The Virtual Stoa

Last Friday afternoon, as it happens, I tried to walk up to the top of Monte Nuvolone above Bellagio on Lake Como. I didn’t succeed, partly because I didn’t leave myself quite enough time, and partly because at one point I spectacularly missed the path, and it took quite a long time to find it again, much further up the slope. But while wandering through the fairly dark woods looking for the path again – in, significantly, my thirty-fifth year, I realised I was enjoying what can only be called an authentic Dante moment.

People tell me I should go off next in search of an authentic Petrarch moment in an attempt on Mont Ventoux, but those who know me better will know that if I ever do go up that mountain it won’t be by way of tribute to an Italian poet.

My friend Ted Vallance (his new-ish blog is over here) has just posted his report of this year’s Levellers’ Day in Burford over at the New Statesman website. Somewhat to my shame, I’ve never been.

Enkidu recently disappeared for (we think) three nights in a row, which isn’t typical behaviour, and in the end I found him on the corner of Victor St and Canal St where there’s a little alleyway that goes down to the canal, and I brought him home. (This confirms what other neighbours had told me, that he spends his time hanging out down at the canal, and this may be where he finds his mice.)
Anyway, this is by way of background to the fact that my friend Max Pensky, who has been a visiting philosopher at Oxford this year, is living round the corner from us in Jericho, on the street to which Enkidu is a frequent visitor, and has now turned to haiku.

First, there was this:

Enkidu’s return:
Indignant but glad he’s found
Like any good cat.

Then, yesterday, this:

Peripherally
Glimpsed, black-white quicksilver flash.
“Flink,” the Germans say.

And, this morning, the third instalment:

Dialectic of
Enkidu’s extremities:
Quite sharp, or quite soft.

Was this year the first time the French have entered a song with Anglo lyrics in the Eurovision song contest?

(You can tell that I’m brooding over the issues that matter.)

Is it true, as more than one person has suggested to me this evening, that Kant was only four foot eleven?

If it is true, a follow-up question: what was the average height of the German professoriat in the second half of the eighteenth century?

One of the faintly annoying things about last week’s coverage of Mr Blair’s resignation announcement is that not enough attention was being paid to the extent to which he was, at bottom, being deposed by his party.

It’s true that his departure doesn’t look much like Mrs Thatcher’s in 1990, but the underlying politics are pretty much the same: if you’re supported by the Cabinet but by not nearly enough of the back-benchers, you can’t remain Prime Minister for long. (The funny thing in Mrs T’s case is that she forgot this crucial rule: in her first term, she knew half the Cabinet didn’t want her as Prime Minister, but she had a keener sense than they did that this didn’t really matter.)

Shrewd observers (well, Jamie K at B&T) have been saying for a while now that the Blairite response would be along the lines of wanting to dissolve the ungrateful people and elect another one, that he was too good for us, etc., and we got this in great steaming dollops from John Rentoul at the weekend. But Rentoul at least acknowledged that “the real story behind his promise in September 2004 not to fight a fourth election” was “not a mistake, it was a tactic of self-preservation”, and that Blair was leaving office because he was being forced out.

And I’m writing this because I’ve just read Avi Shlaim’s new piece up at tehgraun, which starts with the words, “Tony Blair’s opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall.” And I think that’s more or less right. Certainly in my neck of the Labour woods, there was a perceptible shift in attitudes to Mr Blair’s continued tenure in office last Summer over precisely this issue, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the historians do ultimately judge that it was this more than anything else that meant that he left office in 2007 rather than 2008, which is what he must have been thinking at minimum when he said he’d serve for a “full term”.

Idiot.

A bunch of my friends went off to Helsinki last week. They said they were going to attend the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium of Political Research. But were they just too embarrassed to say that that they had tickets to Eurovision 2007? It’d be nice to think there were several analytical political theorists in the audience. Perhaps one of them was holding the much-filmed “Where Is Andorra?” placard?

Just as the separation of Montenegro and Serbia came suspiciously close to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, Tony Blair’s resignation was clearly timed to try to increase the chances of the Eurovision electorate casting any votes at all for the UK entry, but in the end only Ireland (7) and Malta (douze points!) co-operated. (Perhaps we should hand out the George Cross to foreign countries more liberally than we do.) Still, I was glad Scooch got something. 2003′s Jemini deserved nothing, and Flying the Flag For You was far better than that. Ukraine was robbed, though.

Is all of Eurovision ever on Youtube? There seems to quite a lot of it, anyway, as searching for things like “Eurovision 1957” is generating quite a lot of clips. But I won’t plough through them just yet.

And if we are stuck in the era of Eastern domination and shameless regional bloc-voting, please can all the North African countries in Eurovision get over their hang-ups about Israel, at least to the extent of sending in their official entries, in the interests of living in a more multi-polar Eurovision large geographical area? And the Italians should return to the fray. Just because they’ve got their very own San Remo festival doesn’t mean the rest of us think it’s OK to opt out of Eurovision.

(I was surprised Sweden didn’t do better.)

Enkidu and Andromache, two today (probably).

Here’s a birthday portrait of Enkidu:

And here’s a birthday portrait of Andromache:

UPDATE! [11.30pm] Enkidu has marked his birthday by catching a mouse, bringing it inside, and playing with it on the carpet!

If (as we all hope and now, thank goodness, expect) Tony Blair announces his departure from politics tomorrow and resigns the leadership of the Labour Party immediately, does that mean John Prescott will be the Acting Leader over the Summer (just as Margaret Beckett held the fort during the Euro-elections in between John Smith’s death and Tony Blair’s election). Or if John Prescott is going at the same time, does this mean that we’ll have someone else as an interim leader? And, if so, who? Or will we have an acephalous Party for a bit?

As befits his Sumerian origins (more or less), Enkidu appears to have perfected his proskynesis technique (though I doubt I’ll ever capture this on film).

The rubbish wars are escalating here in Jericho. About ten days ago The News of the World van was spotted driving around with a chap dressed up as Robin from Batman (pretty similar, anyway), and now Channel Four’s Dispatches tell me they’d like to have two weeks’ worth of my rubbish, and have given us an enormous yellow wheelie bin to put it in. I dread to think what’s coming next.

Robert Jospin, French pacifist, socialist, Lavaliste, and father of Lionel; born 9 June 1899, died 9 May 1990.

Elias Motsoaledi, South African trade unionist and anti-apartheid militant; one of Nelson Mandela’s co-defendants in the Rivonia trial, he spent twenty six years on Robben Island, and died on the day that Mandela was inaugurated as President. Born 26 July 1924, died 9 May 1994.

Not good at all. Over here.

UPDATE [Wednesday, am]: More here.

Happy May Day!

I’m still in a far-too-busy-to-be-posting-much-of-anything kind of state right now, but the old May Day-themed Stoa posts are on this page, and Dave Osler’s got a suitable joke for us all to enjoy.

In several years of recording Dead Socialists, I still haven’t come across one who died on May Day. I hope this is not accidental (comrade).

And, Americans!, for you, as ever, it is Loyalty Day!

(Actually, “as ever” doesn’t seem to be quite right: wikipedia tells me that in 1921 it started out as Americanization Day, which is even funnier.)

Here in Oxford, of course, we have our own reactionary invented traditions.

UPDATE [11.30pm]: Americans! Here is your annual Loyalty Day Proclamation!