Trying and
Among the many constructions hated by pedants, "try and" is a favourite. For my part, although I invariably correct it, I do not think it is particularly bad, and I think a case could be made for considering it correct.
First, we need to consider what "incorrect" even means. As I've noted in previous posts, English does not have an Academie, so there is no authority to say "this is how one should write English". Only custom and various sources of authority that we appeal to serve as our yardsticks.
However, many, me included, accept that "correctness" in English -- or any other language, even those with their state bodies to preserve their purity -- is a matter of usage. If everyone bar you writes "in order to" or "between you and I", it doesn't matter that you deprecate it. You have been left behind by the language. This is primarily an outcome of the purpose of language: to communicate. To fulfil this purpose, it's essential that those who use the language have a common understanding of it. They do not have to have identical understanding, but it must be reasonably close. (So that we can disagree on what a "pavement" is, but we pretty much have to agree on "road". And you might use "may" where I use "might", but neither uses "should" for the meaning we are trying to convey.)
I think it's fairly clear that "try to" is more widely used than "try and", and most writers would consider the latter informal at best, but the latter usage is increasing, and there are other constuctions that share the same space. Many use "due to" or "as" where I would use "because of" and "because". Again, I would correct their usage, but I am not on sure ground. The usage of "as" for "because" is so broad that only my personal taste allows me to change it. So it's true, I think, that the day is not won for "try and".
But it is widely used, and universally understood. The first is important, because innovatory usages are rarely correct unless they are part of a jargon. You can't just invent your own constructions and hope that they will fly (even though they might be comprehensible to other users of the same language). The latter is not so important in considering "correctness" quite strictly, because solecisms made by native speakers are usually understandable without too much effort. However, I do think it's important in considering what is correct in a broader sense.
Why do people write it? It doesn't make "sense". When you "try to see" you are not trying and seeing, so why say "try and say"? People probably say it by folk analogy with "wait and see" and "go and see". It's interesting that these constructions have different meanings. The first, curiously, actually means "wait to see". Waiting and seeing are not separate. You must wait, then you will see. (And if you "try and go", you must try if you want to go. The parallel is reasonable.) The notion is that seeing would require waiting. The second means something slightly different. You must go if you personally want to see, but seeing itself does not require going. I'm not sure I'm correctly getting the point across (rushed for time) but the difference, as I see it, is that for "wait and see", the only way *anyone* could see would be to wait, whereas for "go and see", you have to go, but whoever has already gone, or is where the thing is, can already see. (This idea is complicated by its being possible that you must wait to see something someone else has already seen.)
It's interesting also to look at "look and see". Here, looking is necessary for seeing. So I think you can figure out how "try and see" has gained some currency.
The reasons that it doesn't work are complicated. "Try to" is not like "wait and" but more like "want to". You do not want and see if you "want to see" a film. "To see" is the thing you want. "Try to see" has the same pattern.
But items in English can happily cross into other categories, if they resemble their members sufficiently. Speakers use the material that they have in ways that make sense to them. We infer the rules of English
afresh as children; we are not taught them (when you are taught English at school, you are taught two things: one, a restricted code that one could call "formal English" and two, descriptions of the rules you already figured out -- and those descriptions are often inaccurate). As in other languages, parts of verbs will become conjunctions and adverbs, adjectives will become nouns and vice versa, and nouns will become verbs if they're not carefully watched.
Nor does English have to make any sense. Phrasal verbs give terrible trouble to speakers of, say, Chinese, because they often do not have the sense of the words they are made of. ("Take over" is nightmarish for Chinese! Particularly because it can be used with the sense of "take" and "over" and also without it: "take that pie over to your aunt" and "take the firm over".) These are matters of idiom, that dirty black hole into which "sense" is thrown and new sense spat out. I think that if you can put up with "put up with" without demur, you can live with "try and put up with it"'s not making any "sense".
Of course, I do not recommend writing "try and". "Correctness" in language has a lot to do with status: you don't gain much kudos by using what others who believe that language signifies status consider a clear solecism. But I wouldn't be too quick to condemn it either. In a hundred years, it's possible -- particularly given its prevalence among American English speakers -- that we will all be "trying and", looking back at a quaint lost usage that only the very conservative still cling to.
(Just as a side note, it might seem that you cannot say "try and" because whereas "I'm trying to." is a whole sentence, "*I'm trying and." definitely is not. However, in "try and see", "and" is simply a conjunction. On its own, "trying" does not use it. It is, after all, "try" on its own that is replacing "try to".)
Trying and
Among the many constructions hated by pedants, "try and" is a favourite. For my part, although I invariably correct it, I do not think it is particularly bad, and I think a case could be made for considering it correct.
First, we need to consider what "incorrect" even means. As I've noted in previous posts, English does not have an Academie, so there is no authority to say "this is how one should write English". Only custom and various sources of authority that we appeal to serve as our yardsticks.
However, many, me included, accept that "correctness" in English -- or any other language, even those with their state bodies to preserve their purity -- is a matter of usage. If everyone bar you writes "in order to" or "between you and I", it doesn't matter that you deprecate it. You have been left behind by the language. This is primarily an outcome of the purpose of language: to communicate. To fulfil this purpose, it's essential that those who use the language have a common understanding of it. They do not have to have identical understanding, but it must be reasonably close. (So that we can disagree on what a "pavement" is, but we pretty much have to agree on "road". And you might use "may" where I use "might", but neither uses "should" for the meaning we are trying to convey.)
I think it's fairly clear that "try to" is more widely used than "try and", and most writers would consider the latter informal at best, but the latter usage is increasing, and there are other constuctions that share the same space. Many use "due to" or "as" where I would use "because of" and "because". Again, I would correct their usage, but I am not on sure ground. The usage of "as" for "because" is so broad that only my personal taste allows me to change it. So it's true, I think, that the day is not won for "try and".
But it is widely used, and universally understood. The first is important, because innovatory usages are rarely correct unless they are part of a jargon. You can't just invent your own constructions and hope that they will fly (even though they might be comprehensible to other users of the same language). The latter is not so important in considering "correctness" quite strictly, because solecisms made by native speakers are usually understandable without too much effort. However, I do think it's important in considering what is correct in a broader sense.
Why do people write it? It doesn't make "sense". When you "try to see" you are not trying and seeing, so why say "try and say"? People probably say it by folk analogy with "wait and see" and "go and see". It's interesting that these constructions have different meanings. The first, curiously, actually means "wait to see". Waiting and seeing are not separate. You must wait, then you will see. (And if you "try and go", you must try if you want to go. The parallel is reasonable.) The notion is that seeing would require waiting. The second means something slightly different. You must go if you personally want to see, but seeing itself does not require going. I'm not sure I'm correctly getting the point across (rushed for time) but the difference, as I see it, is that for "wait and see", the only way *anyone* could see would be to wait, whereas for "go and see", you have to go, but whoever has already gone, or is where the thing is, can already see. (This idea is complicated by its being possible that you must wait to see something someone else has already seen.)
It's interesting also to look at "look and see". Here, looking is necessary for seeing. So I think you can figure out how "try and see" has gained some currency.
The reasons that it doesn't work are complicated. "Try to" is not like "wait and" but more like "want to". You do not want and see if you "want to see" a film. "To see" is the thing you want. "Try to see" has the same pattern.
But items in English can happily cross into other categories, if they resemble their members sufficiently. Speakers use the material that they have in ways that make sense to them. We infer the rules of English
afresh as children; we are not taught them (when you are taught English at school, you are taught two things: one, a restricted code that one could call "formal English" and two, descriptions of the rules you already figured out -- and those descriptions are often inaccurate). As in other languages, parts of verbs will become conjunctions and adverbs, adjectives will become nouns and vice versa, and nouns will become verbs if they're not carefully watched.
Nor does English have to make any sense. Phrasal verbs give terrible trouble to speakers of, say, Chinese, because they often do not have the sense of the words they are made of. ("Take over" is nightmarish for Chinese! Particularly because it can be used with the sense of "take" and "over" and also without it: "take that pie over to your aunt" and "take the firm over".) These are matters of idiom, that dirty black hole into which "sense" is thrown and new sense spat out. I think that if you can put up with "put up with" without demur, you can live with "try and put up with it"'s not making any "sense".
Of course, I do not recommend writing "try and". "Correctness" in language has a lot to do with status: you don't gain much kudos by using what others who believe that language signifies status consider a clear solecism. But I wouldn't be too quick to condemn it either. In a hundred years, it's possible -- particularly given its prevalence among American English speakers -- that we will all be "trying and", looking back at a quaint lost usage that only the very conservative still cling to.
(Just as a side note, it might seem that you cannot say "try and" because whereas "I'm trying to." is a whole sentence, "*I'm trying and." definitely is not. However, in "try and see", "and" is simply a conjunction. On its own, "trying" does not use it. It is, after all, "try" on its own that is replacing "try to".)
Dina Rabinovitch, Guardian journalist, has died.
Her last column is a masterpiece of humanism, indeed of humanness. The last two paragraphs express perfectly for me how we all feel about dying young and leaving our kids. Rabinovitch's warmth and bravery in facing that fear are an object lesson to those of us who strive for decency in a bad world.
Queensland Roar 3 Perth Glory 3
Okay, let's ramble.
First up, this is so frustrating it's making me weep. When I try to open my C drive, it puts up a search screen. The menu is all in the wrong order. I have no idea how to fix it. Have pity, I beg you.
Next, poker frustration. Move on to the next paragraph if you don't want to know. Poker is like a jigsaw puzzle, right, and it's like there's a hundred pieces that you have to know to be good. But here's the thing. They're not steps in a ladder. You don't learn A, then B, then C, up to Z, then you're Dolly Brunson. No, you gain a piece here, you think you have a piece there. But you're missing that bit of sky, and you put the tiling on the temple the wrong way round, and the picture you thought was there isn't. So I've been playing for a while, and studying a bit, and I'm pretty sure I've learned some things, but sometimes I feel like I'm just missing all the key pieces.
Also, here's a thing. I don't have any problem with people who disapprove of gambling. Maybe your god told you not to like it, or you truly feel it is a menace, which softheaded men will piss away the family exchequer on. Obviously, I don't agree. But on the other hand, I don't agree with you about Jesus. So why the fuck are you banning my poker, you arsewits? I'm not touching your Jeebus, am I? It's hurt me in two ways: first, the wowsers made it scary for Americans and more particularly for sites that are publicly listed to allow Americans to play -- how amusing that that bastion of liberty should deny people the right to throw their money in my direction as they please; second, it's actually banned here too. Yes, I am an outlaw. But Australia simply does not enforce it, and most sites have it in their rules that Aussies can't play, but don't care that they do. Except Carbon Poker. And I want to sign up with Carbon to get some free goes on
Sharkscope.
Look, it's a general principle that I subscribe to that if you're not harming anyone else, what you do is no business of anyone else's. I'm a small-l libertarian in that way (the difference is that big-L libertarians think you should do what you want even if others are hurt, so long as you're a big business). The argument that gambling hurts families is tenuous, and one can ask whether it's any business of the government's that it does (I think there is a genuine argument that it does, and that that has powered the ban here, but not the one in the States, which is motivated by religion).
And I believe that it is better to resolve secondary harms by punishing the secondary harm, not by banning the activity that may or may not lead to harm. Why should I be prevented from gambling just because Joe Schmo runs up huge debts on his CC? That really is Joe Schmo's problem, not mine. I also don't believe drivers should be fined for not wearing seatbelts, nor for not having their passengers wear them. But if you crash, and your passengers aren't wearing them, and they die, you just killed them. Outcomes, not behaviour.
***
The other night I was drinking with M, my English friend. He was saying that he had tickets for Muse, and I couldn't help saying THEY SUCK. Because they do suck, profoundly. And we got talking about bands, and I realised that I had been listening to electronic music so much that I couldn't bear rock. So I am trying to wean myself back by listening to Palomine by Bettie Serveert (which is just a brilliant album) and by using shuffle on my iTunes instead of just listening to Venetian Snares all day.
But don't you find that the scope of rock is just so narrow? It doesn't really lend itself to experimentation, and once you've heard enough, you've heard it all. Yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's not so far from true. If I was to say to you, name me three new rock things that I might like, you have just about no chance of picking something good. But if we said, make it dance, well, you just might mention something I liked.
Now yes, I know, that's just me, but be honest, has much enthused you recently? For me, I've heard tons of good new music in the past year, but none of it is rock or anything like it. Even the bands I do like have profoundly disappointed on their second albums, even where they tried to do something new.
Maybe it's just because I'm getting old?
Yeah, but I was in HMV at the weekend, trying to spend a gift voucher I got for my birthday, and I was thinking, will I still be trolling the racks of record shops when I'm 70? You don't see many 70yo groovers. But I don't love music any less now than I did 20 years ago.
I couldn't find anything though. How bad is that? An entire shop of music, and I couldn't find anything to buy. I could have bought some classical, I suppose. HMV resolutely refuses to stock any decent electronic music (except for a couple of things I already own), so I might have to.
***
So I should do a report on the last Roar match, hey? The thing is, it was just unremittingly awful, and it's hard to write anything more than that. This time Farina had them play 451, which is atrocious at home to the worst side in the league. (Zenella's tennis coach, K, who stands next to me at matches, thought it was 433, which is just one more black mark against him in the pundit stakes, because there is clearly a difference between the two tactics, and the Roar were packing the midfield, not playing with wide attackers.)
It's frustrating because you just can't help feeling that it would be easy to fix the Roar's problems. I've been saying it for a long time, but they need to play 442, and get the ball forward quickly. We have the personnel for that shape too. I truly think that Farina won't play it because he doesn't think it's fancy enough for a man who played in Italy. Either that or he's truly clueless.
K was pissed off with me and M, who also goes to the football, because we were indulging ourselves in chanting "Sack Farina". You can't blame the coach, said K. But he would say that; he's a coach. And of course you can blame the coach. That's part of football. Trust Aussies not to understand that.
Anyway, the Roar were generally poor. Seo, at last played in midfield, had an uncharacteristically poor game. Tiatto was solid but not progressive. Marcinho played okay, but he would be much more effective if he played a bit closer to the front man. Kruse and Zullo had poor games, surrendering possession easily and rarely threatening. Had we played 433, they might have been more useful, but they were behind the play too much going forward. The back four were mostly okay. Moore is pretty solid, and McLoughan, badly out of position at leftback, is too, although he doesn't get forward at all. Ognedonkey is awful though: he lacks pace, positions himself poorly and is usually responsible for the soft goals we often concede. I can't even remember who was at rightback. Up front, Reinaldo was abysmal again. He. Must. Be. Dropped. When Lynch came on, he did well. The game had opened up a bit and he found some space. He would be much better as a target man than Reinaldo. Nicholls came on for Tiatto and did precisely nothing.
Best on field for us was, erm, tough choice... I think I'd have to go for Lynch. He has been trying hard every week and it worked for him this time. He took a nice goal, and scored a pen nervelessly. No one else on our side could really look back at this match with too much joy, although perhaps Marcinho wasn't so bad: I just want more from him. The referee was quite simply at a different game; some of his decisions were bizarre.
Can we get down from this peak?
So why care about peak oil? Somebody will just provide new sources of energy and we'll all be okay, right?
Wrong. This is why.
First, energy companies are not in the business of providing energy. What a whacky communist idea that is. They are in the business of making as much money as possible. They've been well aware of peak oil for decades (they are mostly American and are fully aware that the US had its peak a while back). But peak oil does not mean no oil. It means less oil.
What is economics? Why does it exist? Economics is the study of how scarce resources can be allocated. Why scarce? Surely there are lots of resources. The reason is that we can't all have everything we want just like that. There are limits on how much we can share out (mostly the obvious physical limits). Economics tells us how we can make work into shares of resources. You don't need to be an economist though to appreciate that if something is rare but people desire it, it will be costly. For instance, gold, which in times past had a rather limited supply, but is pretty and a good store of value (because it does not tarnish readily and consequently won't depreciate), has always been expensive enough to be the byword for riches.
So I'm BP or Exxon. What does peak oil mean for me? It means that demand for my major product is increasing, while the supply is not. So the cost will go up. Hooray! I can make tons more profit from it.
But peak oil is bad for the rest of us because we need a cheap source of energy. Really, really need it. The relative luxury we enjoy now is down to oil: I won't go into boring detail of how and why; let's just agree that it is. Without it, we will struggle to maintain our lifestyles. So we are a market, right, waiting to be served by the energy companies?
Well, yes, from our point of view, we are. We demand cheap energy, so come on, supply us. But from BP's point of view, if they make more money from lower-volume sales of oil than they can from higher-volume sales of cheaper energy, they are not going to bother with windpower, even if it is marginally profitable. It's as simple as that. If I have a hundred units of capital to invest, and can make two hundred back from expensive oil, and a hundred and ten from cheap energy, I am not investing in wind.
Okay, you might say, there's little incentive for the energy companies to invest much in research, but surely someone else will want to serve that market? True, as oil rises above a hundred bucks a barrel, other sources of energy will become competitive, but who is going to produce them? No other method currently produces large amounts of energy cheaply, and research into production methods to make the other sources cheap enough is very costly. Remember what we are asking for here: someone to invest a huge amount of money so that they can create a product that is cheap! We're saying invest money so that you can make thin profits. Oil was easy. It just sits there in the ground. You drill and bang, there it is. It requires investment but you can produce oil with fairly low-grade technology (and you are doubtless aware that the Middle East has been in the forefront of oil production as much because its oil is easy to acquire as because it has so much of it). The profits from early production allowed research into technology to increase production, but that process was powered by the easy profits oil brought. Other energy sources do not offer easy profits. They could, perhaps, once the technologies involved are mature. (But consider this: if someone can make solar cells, they make a one-time sale to you of the cell, then you make your own electricity, so again, it's great for you that there should be cheap photovoltaic cells but the cheaper they are, the thinner the profits for manufacturers and the more likely that my investment does not provide the return I hoped for-- if I am Exxon, what do I see in this process: I spend a shitload of money inventing cheap solar power, and someone in China makes the cells cheaper than I can). This last point is important. Exxon profits hugely from peak oil. As demand grows, oil will become ever more costly, but the slope of price will likely outpace the slope of increased costs, as oil becomes more difficult to extract. But if someone is churning out cheap, efficient solar cells, oil is no longer a valuable commodity. The thing we want, remember, is not oil as such; it is cheap power.
These then are the reasons energy companies have not rescued us from peak oil, and will not do so, and why no one else looks much like doing so. Energy companies could pour money into the technology (and they are doing some water-treading research, so that they are capable of keeping pace with the market as it develops) but they don't figure to make as much from it as they can from oil, and worse, any technology that produces cheap energy will be replicable by people who can do it cheaper, so they will simply be cutting their own throats to create it. And others simply
cannot do it. The technology for extracting cheap energy from the available resources is extremely expensive, and the road to cheap power is not short. You are looking at a long-term investment of an enormous amount of money into a product that is not certain to make money, partly because, again, any technology that can create cheap power is likely to be easily replicable. Alternatives are simply enormous projects, which are far beyond the scope of anyone who doesn't already have a very large amount of money, and those people, just like the energy companies, already have more certain profitable uses for their capital.
What people who insist that markets can correct problems like this often ignore, or are too ill informed to figure out, is that while in theory someone will gladly meet a demand so long as it makes money, and certainly, there is money to be made in energy, they will not surrender currently profitable activities to do so. They also ignore that capitalists do not on the whole work on the long term. They do not think about how they will make a profit in fifty years. They think about how they will make one next year.
The problem for businesses, I'll repeat for the slow learners, is not that they can't fulfil the demand for cheap power. Of course, they could. A big company could invest a ton of money in solar power or some other source of cheap power and create cheap solar cells. But they would find monopolising that cheap source of power impossible, because even if they tried to keep the technology secret, the risk of someone stealing it would be high, and governments, under pressure from their power-hungry citizens, could force them to allow competition. (Contrary to popular belief, businesses hate competition, because if no one else supplies what you supply, but demand outstrips supply, you are going to make a great deal of money, but if someone else supplies it so that the market finds an equilibrium, then you are not. What people who urge free markets do not always grasp is that volume is great for the consumer but not so great for the business: a business's ideal market would be one in which there isn't quite enough of whatever people want -- the sort of market we will soon have for cheap energy.) The energy companies are among those rich enough to do it, but they have
even less incentive: they would be destroying the conditions that will be creating their enormous profits in the next 30 or so years. Yes, after that the oil will have more or less run out and that will make it impossible to profit from it, but they will simply switch their operations to something else they can readily profit from.
The answer is quite simple though. We need someone who is willing to make huge investments without the pressure of needing to recoup them in profit. Someone who has our interests at heart and can undertake enormous research projects that can produce results reasonably rapidly.
Now where can we find someone like that?
Can we get down from this peak?
So why care about peak oil? Somebody will just provide new sources of energy and we'll all be okay, right?
Wrong. This is why.
First, energy companies are not in the business of providing energy. What a whacky communist idea that is. They are in the business of making as much money as possible. They've been well aware of peak oil for decades (they are mostly American and are fully aware that the US had its peak a while back). But peak oil does not mean no oil. It means less oil.
What is economics? Why does it exist? Economics is the study of how scarce resources can be allocated. Why scarce? Surely there are lots of resources. The reason is that we can't all have everything we want just like that. There are limits on how much we can share out (mostly the obvious physical limits). Economics tells us how we can make work into shares of resources. You don't need to be an economist though to appreciate that if something is rare but people desire it, it will be costly. For instance, gold, which in times past had a rather limited supply, but is pretty and a good store of value (because it does not tarnish readily and consequently won't depreciate), has always been expensive enough to be the byword for riches.
So I'm BP or Exxon. What does peak oil mean for me? It means that demand for my major product is increasing, while the supply is not. So the cost will go up. Hooray! I can make tons more profit from it.
But peak oil is bad for the rest of us because we need a cheap source of energy. Really, really need it. The relative luxury we enjoy now is down to oil: I won't go into boring detail of how and why; let's just agree that it is. Without it, we will struggle to maintain our lifestyles. So we are a market, right, waiting to be served by the energy companies?
Well, yes, from our point of view, we are. We demand cheap energy, so come on, supply us. But from BP's point of view, if they make more money from lower-volume sales of oil than they can from higher-volume sales of cheaper energy, they are not going to bother with windpower, even if it is marginally profitable. It's as simple as that. If I have a hundred units of capital to invest, and can make two hundred back from expensive oil, and a hundred and ten from cheap energy, I am not investing in wind.
Okay, you might say, there's little incentive for the energy companies to invest much in research, but surely someone else will want to serve that market? True, as oil rises above a hundred bucks a barrel, other sources of energy will become competitive, but who is going to produce them? No other method currently produces large amounts of energy cheaply, and research into production methods to make the other sources cheap enough is very costly. Remember what we are asking for here: someone to invest a huge amount of money so that they can create a product that is cheap! We're saying invest money so that you can make thin profits. Oil was easy. It just sits there in the ground. You drill and bang, there it is. It requires investment but you can produce oil with fairly low-grade technology (and you are doubtless aware that the Middle East has been in the forefront of oil production as much because its oil is easy to acquire as because it has so much of it). The profits from early production allowed research into technology to increase production, but that process was powered by the easy profits oil brought. Other energy sources do not offer easy profits. They could, perhaps, once the technologies involved are mature. (But consider this: if someone can make solar cells, they make a one-time sale to you of the cell, then you make your own electricity, so again, it's great for you that there should be cheap photovoltaic cells but the cheaper they are, the thinner the profits for manufacturers and the more likely that my investment does not provide the return I hoped for-- if I am Exxon, what do I see in this process: I spend a shitload of money inventing cheap solar power, and someone in China makes the cells cheaper than I can). This last point is important. Exxon profits hugely from peak oil. As demand grows, oil will become ever more costly, but the slope of price will likely outpace the slope of increased costs, as oil becomes more difficult to extract. But if someone is churning out cheap, efficient solar cells, oil is no longer a valuable commodity. The thing we want, remember, is not oil as such; it is cheap power.
These then are the reasons energy companies have not rescued us from peak oil, and will not do so, and why no one else looks much like doing so. Energy companies could pour money into the technology (and they are doing some water-treading research, so that they are capable of keeping pace with the market as it develops) but they don't figure to make as much from it as they can from oil, and worse, any technology that produces cheap energy will be replicable by people who can do it cheaper, so they will simply be cutting their own throats to create it. And others simply
cannot do it. The technology for extracting cheap energy from the available resources is extremely expensive, and the road to cheap power is not short. You are looking at a long-term investment of an enormous amount of money into a product that is not certain to make money, partly because, again, any technology that can create cheap power is likely to be easily replicable. Alternatives are simply enormous projects, which are far beyond the scope of anyone who doesn't already have a very large amount of money, and those people, just like the energy companies, already have more certain profitable uses for their capital.
What people who insist that markets can correct problems like this often ignore, or are too ill informed to figure out, is that while in theory someone will gladly meet a demand so long as it makes money, and certainly, there is money to be made in energy, they will not surrender currently profitable activities to do so. They also ignore that capitalists do not on the whole work on the long term. They do not think about how they will make a profit in fifty years. They think about how they will make one next year.
The problem for businesses, I'll repeat for the slow learners, is not that they can't fulfil the demand for cheap power. Of course, they could. A big company could invest a ton of money in solar power or some other source of cheap power and create cheap solar cells. But they would find monopolising that cheap source of power impossible, because even if they tried to keep the technology secret, the risk of someone stealing it would be high, and governments, under pressure from their power-hungry citizens, could force them to allow competition. (Contrary to popular belief, businesses hate competition, because if no one else supplies what you supply, but demand outstrips supply, you are going to make a great deal of money, but if someone else supplies it so that the market finds an equilibrium, then you are not. What people who urge free markets do not always grasp is that volume is great for the consumer but not so great for the business: a business's ideal market would be one in which there isn't quite enough of whatever people want -- the sort of market we will soon have for cheap energy.) The energy companies are among those rich enough to do it, but they have
even less incentive: they would be destroying the conditions that will be creating their enormous profits in the next 30 or so years. Yes, after that the oil will have more or less run out and that will make it impossible to profit from it, but they will simply switch their operations to something else they can readily profit from.
The answer is quite simple though. We need someone who is willing to make huge investments without the pressure of needing to recoup them in profit. Someone who has our interests at heart and can undertake enormous research projects that can produce results reasonably rapidly.
Now where can we find someone like that?
Al Gore is fat, right, and a screeching Cassandra, right, so we needn't take what he says, seriously, right? That stuff about 20-feet rises in sea level, blah blah, all nonsense, right?
Right. The sea is not likely to rise 20 feet any time soon. (But not likely is not not at all.)
The thing is, this is why I take him seriously. We have no idea how close to falling into the sea Greenland's ice is. But we do know that it would be catastrophic if it does. And it's not just a case of fuck it, I'll just go live up a mountain.
The Larsen B ice shelf fell into the sea over 35 days. One day it was there, proud and frigid, just over a month later, it was pretty much gone. More than three thousand square kilometres of ice, whack, straight into the ocean. (Our American friends may like to know that that's a bigger area than Rhode Island; Europeans, it's more than Luxembourg and slightly smaller than Cornwall.) That structure had existed for at least 400 years, and probably for 12K years, since the last glaciation. Well, the sea didn't rise 20 feet, because Larsen B is only tiny as ice sheets go. Greenland's sheet is more than a million square kilometres. We know it's melting, but we don't know how fast. Scientists cannot accurately model ice-shelf breakage, because it is so complicated and has so many variables, so they are left saying, let's hope it doesn't.
The chance is not nil though and the outcome would be horrendous. A Larsen-type event in Greenland could dump an enormous amount of ice into the North Atlantic. Well, so what? The so what is that a large influx of ice could disrupt -- even stop -- the ocean circulation, as well as raise sea levels. The headline outcome of that would be that the UK and Western Europe, which have a mild climate because of the Gulfstream, which brings warm water -- and by extension warm air -- from the Gulf of Mexico, would instead have climates that matched those of other places at the same latitude. Which is Labrador. Or Moscow but with more storms.
Still, we would not be in a position to worry about that for long, because that would not be the worst of it. If the sea stops circulating, the seabed will be warmed by the Earth's internal heat and the deep sea will become anoxic. This will do two things. Allow the release of sequestered methane and create the environment in which bacteria that like eating methane and shitting out sulphides thrive. The deep sea holds sulphides, which cannot escape because of reasons I can't explain but do understand (I know that sounds weird but when I read about a "chemocline", I understand what it means but don't know why it works, so can't really describe it), and can hold them up to a point. Once that point is passed,
wham. Hydrogen sulphide -- the "rotten egg" gas -- would belch up from the deep in enormous quantities.
It's believed this
may have happened before. Unless you are planning on patenting a method of breathing hydrogen sulphide, it will not be pleasant for you.
Yeah, it's not all that likely. And Al Gore is totally fat. But it's much more likely than winning the lotto, and I buy a ticket for that every Saturday.
Al Gore is fat, right, and a screeching Cassandra, right, so we needn't take what he says, seriously, right? That stuff about 20-feet rises in sea level, blah blah, all nonsense, right?
Right. The sea is not likely to rise 20 feet any time soon. (But not likely is not not at all.)
The thing is, this is why I take him seriously. We have no idea how close to falling into the sea Greenland's ice is. But we do know that it would be catastrophic if it does. And it's not just a case of fuck it, I'll just go live up a mountain.
The Larsen B ice shelf fell into the sea over 35 days. One day it was there, proud and frigid, just over a month later, it was pretty much gone. More than three thousand square kilometres of ice, whack, straight into the ocean. (Our American friends may like to know that that's a bigger area than Rhode Island; Europeans, it's more than Luxembourg and slightly smaller than Cornwall.) That structure had existed for at least 400 years, and probably for 12K years, since the last glaciation. Well, the sea didn't rise 20 feet, because Larsen B is only tiny as ice sheets go. Greenland's sheet is more than a million square kilometres. We know it's melting, but we don't know how fast. Scientists cannot accurately model ice-shelf breakage, because it is so complicated and has so many variables, so they are left saying, let's hope it doesn't.
The chance is not nil though and the outcome would be horrendous. A Larsen-type event in Greenland could dump an enormous amount of ice into the North Atlantic. Well, so what? The so what is that a large influx of ice could disrupt -- even stop -- the ocean circulation, as well as raise sea levels. The headline outcome of that would be that the UK and Western Europe, which have a mild climate because of the Gulfstream, which brings warm water -- and by extension warm air -- from the Gulf of Mexico, would instead have climates that matched those of other places at the same latitude. Which is Labrador. Or Moscow but with more storms.
Still, we would not be in a position to worry about that for long, because that would not be the worst of it. If the sea stops circulating, the seabed will be warmed by the Earth's internal heat and the deep sea will become anoxic. This will do two things. Allow the release of sequestered methane and create the environment in which bacteria that like eating methane and shitting out sulphides thrive. The deep sea holds sulphides, which cannot escape because of reasons I can't explain but do understand (I know that sounds weird but when I read about a "chemocline", I understand what it means but don't know why it works, so can't really describe it), and can hold them up to a point. Once that point is passed,
wham. Hydrogen sulphide -- the "rotten egg" gas -- would belch up from the deep in enormous quantities.
It's believed this
may have happened before. Unless you are planning on patenting a method of breathing hydrogen sulphide, it will not be pleasant for you.
Yeah, it's not all that likely. And Al Gore is totally fat. But it's much more likely than winning the lotto, and I buy a ticket for that every Saturday.
Soft centres
There is nothing much worse in politics than a moderate. These sad creatures tend either to be rightists in disguise, or clowns who cannot read the political map. They believe they are eminently "reasonable", but reason should lead you to either wing of political thought. I can respect the rightist intellectual -- although I wonder about the coldness that has seized their heart -- but for the moderate I have only contempt.
Why? I can almost hear you whining. Why hate me for not having the balls to believe in anything except timidity? The reason is simple. Moderates are enablers of the right.
Progressives want change because we believe the world is wrong. The way it is structured is all awry, and we believe it could be put right -- or righter. I don't think anyone wholly sane believes it can be made perfect, or even that there is a perfect state it could be in. But we feel that it could be
better. Moderates though fear great change. They are on the whole statusquoists. They look for excuses not to urge disruption. On climate change, they want to wait and see; on oil, they think the crisis is exaggerated and we will science our way out of it; on wars, they are against them, but not so much; in disputes, they urge seeing both sides, even where it is quite plain that one side has much the greater claim to justice. This latter is, I think, their worst crime: they allow disgusting rightists, who have no interest in justice, to claim an equal share of their affection. Always seeking "balance", the moderate ignores that the world is unbalanced, and, to bring about equity, what is needed, sometimes, is an extremely unbalanced reaction. For instance, if women are sorely mistreated in some distant land, denied rights, employment, access to education, what is needed is not to see the point of view of the men who are mistreating them, but to demand that they are provided with what they lack. But what happens? The rightists, who don't care about women (and mostly don't believe they should have much in the way of rights anyway) unless they have some political purpose for pretending to, want business as usual with the men in the distant land. Moderates, instead of insisting that we cease to empower them, invent excuses to do nothing: the women will suffer more; our economy depends on turning a blind eye to bad business partners; we should work for slow but steady progress, not revolution. And so on, blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, the women continue to have circumscribed lives, and nothing changes.
As I say, there's no way in a case like that to characterise the moderate's position as anything else but a softer version of the rightist's. Philosophically, they took a different road, but they arrived in the same town, if not the same street. Worse, even where they do not share the rightists' positions, they enable them. American moderates may hate Guantanamo, torture, the war on people with oil, but they won't do what it takes to end it. If that was impeach Bush, Bush should now be impeached. If it was disrupt the mechanism of government, that's what they should have done. Floppy moderates, trapped by their belief that others can't really be all that bad, allow hardcore shitheads to get away with murder. It's not just America, of course. This happens everywhere that there are bad men and others without conviction.
Now, I do understand that this thinking can be dangerous. It lies on the road that the takfiris and other jihadis have taken: first you identify your enemies, then you identify your enemies' fellow travellers and they too are your enemies, and finally you identify those who aren't actively opposed to your enemies and they join the ranks of your enemies. But it's a curious thing about the jihadis that in their ranks are many smart guys, who have argued from premises that are not unreasonable to positions that are extreme without their ever having really gone off the reservation. Most of their analysis is fairly sound, when it comes down to it. (Consequently, I think that if you consider that we are involved in a battle of ideas with Islamists, we must approach their premises, not their final positions.)
But I am not urging their extinction. I'll settle for their being imprisoned in the camps they facilitated, until they are sufficiently enraged by the way things are that they stop the Panglossing and start hating the bad. It's not so terrible to hate if the target of your hatred really deserves it. And some do. Some really do.
Soft centres
There is nothing much worse in politics than a moderate. These sad creatures tend either to be rightists in disguise, or clowns who cannot read the political map. They believe they are eminently "reasonable", but reason should lead you to either wing of political thought. I can respect the rightist intellectual -- although I wonder about the coldness that has seized their heart -- but for the moderate I have only contempt.
Why? I can almost hear you whining. Why hate me for not having the balls to believe in anything except timidity? The reason is simple. Moderates are enablers of the right.
Progressives want change because we believe the world is wrong. The way it is structured is all awry, and we believe it could be put right -- or righter. I don't think anyone wholly sane believes it can be made perfect, or even that there is a perfect state it could be in. But we feel that it could be
better. Moderates though fear great change. They are on the whole statusquoists. They look for excuses not to urge disruption. On climate change, they want to wait and see; on oil, they think the crisis is exaggerated and we will science our way out of it; on wars, they are against them, but not so much; in disputes, they urge seeing both sides, even where it is quite plain that one side has much the greater claim to justice. This latter is, I think, their worst crime: they allow disgusting rightists, who have no interest in justice, to claim an equal share of their affection. Always seeking "balance", the moderate ignores that the world is unbalanced, and, to bring about equity, what is needed, sometimes, is an extremely unbalanced reaction. For instance, if women are sorely mistreated in some distant land, denied rights, employment, access to education, what is needed is not to see the point of view of the men who are mistreating them, but to demand that they are provided with what they lack. But what happens? The rightists, who don't care about women (and mostly don't believe they should have much in the way of rights anyway) unless they have some political purpose for pretending to, want business as usual with the men in the distant land. Moderates, instead of insisting that we cease to empower them, invent excuses to do nothing: the women will suffer more; our economy depends on turning a blind eye to bad business partners; we should work for slow but steady progress, not revolution. And so on, blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, the women continue to have circumscribed lives, and nothing changes.
As I say, there's no way in a case like that to characterise the moderate's position as anything else but a softer version of the rightist's. Philosophically, they took a different road, but they arrived in the same town, if not the same street. Worse, even where they do not share the rightists' positions, they enable them. American moderates may hate Guantanamo, torture, the war on people with oil, but they won't do what it takes to end it. If that was impeach Bush, Bush should now be impeached. If it was disrupt the mechanism of government, that's what they should have done. Floppy moderates, trapped by their belief that others can't really be all that bad, allow hardcore shitheads to get away with murder. It's not just America, of course. This happens everywhere that there are bad men and others without conviction.
Now, I do understand that this thinking can be dangerous. It lies on the road that the takfiris and other jihadis have taken: first you identify your enemies, then you identify your enemies' fellow travellers and they too are your enemies, and finally you identify those who aren't actively opposed to your enemies and they join the ranks of your enemies. But it's a curious thing about the jihadis that in their ranks are many smart guys, who have argued from premises that are not unreasonable to positions that are extreme without their ever having really gone off the reservation. Most of their analysis is fairly sound, when it comes down to it. (Consequently, I think that if you consider that we are involved in a battle of ideas with Islamists, we must approach their premises, not their final positions.)
But I am not urging their extinction. I'll settle for their being imprisoned in the camps they facilitated, until they are sufficiently enraged by the way things are that they stop the Panglossing and start hating the bad. It's not so terrible to hate if the target of your hatred really deserves it. And some do. Some really do.
Mind your nonsense
There are fewer sadder sights than pedants playing Canute with the tide of language change. Some of these poor creatures have slid out from the woodwork to complain about the BBC, which is,
they claim, failing in its duty to guard the English language. I am not sure it ever had that task, really, although it served as a de facto guardian of the standard when its announcers all spoke "BBC English", another term for the style of pronunciation known to linguists as RP, and to the laity as Oxford English, or public school English, among other things. (It is simply the "posh" English that you would be taught in an elocution lesson.)
Sadly for the whiners, language changes, and for a language such as English, which does not have an Academie to fight against change, and whose arbiters of correctness, such as the OED, are solid descriptivists, what is right is not some ossified code from the 1950s, but whatever people actually say.
They claim that presenters and correspondents on both television and radio routinely misuse words, make grammatical mistakes and use colloquialisms in place of standard English.
Do they though? You cannot "misuse" a word if your usage is in accord with the majority's for the reasons I've given. Particularly, you cannot be said to be wrong if the language has changed and your accuser simply wishes it hadn't. I note that one example they give is "refute". Now, "refute" may well once have meant "disprove", but it now also means "deny strongly". One may deplore that it has shifted meanings, making it a less precise word, but the shift has happened whether you like it or not.
I note too, with some glee, that as usual when a pedant fires a broadside, he or she ends up with egg on the mush:
He blamed the corporation for ruining a number of words, giving the example of the noun, replica. Correctly defined as a 'copy, duplicate or reproduction of a work of art', Bruton-Simmonds complained that it was now used in place of 'imitation', 'likeness' and 'model'.
But "replica" of course does mean all those things. It basically has two meanings. One is a copy that is indistinguishable from the original. The other is a miniature model of the original. Those of us who spent boyhood (or girlhood) hours gluing together replicas of aircraft and ships will be well aware of this meaning (so it's clear that the word has had that meaning at least since I was a lad, and that's, erm, many years).
The idiot who made this mistake wants a whole grammar Stasi for the BBC. Volunteer nitpickers would listen to the radio, or watch the telly, and then whine disconsolately to the grammar tsar. I'm sure broadcast professionals would welcome these interventions, because we all enjoy being treated like schoolkids at work.
Ann Widdecombe, a phenomenon that I don't think I could adequately describe to American readers (indeed no biography could get across just what an atrocious and hilarious person Widdecombe is), rentaquotes that it is important that broadcasters mind their Ps and Qs because their use of language has a tremendous effect on society. However, she didn't say what that effect was. Broadcasters of course reflect society more than they influence it (although I accept that a feedback loop probably does exist, and of course American TV has some influence on usage -- although possibly not as much as some make out).
They need not fear. Language survives everything except its speakers dying. Like everything else, it evolves. And complaining about that is as sensible as complaining about the evolution of animals and plants. What? You think cats, dogs and birds were better in the good old days?
Mind your nonsense
There are fewer sadder sights than pedants playing Canute with the tide of language change. Some of these poor creatures have slid out from the woodwork to complain about the BBC, which is,
they claim, failing in its duty to guard the English language. I am not sure it ever had that task, really, although it served as a de facto guardian of the standard when its announcers all spoke "BBC English", another term for the style of pronunciation known to linguists as RP, and to the laity as Oxford English, or public school English, among other things. (It is simply the "posh" English that you would be taught in an elocution lesson.)
Sadly for the whiners, language changes, and for a language such as English, which does not have an Academie to fight against change, and whose arbiters of correctness, such as the OED, are solid descriptivists, what is right is not some ossified code from the 1950s, but whatever people actually say.
They claim that presenters and correspondents on both television and radio routinely misuse words, make grammatical mistakes and use colloquialisms in place of standard English.
Do they though? You cannot "misuse" a word if your usage is in accord with the majority's for the reasons I've given. Particularly, you cannot be said to be wrong if the language has changed and your accuser simply wishes it hadn't. I note that one example they give is "refute". Now, "refute" may well once have meant "disprove", but it now also means "deny strongly". One may deplore that it has shifted meanings, making it a less precise word, but the shift has happened whether you like it or not.
I note too, with some glee, that as usual when a pedant fires a broadside, he or she ends up with egg on the mush:
He blamed the corporation for ruining a number of words, giving the example of the noun, replica. Correctly defined as a 'copy, duplicate or reproduction of a work of art', Bruton-Simmonds complained that it was now used in place of 'imitation', 'likeness' and 'model'.
But "replica" of course does mean all those things. It basically has two meanings. One is a copy that is indistinguishable from the original. The other is a miniature model of the original. Those of us who spent boyhood (or girlhood) hours gluing together replicas of aircraft and ships will be well aware of this meaning (so it's clear that the word has had that meaning at least since I was a lad, and that's, erm, many years).
The idiot who made this mistake wants a whole grammar Stasi for the BBC. Volunteer nitpickers would listen to the radio, or watch the telly, and then whine disconsolately to the grammar tsar. I'm sure broadcast professionals would welcome these interventions, because we all enjoy being treated like schoolkids at work.
Ann Widdecombe, a phenomenon that I don't think I could adequately describe to American readers (indeed no biography could get across just what an atrocious and hilarious person Widdecombe is), rentaquotes that it is important that broadcasters mind their Ps and Qs because their use of language has a tremendous effect on society. However, she didn't say what that effect was. Broadcasters of course reflect society more than they influence it (although I accept that a feedback loop probably does exist, and of course American TV has some influence on usage -- although possibly not as much as some make out).
They need not fear. Language survives everything except its speakers dying. Like everything else, it evolves. And complaining about that is as sensible as complaining about the evolution of animals and plants. What? You think cats, dogs and birds were better in the good old days?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of
Naomi Klein, but I can't help thinking of her as "the OMIFUCKINGGOD writer".
Her stuff is just so breathless. She takes a narrative tack, which reads like a journey, a walk you are taking with her, which is frequently punctuated by her yelling "OMIFUCKINGGOD did you see that?"
"Lockheed... you know... guns and bombs and shit... and they're investing in... get this... healthcare. OMIFUCKINGGOD, can you imagine? It's like the most moooorbid vertical integration."
I mean, I can get with the programme; I feel it like she feels it; but by fuck, by the end of one of her pieces I feel too exhausted to
care about whatever she's seen and is sharing.
Cosmos
So here's something I don't understand. If you sell a record on second hand, that's legal. So EMI's problem with me is not that I trade music they produced without their making any money, it's that I don't buy any plastic. Because otherwise how is d/ling stuff peer-2-peer any different from getting it second hand but just not being charged anything?
***
Anyway, Cosmos. If you're a fan of IDM, you know Murcof, and if you're not, you probably don't. (I wouldn't recommend starting with Cosmos, downloadaholics, go for Martes instead.) And if you are a fan of IDM, you are going to love Cosmos. If you're not, maybe not.
It's way out there. If you thought Martes and Remembranza were experimental, you're going to need a new concept for Cosmos. It's huge. You couldn't call it ambient because it is mostly SO LOUD. The bass will make your guts liquid. Yet it's not pumping in any way. In places, it's like the scary music before the alien rips your guts out (on that subject, I watched Sunshine the other night: I was loving it mostly, because it was so well shot more than from any great appreciation of the plot, which was pure hokum, until the last twenty minutes, which sucked a lot. Whoever told Danny Boyle that pace equals excitement did him a disservice. Also, suspense really lacks when your plot is this formulaic).
So Murcof has gone for BIG, and I have to tell you, he mostly nails it. I can't really describe it any better than that. You could say that it's classical-tinged minimal techno, or that it's dark ambient with microbeats, but you just wouldn't capture what it is. I don't think you can listen to this every day; it's just too intense. But when you do listen to it, prepare to be transported.
***
While I write this, I'm listening to Contact note by Jon Hopkins. I'd never heard him before today, but I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes experimental or chillout music. (It's not experimental in an OMG what teh fuck, where's the tune in that clattering mess sense, but in a you haven't heard this a million times before sense.) The word I'd use for it is "neat". It's just extremely well put together, not a beat out of place. Hopkins is, I'm told, a classically trained pianist, and he really does excel at composition. He's clearly not coming at it from any of the usual IDM angles (no dnb, no acid, no jazz, not ultratechnical techno), rather from ambient. But it's not the lacklustre, uninspired shit that "ambient" so often describes. In places it could be a bit harder-edged (and in particular, the drums could have been a bit sharper), but you can't listen to Venetian Snares all day unless you want earbleed.
We are
fucked.
This won't be resolved by energy-efficient lightbulbs, by clean coal or by using ethanol. It won't be resolved
at all. We needed
serious action a decade ago, at least, and we used the Americans' being fuckheads as an excuse to do nothing much of anything.
The question is going to be asked, sooner or later, and I think it's one that has been asked and answered already by some on the right: can we afford to be moral if it will cost our lifestyle to do so?
Because, I think, if we do not fight for oil, we are going to have to give up a lot.
The question whether it was all that wise to put all our eggs in a basket that demanded constant growth is easily answered. The problem is that those who had the right answer had too small a voice, and came over as Cassandras. Incredibly, on the edge of the abyss, they still do.
Oblivion with bells
Like many of, erm, a certain age, I have fond memories of Underworld. They made dance music it was all right for indie kids to like, and even now that I like dance music that would make indie kids cry, I still have a warm feeling when I hear Born slippy or Cowgirl. To tell the truth, this end of techno is not "dance" music at all. Sure, you could dance to it, but it's quite tangential to the dance scene. In its way, it was quite experimental--crossover often does involve treading new ground, much tougher ground sometimes than you'd traverse if you stuck to a genre. I look at experimental bands such as Autechre, and I think, it must be easier for them to make an Autechre album than it ever would be to make something that had broader appeal. (Perhaps unfair, because Autechre made a couple of fairly standard, although still leftfield, techno albums early in their career.)
But Underworld were not completely out of touch with the dance world, thanks to having among their ranks Darren Emerson, an excellent DJ with his finger very much on the pulse. I don't think I'm alone in thinking he kept them "honest", stopping them from drifting too far into rockery or musoland. When he left, that drift seemed to happen, and previous album NineMonthsOff was weak, with only a couple of tracks really hitting the mark.
So is Oblivion a return to the heights of Dubnobass... or Second toughest... or is it another NineMonthsOff? Sadly, it's the latter. It starts promisingly, with Crocodile, which is strongly reminiscent of Jumbo, which kicked arse. It doesn't kick arse, as such, but it is at least decent. But it's all downhill from there. I spent the whole album thinking to myself, why is this not banging? The band seems to have ideas still, and several of the tracks have the makings of good work, but too many are just halfbaked, or ruined by vocals that sound far too little like the excellent, seedy mutterings of Dubnobass... and far too much like your pissed uncle.
I wanted to love this. I remember actually being excited by the prospect of a new Underworld release--they really were that kind of band--and I would love to be telling you that this is their greatest work. It's not though. If I had to put my finger on where it goes amiss, I'd say that it lacks the palpable sense of danger that enlivened Dubnobass... (which sounds like it would come into your room in the middle of the night, chloroform you and take you up the butt), the cool tunes of Second toughest... and the dancefloor awareness of Beaucoup fish.
So, with the exception of a couple of truly horrible tracks (the MOR "ambient" thing for instance), it's not truly terrible. It's just not anything you'd want in your collection, or would ever actually buy. Which is a pity, but they're not the first band to go an album too far, and they won't be the last.
Workshop: The smoothie
Although I'm not such a huge fan of her blog (too saccharine for me, and way too concerned with ephemera, but that's not to say there's no place for a bit of fun in this sad old world, and I do read it from time to time, and when Paula is
into an issue, her writing is fine; and in any case, she has a great eye, always
noticing), I'm a big fan of Paula's writing. She's light and sharp in about equal measure, and that's not easy. She is, as I've mentioned before, wasting her time with romantic fiction. She writes far too well, and is far too observant for it. I'd love to see her write a comedy of manners, and if she ever does, I hope she'll let me read and comment on it, because I'd love to see her in print.
The smoothie is pretty good. On the one hand, you'll swear you've read it before; and on the other, you just won't be able to think where. Maybe it treads a bit too close to the cliche line, but I think Paula's style is always to do that. She's familiar enough to drag you in, but just sharp and clever enough to be engaging for the more serious reader. It's like a hug with teeth. You can decide for yourself whether that's something you like.
The Smoothie
They were arguing again, the sounds bouncing in from the living room
and making shadows on the bedroom walls.
I think that sounds making shadows is too much of a stretch. If you mean the parents cast shadows, okay, but you didn't say that.
She pushed back the blankets,
grabbed Bashley the bunny, and crept into the kitchen.
One thing I do like in writing is economy (which will not surprise anyone who's read any of these workshop pieces, nor anyone who reads my blog, I should think). Here I think Paula has quite neatly introduced her main character. We know already she's a small girl (the comforting toy tells us) -- and we've filled in that it's her parents who are fighting.
Bashley said he
was hungry, so she stood on a chair to reach the fruit bowl. Dropped
the mushy brown bananas into the blender. Added a scoop of vanilla ice
cream and pressed the button.
I love the lack of an agent in those two sentences. It echoes a recipe, of course, and that's a really nice touch.
The whir drowned out the voices a
little.
Well no. It drowned them out or it didn't.
She added the rest of the ice cream, some orange juice, and an
apple. Turned up the blender's speed, but could still hear them. She
threw in slices of bread and the leftover chicken thing Daddy had said
was shit.
Nice touch. I wonder whether she knows what something being "shit" means. But it doesn't matter. Kids catalogue that sort of thing, and throw it back at you.
Literally, in this case.
Milk, cookies, and beer. The blender spat out a torrent of
smelly banana beer goo that splattered over the stove.
Two things here: first, I don't think you need to tell us that the good is "smelly". If you do feel you must, find a better word, one that really turns the stomach. Reeking springs to mind. Fetid. Second, I would ditch "that splattered" and add in "the counter and" so that it reads "spat out a torrent of fetid banana beer goo over the counter and stove", because it's not clear why a blender would spew goo over the stove.
She tossed in Mommy's calendar with the checkmarks on the days she
stayed late to do inventory. There were lots of checkmarks this month.
A nice piece of dramatic irony. The kid doubtless has no idea why the checkmarks, but we of course do.
They all disappeared into the stinky gray ooze.
Because you are writing this in omniscient voice, you should prefer "stinking" to "stinky". Also, I think the goo would be brown. Apart from anything else, it should be the colour of shit.
Bashley laughed as it
overflowed like lava
I'd just say "flowed" here. No big reason; it's just that it's obviously overflowing, just as lava overflows the vent.
spreading across the counter and swallowing up
the telephone. She held him tight and climbed on top of the
refrigerator as the goop flooded the floor.
You should use a comma before "and" because that's the American way.
Gaping maws materialized
out of the mess, devouring the table and chairs as the blender
shrieked and whined, vomiting out more.
I don't like "gaping maws" because it is such a stock phrase. And I'd much prefer an amorphous mess, so that the parents are surprised by their fate.
Her parents stood in the doorway and screamed.
"What are you doing up there?"
"Turn that goddamned thing off!"
She rested her chin on top of Bashley's soft head as the smoothie
swirled around their feet, making them slip and fall. Her father tried
to pull up her mother, but it was too late. The tsunami was starving
now and its eager claws pulled them under, their bodies disappearing
into the roaring wave, becoming the wave.
See, I think that works without maws. The "claws" are easily visualised as peaks of goo.
And then it was quiet.
Yuk. I have to say, I loved it. My suggestions are entirely minor because I don't think this sort of piece is really helped by overthinking it.
I repost the whole story below. The copyright remains with the author, whose moral right to be identified as the author I affirm by attaching her name.
The Smoothie
They were arguing again, the sounds bouncing in from the living room
and making shadows on the bedroom walls. She pushed back the blankets,
grabbed Bashley the bunny, and crept into the kitchen. Bashley said he
was hungry, so she stood on a chair to reach the fruit bowl. Dropped
the mushy brown bananas into the blender. Added a scoop of vanilla ice
cream and pressed the button. The whir drowned out the voices a
little. She added the rest of the ice cream, some orange juice, and an
apple. Turned up the blender's speed, but could still hear them. She
threw in slices of bread and the leftover chicken thing Daddy had said
was shit. Milk, cookies, and beer. The blender spat out a torrent of
smelly banana beer goo that splattered over the stove.
She tossed in Mommy's calendar with the checkmarks on the days she
stayed late to do inventory. There were lots of checkmarks this month.
They all disappeared into the stinky gray ooze. Bashley laughed as it
overflowed like lava, spreading across the counter and swallowing up
the telephone. She held him tight and climbed on top of the
refrigerator as the goop flooded the floor. Gaping maws materialized
out of the mess, devouring the table and chairs as the blender
shrieked and whined, vomiting out more.
Her parents stood in the doorway and screamed.
"What are you doing up there?"
"Turn that goddamned thing off!"
She rested her chin on top of Bashley's soft head as the smoothie
swirled around their feet, making them slip and fall. Her father tried
to pull up her mother, but it was too late. The tsunami was starving
now and its eager claws pulled them under, their bodies disappearing
into the roaring wave, becoming the wave.
And then it was quiet.
Paula Light 2006
Workshop: The smoothie
Although I'm not such a huge fan of her blog (too saccharine for me, and way too concerned with ephemera, but that's not to say there's no place for a bit of fun in this sad old world, and I do read it from time to time, and when Paula is
into an issue, her writing is fine; and in any case, she has a great eye, always
noticing), I'm a big fan of Paula's writing. She's light and sharp in about equal measure, and that's not easy. She is, as I've mentioned before, wasting her time with romantic fiction. She writes far too well, and is far too observant for it. I'd love to see her write a comedy of manners, and if she ever does, I hope she'll let me read and comment on it, because I'd love to see her in print.
The smoothie is pretty good. On the one hand, you'll swear you've read it before; and on the other, you just won't be able to think where. Maybe it treads a bit too close to the cliche line, but I think Paula's style is always to do that. She's familiar enough to drag you in, but just sharp and clever enough to be engaging for the more serious reader. It's like a hug with teeth. You can decide for yourself whether that's something you like.
The Smoothie
They were arguing again, the sounds bouncing in from the living room
and making shadows on the bedroom walls.
I think that sounds making shadows is too much of a stretch. If you mean the parents cast shadows, okay, but you didn't say that.
She pushed back the blankets,
grabbed Bashley the bunny, and crept into the kitchen.
One thing I do like in writing is economy (which will not surprise anyone who's read any of these workshop pieces, nor anyone who reads my blog, I should think). Here I think Paula has quite neatly introduced her main character. We know already she's a small girl (the comforting toy tells us) -- and we've filled in that it's her parents who are fighting.
Bashley said he
was hungry, so she stood on a chair to reach the fruit bowl. Dropped
the mushy brown bananas into the blender. Added a scoop of vanilla ice
cream and pressed the button.
I love the lack of an agent in those two sentences. It echoes a recipe, of course, and that's a really nice touch.
The whir drowned out the voices a
little.
Well no. It drowned them out or it didn't.
She added the rest of the ice cream, some orange juice, and an
apple. Turned up the blender's speed, but could still hear them. She
threw in slices of bread and the leftover chicken thing Daddy had said
was shit.
Nice touch. I wonder whether she knows what something being "shit" means. But it doesn't matter. Kids catalogue that sort of thing, and throw it back at you.
Literally, in this case.
Milk, cookies, and beer. The blender spat out a torrent of
smelly banana beer goo that splattered over the stove.
Two things here: first, I don't think you need to tell us that the good is "smelly". If you do feel you must, find a better word, one that really turns the stomach. Reeking springs to mind. Fetid. Second, I would ditch "that splattered" and add in "the counter and" so that it reads "spat out a torrent of fetid banana beer goo over the counter and stove", because it's not clear why a blender would spew goo over the stove.
She tossed in Mommy's calendar with the checkmarks on the days she
stayed late to do inventory. There were lots of checkmarks this month.
A nice piece of dramatic irony. The kid doubtless has no idea why the checkmarks, but we of course do.
They all disappeared into the stinky gray ooze.
Because you are writing this in omniscient voice, you should prefer "stinking" to "stinky". Also, I think the goo would be brown. Apart from anything else, it should be the colour of shit.
Bashley laughed as it
overflowed like lava
I'd just say "flowed" here. No big reason; it's just that it's obviously overflowing, just as lava overflows the vent.
spreading across the counter and swallowing up
the telephone. She held him tight and climbed on top of the
refrigerator as the goop flooded the floor.
You should use a comma before "and" because that's the American way.
Gaping maws materialized
out of the mess, devouring the table and chairs as the blender
shrieked and whined, vomiting out more.
I don't like "gaping maws" because it is such a stock phrase. And I'd much prefer an amorphous mess, so that the parents are surprised by their fate.
Her parents stood in the doorway and screamed.
"What are you doing up there?"
"Turn that goddamned thing off!"
She rested her chin on top of Bashley's soft head as the smoothie
swirled around their feet, making them slip and fall. Her father tried
to pull up her mother, but it was too late. The tsunami was starving
now and its eager claws pulled them under, their bodies disappearing
into the roaring wave, becoming the wave.
See, I think that works without maws. The "claws" are easily visualised as peaks of goo.
And then it was quiet.
Yuk. I have to say, I loved it. My suggestions are entirely minor because I don't think this sort of piece is really helped by overthinking it.
I repost the whole story below. The copyright remains with the author, whose moral right to be identified as the author I affirm by attaching her name.
The Smoothie
They were arguing again, the sounds bouncing in from the living room
and making shadows on the bedroom walls. She pushed back the blankets,
grabbed Bashley the bunny, and crept into the kitchen. Bashley said he
was hungry, so she stood on a chair to reach the fruit bowl. Dropped
the mushy brown bananas into the blender. Added a scoop of vanilla ice
cream and pressed the button. The whir drowned out the voices a
little. She added the rest of the ice cream, some orange juice, and an
apple. Turned up the blender's speed, but could still hear them. She
threw in slices of bread and the leftover chicken thing Daddy had said
was shit. Milk, cookies, and beer. The blender spat out a torrent of
smelly banana beer goo that splattered over the stove.
She tossed in Mommy's calendar with the checkmarks on the days she
stayed late to do inventory. There were lots of checkmarks this month.
They all disappeared into the stinky gray ooze. Bashley laughed as it
overflowed like lava, spreading across the counter and swallowing up
the telephone. She held him tight and climbed on top of the
refrigerator as the goop flooded the floor. Gaping maws materialized
out of the mess, devouring the table and chairs as the blender
shrieked and whined, vomiting out more.
Her parents stood in the doorway and screamed.
"What are you doing up there?"
"Turn that goddamned thing off!"
She rested her chin on top of Bashley's soft head as the smoothie
swirled around their feet, making them slip and fall. Her father tried
to pull up her mother, but it was too late. The tsunami was starving
now and its eager claws pulled them under, their bodies disappearing
into the roaring wave, becoming the wave.
And then it was quiet.
Paula Light 2006
If it's true that Israel struck a reactor under construction,
it and the US just binned the NPT.
Thanks for that, guys. Without international law, but with globalisation, the whole fucking world becomes a jungle. Israel doesn't mind: it's a gorilla.
But gorillas grow today, wane tomorrow. The old Rome fell and those who lived in it could not have been sure, right up to the end, how far it had fallen. The new Rome will too fall. And with it, its clients, into what ruination, I can't say, but into ruination, for sure.
Why not God?
Why would I rather God didn't exist?
It's quite simple. He solves one mystery: why is there something rather than nothing? But he poses another in answering it: why is there God rather than nothing? So that's pretty much a tie.
Otherwise, God is just another burden on us, and we have enough.
I was going to explain what I meant by that, but thinking about it, it should be self-explanatory.
Also, this is not a good world. We can't even pretend it is. It's rubbish. It's grossly unfair and stupidly so. The bad often get rewarded, usually at the expense of the not-so-bad. Virtue does not bring success, or reward, no matter how you measure it. It tends to bring heartache, because it is just another weakness for the nonvirtuous, or simply callous, to take advantage of. We are poorly equipped to live in it, because we have been burdened with just enough intelligence to understand that we are alive, and not enough to live, enough to know who we are, and not enough to be able to change.
I don't think a god who made this world would be a good god. I'd rather it was the outcome of stupid chance. Because doing this on purpose would be really cruel.
***
But it has beauty, I know you will say. Yes, it does. But you cannot ascribe all the beauty to God and the ugliness to man, because the most ugly things are not our fault. That we must die is not our fault. We'd live forever if we could. That we are driven by feelings we cannot understand is not our fault either. We didn't make ourselves (although maybe one day soon we will). And even those things that are our fault would be his fault too: he is supposed to have made us and at the same time to be outside time, so he knew how we would be.
But I do not blame God, because I have my preference. He does not exist. We are a joke the cosmos has played on itself, a rather unfunny, weak joke, which is told today, forgotten tomorrow. Let's not be sad about it though. With added God, it would only be funnier.
Why not God?
Why would I rather God didn't exist?
It's quite simple. He solves one mystery: why is there something rather than nothing? But he poses another in answering it: why is there God rather than nothing? So that's pretty much a tie.
Otherwise, God is just another burden on us, and we have enough.
I was going to explain what I meant by that, but thinking about it, it should be self-explanatory.
Also, this is not a good world. We can't even pretend it is. It's rubbish. It's grossly unfair and stupidly so. The bad often get rewarded, usually at the expense of the not-so-bad. Virtue does not bring success, or reward, no matter how you measure it. It tends to bring heartache, because it is just another weakness for the nonvirtuous, or simply callous, to take advantage of. We are poorly equipped to live in it, because we have been burdened with just enough intelligence to understand that we are alive, and not enough to live, enough to know who we are, and not enough to be able to change.
I don't think a god who made this world would be a good god. I'd rather it was the outcome of stupid chance. Because doing this on purpose would be really cruel.
***
But it has beauty, I know you will say. Yes, it does. But you cannot ascribe all the beauty to God and the ugliness to man, because the most ugly things are not our fault. That we must die is not our fault. We'd live forever if we could. That we are driven by feelings we cannot understand is not our fault either. We didn't make ourselves (although maybe one day soon we will). And even those things that are our fault would be his fault too: he is supposed to have made us and at the same time to be outside time, so he knew how we would be.
But I do not blame God, because I have my preference. He does not exist. We are a joke the cosmos has played on itself, a rather unfunny, weak joke, which is told today, forgotten tomorrow. Let's not be sad about it though. With added God, it would only be funnier.
Man, if only libertarians and those who think the poor deserve to be poor and the wealthy deserve to be wealthy (Don, you know we're talking about you here, dude) would read and understand
this.
The playing field is not level if we play with loaded dice. This is why people like me will say to people like Don that it is not about "equality of opportunity" simply because not everyone is in position to take advantage of opportunity. That's difficult to understand for someone who began life's race fifty yards ahead of the average black man, and worked to get what he has. I do understand that. It doesn't
feel as though you've been running downhill while others struggle uphill.
I think not understanding this -- or understanding it and pretending it doesn't matter, or is something so easy to overcome that it can be set aside -- is central to the libertarian ethos. I prefer the more simplistic "fuck you Jack, I'm all right" thinking of "Objectivists", who mostly at least are not pretending they aren't cunts.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will not take Richard Dawkins' shizzle lying down. Oh no! He come out swinging,
The Observer reports.
Williams is renowned as an "intellectual". Now there are some who would argue that an intellectual among Godbotherers is a bit like a polevaulter among dogs, but I say we have to judge the man by the output of his formidable mind.
Williams strikes a deadly blow to Dawkins by describing religions as "naturally self-critical". Dawkins misses that, Williams points out. Erm, yes, he does. Possibly because religions are so far from self-critical as to be completely nonself-critical. Religions mostly believe in their own inerrancy. They are bastions of intolerance. When believers stop believing in their particular brand of whateverism, they hive themselves off and form a new sect of intolerance, and start describing their fellow believers as "heretics".
Williams does not stop there. Oh no!
'There are specific areas of mismatch between what Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing,' he said.
Okay, hit us with it, Arch.
He said Dawkins had 'picked up on' the fact that theologians talk about God as a simple explanation but if God was around before the Big Bang, 'he must be complex'.
Well, that's telling us. We say you invented God because the world is too complex for you to understand, and your answer is noes, you fools, God is
reaaaaaallly complex.
Williams topped that though, with blather so thoroughly stupid that it makes believing in a transcendental being, capable of creating a whole universe, who cares whether you like arse sex seem sensible.
'Don't distract us from the real arguments by assuming that religion is an eccentric survival strategy or irrational form of explanation,' Williams said.
Erm, Rowan mate, our arguments
are that religion is a survival strategy or an irrational form of explanation. What "real arguments" are there, in your view, that make those "unreal"?
Of course, Williams is indulging in the special pleading that religion always insists on with science. Basically, we are not to judge his beliefs by the same standards we do the rest of the universe. No, we must accept them as axiomatic, and then go from there. So when we are arguing about the nature of his god, we must accept that his god exists, even though the argument concerns, erm, his existing in the first place.
OMFG.How far gone are the rightards? Check it:
So just talking about your personal security, would you support President John Edwards? Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone surveillance without a specific warrant.
Would you support an America that does not torture, that upholds the right of habeas corpus, does not dehumanise other people with in-your-face lies as a prelude to attacking their nation and does not tap your phone?
"Talking Points" believes most Americans reject that foolishness.
Thankfully, Talking Points' view is not on the whole supported by opinion polls.
But what a chill wind is blowing through American politics, through American society. It has a name. A nation that is powered by fear and hatred of the other, whose purpose as a state is to serve the wealthy, as embodied in corporations, that has a name. Bill O'Reilly is not a patriot, not a defender of "American values" (rather, he wants those values smashed, destroyed), not the "mainstream". Bill O'Reilly is a fascist, pure and simple.
This is how the US supports its troops. Once they have given their bodies and, in this case, minds in service of a rich man's crusade against poor brown people who happen to control a resource we all need, they are left to moulder.
War is fucking horrible. That's all I have to say about it. We should think twice before starting them because the mess they cause is deeper, broader and more painful than we ever imagine it will be.
Another brilliant post by Glenn Greenwald on the FISA scandal.
We're just sitting by watching as telecoms right in front of our faces purchase from government officials the right to be exempt from lawsuits currently pending in our court system.
That pretty much says it all. There is no rule of law if you can buy the law. We all know you can to some extent: the rich have better lawyers than the poor, after all. But as uneven as our justice systems are, as unjust as they are (so focused are our laws on the wealthy's rights to property and so little on, erm, justice), they are supportable by us, to the extent that they are, so long as they are evenhanded. Once they are not -- once they cannot even be pretended to be, there is no rule of law, no law at all. Tell me, why should I abide by any one of your laws if he need not? If the answer is, he is rich and you are poor, then why is my response not, I am armed and he is not?
Race to the bottom
Fun and games at the Gates of Vienna, a blog whose content could pretty much be summed up as "The Filthy Wogs are Coming". Recently, they allowed
noted Norwegian racist Fjordman to guestblog.
There is something I want to note about the concept of "whiteness" that people like Fjordman appeal to. American "blacks" are "black" for a simple reason. Their ancestors were stolen from their homes, decultured and homogenised by the slavers as a monocultural mass of men, women and children. The slavers did not care that Fang people have different marriage rites from those of the Igbo. They did not care that Gambians and Congolese speak languages from different families. To them, they were all black.
This is part of the tragedy of slavery, not an outcome to be celebrated. Yet, curiously, writers like Fjordman want to do the same to "whites". Whereas I can see some merit in believing that one should celebrate what is good about Norwegian culture, I cannot see that Fjordman does that. Instead, he wants to celebrate what is good about "white" culture, as if there were such a thing.
Of course, it's a strange thing for those who stand outside Fjordman's worldview to look in at it. In his world, our common "whiteness" gives us common cause. Which is odd, because when we were kids, we were taught to hate other Europeans for
not being like us. The Fjordmans of my youth hated the French as much as they hated blacks. Not that they had much to do with either. When I was, say, 12, there was one black family in my village of three thousand people and no French. The locals contented themselves with hating the English, given the lack of "Pakis" to bash.
I am only going to pick out one part of Fjordman's pseudointellectual essay (how these people love their spurious sources: always the same "thinkers"; always the same distorted stats; always the same sources for the same old bullshit), because it illustrates so clearly how unthinking this particular "intellectual" is:
In May 2007, Osama bin Laden’s deputy terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahri stated that “Al-Qaida is not merely for the benefit of Muslims. That’s why I want blacks in America, people of color, American Indians, Hispanics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world.”
Read that statement closely. This Jihadist organization is calling for a global war against whites. Not Christians or Jews. Whites. I have been told all of my life that skin color is irrelevant, but this balancing act gets a lot more difficult when somebody declares war against you because of your race.
But the reason Al-Zawahiri calls on blacks, American Indians, Hispanics and so on to join the jihad is not that he is perpetrating a war on whites, but that he considers himself white.
What irony! Fjordman and his like think that "Muslims" too are homogenous and "black". But Arabs consider themselves white (and are often themselves starkly racist). A visit to any of the nations in northern Africa that have significant overlap between Arab or other Semitic peoples and black Africans will disabuse you very quickly of the notion that they are all just "blacks". Take Sudan, where Muslim Arabs are dispossessing and murdering mostly Muslim blacks.
***
The Muslim menace is, of course, mostly illusory. Most, nearly all, Muslims are just like you and me: people who are just getting on with it. They don't want to destroy your culture, such as it is (since when was the rampant pursuit of material goods and the sexualisation of absolutely everything to the soundtrack of mushy pop, documented by a man who puts sharks in tanks actually a "culture"?); they just want to make a few quid so they can nice up their home.
But that doesn't stop hatemongers such as
Melanie Phillips. I well remember disagreeing with a friend quite vehemently because she considered Phillips a "good source" for Wikipedia, just because a newspaper prints her bullshit. (If you wanted an illustration of Wikipedia's bankruptcy as a bastion of intellectualism, in fact, its insistence, driven by a handful of ideologically motivated editors, that newspapers are infallible is as good as any.)
Here Phillips takes issue with the recent letter from Muslim scholars to the Christian top bods. The Muslims, you may have read, have called on Christians to find areas of commonality and live together in peace. Seems fairly unexceptionable, although there are certainly criticisms to be made.
Make peace? says Phillips. But to do that, we'd need to be at war:
First and foremost, it purports to be a plea to Muslims and Christians to make peace with each other. But this implies that both are at war with each other. This is untrue. The Islamic world — or part of it — has waged war on the Christian (and Jewish) western world. The Christian world is merely responding in self-defence. It is the Islamic world which says it wants to conquer the Christian. The Christian world does not say it wants to conquer Islam, merely that Islam should stop trying to conquer it. Yet the Islamic world pretends that the Christian world is engaged in an act of exterminatory aggression against it.
Islamic acts of conquest? Erm. Let me think... erm. Help me out, Mel, because I'm really struggling to recall the massive invasion of any Christian states and the destruction of their infrastructure, command structure and social fabric in recent times. Can you help me out?
On the other side, well, there are two invasions of Afghanistan, one of Iraq, a coup in Iran, the threat of bombing against Iran, the bombing of Sudan, two wars against Somalia's Muslims (Ethiopia is overwhelmingly Christian, remember), not to mention the ongoing support and arming of repressive regimes in several Muslim states and of a repressive, usurper state in Israel. For starters.
But one supposes that in Phillips' world, the "Muslims" are "attacking" us by sending hundreds of thousands of poor people, the flotsam and jetsam of our colonialisation and its stepson globalisation. They didn't just impoverish themselves, you know!
In response to the invitation to consider Muslims as partners, beautifully expressed by the Muslim scholars thus:
So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill
which is a sentiment that it's hard to believe anyone would struggle to get behind, Phillips says:
it’s really a variation of the ancient adage: submit or die
Yes, it's true. These lunatics are so far gone that they read "Let's be friends" and it says "Die white bitch" to them. The war of the West on Islam will never end while this mentality not only gets airtime, but predominates in our media.
