I am the enemy you killed, my friend

This year I want to think of the many different types of people who contributed to stemming the tide of imperialism and Nazism. And also, let's not forget those who refused to take part in war, which is a very brave decision also.

Black veterans, Asian veterans, LGBT veterans, the poets and writers and artists, medical personnel, conscientious objectors, Bevan Boys, Land Girls, Lumber Jills, the Little Ships that went to Dunkirk, and other groups who get forgotten in the general remembrance. And what about those who fought on the other side, whose memorials just say they lost their lives, not that they laid down their lives for their country.

When so many have been slaughtered,
Let us mourn with tears of sorrow,
And treat victory like a funeral.
~ Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 31

What about all the refugees and civilian casualties? What about all those who were shot for desertion, or died of disease, or from "friendly fire" or accidents? Did they lay down their lives for their country, or did their country lay down their lives without thought of the cost? Let us not treat victory as anything other than a funeral, because the fact that war ever came to seem like the only way to solve a conflict is a cause for mourning. Yes, we must resist oppression and persecution, but let us study peace-mongering ways to do it.

Strange Meeting ~ Wilfred Owen

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,-
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said that other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also, I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . ."

word verification

Recently Google has been generating quasi-meaningful-sounding word verification - so far today I've had besserso (as in, "Ja, es ist besser so.") and vocurdst:

I vocurd
Thou vocurdst
He vocurdeth
We vocurden
You vocurden
They vocurden

(to vocurd: archaic English verb meaning to vocalise through emulsified substances associated with whey.)

And the latest gem is pologami - that's either "the art of folding small round mints with a hole in" or a love-in at a polo match...

Why ID cards suck

1. I carry a driving licence to prove that I am capable of driving; I carry a bank card to gain access to my bank account (which no-one else should have access to); I carry ID for my workplace because it is a secure building and I can't get in otherwise; I carry a passport to prove who I am at the border so I can get let back into my country of origin. These are all special resources or services to which limited access is required. I shouldn't have to carry an ID card to prove that I am allowed to live and move freely in my own country, where I was born. I don't want to live in a police state.
   
   
2. The underlying database is costly and time-consuming to build, and judging by other government IT projects and data-loss fiascos, will be easy to hack and easy to mislay data from. It's also the largest and most complicated government IT project yet.
   
   
3. ID cards won't help to catch terrorists or prevent terrorism. All the people involved in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade centre were carrying ID cards. There are other measures which would be far more effective.
   
   
4. ID cards will not prevent cases of mistaken identity; they are more likely to exacerbate the problem, because law enforcement officials will assume that the system is more robust, when it isn't.
   

Bill for ID cards rises by £50m

Hopefully this will now mean ID cards are dead in the water, but we must remain vigilant...

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk The costs of the national identity card project crept up by a further £50m yesterday as the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced that a small number of transport workers will be able to volunteer to get the cards next year before the official launch date. Despite this effort to reduce the costs of creating a national network of ID enrolment centres, the latest cost report for the scheme shows that the projected overall bill continues to creep up. The bill for issuing ID cards to all foreign nationals who are long-term resident in Britain, which began this month, has risen by £7m since March to £326m. The cost for British nationals has also crept up in the last six months by a further £45m to £4.7bn over the next 10 years. This figure does not include the costs to any other government department of using the ID cards to check identities.

DNA database to be cut back

This is good - the House of Lords introduced an amendment that says the DNA records must be deleted.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The government has been defeated in the House of Lords over the issue of keeping peoples' DNA and fingerprints on the police national database. Ministers said the safeguard was not needed and could hinder anti-terror operations but critics said innocent people should not be stigmatised. The defeat is the latest inflicted by peers on the counter-terrorism bill.

memories that never were

Just spotted this marvellous meme on Quaker Pagan Reflections, which Cat got from Walhydra's Porch (it was lying under the recycling), who got it from Igraine:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now (even if we don't speak often or have never met), please post a comment with a completely made up, fictional memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - but it has to be fake.

When you're finished, you could post this little paragraph in your blog and see what your friends come up with...

Remember when we found the door to another world at the bottom of the garden? Or when we invented a perpetual motion machine, but lost the plans in a freak accident with the athanor?

when food attacks

I enjoyed these macabre but lovely images. Spot the Death of Marat and Whistler's Mother ones (but are they hommage or parody? I'd say they were hommage, because they are both like and unlike the originals, and are saying something different.)

In these images, strangely attractive young ladies are menaced, sometimes actually killed, by food, usually the sort of food that one is likely to binge on. Yet the images are not gross; they have the high colour-depth of 1950s advertising, but instead of smiling winsomely, the protagoniste is prone; yet graceful even in death. The most tragic image is probably Death by Slimfast. My favourite is Death by Oreos. There are film references too: Death by Bananas references Hitchcock's The Birds; and I wonder if there's any connection between Death by Lifesavers and The Virgin Suicides?

Hat-tip to Balador.

ouch

I have written before about the annoyance of trying to read light text on a dark background (especially white on black).

But now a helpful blogger has produced a simulation for people who don't read their own blogs.

If this doesn't convince people, you can always install the "black on white" toolbar button, which turns any page you are reading into black text on a white background.

sanitised fairy tales

Boston Globe: Fear of fairy tales: The glossy, sanitized new versions of fairy tales leave out what matters: the scary parts by Joanna Weiss

The book went on to spin the tale of a charmed girl named Rapunzel, who spent her days in the tower sewing dresses with a friend. She loved when the witch came to visit and teach songs, including one that made Rapunzel's hair grow longer. But tension arrived: One day, Rapunzel looked out the window and saw a fair in the village nearby. She wanted to go, but the witch was off tending to her garden and couldn't let her out. Fortunately, a prince riding by in his carriage called up to her, "Rapunzel! Why aren't you at the fair?"

This is all wrong. The witch character has to be a threshold guardian or Rapunzel can't come into her power. And the archetype of the witch is meant to be a bit scary, because s/he is a wielder of power.

Of course this sort of thing has been going on for centuries, though this is a particularly schmalzy and fluffy version. Cinderella (the Perrault version) is a bowdlerized version of Aschenpüttel (Brothers Grimm version), which has much darker and earthier elements - in Perrault's version it's a glass slipper, but in Grimm it's made of fur, and the ugly sisters cut bits off their feet to fit into it, and are only caught out in their deception when blood oozes over the side.

I am sure that Clarissa Pinkola-Estes (author of the excellent Women Who Run with the Wolves) would have a thing or two to say about this evisceration of Rapunzel. And so would Bruno Bettelheim (author of The Uses of Enchantment). Indeed, in the rest of the Boston Globe article, various experts do point out why we need fairy-tales that aren't twee.

Hat-tip to Steve.

Stepping Stones Nigeria update

From Stepping Stones Nigeria:

Dear Stepping Stones Nigeria Supporter,

I just thought that I would take this opportunity to update you with some
of the exciting events of the previous few weeks. As you may know SSN has
been campaigning for the rights of so called child “witches” in Akwa Ibom
State since November 2006. This has been carried out through our Prevent
Abandonment of Children Today (PACT) campaign and has involved organising
two international symposiums, TV and radio adverts and regular visits to
government officials to advocate for the rights of the child. Most
recently SSN organised a child rights rally through the streets of Uyo,
which culminated in the children handing over a petition to the Governor
of the state demanding that he acted to protect the lives of these
innocent children. In addition to this SSN also paid UNICEF a visit in
order to make them aware of this terrible situation and request for their
assistance in the fight against child abandonment due to witchcraft
stigma.

One of the consistent demands that SSN has made is for the Akwa Ibom State
government to enact the Child Rights Act (CRA). Despite the Federal
Republic of Nigeria enacting the CRA at federal level in 2003, Akwa Ibom
was still one of the 22 states still awaiting to enact it. Without the CRA
in place it is very difficult to protect the rights of the children, many
of whom have been tortured in churches, abandoned by their parents, set on
fire, trafficked etc. Indeed through working with our Nigerian partner,
CRARN, we had tried unsuccessfully to prosecute a number of parents and
pastors. Without the legal framework to support us this was a seemingly
impossible task.

Thankfully on 6th September we received the news that the Akwa Ibom State
government has finally enacted the CRA. SSN sees this as a giant stride in
our efforts to protect, save and transform the lives of stigmatised
children in Akwa Ibom State. Whilst we cannot fully attribute the
enactment of this law to the efforts of SSN or CRARN, it is clear that we
have contributed a great deal to bringing about this positive change. As a
small charity, with limited resources, SSN feels very proud at this
accomplishment and now looks forward to working with all stakeholders to
ensure that the CRA is fully implemented and that parents or pastors that
are guilty of violating child rights are held to account. Please do visit
our website - www.steppingstonesnigeria.org/news - for the latest press
coverage of these issues.

In a separate development, whilst carrying out research into the needs of
abandoned children in Oron LGA, our sister NGO – Stepping Stones Nigeria
Child Empowerment Foundation (SSNCEF) – recently uncovered some very
disturbing findings. A shadowy religious group, known as the “peace
sisters”, had been found to have rounded up between 200-300 abandoned
children from the streets on the pretence that they were taking them to
their centre in Aba for “deliverance”. SSN and SSNCEF were already aware
that this group had been arrested in 2007 on suspicion of trafficking of
children and, as soon as we unearthed these findings, we quickly leapt
into action. Letters were sent and numerous calls were made to the federal
government anti-trafficking agency, NAPTIP, government, police and UNICEF
demanding that urgent action should be taken to investigate the “peace
sisters”. After two weeks of high level advocacy, SSN is happy to
announce that on 12th September 2008, 5 members of this group were
arrested and were found to be imprisoning 36 children in their “church”.
SSN and SSNCEF strongly believe that these children were destined to be
trafficked, although where exactly to we do not know. The investigation
into the “peace sisters” activities is still continuing and numerous
children are still unaccounted for. SSN sees this case as a huge success
for the work of SSNCEF and hopes that this will be the first of many
positive interventions carried out by our sister NGO.

SSN now feels that there is a great deal of positive momentum behind our
work and we very much look forward to working with key stakeholders, such
as government, churches and traditional rulers, in the near future to help
develop sustainable strategies to dealing with the child “witch”
phenomenon and ensuring that all children in Akwa Ibom state have access
to their rights. This momentum will undoubtedly continue with the
broadcast of the "Dispatches" documentary that SSN has been working on -
The Witch Children of Nigeria - on 12th November at 9pm on Channel 4.
International supporters may watch the film online at
www.channel4.com/watch_online.

We hope that you share our joy about these positive developments and wish
to thank you for your continuing support for SSN’s work.

With best wishes,

Gary Foxcroft

--
Programme Director

Stepping Stones Nigeria

www.steppingstonesnigeria.org

Protecting, Saving and Transforming the Lives of Vulnerable and
Disadvantaged Children in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

Registered UK and Wales charity number 1112476
Company number 05413970

Avast there!

Happy Internashnul Talk Loike a Pirate Day!

Avast there me hearties! Prepare to be boarded. I be out on the cyber-seas lookin' fer people to walk the virtual plank. Ye lubbers!

If you be an aspirin' female pirate, you should read Pirates by Celia Rees, which be explainin' all about how young ladies might become pirates, if so be as they wanted to excape from a loife of drudgitude and subjecshun to patriarchy and such-like stuff.

Teh ship's mascot also be gettin' in on the akshun:

a new planet

This is very exciting: astronomers at the University of Toronto have spotted a planet.

Young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 and its faint, planetary mass candidate companion.

University of Toronto astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a star similar to the sun.

Three scientists from astronomy and astrophysics used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies outside the solar system at about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight times that of Jupiter and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the sun at only about 30 times the Earth-sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the sun but is much younger.

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun," said David Lafrenicre, a post-doctoral fellow and lead author of a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters and also posted online. "If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward."

Actually I think I heard about this when it happened and forgot to look it up. But anyway, a planet like ours near a star like ours. Wow - it could be capable of supporting life.

Hat-tip to Geekologie.

More information and a bigger picture on Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Steampunk

Awesome! Bluetooth, steampunk-style:

clipped from www.slipperybrick.com Nicrosin’s Victorian-style Bluetooth device should be mass produced and powered solely by winding. He makes his creations from sculpey and watch parts, then lines it with leather for comfort. Though it still looks like it will eat your ear.

And this steampunk R2D2 is pretty cool, too:

clipped from www.slipperybrick.com

Here’s what you get when a mad scientist from the 19th century creates a droid. The only thing missing is C3PO in a gentleman’s suit and bowler. It was made by Deviant Art user Amoebabloke, who has mad droid modding talent.