Hobnob’s choice

There is altogether too much choice in this world and it induces stress. Stress is bad. Limited choice is good. Let me show and tell.

The first thing to acknowledge is if you’ve made a choice and aren’t allowed to have it, then that induces far worse stress. But that’s limited freedom, not limited choice. What I am complaining about is being forced to make a choice when I don’t have, want or need to.

I am talking about:

• Supermarkets that have 15 kinds of extra-virgin olive oil.
  • I just want to choose between olive, sunflower, vegetable and lard, thanks. Oh, fuckkit, I’ll go to Morrisons, ta.
• Doctors making me choose between a dozen indistinguisable triptanes to treat migraine.
  • You’re the one with the medical degree, pal, you choose.
• The restaurant that says “oh, you want a vegetarian meal, tell us what you’d like and the chef will make it”.
  • Yeah, but how do I know what veg you’ve got in fresh today?

Consumer choice

There is a difference between variety and product range. Variety is something new once in a while. A wide product range is a whole aisle of shampoo. That is one of the many reasons I like Aldi – they maintain a limited core product base and introduce wierd shit every now and again. (The other three reasons are antipasti for a quid, their chocolate brioche which is dangerous, and their tribute brands which deserve a post of their own).   The supermarket problem’s easy enough to deal with – I only go to Sainsburys for prescriptions, petrol and clothes. (I go to Tesco local instead, so there is no health in me. Oh, and the veg and cheese stalls in the market, so maybe there is a bit.)

The situation with professionals is harder because the government insists that the people want a fully informed choice. There are three words that are the problem, “choice”, “informed” and “fully”. How often do people suffer from nocebo side-effects? How much better to say “if anything changes that you don’t like, let me know”. You see, you pay a professional NOT to tell you stuff: you don’t pay for an hour of their time. You pay them to shut the fuckup about the 9,999 hours they have spent leading up to your appointment.

Ritual

Let’s admit it: choice in our consumer society (or what used to be our consumer society) is a ritual. The purpose of the menu is to give you something to talk about in the embarrasing time before the wine kicks in. It’s not there to give you choice. If it were, then there’d be more than one vegetarian option for a start.  These days I let the one I’m with do the choosing for me while I sit back and look at the other diners and the wallpaper.  (Wallpaper in restaurants, now there’s a topic).

Choice is about giving us something to do while we wait for the waiter, or making us feel special when we are just another punter, or persuading us that we’ve had customer service.

So let’s hear it for smaller shops which you can nip in to and nip out of, advisors who give advice rather than explaining options, and doctors who prescribe and proscribe but don’t bloody well describe.

Lorem ipsum quantum ploncum

The tutor that I will be submitting my assignment to prefers data to be plural. 

Now, I am a linguistic liberal: I am not sure if there can ever be such thing as ‘correct’ usage and however you use the language is fine by me so long as I can observe it, I am a linguistic voyeur as well you see.  And on top of that, I’m a linguistic democrat, I tend to go with my peer group if only to improve my chances of being understood.

So, I follow the usage of most people, and regard data as basically indivisible, like fog or rice. Thus: ‘the data is interesting’. Ok, I admit I use media in the plural, but you can still say medium and not be a complete arse-hole.  

You see, I think that only someone whose datum is right up their rectum convolutes the English language like that and just such a datum-rectum-qantum-lorem-ipsum is teaching me this module and he has thrown a linguistic tantrum, and now so am I. How bloody dare he impose his linguistic quirks upon me? Just because he’s the teacher an’ has a doctorate an’ all.

I’m being oppressed by the patriarchy!

The question is, can I write a whole paper on research methods without using data as the subject of a verb?

I am quite tempted to say ‘the results we get datis’ and let him ablate on that.

Or ‘the implications datorum’.

Yeah.

I like that.

Decline on that genitive, datum boy!

Aphra, she say

Charlotte asked me to list ten things I know, and I missed it.  So, rather late, here goes:

1. Everything’s a trade off – accept the loss as well as the gain
2. Starbucks is for people who don’t actually like coffee
3. Cravings do eventually fade
4. All men are bastards, but that’s ok because all women are bitches.  Know that and be constantly delighted by goodness.
5. The wiccan admonition to do what you will but do no harm has a sting in the tail.  Knowing what we do, it is impossible to live up to.
6. A girl can never have too many sapphires.  
7. There is no meal better than a russet apple and a piece of cheddar.  Good cheddar.
8. Fois gras is very nearly worth it.  Very nearly, but not quite.  
9. Lime curd is better than lemon curd, but harder to find.
10. People with no sense of humour are in fact aliens.  We must be patient with them.  They’ve been cut off from the mother ship.

If you know stuff, post it and link back.

Diana Mosely

 Diana Mosley

I’ve been reading the letters of the Mitford sisters and finding one of them fascinating. So fascinating that when I got to the last letter in 2003, I looped straight back to the 1920s and started again. The unexpected revelation is the development of the character of Lady Diana Mosley. The story of the “six hooligan girls” is notorious: there was the writer (Nancy), the lesbian (Pam), the fascist (Diana), the nazi (Unity), the communist (Jessica), and the Duchess (Deborah).  But it’s a much told tale and I didn’t expect to be surprised.

In her teens, Diana was rich and  socially successful, and then she segued into a politically and sexually glamorous femme fatale before turning into a political activist, imprisioned traitor, troubled mother and – finally – she emerges as someone alert to nuance, kind, subtle and gracious. Her letters of the last 50 years show us a patient and wise woman, accepting the difficulties of the path she’d chosen with stoicism and uncomplaining good grace. She is almost humble, as she absorbs a lifetime’s priggish sanctimoniousness from one sister and decades of spiteful jealousy from another. The impossible thing of course is to square these admirable traits with her politics; she was married to Oswald Mosely, founder of the British Union of Fascists. She never recanted, never appeared to regret her quite literal espousal of Fascism, remaining resolutely un-revisionist of her personal and national history until the day she died. 

Hers is an extraordinary story.  She was an impatient teenager who married a rich man who adored her and by the age of 20 she had borne him two heirs. So far, so conventional. Churchill was a cousin, and Diana Mosley may well have been the only person to know both Churchill and Hitler socially. Hitler was a guest of honour at her small and very private wedding to Oswald Mosley. This is the key to her history. She met Mosley in her early 20s and loved him beyond reason for more than 50 years. Her daughter in law suggests that her loyalty cost her so much that she could not admit the immorality of European Fascism. Her relationship certainly cost her a lot: she was cut off from her younger sisters, her older sister betrayed her, she was imprisoned in Holloway and separated from her children (her youngest son was 11 weeks old and not even weaned when she was arrested).

Judged by his actions, Mosley was a deeply unpleasant man: while his first wife was dying he kept two main mistresses – one was Diana but the other was his wife’s younger sister. He was never faithful to his first wife, and rarely faithful to Diana during the early years. If he was greedy for sexual conquest, he was also greedy for personal power. He was at one time a Labour MP, at another time a Conservative and he founded the British Union of Fascists only when it became obvious that he was not going to achieve office as a Socialist.  A woman as intelligent and sensitive as the Diana who emerges from the later letters would not have loved a man who was merely selfish, brutish and greedy.  There must have been more to Mosley in person than comes through from a mere list of things he did.  There are men who are sexy, charming, clever and deliciously good in bed but so self-directed they simply don’t understand the need for morals or scruples. They used to be called cads or bounders, and the intelligent ones are particularly devastating.   It’s clear that Moseley was one of these, and an intelligent woman will fall for a cad far more quickly than she’ll fall for a bore.

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters

As we read the early letters we find her caught up in her love for Mosley and then in its consequences, in particular the separation from her children. The turning point in her letters seems to be the death of her younger sister Unity in 1948. If Diana was swept into Fascism by sexual and romantic love, Unity became a fascist because she needed an outlet for a passionate and fanatical nature. She wanted a cause and a leader, and Fascism gave her both. It was Unity and not Mosley who provided Diana with her entré to the highest levels of the third Reich. 

Unity’s blind adoration of Hitler rings out shockingly from her letters. She trembled at the very site of him. No-one helped her meet him, she engineered that on her own when she found a café where his group would often dine, and had lunch there alone again and again until he eventually asked her over to his table. She seems to have been no more than an adoring and pretty acolyte, albeit a remarkably well connected one. Certainly she had none of her sister’s intelligence or acuity.  Even so, Hitler paid her medical bills when she attempted suicide on the day the war broke out and he arranged for her to be transferred to neutral Switzerland. She survived another 9 years with the mental capacity of a 12 year old and the emotional stability of a toddler.  All the Mitford sisters loved the pre-war Unity for herself, no matter how much they deplored her politics and Diana of course did not deplore her politics. So who knows what her reaction was when Unity died unexpectedly aged 33 when an infection flared up in the bullet wound.

Compare Diana’s tactful letter to Nancy with Nancy’s insouciant, almost defiant, reply.

Diana:

… it seems that Muv has got an idea that you think she oughtn’t ever to have taken Boud [Unity] away from Prof Cairns [her neurologist] – of course I knew this had never crossed your mind but if you could write and put something comforting about how wonderful it was that Birdie [Unity] was able to go about … and not be a hospital case all those years – or you will think of something much cleverer than that …

Nancy: 

… not only never did such an idea cross my mind, but I couldn’t imagine that anybody could think such a thing. I vaguely remember that under the stress of great emotion & after that dreadful journey (I was really ill with it you know) I said ‘Oh but didn’t you send for Cairns’ which I now see was very tactless – but like that & no more than that.

Perhaps the key to the sensitive, patient, accepting woman who emerges after Unity’s death is summed up in the last line of her letter to Nancy:

… the fact is all deaths bring remorse, isn’t it odd.

But it seems slick to assume that it wass simple and obvious as that, and certainly those traits could not have come to the fore if they’d not been there all along.  So maybe the question is not so much why did they emerge as why were they hidden?  And there is no way of knowing the answer to that one.

Migraines 6 – five days and counting

I’ve posted elsewhere about migraines. In particular I have posted about the idea that we are a prey species, and migraines hunt us down and feast on our open brains, our pain dripping down from their bloodied jaws.

Well, now I’ve discovered that the migraine is not only a mighty hunter, it’s a mighty hunter with a grudge. It’s been months since I’ve had a migraine – the last time I posted on the topic was over a year ago.  Yes, at the end of last year I was burning the candle at both ends, and at the beginning of this year I just threw the bloody candle on the fire and admired the pretty flames. I was well aware that the only things keeping me going were beta-blockers and triptanes.

On Saturday the dam gave way. Today is Wednesday. You do the math.

In fairness there have been gaps (I’m in one now) and they have been Level 1 – 3 migraines. But even so.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I grade my migraines thusly:

Level 1 – pain on one side of the head, slight feeling of nausea, can think clearly
Level 2 – as above, but mental processes numbed
Level 3 – as above, but with moaning and occasional vomiting
Level 4 – it seems like a good idea to walk about because that way you may leave the pain behind
Level 5 – as above, but you try to knock the pain out of your head by banging it against a wall

Interestingly, triptanes will often relieve the pain but leave your mental processes haywire, so you feel ok but are very disengaged: an Aphra-shaped automaton-zombie-creature. Or whatever shape you actually take in the universe, of course.

I really do want to be free of this tomorrow.

And yes, I have been to see the doctor. Doh.

Man watches porn – hardly news, is it?

It’ll be “dog bites man” next.

Let’s face it, in the list of Bad Things done by this government, making me pay for Jaquie Smith’s husband’s skin-flicks isn’t that much of a deal. It’s cost us collectively – what – less than fifty quid, certainly less than a couple of hundred.

It’s piss-all compared with the tens of thousands of pounds that the bail-outs and refinancing has added to my very own personal tax bill over the next few decades to pay for Gordie’s end to boom and bust.

Now that annoys me.

As others see us

Which of our attitudes will horrify future generations?  What blind-spots will show up large and clear for all who follow us to point at in sneering horror?

I thought about this because of the discordant notes I found as I read the pre-war letters of the Mitfords and a couple of light-weight romances about English middle class life in the 1930s by Angela Thirkell.   The Mitford letters are in a class of their own and Unity’s breathless descriptions of Hitler are almost beyond comment.   But Thirkell shocked on a more banal level, with its casual, almost colloquial anti-semitism (the heroine’s publisher is good at business and has dark hair,  legacies of Jewish ancestry), its incidental acceptance of ritualised brutality (a  schoolboy who has a toy called “foxy” which is the tail of the fox that blooded him, mounted in to a silver handle), and the assumption that driving a car into a ditch is nothing more than carelessness (perfectly normal because you are drunk or showing off).   Oh and the entirely unironic statement that someone was  ”adored by her servants”.  Yeah. Right.  

So which of our assumption and norms will chime as discordantly on our offspring’s ears?

• Our casual consumerism.
  Our economic woes already makes this seem extravagant, it won’t be long before it is in poor taste and finally becomes unfashionable.  The question is whether the economy will recover enough before the oil runs out for the indulgences of the previous decade to occur again.
• Sweatshops.
  I hope future generations judge as as harshly for buying clothes made in sweatshops, wearing them once and throwing them way, as we judge those who opposed Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish slavery. 

• Recreational travel.
  The idea that responsible, intelligent people who can see the climate changing before their own eyes would indulge in recreational travel without compunction will, surely, be as abhorrent as … oh fill in your own exploitative and selfish horrors here.  And so much business travel is unnecessary that it’s no more than an indulgence.
• Personal transport.
  Says me.
• Plastic cutlery and plastic packaging.  
  Our hydrocarbon-starved progeny will  curse us for taking something as rare and unrenewable as oil and turning it into something indesctructable but used only once, and tossing it away into landfill.
• Landfill.  
  The mines of the future.  Hey kids, curse our names, eat our shit.

• Our dual standards around obesity, dieting, size zero and BMIs.
  Next time you are in a supermarket, count the magazines by the till that are running two cover splashes, one on the dangers of anorexia or dieting, and the other jibing at some poor famous neurotic’s gain in weight.
• Our hypocricy about the sexualisation of childhood.
  Same as above.  Newspapers simultaniously run “string-em-up” rants about paedophilias and drooling comments like those about the then 15-year old Charlotte Church’s breasts.
• Our simultanous delight in technology and indulgence in pseudo-science.
  My mind’s run out of things to say.  Just read any ad for cosmetics or the incomparable Dr Ben Goldacre.

Ach, that’s enough to be going on with.

Incidentally, it isn’t just about when people live it’s also about how they react to their times:  Thirkell is particularly insensitive to the darker side of the 1930s but her conteporary Margery Sharp had a much clearer understanding of the social and political nuances of the times she lived in.

The devil you know

I found the news last night oddly comforting.  I drove home listening to stories of the falling pound, tumbling stock markets, freshly announced job losses, rising unemployment,  spiraling fuel costs, failing industries sucking up public money, and hydrocarbons being choked off at source by ludicrously rich eastern states.  

It had a familiar feel to it.  It was almost cosy.  It could have been 1979 all over again. Or 1992 at a pinch.  

So much less terrifying than climate change deniers and the world’s failing superpower prodding terrorists with nuclear weapons to see if they’ll blink.  

If only the comfort wasn’t an illusion.

Not the only trans in the village

It is easy to think of villages in rural and semi-rural England as rabidly conservative.   So what is the chance of having not one but two transsexuals, both stealth, seeing in the New Year in the same village hall?

It was very nearly a comedy moment:

My neighbour:  My son’s a transsexual!

The one I was with: Really? So’m I!

In the 1990s, when Thatcher introduced Clause 28, John Junor would rant in the Express and the Mail about poofters and lefties. He took his stereotyping even further and held up Auchtermuchty as an example of “traditional values” which must have scraped on the nerves of the people of Fife.  Eventually one of the broadsheets sent a reporter to the town with the comedy-name to find out how “traditional” it actually was, it turned out that the the town’s homophobia was entirely in Junor’s head. Ok, I think Auchtermuchty’s gay community at the time was one pair of patient and long-suffering gay men, but the town was far wiser, kinder and more tolerant than Junor – foaming at the mouth in what the Americans rightly call “London, England” – would have his tabloid audience believe.

Back to the here and now: I was astonished by the instinct that led my neighbour to talk to us, of all the people, in the village hall on New Year’s Eve.  She is still reeling with surprise and has a long journey to travel on her own account.  I suspect that many transsexuals break the news to their parents rather badly, and it is certainly easy for them to confuse parental surprise with rejection.  My neighbour has a lot of re-adjusting to do, but she already appreciates that the new daughter she is getting to know is the same talented, gentle, funny person as the son she adored.   My neighbour is getting there and geting there quickly, but right now she needs to talk it through, and talk it through, and talk it through.  Hence the conversation in the village hall.

Our shock at her revelation was two-fold.  The one I was with assumed that she’d clocked him as trans, and this undermined his assumption that he passes.  (He does).  I was unsettled that she blurted out something which isn’t really her secret to relative strangers, (I’ve met her twice before).  She saw the surprise in our faces and thought “oh no, I’ve made a mistake, they’re not as cool as I thought”.  It was only when the one I was with outed himself that she knew that we are in fact much cooler than that.

She wanted to spend the evening talking to the one I was with, so I spent the evening intercepting the people who came over to chat and pulling them off to the bar or the buffet so they could talk it out.

But, as I said, what are the chances?  

Ach.  Who cares?  

This isn’t the 1990s any more.  This really is Little Britain, and it’s good to know that there’s more than one trans in the village.

Specifically for Alfster and SoRB among others – you know who you are

Here’s an atheist meme I picked up on Adopt-An-Atheist  who credits The Friendly Atheist Site.  I’ve done it more because I’m interested in how others will reply than because I think you give a flying-meatball about my beliefs.  But here, for the little it’s worth is 

The Atheist Quiz

Have you ever…

1. Participated in the Blasphemy Challenge? - No – but one of my favourite jokes has the punchline – “Are you kidding….?  I went there 2000 years ago, got some bird pregnant and they’re still talking about it!”  If that’s not denial of the holy spirit, what is?  My big sis said that the sin against the holy ghost is usually thought to be bestiality, but I’m not sure how they work that  out.  I’ve not notched that one up either.
2. Met at least one of the “Four Horsemen” (Richard Dawkins,Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) in person? - No – but I did go to hear Richard Dawkins speak when he was plugging was “Unweaving the Rainbow”.
3. Created an atheist blog? - Well it’s a blog and I’m an atheist…
4. Used the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a religious debate with someone? - No.  I’m an atheist not an evangelist.   I don’t care what you believe so long as you don’t care what I believe.
5. Been offended when someone called you an agnostic? - Impossible to say.
6. Been unable to watch Growing Pains reruns because of Kirk Cameron? - Huh?
7. Own more Bibles than most Christians you know? - Just the one, I think.  Maybe two.   Dunno.
8. Have at least one Bible with your personal annotations regarding contradictions, disturbing parts, etc? - Puh-lease.  I have only one life.  Why would I spend precious time trying to prove it?
9. Have come out as an atheist to your family? - Dunno.  Probably not.  It’s a belief-system not a lifestyle.
10. Attended a campus or off-campus atheist gathering? - Er.  Why would I do that?
11. Are a member of an organized atheist/Humanist/etc. organization? – Surprisingly, yes, I’ve signed up to the BHA.
12. Had a Humanist wedding ceremony? - No.  But I’m thinking of becoming someone who can officiate at humanist funerals.  Not a thing to do lightly, so I’m mulling it over.
13. Donated money to an atheist organization? - Yes, the atheist bus campaign and the BHA.  
14. Have a bookshelf dedicated solely to Richard Dawkins? – No, but I do have a chair dedicated solely to … oh, I can’t be bothered.  Dawkins is eye-wateringly good on genetics, but I dislike polemics.  
15. Lost the friendship of someone you know because of your non-theism? – I doubt it.  I do believe very strongly we should all be allowed to go to the devil our own way.
16. Tried to argue or have a discussion with someone who stopped you on the street to proselytize? – No.  Why bother?  
17. Had to hide your atheist beliefs on a first date because you didn’t want to scare him/her away? - No.  I don’t foam at the mouth.
18. Own a stockpile of atheist paraphernalia (bumper stickers, buttons, shirts, etc)? – No.  Or any other kind for that matter.
19. Attended a protest that involved religion? - No
20. Attended an atheist conference? - No
21. Subscribe to Pat Condell’s YouTube channel? – Who?
22. Started an atheist group in your area or school? - No
23. Successfully “de-converted” someone to atheism? - I doubt it. 
24. Have already made plans to donate your body to science after you die? - No.  I’ve arranged to have my ashes packed into fireworks and set off at my wake.
25. Told someone you’re an atheist only because you wanted to see the person’s reaction? – No, I’m not a teenager.
26. Had to think twice before screaming “Oh God!” during sex. Or you said something else in its place? –  Heh heh.  No.  (There has to be a marian joke here, but I can’t work it out).
27. Lost a job because of your atheism? - No.  That would be illegal.
28. Formed a bond with someone specifically because of your mutual atheism (meeting this person at a local gathering or conference doesn’t count)? - I doubt it.  You’d have to ask my friends.
29. Have crossed “In God We Trust” off of — or put a pro-church-state-separation stamp on — dollar bills? - N/A
30. Refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance? - N/A
31. Said “Gesundheit!” (or nothing at all) after someone sneezed because you didn’t want to say “Bless you!”? - No.  And I tend to say “Bless me” rather plaintively after I sneeze.  Pavlov’s got a lot to answer for.
32. Have ever chosen not to clasp your hands together out of fear someone might think you’re praying? - Eh?
33. Have turned on Christian TV because you needed something entertaining to watch? - N-n-no.  Though I have played follow-the-fundy on YouTube.
34. Are a 2nd or 3rd (or more) generation atheist? - My father and great-grandfather were clergymen.  So that’ll be a ‘no’ then.
35. Have “atheism” listed on your Facebook or dating profile — and not a euphemistic variant? - Oh, I don’t know.  I think I don’t list it one way or the other.
36. Attended an atheist’s funeral (i.e. a non-religious service)? - No, but see #12 above.
37. Subscribe to a freethought magazine (e.g. Free Inquiry, Skeptic)? - Only as podcasts.
38. Have been interviewed by a reporter because of your atheism? - No
39. Written a letter-to-the-editor about an issue related to your non-belief in God? - No.   But I did write a chunk of the Wikipedia entry on the atheist bus campaign.
40. Gave a friend or acquaintance a New Atheist book as a gift? – “The Selfish Gene” doesn’t count, presumably.  Call that a “no”.
41. Wear pro-atheist clothing in public? - No.  But then I don’t wear any slogans in public.
42. Have invited Mormons/Jehovah’s Witnesses into your house specifically because you wanted to argue with them? - No.  One and only precious lifetime.  Not going to spend it arguing about something that doesn’t exist.
43. Have been physically threatened (or beaten up) because you didn’t believe in God? - No.
44. Receive Google Alerts on “atheism” (or variants)? - No.
45. Received fewer Christmas presents than expected because people assumed you didn’t celebrate it? - No.  I actually don’t celebrate it when I’m single, only when I’m in a relationship with someone who does.  I find it bemusing and rather sweet that people give me presents.
46. Visited The Creation Museum or saw Ben Stein’s Expelled just so you could keep tabs on the “enemy”? – No
47. Refuse to tell anyone what your “sign” is… because it doesn’t matter at all? - No.  Confirmation bias and expectations theory have made me an absolutely typical Aries.  Little sheep that I am.  Baa-aaa-aaa.
48. Are on a mailing list for a Christian organization just so you can see what they’re up to?  - Do I look like someone who gives a bleep?
49. Have kept your eyes open while you watched others around you pray? - No.  I still bob to the knees when I sit down in Church.  Pavlov again.  It stops other people chatting to me and lets me focus on why I’m there – wedding, funeral, whatever.
50. Avoid even Unitarian churches because they’re too close to religion for you? - Eh?

And just so you know how you fare, here’s a scale to rank yourself (adapted from Darwin’s Dagger’s suggestions):

0-10: Impressive, but not too far from agnosticism.
11-20: You are, literally, a “New Atheist.” But you now have something to strive for! Go for the full 50!
21-30: You are an atheist, but babies aren’t running away from you. Yet.
31-40: You are the 5th Horseman! Congratulations!
41-50: PZ Myers will now be taking lessons from you.

That’s 5 or so out of 50.  So not a militant then.