What with news of the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, it’s useful to have an updated Royal Family tree with birth years, titles, and succession indicators:
For some readers this will be old hat. Not for me, alas. I’ve seen just one episode of The Crown.
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Current reading (books):
W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (for the group)
Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun
Agatha Christie (writing as Mary Westmacott), Absent in the Spring
E. W. Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra
François Mauriac, The Holy Terror (a mini-book – for making up lost ground)
John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat (ditto)
Aristotle, Poetics (ditto)
John Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality (ditto)
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (ditto; a re-read)
books, as yet unfinished, mentioned in previous entries
I was going to say it’s pretty cupcake, but surveying the list, I see the authors include two Nobel winners (Mauriac and Steinbeck), two Great Books of the Western World contributors (Aristotle and Machiavelli), and two theological giants (Christie and Lewis). So, not too shabby after all. Mr. Quiring would approve. Maybe not of Christie. I shake my head whenever well-read people don’t bother with Christie, especially if they do read Chesterton and Sayers. (See the latter’s gem “Aristotle on Detective Fiction,” which I found in Anthony Kenny’s Oxford World’s Classics edition of the Poetics.)
Despite about 10,000 years of humans living alongside cattle, this is the first time scientists have documented a cow using a tool.
The researchers say their discovery shows that cows are smarter than we think and that other cows could develop similar skills, given the chance.
I’m too tired to work out the details, but I suspect that trouble lurks here for Hume’s account of testimonial knowledge.
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Bible reading report. I’m caught up reading Acts, but I’m three or four chapters behind in each of Genesis, Nehemiah, and Matthew. It’s not as dire as it sounds. Acts is by far the most thoroughly annotated of these books. The notes discuss every historical character (there’s a surprising amount of information about Sergius Paulus), every city that Paul visits, logistical reasons for travelers’ detours and delays, etc.
How, exactly, were worms involved in Herod Agrippa’s death? The possibilities are spelled out. (Bonus tidbit: the guy used to party with Caligula.)
Fascinating but long.
If I don’t begin reading before Abel wakes in the morning, I don’t finish by the end of the day.
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Less demanding is my re-reading of Jay Bennett’s Deathman, Do Not Follow Me (1968). I read it in 1995, when I was 13 or 14. It seemed dated then. But now more years have gone since I first read it than between that reading and when it was first published. And the book feels, if anything, more fresh.
I had a similar feeling the other day, showing Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, also from 1968, to my family. That movie used to seem antediluvian. Now, its hospitals and airports remind me of my childhood; they look how hospitals and airports should look.
A 2026 World Cup fixture designated by organisers as an LGBTQ+ “Pride Match” will feature two countries where homosexuality is illegal. …
The plans were put in place before the teams involved in the fixture were selected or the draw for the 2026 World Cup was made.
The moral of this story is … [I leave it as an exercise for the reader].
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Re: the font.
In a not-too-wild alternate reality, universities decline less severely, and I obtain gainful employment. I teach classes and publish ten-page articles: some, in top journals; others, in Curaçaoan semi-annuals. Each article is repeatedly anthologized.
In time, I issue a pithy book. Then another. Then a third and a fourth. (I write bestselling mysteries on the side.)
I’m respected enough that it doesn’t matter with whom I publish the fourth academic book. Perhaps I choose Indiana, out of loyalty to the state; perhaps, a trade press (Norton? Penguin?). Perhaps I self-publish and do all the typesetting myself.
The first book, I publish in the “Cambridge Studies in Philosophy” series; the third, a dauntingly terse work, with “Princeton Monographs in Philosophy.”
What interests me tonight is the second book, issued, obligatorily, with Oxford. (“Obligatorily” because Oxford has just about cornered the market of the best academic books. The alternate reality isn’t so different that the major players have changed.)
The trouble with Oxford, as a publisher, is its meager font menu and tiny print size.
My Oxford font choice is Albertina for its long-tailed lowercase “y.”
… according to some. Lewis biographer Alan Jacobs isn’t convinced but happily pays tribute. Lewis devotees will recall the nice girl who lived at the Kilns during the Second World War. It’s good to hear how she turned out.
Some lives are blessed. Lucy’s (in the Chronicles) was even more favored. She reigned in Narnia; sailed to that world’s edge; and then, in her prime, was whisked away to Aslan’s country and the new Narnia.
A new Blu-ray collection of the BBC’s Narnia has been released some forty years after the series was first broadcast. Included is a documentary, Return to Narnia, featuring the original cast.
I learned this from the tabloids. (It popped up in various feeds.) The sensational bit is that Narnia was filmed next-door to pedophile Jimmy Savile’s studio. No Narnia actors were harmed.
The afore-linked piece tells that Downton Abbey’s Lesley Nicol was in this series. For completeness’s sake, here are a few other familiar names:
Karin wanted to sit through this BBC miniseries – one of her staples – while on (unpaid) maternity leave. So we did. It was my second viewing. I enjoyed it better this time, probably because we watched 50, not 150, minutes each night.
As you’d expect, the dialog is witty, and there’s lovely scenery, architecture, costuming, etc. But it’s the reaction shots that distinguish this production. Whenever some fool runs his or her mouth, Miss Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (Colin Firth) cast exquisitely disparaging looks: Lizzy’s, half-pained, half-amused; Darcy’s, woeful. (Firth, who is always turning to the wall, seems physically ill in two-thirds of his scenes.) Other superior persons – notably, old Mr Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow) and Miss Caroline Bingley (Anna Chancellor, a.k.a. “Duckface”) – are more overtly contemptuous. As for the fools that these higher beings must endure: Mrs Bennet (Alison Steadman) and Mr Collins (David Bamber) are too ridiculous for my taste, but Miss Lydia Bennet (Julia Sawalha) is superb; she isn’t stupid so much as lively, ignorant, and selfish. (I knew a girl at school who looked and acted like Lydia. She was amusing – and rather a dear – at arm’s length; her closer associates suffered. Happily, she did grow up.)
I needn’t rehash the plot of Pride and Prejudice. The themes are matchmaking and, especially, money.
“How long have you loved him?”
“Well, it’s been coming on so gradually, I hardly know. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”
As for the actors, it might be useful to list some of their other notable performances.
(1) Julia Sawalha (Miss Lydia Bennet): A Midwinter’s Tale, reviewed by me. She’s just as lively in that movie. She has kept on getting parts, but I know of nothing comparable to her mid-nineties work. Her looks haven’t deserted her. Her youthfulness has.
(2) Susannah Harker (Miss Jane Bennet): Midsomer Murders, s12e02, “The Black Book.” The most intriguing murder suspect in that hilarious episode.
(3) Barbara Leigh Hunt (Lady Catherine de Bourgh). Strangled in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy.
(4) Adrian Lukis (Mr Wickham): Blair Toast, Stephen Toast’s insufferable military brother, in Toast of London.
(5) Emilia Fox (Miss Giorgiana Darcy), of the prolific Fox family. Kind-faced, handsome, unremarkable. Such actors are necessary. Typical work: the everlasting autopsy/forensics drama, Silent Witness. Atypical work: Cashback, as a supermarket checkout girl. Most effective work: as one of the blondes in Roman Polanski’s Pianist.
(6) David Bamber (Mr Collins). He is in absolutely everything. My choice is his turn as a harried piano teacher/road accident victim in the miniseries Collision.
(7) “Duckface” (Miss Caroline Bingley): Four Weddings, of course. Honorable mention: Ken Stott’s love interest in the lurid crime series The Vice.
The best tribute to this Pride and Prejudice is this YouTuber’s, who re-enacted it by himself.
I am reminded of Snoopy’s unabridged sock-puppet show of War and Peace, which goes on for days and is viewed, in its entirety, only by Linus.
It could be a technically superb movie and still disappoint. It’ll almost surely give Christie the Merchant-Ivory treatment, which is wrong for her.
The recent adaptations don’t capture Christie’s spareness. No matter how faithfully they render the plot and characters, they make the scenery and costumes too pretty. They embellish what the page (wisely) barely sketches.
Perhaps if Mike Leigh were the director …
If only Nicolas Roeg had adapted one or two of the creepier Christie novels, as he did The Witches and Don’t Look Now …
As T.S. Eliot famously said: “Christie and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”
(OK, he said Dante and Shakespeare, but that wasn’t what he meant.)
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Shakespeare-wise, I have begun reading Coriolanus. How timeless these plebians and politicians seem!
Daniel, this week, decided to say dozens of real words. Previously, he had spoken gibberish.
Congrats to Liga de Quito for winning the Copa Sudamericana, and especially to Alexander Domínguez for blocking three of Fortaleza’s penalty kicks. Domínguez also tended goal when Liga previously won this tournament, in 2009.
I have nothing much to relate – the weekend has been low-key (the best kind of weekend) – so here is an oldish video by Un mundo inmenso that I’d somehow never viewed until tonight. It’s about Ascension Island, an out-of-the-way, volcanic, Guernsey-sized British territory in the South Atlantic.
Plenty of weirdness here. Best thing – or worst, according to one point of view: Charles Darwin had the idea of importing non-native plants to moisten the air a bit. One of the mountains ended up turning green, but its ecosystem isn’t up to the ecological purists’ standards.
The U.S. has a military base on the island. Apparently, quite a few of the Britons are getting edged out. Which they resent. They’re only temporary residents, but some have been on Ascension for many years, and like their Northern Atlantic counterparts they feel connected to “their” land.
I looked up the island’s job board to see about moving my family there, but only one job was posted, in waste management, and it wasn’t ideal, requiring various special driver’s liscences as well as unmarriedness. Besides, the vacancy was closed.
I believe this is the first Ecuadorian president or presidential contender to have been murdered during my lifetime. President Jaime Roldós died in a plane crash several months before I was born; as far as I know, he was Ecuador’s last president – or near-president – to die mid-career (so to speak). It happened forty-two years ago; I’ve now had a longer life than Roldós.
Other presidents have been kidnapped, exiled, forced to barricade themselves indoors, etc., but they’ve survived. It hasn’t been too, too unsafe to seek the presidency in Ecuador. A lot of ordinary citizens have had it much worse.
But several politicians have been murdered this year (and more ordinary citizens than usual have been murdered). Ecuador is in a bad way.
“That was the secret of secrets,” said Queen Jadis. “It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient kings were weak and soft-hearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought and fought to overcome her by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water – ”
“Beast!” muttered Polly.
“The last great battle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was half way up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Victory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Victory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”
(From The Magician’s Nephew.)
In Ecuador, the political situation isn’t as dire as this. But it’s close.
On the verge of impeachment, the president, Guillermo Lasso, has spoken the Deplorable Word. Or, rather, he has invoked its watered-down, constitutional equivalent, the muerte cruzada (“mutual death”).
The legislature is hereby dissolved (although this won’t go unchallenged). Lasso’s tenure is now slated to end in six months. Meanwhile, general elections will be held. The victorious legislators and executive will serve out the remainder of the original, pre-dissolution term of office, which will continue until 2025.
Lasso, in theory, could win his election and be “resurrected” as president. Until then, it will be his prerogative to govern by decree, unchecked by the legislature (but not by the courts).
My dad made the point that muerte cruzada amounts to a check on legislators, discouraging them from overthrowing the president – spuriously or otherwise – as the Ecuadorian Asamblea Nacional has been wont to do.
In this case, it was the legislators’ foolish attempt to oust Lasso that provoked Lasso to oust them from the government.
A longer-term consequence is that from now on, every likely presidential impeachment can be expected to result in a dissolution of the legislature. Immanent impeachment virtually guarantees a comprehensive reset.
That might not be such a bad thing.
More worrying is the period of governance by presidential decree. I hope that things will turn out all right this time. But it’s not the sort of privilege I’d be glad for just any president to exercise.
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Karin had planned to take a few days off, for enjoyment. Then, she tweaked her lower back, was unable to walk, and ended up taking Tuesday and Wednesday off, for recovery.
Eighty-two degrees (F) today. That’s more like it!
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Something you don’t often see: a philosophy book about spying. And it looks like a good book. (The reviewer is C.A.J. Coady, whom I’ve previously mentioned and who is known for philosophizing about “dirty hands” in governance.)
From the acknowledgments:
I read my first spy novel, Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger (in French translation), about thirty-five years ago. Since then, spy fiction (be it in novel, movie, or TV series form) has been one of my favourite genres, alongside crime fiction. Over the last four years, I have had to read spy novels, watch spy movies and sit through years’ worth of television series. Of all my books so far, this one has been the most enjoyable to research and write, though at times and for reasons that will become apparent throughout, uncomfortably so. Unless I decide to write on the ethics of policing, it is unlikely that I will ever again combine my research with my love for so-called popular culture and so have the chance to indulge in the latter entirely without guilt. Partly for this reason, my elation at having finished this book is tinged with regret.
I’m glad the author admits this in the very first paragraph! It reminds me of the quip:
I am voting for George Bush because I liked his daddy.
I liked Daddy Bush because I liked Ronald Reagan.
I liked Ronald Reagan because he was in the movies.
I like movies.
Maybe someone who likes to watch movies about the Mafia can write a book about the ethics of belonging to the Mafia. (I’d hope the thesis would be an unqualified or negligibly qualified condemnation of belonging to the Mafia.)
For what it’s worth, I’ve met at least two philosophers who were spies.
They didn’t tell me they were spies.
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Karin & I have been reading aloud about James Thurber’s quasi-fantastical hometown – Columbus, Ohio – in his My Life and Hard Times, one or two chapters each night. Our mistake last night was to read Thurber and then the Old Testament. “The Car We Had to Push” and “The Day the Dam Broke” did not prepare our hearts for Leviticus 15.
Eleven-month-old Daniel, who’d been taking five or six steps at a time, casually walked across the living room two nights ago. He’s learned to climb up our staircases (but not down them). He’s grown tall enough for his head to be whacked by the refrigerator door. Today I caught him playing with the dials on our gas stove.
Samuel received his first YouTube lesson in adding and subtracting. He grinned and squealed and waved his arms. Fireworks of possibility exploded in my brain. Should I buy Samuel an abacus so that he can practice calculating like the Japanese? (Should I buy myself an abacus?) Should I teach Samuel about truth tables? Propositional logic? Quantification? He’d probably get a kick out of seeing “∀” and “∃.”
I’m not even sure I could teach logic to adults. I’ve never tried.
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I spent a couple of hours at the whiteboard with Samuel. He can’t add yet. He won’t even count all the dots unless I do so along with him. He does like to yell out the numbers and the operations, but he gets the sums wrong.
“Five plus three equals FOURTEEN!”
No, son.
He is bitterly disappointed. Not because he’s got the sum wrong – I doubt he understands what it is to get a sum wrong (and he never has minded factual correction as such) – but because he really wants the last term to be fourteen. He is an enthusiastic laissez-faire combinatorialist. If South Africa vs. Mexico is a valid possibility, and if there’s another possibility which is South Africa vs. Finland, and if South Africa vs. North Korea is possible … then surely five plus three equals fourteen is perfectly kosher, perfectly respectable (worth celebrating, even), no matter that dot-counting can establish that five plus three actually (therefore, possibly; therefore, necessarily) equals eight.
I believe this is his first brush with theoretical, as opposed to practical, impossibility. It is baffling to him.
I had to wait twenty years to see Ecuador play for the first time in a World Cup. I lived through five World Cups before Ecuador ever qualified for one. Oh, the shame and helplessness of those years.
Samuel and Daniel saw their very first World Cup game yesterday, and Ecuador played in it.
Ecuador scored the first goal after three minutes. Stephen and I jumped up and yelled and celebrated. Samuel and Daniel were startled. They cried.
Then the goal was disallowed because a player was offside.
Stephen and I couldn’t see the infraction – not even after the replay was shown. I gather that 99% of the world couldn’t see it, either. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Offside is decreed by technology now. Good thing, because if a human referee had decided that we were offside on that play, FIFA and the host nation would have lost all credibility.
In any case, fútbol-wise, Qatar was doomed. Ecuador was better by about ten miles. The only question, at that point, was whether the referee would permit Ecuador to win.
Then, after twelve minutes, he awarded Ecuador a penalty kick. (He couldn’t have done otherwise, really.) He should have shown Qatar’s goalie a red card, but, understandably, he let the host nation off the hook.
Enner Valencia, who had been missing his penalty kicks in recent games, calmly scored. Stephen and I were quiet this time.
The rest of the game was a walk-through for Ecuador. The Qataris were rattled and simply awful. The Ecuadorians were more cautious than I should have liked. Valencia scored again later in the half, and then Ecuador rested. Or tried to; Qatar kept on fouling.
The Ecuadorian supporters could be heard cheering. Many Qatari supporters left at halftime.
In this video, one of the soberer analysts on U.S. television describes the Qatari exodus. Some of the numbers he cites seem off, but the lesson is clear enough.
How valuable was this victory? We got the points. We regained some confidence after a series of lackluster practice games. Our main scorer regained his form. Were we good? Impossible to say. Qatar was so, so bad. We could have tried harder to score more goals, but it was crucial to rest and calm down. The games against the Netherlands and Senegal will be very hard.
This analysis is fair.
For one day, we led the whole world in the standings – something which also happened during the 2006 World Cup. Then, this morning, England beat Iran 6 goals to 2. Iran looked miles and miles better than Qatar.
Here is Un mundo inmenso’s take on this World Cup.
Now, something different. Samuel asked to watch more tornado videos, so I put on Netflix’s series Earthstorm. It has the best tornado footage I’ve seen. I highly recommend it.
No one ever thought that 1066 and All That was All That, but that book turns out to have been a Good Thing after all. But to understand this, it helps to imagine the book read aloud by Internet wonder Philomena Cunk. This week, the Internet discovered that Cunk has been on the BBC for many years. She has become famous for wondering: “What is clocks?”
She ponders history as well as the “centuries of millenia” of architecture (“buildings”), as well as time. Not only is she an historian, she is a philosopher, or perhaps an idiot. Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wondering. Cunk, in her questioning of “experts,” makes us wonder who it is who would waste time on wondering. And yet, we cannot spend enough time inquiring along with Philomena Cunk.
(Has she ever interviewed Timothy Williamson? He would be almost ripe for it.)
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I checked out Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman for Karin. Rickman is her idol. Karin worries that the diaries will spoil Rickman for her.
She needn’t.
He is – was (R.I.P.) – a good diarist and a decent guy. He clearly was fond of the Harry Potter kids.
I promised Karin I’d read Harry Potter 1 and 2 by May 1 so that we could watch those movies together. She’s reading Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? so that we can watch the Britbox series of that book.
Today is the 65th anniversary of its first printing (it already had been delivered over a BBC radio program). R.M. Hare and P.H. Nowell-Smith replied to Anscombe in the next week’s issue; and a week later, she replied to them.
(All these PDFs are supplied by the Integrity Project. Their typeface is Plantin, my favorite for body text.)
I’m afraid there is nothing friendly, romantic, or erotic in this exchange; although Hare does begin, “Owing to the lubricity of her style …” and Anscombe replies – equivocally! (for “lubricity” has two meanings) – “I won’t sue Mr. Hare for suggesting I give lecherous talks on the wireless.”
This was published on St. Valentine’s Day three years ago.
It’s a pretty useful piece. The next time someone accuses you of being a “grammar Nazi” or an “emotional rapist,” you can retort, “Concept inflator!”
Well, OK, that’s not going to win many battles: the phrase just isn’t harsh enough. But you can still look to the concept to purify your own speech. And then you’ll end up as the “sucker” in our society’s verbal arms race. That is, you’ll end up in the pacifist’s position.
(What was Anscombe’s position on dropping language-bombs?)
