June 2008 – The Virtual Stoa

Resignation

Hmm. I thought that Caroline Spelman would be forced out before Wendy Alexander, but apparently I was wrong. Still, can’t be long now.

(Perhaps Gordon Brown could go off and lead the Scottish Labour Party, now there’s a vacancy, and then the rest of us can be spared his wretched Britishness obsession?)

In the quarter-finals and semi-finals of Euro 2008, I have supported Portugal against Germany, Croatia against Turkey, the Netherlands against Russia, Italy against Spain, Turkey against Germany, and Russia against Spain. I have, nevertheless, enjoyed myself enormously.

Since I shall be cheering for the Spanish on Sunday night, people who like to gamble may think this is reason enough to bet heavily on Germany to win the competition. (On the other hand, see this post.)

Germany 3 – 2 Turkey

Although it’s impossible to dislike the German team entirely when they have a player called Jansen.

Quomodo sensus suos sentit vespertilio?

That’s the very handy expression, “what is it like to be a bat?”, in Latin, and it’s also the opening line of the laudatio of Professor Thomas Nagel on the occasion of Oxford giving him an honorary degree earlier this week. The full text is here, or go here for Emma Kirkby.

This Week Is Refugee Week

National details over here. Here‘s what’s happening in Oxford. Click here to give your money to Oxford’s excellent Asylum Welcome. Here‘s Bill Morris making the case for why asylum seekers should have the right to work restored. And here‘s a bunch of things from MigrantVoice over at OpenDemocracy.

“After the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour has vanished…”

Today, tehgraun‘s arts critics are writing about sporting events, so we have theatre critic Michael Billington on darts and rock critic Caroline Sullivan on the Second Test Match.

Tomorrow we’re promised “chief football writer Kevin McCarra on Finnish contemporary dance” and “golf correspondent Lawrence Donegan on the San Francisco Symphony’s Brahms cycle”.

I like this kind of thing.

Austria 2 – 0 Germany

On 3 April 1938, at any rate. Very interesting article in the New Statesman (and it’s not often you can say that).

and yes I said yes I will Yes

Happy Bloomsday, Joyceans everywhere!

Have there been any good books on Joyce published recently, say in the last five years or so, since this one? I haven’t been keeping up.

1974 Twickenham Streaker, in Lego

Here, by Balakov. More over here [via ejh in comments below].

MacShane

While I’m on the subject of the Poles in the UK Parliament, I’ve got a question. Has Denis MacShane’s slide into absurdity been a gradual, steady thing, or has it gone in fits and starts? If the latter, are there key moments that one needs to know about? I can remember that I once used to think he was a more intelligent than average politician whose opinions were worth paying attention to — but that seems like a very long time ago now. Maybe it was just because he appeared to know something about European social democratic politics, and I have an unreasoned prejudice in favour of people who appear to know something about European social democratic politics?

Month: June 2008