People sometimes say that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but Sordel heard a longer version of that which makes rather more sense. "Which is better: a stopped clock or a clock that is slow by five minutes?" The paradoxical answer, the clearly incorrect answer, is that the better clock is the one that is stopped because it is right twice a day.
People going around celebrating the purported accuracy of a stopped clock are missing the point.
Doubtless (in some sense or another, one day) the world will end, and there's a chance (since there are many churches) that a small band of devoted religious followers will on that day be celebrating the arrival of "The Rapture" or somesuch. Should a Pythonesque hand descend on that day from a fluffy cloud and gather up God's True Believers, they might feel entirely vindicated.
The correct division is not, however, between those who happened to be right and those who happened to be wrong, and in this those atheists delighted at the conspicuous humiliation this weekend of Family Radio Worldwide are just as mistaken as the ardent followers of Harold Camping.
The correct division is between those who are sort of muddling through but inaccurate and those who, while accurate, are totally broken.
There is no rational eschatology under which the people who are saved are those who happen to adhere to a religion in which salvation is accorded to those either a) born into the right race/religion or b) able to calculate a correct date based on conjectural dates of events in the Old Testament.
If God's hand is going to descend from a fluffy cloud and gather up Jews, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Harold Camping, then the god running the system really hasn't given the rest of us much to go on.
It's true that God might not play into human ideas of fairness, but being saved by an unfair god is not really much different from being damned by it. Salvation should not be like buying a lottery ticket.
Broadly speaking: if a religion only functions accurately at one moment of history, you'd be better off with one that is somewhat helpful whatever the day, date and time.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Those Nine Preferences In Full
Under the Alternative Vote system, voters would get (would have got) the ability to register up to nine voting preferences, which is all very well and good, but I got to the Voting Station this morning and made a disturbing discovery.
I don't even have a first preference.
While certainly I have been an undecided voter in earlier elections, this is the first time that I have looked at the voting form without having given any real thought for which party I would like to support with the mickle might of my vote.
Moreover, this was not just a "Lib Dems or Labour" thing. Even David Cameron - a man who probably used to wear a morning suit to buy his morning newspaper but now makes much show of not being able to put his hands on one for a Royal Wedding - was in with a chance of the Sordellian imprimatur.
Nick Clegg, aka the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, could well have swung it for the Lib Dems. Ediband The Unknown could have taken it for Labour. It was certainly not unthinkable that the Greens would stand secure beneath the impregnable aegis of my cross.
The problem, though, was not a lack of interest, but a genuine lack of what for want of a better word one must call an Alternative. If it's true that the Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow (and according to Wikipedia it isn't) then we had better start working on a larger vocabulary for the otherwise indistinguishable shades of political platform upon which we are invited to lavish our electoral enthusiasm.
It's a sad day for something-or-other when one has a more decided preference on what socks to wear than one does for which party should govern, but that seems to be my predicament.
(Admittedly, Sordel is unusually attached to socks, like a recently-liberated house elf.)
Still, it's comforting to think that despite my near-complete aporia, my vote will have been registered with the same vanishing significance as someone who actually cares.
I don't even have a first preference.
While certainly I have been an undecided voter in earlier elections, this is the first time that I have looked at the voting form without having given any real thought for which party I would like to support with the mickle might of my vote.
Moreover, this was not just a "Lib Dems or Labour" thing. Even David Cameron - a man who probably used to wear a morning suit to buy his morning newspaper but now makes much show of not being able to put his hands on one for a Royal Wedding - was in with a chance of the Sordellian imprimatur.
Nick Clegg, aka the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, could well have swung it for the Lib Dems. Ediband The Unknown could have taken it for Labour. It was certainly not unthinkable that the Greens would stand secure beneath the impregnable aegis of my cross.
The problem, though, was not a lack of interest, but a genuine lack of what for want of a better word one must call an Alternative. If it's true that the Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow (and according to Wikipedia it isn't) then we had better start working on a larger vocabulary for the otherwise indistinguishable shades of political platform upon which we are invited to lavish our electoral enthusiasm.
It's a sad day for something-or-other when one has a more decided preference on what socks to wear than one does for which party should govern, but that seems to be my predicament.
(Admittedly, Sordel is unusually attached to socks, like a recently-liberated house elf.)
Still, it's comforting to think that despite my near-complete aporia, my vote will have been registered with the same vanishing significance as someone who actually cares.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Abbottabad-a-Bing
At a time when the moral compass for international affairs seems to be having significant difficulties pointing steadily in any direction, let alone North, Sordel would like to take a moment (with all due deference to Buffy) to suggest a new doctrine:
"What would Michael Corleone do?"
Much as the Obama administration chooses to say that justice was served on Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces, our ideas of what is just, proper and "right" don't really embrace murder.
Sordel is not being squeamish or scrupulous though. We all love it when bad things happen to worse people, and this is what makes Corleone justice so compelling. Helicopters, assassins dropping through the darkness ... sure, it's a bit "Part Three", but Michael would assent, just as long as he could brood over a Catholic rite while it was taking place.
Pilotless drones firing rockets into a meeting of the Five Families? If the shadows are suggestive of chiaroscuro and a snatch of Italian opera is played, why not?
Risible Whack-a-Mole while trying to kill Qaddafi in the ruins of Tripoli? The Don demurs.
Michael Corleone's guiding principle was not morality, but effectiveness, and it wouldn't be hard to be on the side of democratic governments were they more effective. Protecting civilians, for example, is such a laudable aspiration, but there comes a point when an incompetently attempted good deed is even less welcome than a boldly effected crime.
Unfortunately, there is an admitted flaw with this new guiding light.
The event most typical of the Corleone approach is not the raid on Osama Bin Laden that took place in 2011, but the attack on the World Trade Center that took place in 2001. Ultimately, an ethical system that is enamoured of effectiveness to the exclusion of all other attributes owes its existence to the man who has now become its latest and most prominent victim.
Justice has been served all right, but only the poetic variety.
"What would Michael Corleone do?"
Much as the Obama administration chooses to say that justice was served on Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces, our ideas of what is just, proper and "right" don't really embrace murder.
Sordel is not being squeamish or scrupulous though. We all love it when bad things happen to worse people, and this is what makes Corleone justice so compelling. Helicopters, assassins dropping through the darkness ... sure, it's a bit "Part Three", but Michael would assent, just as long as he could brood over a Catholic rite while it was taking place.
Pilotless drones firing rockets into a meeting of the Five Families? If the shadows are suggestive of chiaroscuro and a snatch of Italian opera is played, why not?
Risible Whack-a-Mole while trying to kill Qaddafi in the ruins of Tripoli? The Don demurs.
Michael Corleone's guiding principle was not morality, but effectiveness, and it wouldn't be hard to be on the side of democratic governments were they more effective. Protecting civilians, for example, is such a laudable aspiration, but there comes a point when an incompetently attempted good deed is even less welcome than a boldly effected crime.
Unfortunately, there is an admitted flaw with this new guiding light.
The event most typical of the Corleone approach is not the raid on Osama Bin Laden that took place in 2011, but the attack on the World Trade Center that took place in 2001. Ultimately, an ethical system that is enamoured of effectiveness to the exclusion of all other attributes owes its existence to the man who has now become its latest and most prominent victim.
Justice has been served all right, but only the poetic variety.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
M in Masterpiece or F in Fraud?
On 5 April, The Bolton News carried a headline that for once was inaccurate in a wholly informative way: "Fake Art by Banksy and Tracey Emin on display at museum."
The headline was inaccurate in the sense that the fakes were not by Banksy and Emin at all: they were fakes of Banksy and Emin by people with an ability to copy. It is notable, however, that Emin herself has not the ability to copy, or even, seemingly, trace, as her portrait of William and Kate's balcony kiss rather demonstrates.
"What's this, Sordel?" I hear you demand: "are you really going to devote an entire nutshell to championing outmoded bourgeois theories of art?"
Well, yes, actually.
The Independent, one must admit, has scored another hit. It is comparatively rare for a newspaper's front page to become a genuine subject of discussion, and only The Sun has been better at it than the UK's foremost contrarian chip-wrapping. On a day when every other paper was running colour pictures of the prince in his red tunic, it is perhaps unsurprising that The Independent would go with sober black & white.
What is less to be expected is that they would have selected (perhaps even commissioned) a work that falls so short of any minimal standard. There is a taste test to art. First we must recognise it: as something meriting attention as a piece of art. Hard though it may be to judge art, I wouldn't recommend any aspiring 15-year-olds to supply work of Emin's standard as part of their G.C.S.E coursework.
In Emin's "The Kiss" (to dignify it with a title) the most persuasive piece of draughtsmanship is the actual words "THE KISS" printed in block-capitals (though admittedly on a slant) beneath Kate's veil. Were one required to defend it, one could applaud the focus on the military trappings of the jacket, the baldness of William's head and the emptiness of his face, as pointed statements by a master portraitist, but this would be playing along too much. It would be to supply as the viewer an effort of creation that is missing in the artist.
Go peruse Google images for Tracey Emin and be amazed by the paucity of her oeuvre. What, to rephrase the old drummer joke, do you call someone who hangs around with artists?
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Margate 2: This Time It's Personal
Sordel is confident that we all thought the same thing when we heard that the BBC's Resident Intellectual had obtained a super-injunction to prevent publication of the news that he had been unfaithful to his wife:
It's only to be expected when one is as irresistible as Andrew Marr.
It has often been observed that the mind is also an erogenous zone, and that Mekon-like pixie, whose high-domed cranium becomes only more disproportionate as time goes by, must have been beating them off with a stick these many years.
Nothing says amours like a Marr.
Indeed, one can only imagine that he sought the super-injunction not so much for the sake of his reputation as to protect the ladies of this island, who might be driven to self-destructive yearning at the discovery that - far from being permanently off the menu as previously assumed - this dish was, like sashimi fugu, a rare delicacy obtainable by the woman reckless and dedicated enough to attempt it.
Before you dismiss this, however, as mere tawdry Schadenfreude, a loathsome paddling in the neck of tabloid sensationalism, Sordel would like to raise in your mind an intriguing possibility.
Marr's wife, Jackie Ashley, is a journalist. The woman in the case is evidently also a journalist. Andrew Marr ... well ... he knows a great many journalists. Here is a man whose championship of the Freedom of the Press would normally be above suspicion.
Is it beyond possibility that this great mind, with his lofty view of the chessboard and ability to think many moves ahead, actually foresaw that if one wished to break the issue of super-injunctions, the only way to do so would be to obtain one and then voluntarily forego it?
Might it not be that at the very moment that strange fingers coyly fondled his Full Windsor for the first time, the plot hatched in that mighty brow which only now has come to full fruition?
Sordel says not that it happened thus, but how could it have happened else?
It's only to be expected when one is as irresistible as Andrew Marr.
It has often been observed that the mind is also an erogenous zone, and that Mekon-like pixie, whose high-domed cranium becomes only more disproportionate as time goes by, must have been beating them off with a stick these many years.
Nothing says amours like a Marr.
Indeed, one can only imagine that he sought the super-injunction not so much for the sake of his reputation as to protect the ladies of this island, who might be driven to self-destructive yearning at the discovery that - far from being permanently off the menu as previously assumed - this dish was, like sashimi fugu, a rare delicacy obtainable by the woman reckless and dedicated enough to attempt it.
Before you dismiss this, however, as mere tawdry Schadenfreude, a loathsome paddling in the neck of tabloid sensationalism, Sordel would like to raise in your mind an intriguing possibility.
Marr's wife, Jackie Ashley, is a journalist. The woman in the case is evidently also a journalist. Andrew Marr ... well ... he knows a great many journalists. Here is a man whose championship of the Freedom of the Press would normally be above suspicion.
Is it beyond possibility that this great mind, with his lofty view of the chessboard and ability to think many moves ahead, actually foresaw that if one wished to break the issue of super-injunctions, the only way to do so would be to obtain one and then voluntarily forego it?
Might it not be that at the very moment that strange fingers coyly fondled his Full Windsor for the first time, the plot hatched in that mighty brow which only now has come to full fruition?
Sordel says not that it happened thus, but how could it have happened else?
Friday, April 15, 2011
Eh? V?
Those who consulted, memorized and obediently signed up to Sordel's previous reflections on democracy will not be surprised to hear that a referendum on a new electoral system in the UK leaves me somewhat cold.
According to research cited by The Economist the consequence of a move to the A.V. system would be that 16% of seats would change hands at a general election rather than 13%. The ideal - a swing of 100% to the None of the Above Party - is, to say the least, unlikely, and even were the 3% of constituencies that changed all to become BNP that would only bring the BNP representation in Parliament up to (checks sums) about 3%. None of this counts as a smooth transition to democracy.
Sordel's contention is that very few voters actually care about elections, and this can be extrapolated to the Middle East and Africa where, we are repeatedly told, populations are rising up to demonstrate their ardent thirst for a fair vote. Certainly some of the people are rising up for a fair vote, but it seems a reasonable guess that the greater number would also be willing to rise up for an oligarchy stacked in favour of their tribe, religious orientation or favoured tyrant. Not many of the rebels in Libya would be risking their lives to see Qaddafi fairly elected.
More significantly, it seems reasonable to suppose that many of the supposed beneficiaries of democracy in Libya are much like ourselves: more interested in the wellbeing of our families, businesses and neighbourhoods than we are in who is in government. Many of those who are currently dying for democracy in Misurata were just trying to get on with their lives. Posthumously turning them into martyrs for a political ideal is a typically political manouevre that demonstrates that while the rebels may not be a fitting army, there are those among them well suited to a career of bribery and corruption.
Returning, then, to the United Kingdom, AV would seem to be the perfect voting system for our national temperament: an ever more long-winded process to satisfy us that our miniscule contribution to the election of our political masters has been felt. Religion may be the opiate of the people in some countries, but all you really need to pacify an Englishman is a big piece of paper and an ill-sharpened pencil.
According to research cited by The Economist the consequence of a move to the A.V. system would be that 16% of seats would change hands at a general election rather than 13%. The ideal - a swing of 100% to the None of the Above Party - is, to say the least, unlikely, and even were the 3% of constituencies that changed all to become BNP that would only bring the BNP representation in Parliament up to (checks sums) about 3%. None of this counts as a smooth transition to democracy.
Sordel's contention is that very few voters actually care about elections, and this can be extrapolated to the Middle East and Africa where, we are repeatedly told, populations are rising up to demonstrate their ardent thirst for a fair vote. Certainly some of the people are rising up for a fair vote, but it seems a reasonable guess that the greater number would also be willing to rise up for an oligarchy stacked in favour of their tribe, religious orientation or favoured tyrant. Not many of the rebels in Libya would be risking their lives to see Qaddafi fairly elected.
More significantly, it seems reasonable to suppose that many of the supposed beneficiaries of democracy in Libya are much like ourselves: more interested in the wellbeing of our families, businesses and neighbourhoods than we are in who is in government. Many of those who are currently dying for democracy in Misurata were just trying to get on with their lives. Posthumously turning them into martyrs for a political ideal is a typically political manouevre that demonstrates that while the rebels may not be a fitting army, there are those among them well suited to a career of bribery and corruption.
Returning, then, to the United Kingdom, AV would seem to be the perfect voting system for our national temperament: an ever more long-winded process to satisfy us that our miniscule contribution to the election of our political masters has been felt. Religion may be the opiate of the people in some countries, but all you really need to pacify an Englishman is a big piece of paper and an ill-sharpened pencil.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Together In Perfect Harmony
Looking rather like a poorly-animated mugshot of herself in ten years time, Hillary Clinton appeared on television yesterday to claim victory in Côte d'Ivoire.
"This transition sends a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and around the world: they may not disregard the rights of their own people in free and fair elections and there will be consequences for those who cling to power. We commend the United States, the government and people of France and other members of the International Community who have worked diligently to ensure the safety and security of the Ivorian people throughout this crisis."
(Quite why we're commending the United States is unclear, but perhaps it's the even-handed way in which former aides to (Bill) Clinton lobbied for Gbagbo in Washington. It is indeed commendable when a country can roll over any obstacle to commerce.)
Now, Sordel knew nothing at all about Côte d'Ivoire until the rebels had actually surrounded Laurent Gbagbo's compound, but before we break out the champagne and toast to a much-needed fillip to democracy and security, it's perhaps worth taking a critical look at this victory.
Laurent Gbagbo - universally described as a "strongman" (which summons up in Sordel's mind only images of curled moustachios and a striped bathing costume) - was presumably some sort of horrific tribal warlord wearing the teeth of his opponents as a necklace. Somehow he started out as Director of the Institute of History, Art, and African Archeology at the University of Abidjan, but we can assume that he degenerated pretty swiftly after that.
Gbagbo's political manoevring in Côte d'Ivoire has seemingly been pretty unscrupulous over the years, with a number of human rights abuses and electoral tricks employed to keep him in power. It's lucky for the Ivorian population, then, that members of "the International Community have worked diligently to ensure the safety and security of the Ivorian people throughout this crisis."
Protecting civilians is, after all, something at which the commendable United States excels.
So, readers may share Sordel's mild surprise at a Human Rights Watch report that claims that Ivorians have been raped, killed, maimed, have had their villages burned etc. etc. all by people fighting on behalf of incoming-president-and-champion-of-peace-&-democracy Alassane Ouattara.
While the U.S. was ensuring their safety and security?
Ouattara The Fuck?!!
Perhaps before Hillary draws the moral of this tale she should consider some other possible morals that might be inferred, such as the following. That both sides in a sufficiently-entrenched conflict will ultimately become guilty of horrific abuse? That if you want to conquer a dictator it helps to have rebels who have been battle-hardened in a civil war and spent several years governing a substantial area of the country?
Or maybe, just maybe, that the best way to participate in the affairs of another country is to do absolutely nothing at all until a winner becomes clear and then turn up in time to claim the assist.
"This transition sends a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and around the world: they may not disregard the rights of their own people in free and fair elections and there will be consequences for those who cling to power. We commend the United States, the government and people of France and other members of the International Community who have worked diligently to ensure the safety and security of the Ivorian people throughout this crisis."
(Quite why we're commending the United States is unclear, but perhaps it's the even-handed way in which former aides to (Bill) Clinton lobbied for Gbagbo in Washington. It is indeed commendable when a country can roll over any obstacle to commerce.)
Now, Sordel knew nothing at all about Côte d'Ivoire until the rebels had actually surrounded Laurent Gbagbo's compound, but before we break out the champagne and toast to a much-needed fillip to democracy and security, it's perhaps worth taking a critical look at this victory.
Laurent Gbagbo - universally described as a "strongman" (which summons up in Sordel's mind only images of curled moustachios and a striped bathing costume) - was presumably some sort of horrific tribal warlord wearing the teeth of his opponents as a necklace. Somehow he started out as Director of the Institute of History, Art, and African Archeology at the University of Abidjan, but we can assume that he degenerated pretty swiftly after that.
Gbagbo's political manoevring in Côte d'Ivoire has seemingly been pretty unscrupulous over the years, with a number of human rights abuses and electoral tricks employed to keep him in power. It's lucky for the Ivorian population, then, that members of "the International Community have worked diligently to ensure the safety and security of the Ivorian people throughout this crisis."
Protecting civilians is, after all, something at which the commendable United States excels.
So, readers may share Sordel's mild surprise at a Human Rights Watch report that claims that Ivorians have been raped, killed, maimed, have had their villages burned etc. etc. all by people fighting on behalf of incoming-president-and-champion-of-peace-&-democracy Alassane Ouattara.
While the U.S. was ensuring their safety and security?
Ouattara The Fuck?!!
Perhaps before Hillary draws the moral of this tale she should consider some other possible morals that might be inferred, such as the following. That both sides in a sufficiently-entrenched conflict will ultimately become guilty of horrific abuse? That if you want to conquer a dictator it helps to have rebels who have been battle-hardened in a civil war and spent several years governing a substantial area of the country?
Or maybe, just maybe, that the best way to participate in the affairs of another country is to do absolutely nothing at all until a winner becomes clear and then turn up in time to claim the assist.
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