Poetic Interlude

I had meant to post this earlier, but the weird vagaries of time intervened once more, as they so often seem to, and I didn’t.  The ironies involved are not slight.

Frequent reader and less-frequent commenter Godescalc made reference to a ballade he had written concerning this blog’s notoriously unpredictable posting schedule.  I thought he was joking.  He wasn’t.  Here’s the proof:

A Ballade of Enquiry after the Posting Schedule of the Kraken

When first the morning sun lights up the skies,
I leap up from my bed and make my way
over to my laptop – ‘fore my eyes,
new blog posts march in glorious array!
But sometimes there’s a terrible delay -
Mark Shea’s silent now for five days straight.
Eve Tushnet’s gone for weeks with nought to say.
When will the Daily Kraken next update?

When men Jane Austen’s books thought to revise,
that zombies may enhance the mannered fray -
it was his blog that to this made me wise,
and told what worthy films were on display.
I hit F5 to see on what, each day,
he has seen fit to prognosticate.
But now there falls a silence, drear and grey -
when will the Daily Kraken next update?

It was his choice from murky depths to rise,
From darkness never pierced by sun-born ray.
‘Twas not a course of action I’d advise,
but on his heart some nameless yearning lay.
And so he rose and roared and passed away;
all clad in black we now bewail his fate.
And how can we our children’s cries allay? -
“Daddy, when’s the Kraken next update?”

ENVOI

Prince, sorry that my mood is less than gay -
your parties are the envy of the state,
but cannot take my mind off my dismay.
When will the Daily Kraken next update?

==

We salute you, Godescalc.  Damn straight we do.

Quangos :-/

I hadn’t heard them called that before reading about that situation in the UK, but, under whatever name, they’re an experience that’s difficult to avoid.

These “quasi-non-governmental organisations” are omnipresent, often unsupervised, and typically more powerful than they ought to be.  Look to groups with names starting with things like “Committee For…” and “Council Of…”.  Look at the thin pink line of disaffected poli-sci majors and other activists leaving your local college, and follow it up to the heights from which any number of petitions, declarations, statements and open letters descend like a golden mist upon the land below.  There’s a standard trope to be found in news stories which sees them begin by saying “there are calls for [x] tonight after [such and such happened];” those calls have to come from somewhere.

Godescalc, in a comment, offered this helpful description:

A “quango” is a committee assembled at the behest of someone in government to provide feedback or recommendations; except it’s staffed with friends and allies of the person assembling it and exists either to provide employment to the members, or to act as an opinion-laundering scheme, or to address some specifically beaurocratic psychological drives I cannot begin to guess at. It provides no actual oversight or analysis or criticism, but a simulacrum of same. A bit like a circumlocution office, but less honest and more in need of being destroyed by fire.

Organisations along these lines are everywhere, and similar groups seem to be a pretty substantial part of modern politics.  I have friends involved in politics on a grassroots level in municipal, provincial (sometimes state; I know a lot of people) and federal capacities, and in many cases (not all, Heather) it’s to membership in or oversight of or even just service to such groups that they aspire.  The activism and the actual ideas at stake aren’t always enough for them; it’s the groups that matter.  I guess it’s all the fun of old-timey cloth-capped Bolshevik committee-building but without the happy possibility of being ridden down by cavalry.

Although quangos are typically government-organized, there are many groups that share their essential features while being more or less popular phenomena.  There’s no reason why any one of these groups should have any sway upon the governance of the land, much less the day-to-day lives of its citizens, but for many there is something at work that smacks of the self-fulfilling prophecy.  Let’s say some people like sunshine, and think that others should like it too.  Fair enough!  It’s eminently likeable.  But them simply saying that isn’t going to be enough; people won’t be moved by their mere suggestions, or even by their demands.

So some sunshine activists start a Council for the Enjoyment of Sunshine.  The Council has no power at the outset, naturally, but rather exists as a semi-official entity to which the activists can then appeal for assistance (their own effort, to their own ends, magnified by the amorphously official artifice of the quango they just created) once their ideas inevitably fail to prove attractive in the great marketplace of ideas.  People on a street corner with signs promoting sunshine can and will be ignored; a message with an official letterhead signed by people with administrative titles is like a man pointing a gun at you.  Such groups come and go and transform and subsume one another with such rapidity that to ignore one – even one of which you’ve never heard and which seems completely insane – is a perilous enterprise.

What happens next is anyone’s guess; perhaps they make a loud nuisance of themselves and get a politican to respond to them (though not necessarily support them); perhaps an eccentric pundit makes a joke about them; perhaps an opposing idealogue condemns them; perhaps a pastor preaches against them.  Who can say?  Once any of those things happen all of a sudden there’s a Sunshine Movement, and a Sunshine Community and then a Sunshine Lobby and then all of still more of a sudden nobody on the continent can even mention the weather without worrying about being brought up on charges.  If we’re lucky the thing will go one step further and get in bed with the corporations, and then the same people who started the ball rolling in the first place will start passing around furious petitions against Big Sunshine.  It’s nice to wish.

The popular quango’s place in all of this is peripheral in a visible sense (at least at first) but essential in a practical one.  Such movements live and die by the ferocious and misapplied energy of the young people involved, but the social change they effect tends to flow from the hands of the quangos.  But the power that flows into the quangos in the first place is another thing entirely, and tends to come from nowhere; after all, the man waving a sign on a street corner today could be the Director of the Committee on Sunshine Reform tomorrow, and then there’s simply no stopping him.

In the meantime, the rest of us all get to hear about it whether we wish to or not.  That’s just par for the course, though, so it should hardly surprise.

Only a game

In recent weeks, I have been greatly enjoying an online version of the classic board game Diplomacy.   Vernunft of the New Skeptic takes the blame for that one, but I went in willingly enough and cannot pass off the responsibility.

The game is similar to Risk in some respects, but greatly superior to it as well.  The layout is a simplified version of Europe in 1901; the object is conquest.  Unlike in Risk, the only element of chance that enters into Diplomacy is the random assignment of a world power at the beginning of the game.  That is, it is chosen at random whether you’ll be England, or Russia, or Turkey or whatever.  Everything else, apart from the accidents of international geography, is entirely contingent upon what you can get the other six players to do for, with, and to you.  The military units – armies and fleets (no air power in 1901) – are all of exactly the same strength, and if you want to successfully attack an occupied territory you have to do it with at least one more unit than is already in it.  1 vs 1 will just bounce off each other; 2 vs 1 dislodges the 1.  Simple enough.  There’s lots more to it than that, and dozens of ways to get the 2 vs 1 to transpire, but that’s the basic jist of it.

What’s so fascinating about the game is that, while only one player can actually win, there’s no way to win without co-operation.  It’s necessarily a tense and intriguing race between self-interest and community spirit, so to speak, and every alliance into which two players enter functions under the burdensome knowledge that it will always be only temporary, and each side – unless the player is a fool – is always looking for a way to stab the other in the back.  It’s made all the more complicated by the fact that draws are technically allowable; it’s just that nobody wants one if he thinks he can win instead.

Naturally, to play Diplomacy competently requires a great deal of skill in a number of areas.  I’m still learning about the intricasies of the rules and attempting to internalise the layout of the territories, but being able to write both eloquently and convincingly is an advantage that many of those playing online unfortunately do not share.  Unfortunately for them, anyway.

This brings me to the trouble of the thing.  While it is only a game, and entered into willingly by all participants in the full expectation of these things happening, it is nevertheless the case that a round of Diplomacy is by necessity and without exception one mad whirlwind of deceit, duplicity and betrayal.   Playing as Russia at the present hour, for example, I entered into a highly profitable early alliance with Turkey.  We swept all before us.  The second his back was exposed I tore him in half.  It was wonderful.

But should it be wonderful?  For all that the qualifications above are true – just a game, entered into willingly, etc. – the deception and betrayal are still happening, and the more you play Diplomacy the better you get at it.  It is certainly the case that almost any conventional game involves attempting to get the better of your opponent, but beating someone at Checkers (for example) doesn’t necessarily involve the telling of brazen lies or the breaking of promises.  You can play a clean game of Checkers, or Dodgeball, or Hungry Hungry Hippos or whatever; there’s no such thing as a clean game of Diplomacy.

And that troubles me just a little bit.

Keeping us safe

Or, well, keeping England safe:

It could be construed as a black day for the English language — but not if you work in the public sector.

Dozens of quangos and taxpayer-funded organisations have ordered a purge of common words and phrases so as not to cause offence.

Among the everyday sayings that have been quietly dropped in a bid to stamp out racism and sexism are “whiter than white”, “gentleman’s agreement”, “black mark” and “right-hand man”.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has advised staff to replace the phrase “black day” with “miserable day”, according to documents released under freedom of information rules.

It points out that certain words carry with them a “hierarchical valuation of skin colour”. The commission even urges employees to be mindful of the term “ethnic minority” because it can imply “something smaller and less important”.

There’s more – much more – in the rest of the article. If you want to see the word “master” blandly declared “problematic,” well, now’s your chance.

I guess the United Kingdom is coming up in the world if it can finally aspire to the sort of race-obsessive madness that was once so thoroughly American. There’s been a lot of PC weirdness over there, to be sure, but there’s typically been a class- or gender-based tinge to it. They seem to be expanding their repertoire.

Also, a “quango” is apparently a faintly-derogatory acronym for “quasi-non-governmental organisation,” of which there are so very many throughout the world. I wish that there weren’t, and that I didn’t know that people call them by this name. It’s a day for wishing things weren’t so.

C.S. Lewis’ Library

Craig Burrell of All Manner of Thing has very helpfully pointed out the full catalogue of C.S. Lewis’ personal library, available online at LibraryThing. It runs to some 2111 volumes, apparently, and there’s some stuff in there that might surprise.

The twenty-five Chesterton volumes are gratifying; the four from Belloc – including the delightful novel The Green Overcoat (1912) – are unexpected. The substantial collection of works by the Benson brothers (E.F., A.C., R.H.) is wonderful to see; a lonely copy of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure invites comment. Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is only to be expected; Karl Stern’s The Pillar of Fire could perhaps never have been predicted. The joint presence of Mark Twain (in abundance) and H.L Mencken (a single volume of essays) is also notable.

It’s a neat thing to check out, if you have the time. It’s fully searchable by both title and author, too, so have no fear about having to click through an interminable list to see if some favoured volume is there – or some contemptible volume is absent.

Alright

I’m going to try for some more content – you know, like I had said I would – now that everything has settled down again. I’m moved in to the new apartment. I’ve had my short vacation back home and returned again. Things have normalized.

Thanks for your patience, assuming you’ve been patient.