The Virtual Stoa

H. G. Wells, novelist and socialist, born in Bromley, 21 September 1866; died in London, 13 August 1946.

From tehgraun‘s minute-by-minute Olympics coverage this morning [at 4:32am]:

Jessica in Connecticut provides an insight into superpower manipulations: ”You may not be aware of how the medal count is being tallied over here. Instead of using the official IOC medal table, which places the greatest emphasis on the number of gold medals earned (and thus shows China in the lead), US media outlets are determining standings based on total medals won. No prizes for guessing who’s in the lead when you count it that way.”

Americans, is this true?

While we were standing around outside the Town Hall this morning, Philip Pullman was being interviewed on the Today Programme [and scroll down to 0837 for the audio link].

(More over here.)

Well, not quite.

But Victoria Beckham’s great-great-great-grandfather turns out to be Carl Heinrich Pfaender, an associate of Karl Marx and, like him, an exile in London after participating in the failed revolutions of 1848-9.

In the notes to this article by the aged Engels, Pfaender is described in these terms: “C’était un homme d’une finesse toute particulière, spirituel, ironique, dialectique.”

If you prefer to hear about this kind of thing in German, why not try over here? (“Die Glamourfrau ist eine Schwäbin”, that kind of thing).

[thanks! SF]

Robin Cook, contributor to The Red Paper on Scotland, Labour MP and Foreign Secretary, born 28 February 1946, died 6 August 2005.

Extraordinary story.

[There's an old page about him from the Tory Party website in the Google cache here.]

Cracking cartoon in yesterday’s graun, from Martin Rowson:

[The original is, e.g., here.]

What are you all reading this Summer? Any recommendations?

Having decided I really ought to read a few novels again, I’ve recently bought-but-not-started Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill (which I understand is about cricket) and Isle of Dogs, by Daniel Davies (which I understand is about dogging). I’d also like to start on Patrick Cockburn’s Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq soon, but I suspect non-fiction reading will for the foreseeable future be dominated by new academic titles like Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics, vol.2, “Suarez to Rousseau” and Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, both of which have just been published, hooray.

Wang Hongwen, Chinese communist and youngest member of the Gang of Four; born around 1934; arrested in 1976 and sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment; died 3 August 1992.

For much of the Summer I’ve found Test Match Special pretty hard to listen to; yesterday and today I’ve been hooked. It could just be that the compellingness of TMS directly correlates to the compellingness of the match, and when the cricket’s not that interesting, then all the reasons that make you think, “God, the commentators really annoy me” come to the fore and you switch off the radio. Or it could just be that they haven’t had Geoffrey Boycott on this morning, so it’s a lot less irritating than usual. Does Boycott not work on Saturdays? Or have they realised he’s really annoying and sacked him?

Also – why on earth is the final day of Test cricket this Summer  Monday 11 August (assuming the game makes it to the fifth day)? That’s preposterously early. Grr.

Edward Aveling, English socialist; Eleanor Marx’s partner, and a participant in the English translation of Capital. From the ODNB:

Notorious both for the debts which he habitually incurred and for his numerous affairs with women, Aveling was widely regarded as being without scruples in his private life. The many accounts of his repulsive physical appearance are not borne out by surviving photographs and seem to be informed more by the ‘moral dread’ which he occasioned in some people than by his unremarkable features. William Morris’s daughter called him a ‘little lizard of a man’ and Olive Schreiner said that he looked like an illicit diamond buyer. According to Hyndman, ‘nobody can be as bad as Aveling looks’.

He was born in Stoke Newington, 29 November 1849, and died in Battersea, 2 August 1898.

Paul Collingwood’s just hit a century, in what’s turning out to be a smashing Test Match.

Over here at CiF.