normblog

The point is to fress

This has its moments - 'Friedrich Nietzsche's Diet Book':

No philosopher came close to solving the problem of guilt and weight until Descartes divided mind and body in two, so that the body could gorge itself while the mind thought, Who cares, it's not me... Spinoza, on the other hand, dined sparingly because he believed that God existed in everything and it's intimidating to wolf down a knish if you think you're ladling mustard onto the First Cause of All Things.
.....
"Order like you are ordering for every human being on earth," Kant advises, but what if the man next to you doesn't eat guacamole? In the end, of course, there are no moral foods - unless we count soft-boiled eggs.

And other food philosophies.

The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection 64

In the latest instalment I bring you family, faith and... class solidarity. You better believe it. It's from an old friend of the Momma 'n' Daddy series, Ricky Skaggs, and he's singing 'My Father's Son'. As I couldn't find the lyrics online, I had them transcribed - just for you - at normblog. Take it away, Ricky:

My history is no secret, it's written in the stones
In the hill beside this river rest my mother's gentle bones
And Daddy there beside her, home among his next of kin
And their legacy passed down to me the sons of mountain men.

Raised to be a miner by a miner's calloused hands
Passed my youth between these mountains where I grew to understand
That family was the word of God and faith was its demand
And life and death, the same, came from the coal beneath this land.

Well, a rich man writes the book of laws a poor man must defend
But the highest laws are written on the hearts of honest men.
If that cup is passed to me to do what must be done
When they lay me down, remind them I was just my father's son.

I've walked among these people, heard the stories that they tell
I've crawled beside them in the mines and touched the walls of hell.
I've shared their sacred secrets, known their triumph and their pain
And right or wrong I'll stand with them on the final judgement day.

They say God gives us comfort when the time of trouble comes.
They say we'll know no share of peace till we lay down our guns.
But will my boy have a chance to do the things I've never done?
Or will he, like me, be told that he must be his father's son?

Well, a rich man writes the book of laws a poor man must defend
But the highest laws are written on the hearts of honest men.
When that cup is passed to me to do what must be done
On a chunk of coal just carve these words: I was just my father's son.

The song has depth.

[The Momma 'n' Daddy Archive, containing all the details of the series, is here.]

Zidane, you're rockin' the boat

But I ain't complaining. It's one of the things sport is for, moments like that:

Zidane was not done. His charge up-field in stoppage-time was rewarded with Sylvain Wiltord's clipped pass and the 34-year-old gathered, cut inside Puyol and slipped his shot left, where Casillas had sprung right.

Martin Walker:

[T]he Spaniards in the crowd let him know the agenda early. Taking a third-minute corner in front of them, Zidane was greeted with waving hands and a chorus of au revoir.

Some 87 minutes later he was in the opposite corner of a fascinated stadium cutting inside Carles Puyol to drill in France's third past his Bernabéu teammate Iker Casillas. Adios, España.

It was one of those magic World Cup moments from this man of stern face and sad eyes.

Incidentally, the n-predictor ended with a 75% success rate for the second round. Its current projections are that England will meet Brazil in one semi-final and lose, and that Germany will meet Italy in the other and win. Brazil will then beat Germany in the final.

'We carry on'

Professor Mosa al-Mosawe, president of Baghdad University:

Everything's much more open now. On campus you can discuss what you want without feeling threatened. The downside is that you have to be very careful when you walk out on the streets...

... By blowing up electricity sub-stations, the insurgents are trying to give us the impression that things were better in Saddam's day.

... Like a lot of Iraqis, I'm optimistic that the insurgency will stop some time. It may be next week, next month, next year. In the meantime, we carry on.

Read the rest.

Short short story 5

Time Slip (by Sophie Masson)

The beach is crowded, people talking, laughing, shrieking, radios blaring, footballs smacking the sand, all sounds muffled by the roar and whack of the waves. Out at sea, there are ships, a row of them, sitting patiently on the horizon. So many. She has never seen so many before. There must be a dock strike. Isn't there always a dock strike? But the realities of city existence seem unreal on this sunny fringe of the world, with time hanging still. She thinks lazily of how hot and stinking it must be on the ships and how the sailors must envy the swimmers and surfers playing about so carefree in the sea. And thinking so, she goes to sleep, and dreams...

He stands on the deck of the ship and looks out to land. Long ago, this place was deserted, after the great wave. Once, though, so the history books said, it had been popular with the people of the big city that had hugged the coast. He stares at the empty beach and sees a mirage of what once was - a colourful crowd of people, playing happily about in the waves. It looks so real, this trick of sun and haze and silver sea. It frightens him. And so he turns away, and goes below for the rest of the time they steam past the dead coast. It is better that way. The service has no use for dreamers.

[The short short story comp is announced and explained here.]

Short short story 4

Equilibrium (by Peter Gorman)

Topper had come to believe that an obsessive was someone who spent more time on something than he did.

[The short short story comp is announced and explained here.]

A step

Hamas and Fatah on Tuesday completed an agreement over a plan that implicitly recognizes Israel, ending weeks of acrimonious negotiations, a top official said.

"We have an agreement over the document," said Ibrahim Abu Najah, coordination of the "national dialogue" over the proposal.

I'll be interested to see what 'implicitly' means, but it's a step.

Top Aussies

Via Tim Blair here's another of those lists - the 100 Most Influential Australians. Rupert Murdoch, Germaine Greer, Kerry Packer and Patrick White all make the first 10. Don Bradman - amazingly, to me - doesn't. But he's there in the big list, of course, along with John Anderson, John Howard, Ned Kelly, Robert Menzies, Kylie Minogue, Sidney Nolan, Peter Singer, Shane Warne and Peter Weir. An earlier top Aussies list was done by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2001.

Securicor workers campaign

Last year Indonesian workers employed by UK-based global security giant Securicor took the decision to strike. For this they were illegally sacked by the company. They've tried every means to win back their jobs, and recently the Indonesian Supreme Court ruled in their favour, ordering Securicor to take them back. But the company has failed to comply with the Court's order. More than 150 security officers have been occupying the offices of Securicor Indonesia.

You can express your support for these workers at LabourStart. And see also here, here and here. (Thanks: AS.)

Against blacklists

Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Financial Times (subscription required), as reproduced at Engage:

Fighting oppression is admirable but to insist that no one in a free society should have to make any kind of political statement in order to get a non-political job is to fight for a more vital principle still.

More vital or as vital? In any case, vital.