One up the Khyber

Surely I can't be the only one. If I hear on the news about Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, in my head I picture noted English actor Kenneth Williams. That’s because he starred as the Khazi of Khalibar, the head of the Pashtun (I assume) opponents of the British Raj in the greatest film of the Carry On series (in fact one of the greatest English films of all time) Carry On up the Khyber. It’s a natural mistake to make: The Khyber Pass (the geographical feature, not the restaurant in Woking) which is central to the story, is indeed on the border of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, so the confusion – a result of my brain’s limited capacity – is understandable.

I won't direct the delicate to a dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang to point out what "Khyber Pass" means in the East End vernacular, and therefore the double entendre in "up the Khyber". That would be indelicate."

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Iced, iced, baby

You think your job is tough? I suspect the head of PR for the Icelandic Tourist Board would be happy to swap with the Corporate Social Responsibility guy at Al Qaeda right now. As you may now, they (together with the Norwegians) have been going out a limb (well, fin) a little with their sea-farming:

The United States on Tuesday urged Iceland and Norway to cease exporting whale meat to Japan, which they have resumed for the first time since the early 1990s despite a United Nations ban.

[From US urges Norway, Iceland to end whale meat exports | Reuters]

Oh no, what now! Well, not long after they outraged just about everyone -- except the Japanese -- by starting to kill whales again, the hardy folk of that beautiful, remote, volcanic world found the first polar bear seen in Iceland for 20 years. And shot it. Way to go sagadudes! Take my advice and put the kitten-throwing competition on hold for a while...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Super, super Cannes

In all these years, I'd never been to Sophia Antipolis before, so I was quite looking forward to my first visit. Unfortunately, the visit was spoiled because as I stepped out of taxi and looked around, I suddenly found the landscape both familiar -- despite never having been there -- and strangely sinister. For a moment I was genuinely disconnected, and then I realised that it was because of J. G. Ballard. One of the greatest of all English novelists, his Super Cannes, which I read some years ago. Ballard's descriptions of the buildings, the executive cars lined up out side them, the trees partly hiding the landscape, are so perfect that my brain slipped out of gear for a moment as it tried to come to terms with the fact that I hadn't actually been there before. Although I'd forgotten about the book up until this moment, the sense of lurking amorality washed over me as soon as I breathed the air there.

It actually is quite an odd place, in that while it's in beautiful hills and no more than an expensive taxi ride away from Nice, there is a pervading artificiality that is slightly jarring. If you're driving around the Cambridge Science Park, say, then it is openly artificial, a medium-is-the-message artefact of the times, and so it's not odd. But you don't get that feeling here. Maybe it's because it's just new. Fortunately, none of the people I met looked as if they might be murdering immigrants in their spare time, but you can never really tell, can you?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Unfair!

Isn't there some sort of EU rule about unfair competition from governments? If so, surely British satirists will have to launch an action, because they simply cannot compete with the U.K.'s elected representatives (at every level). In today's newspaper I read that a local council wants to send out detailed -- and intrusive -- questionnaires in order to establish who the legal guardians of rubbish bins might be. This is, naturally, so that they can prosecute people for putting too much rubbish in the bins (or the wrong kind of rubbish). They blame it on Brussels -- reasonable I suppose -- but I doubt even North Koreans have to register their bins with the commissars. I don't really understand the thinking behind this, except that a general policy of creating crimes that it's hard to arrest and prosecute people for (eg, not shutting a rubbish bin properly) will improve the crime statistics, because these statistics are currently made up of crimes (eg, murder) that it's difficult to arrest and prosecute people for. Householder, particularly homeowners, are much better bet. Such people often try to get their children into good schools as well, it appears.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

News and olds

Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't be a little tougher on the use of the word "news". There must be some way that Google or someone can apply some rudimentary information theory so that news feeds could actually be restricted to news. The definition of news must include so element of surprise: something that you know already isn't news. There would be no point sending out a news bulletin saying that the sun has risen or that a government IT project is late and massively overbudget. We already know these things: it's only if they don't happen that we need to be told. The problems come at the margins, of course. I was thinking about this the other day, when this article turned up in a news feed:

Internet consultant firm Gartner claims that only 1 in 10 commercial virtual worlds succeeds, and most fail within 18 months

[From Slashdot | Most Business-Launched Virtual Worlds Fail]

As soon as I read this I thought, hold on, don't only 1 in 10 of all new restaurants succeed and don't most fail within 18 months? In fact, don't only 1 in 10 of all new businesses succeed and don't most fail within 18 months? So shouldn't the headline have been that "commercial virtual worlds are exactly the same as commercial anything else". Is that news?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

On the waterfront

When summer finally arrived, I was told the weather in England was unbelievable, but I was in Stockholm, where the weather was unbelievable.

The Stockholm waterfront was wonderful. As the sun went down, we strolled to a fabulous fish restauraunt.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Litter lout

Bill Bryson, who is the head of the Campaign for Rural England, has been complaining about the amount of litter everywhere in the UK. I hate to sound unpatriotic, but he's right: England is a dump.

I spend a lot of time working in different countries at the moment, and I can vouchsafe that nowhere is as filthy as home. You don't see garbage all over the place when walking around New York and as soon as you return to Woking you can't help but notice rubbish in the hedgerows, on the verges, beside the road. Compared to Singapore, living in Woking is like living in a landfill. It really does begin to affect you after a while, because you want to feel proud of your homeland, but it's becoming increasingly more difficult. With St. George's day still fresh in my mind, I'm trying to find -- cling on to -- a few things to be proud about, but all I've come up with so far is Radio Four.

Unfortunately, when I picked up the newspaper are after arriving back in merrie England, the first stories I saw were about a criminal being let out of jail to go on a golfing holiday, the police taking over four hours to respond to a 999 call about a murder and a guy being fined (and getting a criminal record) for putting too much rubbish in his bin (oh, and a convicted terrorist is being let out of jail because he can't be deported as it will violate his human rights). Still, great to have a decent cup of Yorkshire Gold tea again.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]