The Virtual Stoa

Here’s Andromache:

And here’s Enkidu:

We enjoyed Hannibal ad portas, which we saw in Karlsruhe just before it closed in January, and we’re looking forward to the Persians at the British Museum, though we won’t catch that until the New Year.

Biggest disappointment was Turks at the Royal Academy, which had some splendid objects, but wrapped it all up in the kind of ideological nonsense which pissed you off the more you thought about it.

On the eve of the elections, I thought I’d read the reports from the February 2004 and November 2005 National Survey of Iraq polls side by side, to see what the changes have been over time on the questions that were asked both times around, as I’ve found a number of presentations of the numbers on different blogs and in various media reports a bit annoying.

There’s a little bit of a shift in the “how are things going in your life” figures — more people are plumping for “very good” as opposed to “quite good” and more are choosing “quite bad” rather than “very bad”, but the overall numbers in the two main camps - good and bad - remain the about the same, with about 70% of people saying “good” and a little under 30% saying “bad”. But there’s certainly a small movement towards the people who are content with their lot over the last two years.

On the other hand, ask the same people how their lives compare with the way they were before the war, and another small shift is discernible, but this time towards people who think things are going less well for them. Numbers reporting things as being “much better” and “somewhat better” are down by 1.3% and 3.7% at 20.6% and 30.9% respectively; numbers saying things are “somewhat worse” or “much worse” are up by 6.4% and 4.3%, and now stand at 19.1% and 10.2%.

And people are slightly less optimistic about their prospects over the next 12 months than they were in February 2004, though the optimistis still heavily outnumber the pessimists. 34.9% think things will be “much better” (down 1.8%); 29.3% think they will be “somewhat better” (down 5%); 7.3% think things will be “somewhat worse” (up 4.1%); and 5.2% think things will be “much worse” (up 1.8%).

Support for a unitary Iraq remains high, but is falling. 79% of respondents opted for a “unified Iraq with central government in Baghdad” in February 2004; that’s now down to 70%, with support for a federal government up from 14% to 17.6% and support for partition rising from 3.8% to 9.1%.

In February 2004, 15.1% of those polled thought the coalition forces should “leave now”; that’s now up to 25.5%, which seems a pretty big shift. In the earlier poll 18.3% thought they should stay “until security is restored”; that’s now up to 30.9% — though I think the data here isn’t comparable, as respondents faced a different set of choices each time the poll was conducted.

The occupying forces aren’t especially popular. In February 2004 13.2% of Iraqis “strongly supported” the presence of coalition forces, now only 12.8% do, which is a trivial shift, as is the shift from 19.6% to 20.8% among those who “somewhat oppose” the presence of the troops. Less trivial, though, are the other two shifts in opinion: those who “somewhat support” their presence have fallen from 26.3% to 19.4%; those who “strongly oppose” the presence of occupying forces has risen from 31.3% to a substantial 43.7%.

The question about whether the occupying forces have done a good job or not wasn’t asked last time around, which was a shame, although I’d hazard a guess that there hasn’t been much change here: the answers to a different question from February 2004, about how much confidence Iraqis had in the occupying forces has a very similar profile. Thus in 2004 7.9% reported “a great deal of confidence”, 17.4% reported “quite a lot”, 23.5% reported “not very much” and 42.8% reported “none at all”. And these look pretty similar to the answers this time around to the “have done a good job” question, where 9.6% said “a very good job”, 26.6% said “quite a good job”, 18.8 said “quite a bad job” and 39.8% said “a very bad job”. But these weren’t the same questions, so comparisons are hazardous.

UPDATE [15.12.2004]: I forgot to include the stats on the “was the coalition right to invade in 2003″ question, though I think you know how this one goes by now. Here there’s a shift away from the thought that it was the right thing to do at all levels, which takes the belief that the invasion was wrong above the 50% level: 18.6% think it was “absolutely right” (down 1%); 27.8% think it “somewhat right” (down 1%); 17.2% think it “somewhat wrong” (up 4.3%); 33.1% think it “absolutely wrong” (up 6.9%), with the 12.7% of people who found it “difficult to say” in 2004 now making up a mere 3.5% of the population.

Can some friendly Lib-Dem-supporting VS-reader please explain in words of a few syllables what all this Charles Kennedy stuff is really about?

I heard some idiot on The World At One explaining that the problem with CK was that no-one could really imagine him as PM, which is true. But it’s clearly not at the root of the current flap, as there’s no Lib Dem whom anybody could begin to imagine as PM, and for lots of reasons. So, as I say, if some passing Lib Dem could explain what’s going on, that will save me from having to spend more time than I should like with tomorrow’s papers.

I mean, I assume he’s doomed, but quite who’s wielding the knife / axe [delete as applicable] isn’t yet clear.

Is the key point that some faction among the Lib Dems decided that putsching Kennedy won’t necessarily lead to a Simon Hughes leadership (which might require emigration to avoid)?

I’ve just posted the text of Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1968 radio broadcast, “The Strange Death of Social Democratic England” over here. It’s not especially well-known, but it’s interesting for all kinds of reasons, and, like everything he’s ever written, it’s a good read.

I’ve been to the theatre even less often than I’ve been to the cinema this year, but the two outstanding shows this year for me were both called Don Carlos. We saw Derek Jacobi in Schiller’s play in the middle of the year in London, which was splendid (costumes, acting, production, play); and we saw the Welsh National Opera’s production of Verdi’s epic opera towards its end in Oxford, which had one or two medium-sized problems (not enough subtlety on the part of the chap singing Philip in particular), but which was a thoroughly worthwhile production of a very difficult piece — and they made - in my opinion - all the right choices, with the five-act ever-so-slightly-trimmed-down French version, and the more brutal finale at the end. What did we miss (theatre and opera, please; concerts and other kinds of music will follow in a separate post)?

We’re dealing with books quite happily below. Now’s your chance to tell me whether there’ve been any good films this year that I’ve missed, as I don’t really read the film review pages any more. I enjoyed March of the Penguins last night, and am quite glad that I am not a penguin, but I’ve made very few trips to the cinema in 2005, despite living just around the corner from the only half-way decent cinema in Oxford. Downfall was probably the pick of the (small) bunch, with a remarkable performance from the Swiss chap playing Hitler.

Jill Craigie (also here), socialist film-maker; born in Fulham, 7 March 1914; died in Camden, 13 December 1999.

What books have you most enjoyed reading this year, Stoa-readers? I’m most interested in fairly-recently-published stuff, but if any of you want to tell me about older things that you really enjoyed go ahead. As you may have noticed, this is just like the features that every newspaper runs at this time of year, and that Private Eye regularly lampoons, but with this crucial difference: that I’m actually interested in your opinions.

I’ll kick off with endorsements for David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire and John Robertson, The Case for The Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680-1760, to which I’ll add a 2004 book which I only read more recently, Steven Nadler’s Spinoza’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind, which was full of things I didn’t know about, but wanted to.

Enkidu still continues to be a bit of a cause for concern: we took him in to chat to our new vet yesterday afternoon after the triple combination of (i) a bit of a limp on his previously-broken paw showing itself from time to time, (ii) a spot of bowel trouble a couple of days ago, and (iii) evidence of his first proper fight, in the form of a nasty-looking cut around the edge of his mouth. It was a very helpful chat, and he had a shot of antibiotics to help with the infection around his mouth, and he’s already looking much happier after spending most of today indoors.

Enkidu even sat in his new cat-bed earlier this afternoon, but when I popped upstairs to grab the camera, he hopped out again, and sat on the back of the sofa, where you can see him here:

Andromache, on the other hand, continues to generate no animal husbandry problems at all. Here she is, flexing her claws up in the attic:

I’m reading Robert Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism:

The term national socialism seems to have been invented by the French nationalist author Maurice Barrès, who described the aristocratic adventurer the Marquis de Mor�s in 1896 as the “first national socialist”. Mor�s, after failing as a cattle rancher in North Dakota, returned to Paris in the early 1890s and organized a band of anti-Semitic toughs who attacked Jewish shops and offices. As a cattleman, Mor�s found his recruits among slaughterhouse workers in Paris, to whom he appealed with a mixture of anticapitalism and anti-Semitic nationalism. His squads wore the cowboy garb and ten-gallon hats that the marquis had discovered in the American West, which thus predate black and brown shirts (by a modest stretch of the imagination) as the first fascist uniform…”

Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p.48.

David Cameron’s recently unveiled his new Tory team; I’m struck by just how many academic baubles they’ve picked up between them.

I count two Cambridge PhDs (Oliver Letwin MP, moral philosophy; David Lidington, Elizabethan history); at least five Oxford firsts (David Cameron, David Willetts, William Hague, Philip Hammond [all PPE] and George Osbourne [history]; not sure what Alan Duncan’s degree class was, but he held a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard, which suggests it might not have been bad); and there’s also Caroline Spelman (1st, European studies, Queen Mary College, London), Theresa Villiers (1st in law from Bristol, followed by an Oxford BCL and five years lecturing at KCL). And of the remaining dozen or so, virtually all seem to have degrees (does Lord Strathclyde? I’m not quite sure what google search string to use on him), half from Oxbridge.

The most impressive intellectual achievements are probably those of David Lidington, the new shadow secretary for Northern Ireland, who captained Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, to victory in the 1978 instalment of University Challenge, and then led the same team to victory again in the 2002 University Challenge Reunited champion of champions contest!

UPDATE [4.45pm]: Letwin’s 1982 thesis was on “Emotion and emotions”, and I assume it was the basis of his later book Ethics, emotion and the unity of the self; Lidington’s 1988 thesis was on “The enforcement of the penal statutes at the Court of Exchequer c.1558 - c.1576″.

UPDATE [13.12.2005]: Contributions in the comments suggest that Osbourne didn’t get a first after all, but that Andrew Mitchell (history, Cambridge) might have done, keeping the score at roughly what I thought it was.

I’ve already posted on the demolition of Lucy’s. Now it’s been confirmed that The Globe, the pub just over the road from me, isn’t going to reopen, but will probably be turned into flats.

One of the reason I liked the idea of moving to Cranham Street is that there was a spot a few yards from my door from which four licensed premises are clearly visible (with three more just out of sight!). Now there are only three. Still, it won’t make much of a difference to my life, as I never had a drink there.

Someone told me it used to be a National Front pub, which surprised me a bit, so if there’s any Stoa-reader out there with a long memory concerning this part of the world, please do your bit in the comments box.

[The next instalment of Defunct Oxford Institutions will be a sadder one: the St Giles Cafe appears to have shut down, too, either for good, or for a comprehensive remodelling inside.]

Matthew Turner has a graph to prove that Cameron will last c.329 days as Leader of the Conservative Party.

Watching David Cameron’s first appearance as Leader of the Opposition, I’m struck by the very ugly man sitting on his left on the Tory front bench (so on the right of the TV screen). Who’s that? I’m sure I should know, but it isn’t ringing a bell.

Dead Socialists over here, obviously, and Dead Botanists over here (e.g., here, here and, more extensively, here), and now some other socialist blogger is running a Dead Kings and Queens Watch over at this new blog (well, new to me), Histomat (e.g., here, here or here).

(It’s almost Fourier-esque, isn’t it? “But who’s going to remind people about the anniversaries of the day that certain kinds of people died?” “I know, the socialist bloggers will be quite happy reminding people about the anniversaries of the day that certain kind of people died!”)

Jennifer Pitts’ book, A Turn to Empire is out (in the States, at least: I picked up a copy at University Press Books in Berkeley; but it should appear over here before too long). I’m not wholly impartial, as we shared a flat in Cambridge, Mass., for two years, and I’ve read various early drafts over the years, but I think it looks great.

So if anyone’s interested in why English and French liberal political thought became quite so imperialist in the middle of the nineteenth-century (esp. Mill, Tocqueville) despite a fairly solidly anti-imperialist late-eighteenth-century ancestry (esp. Burke, Smith, Bentham), Pitts is your woman.

(A fairly topical subject, I’d have thought, given the extent to which people on blogs like to talk about the heritage of the Enlightenment, liberal empires, intervention in other countries’ affairs, and so on. Order yourself a copy now.)

(And, slightly off-topic, isn’t City Lights just wonderful?)

(I doubt this will become a regular feature, don’t worry.) On the plane on the way out to California, I read Jonathan Beecher’s 500-page biography of Charles Fourier, which was fun. Sandwiched between two biographical sections, the middle of the book gives an overview of Fourier’s developed doctrine of harmony and whatnot, which is a very handy summary.

I had remembered (of course, because who can forget?) that Fourier’s great answer to the “well, who will do all the crap work under your kind of socialism?” was “the children, because they will like getting themselves dirty!”, but I had forgotten quite how elaborate his thinking on the matter was, and I don’t think I had ever fully taken in what a Druid was:

What Fourier proposed was that the truly disgusting work of the Phalanx should be performed by groups of preadolescents who could conceive of no more delightful activity than wallowing in dirt and excrement. Fourier estimated that two-thirds of all boys and one-third of all girls between the ages of nine and fifteen fell into this category. Such children were passionately attracted to filth, and they were also generally foul-mouthed, surly, and willing to brave any danger “simply for the pleasure of wreaking havoc.” In Harmony these hitherto intolerable qualities would be put to good use. As members of the Little Hordes and entrusted with principal responsibility for such tasks as garbage collection, sewer maintenance, and the cleaning of slaughterhouses, these unruly children would be venerated by the community as “guardians of social honor” and (because they would refuse to accept pay) exemplars of “the spirit of abnegation recommended by Christianity”. They would have their own private language or slang, their own uniforms (in the “grotesque or barbarian style”), and their own leaders, called Little Khans and Little Khantes. They would be aided by acolytes called Bonzes and Druids - older people who had never outgrown the love of filth and who would accompany them on their missions.”

And, Beecher continues, “Fourier has left us with an unforgettable description of their departure for work in the morning”:

“The charge of the Little Hordes is sounded by a din of alarm bells, carillons, drums, trumpets, barking dogs, and mooing cows. Then the Hordes, led by their Khans and their Druids, rush forth with great cries, passing before the patriarchs, who sprinkle them with Holy Water. They gallop frenetically to labour, which is executed as a work of piety, an act of charity toward the Phalanx, the service of God and of unity.”

– Jonathan Beecher, Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, p.287.

I thought that while I was away I had regressed all the way back to Flappy Bird status, having been a Marauding Marsupial for a long time, bypassing the Adorable Rodent stage on my way down. But apparently this isn’t so much the consequence of a three-week blog-silence, but of general chaos in the ecosystem as major re-engineering is underway.

And, thinking of blogwidgets, do put yourself on the Map of the Stoa, if you haven’t already. Some parts of the world still appear to be unrepresented.

Over here.

One of the things we did in San Francisco was visit Best in Show, a few blocks away from where we were staying in the Castro. It’s an excellent pet shop. And we bought something that looks a bit like this, but in the purple colour (to match our sofa; scroll down), as our cats didn’t have a bed of their own.

(Well, they did have a nasty cheap one which I bought back in July, but Enkidu decided early on that it was a latrine, back in the days when his digestive system wasn’t entirely in working order, and we ended up throwing it out, unlamented by all.)

So the question for the cat psychologists out there is this: how do you induce kittens to start using their lovely new bed, imported all the way from California, instead of their usual sleeping places (at the top of the stairs, on top of my head, wherever)?

Andromache will occasionally rest in it for a few minutes when she’s placed in it; Enkidu just marches off immediately if we put him in it. I know several Cat Experts read this site, so any advice gratefully received.

(We did think about putting some catnip in it, but my guess is that that would overstimulate them just when you want them to be feeling calm and relaxed.)

Enkidu decides that Andromache’s head needs a bit of a wash…

Though he is quickly distracted by the need to wash his own front leg…

He quickly returns, however, to the important work of washing his sister…

Both kittens are distracted by a noise from somewhere…

And Enkidu jumps onto the photographer…

In other kitten-blogging-related news, I recently learned that this site is the internet’s #2 site for a search on “weird kitten clicks noises“.

Apologies for the break. I was off in San Francisco for a few days, and wasn’t scribbling on the blog for a few days either side of the trip in order to squeeze in all the things I had to squeeze in.

The end of term is always a busy time, especially if you disappear off to San Francisco for a few days.