Spectacular feat of diplomacy

My excuse for not replacing my glasses with contact lenses, or undergoing laser treatment, has always been some lame remark about needing the specs as a prop. Andrew Stuart, British Governor of Vanuatu in the early eighties, put his need for glasses to a different use:

Stuart wrought his final act of diplomacy, and triumph over his French rival, by removing his glasses when faced with a letter from Father Lini (also sent to Robert) which ordered the expulsion of both French and British forces. Stuart was thus able, while apparently still ignorant of the letter’s contents, later to offer the transitional services of the Marines to the new state, which Lini accepted.

Easier than 1-2-3

It is well known that people use stupid passwords on the internet. An alarming number use "Password" for every "secure" site they visit. The 1Password blog has an interesting post discussing the mathematics of a cartoon from xkcd.

But that is all by the way. Apparently until 1977 the launch code for American nuclear missiles was "00000000". That's a zero followed by seven other zeroes.

Naturally I remembered this scene from Spaceballs, where the villains are extorting the code to open the shield from King Roland:


I am never eating on an aeroplane again

6 places germs breed in a plane

Flight attendants have witnessed many repulsive misuses of the tray table, from parents changing dirty diapers to kids sticking their boogers underneath. Research confirms that the handy tray table is a petri dish for all kinds of health hazards, including the superbug Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), which is often fatal once contracted. It kills an estimated 20,000 Americans annually. In 2007, University of Arizona researcher Jonathan Sexton tested tray tables from three major airliners, and an alarming 60 percent tested positive for the superbug. That's quite a revelation considering only 11 percent of his samples from the New York subway found traces of the bug.

Via b2w.

Obama and Cameron would rather not have to think about Assyriology

Further or Alternatively was decent enough to credit me when pinching one of my posts. I am obliged to her, or as it may be him, for The tragic tale of George Smith and Gilgamesh. He, or as it may be she, picks up on the fact that a lecture on the discovery of an Akkadian text about the Flood on a tablet in the British Museum received wide attention.

What is most striking about all this? It's a close call. Is it:

- a national newspaper covering recent developments in Assyriology in glowing terms and funding expensive new research in the field?
- recent developments in Assyriology producing lecture halls thick with reporters?
- carpenters in Chelsea and lectures where we now find Sketch? (This is the "Lecture Room and Library" at Sketch. It's a fun place to eat and "The extensive and acclaimed wine list was awarded ‘Best Award for Excellence’ by the Wine Spectator and AA Guide’s ‘Best UK Wine List'", which is more than the Society of Biblical Archaeology ever got for its wine list.)
- a Prime Minister turning up to a lecture on recent developments in Assyriology?
- a left-wing Prime Minister casually brushing aside a claim for public funding for a popular cause by saying that was a "vulgar expedient"?

One piece at a time…

A story from Johnny Cash comes to Adelaide: 

Richard Andres Jorquera, 27, was one of seven people arrested in July last year after 140 V8 engines and 175 high-powered transmissions disappeared from the production plant over a two-year period. Jorquera admitted stealing nearly 140 parts using his courier van over 18 months but pleaded guilty to two counts of theft when he faced the Adelaide District Court, under a deal with the prosecution.

He was taking the car out one piece at a time:

 

Not the whole book of Genesis

I am not sure why but NASA's Image of the Day for 26th June 2013 is the famous and beautiful Earthrise photograph taken by the astronauts of Apollo 8, taken on Christmas Eve 1968.

That evening, the astronauts--Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders--held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

Good thing NASA"s copy writer remembered to include the "from".  That could have been rather a long reading.

Still not setting

"The Sun," said Mr. Bull,  "never sets on English dominion. Do you understand how that is?" "Oh yes," said the Indian, "that is because God is afraid to trust them in the dark."

That story is attributed to Abraham Lincoln in The Yale Book of Quotations. (The source  makes it plain that John Bull's interlocutor is a Native American). A distinctly less politically correct version was used in a speech at the second annual meeting of the Associated Alumni of the Pacific Coast (no I have no idea either).

According to xkcd (this bloke) the sun still hasn't set on the British Empire.

 

"In the dusty, damp or dismal purlieus of second-hand bookshops"

Theodore Dalrymple usually writes pessimistic pieces on the corruption of modern society. As a prison doctor he cornered the market in vignettes of the prison infirmary which expressed contemporary abdications of personal responsibility, laziness, fecklessness and cruelty.

He also likes second-hand bookshops.
How many hours, among the happiest of my life, have I spent in the dusty, damp or dismal purlieus of second-hand bookshops, where mummified silverfish, faded pressed flowers and very occasionally love letters are to be found in books long undisturbed on their shelves. With what delight do I find the word ''scarce" pencilled in on the flyleaf by the bookseller, though the fact that the book has remained unsold for years, possibly decades, suggests that purchasers are scarcer still. Alas, second-hand bookshops are closing daily, driven out of business by the combination of a general decline in reading, the internet and that most characteristic of all modern British institutions, the charity shop. Booksellers tell me that 90 per cent of their overheads arise from their shops, and 90 per cent of their sales from the internet.
The story in the last three paragraphs about the purchase of "a slim paperback entitled Making Sense of the NHS Complaints and Disciplinary Procedures" is hilarious.

One of the commenters gives additional pleasure – unintended by him – in his denunciation of Dalrymple's central thesis. With all due respect to citizens of the Great Republic (at least one of whom reads this blog), I fear this bloke might be ("book stores", "outlet stores", general love of order and efficiency) one of yours.

I like to pretend I avoid buying from charity shops because of the threat they pose to the trade. Actually it is because I hardly ever go in second-hand bookshops any more. However, I do dream about them.

Life in the Russian wilderness

A family of Russian Old Believers, who fled to escape the Bolsheviks in 1936, are discovered by a party of geologists in 1978.
A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides that were close to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors' downdraft were so thickly clustered that there was no chance of finding a spot to set the aircraft down. But, peering intently through his windscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw something that should not have been there. It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time. It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.
The youngest daughter of the family, Agafia Lykov, born in 1943, is still living there.

The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, on your Mac

You can get a barebones anniversary list of events in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on your Mac. Not immediately obvious how I import it into Calendar.

Slightly more information e.g. what the "cat" command in the terminal means (I know I was dying to know) at The Mac Observer.

UPDATE: Since the above links might die this is a note at what you do. (1) On your Mac open the terminal in Applications/Utilities. (2) Type:

cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr.

Don't forget the space between "cat" and "/usr…"

(3) Hit return. (4) Enjoy Appendix B.

Newman's hymns updated

Once upon a time on The Daily Telegraph blog of Damian Thompson, called Holy Smoke (now folded into his current blog, same stuff, different name), which was mostly to do with Catholic matters, there was a trolling anti-Catholic commenter called Bosco. Another commenter called Eccles sprang up to poke fun at Bosco. He claimed to be Bosco's dimmer half brother. Together they caused trouble for the moderators. Eccles soon got his own blog.  In one post, Eccles interviews Cardinal Newman and gets him to update some of his works.
E: Gerontius? I suppose it's too late to give him a more with-it name? The Dream of Dave, maybe? Well, let's see how it starts:
Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise;
In all His words most wonderful,
Most sure in all His ways. 
E: I think the problem here, John, is that there are at least four different ideas in that verse. And later on you get very involved in sin and redemption, and all that sort of Jesus-stuff, whereas modern congregations should be singing about how happy they are.
JHN: Yes, I think I'm getting the hang of this now. Could I use the tune of "Follow me, follow me?"
When we're up in the heights, or we feel a little blue,
Oh we like to praise our holy holy Friend,
For He sorted us out, yes He did, for me and you,
So we're saved, yes we're saved, and that's the end.
Chorus: Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
praise the holy holy Lord... (ad libitum)
Eccles has lots of posts on hymns, e.g. "Colours of Day", "I the Lord of Sea and Sky" ect ect.

Via Chant Café.

Really?

Jerry Seinfeld used the word really a lot, hence this scene from 30 Rock:

Neil Genzlinger attacked the word in The New York Times:

I’m not talking about “Really?” as a request for more information or an expression of surprise. I’m referring to the more recent, faddish use of it: delivered with a high-pitched sneer to indicate a contempt so complete that it requires no clarification.

Jerry Seinfeld responded. (Via The Times Is On It).