Stupid People

Stupid people are, unfortunately, all around us. I know. I spend more time with them than most, especially during The Exam Season. I hold my throbbing head in my hands and reflect on the fact that they might have gained more marks if the paper had been written in Serbo-Croat, feeling a momentary pang of guilt because nobody got the easy question on radioactive decay right.  Stupid people are those for whom the formation of words is little more than a maxillofacial contortion which produces farmyard noises, in fact, they speak only to draw attention to themselves. As an educator - the word is rather loose, I admit - my task is to attempt to make the sounds that come out, either out loud or on paper, carry some semblance of meaning. There’s a slight but distinct racial tinge to how one feels about stupid people and it’s all too easy to conjure a mental image of the Irish, for example, and ascribe quite unjustifiably low IQ’s to them, based purely on geographical proximity. How unfair it would be to laugh at the following..

A man was on a walking holiday in Ireland. Irish hospitality being legendary, he knocked on a cottage door to ask for something to drink. The lady of the house invited him in and served him a bowl of soup by the fire. There was a wee pig running around the kitchen, bounding up to the visitor and paying him a great deal of attention. The visitor commented that he had never seen such a friendly pig. The housewife replied: "Ah, he's not that friendly. That's his bowl you're using.”

Even the Americans, known for their egalitarian and non-judgemental outlook, seem, strangely, to have a blind spot for those from Indiana. We can all empathise with these people…

Shelly Madison, 30, of Worthington, accidentally tore off an extra day from her day-to-day calendar and for a moment, felt what it is like to live in the future.

Carpenter Karl Gartung from Galveston was pleased to find a pocket in his carpenter's pants just the right size for a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera.
His work colleagues teased him because he told them he was born in Texas.

Nearing the end of a heated game of Monopoly, Taylor Davis stopped short of purchasing his fourth railroad, realising that nobody really takes cross-country trains these days. Taylor was born in Russiaville, of mixed parentage.

Were this level of awareness present in my students, the scripts that I shall actually be able to read would be full, replete with meaning, and would doubtless make an old man very happy.


I didn't know there was a place called Warsaw "the orthpaedic manufacturing capital of the world"  right there in Indiana. Strange. I was convinced it was elsewhere....

Group Theory

I think, or rather wonder about groups sometimes and the stratagems people adopt to either belong to them or the steps they take to avoid belonging. Having said that, I wonder if my thinking is accurate, or just a projection of the fact that I am less involved in a group that I have been for some time. With apologies to those whose training and experience exceeds my own:
Anxiety - a perception of a shared foe -  is often a cohesive force which can hold a group together and people join it as a defence against such anxiety. I think however that groups themselves can also be the source of anxiety.
Being in a group leads to blurring between the self and others that, whilst giving the comfort of the 'Body',  - effectively similar to neonatal comfort - also causes inner conflict. As the attachment of the self to the group increases, the sense of individual selfhood decreases, which leads to anxieties about integrity and hence a 'true' and 'false' self. This I think is prevalent in groups having a strong sense of corporate identity, like churches with a sharp, almost unyielding doctrinal position. The true self is masked behind a facade of self acceptable to the group - a false self, in other words. Someone posted elsewhere  that when one's foundation is neither stable nor reliable it separates seemingly similar individuals into two groups - those who can tolerate the physical, emotional, and psychological ambiguity, perhaps more at home with a false self, and those who can't. 'Tolerate' in this sense would seem to mean discovering a mechanism - being resourceful emotionally - to help them deal with a potential but ever-present feeling of impending loss.
The image is from the Saatchi Gallery.

Weighed in the Balance

It’s that time of year again. The examination season, like grouse shooting, is almost upon us. No, it’s not the academic staff getting their own back, nor is it some kind of purgatorial rite of passage. It’s an event, like breakfast. It comes, it goes. Here, we bang on and on and on about exams – from the Latin meaning ‘accurate weighing’ – as if by worrying about them the candidates can add a single grade to their result – Matthew 6 springs to mind.  In Japan, student stress can lead to suicide with horrifying frequency. Here, they might get a beating if results don't match parental expectations. It’s also noticeable that staff become fretted, as if a successful outcome earns an insecure teacher a brownie point, cosmically recorded somewhere. Teacher frustration boils over sometimes and people sit down in a corner and say ‘won’t’.

Kids’ brains don’t work like mine does; they don't see things in the same way, and they react differently. I quite enjoy writing flow diagrams on the board, carefully colour-coded knowing that the diagram is rich with meaning and a lot of stuff can be learned from it. The kids just want to copy it down as fast as they can and the fact that it actually has some educational merit  is of little significance. What they care about is getting as many decent grades as possible in order to screw more money out of their parents. Bribery and greed are powerful motivators. Plus ça change…

As an educator, my job is to talk myself out of a job. It gives me no little satisfaction when I am shooed away and told that I’m redundant and they can gain more from the texts or each other than they can from me.

I thought this worth publishing, as a reminder to me.

“High school is horrible for me. I am a junior and go to a small, private, and extremely competitive school. I have an average of three tests a day, and 6 hours of homework, not to mention working every night and taking care of my little sister. I find myself crying hysterically four nights a week because i just can’t work fast enough, and am purely exhausted from lack of sleep and can never just relax. I take five college classes now and it is just impossible. I am under so much pressure; I just want to give up and have some fun before college, but that can't happen since my parents expect nothing less than acceptance into Harvard or Princeton! Please help me!"

Neglecting adolescent hyperbole for the moment, this kid is a potential train wreck.

An educational establishment, whether kindergarten or Harvard Law isn’t an encyclopedia – an informational mincing machine able to turn out well-read but emotionally incompetent graduates because knowing what isn’t the same as knowing how. Perhaps all teachers as a prerequisite should have a diploma in psychology and be themselves required to pass tests on their emotional intelligence since it has been obvious for some time that the methods for solving quadratic equations are instantly forgettable but the person who taught them might not be.

Virtual Unreality

I’ve never really got on with computer games or social networking sites, indeed the use of the word ‘gaming’ in conversation brings me out in hives. Millions of young, tech-savvy professionals – I use the words loosely, use Twitter and Facebook on their iPubs or whatever to ‘keep in touch” with such blithering, mindless inanity as ‘what are you doing now?’ The answer to which, in all probability is “you don’t really want to know”. As friends will tell you, should you text them and ask, this is because I’m a complete troglodyte who believes in the rather quaint notion that people aren’t remotely interested in what I had for breakfast or which brand of toothpaste I happen to have picked off the shelf; instead anyone with whom I want to have meaningful contact with does me the courtesy of personal interaction. The newest kid on the block is something imaginatively entitled “Foursquare”. The only time I have previously run across the term was in the context of Aimee Semple McPherson and the birth of American Pentecostalism. Foursquare is a little bit of everything—a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game," said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script used by every one of these Web 2.0.1 or whatever-the-hell-they're-called startups. "But more than that, Foursquare is an [endless string of meaningless buzzwords I just couldn't bring myself to write down] I can feel my eyeballs melting.
Foursquare works by allowing users to "check in" from their present location, which might be a restaurant, coffee shop or (very probably) gentlemen’s convenience and in so doing, they can earn tangible, real-world rewards. For instance, the Foursquare user with the most points at any given venue earns the designation of "mayor" and can receive discounts, free food, or other “giveaways” that, quite honestly, I’m appalled at myself for having actually researched. I can’t imagine being “Mayor of Starbucks in King’s Cross” on the best day I ever had. Somebody please shoot me. Such ephemera is grist to its founder’s mill, who comments ‘it’s a unique and transformative social networking tool”. The guy has a PhD, for Heaven’s sake. I intend to strenuously resist throwing myself at the latest mobile technology trend in a humiliatingly futile attempt to remain relevant. Oh, God, all right then. Here’s the link.

Indigo Children

I've had my share of badly behaved children in my classes. In the course of a career spanning over thirty years, I've come across the brilliant, psychotic, insecure, indolent and  irremediably stupid. In the warm, indigo glow of history, kids seemed to be roguish, mischievous, inattentive, sometimes unwilling to scoop up any small pearls cast before them, but relatively easy to persuade and comfortably disciplined by a raised eyebrow or two. Later, grammar school girls were well-behaved, determined and usually successful, followed by a rag-bag rainbow of international students, often bewildered by scientific English. These, often with unpronounceable names, attempted to access British examination courses with varying degrees of success. And, now we're here, where F and G grades are commonplace, not because the student body is necessarily less able, but because there is for many no sense of struggle, no embodiment of effort and no consequent pride in achievement. Someone reminded me the other day about so-called 'indigo children' whose parents believe them to be in some way gifted or extraordinary. Although there are no scientific studies lending credible weight to the existence of such children, or their traits, the phenomenon appeals to parents whose children have been diagnosed with learning disabilities or parents seeking to believe that their children are in some way special, in some cases, paranormal. This is viewed by sceptics as a way for parents to avoid proper paediatric pharmaceutical treatment or a psychiatric diagnosis which implies imperfection. In this country, the sceptics might just be right. There's been a lot of brouhaha linking ADHD with indigo children - some even suggest that such 'challenging behaviours' are the next stage in human evolution, which is a lot more palatable than telling a parent that their child is merely lazy, arrogant, self-serving and attention-seeking. Meantime, I spend my time either babysitting or zookeeping.

Consequences

A friend left today.  This isn’t the first time that someone has been ‘asked to leave’ in something of a hurry. The ‘charge’ was ‘stamping on a copy of the Holy Qur’an’ which, even without material substantiation, is sufficient for some authorities to recommend deportation. Were it to be found to be true, such an action would be defamatory, provocative and blasphemous to Muslim eyes. The reality is, of course, that it was not and the story was fabricated in order to discredit. Westerners here are usually remarkably sensitive even about practices which they privately think are arcane and medieval, thus the injustice of such a course of action by the authorities is unconscionable. A man’s livelihood has been summarily removed, ironically citing ‘the law’ as a flabby, weak and morally reprehensible excuse. Justice is blind and also deaf here.

Expat life has a fragility about it, a pond-skating mentality that has at its heart that within a matter of hours, everything could change. For example, the roads are actively dangerous here and accident-watching is a spectator sport. Last night, I heard a grinding, tearing sound, tortured metal on asphalt. Looking out over the balcony, it looked as if a bus had been almost parked by the side of the road, with its front bumper caved in. Spectators were rushing to the scene, looking out of my field of view on the other side of the bus. Later, the bus moved away under its own power, revealing a upturned vehicle almost underneath it. It was as if the vehicle has been run over by a tank. There were almost certainly fatalities. There was a second accident on the way home today. A huge SUV, heavy and powerful, looked as if it had cannoned into a small minibus, shooting it like a pool ball a hundred feet across the highway and into a brick wall. Both vehicles were scrap metal, littering the road.

I thought about consequences. It was the time when people who had been out for dinner might be returning. Cars carrying young children in them who almost never use seatbelts. Much as the friend left with no conscious  thought that tomorrow would be materially different than today,  he found himself on a journey, leaving much behind. The unfortunates in the car also found themselves on a journey, but one of a very different kind.

Perhaps much of life is like waiting for a bus in the rain. In C S Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”, the bus to heaven shows up, often when those waiting at the bus stop least expect it.

Skiing with Noah

Had breakfast with a couple friends today. McWrinkles isn't my favourite dining establishment, nevertheless that's where the guys were gathering so I decided to get up early, be a good Joe and show up on time. First mistake. The only other guy to show up was the convenor of the meet and we shot the breeze for the next forty-five minutes until eventually a couple other people put in an appearance. I say this not out of malice but simply to accurately inform as to the timeline. Nobody shows up on time here. Ever. Appointments are made and it's entirely a matter for conjecture whether they show up half an hour late, an hour and a half late, or not at all. People have perished in house fires because nobody showed up. Nobody showed up to collect my rent. For six weeks. Years ago, this would have enraged me. Not the rent part, obviously - one lives in hope that someone just forgot about it this month - but about UNACCEPTABLE TARDINESS! Now, I guess I just let it go because I have learned that God is an economist. Not the beige, dark-suited type, but I think he recognises that time, like money, is under his full control and the sooner we stop fretting about it, the more constructive use we can make of it. Taking 'no thought for the morrow' isn't a bad policy, on reflection, which the exegete in me translates as..do what needs to be done today and tomorrow has a habit of taking care of itself. It was 'nice' to hang out with a few of the church folk today, without the additional stress of actually having to attend the service. I felt rather like a water-skier behind the Ark.

Transcending Polarity

I had to republish this, because the server fell over mid-save. Also, because it's Pentecost this weekend, as the image of the window reminded me.

A mystic, an evangelical pastor and a fundamentalist preacher die on the same day and find themselves outside the Pearly Gates, where, traditionally, they are greeted by Peter. He informs them that before they can get into heaven they must be interviewed by Jesus about their doctrine. The first to be called forward is the mystic, who is quietly ushered into a room. Two hours later, the mystic reappears with a sad smile, saying, ‘I rather thought I might have got it all wrong.’ Then the evangelical pastor is invited into the room. After a full day had passed the pastor reappears with a frown and says to himself, ‘How could I have been so foolish!’ Finally, Peter asks the fundamentalist to follow him. The fundamentalist picks up his well-thumbed Bible and walks into the room. A whole week passes with no sign of the preacher, then finally the door opens and Jesus himself appears, shaking his head. ‘How could I have got it all so wrong?’

When the Church stops speaking and listening, in other words, the dialectic slows to a crawl, it is in mortal peril.  I am slowly coming around to the view that  both absolutism and relativism are idolatrous, hiding their human origins behind a myth of reason. Instead of following the Greek notion of orthodoxy as right belief, I rather  wonder whether the more Hebraic and mystical notion of the orthodox believer in God as one who believes in the right way - that is - believing in a loving and sacrificial manner is a more appropriate mindset. The difference between ‘right belief’ to ‘believing in the right way’ is by no means a polarisation of opposites - as we were taught at theological college - more a way of transcending the polarity altogether. So, orthodoxy is no longer conceived as the antithesis of heresy but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things about the world. To my astonishment, on reading this over, it really does sound terribly Jewish, doesn't it... Learning to wrestle with moral dilemmas is quite a good thermometer for our belief systems, I thinkA mystic, an evangelical pastor and a fundamentalist preacher die on the same day and find themselves outside the Pearly Gates, where, traditionally, they are greeted by Peter. He informs them that before they can get into heaven they must be interviewed by Jesus about their doctrine. The first to be called forward is the mystic, who is quietly ushered into a room. Two hours later, the mystic reappears with a sad smile, saying, ‘I rather thought I might have got it all wrong.’ Then the evangelical pastor is invited into the room. After a full day had passed the pastor reappears with a frown and says to himself, ‘How could I have been so foolish!’ Finally, Peter asks the fundamentalist to follow him. The fundamentalist picks up his well-thumbed Bible and walks into the room. A whole week passes with no sign of the preacher, then finally the door opens and Jesus himself appears, shaking his head. ‘How could I have got it all so wrong?’

When the Church stops speaking and listening, in other words, the dialectic slows to a crawl, it is in mortal peril.  I am slowly coming around to the view that  both absolutism and relativism are idolatrous, hiding their human origins behind a myth of reason. Instead of following the Greek notion of orthodoxy as right belief, I rather  wonder whether the more Hebraic and mystical notion of the orthodox believer in God as one who believes in the right way - that is - believing in a loving and sacrificial manner is a more appropriate mindset. The difference between ‘right belief’ to ‘believing in the right way’ is by no means a polarisation of opposites - as we were taught at theological college - more a way of transcending the polarity altogether. So, orthodoxy is no longer conceived as the antithesis of heresy but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things about the world. To my astonishment, on reading this over, it really does sound terribly Jewish, doesn't it... Learning to wrestle with moral dilemmas is quite a good thermometer for our belief systems, I think

Eye of the Storm

Melanie Phillips’s new book “The World Turned Upside Down”   is a worthy sequel to “Londonistan. How Britain is creating a Terror State Within”. It looks very much like a Jewish plumbline held up to a system on the brink of chaos.  She doesn't pull her punches and writes “Christianity is under direct and unremitting cultural assault from those who want to destroy the bedrock values of Western civilization.” which most of us agree with but dare not say so publicly. In the West, we have unwittingly become participants in a war of worldviews. On the one side is the Judeo-Christian worldview. In opposition are two main rivals: radical secularism, including leftism, whose champions in Britain are people like Christopher Hitchen and Richard Dawkins, and radical Islam, who place the masses like Napoleonic cannon-fodder in their front lines. Indeed, Phillips notes quite appalling similarities between Western progressives and the Islamists but in addition there are many interwoven theological, political, moral and ideological issues. Terrorism is simply one facet of a multilateral approach to achieving "Ummah"

Both are a threat to the free West and to Judeo-Christian values because both are involved in coercive utopianism; both demonise dissent and both have declared war against Israel and the Jewish people. Against their better judgements, both find themselves uneasy allies as they lay siege to their enemy's cultural high ground. Protestant evangelicals are often “passionately supportive of Israel” while the liberal progressive churches are mainly hostile, citing Palestinian repression as the lever for their argument. She sees the established Church of England as especially tainted by leftist, pagan and secular nostrums and values, including contempt for Israel.

Britain has largely allowed the development of a culture which provides fertile breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism. British authorities have done very little to discourage it, and in many ways have inadvertently facilitated home-grown varieties, citing tolerance and inclusivism as the reasons.

Indeed, “London has become the epicentre of Islamic militancy in Europe”. That is, it has “become the major European centre for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism”. She offers two main reasons in “Londonistan”. First, Britain no longer believes in itself and, political posturing notwithstanding,  no longer thinks it has a major role to play in the world. Second, British authorities have seriously misjudged the threat of Islamic terrorism in terms of its global impact. Therefore Britain’s policy has been one of denial, appeasement, self-blame and hiding its head in the sand. It is still to some extent true that when Britain sneezes, the rest of Europe catches a cold and ripples created in London, wash up on the shores of Brussels, Paris and Rome who have their own bush fires to deal with..

The Scripture from Revelation 4:6 springs to mind… “and before the Throne there was a sea (as) of glass, like crystal…” The metaphor of a body of water, calm as a millpond, is in stark contrast to the cultural maelstrom and assault with and by which we are surrounded. In the eye of the storm, however, there is peace and God is well able to make his voice heard at the appropriate time.

Sets and Logic

In response to an email from a friend the other day, I described myself as a ‘barrage balloon, loosely tethered to the body of Christ’. Which led me to wondering about  the way that the Christian church thinks about itself as a group. Set theory is a concept in mathematics whereby certain numbers or other entities belong to a group, or set. A bounded set would describe a group with clear "in" and "out" definitions of membership, such as “all integers divisible by 5”. It seems to me that the church historically has organised itself as a bounded set, or better, a series of bounded sets called denominations with more or less overlap. The set bounded by both Catholicism A (all integers divisible by 5) and Anglicanism B (all integers divisible by 2)  has as its shared membership A Ç B,  (to which the numbers 10 and 20 belong, but 15 and 6 do not) perhaps defined by the Creed or the Eucharist, for example. Those who share the same beliefs and values belong to the set and those who disagree are outside it. This is the methodology that most of the historic churches have adopted towards interfaith dialogue. I think it’s a mistake.

In response to postmodern thinking, a ‘centred set’ does not limit membership to pre-conceived boundaries, defined by liturgy or tradition, for example. Instead, a centred set is conditioned on a centred point and membership is contingent on those who are moving toward that point. Elements moving toward a particular point are part of the set, but elements moving away from  it are not. Thus, membership of a centred set called ‘believers’ would be dependent on moving toward the central point or focus of belief. Jesus, in other words. One is then, in my view, more properly defined by one’s focus and movement toward Christ rather than by a limited set of shared beliefs and values. Hopeful travel, as C S Lewis put it, is better than arrival.

Forbidden Talk

The culture gap between us and them - the West and the East - in this part of the world is sometimes unimaginably wide. Interfaith dialogue is all fine and dandy, provided both parties belong to the same species. For someone who would probably enjoy living in a cave, the Saudi cleric Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak has an impressive ability to occasionally make news headlines with his eye-poppingly mediaeval fatwas which it would seem 'conservatives' here - that puts a new spin on David Cameron - actually pay attention to, in an Orwellian kind of way.

The latest pronouncement from the gentleman, who, it would seem, has trouble smiling, concerns the evils of fraternisation.  He comments that 'mixing of genders at the workplace or in education "as advocated by modernisers" is prohibited because it allows "sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women" '. Ah. OK. No chatting each other up round the water fountain, then...And, since most women are covered with a tarpaulin, it's hard to figure out what's actually there, never mind what's forbidden.

"All of this leads to whatever ensues.... whoever allows this mixing ... allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam ... Either he retracts or he must be killed ... because he disavows and does not observe the Sharia." Barrak said. Lots of $50 phrasing there, it seems, and rather a high price to pay for a bit of a fumble behind the bike-sheds.

And furthermore.."Anyone who accepts that his daughter, sister or wife works with men or attend mixed-gender schooling cares little about his honour and this is a type of pimping". Yeah. Just a little bit lost in translation, I think.

His website does not translate well from Arabic - but one anxious reader did feel emboldened to ask him..'Is pulling the penis after urinating heresy?' The reply was long and detailed...

The image is from Summerhill School, A S Neill's radical educational experiment, and the oldest democratic freedom school in the world. It probably wouldn't go down too well in Riyadh.

Wisdom of the Aged

When I'm old, I'm going to be plaintive, querulous, badly behaved and probably smelly. In which case, I shall be able to say exactly what I like, when I like and to whomever I like, since the rest of the population will simply peg me as demented thus not responsible for my behaviour. I intend to become like Socrates, but angrier and less tolerant and with bigger hair in which small mammals make their homes. Mincing words will be a thing of the past. Perhaps I shall by then, and with malice aforethought, have inflicted my noxious presence on one or both of my children who in desperation try to shuttle me from one to the other like a red-hot coal, which is as good a way as any of getting a change of scenery. Very Jewish of me.

All this from a new book which I came across, tastefully entitled 'Sh*t My Dad Says' by Justin Halpern who is very probably as bald as an egg by now from tearing clumps of his hair out over the breakfast pronouncements of his father who, if it were possible, is more loathsome that I intend becoming.

"That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son, let women figure out for themselves why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them."

"The worst thing you can be is a liar. OK, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then Number Two is a liar. Nazi one, liar two."

"Son, no one gives a sh*t about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

"What makes you so special? Nobody cares what you think. They never have."

Three of the above are actual quotes. One is not. The clue is in the phrasing, people. Tee hee.

Humour is quite subjective, one finds, and this post was more of a last, grim, pre-Holocaust despairing exercise in exploring what makes me laugh. Some women - not all, as it happens - find Kathy Lette hysterical. I read "The Llama Parlour" years ago and bought "Mad Cows" the other day in a secondhand bookshop for someone. Laugh? I almost ruptured a haemorrhoid. Had I been a woman, I would have done. Enjoy, ladies.

Travel and Tourism

I don't camp. Unless it comes with room service. I haven't camped frequently, hamdullah, but the occasions when I have are, curiously, etched into long term memory like a computer virus. After what seems like lifetimes of muddy English fields, or even enthusiastic European campsites with sinks and flushing toilets,  I still 'don't do canvas'. Camping and it's even uglier sister, caravanning, is for those who can't afford the Marriott. It's for those with that appallingly British  'mustn't grumble' stoicism, determined to enjoy themselves in the teeth of a squall gusty enough to uproot marrows and lashing rain which systematically soaks everything whether directly exposed to the elements or not. On arrival, you discover with enthusiasm that there's a kilometer or more to walk to find either a flushing toilet or a stand-pipe from which if you wait long enough in the queue, you can collect enough water to make a small pot of tea. Thanks. But, no.
The reason for all of this is that, by and large, British expats are hardy and longsuffering worldwide travellers, packing a clean pair of underpants, a toothbrush and a SpeedStick in hand luggage and grittily making do for the rest. They arrive in strange foreign towns, dusty and unshaven, find the nearest Y, play catch with the cockroaches, eat triple portions for breakfast to save the expense of lunch and, terror notwithstanding, travel by local bus and to hell with the risk of either fire or electrocution. They drink polluted water, reasoning that the fastest way to gain immunity is to expose oneself to the local bacterial fauna. This is travelling, it would seem. Tourism on the other hand, its gentler face, seeks to protect the visitor from the more unwholesome aspects of a foreign culture and just show them a good time, ferrying them en masse in a rum-sodden haze, from one 'attraction' to another. I suppose, to jeers and mingled boos, I am one of those who prefer the latter, minus rum. Marriott hotels worldwide are accessible from a Freefone number. To Omaha, Nebraska.

Through Glasses Darkly

We live in iconic times. I have to say, this had been in the back of my mind ever since I saw "A Christmas Carol" in 3D, clapping, childlike with amusement, much as the first cinemagoers must have done when the characters' words were heard, tinnily synchronised, adding new reality to the visual experience. Really, it was only a matter of time. With over fifty releases planned for movies in 3D, for the cinema and DVD/BluRay, the glasses makers have been a bit slow on the uptake. Especially here, where it's not at all uncommon to drop 150KD or more on designer sunglasses. Wearing geeky cardboard frames that other people have worn, possibly many times, is mercifully to become a thing of the past, as frame makers have finally picked up on the notion that there's a buck or two to be made here. These I thought particularly tasteful, if 70's retro is your thing. The only problem to be overcome is when people forget that they are for 3D viewing and attempt to drive their cars wearing them. Given the quality of driving here, on the other hand, I doubt it'll make much difference.

"Oh Captain, my Captain"

Some suggest that Warren Harding was the worst US President in history. His speeches were once described as 'an army of pompous phrases...in search of an idea'. But, boy, did he look presidential. Roman features, strong, manly jawline - the guy looked as if he could leap tall buildings with a single bound. Oh, no. That was the other guy. Never mind about the poker parties and bathtub gin during Prohibition, the man looked as if he could be trusted. 

Poor old Gordon Brown. He really never had much of a chance, did he? The man looks like an accountant, for Heaven's sake, a bean-counter, a lackey before the generalship of nobler men. David and Nick, on the other hand, look as if they can govern a country. Something about Old Etonians, once one gets over the insufferably superior expressions, gives one a kind of, well, confidence.

They've all got it, these statesmen, to a greater or lesser extent, except perhaps Ahmedinajad, who always looks slightly deranged in front of a camera, that subliminally soothing air of competence, almost, but not quite, trust. Were he a doctor, you'd trust Nick Clegg's professional competence, placing the life of your aged and much loved mother in his capable hands and, if she died, it surely wouldn't be his fault and you'd find someone else to sue.

Tall people earn more money than short people because more people look up to them, metaphorically and literally, to run big companies. Speed daters make their minds up within a few seconds and to hell with all that stuff they wrote down about their perfect partner.

In spite of the perilously thin veneer of civilisation, we're all gutter fighters underneath. Long ago, our very existence depended more on our unconscious, snap decision making abilities than by longwinded, reasoned argument and thus, by definition, we are the survivors.

As a small tail to wag the triumphant dog, a day or so after the party-poppers were all swept up, Johann Hari, of the Independent, the Eeyore of Fleet Street wrote.."..it looks like we are about to face years of a ConDem coalition we didn't vote for (oh, really?) and don't want. I hope I'm wrong (do you really, Johann..?)  and Clegg will tame the Tories, but I'm braced for this movie turning into 'One Shotgun Wedding and a Bloody Long Funeral' " I can't wait.

Divertissement

I'm not a great fan of Christopher Hitchen, whose rabid antipathy towards religion in all its forms reveals him to be scrabbling for personal recognition despite being grey and amorphous, which were he to read this, would enrage him. The 'Proust Questionnaire' which he devised with colleagues at 'Vanity Fair' is engaging enough for a general reader to amuse himself with.  I've omitted the more fatuous questions like "what is my favourite colour/bird?" Who cares if I happen to like duck-egg blue or vultures? Hitchen's own responses are here. Mine, much less clever, less ironic, more monosyllabic, for amusement only, are appended. Those who know me well can draw their own conclusions.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Being without intellectual stimulus of any kind. Also, the prospect of no sex for the rest of my life

Where would you like to live? Wherever those who love me live. Alternatively, a log cabin in Montana or a beach in Fiji. Perhaps both.

What is your idea of earthly happiness? Feeling close to God, and satisfied with my day's work.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent? Impatience. Especially my own

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction? Sherlock Holmes, Mr Micawber, Sydney Carton, Ivan Denisovich, Winston Smith

Who are your favorite characters in history? Galileo, Newton, Kierkegaard, Einstein

Who are your favorite heroines in real life? Mary Magdalene, Gladys Aylward, the Missionaries of Charity.

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction? Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Moll Flanders - why are they all whores?

Your favorite painter? Titian, Botticelli, Frederick Sandys, Klimt.

Your favorite musician? William Byrd, Gabriel Faure, Antonio Vivaldi, Claudio Monteverdi

The quality you most admire in a man? Fortitude

The quality you most admire in a woman? Serenity

Your favorite virtue? Patience

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Self-control. Causes high blood pressure

Your proudest achievement? I don't know. Most achievements are little more than wood, hay and stubble.

Your favorite occupation? Travel

Who would you have liked to be? Leonardo (da Vinci, not the other one)

Your most marked characteristic? Ask those who know me

What do you most value in your friends? Loyalty

What is your principal defect? Pessimism

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time

What would you like to be? A writer

What word or expression do you most overuse? 'Of course'

Who are your favorite poets? Keats, Byron, Goethe, Schiller

What are your favorite names? Leo, Gabriel, Charis

What is it you most dislike? Pomposity, self-importance, especially in politics

Which historical figures do you most despise? Goebbels, Napoleon, Caiaphas

Which contemporary figures do you most despise? Osama bin Laden

Which events in military history do you most admire? Spartans at Thermopylae

Which natural gift would you most like to possess? Empathy

How would you like to die? Ready

What do you most dislike about your appearance? My nose

What is your motto? Nil desperandum

You can do it yourself  if you like. The original, considerably more self-indulgent version is here. The image is Sandys' "Mary Magdalene" for obvious reasons.