On the importance of knowing stuff

I was reading an old Joel on Software article on software, for the day job, and saw this peach of a quote.

People who only know one world get really smarmy, and every time they hear about the complications in the other world, it makes them think that their world doesn't have complications. But they do. You've just moved beyond them because you are proficient in them. These worlds are just too big and complicated to compare any more. Lord Palmerston: "The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it."

That's similar to the tale of Arthur Eddington.

[Eddington] was an early apologist of Einstein's General Relativity, and an interesting anecdote well illustrates his personal intellectual investment: Ludwig Silberstein approached Eddington at the Royal Society's (November 6) 1919 meeting wherein he had defended Einstein's Relativity with his Brazil-Principe Solar Eclipse calculations with some degree of skepticality and ruefully charged Arthur as one who claimed to be one of three men who actually understood the theory. When Eddington refrained from replying, he insisted Arthur not be "so shy", whereupon Eddington replied, "Oh, no! I was wondering who the third one might be!"

That's all for today.

Music of the Future

Tonight I am off to see the poetic Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip.

Next week I am off to see A Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band.

Royal mail Stamps

At the moment I am reading the Martin Beck Police Mysteries by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. The series was wriiten in the 1960s and 1970s by a couple of Marxists who used detective fiction to reveal the state of Swedish society under capitalism.

The book I am currently reading is "The Abominable Man". On page 96 of the Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition (2009) there is this quote:

Then he looked suspiciously at the stamp. It was rather pretty, with a picture of a bird. It belonged to a series of newly released stamps which, if he understood the thing correctly, guaranteed that letters bearing them would be conveyed with special sluggishness. The kind of sublety so typical of the post office.

That speaks as much of early 1970s Sweden as it does of The UK's Royal Mail in 2010.

Royal Mail: Stand and Deliver

Recently the Royal Mail has been criticised for failing to deliver one in four first class letters on time. See this Torygraph report.

In the last quarter of 2009 less than 80 per cent of first class letters arrived the next day, this compared badly to the first quarter when 94 percent arrived the next day.

This report being in the Torygraph it stresses that the strikes, together with management failure to plan for the disruption, were to blame for the performance failure.

During October's dispute almost 60 million parcels, packets and letters clogged up sorting offices.

Nigel Woods, of Consumer Focus, said: "Whether or not these results are down to industrial action, consumers were let down by Royal Mail last autumn.

"The figures are similar to those recorded during the industrial action of 2007-8 and show how important it is for Royal Mail to resolve their industrial relations problems once and for all.

"It also shows that Royal Mail's contingency plans have not stopped severe service disruptions from taking place during strike action.

So, to summarise, the stike caused the disruption which wouldn't have been as bad if management had arranged a massive scabbing operation.

No Redemption

Life goes on. Things happen. Terrible things happen. Good things happen. Terrible things happen. Good things happen. And so it goes. And then it stops. Mr D comes in and out goes that last breath of life. But before then there is life.

Sometimes the media, in the UK, acts as if everyone is immortal and appears shocked when someone is told that they are going to die. Let me let you into a secret: you are going to die. Very few people know when they will die but everyone will die. There is no deus ex machina to prevent it. There is no redemption. Bob Marley may have a redemption song but redemption is rare.

Anyway Pere Ubu are back on tour with a version of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. The album is called "Long Live Pere Ubu" and the stage show is called "Long Live Pere Ubu - The Spectacle". As David Thomas said

"Long Live Père Ubu!" is the album of songs that was the genesis of the entire mess. It is a great leap forward in our pursuit of hyper-naturalistic recording techniques by which we replace microphones in the studio with wooden boxes, junked radio speakers, metal horns, and electrically charged window panes. Sound itself becomes the narrative. Everyone is going to hate it. We know that. The story, though satiric and comedic, is utterly bleak, lacking charm (the usual counter-weight to the band's noire tendencies) and devoid of redemption. Few people have ever read Ubu Roi, fewer heard of it. Wonderful. Altogether two years of work. Père Ubu, the character, ruined Jarry's life. And now he's ruined our career. This thing is our Waterloo, our Bridge Too Far, our Pickett's Charge.

Well, somebody had to do it.

Those things that people do that make the world a better, more interesting place. See more here at Pere Ubu's place. For dates see the calendar page.

Must be Santa

This, from the man who brought you, "even the President of the United States/Sometimes must have/To stand naked", is a seasonal jape.



A polka filled sack of seasonal merriment.

No Pasaran

Remembrance is one of those human actions that we do in quiet moments. Remembering friends and family who are no longer with us. Remembering those who sacrificed themselves to a cause that hoped to change the world. Remembrance for what may have been if they had not volunteered.

Memorials should be there as a motivation to remember. Sometimes remembrance is provoked by seeing something you see everyday in a fresh light. Last year some friends and I parked at County Hall Nottingham to watch a cricket match at nearby Trent Bridge.

On the way back we noticed a memorial to International Brigade volunteers from Nottinghamshire:

==============================================
In honour of the volunteers who left Nottinghamshire to fight in the International Brigade Spain 1936 - 1939.

They fought alongside the Spanish people to stop Fascism and save Liberty and Peace for all

They went because their open eyes could see no other way.

NO PASARAN
============================================
International Brigade
Volunteers from Nottinghamshire
Five Rest in the soil of Spain

R Goodman, Nottingham
Killed Jarama February 1937

R Grant, Nottingham
Killed Calaceitte March 1938

F Turnhill, Worksop
Killed Teruel January 1938

Eric Whalley, Mansfield
Killed Fuentes de Ebro October 1937

Bernard Whinfield, Nottingham
Killed Teruel January 1937
============================================
Thirteen Returned TO Continue The Struggle

G Alcock Nottingham
Robert Brown, Bircotes
Frank Ellis, Linby
James Feeney, Nottingham
Walter Gregory, Nottingham
J Hardy, Sutton Bonnington
Lionel Jacobs, Nottingham
Anthony McClean, Nottingham
G Richards, Nottingham
William Rowe, Nottingham
AS Sheppard, Hucknall
RA Soar, Nottingham
SR Stevenson, Nottingham
===========================================



To the right of these three plaques is a sculpture by the artist Michael Johnson, unveiled by the Spanish Ambassador on the 4th of September 1993 in front of nearly fifty surviving International Brigade volunteers.

The sculpture "depicts bombarded buildings similar to the ones that still remain in the Spanish town of Belchite".

The artist Michael Johnson describes the installation as "1992 International Brigade Memorial, County Hall Nottingham. A 3m x 1.5m bronze panel With two cast brass balconies to either side".



The International Brigades Memorial trust describes the Nottingham, County Hall memorial as "Nottingham. Sculpted relief and 3 plaques in County Hall, West Bridgeford (sic), Nottingham. Erected by Nottinghamshire County Hall, 24 September 1993".

The UK National Inventory of War Memorials also lists the County Hall memorial to the Nottinghamshire International Brigade volunteers.

This monument is now under threat from ideological vandalism. Spoiling the view of the International Brigade memorial is a new brass plaque proclaiming "In proud and grateful memory of the men and women of this county who have sacrificed their lives for others and for freedom. We will remember them."



On first reading that's fine. On second reading the use of "freedom" seems to be there as a deliberate counterpoint to the "liberty and peace" of the International Brigade volunteer memorial. "Freedom" is a term laden with meaning. Everyone "knows" what it means. Few people are prepared to unpack what it stands for.

We could discuss the Isaiah Berlin positive and negative freedoms, or the anarchist concept of freedom but that's for another post. Here on the brass plaque it is being used as a Tory would use it: to stand for the freedom to exploit; to stand for the freedom to abuse; to stand for the freedom to kill in the call of capitalism.

Today's local rag has a feature on the Memorial and the brass plaque

A spokesman for Notts County Council said: "We're not removing the Spanish Civil War Memorial. It's a beautiful piece of artwork at the front of County Hall.

"We are replacing the information board, which replicates the text on one of the plaques, with a brass memorial plaque which will remember all of the people from Notts who lost their lives in service of their country.

Just a couple of points. The "information board" gave background information on the Spanish Civil War and I find it helpful when I see a sculpture memorializing an event to have some historical information. By providing historical context the information board prevents the memorial becoming just another piece of street furniture.

And there is nothing on the brass plaque about "in service of their country". As the text stands it could be in honour of anyone from Nottinghamshire who believed they sacrificed their life in the cause of "freedom". It could honour anyone from Nottinghamshire who died for a cause, whatever the cause. Because it is such a generic, broad and bland statement that covers everyone who has died for a cause it detracts from the specific anti-Fascist sacrifice of the Nottinghamshire International Brigade volunteers.

No Pasaran.

Business Clean Up

Capitalism at work.
This is what the nice, caring capitalists at Trafigura did:

dozens of damning internal Trafigura emails which have now come to light reveal how traders were told in advance that their planned chemical operation, a cheap and dirty process called "caustic washing", generated such dangerous wastes that it was widely outlawed in the west.

The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of $7m a time by buying up what they called "bloody cheap" cargoes of sulphur-contaminated Mexican gasoline. They decided to try to process the fuel on board a tanker anchored offshore, creating toxic waste they called "slops".

One trader wrote on 10 March 2006: "I don't know how we dispose of the slops and I don't imply we would dump them, but for sure, there must be some way to pay someone to take them." The resulting black, stinking, slurry was eventually dumped around landfills in Abidjan, after Trafigura paid an unqualified local man to take it away in tanker trucks at a cheap rate.

And

The UN human rights special rapporteur, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, criticised Trafigura ...

He wrote: "According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations … there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping."

And that is life under capitalism for too many in this world.
As the man sang

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

Amen.