DUFF & NONSENSE!

On beauty

According to the TV guide provided courtesy of The Daily Mail, which is without any doubt the very best TV guide produced by anyone so don't give me an argument about it, some clever chappie on BBC2 is going to give a talk next week on 'beauty'.  It nudged my tired and third-rate brain into musing upon the subject - so don't expect too much in the way of enlightenment.

A 19th century lady, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, told us that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but the philosopher, David Hume, put it further back behind the eyes and into the brain, writing "Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them".  Of course, that implies, rather ittitatingly for tidy-minded people, that there is no universal 'beauty' to act as a template and to which we might compare our own particular sense of 'beauty'.  It's all relative, as that loon from Berne told us a hundred years ago, in a somewhat different context.

Even so, 'beauty' does exist for each of us.  We know it instantly when we see it or hear it.  One of those peculiar but measurable physiological, and therefore material, re-actions takes place even though the cause is immaterial and beyond mere measurement.  It is, I suppose, an example of that mysterious interface between mind and body which my e-pal, 'Bongers' and I discussed the other day in a thread down below.  Beauty comes in different sized packets but if it is sufficiently large it causes an intake of breath, a momentary frisson of excitement, a heightened emotional response.  But what is it?  What is the essence of the thing that causes the re-action?

If sight is involved the psychologists suggest that symmetry is involved.  At first glance (no pun intended!) that seems true when one contemplates the great buildings of the world

Picture by Anjoita

However, this conglomoration of old houses on a cobbled hill set in the Dorset countryside contains not a hint of symmetry anywhere but produces in me much the same re-action as the Taj Mahal.

Picture of Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, the scene of the famous Hovis advert.  http://www.dorsets.co.uk/Shaftesbury/ 

Of course, it does not have the grandeur of the Taj Mahal but for me the effect is the same.

Any talk of 'beauty' naturally leads to "the ladies, God bless 'em", and here again symmetry is supposed to be all important.  There can be no doubting Elizabeth Taylor's symmetry and beauty, it is perfection, and yet . . .  and yet . . .

 

By dstarprincezza

When it comes to human 'beauty' it cannot be divorced from human personality, and that, alas, is often a downfall.  It hardly needs saying but ideas of human beauty change through the ages.  The 17th century notion of female beauty appeared to be measured by weight rather than symmetry!

 

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_and_the_Elders_(Rubens)

Perhaps one should not confuse the full figures favoured by Rubens for the purposes of showing musculature and the reflection of light, for his personal taste in women and I have no idea what Mrs. Rubens looked like! Personally, I have never met a perfectly beautiful woman and so I cannot gauge how I would re-act to her.  I would hope to withold judgment until I knew her better, but I'm a man, so not much chance of that!  However, I have met very many attractive women - and no, don't ask me to define the word 'attractive', like 'beauty', you know it when you feel it.  The point about attractive women is that they are not symmetrical, and perhaps there-in lies their attraction.

I have not touched upon the beauty of sound as expressed in music.  Again, you can measure the physical response to the catalyst of sounds and rhythms but exactly where or in what lies the beauty it is impossible to say, but exist it undoubtedly does.  The beauty of words is perhaps the most mysterious of all beauties.  Let this speak for itself:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

Byron: Hebrew Melodies

The Jocks are as thick as their porridge!

Well, to be strictly accurate, at least the eight thousand of them in Glasgow North East who voted for 'the big Brown job' are as thick as their porridge. Those who remained at home did so, I guess, from a variety of reasons, mainly because their only outings are to the benefit office to pick up their state handouts and then back home via the pub, or possibly because they are dying, given that life expectancy in Glasgow North East is lower than many Third World countries:

Glasgow City, as a whole, has a male life expectancy of 71 years which is actually lower than the 72 years of both Gaza and Pyongyang. But this includes its lush suburbs. Those in the welfare ghettoes of Glasgow East can only dream of such longevity.

The life expectancy of its sink estates is worth recording here. A boy born in Camlachie is expected to live to 64.5 — the same as in Uzbekistan. In Parkhead it is 62, the same as Bangladesh. Just outside its boundaries lies Dalmarnock where the figure is 58 — lower than Sudan, Cambodia or Ghana. The lowest is Carlton, where the figure of 54 is lower than even Gambia’s equivalent. (*)

I suppose some of the 33% (a record low turnout) who did bother to vote must have come from that tiny percentage of the inhabitants who actually work:

Official unemployment is just 6.7 per cent. But add in such factors as those claiming incapacity benefit, and it quickly emerges that a scandalous 50 per cent of the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits. And here, as everywhere, dependency begets poverty.

Once, Labour would have been outraged at this. Now, the party refuses to recognise this as a problem — or thinks, madly, that even more money is the answer. What Beveridge once called the ‘great evil’ of idleness is now being mass-produced by a welfare state that pays the poor to do nothing. It is fuelling the very problem it was set up to eradicate, petrol on fire.

When, as must surely be the case, Gordon Brown is bound hand and foot and dropped into the Clyde weighed down with sundry Labour party manifestos, it will surely be because of this - and I choose the word with care - wickedness:

Mr Brown’s energies have been devoted to moving people from just beneath his arbitrary poverty line to just above it — and then claiming they have been ‘lifted out of poverty’. Those at the bottom, with no hope of crossing any threshold, are literally growing poorer each year. Languishing on welfare, they have been ignored and replaced in the British labour market by an industrious, ambitious immigrant workforce. This has been Labour’s deplorable formula for the last decade.

Glasgow North East in all its ghastly poverty and ignorance stands, or rather crumbles, as a monument to the hypocritical evil that is the Labour party.  The Jocks might be thick but that's no excuse for the rest of us; come the day of electoral retribution we must despatch this gang of crooks, spivs, charlatans and commissars to the unemployment registers they have filled so avidly.  "Do it England!"

(*) All quotations from Fraser Nelson in an article well worth reading even if it does make you weep!

Is Obama about to make a really well thought-out mistake?

Sorry to return so quickly to Afghanistan but there is a very perceptive essay in this week's edition of The Spectator by an astute American academic called John C. Hulsman who suggests, with only half his tongue in his cheek, that perhaps America should take some lessons from Britian in how to relinquish empire gracefully.  On the Afghan question he writes:

But by all accounts, pressured by both his generals and the neoconservative opposition, Obama is about to make the fateful decision to go ahead with a significant new deployment. And the problem is, as Bismarck put it, that when you draw the sword you roll the dice. In this case, tragically, President Obama will find that the odds of his dice throw are monumentally stacked against him.

Hulsman re-iterates in more refined language than I can manage the unpalatable fact that America is skint - broke - lacking even a pot to piss in!

For like the British in 1920, America today is economically imperilled. Using the White House’s own dubious numbers, the American deficit over the next decade is projected to explode by $9 trillion, which is greater than all the debt accumulated by the republic since its founding. This is the uncomfortable elephant in the corner of the room that will, sooner or later, dampen Washington’s zeal for social engineering abroad. Likewise, though a long way off, the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the other rising powers are clearly gaining on an America winding down a disastrous war in Iraq, mired in Afghanistan, desperately trying to stop the Iranian government from going nuclear, getting nowhere with the Israelis and the Palestinians, and having to accommodate the rise of Beijing. So much for the peace prize. [My emphasis]

In addition, Hulsman points to the fact that there is no political legitimacy attached to Karzei's government of Afghanistan, although in my opinion its similarity to the government of Chicago should at least make Obama feel at home!

A series of tribes form the local unit of politics, rather than some Jeffersonian ideal. As such, a confederation, with as much power as possible being devolved to the local level, would suit the country’s realities. Sadly, the Afghan constitution vests far too much control at the national rather than the regional level ...

In my less-than-adequately-experienced mind, I think that if the Americans decide to re-enforce to the hilt, they should bypass the Karzai regime including the corrupt cronies and placemen appointed as district governors, and instead, concentrate on making direct alliances with existing tribal groups and their 'warlord' masters.  The possibility of allowing Afghanistan to break up into its constituent parts should not be ignored.

Either that, or get out.  Any halfway-house scenario will be the worst of all possible worlds.  According to my embittered, but usually shrewd, e-pal, Alan Sullivan, the worst is precisely what Obama wishes for:

Barack Obama is not a patriot. He does not wish his country well. He wishes to diminish what he perceives as an evil power, and bind it to international institutions so it can never rampage again. Everything he says and does makes sense only in that context.

Then why the Afghan waver? Obama committed himself to the Afghan conflict solely for domestic political gain. He is against war in general, and American wars in particular. He wants to withdraw, but he is waiting for public displeasure to grow, as he knows it will, so he can change policy with less political consequence. There is no thought of geostrategy in this man, only political calculation.

That has a ring of truth about it.  If it be so, then we in Britain, as I have mentioned before, need to take a hard, clear look at the real-politik of a new world (dis)order in which the USA withdraws and some new and very hard kids take over the block.

ADDITIONAL: I just came across this by David Blackburn at The Coffeehouse:

Obama is correct to take time and consider. However, a fudge is engendering. The Guardian reports that David Kilcullen, a leading counter-insurgency expert and contributor to the Spectator, is criticising the Obama administration’s “messy pontificating” over the Afghan surge. Kilcullen tells the paper:

"It feels to me that all these options are dangerously close to the middle ground and we have to consider whether the middle ground is a good place to be. The middle ground is a good place on domestic issues, but not on strategy. You either commit to D-Day and invade the continent or you get Suez. Half-measures end up with Suez. Do it or not do it."

The middle approach is a fudge determined by economic frailty, the US’ declining international strength and Nato’s inability to pull together. The unconditional surrender of the Taliban is a hopeless fanstasy; yet the strategy remains unchanged. This meandering war exacerbates jihadism, accelerates the spoliation of American power and endangers Nato’s integrity. Coffee House has been urging Nato to talk to local Afghan potentates; the leaked Foreign Office plan to engage with elements of the Taliban represents the way ahead. 

Thank God for Nick Griffin!

Yes, yes, I know he's a fat, obnoxious menace whom one would not wish to see in control of a Parish Council but, like those splendid fellows who regularly go down into our city sewers and ensure that any build up of brown stuff is whooshed away, so it is with Mr. Griffin and his thugocracy who have just assisted in the whooshing away of somewhat similar Brown stuff!  Mirabile dictu, suddenly the Brown blockage which has held open the doors to mass immigration has dissolved under a powerful stream of BNP uric acid.  Or, to put it another way, they just pissed on Labour's parade!  Not only has a hitherto non-subject, only spoken of in the impolite, ignorant and not yet re-educated white, working-class circles, been allowed to enter the Westminster salons, but the big Brown job himself has now decreed that actions will be taken to cut down on visa entries from countries outside the EU.  Is it not wonderful, mes enfants, how politicians can so easily, so effortlessly and so elegantly, perform 180 degree turns when they find themselves staring down the double-barrels of the shot-gun from electoral hell which will despatch them to oblivion?

Of course, it goes without saying that the panic U-turn will, as usual, take Brown & Co. in completely the wrong direction.  He is, I gather, planning on cutting visas to well-educated, highly trained professionals who are precisely the sort of immigrants the country needs.  Its the scallawags camped out over the Channel that we need to keep out - not that I don't admire their drive and determination, but until we force our own less-than-determined 'youfs' and 'youfettes' back to work by cutting off every single welfare benefit, then I'm afraid they will just have learn French.  Also, before we celebrate it must be remembered that on Planet Brown words and deeds are rarely conjunctive!

Anyway, let's give old Nick one cheer - oh, come on, I know you wouldn't want him to marry your sister but if it wasn't for him putting the frights up Gordie's kilt, immigration would still be a non-subject spoken of by non-people. So, altogether now  . . .

One advantage of growing old

There is only one advantage as far as I can tell and it is this: if you live long enough you find out that you were right all those years ago.  Ah, but, I have just remembered a second advantage of being old, happily some of your memory goes and so you forget how many things you got wrong!  Still, never mind that, just please a cantankerous old man by letting him crow over a past triumph. 

Years ago in the '60s,'70s and '80s I used to fulminate about the Russian infiltration in the Labour party and its various Left-wing off-shoots like the unions and CND, etc.  I was firmly sat upon by my Left-wing friends (yes, I had a few!) and also by my non-political friends who thought I was exaggerating.  Last week The Spectator published the diaries of Anatoly Chernyaev who for years was the Kremlin's main contact man in the west and in which he detailed his relationships with a variety of Labour party officials.  Jack Jones, for example, the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), whose power in the nation was enormous, was a KGB agent in the pay of the Soviets for years.  His unelected 'consigliore' in the TGWU was Alec Kitson, another Soviet toady, and between the pair of them they controlled, via the TGWU block vote, dozens of safe Labour seats.  Thus, if you failed to dance to their communist tune your chances of being selected as a candidate were nil.  Gordon Brown, himself, gained his safe Scottish seat only on the nod from the TGWU which may be the reason why his eulogy to Jones after his death was so fulsome - and which he refuses to withdraw now that Jones's treason is public knowledge.  Others who were similarly rewarded by the TGWU communist cabal were Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Margaret Beckett, Harriet Harman, John Reid - and the list goes on.

Another key figure in steering the Labour party to Moscow's line was the disgusting traitor, Ron Hayward, its General Secretary from '72 to '82.  Gerald Kaufman in the early '80s was a leading player in Labour politics and he was dumbfounded by the policies espoused in the election manifesto of 1983 under Michael Foot which he described as the longest suicide note in history.  He writes:

The remarkable revelations published in the Chernyaev diaries make this attempted political suicide easier to understand.  It is clear that key elements in the Labour party structure were determined to ingratiate themselves with Moscow - regardless of any adverse electoral impact in Britain.  They show, vividly, how Labour was being poisoned by key officials who were laying the groundwork, apparently deliberately, for the debacle of 1983.

Hayward, as General Secretary of the Labour party considered himself to be the true leader of the party not Harold Wilson who was merely the parliamentary leader.  He held secret meetings inside the Russian embassy.  Chernyaev's diaries describe how Hayward boasted that he "prepares young people , puts them in the right places, helps them become prominent."

See?  I was right all along.  And don't bother asking me what I was wrong about - I can't remember!

He who hesitates is lost

Like most old saws it has a grain of truth in it but only a grain.  I am provoked into using it by the extraordinary time it is taking President Obama to make up his mind on the grand strategy to be used in regard to Afghanistan.  I am one of the few who do not begrudge him that time because there is no immediate crisis and the decision - in essence whether to stay or go - needs to be carefully weighed.  Even so, it does seem to have dragged on and on and I had assumed that the Afghan election might have been the cause of the wait and see approach.  However, that stitch-up is done and dusted so I wondered what else might be the cause of delay.  I wondered if perhaps all the diplomatic  pieces have not yet been lined up despite 'HilBilly's' constant to-ing and fro-ing.  A more likely reason for delay is that the American high command, civilian as well as military, is completely split.  Confirmation of a sort can be had from a leaked memo indicating that the US ambassador in Kabul has come out strongly against re-enforcement because of his doubts concerning the Karzai government.  His views carry considerable weight because he is a former soldier and thus understands the problem from all sides.  The other factor plaguing Obama must be the intentions and the reliability of the Pakistan government and its military on the other side of the frontier.  An American withdrawal would diminish their reputation but Obama could disguise it as the only option to extricate his country from the quagmire into which the Republicans under George Bush had led them.  There are many more currents and counter-curents at play in this imbroglio than I have time to elucidate now and it is almost enough to produce a twinge of sympathy for statesmen - until, of course, one remembers how they fight tooth and nail to get the job.  Needless to say, not the least of Obama's concerns will be his place and reputation in the history books depending on this decision!

I'm not the only one . . .

Hoping for a Labour massacre at the next election, that is.  Jackie Ashley in the Guardian may not exactly be hoping for it but she is forecasting it:

‘Some Labour people may think I'm sounding too gloomy, but those who have been privy to recent private polling are a lot more than gloomy. This suggests that Labour could return to the Commons with just 120 MPs or thereabouts, taking the party back to 1930s territory. As ministers look for jobs to keep themselves going after politics, a Miliband move to Europe looks sensible.’

I haven't read the whole thing but you can - here.  My thanks to David Blackburn at The Coffee House.

 

The way it was - 20 years ago

I am pushed for time and I will be away for a couple of days but here, via the excellent Tim Worstall, is an eye-witness account of that incredible victory day 20 years ago by the man with the keenest eyes in the business - P. J. O'Rourke. He it was who years ago laid down the best definition of real third world poverty I have ever heard - absence of chickens!

Cameron should prepare for the bowl of cold sick coming his way!

Several months ago I warned that Brown, facing certain defeat and beset by his in-built Tory hatred which is possibly re-enforced by a latent anti-English phobia, would adopt a policy of slash and burn to the British economy to ensure that Cameron would inherit a waste-land.  Not particularly perceptive of me since anyone with half an eye (like Brown, himself) could foresee that likely course of action.  However, Peter Oborne in The Mail on Sunday compares Brown's despicable attitude to that of his predecessors who also faced certain defeat at their next elections.  Callaghan and his Chancellor, Dennis Healey, went against the inclination of their party and did their patriotic duty by cutting government spending.  Similarly, John Major, went against the instincts of his party and pursued a peace deal with Irish terrorists, whilst simultaneously keeping a strict control of government budgets which resulted in Gordon Brown inheriting an extremely healthy economy.

I had hoped that the un-sackable Chancellor Darling would at last emerge as a strong man in his own right but, alas, he has proved to be weak and pathetic against the machinations of Brown and his 'bully-in-chief' Ed Balls.  The pre-budget report due in a few weeks will be Darling's last chance to prove to us and to history that he is a man prepared to put country before party.  Don't hold your breath because I fear that he will do what he's been told and hurl money which hasn't got in every direction in order to achieve two aims - buy as many votes as possible, and ensure the economy is a train wreck when Cameron comes into office.  Thus, the Tories will take all the blame for the massive and unprecedented cuts in government spending which will be inescapable next year.

I have said it before and I don't care if I sound like a Saloon Bar bore because I will keep on saying it - the Labour party must be decimated at the next election, reduced to less than a hundred seats, as punishment for their malignant behaviour over the last 12 years in general, and the last two in particular.  "Do it England!"

Let's all bully little George Monbiot!

Well, why not?  I mean, you only have to look at his smug, smiley face in the post below to know that he was the school swot despite being as thick as John Prescott, than which, etc, etc.  If I had been at his school, he would have been the one whose packed lunch I would have nicked for no other reason than the obvious fact that he was a tosser.  Of course, being the school bully does require some mates, er, just in case the victim hits back, but happily on this occasion I do have a pair of them.

First, there is the pugnacious Rod Liddle in 'The Speccie' who clobbers all those 'cataclysmics' like Monbiot.  Given that little Georgie indulges himself in some psycho-babble, 'my mate Rod' gives a little of it back:

If somehow it could be proved tomorrow that climate change was a huge con, these people [true believers like little Georgie] wouldn’t be relieved — they’d feel robbed of something intrinsic to themselves.

He speculates on where this 'cataclysmic tendency' comes from:

[N]ormal, apparently sane people seem to wish for catastrophe too: they are determined that calamity will befall us all, and are furious when they are gainsaid.

He continues:

[Y]ou hear it every time a ‘climate-change’ evangelist opens his or her mouth — and I wonder if ecological disaster is an upmarket version of the 2012 scenario [some loonies believe the world will end in that year!] a catastrophe the chattering class of every Western country have eagerly bought into, a politically correct Armageddon which requires us to be endlessly self-flagellating (and even that, we are lectured, will not avert the crisis, nor even much lessen its impact).

My other mate in this disgraceful bullying incident is Don Boudreaux from the always excellent 'Cafe Hayek'.  He sent (yet another) letter to the WaPo provoked this time by some moaning Minnie (perhaps little George's American cousin?) who had written in a state of panic weeping over the inevitable end of the world because of over-population.  'My mate Don' gave him a smack:

For example, the earth’s population today is seven times larger than it was in 1800, and yet most people today live lives that are far more sanitary, healthy, long, and rich in experiences than were those of all but the most privileged potentates and pooh-bahs before the industrial age. 

Then he gives him a kick:

Each hectare of land now feeds more mouths and clothes more bodies than ever before.  Water and air in capitalist countries are cleaner than they were a century ago, or even just 50 years ago – and still getting cleaner.  Available supplies of oil and most other raw materials show no signs of being depleted, despite the fact that today we use absolutely larger quantities of these materials.

He describes this assault on little George's 'cousin' as "Simonizing", this being a reference to the late Julian Simon.  Back in 1980, Simon offered a bet to that great doomsdayer, Paul Ehrlich, who had written a book telling us all that it was only a matter of time, very short time, before the world ended because over-population would consume all natural resources.  Simon invited Ehrlich to choose any five commodity metals and then bet him that the prices would fall rather than rise due to scarcity as you would expect them to do under Ehrlich's prophesy.  Ten years later, Ehrlich sent Simon a cheque for $576.07.

Simon died in 1998 but Ehrlich, the inventer (and writer) of  The Population Bomb is still with us and still parading up and down with his banner warning us that "The End of the World is Nigh".  One of his great friends and supporters is John Holdren who is - hang on to your hat - now the White House adviser to President Obama on Science and Technology.  You couldn't make it up - but I bet he could!