Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

This week's choice is Gizmodo, a blog about the world of gadgets, gizmos, and edgy electronics. Edited by Peter Rojas, a tech journalist who writes for The New York Times, Wired, Salon and the Guardian, and backed by ex-FT hack and now Manhattan resident Nick Denton, it's powered by Movable Type, the planet's best content management system. The blog's got a lovely look and feel: layout is clean, navigation is easy to use, text is snappy and informed, links are well chosen and the thumbnails of the PDAs, laptops, phones, digital cameras and peripherals make one want to do some serious credit card damage.

The business model? Simplicity itself. Purchasers of gadgets click on the accompanying Amazon link and when they buy Gizmodo collects a referral bonus. Denton calls this "nanopublishing" and he claims that it's got a big future because the overheads are absurdly low — a free content management system and one editor. He launched Gizmodo last August with a marketing blitz that consisted of an e-mail to a few bloggers and reporters. And the site's traffic has doubled every two months since then. For the week ending 25 August, Gizmodo had 180,947 page views from 8,747 visitors. By 13 October the pageviews had doubled to 397,306 as had the visitors, 20,930. In the middle of this month the blog had 1,264,268 pageviews from 53,953 visitors.

As we all know well, metrics such as pageviews and visitors are, in themselves, worthless. But, and this is important, at a time when print magazines have to live with an acquisition cost of 100 euros per subscriber, online publishing is starting to look incredibly attractive. What you do with your visitors is the great challenge, of course, but it's certainly never been cheaper to attract an audience.

Diarist of the day: Woodrow Wyatt, 31 January 1987

"Eddie Brown [barber] and Mrs Wilson, manicurist, were amused in the morning when I told them a true story about Enoch Powell. There is a very chatty barber in the Commons who never stops telling MPs whose hair he cuts about politics and what his views are on the world. Enoch Powell went to have his hair cut by him one day, sat down and the barber said 'How would you like your hair cut, sir?' 'In silence,' Enoch replied. "

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 31 January 2003 at 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Thanks in large part to American bravery, generosity and far-sightedness, Europe was set free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and Communism."

So say these European leaders: Jose Maria Aznar (Spain), Jose Manuel Durao Barroso (Portugal), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Tony Blair (United Kingdom), Vaclav Havel (Czech Republic), Peter Medgyessy (Hungary), Leszek Miller (Poland), Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Denmark).

And they have no doubts about what must be done now:

"The combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is a threat of incalculable consequences. It is one at which all of us should feel concerned. Resolution 1441 is Saddam Hussein's last chance to disarm using peaceful means. The opportunity to avoid greater confrontation rests with him."

Other moving excerpts from this joint statement, which appeared in Europe's leading newspapers today:

"The real bond between the United States and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the Rule of Law?

These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the USA?

Thanks, too, to the continued co-operation between Europe and the United States we have managed to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent?"

By the way, the average economic growth last year of these eight countries was more than twice that of France and Germany. Hmmm. Read the rest of this profoundly moral declaration on the BBC website.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 30 January 2003 at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When President Bush's State of the Union speech was good, it was very good, but when it was average, it was well, mediocre, especially the stuff about the (shaky) US economy. But let's look at a few of the better bits, the ones that displayed moral clarity and resolve. To the Iraqi people, he declared, "Your enemy is not surrounding your country; your enemy is ruling your country." To the relativists, he said of Saddam Hussein's deeds, "If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." To the world, he promised: " The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others. ? We will prevail." And then, this:

"In Afghanistan, we helped to liberate an oppressed people... and we will continue helping them secure their country, rebuild their society, and educate all their children — boys and girls."

At a time when we seem about to be engulfed by so many daunting problems — war, terrorism, deflation, recession — it is sometimes worth sitting back and looking for positive signs, and there are some. One of the most cheering reports of late was that women in Afghanistan have started doing driving tests. Women were forbidden to drive in Afghanistan in 1992, when Islamic groups seized Kabul and began to restrict independence and mobility. Confinement of women became even worse in 1996, when the Taliban took control and banned women almost entirely from the workplace and girls from the classroom.

Last Saturday, Zai Kakal, an accountant at the Women's Affairs Ministry, became the first of 12 women to take the driving test. They all had to steer a yellow Toyota Corolla about 10 metres along an L-shaped course near Kabul Stadium, then repeat the course in reverse. The women were promised their licenses within a week.

The driving program is sponsored by the German private aid group Medica Mondiale, dedicated to helping women in war-torn countries. It provided classroom materials and paid the salaries of two men from the Afghan Traffic Authority who taught the classes. Rachel Wareham, a program manager with Medica Mondiale, said several Afghan women first approached her agency last year for help learning to drive. Her office now gets 10 such requests a day. Two years ago, who would have thought such a thing possible?

Diarist of the day: May Sarton, 30 January 1975

"The sixties are marvellous years, because one has become fully oneself by then, but the erosions of old age, erosion of strenght, of memory, of physical well-being have not yet begun to frustrate and needle. I am too heavy, but I refuse to worry too much about it. I battle the ethos here in the USA, where concern about being overweight has become a fetish. I sometimes think we are as cruel to old brother ass, the body, as the Chinese used to be who forced women's feet into tiny shoes as a sign of breeding and beauty. 'Middle aged spread' is a very real phenomenon. And why pretend that it is not? I am not so interested in being a dazzling model as in being comfortable inside myself. And that I am."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the week before Christmas, in a small town in Bavaria, a 21-year-old au pair from Romania hanged herself in the cellar of the house where she had looked after four children. When the police came to inspect the scene, the found that the body of Ramona Radulovici was covered with the kind of bruises that were consistent with having been inflicted by a heavy, blunt object. Neighbours said that they had noticed that when the girl appeared at the local playground with the couple's young twins she often had a blackened eye, but nobody wanted to get involved. It was a small town in Bavaria.

The same neighbours, who became aware that the au pair was being beaten, knew that something was seriously amiss from the outset as the host couple and their four children rented an expensive apartment but lived off social welfare. The police are also certain that Ramona had been exploited for quite some time — her visa had expired and there was no evidence that a bank account had ever been opened by her or for her.

Because of a change in the law in March last year, one can open an au pair agency in Germany by filling out a form and paying 30 euros. This has resulted in an explosion of web sites offering young girls from all over Eastern Europe to German families. And this is probably how Ramona Radulovici ended up in Bavaria.

The exploitation of young women such as Ramona Radulovici is one of the themes of a new book "Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy" by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. The two editors look at the lot of America's domestic workers and one their controversial conclusions is that it's ethically wrong not to clean your own house.

Ehrenreich and Hochschild bring formidable credentials to their writing. The Second Shift, Hochschild's 1989 book about couples' battles over housework, started a debate about men's failure to share domestic chores with their working wives, and she expanded the discussion with her 1997 book The Time Bind, which explored the reasons people spend more time at work and less at home. Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed illuminated the hard lot of ordinary women trying to make ends meet in dead-end jobs. She gave up her comfortable life to work as a waitress, a Wal-Mart clerk and a maid to experience what it is really like to depend on low-wage work.

"One bitch would crawl under pieces of furniture to see that I had really done the floor underneath," says Ehrenreich, recalling her experiences as a maid cleaning houses in Maine. She points out that 20 percent of American families now use some kind of housecleaning service. So, in a certain sense, the domestic struggles over sharing housework that Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote about in "The Second Shift" are now history for many middle-class couples — they have simply outsourced the work. As a result, affluent men and women now traipse around their homes, leaving socks here and dropping underwear there, confident in the knowledge that someone from the Third World will pick up the pieces, wash and iron them and not demand much in return. Given this arrogance, it's not surprising that Ehrenreich is given to screaming "Pick up your own mess!"

This is all very well, but it is quite a leap to say that it is morally wrong to pay people to do unfulfilling work. That smacks more of eletism than sisterly solidarity. Hiring a cleaning woman or an au pair is not immoral. Mistreating or underpaying her is.

Diarist of the day: Dawn Powell, 29 January 1950

"A lovely, remote time at Murphys'. The spoke of Elsa Maxwell and how she raised money for Russian Ambulance in World War I, absconded with money, then returned to social success after three yeas. How a friend. Lily Havemeyer, had a calller who brought Miss Maxwell to lunch. Elsa looked over the place -- marvellous for party -- and said to Lily (first meeting). 'You go shopping for the day and leave me your servants , your house and carte blanche and at night you will find yourself with a party all Paris will talk about.' 'No' was all Lily said."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 29 January 2003 at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"An Update On Inspection" was the rather prosaic title of the report that Dr. Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, delivered yesterday to the UN Security Council. The passages that may yet prove decisive were the following:

"The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi air force between 1983 and 1998, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tons. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for. . .

I turn to biological weapons. I mention the issue of anthrax to the council on previous occasions, and I come back to it as it is an important one. Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.

Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.

There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained over the declared destruction date. It might still exist. . . .

As I reported to the council on the 19th of December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kilos, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as reported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. As a part of its 7 December 2002 declaration Iraq resubmitted the Amorim panel document but the table showing this particular import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to be deliberate, as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered.

In the letter of 24th of January this year to the president of the Security Council, Iraq's foreign minister stated that, I quote, 'All imported quantities of growth media were declared.' This is not evidence. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax."

Having read this, does anyone now seriously doubt that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction hidden away from prying eyes? Let's be honest here because we know enough about his brutality and his evil intentions. So what should be done? Wait and hope the UN can keep him penned in? Or do whatever is necessary to end the threat he poses?

These are the stark choices President Bush faces as he prepares to address the people of the US in his State of the Union speech tonight. And they cannot be avoided. And he carries the terrible burden of making the right one for if he does nothing, the worst could happen (Saddam might equip terrorists with weapons far more powerful than anything we have seen before), but if he does something, the worst could also happen (Iraq might use such weapons in a war and the conflict in the Middle East could spread).

Because the world has already decided that Iraq's weapons must be destroyed, because numerous UN resolutions demand Saddam's disarmament, Rainy Day takes the position that it is in the interest of those who value freedom to support intervention in Iraq to remove the barbarous regime in Baghdad. A fortunate by-product of such action would be the shifting of the Middle East towards values such as the rule of law, freedom of speech, the right to self-determination, the rights of women and the ending of capricious cruelty.

A time to choose is at hand. Nations must decide between playing self-interested politics or preparing to risk lives to enforce civilized norms.

Diarist of the day: Rev. James Wooforde, 28 January 1780

"We had for dinner a Calf's Head, boiled Fowl and Tongue, a Saddle of Mutton rosted on the Side Table, and a fine Swan rosted with Currant Jelly Sauce for the First Course. The Second Course a couple of Wild Fowl, called Dun Fowls, Larks, Blamange, Tarts, etc., etc, and a good Desert of Fruit after amongst which was a Damson Cheese. I never eat a bit of Swan before, and I think it is good eating with a sweet sauce. The swan was killed 3 weeks before it was eat and yet not the lest bad taste in it."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 28 January 2003 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At a time when writers all over the world are dipping their pens in outrage about Washington's role in the world, it is worth pointing out that the same scribes have been conspicuously silent on the death of Fazal Wahab Wahab.

Fazal Wahab Wahab, an author and an outspoken critic of radical Islamic clerics, was shot dead in the hill resort of Mingora, in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province last Tuesday. According to Amnesty International, Pakistani police failed to give him any protection although he had complained that he was receiving death threats. Two years ago, Wahab's book Mullah ka Kirdar ("The Mullah's Role") was banned, and local clerics followed up with a religious ruling declaring him a non-believer. Last year, he published a book critical of Osama Bin Laden and his Taleban hosts. His forthcoming book, Mullah ka Anjam ("The Mullah's Fate") was set to make serious allegations of criminal activities against close relatives of local political leaders. The North-West Frontier Province is ruled by a six-party Islamist alliance, which won elections in October on an anti-US platform pledging to enforce strict Islamic laws.

Searching for the truth in Pakistan is a deadly job. Daniel Pearl, and now Fazal Wahab Wahab have joined the list of those who have paid the ultimate price for being writers in a place where an ideology that will not tolerate criticism controls the life people every minute of their day and encourages its followers to commit vile deeds.

Diarist of the day: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 27 January 1933

"I resent in a clipping, 'Father of the dead child.' Dead child -- a waxen child stretched out. No -- the child who died.

I resent 'They lost a child too' -- as though that were the same. It is never the same. Death to you is not death, not obituary notices and quiet and mourning, sermons and elegies and prayers, coffins and graves and worldly platitudes. It is not the most common experiences in life -- the only certainty. It is not the oldest thing we know. It is not what happened to Caesar and Dante and Milton and Mary Queen of Scots, to the soldiers in all the wars, to the sick in the plagues, to public men yesterday. It never happened before -- what happened today to you. It has only happened to your little boy?"

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 27 January 2003 at 6:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While talking to my mother on the phone last night there was no mention of what Oriana Fallaci calls the "brusque turn of history" that is now bearing down on us. Instead, the conversation was mainly about Johnny Grogan and the death of his "pet" cow. Seventeen years old, she was, and although she had not delivered a calf in the past five years, Johnny had kept her, out of affection. Such gestures are rare in rural places, where animals have a simple function to fulfil. Normally, however, if they don't produce, they're a burden, consuming needed resources, and must go — to their death, usually.

Anyway, after some late reading last week ("He should have been a barrister", said my mother) Johnny fell asleep but was awakened at half past two in the morning by the sound of an animal in pain. What was it but "My darlin' cow," as he put it. She was clearly dying. This being a winter scene from life at the foot of the Galtee Mountains and not from a Disney movie, Michael Maher was sent for and he shot the cow on the spot. Affection, yes; sentimentality, no.

Listening to the story, I was reminded of lines from Patrick Kavanagh's great poem, Epic, which contrasts an incident from rural Irish life with events in a world where the spectre of war was looming. On the stony grey soil of Monaghan in 1939 the Duffeys and the McCabes were making their "pitchfork-armed claims" to "half a rood of rock", obsessed by their hatreds and oblivious to the world beyond their farms. "That was the year of the Munich bother", as Kavanagh so brilliantly related the farmers' strife to the promise of "peace in our time". Which event was more important, Kavanagh asked himself. An absurd question? The poet was inclined to agree?

Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance

Is there a Homer or a Kavanagh today capable of making our "rows" immortal?

Epic

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffeys shouting "Damn your soul"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel —
"Here is the march along these iron stones".
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance

Patrick Kavanagh, 1904-1967

Diarist of the day: James Lees-Milne, 26 January 1977

"Sitting in a bus in London last week, it being a raw day I took out of my pocket my white lip salve and applied it to my chapped lips. An elderly woman sitting opposite put on a strongly disapproving face, and said, 'Well!' in a long drawn-out tone. I paid not the slightest notice."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 26 January 2003 at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Donald Rumsfield's calling France and Germany "old Europe" and lumping the two together as "a problem" brought the intellectuals onto the Old World's barricades this week. In an effort to soothe hurt feelings, the US ambassador to Berlin, Daniel Coats, appeared on German television yesterday where he described Rumsfield's word choice as a "slip of the tongue", but it was, of course, no such thing. The defence secretary was doing nothing more than expressing a commonly held feeling in the higher echelons in Washington: anti-Europeanism.

At least that is what Timothy Garton-Ash calls the phenomenon in a valuable essay in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. Titled "Anti-Europeanism in America", the piece makes for disturbing, if not depressing reading. As one expects from an historian of Garton-Ash's ability, the arguments are presented with erudition and elegance, and gentle humour:

"Anti-Europeanism is not symmetrical with anti-Americanism. The emotional leitmotifs of anti-Americanism are resentment mingled with envy; those of anti-Europeanism are irritation mixed with contempt. Anti-Americanism is a real obsession for entire countries — notably for France, as Jean-Fran篩s Revel has recently argued. Anti-Europeanism is very far from being an American obsession. In fact, the predominant American popular attitude toward Europe is probably mildly benign indifference, mixed with impressive ignorance. I traveled around Kansas for two days asking people I met: 'If I say 'Europe' what do you think of?' Many reacted with a long, stunned silence, sometimes punctuated by giggles. Then they said things like 'Well, I guess they don't have much huntin' down there' (Vernon Masqua, a carpenter in McLouth); 'Well, it's a long way from home' (Richard Souza, whose parents came from France and Portugal); or, after a very long pause for thought, 'Well, it's quite a ways across the pond' (Jack Weishaar, an elderly farmer of German descent). If you said 'America' to a farmer or carpenter in even the remotest village of Andalusia or Ruthenia, he would, you may be sure, have a whole lot more to say on the subject."

Garton-Ash visited New York, Boston, Washington and the Bible-belt states of Kansas and Missouri to look at American attitudes towards Europe and he found "a level of irritation with Europe and Europeans higher even than at the last memorable peak, in the early 1980s." Terms of contempt used by the US chattering classes for Europeans, include "the Euros," "the Euroids," "the 'peens," "the Euroweenies" and the "EU-nuchs." This latter causes Garton-Ash to ponder the sexual imagery of the stereotype. One example: last year's influential Policy Review article by Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, "Power and Weakness." He notes that Kagan approvingly writes "Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus", thus echoing the title of the best-seller about relations between men and women, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. In other words, the martial Americans are virile, heterosexual males; Europeans are female, impotent, or castrated.

Disillusionment with the Europeans can now be found even among lifelong liberal State Department Europeanists, says Garton-Ash. The appalling failure to prevent the genocide of a quarter of a million Bosnian Muslims in it's own backyard, proved to be the turning point. And that Colin Powell had to be called in to resolve a dispute between Spain and Morocco over a tiny, uninhabited island off the Moroccan coast just added to the feeling that Europe is not a serious place anymore. "Historically, the tables are turned," Garton-Ash writes. "For what was Charles de Gaulle's verdict on the Americans? 'Ils ne sont pas s鲩eux.'

Garton-Ash's summation:

"At the moment it seems that a second Gulf war will only widen the gulf between Europe and America. Even if there is not a war on Iraq, the Middle East can still provide the vortex in which real or alleged European anti-Americanism fuels real or alleged American anti-Europeanism, which in turn fuels more anti-Americanism, both being aggravated by sweeping charges of European anti-Semitism. A change might come through a major conscious effort on both sides of the Atlantic, or with a new administration arriving in Washington in 2005 or 2009. Yet a lot of damage can be done in the meantime..."

And his distressing conclusion:

"You might say that to highlight 'American anti-Europeanism,' as I have done in this essay, will itself contribute to the downward spiral of mutual distrust. But writers are not diplomats. American anti-Europeanism exists; and its carriers may be the first swallows of a long, bad summer."

Diarist of the day: Evelyn Waugh, 25 January 1947

"Embarked on the America full of cocaine, opium and brandy, feeble and low spirited. One of the reasons for putting myself under the surgeon's knife was to be absolutely well and free from ointments for Laura's American treat. All the reasons for the operation [for piles] appeared ineffective immediately afterwards. The pain was excruciating and the humiliations constant. The hospital was reasonably comfortable and the nurses charming -- the grace of God apparent everywhere. But I had ample time to reflect that I had undergone an operation, which others only endure after years of growing agony, when I had in fact suffered nothing worse than occasional discomfort. I took no advice, either from a physician or fellow sufferers, just went to the surgeon and ordered the operation as I would have ordered new shirts. In fact I had behaved totally irrationally and was paying for it."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 25 January 2003 at 5:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Given the current bonne entente between Paris and Berlin, it isn't easy to find anything in the German press resembling critical analysis of why France and Germany are adopting such a virulent anti-Washington line. The current issue of the quality weekly Die Zeit, however, carries such a critical piece, and a good one it is, too.

Titled "French Connection", Michael M?nger's article says it's no wonder that France is against a war with Iraq — French business interests are worried about losing their lucrative deals with Baghdad, especially the oil giant TotalFinalElf. Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, France's exports to Iraq collapsed but now they're spiralling upwards — worth a record 660 million euros last year, compared with 398 million in 2000. And M?nger points out that at last November's international industrial trade fair in Baghdad, 130 French companies, including Alcatel, Boygues, Renault and Peugeot were represented. Referring to the impressive, 2,000-square-metre French stand, placed right at the fair's entrance, M?nger notes: "Because of its opulent appearance, France was awarded the fair's gold medal — for the sixth time in a row."

Gracing M?nger's piece is a wonderful photo from 1975 of Saddam Hussein (then dictator and current dictator of Iraq) and Jacques Chirac (then prime minister and current president of France). The dashing tyrant and the suave politician on the plush couch had rather a lot to smile about as Iraq had just awarded a contract for military hardware and for the building of an atomic reactor in Osirak near Baghdad to France, and Chirac felt so moved by the growing links between the two lands as to refer to Saddam as his "personal friend". The Israelis destroyed the reactor in 1981, but how many of the 130 Mirage jet fighters, tanks and rockets (to the value today of 25 billion euros) that were delivered to Saddam before 1991 are still in service is unknown.

And then there's the TotalFinalElf story. Iraq's oil fields were divided up between the British and the French in 1920, but following the 1974 nationalisation of the oil industry, the British were shown the door. French interests, however, remained untouched and TotalFinalElf continues to operate two huge oil fields, Majnoon and Bin Umar, in western Iraq. Although only five per cent of France's oil consumption needs are currently met by Iraq, production could be ramped up seriously if stability, with or without regime change, were to return to the banks of the Euphrates.

M?nger also points out that Iraq sympathies are ingrained in the France's political culture. The socialist defence minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, resigned in 1991 as a protest against the country's participation in the Gulf War, and the wife of the rightist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen heads a group that makes a number of trips each year to Iraq to deliver aid. And, on top of all that, a cross-party "French-Iraq friendship group" from the French Senate that went to Baghdad in 2001 described the effects of the UN trade embargo as "creeping genocide".

At a time when the German media are filled with vicious anti-Americanism, Michael M?nger's article in Die Zeit is all the more valuable for its focus on the overlooked French connection to Saddam.

Diarist of the day: H. D. Thoreau, 24 January 1856

"A journal is a record of experience and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. I am occasionally reminded of a statement which I have made in conversation and immediately forgotten, which would read much better than what I put in my journal. It is a ripe, dry fruit of long-past experience which falls from me easily, without giving pain or pleasure. The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though fresh, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did, my scurf cast off, but what I am and aspire to become."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 24 January 2003 at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (2)

Somehow, it did seem apt that on the day France and Germany celebrated 40 years of friendship with ceremonies at Versailles, the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, flew to Washington for talks with the United States vice president and secretary of state. We have now reached a divide, a point where France and Germany are vowing to prevent a war with Iraq, while George Bush and Tony Blair are planning to state publicly that Saddam has defied UN Security Council resolution 1441.

All this as the troop build up in the Gulf continues. More US and British soldiers arrive each day and now the Australians are on the way. So, what is one to make of this growing split between the EU allies and major parts of the English-speaking world?

Last Sunday, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times (registration required), said that Tony Blair, far from being the president's poodle, is using his relationship with Washington to place himself at the centre of world governance and thereby to re-establish Britain as a world power. "When he huddles with George Bush at Camp David at the end of this month, he will be the most powerful British prime minister since Churchill at Yalta," wrote Sullivan, who then went on to add this observation:

"The man who came to power promising to make Britain a central power-broker in Europe has, by chance or design, done something rather different. By resisting the empty rhetoric of the hate-America left, Blair has made Britain a power-broker on a far grander level. We have the beginnings of an Anglo-American entente — what some in Washington are calling an 'Anglosphere' — that could wield enormous influence for the good in the years and decades to come."

So what exactly is this "Anglosphere" Sullivan refers to, and where does the notion come from? It was given its most thorough exposition in a paper presented by James Bennett to the Foreign Policy Research Institute in 2001. Called "An Anglosphere Primer," the document outlines the concept and suggests ways in which it could develop. Bennett sees the Anglosphere, as a "network civilization", not an alliance determined by borders. At the core of the Anglosphere are the United States and the United Kingdom, while Anglophone regions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa are powerful outliers. The Caribbean, Oceania, India and parts of Africa make up the frontiers. And the concept?

"The Anglospherist school of thought asserts that the English-speaking nations have not only formed a distinct branch of Western civilization for most of history, they are now becoming a distinct civilization in their own right. Western in origin but no longer entirely Western in composition and nature, this civilization is marked by a particularly strong civil society, which is the source of its long record of successful constitutional government and economic prosperity. The Anglosphere's continuous leadership of the Scientific-Technological Revolution from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century stems from these characteristics and is thus likely to continue for the foreseeable future."

An important point to note about Anglospherism, says Bennett, is that it is not to be confused with the racialist idea of Anglo-Saxonism, which relied on assumptions of an Anglo-Saxon race, and sought to unite racial "cousins."

It's a stimulating paper and well worth reading, and if, as Andrew Sullivan states, the idea has currency in Washington, it might be useful to have an understanding of the "Anglosphere".

Diarist of the day: Alec Guinness, 23 January 1996

"Today there is much fuss about Harriet Harman, of the Shadow Cabinet, sending her 11-year-old son to St Olave's School in what the media describe as 'leafy' Orpington. Presumably it is not very leafy at this time of year. Part of the trouble is that the boy has to take and exam and face an interview. Without such things I can't see how the school would know in what form to place him. Neither do I see why all the emphasis is placed on Ms Harman's decision; presumably her husband should have had at least 50 per cent say in the matter, and perhaps Master Joseph may have his views on education."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 23 January 2003 at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was a dark and stormy ni?

Let's start again. It was a dark and chilly night and the Rainy Day team was tempted to do the couch potato thing except?except the Oysterband was in town so we headed out into the freezing fog and towards Munich's rail yards where the Backstage club is located.

Oysterband. We first heard their music some 15 years ago when they were shaking up British folk music with rocking versions of traditional standards such as "Hal-an-Tow", and railing against Margaret Thatcher's treatment of the coal miners. It was their ability to combine politics with a truly British form of rock and folk music that took our fancy. Here's a group that has always worn its heart on its sleeve and time has not wearied Jones, Prosser, Telfer & Co. They have mellowed a bit but their opposition to Tony Blair's stance on Iraq was articulated early and clearly.

Dressed in black, wearing dark shades and making moves that recalled Ian Dury, band founder and leader John Jones knows how to get a crowd on his side — especially a crowd that might not, at first glance, share his radical politics, sense of history and generational hatred of the Tory mindset. Typical of the good-humoured exchanges during the evening:

John Jones "I feel old enough to be one of the English subs." Voice from the audience: "You fuckin' look it!" John Jones: "Well, there's always one cunt, er, friend in the crowd."

And the music. The addition of uillean piper James O'Grady from "Luton, Ireland" has given the band a needed injection of melody and vitality. O'Grady is one of those amazing multitalented people who can also play the whistle and fiddle, and hold a pure vocal line. His work on numbers such as "Blackwaterside" and "Shouting About Jerusalem" can be heard on the band's latest recording, "Rise Above".

After a set that lasted nearly two hours, and three encores, one of which featured a magnificent unaccompanied setting of "Bright Morning Star", the Oysterband headed into the night. Great stuff.

Diarist of the day: Charles Greville, 22 January 1848

"Lady Beavale told me some anecdotes of the Royal children, which may one day have an interest when time has tested and developed their characters. The Princess Royal is very clever, strong in body and mind; the Prince of Wales weaker and more timid, and the Queen says he is a stupid boy; but the hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our Sovereigns to their Heirs Apparent seems this early to be taking root, and the Queen does not much like the child. He seems to have an incipient propensity to that sort of romancing which distinguished his uncle, George IV. The child told Lady Beavale that during their cruise he was very nearly thrown overboard, and was proceeding to tell her how when the Queen overheard him, sent him off with a flea in his ear, and told her it was totally untrue."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 22 January 2003 at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the current issue of the New Yorker, in a piece called "HONEST, DECENT, WRONG: The invention of George Orwell", Louis Menand says of the man whose legacy includes Animal Farm, 1984 and Homage to Catalonia: "He was a writer, of course — he was a graphomaniac, in fact: writing was what he lived for?"

Good word that, "graphomaniac". Those who have sought for clues to Orwell's staying power tend to hold up his 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language," as both the key to his integrity and the beacon by which aspiring writers should be guided, but Menand is less than enthused by it, saying that although Orwell wrote many "strong" essays, "Politics and the English Language" is not one of them.

Menand points out that most of the vices highlighted by Orwell had been identified in Fowler's Modern English Usage, and he then delivers this judgement: "Somehow, Orwell has run together his distaste for flowery, stale prose with his distaste for fascism, Stalinism, and Roman Catholicism. He makes it seem that the problem with fascism (and the rest) is, at bottom, a problem of style." This is bound to stir debate, so while the pot is simmering, it may be worth quoting the conclusion of "Politics and the English Language":

"If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse —into the dustbin, where it belongs."

Whatever faults Menand may find in the essay, Orwell's conclusion, with its warning about the corruption of words and its demand to fight linguistic complacency, has not been bettered in the past 50 years.

By the way, the provocative title of Menand's article, "HONEST, DECENT, WRONG", comes from a debate with Christopher Hitchens, author of the recently published "Why Orwell Matters", in which Hitchens argues that on the three great issues of the 20th century, imperialism, fascism and Stalinism, Orwell was right. Menand's response:

"Excellent. Many people were against them in Orwell's time, and a great many more people have been against them since. The important question, after condemning those things, was what to do about them, and how to understand the implications for the future. On this level, Orwell was almost always wrong."

This is strong stuff and one gets the feeling that the last word on the matter has not been written.

Diarist of the day: Leo Tolstoy, 21 January 1854

"Here is a fact which needs to be remembered more often. Thackeray spent thirty years preparing to write his first novel, but Alexander Dumas writes two a week."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 21 January 2003 at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Rainy Day team played away from home yesterday. Our opponents, and generous hosts, were the Kerns, Anna and Gregor, and the outcome was an honorable 1-1 draw. The game was Cranium, which involves spelling words backwards, humming tunes, answering multiple-choice questions, drawing with one's eyes closed and about a dozen other wonderfully diverse activities.

As well as being fun, Cranium is a very clever board game. To win, teams have to make it to Cranium Central — a large purple brain in the middle of the board. To get there, players draw cards from four decks — Star Performer, Word Worm, Creative Cat and Data Head — to advance around the board. The titles describe activities that teams must complete so, for example, if you pick a Sculptorades card from the Creative Cat deck, you might be asked to shape a banana split from apple-scented Cranium Clay while your team-mates try to guess what you're making. Once teams make it to Cranium Central, they have to successfully complete one activity from each of the four decks. The result is that the team with the best combination of skills comes out on top.

Delicious apricot cake, Australian shiraz and a splendid pumpkin soup fuelled the fun. The return match is being eagerly looked forward to.

Diarist of the day: Victor Klemperer, 20 January 1941

"[Dresden] A couple of weeks ago at the Jewish tea downstairs with the Katzes and Kreidles, Leipziger, an elderly medical officer and insurance doctor, garrulously and somewhat boastfully and conceitedly monopolized the conversation; recently Frau Voss comes back enchanted from one of her bridge parties: The medical officer had read so interestingly from a book about the doctor, it is his own life. So now all the Jews who have been thrown out are writing their autobiography, and I am one of twenty thousand ?And yet: The book will be good, and it helps me pass the time. But the old doubt also revived again, whether it would not have been better for me to learn English. Now on the one hand the new reduction in our money is in the offing, on the other the block on American visas has been lifted and it will soon be the turn of our quota number, and Sussmann ?has passed on my documents by airmail to Georg. Wait and see?

It continues to be cold with snow (without interruption since December), apartment difficult to heat, bad chilblains on my chapped and swollen hands."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 20 January 2003 at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On a dark and frosty night in Bavaria there's a delicious pleasure to be found in curling up on the sofa with a generous glass of single malt whisky and a good book. The volume of the moment is News From No Man's Land by the great BBC foreign correspondent, John Simpson. This is the third in a series of three autobiographical books that Simpson has bundled under the title "Out To The Undiscovered Ends". The first, Strange Places, Questionable People, was an account of his life; the second, A Mad World, My Masters, was about his travels, and the third is a fascinating look at his business: the broadcasting of international news.

On Thursday, 31 August 2001, Simpson and his cameraman, Peter Jouvenal, are at Heathrow Airport on their way to Afghanistan where they plan to do some reporting on life under Taliban rule. First stop is the duty-free shop:

"We needed quite a long things: a couple of bottles of Laphroaig, since booze was illegal in Afghanistan and one had to make a stand somewhere; a box of twenty-five good Cuban H. Upmanns at the cigar shop, because both Peter and I like to end the day in a cloud of choking blue smoke; books and magazines in some numbers; and, finally, a present for Mutawakil, the Foreign Minister.

That, however, posed a problem. What do you give the man to whom almost everything is forbidden? Not, certainly, a bottle of good single malt whisky, the present of choice for government ministers throughout the Islamic world."

In the end, Simpson settles for a large and "hideously expensive diary, bound in what looked rather like human skin, with tags and toggles hanging of it?" On 4 September, in Islamabad, Simpson and Jouvenal receive their visas — among the last to be handed out by the Taliban — to enter Afghanistan. While passing the time, Simpson reads the list of items visitors are forbidden to bring into the country:

"Alcohol, pork products, lipstick, nail varnish, audio recorders, compact disc players, cassettes and discs, video recorders and video cassettes, any items made from human hair, chess sets, musical instruments of any kind, including pianos, grand or upright, billiard tables, statues, Christmas cards, neckties or bow ties, books, newspapers, postcards containing any image of any animate objects, human or otherwise."

From Islamabad, Simpson and Jouvenal make their way to Peshawar before heading up through the Khyber Pass to Torkham, the main crossing point into Afghanistan. But before leaving Peshawar, Simpson repacks, with the Taliban in mind:

"Into the bag I was taking with me I put my only tie, plenty of compact discs, a travel chess set which I had bought in the bazaar, especially for the journey, and a variety of pictures of people especially women. And in lieu of a billiards table or grand pianos, I put in a litre of superb cask-strength Laphroaig single malt whisky. Not in its own distinctive bottle, though; my sister-in-law Gina had provided me with an empty and thoroughly deflavoured bottle of disinfectant for trips such as this. It wasn't in any sense a gesture against Islam a religion for which I have a profound liking and respect; it sprang purely from a dislike of being told what to do."

As they cross the frontier they see a sign that reminding them that they are leaving all rationality behind:

It takes them almost a day to travel the 140 miles from Torkham to Kabul, such is the dreadful state of the road. Once in Kabul they book into the "dark and desolate" Hotel Inter-Continental. After an evening meal of "rice with rubberized meat", they smoke their cigars and sip the Laphroaig from cups, in an attempt to make the waiters believe they are drinking tea. But they pay for their hubris the next day because half a dozen bearded, shawled figures with Kalashnikovs arrive and begin searching the rooms. It's the dreaded religious police from the Ministry for the Suppression of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue. This is a serious situation so they decide to sacrifice the Laphroaig.

"And so I found myself kneeling on the bathroom floor in room 208,staring down into the lavatory bowl in the unwell position. It was full of darkish yellow liquid. I yanked the handle, the lavatory flushed, and the yellow faded. The best part of a litre of the finest alcohol known to man had just passed round the S-bend."

On Saturday, 8 September, three days before the attacks on New York and Washington, the Taliban expelled Simpson and Jouvenal from Afghanistan. On Thursday, 13 November, Simpson was back, becoming the first journalist to enter the post-Taliban Kabul.

This is thrilling stuff and the reading is made all the more enjoyable with the help of glasses of Scapa single malt. Scapa is one of only two distilleries on the Orkney Isles and the malt, which has the colour of fine honey, is aged in bourbon casks and warehoused by the sea. While maturing, it inhales the salt air and when sniffed it exhales a creamy vanilla, floral aroma. The body is silky and rounded with hints of spice, heather, honey and oak, and the finish is smooth and warming.

Diarist of the day: Neil Jordan, 19 January 1995

"We fly to West Cork where Liam (Neeson) is waiting to go to meet the Collins family. Welcomed to the home of Liam Collins, Michael's nephew, and his wife, with old-fashioned rural courtesy. Visit the old farmhouse at Woodfield which has been landscaped quite beautifully into a fitting monument. No museums or interpretative centres here. Just a preserved old burnt-out farmhouse with a lovely oak tree in the garden, and a plaque or two. One gets the impression of quite severe intelligence here, and of a reticence that has accumulated over the years -- a necessary reticence given that neighbours and families would have been divided by the events of the Civil War.

We go to the Four-Alls pub and hear stories of the various directors and actors who passed through here, researching the same film. Michael Cimino, Kevin Costner, even, apparently, John Huston. Kevin Costner we are told turned down the offer of a pint to Guinness for a cup of tea. Liam immediately orders four more pints. The four more and more again until I'm almost footless."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 19 January 2003 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Samuel Pepys, the role model for most daily chroniclers and, in a certain sense, the ürblogger, began his diary on 1 January 1660 or, if you want to be fussy, 1659, as back then the New Year didn't start until 25 March. Pedantry aside, the idea of bringing Pepys to cyberspace must have crossed a few minds when blogging began to hit its stride last year, but it was Phil Gyford who made it reality. His Pepys' Diary blog went live on 1 January this year and it's been a huge success. Lots of press attention and tons of positive feedback have come his way from people who always intended to read Pepys but had never managed to buy the diaries or find the time to work through them.

Gyford, a "Creative Technologist" at UpMyStreet.com in London who programs PHP for a living, knows his interfaces and information architecture and this means he understands how to exploit the strengths of Moveable Type, the publishing software that powers the Pepys diary blog. For example, one of the nicest features of the site is that, like most blogs, it allows comments, which means that people who enjoy looking things up and sharing their findings can add snippets for the collective good. Another nice touch is that entries are posted at the end of each day. We can tell from Pepys' writing that he tended to write late in the evening about the day's events. Therefore, Gyford posts each day's entry at around 11 p.m.

One of the challenges of reading Pepys today is the language, because usage and meaning have changed a lot since the seventeenth century. Here's a sample of false friends from those days (modern meanings in brackets):

able (wealthy) dress (prepare food) effeminacy (love of women) family (household, including servants) grief (bodily pain) ingenious (clever) light (window) meat (food) owe (own) ready (dressed; unready: undressed) strangers (foreigners) tell (count) ugly (awkward) vaunt (sell) warm (comfortable, well off)

Thanks to Phil Gyford, the most famous literary diary in history is now being posted online, as if it were a blog. What makes it different from the printed work is that it allows for shared commentary and analysis — which greatly enhances the reading experience and its pedagogical value. Ingenious.

Diarist of the day: Eug讥 Delacroix, 18 January 1824

"I have been reading about an English judge who desired to live to a great age and accordingly proceeded to question every old man he met about his diet and the kind of life he led — whether his longevity had any connexion with food, alcoholic liquor, and so forth. It appears that the only thing they had in common was early rising and, above all, not dozing off once they were awake. Most important."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 18 January 2003 at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two men are having a drink in a bar and one says to the other: "I can't explain it — it's just a funny feeling that I'm being Googled." Charles Barsotti's cartoon was published in the New Yorker on 28 October last year and it spread around the world quicker than one could say, well, Google. Haven't seen it? Really? Well, here it is.

Anyway, the fact that "google" had become an English verb, like "hoover" and "xerox", signalled that the company had arrived; had made the magic transformation from tech business to integral cultural icon. That Google is more than an Internet phenomenon, more than a Silicon Valley enterprise, more than an English-language tool was demonstrated recently when Germany's leading business weekly, Wirtschafts Woche, posed the following question on the cover of its 9 January issue: "Heute schon gegoogelt?"

For those who have become increasingly aware of the inexorable rise of Google — almost all Net users — there wasn't much new in the cover story, though. That familiar photo of co-founder Sergey Brin in the whirlpool bath appeared and, local angle, there was a full-page Q&A with Monika Henzinger, the company's chief of research. How the search engine functions and how to best use its capabilities fleshed out the profile.

However, nowhere in the article was 23 December mentioned. And why is that date relevant? Well, it was on 23 December that Yahoo! announced that it was spending $235 million to buy Inktomi's Web-search business. With this move, Yahoo showed that its October decision to sign a nonexclusive deal with Google heralded a serious split from the Web's biggest search engine. Back in 2000, when Google was beginning to lead the field in search technology, Yahoo! dropped Inktomi to make Google its search-results provider. Now Yahoo! was saying that it was tiring of Google and was getting ready to replace it, and with the technology of its former partner.

So, what had started out as an amazingly good year for Google was ending on a distinctly sour note, although you wouldn't get that impression from reading Wirtschafts Woche. The indications now are that 2003 is going to be much rougher for Brin and friends, and Business Week laid out the reasons earlier this week in a piece titled "Google's Gaggle of Problems".

Some of these include: Yahoo! dropping the "exclusive" part of its contract, Overture winning a series of key search contracts, and other engines such as FAST, WiseNut and Teoma now mimicking Google's "popularity contest" methodology and delivering rapid results that look every bit as good. Google has reacted to the pressure by raking in the money from "keyword" sales while rolling out Google News as well as Froogle, a service that allows users to type in shopping terms and get rankings based on pricing. But it will need to keep ahead of the game this year if it's to start 2004 with more flattering cover stories. It's tough at the top.

Diarist of the day: Joe Orton, 17 January 1962

"Walter Shenson [film producer] said he'd been having a talk with Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager. He was delighted that I'd like to do the film [script]. 'So,' W. Shenson said, 'you'll be hearing from either Brian or Paul McCartney in the near future. So don't be surprised if a Beatle rings you up.' 'What an experience,' I said. 'I shall feel as nervous as I would if St Michael or God were on the line.' 'Oh, there's not any need to be worried, Joe,' Shenson said. 'I can say, from my heart, that the boys are very respectful of talent, I mean, most respectful of anyone they feel has talent. I can really say that, Joe.' "

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 17 January 2003 at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Munich, home of those sleek BMW cars, turned out to be a good place to watch the film 8-Mile, because one could almost feel the audience wince when first confronted with the beat-up cars Jimmy Smith Jr. (Eminem) and his homies cruise around in. It must be unnerving for people raised with the expectation of driving smooth status statements to endure the sight of the hideous, faulty contraptions that pass for automobiles in the world of the "Rabbit", as Jimmy is called by family and friends.

The only shiny, purring conveyance on view in 8-Mile is the "sport utility vehicle" driven by Rabbit's rappin' enemies. In a critical scene that hinges on sexual jealousy and professional envy, Rabbit is almost beaten to death by a posse that emerges from a forbidding looking behemoth with requisite grill guard and blackout windows. This juxtaposition of machine and man is remarkably eloquent because if Eminem is Detroit's most voluble gift to the world, the SUV is surely its most menacing one.

Lethal, aggressive, unsafe, ugly and environmentally disastrous, SUVs now account for almost half of all new vehicle sales in the US. How could such perversion come to pass? "High and Mighty: SUVs — The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way" by Keith Bradsher answers that question, and quite a few more besides. The author is the former Detroit bureau chief of The New York Times and he writes with assurance about the automotive industry and its key players. It's quite possible that his book will impact the Detroit-Washington nexus in much the same way as Ralf Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed did, because Bradsher, like Nader, also documents how regulatory breakdown has been exploited by corporate malefactors to the detriment of the people.

In the New Republic (registration required), Gregg Easterbrook uses Bradsher's book as the launch pad for a brilliant essay-review that excoriates "America's twisted love affair with sociopathic cars". Cleverly titled "Axle of Evil", the piece locates the moment in time when the SUV emerged: an effort by the old American Motors company to blackmail the Nixon administration by claiming that the newly passed Clean Air Act would put its Jeep line out of business. "You can guess what followed," writes Easterbrook. "Other manufacturers demanded free passes for anything even vaguely truckish, including light pickups."

Bradsher's book and Easterbrook's essay come at an interesting time in the history of the SUV because an intense campaign against the vehicles has begun and, despite the ridiculing efforts of Detroit, it's gaining momentum. The move started last year when a Christian group called the Evangelical Environmental Network came out with a TV ad that featured dramatic music and a voice-over noting that "too many of the cars, trucks, and SUVs" that Americans drive pollute the air, and "maybe it's time to ask ourselves ? what would Jesus drive?"

Then, in August, a "pedestrian rights and advocacy group" called Citystreets produced a campaign that included a 30-second ad that asked "Where Do Terrorists Get Their Money?" It interspersed quick-cut scenes of an apparent terrorist operation in progress with titles such as, "Fake I.D.: 1,500 gallons," "Box cutters: 1 gallon," and "Explosives: 600 gallons," before asking, "Where do terrorists get their money?" The question is answered by images of vehicles. "Every time you fill your tank," a title says, as we look at a trunk-load of machine guns, "Some of it might come back to you."

Now comes the Detroit Project, an activist group based around pundit Arianna Huffington. They have created a controversial TV ad that parodies a US government campaign linking drugs and terror. In the spot titled "Talking Heads," SUV owners say things like "I helped hijack an airplane," and "I helped blow up a night club," and "I helped teach kids around the world to hate America," and, "I sent our soldiers off to war." These comments are interspersed with, "It makes me feel safe," "Everybody has one," and, finally, "My life, my SUV." The ad called "George" focuses on a character who buys gas to fill his SUV. A child narrates and gentle music plays as we see a map of the countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq) where the company that fills George's tank got the oil. "And these are the terrorists," the little girl says, as we watch an image of machine-gun-wielding men in the desert, "who get money from those countries every time George fills up his SUV." Then, the closing title: "Oil money supports some terrible things. What kind of mileage does your SUV get?"

Let's leave the final comment to Easterbrook:

Many SUVs, such as the Durango, have been consciously engineered to look as threatening as possible, with auto companies using focus groups and other techniques documented in High and Mighty to determine which features and styling cues suggest an anti-social message and then zeroing in on them. The styling goal for the oversized Dodge Ram mega-pickup was "a vehicle that would make other motorists want to get out of your way." ?One hostility-intensification feature is the "grill guard" that SUV manufacturers promote. Grill guards, useful mainly for pushing oryx out of the road in Namibia, have no application under normal driving conditions. But they make SUVs look angrier, especially when viewed through a rearview mirror. (The grotesque new General Motors Hummer H2 offers a cage of steel in front of the grill for an additional $525.) Grill guards also increase the chance that an SUV will kill someone in an accident."

Diarist of the day: Tony Benn, 16 January 1979

"Today I began a regime which will probably last for twenty-four hours. I jogged in the bedroom for about twenty-five minutes and did some exercises. Resolved not to eat any bread, potatoes or sugar, and to stop smoking. It's terrifying the extent to which one is dependent on drugs. If I tried to give up tea as well, I think I should go mad!
?It's 10.45 pm and I still haven't smoked."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 16 January 2003 at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Still playing catch up with the cloning debate, I am, as the birth of "Eve" overlapped with Christmas in Ireland when the public prints there were filled with acres of end-of-year rubbishy quizzes and vapid quotes, and my farmhouse Net connection was fickle. POV: as a committed futurist, I'm all for medical innovation but surely caution is called for here. After all, we haven't successfully cloned animals yet. Remember Dolly and all those other ovine and bovine clones? Well, they've all experienced organ failure or are dead. Ooops! And all probably suffered terribly as well. Cloning is simply too unreliable for humans at the moment. So who, in their right minds, would want to do this to a child?

Single-handedly, Brigitte Boisselier, the scientist who heads Clonaid, "the first human cloning company", which has links to the daft Raelian sect that believes aliens created humans by cloning, has done more damage to the field of cellular therapy than all the reactionary anti-abortion activists and regressive legislators put together. By associating cloning with talk of "alien life-seed" (ugh!), stem cell research that could lead to important new treatments and cures is now endangered. Legitimate researchers must distance themselves as quickly as possible from the charlatans who are hijacking reproductive science.

Diarist of the day: Captain Robert Falcon Scott, 15 January 1912

"It is wonderful to think that two long marches would land us at the Pole. We left our dep?oday with nine days' provisions, so that it ought to be a certain thing now, and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norwegian flag forestalling ours. Little Bowers continues his indefatigable efforts to get good sights, and it is wonderful how he works them up in his sleeping-bag in our congested tent. (Minimum for night -27.5?). Only 27 miles from the Pole. We ought to do it now."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 15 January 2003 at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since the September elections, when Gerhard Schroeder stoked fears of war to gain another four years in power, German popular culture has become more and more neurotically anti-American. This week's issue of Der Spiegel, with it's "Blood for oil" title and cover image where the Stars and Stripes are turned into a version of the Hammer and Sickle is but the latest manifestation of the pathology. This is a high-risk course, though, because once the war in Iraq has ended, it's likely that Washington will take the position that American blood wasn't shed to provide economic support for Germany. And act accordingly.

The enormous damage Schroeder has done to Germany's internal well being and to its foreign influence is addressed in "Rot at Europe's Core", in the current issue of Newsweek. Writer Stefan Theil sees Paris as the immediate beneficiary of German weakness — France is essentially the leader of the EU now. And Britain? It's further away from joining the euro than ever.

Regarding Schroeder, Theil says:

"Abroad, he's robbed Germany of nearly all clout with his count-me-out stance on Iraq and his near-total absorption with domestic crises. No one even tries to understand his policies. One week he raises taxes by 23 billion, soon afterward his chancellery "leaks" a paper calling for the exact opposite. As if he had nothing more important to do, he?s suing two tiny regional newspapers for claiming his marriage is on the rocks. Woe betide them had they suggested he dyes his hair."

According to Theil, Germany's weakness means that Europe will have to forget its ambitions of rivalling the US, despite its constant protestations about American "unilateralism." A resurgent Germany is needed if Europe hopes to carry the same weight as Washington, argues Theil, but adds: "None more ardently pursued this vision than Germany. What a paradox that it should become the greatest obstacle to its realization."

Diarist of the day: Iris Origo, 14 January 1944

"Anatole France, in his old age, intended to write a novel, of which the title was to be Les Autels de la peur, "The Altars of Fear" — could a better title be found for an account of our times?"

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 14 January 2003 at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Following last week's Grammy nominations, the battle for Record of the Year will be between Eminem, Vanessa Carlton, Nelly, Nickelback and Norah Jones. The beautiful Jones is one of the most exciting talents to appear on the scene for years. She has that effortless way with a song that only the greats have. Think Macy Gray, think Nina Simone and their ability to appear to sing two notes at once and you've got Norah Jones. Her voice is amazingly kaleidoscopic, its many colours opening up a world of sensual delights. In a very brave move, she includes a number of songs by her band on Come Away with Me instead of taking the easier option of knocking out jazz-lite numbers. That's confidence with a capital C.

One of the handful of old classics on the album is the Hank Williams song "Cold Cold Heart", and its presence is very welcome as the 50th anniversary of the country music legend's death on New Year's Day passed all too quietly. Dead at 29, his body battered by an unknown assailant and years of alcohol and drug abuse, Williams set the standard for Hendrix, Morrisson, Joplin, Cobain and all the other self-destructive music stars who came after him. Still, in his short time on earth, he penned such masterpieces as "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Move It On Over," and "Hey Good Lookin' ". How he managed to write, sing, perform and record remains a mystery as his music usually took second place to boozing, brawling, women, cars and clothes.

His concerts were legendary. When he was good, he would deliver six encores to mesmerized audiences, but when he was bad he'd stagger on stage, announce that if the audience was there to see Hank Williams, they "done gone seen him" and stagger off again without singing a note. Still, the 100-plus songs he wrote, many of them scribbled in a few minutes in the back of a car, inspired by a bottle of bourbon and a broken heart, are regarded by music critics of all genres as one of the most important bodies of work in American music.

Diarist of the day: Brian Eno, 13 January 1995

"Took a long walk this morning — down 7th Avenue to 42nd Street. Such nostalgic air — cool but clear, straight up Manhattan fresh off the Atlantic, having crossed the Sargasso Sea, then accented with all those residual traces of faint fishiness, cinnamon muffins, subway urine, women's perfume, bacon, coffee, newsprint."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 13 January 2003 at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If I were a "pol corr", as the late John Healy of the Irish Times used to call journalists who write about current affairs, I might have hacked out something along these lines this morning: "British Prime Minister Tony Blair met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Hanover last night for talks, which were dominated by the Iraq crisis. Officials said only that a wide range of issues were discussed during an informal dinner at Mr Schroeder's residence."

It might well have been the case that the two leaders got blind drunk, came to blows, wrecked the furniture, watched "Black Hawk Down", swapped wives or nodded off with boredom, but such an account would never reach my readers, so tight is the noose around the news these days. Actually, it's been like that for a long time now and most of us have to wait for the publication of the diaries or the opening of the archives to find out what really happens behind those closed doors. And odd things do happen.

Take the letter former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan wrote to the Queen about a major summit meeting with French, German and American leaders in 1959. It was recently released by the Public Record Office after being under extended closure:

"After lunch, which was extremely good, Dr Adenauer delivered for nearly an hour a lecture on the dangers of communism and the best way to deal with it in the schools, in the factories and in the homes. I regret to inform Your Majesty that I fell asleep during the latter part of this oration."

A gem. And here's another goodie from Macmillan about US President Eisenhower:

"There was something very queer in the contrast between the stately French which de Gaulle speaks and the strange and sometimes unintelligible Americanisms of the president. It was very much the Old World and the New."

One such "Americanism" he noted came when Eisenhower said he would "clean his schedule" to make way for a meeting. Macmillan remarked that the French interpreter found this phrase "somewhat obscure".

Thirty years from now, we'll really know what happened that January night in Hanover. Bet you Manchester United closing the Premiership gap to within two points of Arsenal was mentioned.

Diarist of the day: John Rabe, 12 January 1938

"[Nanking] A month ago, Nanking fell into the hands of the Japanese. The body of that Chinese soldier shot while tied to a bamboo sofa is still lying out in the street not 50 yards from my house."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 12 January 2003 at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The mid-week report by the respected trade paper Variety that the TV hit Sex in the City will draw to a close after its sixth series, with the final show being broadcast in early 2004, unleashed a tsunami of farewell commentary, almost all fawningly complimentary. Time, then, for a counterblast.

Right away, I have to admit that I've seen only one episode of the show. I'm not a very big television watcher, see. Never have been. Anyway, I have to say I just didn't get it. I mean, what is the appeal of these spoiled women, always pining for romance and commitment and then whining about their men's inadequate sexual techniques? In a recent interview, Kim Cattrall, who plays the man-eating Samantha, explained the show's success thus: "It's been a real long time since women have really had the chance to talk about their sexuality and their personal secrets and desires, and phobias in an arena like this." What utter inanity. Does "an arena like this" mean a million-dollar sitcom with Prada shoes? Is she, like, for real?

There's horror and humour attached to dating in New York, but don't expect to hear about it from the unhappy heroines of Sex in the City. Anyway, the demise of the series may be too soon foretold as HBO has said that it would welcome its creators changing their minds and continuing. And there is the precedent set by the cast and producers of Friends as an example of the end not really meaning the end. Their show had been written off by NBC but the six central cast members confirmed in December they would reunite for a 10th series. The pay packet of $1 million each will ease the trauma no doubt.

Diarist of the day: Liane de Pougy, 11 January 1920

"Like every morning, I have had my enema, in order to preserve a clear skin and sweet breath. It is a family habit, approved of by Dr Pinard. One of Maman's old great-aunts, the beautiful Madame Rhom賬 died at the age of ninety and a half with a complexion of lilies and roses, skin like a child's. She took her little enema, it seems, at five o'clock every evening, so that she would sleep very well. She did it cheerfully in public. She would simply stand in front of the fireplace; her servant would come in discreetly, armed with the loaded syringe; Madame Rhom賠would lean forward gracefully so that her full skirts lifted gracefully, one two there, and it was done! Conversation was not interrupted. After a minute or two my beautiful ancestress would disappear briefly, soon to return with the satisfaction of a duty performed."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 11 January 2003 at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here we go with our weekly awards again after the lengthy Christmas break. First up for 2003 is [techno\culture], which writer Karlin Lillington describes as her "weblog on whatever comes to mind..."

Born in Canada, raised in Silicon Valley, based in Dublin, Lillington works the tech beat mainly for the Irish Times but also for The Guardian, and she contributes to a list of publications that ranges from the San Jose Mercury-News to Salon.com. Before plunging into technology writing, she completed a PhD at Trinity College, Dublin, that left her with "the most (the only?) saleable doctorate in the arts — a study of Seamus Heaney's poetry, completed just before he won the Nobel."

[techno\culture] features mostly tech snippets spanning the US, Irish and European markets, but these are often interspersed with items that combine technology, politics, culture and society. The sharpness of the summaries, the freshness of the items and the density of the postings are proof of Lillington's enormous energy and voracious reading, surfing and networking. Here we have a professional writer freed from the deadlines and space constraints of print revelling in the liberty that blogging allows.

Typical of her posting is this fascinating snippet from Wednesday, 8 January:

"Moblogging software for mobile phone-created weblogs: a new Irish company, NewBay Software, will launch a product this month that enables people to create a blog using only a mobile phone and SMS and MMS messages. So text messages and images from a camera phone can be sent remotely to your blog. No PC is necessary although most people would view the blog by PC and would probably want to tinker with their site by PC; no software is carried on the handset itself; instead NewBay offers the software to mobile operators who can then offer a blogging service. This is NOT a direct consumer offering but would presumably be rebranded by an operator. Either the operator or NewBay can host and manage the blogs."

Lillington adds further value to this posting by referring to her Irish Times story on the subject (subscription required) and linking to both a longer version and the official press release. Excellent. Rainy Day salutes [techno\culture].

Diarist of the day: 'Chips' Channon, 10 January 1946

"At the fashionable, carefree Carcano-Ednam wedding reception I remarked to Emerald [Cunard] how quickly London had recovered from the war and how quickly normal life had resumed. 'After all', I said, pointing to the crowded room, 'this is what we have been fighting for.' 'What,' said Emerald, 'are they all Poles?' "

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 10 January 2003 at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich he was grappling with the big questions: religion, life and death. Ivan Ilyich is a bureaucrat in the Russian court system whose entire existence revolves around career, social standing and appearance. Being a creature of the industrial age, he has discarded religious philosophy. His approaching death and the prospect of eternal silence, however, terrifies him. His final illness is made all the worse by the cold, uncaring attitude of his family and friends and the realization that this is exactly the same way he would have behaved. Shaken, Ivan is forced to ask himself: Did my life mean anything? Was it pointless? Is there anything after death?

ivans xtc. is a film adaptation of the story. Instead of 19th-century Russia, however, the scene is late-20th-century Hollywood where director Bernard Rose brilliantly converts Tolstoy's tale into a caustic view of the movie industry. Los Angeles may be far removed from the world of Czarist Russia, but the story's tragic depiction of the frailty of human dignity is equally haunting in this version of the novella.

The film, shot using high-resolution digital video and handheld cameras, has a documentary feel and begins with dawn breaking over Los Angeles as the voice of a dying man gasps "I tried to find an image, but I couldn't find a worthwhile thing." Immediately, we enter the nasty world that the man, an agent named Ivan Beckman (Danny Huston), has departed. Learning of his death, his colleagues first respond with vile gossip — unaware of the cancer in Ivan's lung, they assume he overdosed — followed by damage limitation. High-powered clients need to be placated, and the potentially lucrative film deal Ivan has just brokered must be saved at all costs.

The remainder of the film deals with Ivan Beckman's last few days on earth, and how he spends them. A charming, talented reptile, Ivan is impossible to dislike. OK, he (ab)uses people and drugs but so does every one else in his reptilian world. Huston, son of legendary film-maker John Huston, gives an amazing performance: he's the epitome of animal energy when he's having group sex and snorting coke, and he's heartbreaking when faced with the dying of the light. This is one of the most original and impressive films of recent years. Thanks to Thomas Bourke for the tip and thanks, too, to the Rainy Day wife for locating the video.

Diarist of the day: Lord Byron, 9 January 1821

"The lapse of ages changes all things — time —language —the earth — the bounds of the sea — the stars of the sky, and every thing 'about, round, and underneath' man, except man himself, who has always been and will always be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 9 January 2003 at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

God knows, between the tyrants Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il there isn't much of a choice, but Washington has to make one now or else prepare to fight on two fronts while protecting its back from an Al-Qaeda stab. Not an envious position to be in.

Given this very real and dangerous scenario, it came as quite a jolt last night to hear Petra Gerster, the normally sensible presenter of the ZDF heute news broadcast, ask the station's Washington correspondent to explain why the US is marshalling its forces against one country, where no trace of nuclear weapons has been found, when another country possesses them and has reneged on so many international agreements. Eberhard Piltz tried his best to contrast the two evils, but television makes few allowances for fine detail so his explanation didn't survive the assault of the loaded question.

Along with the "it's all about oil" contention, the media regularly trots out the line that the Bush administration is being inconsistent by threatening Iraq with war rather than North Korea. This is a particularly foolish position as the reason the US is getting ready to remove Saddam is to prevent him from becoming another Kim Jong Il. A man who has used chemical and biological weapons would not shy away from using a nuclear capability to cow his neighbours, blackmail the world and encourage attacks on America. In such a situation, the US might feel compelled to initiate a nuclear war to defend itself. And this is what appeasement would make inevitable.

The days of negotiating with rogues are over. Only the credible threat of harsh consequences works now. The coming end of Saddam's regime may make Pyongyang stop and think before doing anything to further destabilize southeast Asia, but even here, a waiting strategy is risky. The two tyrants took full advantage of Washington's inattention during the 90's and still feel emboldened to play with fire. Regardless of the order in which they are dealt with, there is nothing inconsistent about moving against the Iraqi oppressor and wannabe nuclear power before focussing on the North Korean threat.

Diarist of the day: Barbara Pym, 8 January 1934

"At Marks and Spencer's I bought a peach-coloured vest and trollies to match with insertions of lace. Disgraceful I know but I can't help choosing my underwear with a view to it being seen."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 8 January 2003 at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"One swallow doesn't make a summer," folk wisdom warns us, but this being winter we'll have to think of a more appropriate proverb. Appropriate, that is, to describe the growing evidence that blogging is beginning to show commercial promise. First came Andrew Sullivan's one-week contributions drive in December that reaped an impressive $79,020 from 3,339 people. That'll pay his salary and that of an intern/assistant. Then came word that John Scalzi got a book contract because of the blog serialization of Old Man's War. It's actually a two-book deal. As Scalzi wrote:

"For talented and committed writers, writing on one's own site is a true alternative medium which can be used for one's overall gain, and not simply as a catchall for otherwise unusable or unpublishable material. People who write well, and write online, no longer need to feel at an inherent disadvantage to those who write well, and write in a traditional medium (bad writers, alas for them, are still stuck)."

And here's more growth news from the blogosphere. Nick Denton is looking for a writer for a new blog covering things quirky and erotic. Subject matter: retro porn, computer-generated imagery, erotic art, slash fiction, Hobbit sex. The job, in Denton's words, will be a "labor of love, um, lust." E-mail porno@nickdenton.org. Meanwhile, over at NY Craig's List they're looking to hire a hardware/software engineer for a blog project to do with news indexing. Deadline is 11 January.

Still more good news! Rainy Day expects to show a small profit by the end of 2003.

Diarist of the day: Malcolm Muggeridge, 7 January 1936

"Brian Lunn took me to lunch in the Inner Temple. It was like being back at Cambridge. I found him in a little wooden room, reading old divorce briefs. They were pencilled over with comment. The language was not at all bowdlerized. One contained a verbatim report of a telephone conversation a husband had overheard between his wife and her lover. He claimed that it proved adultery because, in this conversation, she used the same pet name for penis as with him."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 7 January 2003 at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sincere thanks to all in Ireland who made my Christmas blogging trip so enjoyable and productive. As soon as I hit the ground in Dublin, the Donnelly family placed its computer and cellar at my disposal and the memory of those excellent French reds will endure long after my December postings are forgotten.

In Limerick, the Fitzgeralds and the O'Briens were unstinting in their support. Siblings Mary and Mike gave generously of their time in providing transport; Tony, Barry, Kieran, Eoin, Niamh, Sarah, Orlaith, M顤hbh and Mikey were good companions and worthy opponents at Scrabble, draughts and arm wrestling.

The Walshs of Mullingar put on a grand lunch and an informative tour of the region around the Royal Canal. Tom Hanley, Donie Roach and Kieran McDermott told memorable stories of farming and card playing, of robbers and drunken judges.

Special thanks to my parents for their hospitality and indulgence; best wishes to my mother for a speedy recovery to health. May you soon be back at the baking for there is no fruit cake on this earth that tastes better than yours.

Diarist of the day: Nan Le Ruez, 6 January 1942

"[Jersey] RAF dropped leaflets early this morning. Laurence found one and Joyce found one in our garden near the bee-hive! They were all written in French. They were addressed specially to the Channel Islanders. German officers were searching the countryside for them but our eyes are sharper than theirs! It is nice to think that our British friends were close to us today. We are not forgotten after all!"

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 6 January 2003 at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"How do you do it?" That's what a person asked me this Christmas past. They wanted to know what drives a person to blog, day in, day out, summer, winter and during one's holidays. It's a good question, because there are many who would like to understand why some people feel this need to write things down everyday, regardless of circumstances, comfort and, sometimes, consequences.

The simplest explanation of this obsession can be found in The Front Page, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Lemmon plays a star reporter working on his last big story before marrying his girlfriend and giving up journalism altogether. The girlfriend, Peggy, knocks on the door of the room where Lemmon is furiously hammering away on his typewriter:

"Who's there?" "Peggy." "Peggy who?" asks the man who's going to give up reporting for her sake.

The answer, then, to "How do you do it?" is right there. Reporting, like its new manifestation, blogging, is simply an all-consuming passion.

Diarist of the day: Virginia Woolf, 5 January 1918

"We went back to Hampton Court. We walked across Bushy park, and along a raised bank beneath trees to the river. It was cold, but still. Then we took a tram to Kingston and had tea at Atkinsons, where one may have no more than a single bun. Everything is skimped now. Most of the butcher's shops are shut; the only open shop was besieged. You can't buy chocolates, or toffee; flowers cost so much that I have to pick leaves instead. We have cards for most foods. The only abundant shop windows are the drapers. Other shops parade tins, or cardboard boxes, doubtless empty. (This is an attempt at the concise, historic style). I suppose there must be some undisturbed pockets of luxury somewhere still; but the general table is pretty bare. Papers, however, still flourish, and by spending sixpence we are supplied with enough to light a week's fires."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 5 January 2003 at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some fifty walkers, who left the Beara Penninsula in County Cork on 31 December, entered the local village of Ballylanders yesterday. They were greeted by the sight of snow on the Galtee Mountains and cold showers sweeping in off Sliabh Riagh. And this was entirely appropriate as the walkers were re-enacting an epic march that took place in the winter of 1603, which was noted for its extremely bitter weather.

After the defeat of the Irish and Spanish forces by the English at the Battle of Kinsale in 1602, the battered local chieftain, Donal Cam O'Sullivan, decided to lead 1,000 men, women and children to a safe haven offered by the O'Rourkes of Breifne, an ancient region now covered by the counties of Leitrim and Cavan. It was a desperate gamble by O'Sullivan Beara as he knew that the elements, mercenaries and hostile clans along the 250-mile route through Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Offaly, Galway, Roscommon and Sligo would exact their toll. The forced march began on 31 December 1602 and ended 14 days later in Leitrim. Exposure, hunger and attacks meant that only 35 of the original 1,000 who set out from Glengarriff reached their destination. This horrific attrition, along with the dramatic nature of the march, ensured that the trek would become legend and that the story of O'Sullivan Bear's March would inspire generations of Irish nationalists.

Today's marchers have a different reason for tracing the march: They wish to help develop the route as a Marked Way for walking, cycling and heritage activities. And over 60 community groups in the villages and towns along the route will be running festivals throughout this summer to help make the vision reality.

Diarist of the day: Kenneth Williams, 4 January 1953

"I think that people who manifest their love for you, physically, when they know your lack of reciprocation, are abominably selfish. Sooner or later, the relationship must suffer, however noble its beginnings. I must be comparatively under sexed or something for I have never particularly wanted to make physical love to anybody. All this touching and kissing which seems so popular among others passes me by. Dennis Goacher knows I'm a virgin, and is always saying that I make up for it by flirting continually. He says I should do something. He can't believe I could be abnormal. To him everyone must do something or die! Perhaps I am dead."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 4 January 2003 at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night was the national television night of The Field, the screen adaptation of John B. Keane's classic play about land hunger in Ireland. The evening was made all the more poignant by the fact that the two towering figures of the production, playwright Keane and actor Richard Harris, who played Bull McCabe, the patriarchal landowner possessed by the vision of owning a small piece of ground, died last year.

The brother, Mike, and I watched the film in our favourite village pub, Kieran McDermott's, and enjoyed the experience all the more by trading John B. stories with the landlord himself. And what stories!

Kieran's best yarn was a recollection of a night spent looking for accommodation in Listowel, John B's hometown, and ending up the writer's bar where an enormous drinking session was taking place. The scene was dominated by "a line of eleven women, singing, and one of them playing the accordion," in Kieran's words. They were all nuns, according to a man he fell into conversation with. At this point, John B. appeared in the bar and was prevailed upon to say a few words, which he did, in Irish, and he then rendered two verses of a song from Sive, his shocking drama about the horrors of forced marriages in 1950s rural Ireland. To top it off, it turned out that the lusty women were indeed nuns!

John B's language was scrutinised as well, especially his use of the Hiberno-English word "hoor". He was always quick to point out the difference between this word and the standard English "whore", which is never used to refer to women in rural Ireland. "Hoor" is used only when talking about men and it is a complementary term rather than a critical one. In Keane's usage, there were "Nine Choirs" of hoors: the cute hoor, the great hoor, the wild hoor, the fierce hoor, the mighty hoor, the almighty hoor, the awful hoor, the terrible hoor and the poor hoor. The word can also be used as a modifier as in "He's a hoor of a footballer." Although a rural term, the word has migrated to the city and has entered the contemporary Irish vocabulary, particularly the "cute hoor" variant, which admiringly describes those who have bent the law and evaded the taxman in amassing their Celtic Tiger fortunes.

In an emotional state, we ended the evening with our glasses raised to two great Munster-men: John B. Keane of Kerry and Richard Harris of Limerick.

Diarist of the day: Edward Robb Ellis, 3 January 1932

"On my way back to Missouri I stopped in St Louis and saw my first bread line — 200 men forming a grey line as they waited for food. The sight of them disturbed me."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 3 January 2003 at 3:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Would I sound like some curmudgeonly brigadier (retired), if I decided to protest the coarsening of life in Ireland? My letter to the Irish Times would begin: "Madam — From the teen "binge drinking" phenomenon to the growth of violent crime, examples of declining civility abound?" And so on and on in that vein. To hammer home the point, I'd adduce the 2FM Gerry Ryan Show, a radio programme produced by the national public service broadcaster, RTE.

Ryan is an increasingly jowly personage whose glib patter has filled the Irish airwaves for some twenty years now. His emotional range extends from the bland to the sanctimonious and this hollowness has attracted a huge morning audience. An example of the man's tasteless populism should suffice: In autumn, his show ran a "bonking competition" in conjunction with the Sunday World tabloid newspaper. In his 11 October programme, Ryan reminded listeners that the competition was "where we had you tell us the strangest public place that you ever had a shag." Competition participants were interviewed live, including the winner, a woman who had sex with her partner in a church confession box.

As readers of Malcolm Gladwell know, there's always a "tipping point" with these things and it's usually fascinating to retrace the steps to that moment when the shift took place. Scholars seeking the causes of coarseness in Irish life should start by graphing the rise and rise of the Gerry Ryan Show.

Diarist of the day: Alan Bennett, 2 January 1990

"I seem to be the only Western playwright not personally acquainted with the new President of Czechoslovakia [Vaclav Havel]. I envy him though. What a relief to find oneself head of state and not have to write plays but just make history. And no Czechoslovak equivalent of Charles Osborne snapping at your ankles complaining that the history you're making falls between every possible stool, or some Prague Steven Berkoff snarling that it's not the kind of history that's worth making anyway. I wonder whether Havel has lots of uncompleted dissident plays. To put them on now would be somehow inappropriate. Still, he could write a play about it."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 2 January 2003 at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Samuel Pepys, 1 January 1662

"Waking this morning out of my sleep on a sudden, I did with my elbow hit my wife a great blow over her face and nose, which waked her with pain, at which I was sorry, and to sleep again."

Virginia Woolf, 1 January 1915

"We were kept awake last night by New Year Bells. At first I thought they were ringing for a victory."

Adrian Mole, 1 January 1983

"New Year's Day. These are my New Year's resolutions:

1. I will revise for my 'O' Levels at least two hours a night. 2. I will stop using my mother's Buff-Puff to clean the bath. 3. I will buy a suede brush for my coat. 4. I will stop thinking erotic thoughts during school hours. 5. I will oil my bike once a week. 6. I will try to like Bert Baxter once again. 7. I will pay my library fines (88 pence) and rejoin the library. 8. I will get my mother and father together again. 9. I will cancel the Beano."

How many diaries, journals and blogs will be started with enthusiasm today? And how many will survive longer than the year's first hangover; the blank pages and absent postings a reminder of the demands of daily life or a lack of resolve? Let's face it, the discipline of writing on a regular basis can be very demanding but it has it rewards not least of which is the satisfaction of finding one's voice. If this is done with honesty, without fear, the results can be valuable. As Alan Clark, author of a notorious series of late twentieth-century British political and social diaries wrote:

"Sometimes lacking in charity; often trivial; occasionally lewd; cloyingly sentimental, repetitious, whingeing and imperfectly formed. For some readers the entries may seem to be all of these things. But they are real diaries."

So, start writing, get blogging in 2003. Happy New Year!

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 1 January 2003 at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)