Charlie Hebdo

Charlie Hebdo

It is difficult to let the Charlie Hebdo attack and its aftermath go uncommented here. The village held its tribute to the victims on Friday, a minute's silence outside the Mairie. The relevant details have all been published and I can add nothing other than a personal view.

Firstly, the claimed legitimacy for the attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices should be dismissed out of hand. Islamic extremists were of course provoked by Charlie Hebdo's cartoon, as indeed they could claim to be provoked by the day-to-day life of almost everyone in western society. Western society has standards that Muslim extremists will never accept and has every right to those standards. As much was demonstrated by the public display of solidarity by the leaders of western nations and religious groups in France. Any Muslim who cannot accept that should live elsewhere if possible or else confine their objections to peaceful protest.

I think too much attention has been given in western societies to Muslim sensitivities, no doubt partly because of fear of such reprisals. Politically correct circles and advocates of bizarre forms of multiculturalism have played no small part in this. Sensitivity to others beliefs is a laudable form of courtesy but not to the extent that it precludes criticism or occasional lampooning; those are rightly cherished freedoms in the west and must remain so, the more so if threatened by fear

By the same token western nations have erred, I believe, in their interventions in Arabic nations' affairs. Democracy and freedom of speech have never had much of a role in Arab culture and the west has no right to try to introduce them. If other countries willingly harbour groups plotting and effecting terrorist acts in western countries then by all means give them a bloody nose but stay out of their culture. Even, I would argue, if clear atrocities are being carried out in their countries the west should abstain from direct intervention. If their culture is to change and become more humane, the inhabitants of the countries themselves must effect that change.

At the root of much of this is oil and Israel. While the west remains dependent on Arab oil, so foreign policies will be skewed accordingly. And Israel's situation, whilst complex and difficult in the extreme, has not been helped by their policies and strategies towards Arabs in and around their territories. Netanyahu's offer to have the Jewish hostages who were killed buried in Israel was a blunder simply pouring fuel on the fire, another stupid mistake.

The world is in a mess but at least we should not compound the mess.

French And Holidays

Le mot juste

I have become very wary of the danger of making a perfectly accurate translation of English into French but one that is simply not how the French would express themselves. Years ago, when translating the booklet on the History of Mollans I fortunately had the prescience to get friend Steve to check my English. I had blithely translated “monument aux morts” as monument to the dead and Steve pointed out that we call that a war memorial; obvious, but I'd missed it. That was French into English but the same applies in the opposite direction.

So, establishing the French version of the media library for my website (www.mon-mollans-sur-ouveze.fr), I have been adding French captions to the photos as I loaded them. That is something I generally feel happy doing without consulting my French translators. One caption, however, needed to be for a photo of villagers dressed up in historical costumes for a parade through the village. I decided on “defile en costumes” (with acute accents on three of the “e”s which I haven't put in here because the Blogger software screws up the HTML after accents). It then occurred to me that “defile costume” (accent-free zone again and in following text) might be the term needed so I asked Daniel when he called in for an aperitif. He confirmed that I had the right expression, adding as an aside that if it had been a ball it would have to be “bal costume” (costume ball or fancy dress ball in English?) and not “bal en costumes”.

Daniel and I then chatted through some other similar traps. I already knew that an “assurance vie “ was not life insurance; it translates as endowment insurance. What we English call life insurance translates into French as death insurance, reasonably enough. Another example we came up with was the “mutiles de guerre” notices that used to be placed next to selected seats on Paris metro trains. In English that wouldn't be war mutilated but war wounded (blesse in French); same idea, just a different way of expressing it. Incidentally it occurred to me that both French and English expressions for war memorial were inadequate. The term war memorial is not a memorial for a war but for the dead of a war; the term “monument aux morts” is not for the dead in general but for the dead of a war or wars. So both cultures have made compromises without finding a succinct “mot juste”. What should the (succinct) expression be?

Spell-checkers

Decades ago, when electronic calculators were the new “must have”, an American IT friend commented to me that it was a pity because American kids were losing the ability to calculate themselves and calculators often made errors, particularly when the batteries were running down. I knew the problem and always made a round-figure mental calculation when using a calculator and believed the result if it was broadly the same. An analogous situation now is with spell-checkers; evidence on the internet suggests kids can no longer spell and aren't aware of the dangers of relying on spell-checkers.

The Holidays

The “fetes” as they are known here have passed quietly and happily as far as I am concerned. For me, an atheist, Christmas is all about kids and their excitement. In their absence, and since days off work are no longer relevant, Christmas is little more than an occasion to spend something extra on food and drink; also an occasion when most people feel they should be jolly (“disapproval would be folly”: Tom Lehrer). When I was in my teens, it was about that and parties. The same goes more or less for the new year, except that young kids don't really come into it, except for any fireworks displays going on locally or on TV. There is always a “reveillon” or two in the village but I've never felt inclined to sign up for them. So it has been for me.

My one outstanding memory of the new year is witnessing some car carnage when tracking back home in the very icy early morning with a girlfriend from a party in central London. A car parked along the road we were walking along was trying to extricate itself from a line of parked cars with a ridge of iced snow against its outside wheel. Revving up to the maximum it escaped the ridge only to slither across the road and crash into cars parked opposite, ricochet back into cars parked on the side it had been, ricochet again into cars parked on the opposite side and then drive on, leaving seven or eight cars on either side of the road distinctly damaged. No happy new year for some.

Websites, Metrics and Wine

Bad Websites

I wrote some time ago about the stupidity of websites using the UK postcode system unthinkingly, particularly those which would claim to be part of the global market. My annual trip round websites where I look for possible Christmas presents, cards, etc, has shown up more stupidities.

Looking for Christmas cards, which I prefer to buy from charities rather than commercial firms where possible, I went to the Oxfam website. Thee was a reasonable selection of cards from which I chose various packs and I then went on to choose other items. Right at the end of the purchase sequence, when it came to confirming items in my basket, the packs of cards I had chosen were marked as unavailable outside the UK. This meant paging back through the site to delete them, the site was very slow and I ended up aborting the transaction. The problem could have been avoided had Oxfam marked cards as being available only within the UK up front. It was a good demonstration of how to piss off customers and encourage them to shop elsewhere.

Another demonstration of stupidity occurs on the SNCF website. The site demands the age of would-be passengers. If I put in my correct age (over 60) the site automatically assumes I want a reduced fare for pensioners, which is restricted in availability both in numbers of seats and times of trains. The result is a very short list of choices of trains, usually at inconvenient times. To get the full list of trains available I have to falsify my age. It took me a while to discover this since nowhere on the site is it stated. In the case of SNCF, there is no train alternative so maybe they don't care about the difficulty in using their website. Also, many airline sites refuse to give you a general flight schedule; you have to propose to book a flight and then manoeuvre around alternatives when a general schedule would be much more helpful. In this respect, travel agency sites are often easier to use than airline sites; I wonder if the airlines realise that.

All this leads me to wonder about the testing websites are put through. In any IT development there is a whole battery of tests that should be applied, one set of which should be user testing: how easily, efficiently and effectively the software can be used by Jo Public. Testing was always the poor relation in IT development and that seems still to be the case; it would be easy to assume little or no user testing had been carried out on many websites. One glorious exception is Amazon, which has probably been a significant factor in the company's success. Not only do I find that I can do everything I want on their website, I find I can do it quickly and easily. I've been looking for a site that exposes website stupidities but can't find one; it's badly needed and overdue.

Metrics

I went to the Post Office to send off Christmas cards en masse and was duly given strips of stamps in multiples of a dozen. It didn't strike me as odd at the time but friend Steve pointed out you'd really expect them to be in multiples of ten in a metric country. He had an experience a few years ago when he went into a local hardware shop to get some chipboard and he had measured out what he wanted in yards. The shop assistant huffed and puffed and said we sell it in metres (obviously) and so did the conversion. When Steve asked how much it was per square metre he was told that they charged for it in yards. Confusion reigns!

There are other anomalies, such as the “demi” you ask for in a cafe when you want a beer being a half-pint rather than a half litre. Apparently in Napoleonic times there was an attempt to metricate the calendar, which obviously didn't have much success. Beautifully simple as the metric system is, there are some things that just aren't suited to it and now, anyway, a lot of things have gone binary or octal.

Wine

WE Brits are apparently drinking much more wine than 30 years ago, according to all accounts, which makes me wonder about the future of various staple dishes in the English diet. Baked beans on toast, for instance, particularly with brown sauce, wouldn't go with any wine I can think of. Neither would kippers or grilled herring. I can't see wine enhancing fish and chips or sausage and mash either. My point is this: almost any French dish I can think of seems made to go with one sort of wine or another. As the Brits drink more wine, will that start to shape the composition of dishes in the typical diet?

Weather And Charities

Weather

Last autumn and winter were unusually wet and this autumn has been the same so far. The Ouveze is full, fast flowing and discoloured, if not yet in full flood, the consequence of several days of rain over the past week. Today, however, was bright and sunny which gave me the incentive to get out and plant the flowers and bulbs I had bought earlier. There are another 80 narcissi bulbs out front, some replacing those I removed last spring to make way for further planting, but probably about half that number additional to last year. I have also made additional use of cyclamen this year as they seem to like the conditions and bloom more or less continuously. So the front of the house should look good through the winter and into the spring. Unfortunately, cyclamen don't do blue and I'm not keen on pink so I've opted for red and white.

Charities

One of the differences I found when I came here was the absence of the ubiquitous charity shops in the UK. Had there been one nearby I would probably have volunteered, as I did in the Oxfam bookshop in Reading before coming here. So a recent news item caught my attention.

It appears that a book is due to be published very shortly on the charity industry in the UK. It appears not to take any moral stance but is full of facts and figures that would seem to pose some very disturbing questions. For instance, the charity “industry” in the UK has a turnover of £80 billion. That is a staggering figure, making it one of the more important industries in the UK. Indeed, that could be seen as a wonderful feather in the cap of the British, giving so much to charity; but is all that money going where it is intended?

Unfortunately not, it would seem. There is no suggestion of fraud but there would seem to be a huge problem of proliferation of charities. The total number is just short of 200,000 so that, unsurprisingly, the Charity Commission which provides overall governance is struggling to maintain any kind of control. Of that total, nearly 2000 are dedicated to issues concerning children, which most people would agree should be a major focus; but 2000? Other interesting figures are that there are 581 charities devoted to cancer care/cures, 354 devoted to birds and 255 to animals. The obvious question is not whether all these charities are worthy in their own right but whether this is an efficient way of channelling donations to the quite probably worthy, and needy, causes.

Every charity, quite properly, must show that it is appropriately administered and the larger ones must have their accounts professionally audited. Administration costs money and so does auditing; a reasonable estimate of auditing costs for the larger charities has to run into hundreds of millions of pounds. An apparent loophole in declaration of accounts seems to allow such costs, and sundry others, to be allocated as charitable spend. The result is that when charities proudly proclaim that X% of the money they receive goes where the donor expects, that is in fact far from the case. A truer figure would indeed seem to be around half to two thirds of what is officially claimed. Surely that needs legislative attention, of a form that would encourage charities to amalgamate and increase the percentage of donations that actually goes to the front-line operations that donors normally intend.

Bell, Book And Candle

BELL

I went to the Beaumont English Language Library (BELL) (www.beaumontenglishlibrary.com) to hear a presentation by Julia Rothenberg of Harvard University on James Joyce's Ulysses. It proved interesting and revealed an unsuspected fact. Joyce apparently didn't speak Irish, although Ulysses itself was translated into Irish quite late, in 1984.

The visit to the library enabled me to button-hole Julia's husband Albert, who is a professor psychiatry at Harvard on a point that has often intrigued me: concept definition in psychiatry. I have always assumed that defining the concepts psychiatrists use must be a difficult problem in the absence of any clinical indicators. It seems I was only partly right. Concept definition is a problem but psychiatry gets round it by the use of agreed tests and expert consensus. That's hardly ideal and must leave significant room for uncertainty but it would seem to be a case of needs must. However, psychiatry is not depending on advances in clinical indications. I thought it needed better understanding of how the brain works but that turns out to be only partly true. As Albert pointed out, whilst we now know a lot more about areas of the brain that are active when we do certain things or experience various emotions, we still understand next to nothing about what exactly is going on in those active areas. Albert suggested that a much greater understanding of synapses will be needed before any progress is made on that front.

Friend Steve and I have agreed to give a talk some time next year on the origins of popular phrases and sayings. That leaves plenty of time to prepare but has already set me investigating sources and is proving an interesting way to spend otherwise unoccupied hours. One origin I have already found is that of the phrase “nineteen to the dozen”, meaning going all out. Apparently it derives from water pumps used in Cornish mines which were powered by coal and which, at maximum capacity, could pump out 19,000 gallons of water for every 12 bushels of coal consumed. A bushel, for those who left school after the 1960s, is an old volumetric measure of dry goods equivalent to 0.35 cubic metres.

Islam

I find myself with very mixed feelings about the anti-muslim sentiments that I encounter here, in England and among very reasonable friends. In some ways these sentiments are easily understandable given ISIS, Al Quaeda and cases of sexual violence, forced marriages, etc, hitting the headlines in the UK. Outrage must be the normal response for any westerner. My problem is that I understand that to be exactly the response that the extremist groups most want. They want a global war between muslims and the rest of the world and also, it would appear, between muslim factions. Outrage fuels the inferno they want to create.

At root, I can't see this as a struggle between muslims and the rest, as indeed some moderate muslim groups have said it is not or should not be. I see it as a naked struggle for power waged by groups who above all want dominance, want to be able to dictate to the world how it should live. That has happened a number of times in history; all that is new this time around is that Islam has been chosen to provide legitimacy and a constituency. If these groups simply said what they really want, total power, it would be easy to dismiss them; so they seek some form of legitimacy, to gain a following. I find it ironic that we label ISIS et al as mediaeval, which is indeed how their behaviour appears, when muslims in Europe in the Middle Ages were quite the opposite. In muslim-occupied Spain jews, christians and others, whilst excluded from holding office, were otherwise treated as equal citizens, an amazingly liberal approach for those days. When El Cid and the reconquest happened, muslims were offered the choice of conversion to christianity or death. And then came the Spanish inquisition............

The other serious conflict is clearly a clash of cultures which, I believe, has not been helped in England by extremes of political correctness. I firmly believe in tolerance but also that when there is a clash of cultures the predominant national (in this case English) culture must take precedence. And people of other cultures must accept that or face penalties or exclusion from the country. In 90% of countries in the world this would be automatically assumed and I see no reason why England should be different.

The Law

From Matera

My final outing in Matera stay was to the Benedictine Abbey of Michael Angelo in nearby Montescaglioso, nestling in the village at the top of a hill. Reception offered a guided tour, which we took; and just as well. Most of the interest, apart from the main building structure, was behind locked doors which had to be opened by the guide. There were some Greek ruins over which the monastery had been built, starting in the 5^th century and ending in the 12^th. The monks seemed to have lived a fairly plush life when there wasn't a war going on around, the cells being spacious and quite well furnished. I enjoyed the visit.

I was due to fly home on the Monday but the strike by Air France pilots (euphemistically called a “mouvement social” rather than a “grève”) threw a spanner in the works. I am wondering if this interesting change in nomenclature lowers the official statistic for the number of strikes in a year. “No, no, nowhere near 1000; only 300 in fact; the rest were mouvements sociaux or some such.” Anyway, a flight from Bari to Beauvais, a coach from there to the Porte Maillot in Paris, a taxi from there to Roissy and a train from there to Avignon where friend Steve picked me up did the trick, even if it did take 15 hours door-to-door.

I am tempted to express my feelings on Air France but find myself inhibited by a recent court case reported in the papers. A lady who had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant (poor food, service) related the same on her Facebook page, naming the restaurant. The restaurant sued her for defamation and won damages. The court verdict was not based on any inaccuracies in her account but simply on the fact that what she wrote had the potential to damage the restaurant's trade (and so it bloody well should!). Liberté? Whatever happened to freedom of speech in France? And how on earth do you do restaurant reports or critiques of anything else come to that? So all I can really say is that the return flight by Air France didn't go off wonderfully because it didn't go off at all.

Countering Terrorism

France looks as though it could be going to put its foot well and truly in it with a new bill to counter terrorism. The problem of protecting freedom from terrorism without adversely affecting that same freedom too much is well known. However, the new French bill, which proposes blocking websites with terrorist material on them, has obvious and serious flaws.

For one thing it makes a special case of material available over the internet. That's just plain stupid and a refusal to acknowledge lessons that have been learned elsewhere over the years. Material that may be illegal over the internet could therefore be legal if delivered some other way; anomalies here we come. The UK Sale of Goods Act (1979), designed to protect consumers, defined an economic good as something tangible, thus failing to protect consumers from bad services (or computer software). Similarly, the ancient Copyright Act (1911) specifically assumed marks on a page or similar, thus requiring a much later intellectual property rights act. That mistake could at least be excused by changing times and history but there are no excuses now. All media and means of delivery should be covered by any new legislation; surely that lesson must have been learned.

Secondly, and more importantly, although the bill refers to the already legally defined terms provocation and incitement to terrorism, Article 4 also cites justification (apologie) of terrorism. But the bill doesn't give criteria for when a justification should be considered noxious and blocked, neither does it propose a body to define and interpret any such criteria. An explanation, for instance, could easily be interpreted as a justification if someone wanted to take that view. That looks like a free hand for the government to block anything it wants for just about any reason, including any embarrassing criticism it could do without.

NB  I included accents and they have screwed up the text presentation somewhat.  Why can't Blogger deal with accents?

Matera

Matera

I arrived at my cousin’s in Matera without hitch, apart from a rather long hike around Terminal B in Rome’s Fumicino airport.  Having confirmed the gate for my onward flight to Bari, I walked the length of the terminal to present myself at it only to find that it had changed.  And then again………….As my cousin’s son Enrico said when I told him of this: “Ah, Alitalia; welcome to Italy.”

We all (myself, cousin, my daughter, her partner and my cousin’s family) met for lunch at a local hostelry.  The hostelry was on a farm that was part of a scheme in the region whereby a grant could be claimed if the farm served meals consisting of produce 75% grown\made on the premises.  Anyway, the food was excellent and copious.  A starter of types of ham, cheese and salads on a large platter, supplemented by more of the same that wouldn’t fit on the plate, was followed by two courses of pasta, one with mussels and the other with mushrooms.  Then came roast chicken and lamb with salad, again supplemented by more of the same that wouldn’t fit on the plates. Then came two dessert courses, fruit followed by pastry and ice cream, and finally a plate of cheese with which to finish off the dregs of the wine.  We’d started at 1.00 and left at 6.00.

I was fit only for a couch or bed after this but it had been decided that we should go on to visit the vineyard of another of my cousin’s sons, Matteo.  The domain is called Parco Dei Monaci and sits on a south-facing hillside outside the town.  The 20,000 vines are capable of producing the same number of litres of wine but Matteo and his wife carefully choose only half of the harvest to be made into wine.  A very slow fermentation process means that none is bottled until it is three years old.  The result is three wines: a rose made purely from primitivo grapes, a red wine made similarly, and finally a red wine made from a blend of primitivo, cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes.  The latter has been awarded a gold medal and all three sell for between 15-25 euros a bottle.  Having drunk all three I can testify that they fully justify their price.

An evening at a favoured pizza restaurant produced a surprise.  The chef had found a trick with ice cream.  You place a mound of ice cream on a plate and put it in a very hot oven.  The key has to be in the temperature of the oven and the amount of time (30 seconds?) the ice cream is in it.  The result is a mound of ice cream, cold in the middle with a crust on top and surrounded by a puddle of melted ice cream.  Pretty neat, I thought.

A trip to the Sassi (stones) proved interesting.  The Sassi are part of the old town where there are caves that have been inhabited continuously for 30,000 years, one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites known on earth.  It was easy to see that much more could be made of them but a complex recent legal history apparently prevents that.  Part of the site was blocked off as a film was in the process of being shot.  Its title is “Jesus The Lord” or something like that.  Some 30 films have been shot partly or entirely here so its obviously a popular location.  Mel Gibson starred here in Passion Of The Christ and a remake of Ben Hur is scheduled to be shot there starting some time next year.  It appears there was some fall out from Mel Gibson’s time here at a local restaurant he favoured.  He wanted his pasta done a certain way and pasta alla Mel Gibson now features on the menu.