One Last Hurrah

I'm perched once again within an arm-rest infested cluster of airport departure chairs. I'm still sane, but barely. I leave for Blighty this evening, not to return to Tucson until August, and likely not to frequent this page in a manner befitting my audience. I apologize in advance. My mind numbs with the pleasures of home and there are far too many distractions on holiday to piece together a coherent strain of thought. I'll use the opportunity to vocalize my opinions rather than change them. Indeed, I've never been so sad to leave the States, even during a period of unseasonably cool weather here in Arizona: good preparation, no doubt, for the unpredictability of England. As the climate warms here so do I toward the notion of calling America home, at least for the foreseeable future. It was Orwell who highlighted the wealth of names we ascribe to Britain, not to mention its divisions: the British Isles, the United Kingdom, the UK, Britain, Great Britain, and I'm positive I've missed a couple. It indicates a nation unsure of itself, disjointed and fractured. As individuals, the people of Britain are educated and tolerant, but as a collective they're cynical, introvert, and intolerant. Watching scandal after scandal unfold in British politics over the last few weeks (not to mention the greatest travesty of them all - Brown remains PM) has left me remarkably grateful not to be a recipient of all the media guff that comes with it, and grateful to be blogging at a fairly safe distance. So, I shall take up the reins again in August, dear reader. I wish I had a protege to hand over to for the time being but, so far, no one has volunteered (I admit, the bar is set pretty high). Wish me a safe and pleasant crossing. I pass on my sincerest good-will for the Summer months. Enjoy yourself, as I shall be. Before I go, a sweet little girl of five or six, barely three arm-rests away from me, has just exclaimed to her oafish mother, "Mum, that man looks like my Dad!", and accompanied her assertion with an outstretched finger. Absolutely fantastic.

Iran and Revolution

My silence surrounding the situation in Iran is not for want of trying, dear reader. Every time I broach an opinion or formulate an exposition, I'm outdone by the print media and my online contemporaries. If you have been a good bloggist you will undoubtedly already have discovered Michael Totten's specialized blog over at Commentary magazine. His knowledge of the Middle East and its intricacies is astounding, while his devotion to the area and its politics makes me feel like I shouldn't even attempt to comment. Don't neglect his regular blog either, as he's posted a wealth of images and video alongside a salad of the latest journalism, all of which are devoted to the protests and developments as they unfold. It would be irresponsible to condense his coverage into a single soundbite, but he did offer us this in jest:

In case you just woke up from a week-long nap, there is an uprising in Iran that may change the country forever.

What's more, Christopher Hitchens appeared on CNBC earlier today during The Kudlow Report to discuss the issues at present. He lamented President Obama's silence and apparent lack of support with the Iranian protesters, many of whom take severe risks in doing so (far beyond what may cause you or me to stay at home), and clarified his own position, one of solidarity with the demonstrators.

They should know that we are on their side, unconditionally.

This is a position I share. It's fairly clear for all to see that, whether you watch the videos posted on YouTube by the protesters, or delve into the details of how the 1979 revolution shaped the country that has since decayed under Khomeini's theocracy, Iran tinkers on a knife-edge. One heroic surge could topple the regime; all evidence suggests that it's already on its knees. Hitchens quotes Lenin's definition of a revolution and suggests that "both conditions of that definition have more or less been fulfilled". In fact, Lenin eloquently remarked earlier that a revolution involves:

A crisis in the policy of the ruling class which causes fissures through which the discontent and the indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth.

The reaction of Ahmadinejad and his cronies is indicative of a ruling class in crisis ("The situation in the country is in a very good condition") and the cracks are surfacing.

Ad Hominem

Hating a band by default is completely acceptable in the case of Coldplay, Kasabian, and the Killers. As if further proof were needed in the case of the latter, I offer the following:

Only U2 and Radiohead rank higher in the pantheon of globe-conquering rock bands. But now the Killers' time has come, says singer Brandon Flowers.

As if U2 should even be mentioned in the same breath as Radiohead. And what about Floyd or the Stones? You're an idiot, Flowers, with sordid pretensions above your lowly station of teenage pop-rock. Wanker. Further, I've just noticed the inexcusable employment of the term 'rock band' in the above. I'd like to see Flowers go up to Yorke and say that to his face.

YouTube Wednesday

Damien Rice popped into Nigel Godrich's basement some time after Radiohead performed their set there, post-In Rainbows, to good effect. See this sublime solo version of 9 Crimes, a song I never took to like some people, but now I feel strangely converted. The tempo is much slower and the lyrics are sung with emphasis. He seems to have adopted a Thom Yorke-ism as well, singing "no no no" repeatedly over the piano to finish the song. Meanwhile, Blur reunited on stage as a four-piece for the first time in almost ten years in East London's Rough Trade record store a couple of days ago. Here's a short, and yet brilliant clip of the song, This Is A Low. Radiohead fans: feel free to gloat about the fact that when Radiohead announced they'd play a secret gig there in late 2007, there was such a ruckus that they had to move the performance to a larger venue down the road in order to accommodate all the veterans who journeyed in with less than twelve hours notice.

P.S. Now that YouTube have the High Quality button (which I strongly recommend you click), why is there not a function to toggle it on or off indefinitely, rather than click on it every time I open a new video, thus interrupting the flow and causing distortion? Idiots.

Another Ridiculous Conundrum

Here's another one for my philosophically minded friends. On the basis that the image you see in a mirror is the reflection of your former self, due to the time it takes the light to travel from your person to the mirror and back again, if you were to line up a sufficient number of mirrors, so as to be reflecting one another back and forth, would you eventually see yourself as a foetus?

For Tim Dutton

"Goddammit," Doc Daneeka expostulated politely in an uncommon excess of exasperation, "what's the matter with you two men anyway? It just isn't right for a person to have a low temperature all the time and walk around with a stuffed nose. Just look how cold I am right now. You're sure you're not holding anything back?"

"You're dead, sir," one of his two enlisted men explained.

Doc Daneeka jerked his head up quickly with resentful distrust. "What's that?"

"You're dead, sir," repeated the other. "That's probably the reason you always feel so cold."

"That's right, sir. You've probably been dead all this time and we just didn't detect it."

"What the hell are you both talking about?"

"It's true, sir," said one of the enlisted men. "The records show that you went up in McWatt's plane to collect some flight time. You didn't come down in a parachute, so you must have been killed in the crash."

"That's right, sir," said the other. "You ought to be glad you've got any temperature at all."

Doc Daneeka's mind was reeling in confusion. "Have you both gone crazy?" he demanded. "I'm going to report this whole insubordinate incident to Sergeant Towser."

"Sergeant Towser's the one who told us about it," said either Gus or Wes. "The War Department's even going to notify your wife."

Hitchens v. Craig

Only a few moment ago high quality footage was uploaded of the recent debate between our mentor and guide, Christopher Hitchens, and the media-friendly Christian apologist, William Lane Craig. The Hitchens world has gone quiet recently, with little television coverage since his appearance on The Hour, due very possibly to the penning of his memoir, but this encounter, staged at the Biola University in Southern California (a constitutionally Christian institution) was, indeed, extraordinary. Hitchens' arguments have evolved somewhat since the rigour of his book tours and I see him trying to shake things up a little bit and go for the jugular, so to speak, rather than fall back on the lay arguments that have a tendency to lead to regressions when posed to an audience predisposed towards 'faith'. I shan't expand on his arguments here, as I'll leave them for you to fully indulge in, and neither shall I try and tear down Craig's arguments as I don't have a spare 24 hours. Craig has quite a methodical way of speaking that I imagine will appeal to a student audience. That's not to say his points were methodical, but rather, he talks like an essay and adopts this strange excitable mode of oration that I suspect results from years of watching priests and pastors do exactly the same. He was, at times, laughable, and at others, infuriating. His mercilessly repeated claim that atheism has not been proved to be true, for example, was painstaking in the extreme. Atheism cannot be true; it is instead the very claim that something is not true. Likewise, his fervency in his assertion that Christ rose from the dead, which he foolishly tied inextricably to his overlying argument that God, therefore, exists, presented a fundamentalism that lost him the debate. Also, is it just me, or does he appear to claim that atheists consider rape acceptable? I mean, please.

UPDATE: The YouTube clips have been removed due to a request from Biola University. Don't let them get away with it - download the whole video free at the Pirate Bay here.

More on Masa

Masa recommended that I post the video of his victory in the 100m Fly at Santa Clara to go some way towards neutralizing the tremendous humiliation he suffered as a result of being exposed losing to your good author. He came up against some stiff competition in that race, including a full-suited Ryan Lochte and a former world-record holder, and, to be fair, he pulled it out of the bag. However, I'm not so good natured as to post these kind of acknowledgments for no reason other than my innate generosity, so I suggest you wait until after the race and witness the best interview you've ever heard. Classic.

Masa and Me

My cohort Masayuki Kishida, a Japanese Olympian, has relentlessly pursued me over the last year to include his name on this blog in some form or another, so at last I have the perfect opportunity to do so. To conclude a year-long war of competition, I supremely trounced him in last night's 100m Freestyle at the Santa Clara Grand Prix by 4 one-hundredths of a second. Notice how we both go out far too fast and come back in a body bag. We both died harder than Bruce Willis. I'm in lane 2 at the far side of your picture and he's in lane eight, one lane up from the bottom. For novelty value, check Jean Basson's 55 after speed-changing on deck.

Parachutes

Ah, the great American delay. You read me, dear reader, as I sit stranded in San Jose awaiting my flight home to Phoenix. I look forward to a revamp of the whole sky-travel system. One small break in the chain and the whole operation collapses; a few minutes extra here can cost hours, if not days, there. Fortunately, Burger King is no stranger to the local food court and I'm testing the new "Angry Whopper", as opposed to the original, calm whopper. It's only angry, so far as I can see, because of the addition of bacon and jalapenos, which I promptly removed, making, I suppose, a subdued whopper, but a whopper none the less. It's strange that my last two posts should come from airports on either end of my journey. Airports have the tendency to dull the synapses somewhat, so I've no idea whether my prose is at all discernible. I'll have to wait until I've reached a more pleasurable and assiduous setting to review, at which time I'll delve deeper into what I have to say (the whole whopper thing was a bit forced, don't you think?). Prepare yourself for notes from the underground of world swimming, including the defeat of Micheal Phelps following those weird cigarettes.

Money Talks

Phoenix hosts one of the few remaining airports that offers free internet access to all of its travellers, and so who am I to deny myself a brief post? You might notice the time signature, which tells you that it's barely eight o'clock and I've been awake for nearly four hours already. I've long since breached the realm of severe fatigue. If you think tiredness is the cause of your irritability on occasion, you're wrong. Tiredness is often mistaken for mere fatigue. Tiredness infuses you with the delightful sense of languid indifference, quite distinct from fatigue, which always leads to irritability. Bearing that in mind, I'm still able to get quite annoyed by this nonsense about Surallen Sugar's enrollment in Brown's face-saving campaign. Why has he become an authority figure in British politics? As if he has the slightest idea what he's doing. I've noticed he interviews very poorly when it comes to politics and public opinion, probably because his expertise lies elsewhere. For all his attempts at humility and opaque sentimentality, he smacks of an extremely self-possessed, self-interested individual. Is it such a stretch to imagine that he may have a vested interest in the longevity of a Labour government under Brown. His peerage is already on the way, I see. Aha, it appears some sort of demented woman has come to stand near me and generally be a menace, So I must deal with that now with all the apathy I can muster.

Embarking

I embark on my annual trip to Santa Clara, California tomorrow to compete there with the Arizona squad (check video here), and, hopefully, I'll be able to direct you again toward one or two video clips of me raping a few amateurs in the water. (No doubt, I'll watch my readership rise after using those last few words.) Unfortunately, that means I'm likely to be quite heavily tied down (the raping theme continues), so don't expect too many posts until the new week. If your mind is now awash with images of a girl strapped to a four-poster bed, I apologize, but it was intentional.

David Hume on Miracles

From An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages.

The Apprentice Finale

For all its attempts to achieve a sense of climax, Sunday's series finale of The Apprentice left me cold. I confess to a mild obsession with the show, one of the BBC's greatest achievements, having overcome my despondency from last year's run in which Raef "the spoken word is my tool" Bjayou was prematurely given the chop. I'm extremely cynical when it comes to the shaping of character in any form of reality television; I recognize that, with enough raw footage, the editors and producers can construct any narrative, any conflict, or any outcome they like. We're not supposed to feel coerced in this way, and they, largely, do a very good and subtle job. But with every episode it's easy to point to examples whereby the audience is manipulated into siding with one individual or one team. However, I felt as though this series' creators withdrew this aspect of the show, particularly in the final weeks. It was clear in previous series, and in early episodes of this series, that Loraine and Debra, for instance, were two no-hopers, but in the closing stages it was as if the production team got a little carried away with presenting an empathetic, balanced view of the candidates. This culminated, rather negatively, in the final episode in which I had no real favorite; both candidates were shown to be worthy winners, and very little separated either of them, both in their skills and mentality. Take last season's final where Lee, the likable everyman, went up against Claire, the loud-mouthed personification of arrogance, and you'll see the obvious conflict that underpins the whole show. Of course, congratulations must go to Yasmina, though there was no sense of victory or finality. The conclusion felt rushed, dull, and, if this is possible, inconclusive. I left with the impression that Kate, who I'd tipped as a winner fairly early in the run, would likely end up in a higher paid, and better job anyway. Never mind.

More Swimming

And here's another video of me turning out a respectable swim in the 50m Freestyle against some formidables. Success breeds success. Once you get the taste in your mouth, you strive for more like an addiction. It's no coincidence that those at the top of any sport are never satisfied, never willing to sit back. Why does Phelps still want to swim every day, knowing that he won't better 8 Golds at an Olympics? Why does Federer still want to play after winning every Grand Slam there is? Why should Tiger Woods even bother showing up any more? Mediocrity dies young. I'm in lane 6, just a bit further from the camera than is comfortable.

Victory

Congratulations must go to the liberal secular left of Lebanon who voted the March 14 coalition into government against the Hezbollah-led Shia party. Borderline areas were swept by the progressive alliance, following speculation that Christians and Sunnis might favour the supposed protection of the militant state Hezbollah were offering. It's a triumph over sectarianism and the religious bullying of Middle Eastern theocracies, particularly Iran, whose threats and terror tactics have been roundly superseded by the good people of the electorate. Progressive Socialist party leader, Walid Jumblatt reminded people that "the road is still very long, and the project of the state will not be implemented unless by dialogue." His message can be condensed into the following video clip. Check NOWLebanon for all you need to know.

Textbook

I was photographed this morning by a group of girls, doing what I do rather well, eating breakfast. They claimed to be working for the campus newspaper but I suspect my picture will later show up in some kind of feminist manifesto, detailing potential husband material. I am, after all, a catch.

Swimming

I've been rather busy with a swim meet this weekend so I shan't be posting until Monday. But here's a video of me owning a few sixteen year-olds in the final of the 100m Freestyle at Tucson's Southwest Classic. Unfortunately, this morning didn't go so well, but I'm sure there's a rather amusing video of it somewhere. That's me in the middle.

On Genius

The following is used by Christopher Hitchens to introduce his book, Why Orwell Matters. It's rather amusing seeing as Proust was a genius himself.

Men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially or even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.

-- Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove.

Hollah, Triumph!

Hazaa! Blears has gone (for now). Two down, two to go - Milliband and Brown. I fear we might have to wait a little for those two...

More on Brown

Writing yesterday's post in a hurry made me neglect the most obvious example of Brown's indecision. His fumbled handling of the election-that-never-was during the first months of his leadership was an acid test for what was to come and should have stirred a few more pots than it did. Coming to terms with your surroundings and facing your people at every turn should be a mainstay of modern democracy. As Captain MacWhirr says so memorably in Joseph Conrad's Typhoon, "Facing it - always facing it - that's the way to get through". The longer Brown stays in office and refuses to step down only acts to concretize the claim that he is indecisive. He is a doomed man, and the longer this continues, the worse he will look.

Gordon Brown

The watchers of Westminster seem to have decided to oust Gordon Brown. Bryan has been calling for this for a while now, and his projection (out by June 1st) still doesn't look too bad. Polly Tonybee also jumped on the bandwagon a while ago, so it's my turn to do so.

We were willing to forgive Brown early in his premiership for not having been personally elected because we listened to him talk in the lead-up to Blair's departure and decided that, yes, were there to be a general election, he'd probably get our vote anyway. But since then a number of things have gone wrong.

In an increasingly televisual age, appearing comfortable within yourself is key to inspiring respect. Authority and leadership derive principally from respect. I'm not talking so much of instances like the "we've saved the world" incident, but I'm talking along broader, and more serious lines. The 10 pence tax boundary was a royal mess, the recent expenses fiasco is another royal mess, and these eras of malcontent remind us that, in fact, we never voted for him anyway. In turn, this reminds us of how Blair said he would stay on until the next general election, which he didn't.

Once faced with the "Great Recession" we rightly look to partition blame and Gordon Brown must be held, at least in part, accountable. He relied too heavily on Friedman economics, deregulated privatization, and a lack of public investment, which hit the NHS and the armed forces hard during times of need.

Further, his cabinet is weak; Milliband's handling of the situation in the Middle East is insulting, and Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith have proven time and again that they are not people who should be in positions of power.

Brown comes across quite badly during Prime Minister's Questions, and his public persona appears contrived and artificial; his glossy smile is repulsive and his deflective chuckling fools no one but himself. He looks tired, dejected, passively frustrated. As Chancellor he had time away from public scrutiny where he was able to dictate policy from behind the scenes, and project an image of himself from behind the scenes. The premiership offers no such comfort.

The debacles of recent months have shown him to be indecisive, which is compounded by his media personality, especially in relation to his counterpart, David Cameron: equal on political nous but with bags of charisma.

I'm certain Brown is a very intelligent man, and in the right setting he would be positively charismatic (he comes across very well on the radio, for example), but in today's culture of political scrutiny, indecisiveness will not be tolerated, and rightly so.

Our life and times are different from former generations'. The power and influence of Britain should be celebrated and put to use responsibly and appropriately, but, most importantly, at the right time. Brown, it is now clear, is not the individual to do this.

Coming Up For Air

Boredom is the chief propagator of further boredom, have you noticed? A small and appearingly harmless bout of boredom can easily lead to further boredom, and so on. How are you supposed to combat that cycle? A, B, or C? I don't know myself, I'm afraid, so pass on any recommendations. To alleviate ten minutes of boredom, however, you may wish to watch this video of Derren Brown from his Trick of the Mind series back in 2004. I hear he's doing a string of shows in London very soon and there's another television series being planned for September. For enthusiasts, here's a nice interview with him in today's Times, and the uncut interview between him and Richard Dawkins.