lundi 19 novembre 2018

Christmas Is Coming

Christmas Is Coming
And so is winter. I've discovered that the threshold for when I really wake up to this is the remembrance ceremony in the village on the 11th of November. It's quite a low'-key and moving ceremony and always has it's Clochemerle element with the sound system. It is guaranteed that either at least once microphones will be off when they should be on for the speeches or that the recording of the national anthem played will be out of step with the children from the school who are singing it. It happens every year and I find it rather endearing. Every formal ceremony should have its Clochemerle moment.

I know that the advent of Christmas is heralded in the shops long before then but that is too early for the perception to really hit home with me. After the remembrance ceremony, however, three things happen in quick succession: I get asked to create the Christmas quiz for the Beaumont library again and I get asked to come to the first rehearsal of the Christmas carols and those two things remind me to check the number of Christmas cards I have left over from last year and to think about presents for family in England. Also, Beaujolais nouveau arrives in the village.

In fact the first rehearsal for the Christmas carols was on the 15th of November, which is when the Beaujolais nouveau arrived at the Bar du Pont. So immediately after the rehearsal Steve, Jo and I went along to the Bar du Pont for a tasting. This year I thought it was quite good and Patrique and Valérie in the bar provided skewers of chicken, mushrooms and slices of quiche to go with it, all on the house. It made for a convivial evening.

I had two suggestions to make for the carols this year. The first was to make more of an introduction to each carol than the usual “and now we will sing…..”. I feel there should be more time between each carol. The second, because we now have a repertoire of over a dozen with which we are all familiar, whether in English, French, German or Latin,was to get the audience to chose one of those in the repertoire but not in the programme. We try to get the audience singing along with us and this would increase audience participation. I'm not sure yet whether these will be accepted but have been researching the history of carols anyway to get the story behind those we will sing. One interesting point to emerge is that carols weren't sung in churches in England until late in the 19th century. They were sung long before then but in the streets, the age old tradition of wassailing. The word “carol” itself originally meant a dance in a circle so the origins are specifically jollity rather than religion. It points up a different attitude to religion between Britain and France. We Brits sing primarily for the conviviality; the fact that most, but not all, carols are religious is incidental to many of us. For the French, the religious connotations can be a serious inhibition. Many of my French friends who would like to sing won't join in because of the hard religious-secular divide in France.

I've been creating the Christmas quiz for the Beaumont library for two years now and have developed a structure. The total of around 100 questions is divided into around 10 sections, each section with a theme. After grouping potential questions under each theme I review them to try to ensure that there are two hard questions and two dead easy ones in each section; and therein lies the perennial problem: personal knowledge. What seems easy or difficult to me isn't necessarily so for anyone else. I just have to hope that, over 100 questions, the differences even out.

Another sign that Christmas is approaching is that Roberto has started offering a seafood platter, oysters and prawns, as an alternative to the Monday evening pizzas at the Bar du Pont. Oysters figure prominently in the traditional French Christmas meals. And with Christmas comes winter. Snow is forecast tomorrow down to 1000ft; the ski station at Mt Serein will be pleased but the road to the summit of Mt Ventoux is already cut off. I hope the snow stays up there. Even so, you can hardly get out of the village without getting to 1000ft so I'd better check my tyres.

jeudi 8 novembre 2018

Soup And World Domination

Soup
Every year there is a local soup contest here, a contest that should receive much wider popularity. It's so much more civilised than many other contests and everyone benefits, tasting soups and learning what has gone into them. Each village in the region has its own contest and the winners from each, voted by the tasters at large, congregate later in Vaison La Romaine to decide the regional winner. I went along with friends to the contest in Mollans. I'd invited them for a meal and decided that rather than make a starter myself we would all go first to the soup contedt in the village. There were half a dozen on offer covering a range of tastes but my personal choices were a creamy chicken soup and a spicy Thai one. I haven't yet found out who won.

World Domination
This evening I xas referred by a friend to a book he said was titled «Who Rules The World ?» but I have been unable to find it. He said it was by a writer who was basically a Marxist but embraced some aspects of caoitalism via Confucianism. Don't ask. Nonetheless the very title provoked some questions in my mind, such as by what means do you rule the world (or at least become top dog)? We all know how it has been done in the past but how can it be done in the future?I have to admit that I don't particularly care and you might not either but the question is there to be answered ;

Answers from the past, which could just still be valid, are by war or economic domination; in the future intellectual domination (having more clever/skilled people than anyone else) or the opposite, having more uneducated people than anyone else might just do it. This last could support a powerful dictatorship or provide plentiful cannon fodder for a war.

Let's deal with war first, as it seems the least viable. Any future war, other than on a purely local scale which wouldn't secure world dominance, would ammost certainly involve nuclear weapons so thete is unlukely to be any viable winner. Cannon fodder would not be needed.

If we don't need an uneducated workforce in large quantity as cannon fodder why else could we need them? Well, they could support a dictatorship (even if only under duress) but both the USSR and China have demonstrated that that situation is not durable.

Economic dominance is still very possible; the question is how? A large what the Americans call «grunt» (uneducated) workforce won't do it, however poorly paid, as many developing countries have already demonstrated. Wealth is obviously needed for investment and most of that will have to be attracted from outside or internally generated; no individual or likely group of individuals would have enough, however rich they were in realistic terms. Neither does having rich natural resources hack it for long. To create wealth these have to be used and they are finite. Being cleverer looks like the best bet, in quantity as well as quality. If the skilled/qualified labour force is not too expensive, relative to other similar labour forces, then investment and wealth should be generated. It looks a winner to me.

So which countries have that? One of the largest, the USA doesn't. I well remember an American professor friend telling me that he despaired of America's future because his IT classes were full of Asians; American students preferred law or sociology. And America anyway, at the moment, seems to prefer grunts. I think China and India fit my criteria best, so I would bet on one of those. But it's just an idle bet; whoever dominates it is unikely to affect the rest of my life in a small French provincial village so I don't really care. As for a resurgent, globally influential Britain….………..it seems to be trying hard not to be and certainly isn't working on the necessary credentials.



samedi 3 novembre 2018

Where Britain Is Headed

The Problem For Would-be Neo-Fascist/Communist Regimes
The principal problem is democracy; it isn't authoritarian. Worse,it tends to be unpredictable, subject to swings. However, where a coup d'état is not on the cards, it has to be dealt with, perhaps managed. A majority is needed to gain any power so a block vote of some sort is needed. In Britain in the past «tribal voting», voting by family tradition, provided that but tribal voting seems largely to have disappeared to be replaced by other block interests such as unions or commercial interests. Unfortunately (for neo-Fascists/Communists) neither of these is solidly aithoritarian. So how to overcome democracy and the need for a block vote?

One key has to be to make democracy more prdictable, by managing it. The other key is to identify an appeal, or several, (a feeling, a goal, an ambition, a fear) that is common to a large set of people who are persuadable by something other than reason. People who reason tend not to like nything authoritarian by nature so putting the (jack)boot into any thing intellectual, experts and the llike, is obviously a good idea. An appeal to emotion among persuadable people is needed. Support for what, fear of what? There are two obvious candidates: support for nationalism is one and fear of «outsiders», other nationalities or people visibly different by behaviour or appearance, is another. Bingo! All that is needed now is a sizable budget, which shouldn't be beyond important backers even if it is beyond electoral rules (but who cares about those?).

If any of this sounds familiar, rings any bells, then you know where Britain is headed…….unless democrats themselves do something about it.

Brexit: The Will Of The People?

Every Democrat In Britain Should Read This
This is the conclusion of a Guardian article at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy?fbclid=IwAR3rrOQ29qxMYL98qXmqNr

«This is Britain in 2017. A Britain that increasingly looks like a “managed” democracy. Paid for by a US billionaire. Using military-style technology. Delivered by Facebook. And enabled by us. If we let this referendum result stand, we are giving it our implicit consent. This isn’t about Remain or Leave. It goes far beyond party politics. It’s about the first step into a brave, new, increasingly undemocratic world.

Key names

SCL Group
British company with 25 years experience in military “psychological operations” and “election management”.
Cambridge Analytica
Data analytics company formed in 2014. Robert Mercer owns 90%. SCL owns 10%. Carried out major digital targeting campaigns for Donald Trump campaign, Ted Cruz’s nomination campaign and multiple other US Republican campaigns – mostly funded by Mercer. Gave Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU “help” during referendum.
Robert Mercer
US billionaire hedge fund owner who was Trump’s biggest donor. Owns Cambridge Analytica and the IP [intellectual property] ofAggregateIQ. Friend of Farage. Close associate of Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon
Trump’s chief strategist. Vice-president of Cambridge Analytica during referendum period. Friend of Farage.
Alexander Nix
Director of Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group.
Christopher Wylie
Canadian who first brought data expertise and microtargeting to Cambridge Analytica; recruited AggregateIQ.
AggregateIQ
Data analytics company based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Worked for Mercer-funded Pacs that supported the Trump campaign. Robert Mercer owns AggregateIQ’s IP. Paid £3.9m by Vote Leave to “micro-target” voters on social media during referendum campaign. Outside British jurisdiction.
Veterans for Britain
Given £100,000 by Vote Leave. Spent it with AggregateIQ.

BeLeave
Youth Leave campaign set up by 23-year-old student. Given £625,000 by Vote Leave & £50,000 by another donor. Spent it with AggregateIQ.
DUP
Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Spent £32,750 with AggregrateIQ.
Thomas Borwick
Vote Leave’s chief technology officer. Previously worked with SCL/Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ.
ASI Data Science
Data science specialists. Links with Cambridge Analytica, including staff moving between the two and holding joint events. Paid £114,000 by Vote Leave. Vote Leave declared £71,000 to Electoral Commission.
Donald Trump
US president. Campaign funded by Mercer and run by Bannon. Data services supplied by Cambridge Analytica and AggregrateIQ.
Nigel Farage
Former Ukip leader. Leader of Leave.EU. Friend of Trump, Mercer and Bannon.
Arron Banks
Bristol businessman. Co-founder of Leave.EU. Owns data company and insurance firm. Single biggest donor to Leave – £7.5m»