Here I Stand, I Can Do No Other

Hats off to those tireless 'researchers' and their 'studies' for this piece of timely good news, which makes the tedious business of New Year's Resolutions a whole lot easier. This year I shall definitely stand a bit more, and will strive to increase my pottering levels. At last - a realistic goal.

The Year of the Potato

Before Appleyard breaks his silence again (like a long-legged fly, his mind moves upon silence...) to mark the turning of the year and unveil his eagerly-awaited predictions, I must just say that, here at NigeCorp, 2008 is and always will be the Year of the Potato (though, tragically, NigeCorp's capricious technology prevents me from surveying the wonders of the Potato Gallery). When the boughs of holly come down from the lavishly decked turbine halls, they will be replaced by wreaths and swags of interstrung potatoes, bouquets of potato flowers, tasteful arrangements of spuds in all their forms, from raw tuber to sizzling chips, steaming mash and crunchy crisp. A new anthem, devoted to the mighty potato, will be specially composed for the indefatigable workers' choir and orchestra. This - the Year of the Potato - will truly be a year to remember.

I Break My Silence...

... but only to draw your attention to my article in The Sunday Times about what really happened in 2007.

The Toys Of Peace

The Brownite state's quest to micromanage its 'citizens'' lives from womb to grave continues apace, impeded only by that same state's evident inability to micromanage a pissup in a brewery - for which we must be grateful indeed. Its latest pronouncement, for what it's worth (zilch), seems almost sensible: boys, it declares, should be a encouraged to play with weapons. Hurrah! Teaching 'professionals' are, of course, up in arms. Readers of Saki will sigh and recall this fine short story, which really says it all.

Something Big

Inevitably, minutes after my last post, Something Big happened - the messy and hideous murder of Benazir Bhutto. It was perhaps hardly surprising in itself (I was almost relieved she made it over the tarmac from her plane), but none the less shocking. Since then, the event has been buried under the usual mountain of verbiage, none of which seems actually to be making much sense of what happened, what it meant, and what is likely to happen next. Loosely deconstructed, the media's saturation coverage amounts to:
1. O dear.
2. O dear o lor.
3. Well this is a pretty pickle and no mistake.
4. Er...
At times like this, we Thought Experimenters need the wise words of Captain B, if he's around. Oh Captain, art thou sleeping down below? Tell us - whither Pakistan?

Not The Kinks!?

Things are so quiet that even this looks like a story. If the Kinks do re-form, it will surely rank high among the most utterly pointless band reunions ever. Ray Davies's mojo may still be (up to a point) working, but the band long ago imploded with rare finality, and has been lost beyond recovery for decades. What would be the point? Or maybe this is just another Ray Davies prank...

Quiet Times For El Gordo

Well, how was it for you? Still going on for most of you, I daresay, but me I'm back at NigeCorp (where the halls are, I need hardly add, decked with boughs of holly tra-la-la-la-la, la-la la laaa, but there are few of my fellow myrmidons in evidence). I have the traditional Christmas legacy of a 'cold' (one of the most inadequate words in the English language, along with 'shy'). Over the break, it struck me, in the intervals when I was aware of the outside world, that this was a spectacularly uneventful Christmas in terms of 'news' - the BBC bulletins seemed positively desperate to dig up something that might pass as a 'story', usually falling back on sales in the shops and/or on the internet. Why, for several days, no confidential data was (were?) found to have gone missing - it was as quiet as that. Maybe Gordon (whom, in the wake of that big win on the Spanish lottery, I now think of as El Gordo) got his 'day off' after all. I dread to imagine what he did with it...
I reckon it's too early for the looks back and the looks forward - and I'll happily leave that side of things to Bryan. But here, as evidence of the man's uncanny sagacity and prescience, is the latest evidence (and almost the only vaguely interesting thing in the papers ) that Barak will win. This might even be a good thing - who knows?

Well, for myself, it is Christmas Eve as usual - i.e. my battered mind is reduced to one long shopping/to do list. I'll probably be off-blog for a couple of days too (though you never know). Meanwhile, this seasonal poem by R.S. ('Laughing Boy') Thomas swims into my mind. I'll leave you with it...

Song

I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one

Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness
But with a sharp song.


Happy Christmas!

The Christmas Break

It is, I am reliably informed, Christmas. I can't speak for Nige - nobody can, nobody ever could, a lot of men tried, a lot of men died - but I am tired and need to take a break from blogging. Thanks to all readers and commenters. I wish you the great good on which all the People of the Book agree - peace.

A Happy Clappy Squirmalong

Picking up (belatedly) on yesterday's Emmylou And Atheism, I must report that the 'music' favoured by the happy-clappy brand - sadly the fastest growing and most vigorous - of Anglicanism can be enough to drive anyone into the arms of Dawkins. Yesterday I attended a wedding. A happy occasion and all that, and everything was going fine - nice work on organ and trumpet, well chosen Bible readings - when, suddenly, a guitar-drum-keyboard combo let rip with a medley of devotional songs of quite breathtaking fatuity, belted out in sub-pop style, to a rudimentary melody and still more rudimentary beat. In style and (alas) content, it was about on a par with a primary school singalong - and yet, alarmingly, instead of creating silent, squirming embarrassment (the preferred posture of the traditional Anglican), it was causing grown persons to assume a frankly daft facial expression, tilt their heads backwards and extend arms and hands in gestures of... hard to say quite what: abandon? Supplication? Either way, it was dsquieting, incongruous, and seemed to undermine everything about the rest of the service and its serious content. The trouble is that, to most of those gathered, it was almost certainly central. Which - had he been there (I didn't spot him) - would have confirmed all Dawkins's worst misgivings about Christianity. Shame. Tomorrow, DV, I shall be attending Midnight Mass at the ultra-high (thank G--) parish church.

On Bob and Cate

I decided to stop writing and talking about Bob Dylan after I ran into the esteemed, wise and saintly editor of The Sunday Times at the last Wembley Arena concert. This paragon of all human virtue asked me how many Dylan concerts I had attended. 'Three or four," I replied. The bronzed, gleaming demi-god looked startled. I realised he had assumed I was some kind of stalker and had been expecting an answer in the high hundreds. All that had actually happened was that, after Time Out of Mind, I had, in several articles, celebrated the return to form of this great artist. I was even on the cover of the magazine, photoshopped on to the Freewheelin' album as some kind of crazed gooseberry, rabidly molesting Bob and Suzy Rotolo.  Anyway, in deep disguise for fear that I might once again bump into that Man for All Seasons, that unique combination of Plato and Alexander, that editing colossus, I went to see Todd Haynes' I'm Not There. Here's a lucid and favourable review in case you don't know what's going on in this film. The main point is that the Dylan characters are never called Dylan and he is played by many different actors. I'm not sure what to say about the result. I hated it for about half an hour but then began to accept its brazen self-indulgence - how on earth would anybody who knew little or nothing of Dylan make sense of this? Three very good things saved the film. First, the songs were a well chosen string of Bob's best. Second, Cate Blanchett - I suspect she is currently the best movie actor in the world - was stupendous. Third, the sequence in which Dylan becomes Billy the Kid played by Richard Gere is strange, beautiful and true. Old Pat Garrett's almost recognition of the man he thought he had killed is wonderful. In the end, Todd Haynes resolves his hero's split personalities by interpreting them as a longing for an unattainable authenticity. It's not the whole story, but it's a good one. And, to be honest, it's better told in the six minutes of Blind Willie McTell than in the 135 minutes of I'm Not There. Anyway, boss, I've done Bobby, now I'm off to go through Cate's dustbins.

Edward O.Wilson

Today in The Sunday Times, I interview the wonderful Edward O.Wilson.  Is Richard Dawkins wrong about everything?

Atheism and Emmylou

Anyway, that atheism stuff. Having been alternating between two rather demanding books - Dominic Sandbrook's Never Had It So Good and John Burnside's The Devil's Footprints - I turned to the television and stumbled upon an Emmylou Harris concert. For more than thirty years, Nige and I have worshipped this woman, the greatest female singer since Ella Fitzgerald. I heard her say something about religion being the poetry of the people. She then sang a gospel song that made all the hairs on my body stand on end, followed by two Parsons/Hillman masterpieces, Sin City and Wheels, which made me cry. When Keith Richards heard Sin City, he knew his friend Gram Parsons had left him far behind. The band was not right for Daniel Lanois' The Maker, the baptismal prayer that ends her album Spyboy and always makes my mouth go dry. It was perhaps as well; I couldn't have taken much more.

I suppose you could listen to Emmylou while maintaining a lively sense that God does not exist. But why bother? You see, what I really don't get about atheism is, what's the point?

All About Nige

After all this time Thought Experimenting, I've decided it's time to step out from behind the blogname and reveal something of myself - so here it is, the NIGEhomepage. I've even had it specially translated...

Le Pere Noel Est Une Ordure (according to the French)

This brilliantly translated Wikipédia entry (read it to the bottom - it gets worse) describes a 'black comedy' that is shown every Christmas in France and always attracts a devoted following. It must make a refreshing break from all those Ferndandel movies... In Sweden, it seems, an hour of Donald Duck - broadcast every Christmas Eve since 1959 - is enough to glue half the population to the TV screen. German festive highlights invariably include a 1980s adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy and lots of Roger Whittaker, who is huge in Germany (but has to learn every song phonetically as he has no German). So chin up, things could be worse - happy Christmas (and remember, turn off that telly)!

Queerer Than We Suppose

This is jolly cheering - or so it seems to me. The thought of all those beetles, in their countless species, hanging in there, come what may - and they look the business too. Much maligned, beetles. The scientist Haldane once remarked that about all we can know of God is that He has an 'inordinate fondness for beetles'. He also said, 'My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.' There's a nice non-scientistic humility about that.
(The above title is a cynical ploy to ensure a high hit rate.)

Harman and the Sex Robots

Harriet Harman wishes to make paying for sex illegal. There are grey areas here. Does, for example, a nice dinner count? Perhaps the best way round the problem is to make paying for sex compulsory. At least we'd all know where we stood and stay-at-home housewives would feel they had a proper job. Whatever sex 'road map' we choose, it will be a temporary expedient. In a few years, robots will be available for sex. Some, my young friends tell me, already are.

No Predictions

You may remember my startlingly accurate predictions for 2007 - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I was a bit premature on the Gordon Brown eating his own head business, but now, surely, the day is near. I was so uncannily on the ball that I have decided not to issue any forecasts this year as I feel that knowing exactly what was going to happen would suck all the fun out of 2008.  All I will say is it's a shocker and all is not what it seems in Guildford.

Miliband and the Royal Academy

My great friend, former Foreign Office grandee and Russian expert, George Walden, predicted the Russians would pull out of the Royal Academy Exhibition. Why? Because last Saturday David Miliband, our strange-looking Foreign Secretary, made a rooky diplomatic error - he muddled two separate issues. On his blog he wrote`;

'Many people are looking forward to the Russian Masterpieces exhibition coming to London next year. Rightly. But what on earth can the Russians think will be achieved by forcing the closure of British Council offices outside Moscow? It is illegal (against the 1963 Vienna Agreement), hurts Russians, and damages Russia's image abroad. There is even a debate about whether the Russian measures are MORE restrictive than those against the British Council in Burma and Iran. I hope the government will think again before January 1st.' 

Okay, Dave, listen carefully. If the RA show doesn't go ahead, it's your fault. The linkage made in your blog amounted to a deliberate challenge to the Russians and, though Putin may be Time's Person of the Year, we all know this is a gangster government. If you put one of a gangster's buddies in hospital, he'll put one of yours in the morgue. The trick is to outwit the gangster by not letting him make linkages. In this case you did it for him and also inspired headlines that suggested we might pull out of the exhibition. And, Dave, while we are on the subject, does it make sense for a Foreign Secretary to have a blog? A blog suggests you are going to go beyond the official line. But, as this case shows, you can't. And one final question, Dave. Are you or are you not a member of the most jejune and incompetent British administration of modern times?

Atheism and the Avoidance of the SBO

Idly scanning the incomparable Amanda for festive cheer, I came across this post. You don't have to read it - it's the usual under-informed nonsense - but this quote is worth considering - 'Atheists believe that humans are enough, that our lives are with something by themselves and that we have the power and freedom to invest value in ourselves and others'.  Well, actually, some atheists - most senior Nazis, Mao, Stalin - believed that the lives of hundreds of millions are worth nothing and that only the Party had freedom to invest value in people. The one thing the twentieth taught us with absolute certainty is that atheists are as likely to do evil as any other faith or cult. In fact, we shouldn't have needed the twentieth century to teach us this - it's staggeringly bleeding obvious (SBO). But the current wave of militant atheists - Dawkins and friends - are making a very handsome living out of denying the SBO. The reason is obvious. They could just say, 'God doesn't exist', but that wouldn't shift many books. So what they actually say is, 'The world would be a better place if people accepted that God doesn't exist'. This is the wishful thinking typical of any cult or ideology. What it really means is, 'The world would be a better place if everybody agreed with me'. So here's a Thought Experiments Christmas message and New Year resolution: Never forget the SBO.

Fairytale Of Broadcasting House (plus Parky)

Has anyone got a clue what is happening here? Can it really be that Radio 1 - the network whose biggest star is that model of decorum and decency Chris Moyles (and whose 'urban' spinoff, 1Xtra, is devoted to rap and such, er, outspoken genres) - genuinely decided that it had to censor the words 'slut' and 'faggot'? Or is it a stunt to remind us of the good old days when Radio 1 used to ban or censor pretty much everything? And what on earth is Tachell bleating about at the foot of the piece? Equal opportunities censorship, by the sound of it...
(By the way, that hideous image of Parkinson to the right of the piece reminds me that I was thinking of posting on the subject of his departure - but what's to say? First he was good, then he was showbizzy and so-so, then he was frankly awful, now he's gone. And so, one hopes, has the fawning, PR-friendly style of which he became the supreme exemplar).

Tesco/Burchill/Winterson

Julie Burchill is an odd thing but a good one. A New Statesman piece I wrote almost exactly a decade ago explains. Her key virtue is that, even when wrong, she sees to the heart of the matter. In The Guardian today, she trashes Jeanette Winterson for being nasty about Tesco, which, says Burchill, is wonderful. As usual with Burchill, the piece fades badly - the end is devoid of any intellectual punch. But, as usual, she gets to the point. Winterson had spoken of wanting shops that offered 'passion, commitment - something more than a transaction.' To which Burchill responds, 'Maybe I'm lucky, but personally I find I get all the validation passion and commitment I need from my family, friends, religion and voluntary work; that I might go looking for proof of my worth over the wet fish counter seems quite eye-wateringly daft.' This is rhetorically brilliant. She is here calling the bluff of the clever and the smug. It is a given among the bienpensants that shopping for food must be a time-consuming quest for authenticity and self-actualisation. Prigs, who are really snobs, delight in saying this is what you must do, it is an act of religious observance. Burchill outflanks them all by claiming a much more serious list of authentic pursuits. After all, no matter how you tart it up, shopping is still just shopping. This is a perfect confrontation between incommensurable conceptions of authenticity. Burchill has, once again, seen to the heart of the matter and made me happy.

For Michael J.Fox

I don't often say this about movie/TV stars, but I've always had this suspicion that there's a touch of greatness about Michael J.Fox. I once tried to get an interview with him. It was either the wrong time or his people hated me. As I don't give copy approval, trade with my sentiments ('I'll be nice about him so I can get an interview with her.') or gush, I'm regarded as high risk by big time PRs. The greatness is partly about the work. He has dazzling timing and control. On TV - in Spin City and in a guest appearance on Scrubs - he was mesmerising, ironic, quick and subtly anarchic. But there's also something great about the way he's handled Parkinson's Disease - self-deprecating, funny and, for want to a better word, cool. All of this is just to draw your attention to this interview. There's an fast, associative rapidity about this man's mind which, somehow, suits his predicament. His line on tattoos is very sound - 'My tattoo is that I don't have a tattoo.'  - and his words about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton - 'the level of glee and the level of viciousness' - are simply superb.

Jeff Appalled by Royal Succession Horror

Quick, rush over to Jeff's place. He's appalled - do you hear me? - appalled that the birth of a son to Earl and Countess of Wessex has bumped the Princess Royal down to tenth in line to the throne. 'The archaic law,' thunders Jeff, 'that suggests that every woman should be pushed aside in favour of a man when it comes to ascending the throne is obscene.' Blimey. But does Jeff grasp the full extent of the problem of the succession? For example, only 1207 people have to die suddenly for Charles Dobkin, son of Immaculada Dobkin to become King; if he dies, John, another son of Immaculada, gets the job; and, if he kicks the bucket, Anthony, Immaculada's third male sprog, will reign over us. One way or another, we could easily end up with a King Dobbo. I am not making this up. The awful thing is that even if 1345 people suddenly buy the farm, I still don't get a look-in. In that case we'll have Queen Franzsika, lovely daughter of Countess Friederike-Christiane of Castell-Castell. I can't help feeling I'm better qualified. 

Towards A Softer Scotland

Connoisseurs of that ultimate government absurdity, the ten-year plan, have been kept royally entertained by Gordie and his lads recently. Now the Scots (i.e. the ones still in Scotland) have joined in, with this gem. I look forward to reading in ten years' time of wee Kenny MacAskill, looking very relaxed in powder-blue cashmere, raising a glass of mineral water to toast the final extinction of the Scottish hard man... As they say in his country - Kenny, awa and boil yer heed.

The Books

Regulars might recall a post of mine, A Teacher Remembered - date 25 September (for some reason I can't link to it) - about the death of my old friend and teacher at a near-biblical age. Here's the coda. The other day, I went to his flat to have a rummage among his books and pick out a selection to remember him by. This was, of course, sad - the last visit I shall ever make to a place I had been regularly visiting for so many years - and yet it was no longer his home, his habitat (stage set, I should perhaps say, carefully and elegantly constructed). All that had made it his was gone or going, and only the shell remained - which in months will be another home altogether, framing another life. But the books - or a substantial remnant of them - were still there, and my rummage among them seemed the perfect legacy and the perfect tribute.
Some of his library seemed destined to end up among the sad unwanted - multi-volume Dumas, ditto De Quincey, minor Georgians, volumes of letters and diaries by obscure 18th-century figures (French and English), Pierre Loti, James Elroy Flecker (though I took a very handsome Hassan)... But there was much that, for me, was treasure - volumes by Edward Thomas, Saki, Sir Thomas Browne, a beautiful Emily Dickinson, Katherine Mansfield, Beddoes, Thomas Traherne. These were books that would carry his spirit down to me.
What will remain of us is books? Hardly - but with a person like him, they are a large part of what is left - of the shaping intellectual music that lingers in the minds of those who knew him, and no doubt will die with them. But it is something.

Money, Money, Water

Earnings from advertising on this site have soared to dizzy heights. Carefully extrapolating the trend apparent in my latest earnings statement, I think I can safely say that I shall be able to take up blogging full time in February 3247 without any undue decline in my standard of living. To celebrate this torrent of wealth, this cash cascade, I think Nige and I can afford to push the boat out with Christmas drinks at Claridge's. Two glasses of 420 Volcanic from their exciting new water menu would not, I think, be unduly extravagant.

Sunshine and Iowa

This is wonderful news for smokers. Sunlight helps prevent lung cancer. This means that all those smokers now forced to stand outside pubs and offices are, by being exposed to more sunlight, actually offsetting the adverse effects of their habit. Christmas has come early for aficionados of the weed - though it will be little consolation if they are also learner drivers. Somewhere in Iowa, a man is, as we speak, stealing their identities. What goes around, it has been wisely said, comes around.

John Pilger

I don't normally read John Pilger because I know I'm not going to discover anything by doing so. He is a writer for whom the world is known before it is encountered. He can, therefore, neither learn nor inform. That said, this article is such a fine piece of Pilgerism that it really has to be read. It has no substantial content other than the usual demand for action against everything. A few, dim students might be impressed. But it is the extraordinary madness of the thing that should be studied - not least because it makes one wonder why The Guardian feels justified in publishing such stuff. But I suppose he's box office and, as such, not subject to normal editorial standards of literacy and logic. In the first paragraph, for example, he says that Rupert Murdoch's empire is 'devoted to the promotion of war, conquest and human division' and that Britain is a 'murdochracy'. Hmmm, interesting, so convince me. But, no, Pilger drops that theme after the third sentence. He then issues a torrent of assertion about Blair-Brown illiberalism, much of which I actually agree with. But he destroys his case - for thinking people at least - by simply making a list in silly, Dave Spartish language. 'Britain is now a centralised single-ideology state, as secure in the grip of a superpower as any former eastern bloc country.' Again, hmmm, so we're as bad as Honecker's East Germany are we? But, again, no proper evidence or argument. Pilger has been spoiled by only ever preaching to the converted. All information that he absorbs is manipulated to stir the feelings of this paranoid, unthinking little band of neo-manicheans. He has become a parody both of the old left and of the worst kind of newspaper columnist. He  is, in every sense of the word, unbelievable... but also consolingly antique.

Conan Doyle Was Right. Almost.

Heartening news from the wilds of Papua - a Giant Rat, pygmy possum and who knows what else swim into the ken of an astounded science. I always enjoy these stories, as they put into perspective our arrogant assumptions about what we know of the world - never mind giant rats, there may well be large apes we've yet to discover - and what our powers of, in any sense, comprehending it, actually are. (The same arrogance, imho, that convinces us we are destroying the planet...) Better, though, this story almost confirms Conan Doyle's hunch that there's a Giant Rat of Sumatra out there (it's mentioned in a Sherlock Holmes story), not to mention the Lost World. A man of vision, Doyle.

More Narcissism

Lunching yesterday with, among others, the great David Starkey, I found myself becoming competitive. David is one of the great raconteurs, he can make opening a window seem like the most exciting and naughty thing that has ever happened. I'm not in his league, but a few glasses down the line, I started to compete on content - stories about John Wayne Bobbitt etc. I may as well have insisted on  a quick three-setter with Roger Federer - not that David played the game, he didn't need to. This vanity is a way of not living in the present, of failing to seize the moment. Listening to David would have been a lot more satisfying than listening to myself.  But desperately asserting oneself is the way we live now. Apparently 47 per cent of Americans have sought information about themselves via Google. This survey is completely ridiculous as the correct figure is 100 per cent. The low figure is caused by two factors: people don't like to admit to using the internet as a mirror and a large number of people have either very common names - John Smith (33 million results) - that only work if attached to a search term that draws specific attention to yourself, or they have very famous names. Imagine the Google-misery of being called Steve Jobs (16 million) or Britney Spears (61 million). (I assume that eminent British Buddhist, Bryan Appleyard, is above all this. In fact, I'm above it all now. I (87,000) only look myself up in Google Blog Search. Ordinary Google is too depressing as the headline 'Page of Misery: Bryan Appleyard, Wanker and Chief Cultural Critic' still comes up at number six. I have complained about this before, but did any of you come up with a solution? No.) People look themselves up on Google because vanity is a safe haven. Since Google provides, in theory, everything, it provides nothing. To be confronted with the blank search box is to be confronted with a featureless desert or ocean. Fearing death by thirst or drowning, we type in our own names as if planting a flag or marker buoy. The higher the technology, the lower the uses to which it is put. Anyway, if you ever get a chance to hear David Starkey in full anecdotal flow, seize it and forget yourself. And, at last, I've managed a long post - with a few exceptions, I've only been able to do short ones lately. The trick is to start writing without knowing what you are going to say.

Narcissistic...

... but annoyingly gripping.

Provocations

It will soon be Christmas and so everybody is in a filthy mood. We have decided, for example, to provoke war with Iran by sending in Chris de Burgh, a move specifically forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, Terry Eagleton says, 'I did not do this book about Jesus just to piss off Martin Amis.' Yeah, right. Creationists are planning a British theme part disproving evolution with the sole intention of melting Richard Dawkins. Fabulous Acapella  says he wants to restore national pride to the worst football team in the world. This is a clear attempt to provoke Wayne Rooney, who won't even mime the national anthem. And, finally, Mervyn King is provoking Hal by asking him to do something constructive. Guys, guys, it's Christmas. 

That Diana Letter in Full

Darling Bryan,

Even though I am dead, I love your blog and I think everybody should read it all the time and post millions of comments.

Yours always,

Diana

PS For us, it was not to be. But we'll always have Ealing.

PPS You did a lovely job on my funeral.

Bali and the Island of Time

Kyoto achieved nothing, Bali will achieve nothing - unless the agreement to stop deforestation is seriously implemented, which I doubt. The Americans seem to regard fighting carbon cuts as patriotism and the Europeans are lost in a bureaucratic wilderness. Everybody else is just ducking and diving. We are warring ants just before the farmer's boot comes down and crushes us all. Only a disaster that can unambiguously be shown to be caused by climate change will make any difference. And that won't happen because any such disaster could be claimed to have a multiplicity of causes. The emission of CO2 will thus continue to rise inexorably. There is a theory that we have not heard from intelligent life anywhere in the universe because advanced civilisations are lost, not in space but in time. Some life form attains high technology and the ability to communicate across interstellar distances. But this moment of communication is brief because there is an iron law that dictates that technological competence always brings destruction to the technologically competent. There may have been many advanced alien civilisations, but they are all isolated on tiny islands of time. On the basis of a sample of one, I think there's a lot to be said for this theory.

The Strange Ride of Albert Gristle

The news that Britain is to have its very own moon mission reminds me - for no very good reason - of one of the funniest of all Private Eye covers. Perhaps it is the fact that it features the Albert Memorial, an edifice which inspires in me an unhealthy fascination.

Ciao, Fabulous

Personally, I think it's great that somebody called Fabulous Acapella is going to manage the worst football team in the world. Some say he doesn't speak English. I see this as an advantage. Some say he is not as good looking as Jose Mourinho. Again an advantage. Some say he keeps winning things. Okay, this may be a disadvantage. But give the man a chance. He'll soon settle into the losing ways of our ludicrously overpaid, pissing and sex in public superstars. On the whole, a surprisingly sound choice by the buffoons of the FA.

New Jersey's Death Penalty

New Jersey has scrapped the death penalty, the first state to do so since the reinstatement of capital punishment by the Supreme Court in 1976. I have always been intuitively against the death penalty. But, I reasoned, this was little more than a visceral reaction and the Americans in particular have their reasons and their traditions. I became much less sympathetic after reviewing Scott Turow's excellent book on the subject. Basically, he showed, executions don't work and they distort the whole judicial system. Individuals may live by absolutes, but states cannot. New Jersey is wise to have grasped this.