjected to the usual monitoring and may be rearrested and deported after their deportation case comes through. There is some reason for concern in that about 3/4s of these people manage to lose themselves before the deportation case is complete, but the DHS reasonably says that if people want this to stop happening people should give them more funding.

And once again, without more information we can’t tell whether any of this involves a higher crime rate than any other population.

9. ICE is finding and removing more criminal aliens each year. The number ordered removed has gone up from 7,000 in 2007 to 79,000 in 2010. These criminals are not being stopped at the border. These criminals are being deported after making it across the border and committing tens of thousands of crimes.

Sheesh. You get angry when we don’t deport immigrants. You get angry when we do deport immigrants? Make up your minds! This is literally just complaining that we’re getting better at solving the problem you complained about above!

There are between ten and twenty million illegal immigrants in the United States – about equal to the number of New Yorkers. If somebody wanted to expel New York from the country, they could point out that New Yorkers commit 616 homicides, 2,534 rapes, and 45,206 cases of aggravated assaults per year. Or that we need seventy-one prisons just to contain all the New Yorker criminals in our justice system, and we don’t have nearly enough funding to run all of them effectively, such that literally thousands of New Yorker criminals, including murderers and rapists, are released into the general population every year. You could report that [number] of New Yorkers commit violent sexual assaults on children each year – I don’t know what the number is, but I guarantee you that it is a number, that it has a certain number of digits, and that it is worse than zero.

Breitbart consistently fails to give numbers that would mean anything or inform anybody, and when it either uses numbers that are loaded in its favor or ones that don’t mean what it thinks they mean. The actual numbers on the question of interest don’t seem particularly outrageous.

This isn’t to say that there can’t be legitimate concerns about illegal immigration. In fact, that’s my whole point and something that I wish conservatives better understood: we need to practice Gettier politics. There’s a theory on the Right that since the media has created a giant edifice of lies to justify liberalism, liberalism must be false. But other parts of the media have created a giant edifice of lies to justify conservativism. Instead of assuming our opponents are necessarily gullible morons who believe the giant edifice of lies on their side, we should kind of awkwardly go “Oh, there’s a giant edifice of lies on your side too? Yeah, I know that feeling,” and listen to what they have to say.

A major obstacle to changing one's mind is the fallacy that if the other side is right, it must be decent and intellectually honest.

— Steven Kaas (@stevenkaas) August 21, 2010

In the 2011 Holyrood election, the SNP won 69 seats on 45% of the vote, and were able to establish the first majority government under a system that was designed to make that difficult. In the 2014 independence referendum the SNP-led "YES" campaign won 44.7% of the total vote. At the 2015 General Election the Scottish National Party gained just under 50% of the vote and won all but three of the 59 Scottish seats in the Westminster Parliament. There is little doubt that the Nationalist tide has been riding high in Scotland for several years now. The party maintains impressive, some might say oppressive, discipline, and in all things- personal and well as policy- the SNP never loses sight of their goal of a separate Scotland. The Nats see the failure of the first referendum as merely a way-station on the road to ultimate independence.

Yet the Nationalist voters are a lot more heterogeneous than the party, and detailed analysis suggests that quite a few voters support the SNP, not because they genuinely believe in separation, but because they see the party as "standing up for Scotland". There are left wing and right wing Nationalists and not always do they see eye-to-eye, indeed only a couple of decades ago the party seemed on a downward trajectory precisely because of these internal splits.

Even despite this it may seem foolhardy to predict the fall of the SNP, for the fact is that not only is the party united and disciplined, but that its main opponent, Scottish Labour, is not. The Labour Party in Scotland has been hollowed out by complacency and corruption, indeed one could argue that the major story of the past ten years is not Nationalist advance, but Labour collapse. Away from such former Westminster heavyweights such as Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling, the Scottish party fell into the hands of third rate hacks, whose complacency and incompetence ran the party into the ground. Neither does 2016 look like Scottish Labour can make a comeback. The SNP control over Holyrood seems set to continue by default.

Yet there are other aspects which are not being considered. The first is that the electoral system will not deliver the same collapse of Labour in Holyrood as it has in Westminster, so although Scottish Labour may grow much weaker, they will not disappear. The second is that both the Scottish Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Conservatives are likely to do a whole lot better than they did in 2011. For the Scottish Lib Dems it would be hard to do worse than the 5 seats that they held in 2011, but there are real chances for them to make a modest advance back into their former heartlands, with several mainland constituency seats now in play, beyond the two island seats they managed to salvage from the 2011 disaster. Because the Scottish polls are only taken irregularly, the data for voting intention in the Scottish Lib Dems can be very volatile, especially because it is so concentrated in only a few parts of the country, but even despite this, there are signs of a tentative recovery, and even, in the North East and Edinburgh, the chance of some surprise constituency gains, as well as a much improved list vote.

The Conservatives too have reasons for optimism, and although to a degree they may cannibalize some of the Lib Dem votes, especially in the borders, they are also making inroads in the central belt- the ebbing of the Labour tide is not seeing run it all the Nationalists way. Indeed, despite the caution we should show to Scottish polls, one has shown the Tories breathing down Labour's neck for second place. Of course many would say-rightly- that this only underlines the weakness of Labour.

Yet the fact is that the case made by the SNP for Scottish Independence is intellectually bankrupt. The party has not only failed to use the new powers granted to the Scottish government, it has failed to efficiently administer the powers that it has long had- the result has been the debacle of the Forth Road Bridge closure, a scandal long predicted, and an emerging crisis both in the Scottish healthcare system and in education. After 8 years of SNP government, the litany of mistakes is now quite a long one. However it is not this that has undermined the case for independence, albeit that it does the SNP political brand no favours.

The fall in the price of oil has been a catastophe for the North East of Scotland and an emerging crisis for Scotland as a whole. OK, so the Nats got it spectacularly wrong when they based their economic forecasts on a rock solid price for Brent crude of $100/bbl, with good contingencies down to $75/bbl, and OK so it is now trading at below $30/bbl with no long term recovery in sight. It was not just that the Nats forecasts were so wrong that had we in fact voted to separate in 2014 the Scottish economy would be on its knees- it was that the entire economic prospectus that was offered in the so-called "white paper" was bullshit and pixie-dust. "A wish is not a claim upon reality", yet as I read the document I was struck by how small the SNP vision was, how old fashioned and how wrong. 

In fact, beyond the fact of separation there was in fact very little vision of a future Scotland that was rooted in the realities that small nations need to face. There were occasional nods to Estonia, "if they can do it so can we",  but no acknowledgment of the difficulties that had to be faced and the wrenching, painful changes that would be required. This wish fulfillment came to a head in the absurd argument about whether Scotland would keep Sterling as its currency. When George Osborne said that any rUK would not permit a currency union without effective veto rights on Scottish spending it was greeted as some kind of neo-colonialism. "It is our currency, how dare Osborne think he can take it away from us" was a much muttered Nat response. Yet the point was that it Scotland left the UK, Sterling would not have been Scotland's currency, by definition. There was almost no clear thinking on the real practical problems that would have to be dealt with before any potential opportunities of separation might ever be unlocked. The SNP put forward dangerous, emotional and increasingly brainless arguments- setting braying mobs on the BBC and many others. It was a disgrace and it made many in Scotland wonder what kind of horror story the SNP was preparing for its enemies.       

In the end, as we know, the YES-ers lost by a near 10 point margin. 

The question of Scotland's future remains as yet unresolved, and a second referendum may even yet take place. To be honest, although I loath the divisive and poisonous atmosphere that the SNP as set on Scottish politics, I am almost tempted to say "bring it on". The economic arguments that were questionable at $100/bbl, are indefensible after such a period of volatility in the oil price. The political arguments are less and less easy to make as the UK slowly transforms itself into a Federation and the administrative superiority complex of the SNP is being undermined on a daily basis by their own mistakes, incompetence and complacency.

There is of course one fly in the ointment- the EU referendum. The conventional wisdom suggests that it will be close and that it may even be that Scotland votes to stay while the rUK votes to leave- which very likely would lead to an immediate second Scottish referendum and the breakup of the UK that the SNP so desires. However in my view this is to underestimate the planning that David Cameron has made to keep his party mostly onside and his country within the EU. Although Brexit is still a high risk, the betting is firmly on a solid endorsement of continued British membership of the EU. Indeed, given that Scotland elected a UKIP MEP at the last European Parliamentary election, it is even possible that the conventional wisdom is wrong that the the Leave vote could actually be marginally higher in Scotland than elsewhere.

For the the fact is that the commentators could well be reading the runes wrongly- the swing back from Left dominance in Scotland was delayed by the collapse of the Tories, but with even a slight recovery, the votes that were really only lent to the SNP may now return to their natural home, and that over the course of the next two Parliaments the SNP, firstly slowly, then ever more quickly begins to decline as a real threat to the unity of the UK.

Intellectually independence is a dead duck. Surely future belongs to those, like the Liberal Democrats and even some Conservatives, who are prepared to offer creative solutions using the ever stronger powers that Holyrood is gaining not to support the separation agenda but to support a practical agenda of restructuring, investment and growth. 

Surely it is time to start to reclaim Scottish politics from those who "won't change their minds and won't change the subject" and offer a positive, proactive agenda inside an increasingly Federal UK and a continuing and reforming EU. Labour weakness may not allow this to happen in 2016, but I truly believe that eventually, and possibly sooner than 2020, the Nationalist tide will turn. 

Indeed, the tide is already beginning to turn.

One day in grad school, a couple of friends and I were sitting at a table in a hallway in the astronomy building, working on a problem set. The professor who had assigned the problems walked by and noticed what we were doing — which was fine, working together was encouraged. But then he commented, “Hey, I’m confused — you’re all smart guys, so how come the girls have been scoring better than you on the problem sets?” Out loud we mumbled something noncommittal, but I remember thinking, “Maybe they are … also smart?”

This professor was a good-hearted guy, who would have been appalled and defensive at the suggestion that his wry remark perhaps reflected a degree of unconscious bias. Multiply this example by a million, and you get an idea of what it’s like to be a woman trying to succeed in science in a modern university. Not necessarily blatant abuse or discrimination, of the sort faced by Marie Curie or Emmy Noether, but a constant stream of reminders that many of your colleagues think you might not be good enough, that what counts as “confident” for someone else qualifies as “aggressive” or “bitchy” when it comes from you, that your successes are unexpected surprises rather than natural consequences of your talent.

But even today, as we’ve recently been reminded, the obstacles faced by women scientists can still be of the old-fashioned, blatant, every-sensible-person-agrees-it’s-terrible variety. A few months ago we learned that Geoff Marcy, the respected exoplanet researcher at Berkeley, had a long history of sexually harassing students. Yesterday a couple of other cases came to light. U.S. Representative Jackie Speier gave a speech before Congress highlighting the case of Timothy Slater, another astronomer (formerly at the University of Arizona, now at the University of Wyoming) with a track record of harassment. And my own institution, Caltech, has suspended Christian Ott, a professor of theoretical astrophysics, for at least a year, after an investigation concluded that he had harassed students. A full discussion can be found in this article by Azeen Ghorayshi at BuzzFeed, and there are also stories at Science, Nature, and Gizmodo. Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum and provost Edward Stolper published a memo that (without mentioning names) talked about Caltech’s response to the findings. Enormous credit goes to the students involved, Io Kleiser and Sarah Gossan, who showed great courage and determination in coming forward. (I’m sure they would both much rather be doing science, as would we all.)

No doubt the specifics of these situations will be debated to death. There is a wider context, however. These incidents aren’t isolated; they’re just the ones that happened to come to light recently. And there are issues here that aren’t just about men and women; they’re about what kind of culture we have in academia generally, science in particular, and physics/astronomy especially. Not only did these things happen, but they happened over an extended period of time. They were allowed to happen. Part of that is simply because shit happens; but part is that we don’t place enough value, as working academic scientists, professors, and students, in caring about each other as human beings.

Academic science — and physics is arguably the worst, though perhaps parts of engineering and computer science are just as bad — engenders a macho, cutthroat, sink-or-swim culture. We valorize scoring well on tests, talking loudly, being cocky and fast, tearing others down, “technical” proficiency, overwork, speaking in jargon, focusing on research to the exclusion of all else. In that kind of environment, when someone who is supposed to be a mentor is actually terrorizing their students and postdocs, there is nowhere for the victims to turn, and heavy penalties when they do. “You think your advisor is asking inappropriate things of you? I guess you’re not cut out for this after all.”

In 1998, Jason Altom, a graduate student in chemistry at Harvard, took his own life. Renowned among his contemporaries as both an extraordinarily talented scientist and a meticulous personality, he left behind a pointed note:

“This event could have been avoided,” the note began. “Professors here have too much power over the lives of their grad students.” The letter recommended adoption of a three-member faculty committee to monitor each graduate student’s progress and “provide protection for graduate students from abusive research advisers. If I had such a committee now I know things would be different.” It was the first time, a columnist for The Crimson observed later, that a suicide note took the form of a policy memo.

Academia will always necessarily be, in some sense, competitive: there are more people who want to be researchers and professors than there will ever be jobs for everyone. Not every student will find an eventual research or teaching position. But none of that implies that it has to be a terrifying, tortuous slog — and indeed there are exceptions. My own memories of graduate school are that it was very hard, pulling a substantial number of all-nighters and struggling with difficult material, but that at the same time it was fun. Fulfilling childhood dreams, learning about the universe! That should be the primary feeling everyone has about their education as a scientist, but too often it’s not.

A big problem is that, when problems like this arise, the natural reaction of people in positions of power is to get defensive. We deny that there is bias, or that it’s a problem, or that we haven’t been treating our students like human beings. We worry too much about the reputations of our institutions and our fields, and not enough about the lives of the people for whom we are responsible. I do it myself — nobody likes having their mistakes pointed out to them, and I’m certainly not an exception. It’s a constant struggle to balance legitimate justifications for your own views and actions against a knee-jerk tendency to defend everything you do (or don’t).

Maybe these recent events will be a wake-up call that provokes departments to take real steps to prevent harassment and improve the lives of students more generally. It’s unfortunate that we need to be shown a particularly egregious example of abuse before being stirred to action, but that’s often what it takes. In philosophy, the case of Colin McGinn has prompted a new dialogue about this kind of problem. In astronomy, President of the AAS Meg Urry has been very outspoken about the need to do better. Let’s see if physics will step up, recognize the problems we have, and take concrete steps to do better.

Today sees publication of the long-awaited Trans Inquiry report from the Women & Equalities committee, which you can read in full here. Sarah Brown has also written about the report, and you can read her views over on her blog.

The report is one hundred pages long, but for those reading along at home the important areas have generally been printed in bold or bold-and-italic text. If you want to skim the report, concentrating on those areas is helpful. With that said, lets dive in…

First up, this is just a report of a cross-party parliamentary committee of back-bench MPs. It’s not a guarantee anything at all will happen, but it’s certainly a useful stick with which to beat government – at least in the areas where the committee is being progressive.

Generally, the language of the report is good and I did not catch any blatant instances of invalidating trans people’s gender on that score, even in areas where the policy recommendations were not so progressive. The report however does not cover intersex people – although it also states that it does not cover non-binary issues “in depth”. Despite this, there are recommendations in the report that will benefit both non-binary people and those intersex people who transition.

Gender Recognition
There are some welcome suggestions here, such as creation of a “legal category for those people with a Gender Identity outside that which is binary”. The more concrete recommendations are updating Gender Recognition to de-medicalise the whole process and turn it into a simple self-declaration and allowing 16-year-olds to obtain recognition. Oddly, there is only a very passing mention of the current two-year wait to get a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Disappointedly, the report recommends retention of the Spousal Veto, reiterating old and trivially discountable logic about “protecting” the spouse.

There’s a suggestion in the report that there have been no prosecutions for revealing the trans status of someone with a Gender Recognition Certificate. (Section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act) I know this is incorrect and that there has been at least one prosecution, but it appears that the Ministry of Justice is either not tracking this correctly or they’re missing private prosecutions. The recommendation to “investigate” this is the first of the many damp squibs and pulled punches in the report.

Equality Act 2010
The recommendation to reintroduce absolute legal protections in employment and service provision for those holding Gender Recognition Certificates is a really big deal. The effects of a GRC have been watered down over the last few years and such a move would really help those who have them. Unfortunately, it would also increase the perception that those without GRCs are second class citizens which would be a problem if the two year requirement to obtain legal recognition was kept. The report also seems to agree that discrimination against trans people early in transition is OK.

It’s also harsh for those who find themselves caught by the spousal veto: GRCs are suddenly easer to get for single trans people and give more protections, which makes threats to block recognition and delay divorces even more powerful.

There’s also a recommendation about updating the protected characteristic “Gender Reassignment” to be “Gender Identity”. Exactly what force this has in law is unclear, but it’s precisely because of this lack of clarity that the update is suggested: Nobody wants to be the guinea pig who has to spend years fighting a test case to find the limits of the current system.

Healthcare
The really big statement here is that the NHS is in “clear breach of the legal obligations” surrounding waiting lists and breaches of the Equality Act, and that’s something the news media is already leading on. This is a lengthy section and goes much further than a political committee usually would, even making detailed recommendations about treatment regimes and professional development for doctors. Some of this is a welcome intervention, such as the recommendation to move gender identity services out of mental health services altogether. On the flip side, the rejection of an informed consent model of treatment is certainly not something many trans people will be cheering, nor the very timid suggestions about trans healthcare for children and adolescents. It’s unclear why the committee thought it was competent to discuss such matters.

There is some more disappointingly weak language here, such as the suggestion that NHS Networking Groups are a good way of making progress. Although some progress does get made eventually, the pace is glacial and many activists including myself have given up on the meetings due to consultation fatigue.

Everyday transphobia
A mixed bag here, containing some weak statements, such as the suggestion that the Ministry of Justice should “consult fully” on the development of hate crime legislation and police should be “better trained” although extending existing hate crime legislation (The detail is lacking) can only help.

The suggestion that IPSO and Ofcom should encourage more trans people to come forward with complaints is so weak that it crosses into victim-blaming territory: People don’t complain because it costs time and energy for little or no gain.

The recommendations about prisons are not very detailed, but given the impending (and now overdue) publication of a new Prison Service Instruction on the topic this isn’t surprising. The “clear risk of harm” to trans prisoners is noted, as is the inappropriateness of anything that amounts to solitary confinement.

On the plus side, an option for X Gender Markers on passports is enthusiastically endorsed by the report, along with the removal of the requirement for a doctors letter to update passports. I know many long-term campaigners in this area will be happy, although the Passport Office has been very reluctant to work on this in the past though, and it may remain a tough nut to crack.

And, of course, the much-trailed suggestion that official documents and records should be non-gendered as far as possible is here too.

The final sections feel rushed: vague assertions that online harassment is bad, and suggestions that teachers, children and social workers should receive more training. The report does not mention which subjects should be dropped from the syllabus to make space for these topics, nor is there any suggestion that additional support or improved policies should be put in place.

The report is fairly comprehensive, and so far the only items missing that I have noticed are discussions about conversion therapy and the other spousal veto. (Section 12(h) of the Matrimonial Causes Act, allowing a spouse to void a marriage if they marry someone who already has a GRC)

Novelettes Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos contains 70 science fiction and fantasy novelettes (between 7,500 and 17,500 words long) that were published in 1940. Editor von Dimpleheimer comments on the latest volume in his series of public domain reprints: The … Continue reading →

This morning, the government’s Women and Equalities Committee released its first report on transgender equality, detailing its recommendations. They fall into a few broad areas:

• Reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act
• Reform of the 2010 Equality Act
• Reform of healthcare services for trans people
• “Tackling everyday transphobia”

I’ve had a short while to skim this document and these are my initial impressions. It’s a very long report of nearly 100 pages, but much of it is summarising submitted evidence and explaining the current situation. The committee has helpfully written their recommendations in bold, and those are the sections I’m going to focus on. Zoe O’Connell has also blogged on this and is worth reading.

Before doing that, I’ll note that this is very much a report of our time, and fits with the narrative of the current Conservative government. While noting that the government has work to do, it defends the deeply discriminatory Spousal Veto and only really takes the gloves off when it comes to talking about the NHS.

Taking the parts as they are presented in the document, I’ll start with the Summary:

The report recognises that “High levels of transphobia are experienced by individuals on a daily basis with serious results“, and references the appalling suicide statistics faced by transgender people.

It recognises that the 2004 Gender Recognition Act was “pioneering but is now dated“, and criticises the pathologisation of trans identities and the need for self-determination.

It recognises that the Equality Act is unclear in who it covers, and suggests that the fuzzy concept of “gender reassignment” be relaunched as “gender identity“. Hopefully this will clarify and enhance the position of non binary people.

It has some strong words for the NHS, pulling no punches with “ e NHS is letting down trans people: it is failing in its legal duty“. This seems to refer to both gender identity, and general healthcare services.

Now on to the detailed sections, starting with the Gender Recognition Act. The report:

• Recognises that the Act has nothing to offer non binary people, stating that “The Government must look into the need to create a legal category“.
• Urges the government, “within the current parliament” to “bring forward proposals to update the Gender Recognition Act, in line with the principles of gender self-declaration“.
• Recognises that the Spousal Veto is open to abuse and that this is “deplorable and inexcusable“, but recommends that the veto remain in place.
• Recommends that gender recognition be available to 16 year olds, but suggests this should be subject to parental consent or Gillick Competency.
• Notes there have been no prosecutions under Section 22 of the Act (the protection from outing clause), and expresses concern that this may be effectively useless. It suggests the Ministry of Justice “take action to address this“.

There’s some good stuff here. I’m pleased the committee spotted the uselessness of Section 22 as a piece of criminal law that is routinely violated and never enforced, and welcome suggestions that this be tightened up. I welcome the recognition of the need to extend recognition to non-binary people but am disappointed that the committee presents no suggestion as to how this might be attempted. Similarly, while it recognises the need for self determination instead of the current practice of having bureaucrats literally put your gender identity on trial, it presents no suggestions for how this might be done.

In regards to the above, the committee’s report is essentially, “isn’t this terrible? The government ought to do something!”

The attitude towards the Spousal Veto is extremely disappointing. The report notes that Scotland effectively did away with it, but stubbornly insists it must stay, while noting that abuse of it is “deplorable”. Again, it offers no suggestions to how such abuse might be prevented, nor what can be done in the instances where spousal consent is not possible to obtain (e.g. the spouse is in a coma, or cannot be contacted).

This is, perhaps, the most disappointing aspect of the report for me, and the point at which it is at its most timid. The justification for retaining the veto is both paper thin and nothing we haven’t heard before. Stating, “in a marriage where one party transitions, the non-trans spouse does have a legal right to be consulted if it is proposed to change the terms of the marriage contract in consequence“.

Let’s note here what it is that’s being vetoed: it’s not transition itself, nor any of the hormonal or surgical changes that have potentially profound consequences for the nature of what is supposed to be a life-long monogamous sexual relationship.

What is being vetoed is access to equality before the law.

While I will never agree that the veto is anything other than a gross and disgusting infringement on the liberty and humanity of trans people, I would perhaps understand it more if those defending it were able to present an argument that actually made sense. How can you possibly give a spouse power of veto over access to employment nondiscrimination, but not access to genital reconstruction surgery?

On The Equality Act, the report:

• Suggests that the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” be replaced with “gender identity“.
• Suggests clarification of the Act so it is obvious that its protections apply to children.
• Recommends that the granting of a Gender Recognition Certificate prevents the exclusions on access to single sex services and jobs from applying to someone.
• Recommends “the Government work with Sport England to produce guidance which help sporting groups realise that there are likely to be few occasions where exclusions are justified” from single sex sport competitions.

There’s some really good stuff here. The Equality Act was a rush-job at the end of the 2005-2010 parliament and many (myself included) think that its provisions for trans people are a mess as a result. The single most important change, perhaps, is changing the definition of what’s protected from discrimination from “gender reassignment” to “gender identity“. It is currently very unclear just “how trans” you have to be to be covered by the Act, and this should go a long way towards addressing that, especially for non-binary people.

At present, you can be fired from certain jobs (or prevented from applying for them), and refused access to single-sex services (such as domestic violence shelters and rape-crisis counselling) if you are trans, and this is explicitly legal under the Act. The report proposes removing these exceptions but only if you have a Gender Recognition Certificate. According to some legal experts I have spoken to in the past, this is very much the situation that existed prior to the Act passing in 2010.

This does risk widening the perceived gap between those who have a Gender Recognition Certificate and those who do not though. Given there are no actual proposals for how the Gender Recognition Act might be extended to non-binary people, if this proposal is implemented by itself then it very much maintains non-binary people as “second class” trans people, from a legal standpoint.

It also makes a retained Spousal Veto much nastier by creating the unpleasantly ironic situation where an embittered spouse of a trans person can subject them to domestic abuse while withholding their legal right to access a domestic violence shelter.

There are kinds of discrimination that the Equality Act allows which the report does not address. One such is marriage in church, where if the priest reasonably thinks you are trans, they can refuse to marry you. Another relates to military service. The report has no recommendations to make here.

On The NHS the report:

• Says there is “too much evidence” of discrimination towards trans people in the NHS.
• Notes that trans people encounter “significant problems” accessing general healthcare and sometimes encounter “out-and-out prejudice“
• Notes GPs often lack understanding of trans issues and referral pathways and this can lead to “appropriate care not being provided“.
• Calls for a “root and branch review of failures in professional development, commissioning and incidences of transphobia in healthcare to be published within six months.
• States that the General Medical Council must provide reassurance that it takes transphobia seriously.
• Welcomes ongoing depathologisation of trans identities, in the same way that LGB people have been depathologised.
• Suggests that gender identity services be separated from mental health services, and perhaps become a discipline in their own right.
• Recognises that while gender recognition on request is something it would support, it would not support the informed consent model for “medical intervention as profound and permanent as genital … surgery“
• Notes the inappropriateness of prescribed gendered codes of dress and mannerisms to access treatment.
• Demands that the “lack of capacity” which is causing long waiting lists be addressed urgently.
• Recommends much easier access to puberty blockers for adolescent trans people and notes the urgency this represents.

I have less of a dog in this fight than many, as my own interactions with transition related health services largely finished nearly a decade ago. I do still experience problems accessing general healthcare, and I have campaigned continually on the difficulties trans people face accessing all forms of healthcare, because it’s really important.

I know the recommendation against an informed consent model will be disappointing to many. I’m not going to talk about that in depth here as it’s a complex topic and this is already getting really long.

Many clinicians will likely welcome the possibility of gender identity services becoming a fully fledged discipline in their own right, rather than the poor and neglected stepchild of mental health trusts. I would welcome this too: GIC’s currently live rather like a primary-school aged Harry Potter, shut away in the cupboard under the stairs by an adoptive family that would really rather they weren’t there at all, and if pushed, doesn’t really hold with “that sort of nonsense”. In order for GICs to properly reform and grow, they should be set free.

The last major section is called Tackling Everyday Transphobia. The report:

• Notes that legal change will “only bite” if there is social change too.
• Calls for the Ministry of Justice to work with trans people on hate crimes reporting.
• Calls for the government to strengthen hate crime legislation.
• States that the requirement for a doctor’s note to obtain an updated-gender passport “must be dropped“.
• Calls for public bodies to justify those occasions where they record name and gender, and notes there is no such thing as a “legal name” in the UK.
• States that the UK “must” introduce “an option to record gender as ‘X’ on a passport“.
• Suggests the government move towards non-gendering of official records as a general principle.
• Notes it is not appropriate for trans people in prison to be put in solitary confinement just because they are trans.
• Asks the prison service to clarify its position on trans prisoners and requires prison staff training and that the implementation of policy be monitored.
• Tasks the Independent Press Standards Organisation and OFCOM with working out how to get trans people to complain about poor representation.
• Notes harassment of trans people online needs to be taken seriously.
• Suggests schools need to cover trans issues in Personal, Social and Health Eductation.
• Asks further education bodies to better promote trans equality.
• Calls for trans-appropriate training of social workers “as a matter of urgency“

This is the single largest section and there’s a lot here. The stuff on official documents is eminently sensible and the call for X markers on passports (with a move towards removing gender on them altogether) is very welcome indeed.

Treatment of trans people in prisons is a festering sore and urgently needs addressing. The committee seems, in its language, to be putting the prison service on notice, and I welcome that.

I think the committee have missed the point on press and media depictions of trans people. The problem isn’t that trans people aren’t complaining; it’s that nothing is done in response. This is symptomatic of a much larger problem with the press in our society, and I’m not optimistic much will happen any time soon.

I couldn’t help but smile at the suggestion trans issues be covered in PHSE. At my school, the only time they were mentioned was to note that people like me “should be locked up”. Things have improved, thank goodness.

Internet harassment really needs to be tackled. I had a nervous breakdown because of it 2 years ago. This report doesn’t suggest any kind of compulsion to do anything about it though. The government, apparently, doesn’t want to tell ISPs what to do (apart from when it comes to spying on us and making them censor LGBT news sites as “porn”).

I will close by apologising for the length, but there was a lot to get through and the committee have done a thorough job.

What they’ve produced is a curate’s egg. There’s some really good stuff in here, but some of it is really disappointing too, particularly the stuff about the Spousal Veto, especially since Scotland proved there is no need for it whatsoever. I can only wonder why the government is so attached to it, particularly since this report, if implemented, gives it more teeth.

And finally, a word of caution. This is not a bill before parliament. It’s a report from a committee, and while it contains a list of recommendations, it doesn’t have the power to implement any of them without ministerial support.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction, and quite a big one.

But the Spousal Veto guys – sort yourselves out, seriously.

LAST year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 31-page dissent to a 5-to-4 decision upholding Oklahoma’s controversial method of executing criminals. To rely on a drug cocktail with a track record of torturing prisoners to death, she wrote in Glossip v Gross, is “barbarous” and violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. This week, Justice Sotomayor wrote her first majority opinion in a death-penalty case, taking just ten pages to explain why Florida’s death-sentencing procedures are out of whack with the jury-trial guarantee in the Sixth Amendment. The vote was 8-to-1, with only Justice Samuel Alito in dissent.  

In nearly every state that executes criminals, the decision to sentence a convicted murderer to death lies with the jury. But in Florida, a hybrid sentencing scheme has given judges the final word. While juries are asked to issue an “advisory sentence” by a majority vote, and their recommendations must be given “great weight”, presiding judges are empowered to adjust the sentence based on their own assessments...Continue reading

Don't front. You weren't there at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Chances are good that if you grew up in the United States in proximity to the 1980s your early exposure to David Bowie came from one of two sources: 1983's Let's Dance LP or the 1986 film Labyrinth. The first was ubiquitous, the second something of a flop that nevertheless managed to make a significant cultural impact. Labyrinth's initial failure was reportedly one of the darkest moments in Jim Henson's career, but he lived to see the movie redeemed as it found its audience on home video.

Even though musically the period was a nadir, Bowie's performance in Labyrinth was excellent. Many stars in his position wouldn't have had the patience or the generosity for a kids' movie like that - this was before the success of Elton John's score for The Lion King, after all. (The stage adaptation of The Lion King recently became the most profitable anything in entertainment history, though, so you better believe people followed Elton's footsteps.) Soon enough it would be de rigeur for pop stars of all stripes to write songs for children's movies, but that day was still to come in 1986. I'd wager, though,without even bothering to look it up that David Bowie did Labyrinth for the same reason he did anything else - he wanted to work with someone, in that case Henson.

For all the talk of him as a singular visionary perhaps Bowie's greatest skill was his humility as a collaborator, an instinct for sniffing out the best talent paired with a willingness to let them do what they did best, with the understanding that if they looked good, he would look good too. As dramatic a moment as it is on film and record, I've always thought that breaking up the Spiders onstage without informing the rest of the band in advance was one of the all-time towering dick moves in rock history. But he spent much of the rest of his career being gracious to his collaborators and bandmates, and reaped the benefits. Rock stars aren't usually very good at collaboration - just think about how often superstar team-ups yield shockingly poor dividends. And then think about the fact that David Bowie recorded a song with Queen that had every right to be a colossal train wreck and yet somehow managed to be one of the best songs in either of their catalogs. How the fuck did he do that.



(Of course, he also did this, so . . . pobody's nerfect!)

I never had the same kind of visceral emotional connection to David Bowie that so many other, very eloquent people seem to have had. I came to Bowie relatively late. I inherited a lot of great music from my parents but, other than a cassette tape copy of Let's Dance that got a lot of play in the car when I was a kid, he was a blind spot. In terms of formative influences, he wasn't there for me. I came to him when I was a little bit older, after I'd already made some Opinions of my own. As with many people, my first proper Bowie album was a "Best Of." I listened to that quite a bit, but it had the perverse effect of not making me seek out more for a surprisingly long time - his singles are deep enough that just a one-disc LP of his best songs can seem like a universe unto itself. But I got there, eventually.

I spent my early twenties getting into Bowie an album at a time. I wasn't in any hurry. I remember getting my copy of Ziggy Stardust and just sitting on it for a while, listening to it occasionally and slowly letting it seep in. I had time, and I didn't feel a lot of pressure. But I got there, eventually.

One of the aspects of Bowie that made me want to keep him at arms' length even as I became more knowledgable and enthusiastic about his catalog was, frankly, Bowie fandom. One of Bowie's great accomplishments as an artist was understanding the significance of mythmaking in the perception of celebrity. Even in the mid-70s when he was blitzed on coke and doing and saying some of the worst things conceivable - or maybe, especially during those years - he understood how important it was to be bigger than life. Nerds eat this kind of shit up, and Bowie attracted nerds like the Legion of Super Heroes. He made sci-fi concept albums that were cool in a way that, say, Tarkus wasn't (although I'd argue, with the wisdom of maturity, that Tarkus is pretty cool, too). He had alter-egos and vacillated between good and evil. He saved the world and went mad and came back from the dead just in time. He was, essentially, Grant Morrison's Batman made flesh.

Rock critics still use Bowie's vocabulary - we talk about artists having "Berlin periods." Bowie's career trajectory throughout the 1970s is even more iconic, in its way, than the Beatles'. This was because Bowie was part of the first generation of rock musicians who had grown up as rock fans, just as the idea of fandom as we know it today was being defined by the Baby Boomers. He spent his teenage years listening to the Beatles, wanting to be the next Beatles. He understood how big a deal that was and wanted his name in lights. Contrast this to the Beatles themselves, who spent the early part of their career thinking they were still going to have to find real jobs once this rock fad (or rather, it's second wind) ran its course. The Beatles were a tragedy because none of them had a clue what they were signing up for, and probably wouldn't have wanted it if they did. Bowie wanted to manufacture a tragedy out of whole cloth because he knew how awesome it looked from the cheap seats - a will to cataclysm that found outlet in a discography defined partly by frequent reference to disaster and dystopia. You could make an analogy between Jack Kirby and Roy Thomas - the transition between the classical Silver Age of rock to its decadent Bronze - except Roy Thomas never recorded "Rebel, Rebel."



Bowie was always "cool," and I've always been skeptical of that. Every persona had a look and every look was perfect. Of course, that was the point. I've always been drawn towards artists who made hay out of the embarrassment of being bodied. Part of me still loves to see rock stars show up to play dressed like they just walked off the street to punch a time clock, and even towards the end of his life when he had settled firmly into Cool Dad mode that was still the absolute antithesis of everything David Bowie was about. I hate the fact that my spirit is inflicted with the indignity of being attached to this lumpy sack of rotting meat beset by troublesome urges both quotidian and cosmic. That's my damage, I know. But that's where the urge for transcendence comes in, the desire to surpass the limits of embodiment. That's something Bowie did understand. Sometimes, as with the best house music, Bowie could almost make it seem like being a spark of consciousness in a rapidly deteriorating flesh heap wasn't the worst thing in the world. His queerness was one of the most important aspects of his music and his image, and a huge part of his legacy - helping people become more comfortable with themselves by communicating the idea that it's OK to be weird, and furthermore, what the fuck is "weird," anyway? I'm not on that wavelength. But sometimes when I listen to David Bowie I can be, for a little bit.

I spent the last 48 hours of David Bowie's life listening to ★ and just not getting it. I'm not as well-versed in late-period Bowie as some - what I've heard hasn't impressed me much yet, even if do look forward to one day making a more rigorous examination of the evidence. It sounded weird and squawky - he's doing some reedy warble with his voice that sounds a bit goofy. I'm not a fan of the otiose Scott Walker vibe he seemed to be channeling - seems to be a kind of default mode for older musicians who lose their ear for melody and listen to a lot of Steve Reich. And worse yet, the lyrics appeared to be some sort of self-parodic sci-fi junk. I just wasn't feeling it. And then of course he has to go and die on us, and suddenly all those opaquely affected lyrics are laid bare as being literally about his own death and act of dying, and the futuristic ★ is as real as a cancer lesion. He was about to die and he was trying to tell us it was going to be OK, even if he couldn't stand the fuss of actually saying goodbye. He was up and about, smiling for the camera just days before he died. Of course I feel like the biggest asshole in the world, but he probably doesn't care. He'd probably think it was funny. Dying was easy, just like starting a new career in a new town. He didn't need that body anyway, it was just holding him back.

Labyrinth is a great film because Bowie refuses to water down his performance even though he's surrounded by dancing Muppets. He's every bit menacing, melancholy, and dignified, a perfect super-villain. He's also a perfect creep. It's a movie about growing up, specifically about young women growing up and facing a world filled with predatory male images of sexuality - occasionally flattering, even seductive images, but all the more dangerous. If he had never made it as a musician he could have been huge as an actor - the camera loves him. He's a credible figure of immense evil, but infinitely charismatic. He made it all look so easy, at least when the camera was rolling.

According to Last.FM the Top Ten artists in my playlist are:



The site only records what I listen to on my computer, so it's not representative of a lot of what I hear, but in broad strokes that's a pretty accurate representation of the artists who form the bedrock of my musical taste - at least, the stuff I come back to over and over again. That's a pretty predictable, you might even say boring selection - gah, another middle-aged white guy who listens to Bob Dylan, I know. But I guess that, my protestations to the contrary, Bowie is a pretty big part of my musical diet. He may not have been formative for me in the same way that, say, R.E.M. or Elton John or Blonde on Blonde were, but he's been there pretty much consistently since I started listening to him.

The one advantage I have over some of the bigger Bowie fans is that I've still got a while to go. I've heard a lot of people say over the last couple days that there'll never be new Bowie music again. Well, maybe for you. I'm still here, taking my time. There's a ton of stuff, whole albums I've never heard. I'm a big believer in patience. I went through a period in my early twenties where I read everything Dostoevsky wrote, but I stopped short before I got to The Brothers Karamazov. Why? Because I was a little bit burnt out by then, but also because I knew you only get one opportunity to read The Brothers Karamazov for the first time. I've still never read it. Some day I will. It's nice to have something to look forward to. One of these days I'll pick up a copy of Heathen or Tin Machine II, when the mood strikes me. It'll be brand new, and I'll get to love it or hate it or be confused by it for the first time. He'll be living with me for a while yet, and I am confident he's still got some surprises up his sleeve.



(PS - Check out the top pinned tweet on my Twitter homepage.)

Last week we discussed how “A Ted Cruz win could further Bartonize ‘mainstream’ white evangelicalism,” and why that has me worried for my friends (virtual and otherwise) who work at evangelical institutions.

Specifically, I talked about two terrific bloggers — Messiah College history professor John Fea and Grove City College psych prof Warren Throckmorton. Both have been outspoken critics of theocratic pseudo-historian David Barton and the strain of right-wing Christian nationalism he promotes. At the moment, Barton is still mainly regarded as a far-right figure promoting fringe ideas.* But he’s also now running the super-PAC supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Thus my worry: If Cruz wins the GOP nomination, Barton will have to be affirmed by the Republican mainstream — and thus by the white evangelical mainstream. Once Barton ceases to be a “controversial” figure on the fringes of the evangelical tribe, his critics will likely be pushed out to those fringes and be branded “controversial” themselves.

This is the problem with white evangelical identity: It’s contingent on partisan political calculations beyond its own control. What is or is not acceptable for the white evangelical mainstream changes based on the shifting winds of the current Republican enthusiasm or Fox News’ outrage of the week.

Both Dr. Fea and Dr. Throckmorton responded to my post with good-natured, amused and amusing posts of their own. “I Appreciate Your Concern (I Really Do), But I Think I Will Be OK,” Fea wrote. “Thanks But I Think John Fea and I Are in Good Shape,” Throckmorton added.

And I would guess that they’re both probably right about that. They have the benefit of working for institutions — Messiah and Grove City — with settled identities rooted in denomination, confession and tradition. Messiah is officially nondenominational now (I think), but it retains a character and identity shaped by its origins as a Brethren in Christ school. I’m not sure how “official” Grove City’s relationship to the Presbyterian Church still is, but while it now draws students and faculty from a wider spectrum of religious traditions, it also retains that distinctly Prebyterian character and identity.

And that makes both Messiah and Grove City safer places to teach than a generically “evangelical” institution like Wheaton. They are anchored in traditions — Anabaptist and Reformed, respectively. They are, therefore, schools that belong to schools of thought. They have a theological framework that goes beyond an ad hoc set of propositions listed as a Statement of Faith. They know who they are. Their identity is settled.

That’s not the case with generically “evangelical” institutions. Their identity is perpetually unsettled. It is as fluid and anchorless as the identity of evangelicalism itself.

Thus we see evangelical institutions like Wheaton constantly reasserting their identity to keep up with the ever-evolving, ever-shifting winds of whatever it is that constitutes the current evangelical zeitgeist.

That makes such institutions a tricky place to be during an election year because, as Dave Gushee says, the “evangelical” identity of such places is constantly being revised to align with the partisan conservative views of its large financial backers:

So Wheaton is essentially saying this: Tenure will not protect you if you too visibly offend the conservative political views of our constituency. Whatever conservative politics looks like right now, that also is mandatory for faculty. The same is true in many other evangelical universities.

The key words there are “right now.” Right now, conservative politics are in flux. Where they will wind up come the Republican Convention this summer is anyone’s guess. Issues previously unpoliticized seem on the verge of becoming items of partisan dogma. As recently as eight years ago, Republicans were allowed to acknowledge that carbon traps heat in the atmosphere. By 2012, that fact had been anathematized. In 2000, torture wasn’t a partisan issue. Today it is.

And so, “right now,” we have no way of knowing what other positions or principles might soon be forbidden or required. Contraception? Vaccination? Fluoridation? No one can be sure.

My sense is that most “mainstream” white evangelicals are earnestly hoping that the Republican nomination eventually goes to someone like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio — someone they perceive to be less extreme and less volatile than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. But this preference for a supposedly more “moderate” Republican nominee doesn’t reflect a principled moderation. It is, rather, a weird acknowledgement of their submission. They’re not so much saying, “I would prefer to vote for Marco Rubio rather than to vote for Donald Trump,” as they are saying, “Since my religious beliefs and my understanding of scripture are about to be redefined for me by a politician, I am hoping that politician will turn out to be Marco Rubio rather than Donald Trump.”

They’re reasonable people, after all. They don’t want to wind up, a year from now, having to tell you that Jonas Salk was history’s greatest monster. They don’t want to face the prospect of disciplining professors for donating to Church World Service. But it’s not up to them. Their identity is not in their own hands. And, right now, they’re still waiting for someone else to tell them who they are.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* Barton is a fixture in Christian radio and he’s regularly promoted by Charisma magazine and its website, Charismanews.com. While the circulation of Charisma dwarfs that of Christianity Today, the latter is still regarded as the more respectable and representative voice of “mainstream” white evangelicalism. Thus as long as Barton is only revered by Charisma and not by CT, he can be identified as a “fringe” character. He may be influential among tens of millions of American evangelicals, but not among the tens of thousands who read Christianity Today, so he remains inconsequential. That’s the theory, at least.

I remember at a conference a few years ago attending a session on the future of the profession. The panel turned out to consist of four middle-aged men in suits,

Rather to my surprise, the wrongness of this hit me with the sort of force that hearing racist language did when I was a teenager.

Yes, I have had my consciousnesses raised.

Because of this I wrote some a couple of year ago that I am now attracted to the idea of all-women shortlists.

But I see two problems with the proposals to be discussed at the Liberal Democrat spring conference in York. You can find them in a blog post by Mark Pack.

The first is practical: would the proposals make a difference if they were implemented?

In 2010 we had women candidates fighting a raft of promising seats but failed to gain them. In 2015 we had them fighting seats vacated by sitting Lib Dem MPs and didn't win those either.

Do we have a clear enough idea of the seats we can realistically hope to gain, and therefore should place women candidates, in 2020?

The second problem I see lies in the proposal that we should "support diverse candidates with extra training and mentoring".

I suspect that what such candidates need is not training and mentoring so much as practical help with things like funding and child care.

No doubt we could all benefit from training and mentoring, but to single out diverse candidates as being in particular need of them risks reinforcing stereotypes rather than overcoming them.

The announcement we wait for every year has finally come in, and the American Dialect society has chosen their Word of the Year! That word is: “they”. It beat out other finalists such as “ammosexual.”

You might think that dubbing “they” as the Word of the Year is some sort of lifetime-achievement award, since the plucky pronoun has been part of English for quite a long time. But the prize has been given, not for the word itself, but for a particular usage that has been gaining ground for a while now: the singular “they.” We most commonly use the word to stand for the plural: “Jack and Jill went up the hill, but once there they realized they had forgotten their pail.” More and more, however, we’re seeing it used to denote one person at a time, when their sex is unknown to us: “The robber left no fingerprints, but they did leave a note to taunt the police.”

It would be somewhat more traditional, in some circumstances, to say “he or she did leave a note.” It’s a bit cumbersome, however, and to be honest, the real tradition is simply to act like women don’t exist, and say “he did leave a note.” The rise of “he or she” has reflected our gradual progress in remembering that human beings come in both male and female varieties, and our language should reflect that. (We can also try to make it reflect the full diversity of sex and gender roles, but while that’s an admirable goal, it might not be realistic in practice.)

Using “they” instead of “he or she” or just “he” is a very nice compromise. It sounds good, and it’s a word we’re already familiar with. Die-hard prescriptivists will complain that it’s simply a mistake, because when the God of English wrote the rules for our language, He (presumably) declared that “they” is only and always supposed to be plural. That view doesn’t accord with common sense, nor with the reality of the history of English. A long list of the best writers in the language, from Shakespeare and the authors of the King James Bible to Jane Austen and George Orwell, have deployed “they” as the correct pronoun to use when describing a single person whose sex is not known to us. Supporters of singular “they” are not revolutionaries twisting our language to the diabolical purposes of modern political correctness; we are just recalling a well-established and more correct way of speaking.

It’s long been argued that “he” served perfectly well as a generic singular pronoun, without any implication at all that the person being referred to is actually male. The problem with that view is that it is false. Studies have consistently shown that referring to unknown persons as “he” makes listeners envision a man much more often than a woman. To which one can scientifically reply, no duh. Pretending that “he” refers equally to men and women is just another strategy for pretending that sexism doesn’t exist — a tradition much more venerable than using “he” as a generic pronoun.

Minor fixes in our use of language aren’t going to make sexism go away. But they are steps in the right direction. I like to hope that, when the next young genius appears to revolutionize science, they will have had to deal with just a little bit less discrimination than their predecessors did.

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January 11th, 2016: I, too, am available for the role of "element namesake". – Ryan

Since I wrote about the possibility of ‘progressive’ electoral alliances last week, both James King and Andrew Hickey have explained why they think they wouldn’t work, and whoever is behind the Progressive Alliance UK campaign has taken to Facebook to tell us off for being negative.

Just for the record, I don’t think whoever’s behind the Progressive Alliance UK are “a group of party big whigs and donors” and I’m not sure where that impression came from. If anything, my reasoning that the project isn’t going to achieve much is precisely because the people pushing it aren’t at a high level in any of the parties you’d need to bring together to make such an alliance work. The closest we’ve come to any sort of alliance between parties of the centre-left came about because Ashdown and Blair wanted it to happen, often against the wishes of their members, not because they were forced into it.

It’s worth looking back at the circumstances that led to that agreement to see what obstacles are in the way to any formal alliance of parties. For a start, moves toward it began after 13 years of Tory rule (and four election defeats for variosu formations of the centre-left) and were kicked off with Paddy’s speech in Chard. However, John Smith wasn’t keen on any sort of agreement, and nothing really happened until Tony Blair became Labour leader. Any sort of agreement needs the party leaderships on side from the beginning, as they hold the key to getting the infrastructure of the parties on side.

What was also important was that the two leaders were close ideologically and could envisage themselves working together, even without drawing up any public common programme. It wasn’t just a case of them both being anti-Tory but actually having shared ideals and a common vision. This was something important for the electorate too, as it allowed them to switch their vote between the two parties with confidence, as there’d been enough signalling from them that they wanted the same thing.

The problem for any sort of agreement now is that the gap between Lib Dems and Labour is probably bigger than it’s ever been, both in terms of where the party leaderships are located and where the members and activists of the parties see each other. Consider the amount of flak Ashdown (especially) and Blair got from their memberships got for working together, and now imagine the apoplexy the right of the Lib Dems would have at working with ‘Corbynistas’ and the way the more excitable elements of the Labour membership would react to making a deal with ‘Tories in disguise’.

Electoral geography was also an important consideration. In the run up to 1997, most of the seats had either Conservatives and Labour in first and second place, or Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. There were very few seats that were Lib Dem-Labour battles, or where other parties got into those top two. That’s not the case now, and what’s more, there are very few seats where Lib Dems are in the top two at all. An agreement in 1997 made strong strategic sense for both parties as there were very few places they were in direct competition. (They’d also both had much stronger results in the 1992 election than they had in 2015)

The point is that it’s easy to talk about how a ‘Progressive Alliance’ would magically make everything better, but the path from where we are now to actually creating one isn’t clear. Trying to get people to jump straight into a formal electoral alliance is a bit like telling a couple who aren’t speaking to each other after an acrimonious break up that they should get married. It might be true that they’re better together, but that doesn’t mean you can just pretend all their baggage no longer exists.

[Note: despite how some people are spinning this, tobacco is still really really bad and you should not smoke it]

I.

Schizophrenics smoke. A lot. Depending on the study, about 60-80% of schizophrenics smoke, compared to only about 20% of the general population. And they spend on average about 27% (!) of their income on cigarettes. Even allowing that schizophrenics don’t make much income, that’s a lot of money. Sure, schizophrenics are often poor and undereducated and have other risk factors for smoking – but even after you control for this, the effect is still pretty strong.

Various people have come up with various explanations. Cognitively-minded people say that schizophrenics smoke as a maladaptive coping strategy for the anxiety caused by their condition. Pharmacologically-minded people say that schizophrenics smoke because smoking accelerates the metabolism of antipsychotic drugs and so makes their side effects go away faster. Pragmatically-minded people say that schizophrenics smoke because they’re stuck in institutions with nothing to do all day. No points for guessing what the Freudians say.

But all these theories have problems. Sure, schizophrenics are often institutionalized, but even the ones at home smoke a lot. Sure, some schizophrenics are often on antipsychotics, but even the ones who aren’t on meds smoke a lot. Sure, schizophrenics are anxious, but we don’t see people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder having 80% smoking rates.

As usual, I’m more biologically-minded, so I find it interesting that some of the genes that most commonly turn up as linked to schizophrenia – especially CHRNA3, CHRNA5, and CHRNA7 – are in nicotine receptors. Indeed, some of them are also the genes identified as risk factors for smoking. Further, there’s a lot of evidence that schizophrenic people actually feel better and have fewer symptoms when they’re smoking. Further, schizophrenics tend to gravitate toward cigarettes with higher nicotine content, and smoke them in ways that maximize nicotine absorption.

It seems like part of the problem with schizophrenia is that the brain’s nicotine system isn’t working well. Smoking supplements nicotine and makes the system run smoother, so schizophrenics feel better when they smoke and continue to do so. This is the widely accepted self-medication hypothesis.

I like this because it’s a really elegant example of…I don’t know what you’d call it…memetic evolution? Nobody knew that nicotine helped schizophrenia, nobody told the schizophrenics that, but they sort of naturally gravitated to an effective treatment for their condition by going in the direction of things that make them feel better, even going so far as to unknowingly gravitate toward cigarette brands with more nicotine. They did all of this before psychiatry had any idea why they were doing it, and in the face of constant protests that it was stupid and useless. This should be a warning to anyone who’s too quick to tell patients that their coping strategies are maladaptive.

But there’s a much more important question here: does smoking cause schizophrenia? How about prevent it?

II.

First, the causation argument. Gurillo et al do a meta-analysis and conclude that “daily tobacco use is associated with increased risk of psychosis and an earlier age of onset of psychotic illness. The possibility of a causal link between tobacco use and psychosis merits further examination”. That is, schizophrenics are already smoking much more at the moment their schizophrenia starts. This suggests that maybe smoking is helping to cause the schizophrenia?

All nice and well, except for a few things. First, this study ignores the possibility that the genes that cause schizophrenia might also cause increased smoking, even though we have some evidence that this is true (actually, it doesn’t ignore this, it mentions it, but uses it as a reason why a schizophrenia-smoking link is more plausible). Second, we know that people who will later develop schizophrenia are seen as kind of odd even before they come down with the disease, and it’s possible that they’re already in some unusual brain state that smoking helps relieve. Third, this study is not controlled – meaning that we’re totally helpless before factors like “people destined to later develop schizophrenia are often poor, and poor people smoke more”.

And fourth, another study shows exactly the opposite.

Zammit et al (thanks to @allfeelsallthetime for the tip) looks at 50,000 teenage Swedish conscripts, then follows them throughout their lives to see which ones do or don’t get schizophrenia. They find that without adjusting for confounders, smokers are more likely to get schizophrenia. But when you do adjust for confounders, smokers are less likely to get schizophrenia, (hazard ratio 0.8, p = 0.003) and heavy smokers are much less likely to get schizophrenia (hazard ratio 0.5)! A dose-dependent relationship was found between smoking and protection from schizophrenia. This is really interesting.

Why do we find such different results from these two studies? The only explanation I can think of is that the second study controls for various factors including cannabis use, personality variables, IQ, past psychiatric diagnoses, and place of upbringing (thanks @su3su2u1 for the tip) and the first study controls for zilch. In fact, we find that the second study’s uncontrolled numbers are not that different from the first study’s uncontrolled numbers, and that the only difference is that the second study then went on to control for confounders and get the opposite result. Controlling for more things is not always better, but controlling for a few things that previous studies and common sense suggest are very relevant is pretty superior to just leaving the data entirely unprocessed. Advantage very much second study.

III.

Unlike certain people on Facebook, I fucking hate science. Let me explain why.

The first study here, Gurillo et al, was published ten years after the second study. Since it is a meta-analysis, it included the second study in it. The authors of the first study definitely read the second study. They just didn’t care.

Nowhere in the first study does it say “By the way, we read this other study that got the opposite results from us, let’s try to figure out why, oh, it was because they controlled for things and we didn’t, maybe that should call our findings into question.” You know what they did do? They listed the second study as finding that smoking increased schizophrenia risk, because the rules of their meta-analysis said they would only take uncontrolled data, and so they did. You can read this entire study, which cites the second study no fewer than six times, without hearing at all about the fact that the second study got the opposite result using likely better methodology.

Then they go on to conclude that:

Cigarette smoking might be a hitherto neglected modifiable risk factor for psychosis, but confounding and reverse causality are possible. Notwithstanding, in view of the clear benefits of smoking cessation programs in this population, every effort should be made to implement change in smoking habits in this group of patients.

Clear benefits! Every effort! Aaaaaaah!

I mean, I know where they (and the Lancet editors, who write a glowing comment backing them up) are coming from. Smoking is bad because lung cancer, COPD, etc. But now we have these things called e-cigarettes! They deliver nicotine without tobacco! As far as anyone knows they carry vastly less risk of cancer, COPD, etc. If nicotine actually prevents schizophrenia rather than causing it, that is the sort of thing we should really want to know. And instead we’re just getting this “We should make schizophrenia patients stop smoking, because smoking is bad”.

Look. I am not going to come out and say that there’s great evidence that nicotine decreases schizophrenia risk. There’s one study, which other studies contradict. I happen to think that the one study looks better than its competitors, but that’s my opinion and I have nowhere near the evidence I would need to feel really strongly about this. But I feel like we are very far from the point where we know enough to be pushing people at risk of schizophrenia away from nicotine, and light-years away from the point where we can use phrases like “clear benefits”.

Possibly I am an idiot and missing something very important. But if this is true, I wish the authors of the new study, and the editors of The Lancet, would have acknowledged the existence of the conflicting study and patiently explained to their readership, many of whom are idiots like myself, “Here’s a study that looks better than ours that seems to contradict our results, but here’s why our study is nevertheless far more believable.” That’s all I ask.

No matter how much of an idiot I am, I can’t possibly imagine how that wouldn’t be a straight-out gain.

PS: Cigarette smoking definitely decreases your risk of Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s is similar to schizophrenia in that both involve dopamine. But schizophrenia involves too much dopamine and Parkinson’s too little, so the analogy could go either direction.

PPS: Tobacco smoking is definitely still bad! Nothing in here at all suggests that tobacco smoking has the slightest chance of not being a terrible decision!

What was the biggest dinosaur in history? Well, as David Goldenberg tells it, that's not as easy a question to answer as one might think.

The post Go Read It! appeared first on News From ME.

At 3:30am last night, I did one of those half-wakes you sometimes do during the night, and the one fragment of the dream from which I had awoken which remained to me was a radio presenter's voice saying "Sir Cliff Richard has died." "Heh!" I thought, "Maybe it's a premonition. Must make a mental note of that and see what happens in the morning."

Apparently I'm pretty good at keeping hold of random thoughts which occur to me in the middle of the night, because when I switched on my radio (permanently tuned to Radio 4) that morning at 7 o'clock, my ears instantly pricked up, eager to discover whether or not I had indeed had a psychic experience. Only then the presenter started talking about David Bowie, and everything was wrong.

I can tell you exactly when I first got into David Bowie. It was when his band, Tin Machine, released the single 'Baby Universal', which Wikipedia tells me was October 1991, i.e. when I was 15. I quickly moved on to exploring his back catalogue, and the following April I was lucky enough to see him live at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in Wembley Arena, which I attended along with best chum hollyione and her Dad. Obviously, David Bowie wasn't the primary reason for going to a gig like that, but for me seeing him was very much a close secondary draw.

His music and films continued to form the centre of my cultural world for the next year or so, and thus it was that, through his back catalogue, David Bowie was the first person to take my hand and lead me gently into that wonderful decade known as the 1970s. In fairness, I think some of the films I'd already seen had made me receptive - especially Dracula AD 1972. hollyione had also definitely played her role through her enthusiasm for Led Zeppelin - her main reason for wanting to go to the Freddie Mercury tribute gig. But it was David Bowie - his music, his look, his persona - who really carried me over the bridge.

Eventually, of course, I discovered other artists there whose music I liked better, like Marc Bolan, Yes, KISS, and indeed Led Zeppelin (whom hollyione had been quite right about all along). David Bowie faded a little from my radar. But I have always retained a more-than-passing liking for him, followed the trajectory of his career with interest, and been pleased when I came across him unexpectedly - as for example in a short film a few years ago at the Bradford Fantastic Film Weekend. When my sister told me that she liked to sing 'Starman' to a baby Eloise, I smiled and thought, "Parenting - you're doing it right", and I went around singing 'Space Oddity' to myself for several days recently after seeing the film which inspired it in glorious Cinerama.

But now he is gone, which hardly seems possible. Like everyone else, it seems, I'd just assumed he would go on forever - always anticipating the zeitgeist; constantly driven to experiment; and proving over and over again that music need not be formulaic to be popular. But apparently nobody can - not even someone whose persona was so otherworldly and supernatural. We can only be glad that he did so many things during his brief time on Earth, and thus left us much to keep on enjoying - including not only his own work, but all the many bands, films and fashion movements which he inspired. Thank you for that, David.

In light of how it opened, I feel I should end this post by saying that I don't actually wish death on Cliff Richard. He may have spent most of his career deliberately appealing to the socially and musically conservative, and indeed hold those sorts of values so dearly himself that he's capable of saying something like this about the very subject of this post:

'He upsets me as a man ...' Sir Cliff Richard on David Bowie (via Travis Elborough): pic.twitter.com/VyihQ8L9QH

— Lee Rourke (@LeeRourke) January 11, 2016

But I do have a persistent soft spot for him all the same. Some of his music is great - most of his songs with The Shadows, and occasional later gems like 'Wired for Sound' - and he manages to project a sense of ease with who he is and what he does in interviews which I find endearing. Besides, this doesn't seem the sort of day to wish death on anyone. I of course reserve the right to retract these sentiments if he turns out to have been a predatory paedophile all along. (Which, of course, is a case you could make about David Bowie too, although I do feel it makes some difference when you have an adult woman looking back and saying that she treasures the whole experience. All your faves are problematic.)

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I appreciate the offer so much, but…

Tagged: energy, phone, small talk, work

I saw this on Giving What We Can and was so delighted I wanted to repost it here. Source is The effect of malaria control on plasmodium falciparum in Africa between 2000 and 2015 in Nature:

GWWC comments:

The reduction in malaria has been caused — in large part — by people sleeping under bednets…Long lasting insecticide-treated bednets are a powerful weapon against malaria, not only because they’re a physical barrier between mosquitoes and sleeping children — the insecticide coating kills mosquitoes, so they don’t infect other members of the family (and the village) who don’t have mosquito nets…

In other words, this paper tells us about the bigger picture, showing that bednets are incredibly effective, not just at the level of individual villages, but at the level of whole populations. Essentially, the case that we should be distributing bednets just got even stronger.

The research suggests that anti-malarial interventions have prevented about 663 million malarial fevers. Long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets stand out as being particularly effective — being responsible for around 68% of the malaria reduction. This means that bednets have prevented around 450 million cases of malaria! And globally, 6.2 million fewer people died of malaria over the last 15 years because of malaria interventions…

Malaria is an immense economic burden on health systems and people: since 2000, malaria treatment in sub-Saharan Africa has cost almost $300 million. We can see the flip side of this in places in the United States, Brazil and Uganda — children born after malaria was eradicated or heavily controlled and so were not exposed to malaria during pregnancy, had substantially higher income later in life.

We urgently need to keep funding the distribution of bednets, because bednet distributions are one of the most cost-effective ways of preventing disease and death. Since 2000, one billion bednets have been distributed (costing around 5 dollars each), and have averted 450 million cases of malaria — this suggests that, on average, one episode of clinical malaria can be prevented for about $11 (malarial fevers can be very painful). One recent study suggests that in Kenya, bednet distributions between 2003 and 2008 have prevented a death of a child for about $1,011 on average

Humanity seems to be very visibly winning the war against malaria. I just donated a thousand more bednets; now I feel like a part of it and one day I can tell my kids that I helped. If you’re interested, you can donate to Against Malaria Foundation here.

Paddy Ashdown and Jo Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, have written a joint letter to David Cameron calling on him to involve the RAF in getting aid to the starving inhabitants of the of Madaya in Syria.

The letter begins:

The images and stories from besieged Madaya in Syria are truly shocking. 

According to reports, in the past month alone 31 civilians have died in Madaya as a result of starvation or attempted escape, while the UN estimates that 400,000 remain besieged across the country. 

We find it astonishing that so little has been done by the international community to break these sieges when life-saving medical and food aid are often only minutes away,

And they conclude:

We urge you to push the UN, in particular the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, to be far bolder in its aid delivery and stop asking unnecessary permission from the Syrian government. 

In the case that the UN continues to be denied access to these besieged areas by the Assad regime, the UK should strongly consider airdropping aid to those communities at risk of starvation. In some of these areas, the RAF is already flying anti-ISIS missions, and if necessary this is something we should press our European partners to support. 

Like the airdrops by the US in 2014 to the Yazidis in Iraq, and the leadership shown by the last Conservative Government to save lives with similar action in Northern Iraq, there are immediate steps we can take to stop more vulnerable people dying needlessly of hunger. We cannot sit by and watch this happen.

Read the full letter.

So, I'm seeing a bunch of disturbing news headlines in the new year. Mass sex attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve would be one (and I want you to think very hard about precisely whose political agenda benefits from the different kinds of spin that can be placed on this story depending on how it is framed). Poland's constitutional court and civil service being rapidly brought under control of the Law and Justice Party (and what is it about neo-fascists and their obsession with touchstone topics like dignity, law, the church, and justice? Again, read the link I just gave you—it's part of the instructions for assembling the jigsaw puzzle of politics in the 21st century). Saudi mass executions are part of the same picture if you step back and look for the edge of the frame.

But the biggest news of all is getting relatively little traction because it's being mistaken for local colour rather than a global pattern.

What is the news (as opposed to popular entertainment and celebrity gossip) going to be like for the next decade? Let me give you a forecast.

(Note: As usual, there's a lot of meat in the hyperlinks. You won't get the most out of this essay unless you are familiar with their content.)

There are three big determinants of the long-term geopolitical weather report:

1. Global climate change

2. Human reactions to global climate change

3. Economics

Let's take it from the top.

Global climate change doesn't mean a uniform "everywhere gets X degrees warmer" shift in temperatures; the weather is a dynamic, chaotic system, and what climate change means is that more energy is being pumped into driving atmospheric and oceanic currents, with unpredictable but generally more energetic consequences.

A bunch of conflicts are breaking out, or resuming, because chunks of the planet are becoming increasingly prone to extreme weather conditions. The UK just had its wettest December ever, with more than double the normal rainfall and extensive floods taking out the centers of major cities. Part of the blame lies with local cupidity, greed, and myopia in planning land drainage policy, but the rain itself doesn't respect national boundaries. Similarly, chunks of the USA got hammered, as did several South American countries ... in fact, everywhere you look, the weather is out of whack. In extreme cases this is leading to actual open warfare—the Syrian civil war and the rise of Islamic State, for example.

A side-effect of this is mass migration on a scale we haven't seen since the end of the second world war as people try to flee war and disaster zones.

Mass migration drives political backlashes everywhere, with racist clowns marching in front of the band (did you think I just meant Donald Trump?) and nativist anti-immigration groups crowding behind them. I'm not going to go into the social roots of xenophobia other than to note that (a) bigotry is fractal, and (b) insecure, threatened hominids put on threat displays right back at whatever they're scared of. Also, (c) a constituency of insecure, threatened hominids are easily led and profitably milked, which attracts an endless supply of sinister racist revivalist huckster politicians. (This is the Hitler as social entrepreneur theory: he wasn't uniquely evil, he just happened to be the first to get out in front and lead.) More to the point, every nation that isn't impoverished or devastated by climate change will see a wave of immigration, and every nation undergoing a wave of immigration will see a nativist political reaction.

The nativist backlash is inevitably going to be inflamed by the Martian invaders, who are all in favor of the free movement of capital but not labor (hint: this is Marxism 101, and if you don't believe me, go look at the requirements for a Tier 1 investor visa). Restricting transnational mobility for the proles/serfs/99.9% is part of the program and plays well to the nativist strand in climate change politics, which is why unless you've got a few million burning a hole in your back pocket you'll find it really difficult to legally immigrate into the UK or USA or other top-tier countries from outside the developed world. And why all our corporate-owned media (that is, 95% of them: Reddit is owned by Conde Nast, The Times and Fox News and 90% of the newspapers in Australia are owned by Rupert Murdoch, and so on) are banging the drum against immigration, at the behest of their (investor visa equipped) owners.

Nativism meshes with religious ideology as well as politics, of course. It serves the purpose of the right wing in the west very well to have a demonic-seeming Islamic adversary intend on exterminating Christianity. And it serves the interests of Da'esh very well indeed to have an adversary in the west who cack-handedly bomb civilians and rant against the evils of Islam so that they can strike heroic poses against the infidels. As with the communist/capitalist cold war, there's an element of posturing-in-the-mirror going on here. Both capitalism and communism take as holy writ the ideas of the Enlightenment and of society organized around industrial development and division of labour: compared to the ancien regime it was essentially a sectarian squabble between nearly-identical radical factions. Christianity and Islam are both evangelical, messianic, monotheistic religions with a patriarchal ideology and a bunch of lifestyle restrictions (mostly affecting women) bolted on the side; in both cases, most of their followers are peaceful, but we don't pay attention to them—we only notice the scary fundamentalist terrorists on the other side of the fence.

(Random discursive note: this being an anglophone blog, some of you are probably thinking, "but, but, hijab!" To which I will note that veiling women as a religious practice is a long tradition in Christian cultures which only fell into neglect historically recently, and we have equally batshit taboos which we are mostly oblivious to—fish don't notice the water, after all. Almost all the practices conducted by IS that we consider to be barbaric were just business as usual in the western world until historically recent times. Sometimes until very recently. Let's have no stone-throwing here: digression over.)

Economics is another aggravating problem. The global financial system crashed in 2007/08 and was only revived by a brisk dose of hyperinflation. The public didn't really notice the effects of the hyperinflation because it happened globally, with all the central banks engaging in quantitative easing more or less simultaneously (or "printing fiat currency" as the goldbugs call it): the price of exports didn't rise or fall as the tsunami of soft money rushed past in the ocean depths below the keel of the commodities markets. But we're now seeing oddly cheap oil (in turn aggravated by the traditional Sunni/Shi'a cold war that's been running for the past 1300-odd years, which in turn has been inflamed by climate change in Iraq and Syria and the final collapse of the Sykes Picot agreement and its legacy in the former Ottoman Empire). Oil and energy economics in general are now being affected by the human reaction to climate change which, while belated and half-hearted, is to stop shitting in the bed you're sleeping in: the switch to renewable energy is under way globally and the cost per kWh of photovoltaic power is now at grid parity and will soon undercut coal in most of the world (the IEA are putting a brave face on it but they may be next, too).

This is a toxic combination. We've just weathered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and we're undergoing an infrastructure crisis (due to climate change) and the extinction of an economic backbone industry—admittedly one we will be far better off without: coal and oil pollution directly kill tens of thousands of people even in developed nations—which will ultimately require the replacement of tens of trillions of dollars' worth of fossil fuel infrastructure worldwide. Add nativist/racist/right wing politics on top, from Hungary through Poland (above) and Russia and it really looks like we're in for a replay of the 1930s.

I've missed out a few bright spots.

To a time traveller from 1985, China is doing unelievably well. They're working through the huge demographic bulge created by the now-abandoned one-child-per-family policy, and their work force is going to start shrinking in another couple of decades, but for the time being they're reaping the benefits of a much better educated and trained workforce (at least compared to their often-illiterate peasant grandparents) and rapid development. China overall is trying to do what Japan and South Korea did in the second half of the 20th century, with many signs of success (and the negative side-effects too, which explains the Central Committee's conversion to the cause of fossil fuel reduction). India is also developing rapidly, and those two countries combined equal the entire world population in 1950. Lifting China and India out of poverty is, if it happens, going to be one of the great human triumphs of the first half of this century, an almost incalculably huge improvement in the overall human experience—if we (and they) don't drop the ball. We're also seeing development in large parts of Africa. North Africa is a mess, with the spill-over from the Middle East conflicts and climate change as a driver for immigration and strife.

But anyway, here's my summary of the next decade:

1. The weather's going to get worse.

2. We're going to see more and more unscrupulous huckster types leading revanchist, nativist right wing political movements and banging the anti-immigrant drum, world-wide. Civil rights include the right to free movement; this makes civil rights an easy scapegoat and target for the angry populist nativists. Sensible media capitalists (those with a sense of self-preservation) will pander to these assclowns. Courageous media capitalists (those with the odd ethical bone in their body) will stand up to them and get themselves assassinated or imprisoned. Luckily we have the internet except, oops, Facebook owns it and FB will do whatever they're told. (And if not Facebook, Google. The internet is infrastructure, and if annoying dissidents are drinking from the pure tapwater of honest news and you own the pumping station ...)

3. This is going to happen both in nominally/formerly Christian countries and in the Muslim world. Both sides will see each other in a mirror and hiss like cats, but it doesn't really signify anything. Fear of terrorism is a rallying point, so expect unscrupulous politicians to use crack-downs on their local minorities to bolster their popularity. This will of course include crack-downs on civil rights because nothing annoys a political entrepreneur trying to posture as a strong leader like a civil rights lawyer with a good case.

4. The ongoing 1300-year Sunni/Shi'ite cold war will continue, sometimes hotter, thanks to climate-induced disruption in the Middle East and the eventual collapse of the Saudi petrochemical economy. The ongoing Saudi succession crisis isn't going to help (as we just saw).

5. None of this political posturing is going to do jack shit to roll back the already-in-train effects of climate change so the immigration pressure will continue, driving trends (2) and (3).

6. Don't buy long term coal or oil futures.

Dean Atcheson famously said that Britain had lost an empire and not yet found a role. The same problem seems to be afflicting Nick Clegg.

Earlier this week the Telegraph reported:

Nick Clegg has the worst voting record in the House of Commons, according to new parliamentary analysis looking at MP turnout since the general election. 

The former deputy prime minister has failed to cast a vote in almost 90 per cent of all divisions called in the Commons since May 7.

The case for the defence, as made by "Mr Clegg's spokesman, runs

"Nick Clegg has taken part every time he felt it was possible that his vote could make a difference to the outcome, such as the crucial vote on military action in Syria. 

"Otherwise, he has devoted his time to serving his constituents in Sheffield Hallam and to issues that he cares deeply about, including social mobility, drugs reform and Britain's place in Europe. 

"The first six months after a general election are untypical and Nick expects his voting record to improve in the months ahead."

A spirited attempt, but can you imagine what the local Liberal Democrats would be saying about a Conservative or Labour MP with such a voting record?

Last year's general election results must have been a terrible shock to Nick, but then it was to many other people Lib Dems who have had to get on with their jobs since.

Nick needs to find his mojo and find it soon. He should not be providing easy ammunition for the likes of Peter Bone. He is better than that.

March 14, 1969
Washington, DC

Richard Nixon was confused and upset.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected problems. He’d only been on the job six weeks, but he knew a president had to be ready for anything. But “anything” was supposed to mean economic downturns, or crime waves, or The Russians.

Instead Apollo 8 had crashed into some kind of weird space glass, the sky was cracking open, the clouds were forming ominous patterns, and Tuesdays had stopped happening.

The Tuesdays were the most worrying part. For the past three weeks, people all over the world had gone to sleep on Monday and woken up Wednesday. Everything had been in order. The factories had kept running. Lawns had been mowed. Some basic office work had even gotten done. But of the preceding twenty-four hours, no one had any memories.

Today was a Friday, and it had happened three times. The President had gone to sleep Friday night, and woken up Friday morning to a call from the Chief of Staff telling him that everyone was very upset because it was Friday morning again and how was this happening? Everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours had unhappened, been rolled back somehow. Or maybe everyone’s Saturday-morning consciousness had been shot back into their Friday-morning bodies. He had no idea, and the American people were starting to demand answers.

He’d called the head of the CIA and asked him to get whatever department full of eggheads had covered up Roswell as a weather balloon, tell them to concoct some plausible story for whatever chronological tomfoolery was going on now.

The head of the CIA had just stood there, unflappable. “Mr. President, Roswell was a weather balloon. There was no cover-up. Our organization has no department dedicated to covering up inexplicable events.”

“I’m the [expletive deleted] President, Helms!” Nixon had shouted. “You don’t have to lie to me! Get me your cover-up eggheads immediately!”

“I’m sorry Mr. President,” he said coolly, “there’s no such agency.”

“[expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]”, Nixon had answered. “Get the [expletive deleted] out of here!”

Then he’d gone to NASA, the Department of Defense, and even the [expletive deleted] National Bureau of Standards, which was apparently in charge of timekeeping and which he hadn’t even known [expletive deleted] existed until today. The today before today. Yestertoday. [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]. None of them had been any more help than the [expletive deleted] CIA.

It was those cracks in the sky. He was sure of it. Apollo 8 had hit something important. The eggheads at NASA had posited some kind of “nebulous envelope” surrounding the orbit of the moon, made of “compressed dust and gas”. Apollo 8’s collision had caused it to “oscillate”, creating the pattern of glowing, growing spiderweb cracks visible to anybody who looked up into the night sky.

Richard Nixon didn’t believe it, and neither, he figured, did anyone else. If only he could find those people who had covered up Roswell. They would know what to do.

For the past three todays, at 7:38 PM sharp, a red phone on his desk had started ringing. This was worrying for two reasons.

First, the red phone was the symbol of the nuclear hotline between the US and Russia, the last-ditch line of communication to prevent a nuclear war.

Second, the red phone was the symbol of the nuclear hotline. It was a prop he kept on his desk to show reporters. The actual nuclear hotline connected to a large and foreboding machine at the Pentagon that didn’t look nearly as good in pictures. The red phone on his desk wasn’t connected to a phone line and, as far as he knew, didn’t even have a ringer in it.

The first today it started ringing, he’d stared at it for like three minutes before he finally, dumbly, picked it up. The voice on the other end was saying something he couldn’t understand. It occurred to him that the people who monitored the actual nuclear hotline probably spoke Russian.

The second today, he’d been suspicious that it would ring again at the same time, so he’d called an interpreter to the Oval Office. At 7:38 PM, the interpreter had picked it up. “Allo,” the interpreter had said, then started looking more and more puzzled. “This isn’t Russian,” he had said. Then, “This isn’t related to any language I know.” Then, “I don’t think this is a real language.” A few hours later he’d sent over an analysis from the State Department, which concluded that the “language” consisted of the names of the capitals of various 16th-century European countries, arranged in seemingly random combinations.

Today today, Nixon hadn’t bothered. He just sat in the Oval Office doing work. He had been meeting with a man from the Weather Bureau, who wanted to tell him that the clouds were forming ominous patterns. Nixon hadn’t bought it. “I’m the [expletive deleted] President of the United States,” he had told the man, “Do you want me to [expletive deleted] tell you if it’s a cold front or a warm front?”

The man had clarified that he meant really ominous patterns. Like, some big thunderstorms in the Rockies were starting to develop high anvil-like peaks – which was within normal variability for this time of year – but also starting to develop domes and minarets and flying buttresses – which weren’t. And although the Doppler radar didn’t have good enough resolution to be sure, some of the buttresses were starting to look like they might have gargoyles on them.

And before Nixon could say anything, the man had added that a Category 5 hurricane was forming in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was only March, and this literally never happened before July, and something was really wrong here…

It was then, at 7:38 PM, that the red phone started ringing. He considered not picking it up, but at least it would be differently confusing.

To his surprise, the voice on the other end now spoke perfect English.

“HELLO PRESIDENT NIXON. THIS IS THE ARCHANGEL URIEL. I APOLOGIZE FOR RECENT DISRUPTIONS. THE MACHINERY OF THE UNIVERSE HAS BEEN SEVERELY DAMAGED. I AM WORKING TO CONTAIN THE EFFECTS, BUT AT THIS POINT MY POWER IS LIMITED BECAUSE I AM STILL MOSTLY METAPHORICAL. PLEASE INFORM EVERYONE THAT I REGRET THE INCONVENIENCE. AS COMPENSATION FOR YOUR TROUBLE, I HAVE GIVEN EVERY HUMAN THE ABILITY TO PLAY THE PIANO.”

“Wait just a moment here,” said Nixon. “Wait just an [expletive deleted] moment!”

No response.

The head of the Weather Bureau stared at the president shouting into a toy red telephone used as a prop for reporters and visibly unconnected to any phone line.

“Excuse me just a minute,” said the president.

“Of course,” said the bureaucrat.

President Nixon stepped out of the Oval Office and walked downstairs. He went down the corridor connecting the West Wing to the White House proper and entered the East Room, where Franklin Roosevelt’s great Steinway piano stood on the hardwood floor.

He sat down on the piano bench and performed a flawless rendition of Bach’s Concerto I in D Minor.

“[expletive deleted],” said the president.

Editor von Dimpleheimer explains his latest volume: All of the short stories from Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vols 1-7 are included here, along with five new stories. At the end of the book, I listed all the … Continue reading →

A short film based on my story "Axiomatic" is almost finished. The link is to the movie's Twitter account.