The Virtual Stoa

Mrs Betty Bowers is a better Christian than you! And she has a very fine website to prove it.

The world’s media is queuing up to write about Rory’s trek across Afghanistan. Here’s the opening few lines of the latest, from the Los Angeles Times (and they even have a photo!):

600-Mile Journey in Nowhere Land

Afghanistan: Scotsman sets off on foot through some of the Earth’s most forbidding terrain.

By DAVID ZUCCHINO, Times Staff Writer

HERAT, Afghanistan — For breakfast Sunday morning, Rory Stewart ate four fried eggs and a fistful of naan, the flat Afghan bread. Then he walked to the local bazaar and bought 20 tablets of the antibiotic Cipro, two dog-eared English-language books and a walking stick.

Now he was ready to walk across Afghanistan.

Stewart, an Oxford-educated Scotsman, set out Sunday afternoon on a 600-mile walk through some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth. He intends to hike from Herat, in western Afghanistan, to Kabul in the east, through snow and ice, past bandits and gunmen, wolves and guard dogs, famine and drought.

Stewart is fairly certain–and there are no known challengers–that he was the first tourist to enter Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime late last year. He is unquestionably the most unconventional foreigner in these parts, with his skeletal 126-pound frame and his dream of walking the path once taken by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane…

The LA Times does seem to have its finger on the pulse: they had the most detailed coverage of the American fad for Stoicism in 1999…

Thanks to Tim for drawing today’s article to the attention of the weblog.

Thomas Ferenczi writes in Le Monde:

Les controverses suscit�es par les interventions publiques de Pierre Bourdieu au cours des derni�res ann�es ont quelquefois obscurci l’image de celui qui est largement reconnu comme l’un des grands penseurs de la soci�t� contemporaine. Un de ses disciples, Louis Pinto, a rappel�, il y a deux ans, dans un livre consacr� � Pierre Bourdieu et la th�orie du monde social, comment le travail du sociologue a repr�sent� “une r�volution symbolique” analogue � celles qu’on a pu rencontrer dans d’autres disciplines, en musique, en peinture, en philosophie ou en physique.Ce qu’a apport� Pierre Bourdieu � la sociologie, expliquait Louis Pinto, est avant tout une “mani�re nouvelle de voir le monde social” en accordant “une fonction majeure aux structures symboliques”. ���
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L’�ducation, la culture, la litt�rature, l’art, qui furent ses premiers sujets d’�tude, appartiennent � cet univers. Mais les m�dias et la politique, dont Pierre Bourdieu fit, � la fin de sa vie, son champ d’investigation privil�gi�, rel�vent �galement de cette approche. Ce qui caract�rise les “champs de production symbolique”, selon Louis Pinto, c’est le fait que les “rapports de forces entre agents” ne s’y pr�sentent que “dans la forme transfigur�e et euph�mis�e de rapports de sens”. Autrement dit, la “violence symbolique”, th�me central des travaux de Pierre Bourdieu, ne s’analyse pas comme une pure et simple instrumentation au service de la classe dominante, elle s’exerce aussi � travers le jeu des acteurs sociaux. C’est sans doute cette volont� de surmonter les “fausses antinomies” de la tradition sociologique � entre interpr�tation et explication, entre structure et histoire, entre libert� et d�terminisme, entre individu et soci�t�, entre subjectivisme et objectivisme � qui donne � la sociologie de Pierre Bourdieu son originalit�.

Des H�ritiers, un de ses premiers livres, publi� en 1964 avec Jean-Claude Passeron, aux Structures sociales de l’�conomie en 2000, en passant par La Distinction en 1979 et l’ouvrage collectif La Mis�re du monde en 1993, pour ne citer que quelques-uns des quelque vingt-cinq livres qu’il a publi�s, il a ouvert une voie d’une grande richesse. En lui d�cernant sa m�daille d’or, en 1993, le CNRS lui rendait un hommage m�rit�. Pierre Bourdieu, estimait le CNRS, “a r�g�n�r� la sociologie fran�aise, associant en permanence la rigueur exp�rimentale avec la th�orie fond�e sur une grande culture en philosophie, anthropologie et sociologie”. Mais Pierre Bourdieu n’�tait pas seulement un chercheur exceptionnel, reconnu par ses pairs � travers le monde, il �tait aussi un intellectuel soucieux d’intervenir dans le d�bat public, dans la tradition fran�aise de Zola � Sartre. Il avait fait beaucoup, dans les ann�es 1990, pour donner une grande visibilit� au mouvement social et incarner ce qu’il appelait une “gauche de gauche”, c’est-�-dire une gauche refusant les compromis consentis, selon lui, par le Parti socialiste. “Dix ans de pouvoir socialiste ont port� � son ach�vement, nous d�clarait-il en 1992, la d�molition de la croyance en l’Etat et la destruction de l’Etat-providence entreprise dans les ann�es 1970 au nom du lib�ralisme.” Face au silence des politiques, il en appelait � la mobilisation des intellectuels. “Ce que je d�fends, expliquait-il dans ce m�me entretien, c’est la possibilit� et la n�cessit� de l’intellectuel critique.” Il ajoutait : “Il n’y a pas de d�mocratie effective sans vrai contre-pouvoir critique. L’intellectuel en est un, et de premi�re grandeur.”

Ce combat contre le n�olib�ralisme sous toutes ses formes, Pierre Bourdieu y avait consacr� ses derni�res forces. De plus en plus, il s’effor�ait de combiner la posture du savant et celle du militant en mettant ses connaissances scientifiques au service de son engagement politique. “Je me suis trouv� par la logique de mon travail, soulignait-il dans l’un de ses derniers ouvrages (Contre-feux 2, Pour un mouvement social europ�en), � outrepasser les limites que je m’�tais assign�es au nom d’une id�e de l’objectivit� qui m’est apparue comme une forme de censure.” Il se disait soucieux de “faire sortir les savoirs de la cit� savante” afin d’offrir de solides bases th�oriques � ceux qui tentaient de comprendre et de changer le monde contemporain.

Cette lutte passait aussi par une mise en cause des m�dias, que Pierre Bourdieu jugeait soumis � une logique commerciale croissante et auxquels il reprochait de donner la parole, � longueur de temps, � des “essayistes bavards et incomp�tents”. Dans l’une de ses derni�res interventions, en 1999, il s’�tait adress� aux responsables des grands groupes de communication. Dans ces “Questions aux vrais ma�tres du monde”, il affirmait notamment : “Ce pouvoir symbolique qui, dans la plupart des soci�t�s, �tait distinct du pouvoir politique ou �conomique, est aujourd’hui r�uni entre les mains des m�mes personnes, qui d�tiennent le contr�le des grands groupes de communication, c’est-�-dire de l’ensemble des instruments de production et de diffusion des biens culturels.”

Il s’�levait contre cette mondialisation-l�, refusant le choix entre la mondialisation con�ue comme “soumission aux lois du commerce” et au r�gne du “commercial”, qui est toujours “le contraire de ce que l’on entend � peu pr�s universellement par culture”, et la d�fense des cultures nationales ou “telle ou telle forme de nationalisme ou localisme culturel”. Loin des souverainistes, il plaidait au contraire inlassablement pour plus d’universel. En se pronon�ant pour “un mouvement social europ�en”, comme premi�re �tape d’un internationalisme bien compris, il d�fendait cet id�al, fid�le � son r�le d’intellectuel critique.

Il restait en m�me temps attach� � sa conception de la sociologie, telle qu’il avait expos�e, en 1982, dans sa le�on inaugurale au Coll�ge de France. “La sociologie n’est pas un chapitre de la m�canique, disait-il, et les champs sociaux sont des champs de forces mais aussi des champs de luttes pour transformer ou conserver ces champs de forces.” Il ajoutait : “Le rapport pratique ou pens� que les agents entretiennent avec le jeu fait partie du jeu et peut �tre au principe de sa transformation.” Contre tous ceux qui l’accusaient de donner trop de poids aux structures et de s’en tenir � un d�terminisme d�mobilisateur, il proclamait ainsi sa croyance en la libert� de l’homme. Sa vie et son �uvre sont l� pour t�moigner de cette forte conviction.

First Nozick, then Bourdieu. At a steady rate of one a day, this is startlingly similar to The Name of the Rose.

From Reuters (with thanks to Naunihal for passing this my way):

ROME (Reuters) - The rest of the world may see box office smash The Lord of the Rings as a mythical tale of hobbits and goblins but some young members of Italy’s far right hope to use the film to promote their political ideals.

“We want to use the event as an incredible volcano to help people understand our view of the world,'’ said Basilio Catanoso, youth wing leader of the far-right National Alliance party.

Right-wing thinkers and publishers, who introduced the Italian public to the fantasy classic in the 1970s, see the 1,000-page tome by Britain’s J.R.R. Tolkien as a celebration of their own values of physical strength, leadership and integrity.

The National Alliance youth wing is looking back to the 1970s when Italian rightists spun its own interpretation of Tolkien’s mythical world to bolster their image, already imbued with Celtic legends, knights and a cult of personal strength.

“There is a deep significance to this work. The Lord of the Rings is the battle between community and individuality,'’ Catanoso said.

But the tale can be seen supporting either end of the political spectrum. ‘’The destruction of the ring of power, the multiracial aspect — hobbits, elves, men and dwarfs united against evil are all leftist ideals,'’ said Francesco Alo’, editor of Italian film Web site www.caltanet.it.

Tolkien always denied any political intent in the book.

The story follows the struggle of a young hobbit named Frodo Baggins, played by Elijah Wood in the film, to destroy a ring of power which holds the key to the future of civilization.

The cult book evokes a fantasy world peopled by goblins, hobbits and elves.

“Only in Italy is The Lord of the Rings seen as right wing, no other country in the world has a similar reading of Tolkien,'’ said Valerio Evangelisti, an Italian fantasy writer.

In the 1970s, neo-fascist summer training centers nicknamed ‘’Hobbit Camps'’ were set up by the National Alliance’s predecessor, the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

The National Alliance split from the MSI in the mid-1990s. Its current leader, Gianfranco Fini, who is also deputy prime minister, has tried to give the party a new image.

The National Alliance has five ministers in the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

But tradition still echoes in the party’s ranks.

National Alliance’s youth wing plans a campaign to boost membership, inviting students to “enter the fellowship,'’ an allusion to The Fellowship of the Ring, the first book of the Tolkien trilogy.

The film opened on Friday in 700 cinemas in Italy. So far it has grossed more than $500 million worldwide.

I’ll stop posting tonight soon, I promise.

From the Harvard Gazette:

Philosopher Nozick dies at 63
University professor was major intellectual figure of 20th century
By Ken Gewertz, Gazette Staff University

rofessor Robert Nozick, one of the late 20th century’s most influential thinkers, died on the morning of Jan. 23 at the age of 63. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1994.

Nozick, known for his wide-ranging intellect and engaging style as both writer and teacher, had taught a course on the Russian Revolution during the fall semester and was planning to teach again in the spring. His last major book, “Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World,” was published by Harvard University Press in October 2001.

According to Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and a longtime friend, Nozick had been talking with colleagues and critiquing their work until a week before his death.

“His mind remained brilliant and sharp to the very end,” Dershowitz said.

He added that Nozick was “constantly probing, always learning new subjects. He was a University Professor in the best sense of the term. He taught everybody in every discipline. He was a wonderful teacher, constantly rethinking his own views and sharing his new ideas with students and colleagues. His unique philosophy has influenced generations of readers and will continue to influence people for generations to come.”

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers said of Nozick’s passing, “I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Robert Nozick. Harvard and the entire world of ideas have lost a brilliant and provocative scholar, profoundly influential within his own field of philosophy and well beyond. All of us will greatly miss his lively mind and spirited presence, but his ideas and example will continue to enrich us for years to come.”

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles said, “Bob Nozick was a luminous and wide-ranging philosopher who engaged students and colleagues from across the University and beyond. The loss to philosophy and to Harvard is grievous.”

Philosophy Department Chair Christine Korsgaard described Nozick as “a brilliant and fearless thinker, very fast on his feet in discussion, and apparently interested in everything. Both in his teaching and in his writing, he did not stay within the confines of any traditional field, but rather followed his interests into many areas of philosophy. His works throw light on a broad range of philosophical issues, and on their connection with other disciplines. The courage with which he faced the last years of illness, and the irrepressible energy with which he continued to work, made a very deep impression on all of us.”

Nozick’s controversial and challenging views gained him considerable attention and influence in the world beyond the academy.

His first book, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” (1974), transformed him from a young philosophy professor known only within his profession to the reluctant theoretician of a national political movement.

He wrote the book as a critique of “Theory of Justice” (1971), by his Harvard colleague John Rawls, the James Bryant Conant University Professor Emeritus. Rawls’ book provided a philosophical underpinning for the bureaucratic welfare state, a methodically reasoned argument for why it was right for the state to redistribute wealth in order to help the poor and disadvantaged.

Nozick’s book argued that the rights of the individual are primary and that nothing more than a minimal state - sufficient to protect against violence and theft, and to ensure the enforcement of contracts - is justified. “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” won the National Book Award and was named by The Times Literary Supplement as one of “The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the War.”

A former member of the radical left who was converted to a libertarian perspective as a graduate student, largely through his reading of conservative economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Nozick was never comfortable with his putative status as an ideologue of the right.

In a 1978 article in The New York Times Magazine he said that “right-wing people like the pro-free-market argument, but don’t like the arguments for individual liberty in cases like gay rights - although I view them as an interconnecting whole. …”

Whether they agreed or disagreed with the political implication of the book, critics were nearly unanimous in their appreciation for Nozick’s lively, accessible writing style. In a discipline known for arduous writing, Nozick’s approach was hailed as a breath of fresh air.

He explained his approach in the article cited above: “It is as though what philosophers want is a way of saying something that will leave the person they’re talking to no escape. Well, why should they be bludgeoning people like that? It’s not a nice way to behave.”

Despite the notoriety and influence that his first book brought him, Nozick moved on to explore very different territory in his second book, “Philosophical Explanations” (1981). This need to be intellectually on the move at all times characterized his career. He once told an interviewer, “I didn’t want to spend my life writing ‘The Son of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.’”

In “Philosophical Explanations,” Nozick took on subjects that many academic philosophers had dismissed as irrelevant or meaningless, such as free will versus determinism and the nature of subjective experience, and why there is something rather than nothing. In dealing with these questions, he rejected the idea of strict philosophical proof, adopting instead a notion of philosophical pluralism.

“There are various philosophical views, mutually incompatible, which cannot be dismissed or simply rejected,” he wrote in “Philosophical Explanations.” “Philosophy’s output is the basketful of these admissible views, all together.” Nozick suggested that this basketful of views could be ordered according to criteria of coherence and adequacy and that even second- and third-ranked views might offer valuable truths and insights.

Nozick continued to develop his theory of philosophical pluralism in his next book, “The Examined Life” (1989), an exploration of the individual’s relation to reality that, once again, emphasized explanation rather than proof.

In his book, “The Nature of Rationality” (1995), Nozick asked what function principles serve in our daily life and why we don’t simply act on whim or out of self-interest. “Socratic Puzzles” (1997) was a collection of essays, articles, and reviews, plus several examples of Nozick’s philosophical short fiction.

His next work, “Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World,” (2001) looks at the nature of truth and objectivity and examines the function of subjective consciousness in an objective world. It also scrutinizes truth in ethics and discusses whether truth in general is relative to culture and social factors.

Nozick’s teaching followed the same lively, unorthodox, heterogeneous pattern as his writing. With one exception, he never taught the same course twice. The exception was “The Best Things in Life,” which he presented in 1982 and ‘83, attempting to derive from the class discussion a general theory of values. The course description called it an exploration of “the nature and value of those things deemed best, such as friendship, love, intellectual understanding, sexual pleasure, achievement, adventure, play, luxury, fame, power, enlightenment, and ice cream.”

Speaking without notes, Nozick would pace restlessly back and forth, an ever-present can of Tab in his hand, drawing his students into a free-ranging discussion of the topic at hand.

He once defended his “thinking out loud” approach by comparing it with the more traditional method of giving students finished views of the great philosophical ideas.

“Presenting a completely polished and worked-out view doesn’t give students a feel for what it’s like to do original work in philosophy and to see it happen, to catch on to doing it.”

He also used his teaching as a way of working out his ideas, often leading to views that he would later present in book form. “If somebody wants to know what I’m going to do next, what they ought to do is keep an eye on the Harvard course catalogue,” he once told an interviewer.

Nozick, who grew up in Brooklyn and attended public school there, came to philosophy via a paperback version of Plato’s “Republic,” which he found intellectually thrilling. Nozick described the experience in his 1989 book, “The Examined Life” - “When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato’s �Republic’; front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.”

Nozick obtained an A.B. degree from Columbia College in 1959, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton in 1961 and 1963, respectively. After stints at Princeton and the Rockefeller University, Nozick came to Harvard as a full professor in 1969, at the age of 30. He became Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy in 1985 and in 1998 was named the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor.

Nozick was the recipient of many awards and honors, among them the Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association in 1998, which described him as “one of the most brilliant and original living philosophers.”

Nozick was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and a senior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He served as the president of the American Philosophical Association’s Eastern Division from 1997 to 1998, was a Christensen visiting fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, 1997, and a cultural adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the UNESCO Conference on World Cultural Policy in 1982.

In the spring of 1997, he delivered the six John Locke Lectures at Oxford University. He held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

He is survived by his wife, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, and his two children, Emily Sarah Nozick and David Joshua Nozick.

Nozick will be buried in a private ceremony. A memorial service is being planned for sometime in February.

Time for some serious retrospective activity…

This is rather blissful, and comes from the satirewire:

ENRON CHAIRMAN QUITS TO JOIN E.N.R.O.N.,
ENERGY NATIONAL RESOURCE ORGANIZATION of NIGERIA
Asks For Your Confidential Assistances, Bank Accounts Numbers Lagos, Nigeria (SatireWire.com) � Saying he had finally found a venue worthy of his business model, Kenneth Lay resigned today as chairman of Enron to join the Energy National Resource Organization of Nigeria, which needs your confidential assistance in the transferring of offshore funds into a new company of Nigeria that will provide incredible profit on paper by the trading of energy contracts.

According to an email sent to undisclosed recipients by Lay, who now identifies himself as a “close advisor” to the Nigerian National Petroleum Ministry, he is interested to do business with you because of credible reports that you will recognize this opportunity of great wealth. All that is required, the letter stated, is your banking accounts number and your purchase of stock of this energy trading company that has no traceable losses or shell companies or indictable irregularities of any kind.

Dr. Tunde Momoh, director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Ministry, which is coordinating the E.N.R.O.N. initiative, said the addition of Lay to his staff has given a boost to all Nigerian government ministries, which traditionally earned revenues by asking you to provide your bank account number so as to make possible the transfer of $US50 million from a soon-to-be-exposed Ministry fund. For your assistance, you would receive 20 percent of these moneys.

“We are thrilled to have now someone of Mr. Lay’s experiences,” said Momoh. “It is rare to find a non-Nigerian who is familiar with our methods and objectives, and his idea for the creating of the energy trading company E.N.R.O.N. is inspired.”

“When I am first hearing of it, I admit it has the sound of crazy,” Momah added, “but (Lay) is telling us that based on his experiences, this could work for years.”

Contacted at his confidential fax number, Lay said he was excited by the change, and predicted he would adapt easily to Nigerian methods. “It’s a new country and I’ve had to learn to muddle a bit my syntax, but the basic business approach is something we both have in common,” he said. “I only wish I had started here first.”

Lay added that, as he did at Enron, where he served as both chairman and chief executive officer, the new job will enable him to take part in several Nigerian businesses, including stints as Dr. Chukwuma Mbaduwa, an accountant in the Nigerian Transport Ministry, Abu Idomu, a top official of the federal government contract review panel, and the Lady Maryam Abacha, wife of late Gen. Sani Abacha, ex-military head of state of Nigeria, whose assets have been frozen except for $50 million she stuffed in a box labeled as photographic materials which she deposited in a security company where her brother-in-law works as general manager and she now needs your assistance in retrieving these moneys.

Click here to read the letter.

Many thanks to Nick for drawing this variation on a now-familiar theme to the attention of the weblog.

I was lucky enough earlier this evening to come across the email address of the last remaining Shaker community in the United States, so I sent them a polite note to express a modicum of admiration and find out how they were getting along. They replied within a couple of hours to report that there were now five Shakers, aged between 38 and 74, that they continue to be open to new members, that the most recent arrival became a Shaker in May of last year, and that they continue the traditional Shaker way of life, farming cattle, sheep and pigs, and growing various vegetables. It is excellent to hear from them.

The Shakers are, of course, the oldest communal association in the United States, with a history of over two hundred years of utopian socialism in action. You may have come across their furniture, of course, which is fine (if a little expensive these days); and the tune of the classic hymn “Lord of the Dance” is an old Shaker tune, which Aaron Copland appropriated for his Appalachian Spring, and for which Sydney Carter supplied a new set of words. There were once many thousands of Shakers across the North and East of the United States — and now, we learn, there are five; but from the evidence of this message, they still seem to be in good spirits, and we all wish them well.

For more on the Shakers, try www.shakers.org or the Sabbathday Lake community.

From Machiavelli’s Discourses, I.27:

When Pope Julius II went to Bologna in 1505 to expel from that state the house of Bentivogli, which had held the princiapte of the city for a hundred years, he also wished - as one who had taken an oath against all the tyrants who seized towns of the church - to remove Giovampagolo Baglioni, tyrant of Perugia. Having arrived near Perugia, with this intent and decision known to everyone, he did not wait to enter that city with his army, which was guarding him, but entered it unarmed, notwithstanding that Giovampagolo was inside with many troops that he had gathered for defense of himself. So, carried along by that fury with which he governed all things, he put hiimself with a single guard in the hands of his enemey, whom he then led away with him, leaving a governor in the city who would render justice for the church. The rashness of the pope and the cowardice of Giovampagolo were noted by the prudent men who were with the pope, and they were unable to guess whence it came that he did not to his perpetual fame, crush his enemy at a stroke and enrich himself with booty, since with the pope were all the cardinals with all their delights. Nor could one believe that he had abstained either through goodness or through conscience that held him back; for into the breast of a villainous man, who was taking his sister for himself, who had killed his cousins and nephews so as to reign, no pious respect could descend. But it was concluded that it arose from men’s not knowing how to be honorably wicked or perfectly good; and when malice has greatness in itself or is generous in some part, they do not know how to enter into it.

So Giovampagolo, who did not mind being incestuous and a public parricide, did not know how - or, to say it better, did not dare, when he had just the opportunity for it - to engage in an enterprise in which everyone would have admired his spirit and that would have left an eternal memory of himself as being the first who had demonstrated to the prelates how little is to be esteemed whoever lives and reigns as they do; and he would have done a thing whose greatness would have surpassed all infamy, every danger, that could have proceeded from it.

From the translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov.

Happy birthday, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), everybody’s favourite dead Sardinian militant. You are one hundred and eleven today!

Thanks to Heather for sending this my way.

It’s the two hundred and ninth anniversary today of the execution of Louis XVI! Also the anniversary of the death of Lenin (1924), but everything rather pales into insignificance set beside a full-blown regicide.

I was lucky enough to be in Rome at the weekend, and visited the “Domus Aurea”, Nero’s “Golden House”, which is carved out underneath the Caelian Hill. Suetonius has this marvellous description of what it was once like, from his life of Nero in The Twelve Caesars:

“His wastefulness showed most of all in the architectural projects. He built a palace, stretching from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which he called ‘The Passageway’; and when it burned down soon afterwards, rebuilt it under the new name of ‘The Golden House’. The following details will give some notion of its size and magnificence. A huge statue of himself, 120 feet high, stood in the entrace hall; and the pillared arcade ran for a whole mile. An enormous pool, more like a sea than a pool, was surrounded by buildings made to resemble cities, and by a landscape garden consisting of ploughed fields, vineyards, pastures and woodlands - where every variety of domestic and wild animals roamed about. Parts of the house were overlaid with gold and studded with precious stones and nacre. All the dining-rooms had ceilings of fretted ivory, the panels of which could slide back and let a rain of flowers, or of perfume from hidden sprinklers, shower upon his guests. The main dining-room was circular, and its roof revolved slowly, day and night, in time with the sky. Sea water, or sulphur water, was always on tap in the baths. When the palace had been decorated throughout in this lavish style, Nero dedicated it, and condescended to remark: ‘Good, now I can at last begin to live like a human being!’.”

It would be lovely, if implausible, to think that this was what Nero’s tutor Seneca was thinking of, when he issued his famous injunction at the end of his treatise De Ira (On Anger) that we should learn to “cultivate our humanity” (colamus humanitatem).

OK. In the end, I couldn’t resist this photo, from the BBC, which shows the result of the notorious encounter between W. and the terrorist pretzel. Best joke so far is that it serves the teetotal W. right for attempting to eat pretzels without beer.

Nick wrote [17.1.2002]: Avidly following the weblog (as ever), I thought you’d enjoy this.

The bobblog is flourishing again, after a lengthy gap, during which Bob went jobhunting, and a period of only intermittent posting in late December and the New Year. But he’s back on form now with a lot of good stuff — including yet more mockery of W. (this time for his failure to eat pretzels), and the text of an advert for a language course which asks “Wouldn’t you like to communicate with your Spanish speaking domestic help? … Learn specialized vocabulary, phrases expressions and the basics to give instructions in Spanish for house cleaning, food preparation, child care, yard and garden and errands”. And — better yet — he has a job to go to in the Sociology department of St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Well done, Bob (since I know he visits these columns from time to time): this is very good news indeed.

Bob wrote [14.1.2002]: Thanks for the plug in the blog…and for the nice words. You sure do know how to make a guy blush… ; ) I’m honored. I enjoy your blog as well, and I have to admit, I laughed out loud at your newest entry on GWB re: the pretzels and beer. Keep on bloggin’!

Wow. If you haven’t yet been, do visit the multimedia spectacular over at godblessronaldreagan.com.

Sarah [15.1.2002] recommends thegipper.com.

Where are our old tutorial partners now? One of them was on this morning’s Today programme, on Radio Four. (For American readers of the weblog, think NPR’s Morning Edition):

James Naughtie: Twenty five minutes past eight. Well, Afghanistan is still in a strange state but it hasn’t deterred someone called Rory Stewart from turning up in Kabul as a tourist. Now, he’s a former British diplomat, he’s 29, he’s walking across Asia, he’s going to be writing a book, almost needless to say. He was in Peshawar in Pakistan and decided on a diversion into Afghanistan. He’s going to visit some of the historic sites, presumably those where the Taliban didn’t blow up the statues, and he’s going to go trekking. Now shortly after he arrived in Kabul, Mike Wooldridge, our correspondent, asked him whether he’d ever thought twice about coming where few tourists might fear, might dare to tread.Rory Stewart: Yes, many second thoughts. The road I came in on has had four journalists killed there five weeks ago. And so obviously I was very worried. On the other hand I have been walking on foot across Asia through relatively dangerous areas over the last year and a half. I’ve been walking through Nepal during the Maoist insurgency, through Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iran. And I think if you’re relatively careful and do your planning correctly — I tend to travel in as low key a fashion as possible — you should be all right. I wear Pakistani-stroke-Afghani clothes. I talked at the border with the authorities there. I hired a car which I knew was tied in to the local commander…

Mike Wooldridge: Did they actually at the border take some convincing that you should be allowed through?

Rory: I think their basic interest is financial.

Mike: So you mean you had to pay your way in?

Rory: Well, I certainly had to pay quite a lot for the taxi, and how much of that goes to the commander I don’t know.

Mike: I suppose I have to ask you: do you feel it’s right to be a tourist here at the moment? I mean you could obviously run into difficulties, and then there might be security risks for others trying to rescue you if that were to happen.

Rory: I think that’s absolutely right. The British Embassy’s got a very clear travel advisory against people coming here, so people shouldn’t be encouraged to come here.

Mike: Which you would know very well as a former diplomat.

Rory: Which I know very well as a former diplomat. And I realise very well the amount of trouble you cause for people if you do get kidnapped. Other people have to risk their lives and it causes a lot of problems. On the other hand I do belive that for countries like Afghanistan, tourism is good, and I think this is a very important time for Afghanistan. I think the country’s turning round. There is the possibility of a renaissance and future security. It would be very nice if the world began to realise what hospitable and warm people Afghanis are, to overcome the impression that the place is a desperate war zone…

What a loony. Thanks to Olly, the perennial Radio Four listener, for drawing this to my attention. (I was asleep at the time). If you never saw Bachman Reza’s letter to the London Review of Books, responding to Rory’s essay on walking through Iran (LRB Diary, 6 September 2001), do have a look. It is also very funny.Dave wrote [14.1.2002]: Thanks for sending me that. I haven’t knowingly spoken to Rory since 1990, which is an enormous shame, because he certainly seems to live an interesting life. And a double shame, since he was my very best friend in the world at two times - 4 and 16!

From “The Dead”, in Dubliners:

It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

In memoriam James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, died this day, 1941.

“Etonian smokes dope” is about as much of a non-story as the “students get drunk” stories we were served up towards the end of last year after various goings-on at St. Catherine’s College in Cambridge. The real pleasure of today’s Harry’s Drug Shame stories, of course, is that we will be treated to more of the ruminations and calming words of Lord St. John of Fawsley. The story was of “no public interest whatsoever”, he solemnly told the BBC. Please report further sightings of the nation’s favourite “constitutional expert”.

Chris adds [14.1.2002]: Perhaps there have not been as many sightings as I had anticipated. Here are a couple: “Lord St John of Fawsley told the BBC the News of the World’s revelations were serious, but should not be blown up out of proportion. ‘Prince Harry was the member of the Royal Family who suffered most from the death of his mother,’ he said. ‘The News of the World should have some concern for this boy and not expose him to this kind of publicity because there’s no public interest in that whatsoever.’ [Not everyone agreed with the noble lord: Guy Black, director of the Press Complaints Commission on the other hand said to the BBC that “It is important to underline that this was an exceptional matter of public interest”.] And according to Reuters, Lord St.J. of F. told BBC radio that “the person who has come totally well out of this is the Prince of Wales, who has acted as a responsible parent who hasn’t thought about the public issues but has taken his son along to get expert help”.

On Monday, W. spoke to reporters about the crisis in South Asia. Here’s what he said:

I don’t believe the situation is defused yet, but I do believe there is a way to do so, and we are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis there’s a way to deal with their problems without going to war.

Not all the news reports mentioned his use of the word “Pakis”. The Reuters report has “Pakistanis”; the BBC dropped the offending clause altogether; and the later report in Newsday conceded that the President had used a “slang term” which it described, in unexplained, unsourced quotation marks, as “definitely a derogatory term for Pakistanis”. W.’s spokesperson later denied he meant to be disrespectful; and on the strength of a statement from a spokesperson at the Pakistani embassy that “he did not consider what Bush said to be an insult”, the people at Opinion Journal decided that
“the whole ‘controversy’ in other words, seems to have been an invention of the White House press corps”. Some useful discussion is over at monkeyfish.com.

From today’s New Zealand Herald:

New Zealand’s greatest rock band, Shihad, are changing their name because of its similarity to jihad - the Islamic term for holy war - fearing a backlash as they try to make their mark in America.Osama bin Laden has called a jihad against the United States following the September 11 attacks.

A new name is yet to be decided on. Shihad drummer Tom Larkin said the decision was a tough one to make given the 13 years they had spent under the banner. It had been devastating to consider the implications of changing their name, he said.

“We’ve just spent four months in the US and every news item talks of the ‘Jihad against America’. As far as 99.9 per cent of Americans are concerned, ‘jihad’ means fundamentalist terrorist war against all Americans’.

“We wouldn’t get played on radio, we wouldn’t get tours and what would be the point?”

The name Shihad comes from the misspelling of the word jihad the band lifted from the novel Dune.

The group aim to have the new name in place before playing the Australasian Big Day Out tour, which starts in Auckland next Friday.

Thanks to Aziz, for drawing it to the attention of the weblog.

There’s some entertainment over at the ever-dreadful CNN:

“A gaffe,” Michael Kinsley once observed, “occurs not when a politician lies, but when he tells the truth.”

CNN made a terrible gaffe over the weekend and told a terrific truth.

It was refreshing to see somebody finally spit out what we all know but what the networks go to ludicrous lengths to deny: They hire and promote news stars based on looks and sex appeal.

About 10 times over the weekend, CNN ran an ad promoting Paula Zahn’s new morning show, “American Morning,” with a male announcer purring, “Where can you find a morning news anchor who’s provocative, super-smart, oh yeah, and just a little sexy?”

The word sexy then flared onto the screen, accompanied by a noise that sounded like a zipper unzipping.

The ad’s naked truth stunned television insiders. “If they’re sexy, so be it,” said Don Hewitt, executive producer of “60 Minutes.” “It ain’t necessary to say it. It’s undignified.

“Whatever Paula brings to television,” he said, “it’s despite the fact that she’s nicely put together. It diminishes a first-rate woman journalist to label her sexy. Why doesn’t CNN say that Wolf Blitzer is sexy? He must be sexy to somebody.”

On Monday the embarrassed CNN chief, Walter Isaacson, yanked the spot. “It was a bad mistake,” he said. “I’m really sorry. The promotion department didn’t get it cleared. You can say sexy about a man but not about a woman.”

A CNN spokesman explained that the noise was not supposed to be a zipper sound, but more like a needle scratching across an LP record — a sound effect sometimes used on “Ally McBeal.” …

From Maureen Dowd’s column, in yesterday’s New York Times.

British Asian novelist Rajeev Balasubramanyam has some opinions he’d like to share.

Hollywood, literally, is full of it: “buddy films”, like Lethal Weapon, with the black man as loyal sidekick to the white man, or Seven Years in Tibet, where Brad Pitt�s sidekick is none other than the Dalai Lama; or the inter-racial love story; or films like Biko, Hurricane or Amistad (returning to the abolitionist root of it all) which appear to be about black heroes, but turn out to be about white heroes who make black heroism possible….

From his new essay, “Living With The Whites”, available only at The Voice of the Turtle.

From today’s Hansard:

Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway): In anticipation of tomorrow’s important debate, will the Prime Minister consider what is the point of replacing a second Chamber that was rotten because of inherited patronage with a second Chamber that is rotten because of contemporary patronage?

The Prime Minister: First, the independent Members of the House of Lords will be appointed by the independent commission. Secondly, the political appointments can be made in one of two ways. Those Members could be wholly elected — some people here in the House agree with that — or they could be appointed through the political parties. In either event, those would obviously be political appointments. That is a matter for the House to debate, and of course we will listen carefully to the House’s views about the right way to proceed with House of Lords reform. However, I have to say to my hon. and learned Friend and other hon. Members that, listening to those views, it is clear that there are almost as many different views about what should happen with the House of Lords as there are Members of Parliament.

It’s nice to know that when voters elect someone to represent them in Parliament, the Prime Minister thinks this is a “political appointment” functionally indistinguishable from the exercise of arbitrary patronage by party bosses.

The poem is by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866); it is also the text of the first song in the Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the death of children) song cycle by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), written one hundred years ago (though not performed until 1905).

Sameer wrote [15.1.2002]: You may want to have a look at Mallarmé’s “Pour un Tombeau d’Anatole”, written in reponse to the illness and death of his eight-year-old son. Fragmentary, agonised, grappling - incredibly human and touching - especially for one whose reputation is so glacial and literary. Just this overwhelming sense of helpless love and sacrifice. Also see Paul Auster’s essay on it - the only bit of Auster I’ve ever read (the “New York Trilogy” stands uncracked on my shelf), but a keen response.