British police are fully engaged with the public

Peter Hitchens thinks that British police are completely useless:

What use are the police these days? We know they have a pretty ambiguous attitude towards us, the public, avoiding us where possible by staying indoors or racing about in cars, and seldom going out alone in case one of  us actually approaches them.

It turns out he is quite wrong about the police being reluctant to approach the public. PC Shaun Jenkins (no relation – at least, I hope not) is a living refutation of the assertion that the police spend their time avoiding British citizenry. He was in Caerphilly – close to a little town called Machen where I lived for a few years – in South Wales in 2010 where, in his enthusiasm to engage with the public, he decided to indulge in sexual intercourse with one of them – a married woman.

Ever prepared to fight crime no matter what the circumstance, the redoubtable PC Jenkins kept his weapon – as it were – at hand at all times: his gun was around his ankles during what the tribunal who investigated the incident described as the equivalent of a “tea break”.

He could, said the tribunal rather optimistically, ‘have been back on duty “within a minute or two”‘ – presumably with his trousers still at ankle level; in every way ready for action.

Tea breaks are not what they used to be.

From the BBC:

An armed police officer who had sex on duty was not sacked because an appeals panel said it was similar to “a tea break”, it has emerged.

PC Shaun Jenkins, 36, was carrying a gun when he met the married woman in a house in Caerphilly in 2010.

They had consensual sex, with his gun still around his ankles.

An appeals tribunal report concluded “it was the sort of delay that will occur if an officer goes to the toilet or into a cafe to buy a cup of tea”.

Gwent Police had initially dismissed PC Jenkins for gross misconduct but he was later reinstated.

The tribunal ruled PC Jenkins could still reach his gun because it was in its holder attached to the belt of his trousers, which were around his ankles.

A report into his conduct found the act did not pose a risk to public safety because he could have been back on duty “within a minute or two”.

Pedants of pornography

From here:

The new academic journal Porn Studies, due to start publication in spring 2014, has called for submissions of articles, scholarly papers and book reviews.

U.K. publisher Taylor & Francis says it will be “the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal” devoted to the study of pornographic products and services in the contexts of culture, history, economy, society and the law.

Content will explore the “intersection of sexuality, gender, race, class, age and ability.”

Several educators and authors have provided endorsements for the journal, which will be edited by two women – British academics Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith.

“Porn Studies is a wonderful and much-needed resource for anyone interested in pornography and its relationship to wider cultural contexts,” Ronald Weitzer of George Washington University said. “The journal addresses virtually every aspect of porn and will challenge readers with novel, cutting-edge articles on the topic.”

In 1964 when Justice Potter Stewart made the famous observation that, although he could not define pornography, he knew it when he saw it, he could not have anticipated that in 2013, academics would still be trying to figure out just what it is “in the contexts of culture, history, economy, society and the law”.

I suppose the heartening thing about this is that there must still be a vestige of shame left in academia. After all, everyone knows that these prurient pedants simply want to look at naughty magazines but at least they have the decency to erect a smoke screen of respectability to conceal their scholarly concupiscence.

On Satire

G. K. Chesterton said: “A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.”

But what is satire? The ever helpful Wikipedia tells us:

Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.

While satire originated in Egypt, it became more fully developed in Ancient Greece where it took one of two forms: Satire after the style of Horace: humorous, self-deprecating commentary that laments contemporary follies; or after the style of Juvenal. Juvanalian satire is scornful, sarcastic and polarised.

Unbeknownst to me I have unwittingly succumbed to the influence of Rowan Williams whose ten year stint as Anglican in Chief has insidiously infused my thinking with via media muddle. I have concocted an Hegelian middle ground between Horatian and Juvenalian satire, one that is both excruciatingly funny while being bitingly sarcastic. I have empirical evidence of this: my 11 year old granddaughter roars with laughter at my musings (no, I don’t show her all of them), confirming the former and I find myself deep in the mephitic bowels of an ecclesiastical lawsuit, confirming the latter.

For those who think some of the things I have written are a trifle tasteless, I recommend a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge – whom I met briefly in the 70s and, you will be relieved to know, I irritated by asking impertinent questions:

Good taste and humour are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Breaking Bad: Romans 3:10 for today

Before I was a Christian, it seemed to me self-evident that humankind was a morass of evil and corruption. Its members had a pathetically short, meaningless existence punctuated by episodes of vanity and despair set between the nothingness before birth and the blackness after death – yet man still had the odd talent of making the whole thing seem comical.

As a Christian, my view is not that much different: man is evil, but his evil has an explanation and a remedy; his earthly pursuits are rendered even more vain by Christian understanding, yet there is meaning to be found in life and it does not end in black nothingness. With the abundance of evidence for the existence of evil – personal evil – I’ve never been able to understand why some Christians find it so hard to believe in the devil as a person.

Unsurprisingly, my favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes – and one of my favourite TV shows was The Sopranos and, now, is Breaking Bad. Some of my Christian friends don’t approve of my viewing tastes – among other things – but both seem to me to represent the human condition – sans redemption, admittedly – rather accurately.

From here:

Breaking Bad, the AMC television drama that wrapped up its fifth season this past summer, is one of the most critically-acclaimed shows of the last several years. It recently won its seventh Emmy award and has been touted by many critics as the best show on TV today.

[….]

Behind all of Breaking Bad‘s artistic and technical brilliance is a clear and consistent picture of human nature fully consistent with orthodox Christianity. Perhaps no other show has ever presented such an honest and carefully drawn picture of total depravity. This emphasis surely comes from Gilligan himself. Although he now describes himself as “pretty much agnostic,” Gilligan continues to bears the imprint of his Catholic upbringing. His show portrays moral decay as part of the natural order of things in a fallen world. “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface” is the pithy way Gilligan puts it when asked to describe Breaking Bad in a single sentence.

7 year old announces he is gay, mother believes him

From here:

Considering that my son has a longstanding crush on Glee‘s Blaine and regularly refers to him as “my boyfriend,” I thought there was a fair chance that he would someday say, “I’m gay.” But my kid is only 7 years old. I figured I had a few years before we crossed that threshold (if we ever did), probably when he was 14 or 15. I never thought it would happen this soon.

[….]

It’s amazing, but it’s also shocking. How many people have a 7-year-old come out to them? A lot of people don’t know how to react, and I don’t blame them. Before my son, I’d never met a child who came out this young — and we don’t know anyone else who has. The mere idea of children having a sexual orientation makes people uncomfortable. It’s something we don’t think about (or just don’t like to).

Yes, it is shocking: why would a mother allow her 7 year old to watch Glee and why would it amaze her that junior has been influenced by Glee’s glamorisation of homosexuality?

Lost for Anglicans

Lost is over. This is what it was about:

Without appealing to the trappings of organised religion, Lost dealt – albeit less than coherently  – with good, evil, sin, redemption and the immortality of the human spirit; so it could legitimately claim to be “spiritual, not religious”, the title, coincidentally, of a conference sponsored by the Diocese of New Westminster:

Our keynote speakers understand the spiritual and religious culture of this region in a way that few people do. It is an example of the bridge building that this group is talking about. The book Cascadia explains how we are a distinctive bio-region and the argument in the book is that it is the geography – the mountains, the fish, the rivers, the continental divide – that has created who we are and has helped shape us spiritually. We are different here, largely to do with the fact that we are at the end of the continent and we have this amazing geography.

It looks suspiciously as if the writers of Lost may have drawn inspiration from the meanderings of this obscure and largely defunct corner of dessicated Canadian Anglicanism: Lost was also about a distinctive bio-region, an island, and the effect that it had on those who lived on it. Lost was not specifically Christian – although one could argue that it had a firmer grip on the human condition than the Diocese of New Westminster, since it acknowledged the reality of sin.

Over time, Western Anglican Christianity has become more preoccupied with spirituality, mystery and arcane ritual, and less with truth; consequently you find a speaker at the conference sponsored by the Diocese of New Westminster saying,

“In South American shamanic ayahuasca ceremonies I’ve surrendered to the pulsing heart of the green world and immersed in Jewish Sabbath and high holy days gatherings with friends. I’ve probably taken too many workshops on a wide array of psycho-spiritual and body-oriented healing arts. Some people might say I’ve eaten too many vegetables! My root-meditation practice is inspired by the Buddhist tradition. For 45 minutes each morning I sit and breathe in loving-kindness, a focusing practice that strengthens the heart’s innate capacity to open, accept and forgive.”

This has descended from mystery to muddle – where it cavorts with the spirituality of Lost in which, had you watched it, you would have discovered:

  • The island has a “heart” of light kept glowing by a stone cork plugging a hole;
  • Human guardians of the island live thousands of years after drinking anything – from wine to muddy water – given to them by a previous guardian;
  • A man who fell down the corked hole can – and does – turn into a plume of smoke at will;
  • Electromagnetism from the corked hole is lethal to humans – apart from one;
  • A sequence of doomsday numbers keeps reappearing: their significance is never adequately explained;
  • The island can move through time when an antique wheel is turned.

This goes on and on and none of it makes much sense, scientifically or metaphysically.

Of course, Lost, unlike the Diocese of New Westminster, isn’t pretending to be a church and endless unanswered mysteries (well, some were answered) are good for ratings; moreover, Lost has accomplished what it set out to do: make lots of money for everyone involved – it has been a resounding success. It even entertained a few people along the way – something the Anglican Church has never been able to manage.

The Venus de Milo cover-up

From the BBC:

Add an Image

Police in the US state of New Jersey have ordered a family to cover up their snow sculpture of the famous nude Venus de Milo after a neighbour complained.

Eliza Gonzalez sculpted the snow-woman with her son and daughter on her front lawn in Rahway following a snowstorm.

It may be decent, but is it art?

Toxic TV

Leo Tolstoy in his later years was taken to see a film by a friend. His response was, “why would anyone watch such rubbish?”

Malcolm Muggeridge, after a lifetime of making his living from television, retreated to a small English village and had his television aerial removed. I met him in the early 1980s and mentioned how much I enjoyed his writing. He said that that was music to his ears; I doubt he would have responded similarly had I said how much I enjoyed his TV appearances.

Theodore Dalrymple isn’t swayed favourably by the pernicious twaddle that emanates from the electronic purveyor of mental pollution either:

Shortly before Mr Blair was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, a newspaper discovered that I had not had a television in my home for about thirty years. This struck the editor of the newspaper as an extraordinary circumstance; so extraordinary in fact, rather like having been an anchorite in the Syrian desert subsisting on locusts and honey, that he contacted me to ask whether I would agree to having a television installed in my home so that I could tell readers, after a week of watching it, what I thought of it. This I consented to do on one very firm condition: that the newspaper took the television away at the end of the week. The newspaper agreed.

When the television arrived, I plugged it in and turned it on. The picture was grainy, for something else was required, evidently, to have a good reception. But it was good enough to know what was going on.

The programme was one of those in which a degraded family, or perhaps I should say a group of human beings who have lived in close association for some time or other, airs its appalling behaviour in public in return, I should imagine, for money, and for the prurient delectation of a voyeuristic audience.

A fattish woman approaching middle age was complaining in a monotonously high-pitched voice, halfway between a harangue and a wail, about her three daughters who were aged twelve, thirteen and fourteen respectively. According to her, they ‘did drugs’ and had left home to be prostitutes.

At this point, the presenter of the show interrupted her and asked the audience to give a warm welcome – with, of course, a round of applause – to the three young trollops in question, who came tripping down the steps to the television set with smirks of self-satisfaction on their faces. No lack of self-esteem there, I thought; rather too much, in fact.

Of course, mother and daughters began at once to trade high-pitched insults and accusations, and generally behaved like a dog and a cat enclosed in a sack. There was undoubtedly a morbid fascination in all this, though the spectacle was disgusting; suffice it to say that I was not encouraged by it to take steps to ensure that the television had a permanent presence in my home.

The newspaper had given me a timetable of programmes to watch, though it did not inform me as to the criterion it had used in their selection. Whether what my wife – who likewise had had no exposure to television for years before I met her – and I watched was better or worse than the average that was on offer to viewers, we could not say; but it seemed terrible pabulum to us, having approximately the same effect on our consciousness as a food-mixer on vegetables. It turned it into a kind of soup.

Youtube turns five

Malcolm Muggeridge used to say, “the camera always lies”. His denunciation was frequently made while holding forth in front of a camera – he seemed to enjoy sawing off the branch on which he was perched. According to Muggeridge the camera was a perfect example of what William Blake meant when he wrote:

They ever must believe a lie
Who see with, not through, the eye.

I wonder what he would have made of Youtube; he probably would have hated it.

Like much of the Internet, Youtube has given the common man a means to express himself, wresting it away from the grasp of the elite – who generally are inclined to overindulge man’s natural tendency to lie. This isn’t such a bad thing: with 10 hours of video being uploaded every second, the lies will tend to cancel each other out.

From the Post:

YouTube at five: how its videos became our collective memory.

Chances are, we never would have heard of Susan Boyle without YouTube.

If the frumpy Scottish songstress had blown away a skeptical audience with her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” in April of 2004 rather than April of 2009, no one except those who were watching Britain’s Got Talent on television that evening would know the name Susan Boyle. The more than 120 million people around the world who watched Ms. Boyle’s television debut would likely never have seen the rags-to-riches story.

That’s because five years ago, YouTube didn’t exist.

While it’s hard to imagine a world without YouTube, it was just five years ago last Saturday that a trio of ex-PayPal employees joined forces to register a Web address which would eventually become a site where anyone could post videos to the Internet.

A few months later, the first video, “Me at the Zoo,” was uploaded to YouTube’s servers, kicking off a revolution that would fundamentally change the role video and the Web play in our culture, altering our collective consciousness and helping millions of people understand obscure references from The Simpsons.

Today, YouTube is the world’s largest repository for video clips on the Internet, with a mind-boggling 10 hours of new video uploaded to the site every second and more than 100 million videos watched every day. It is now physically impossible for any human being to watch every video on YouTube in the span of a single lifetime.

James Cameron, Avatar Aeolist

Add an ImageI took my mother to see Titanic when it came out. As soon as the first actor spoke, I knew it was a mistake: my mother at the time was in her late 70s, but her mind was – I was going to say the equal of a 20 year old’s – when idling, the equal of the combined mental capacity of fifteen average 20 year olds concentrating hard. She liked her films to contain interesting dialogue, a commodity that had been thoroughly expunged from Titanic.

So my expectations from James Cameron’s latest attempt to turn the graphics backdrop of Far Cry 2 into a film were low. I watched it this evening and was not disappointed; my mother, were she still with us, would not have approved.

Leaving aside the inevitable demonising of the military, large corporations and industry, the lionising of noble savages in ecstatic pantheistic harmony with their computer game vegetation – all of which are irritating enough in their own right – the dialogue was so mind-numbingly trite, it make Titanic look like Proust.

For those who are interested and want to save 3 hours, the story is: nasty men want a rare mineral that is under the noble savages’ village. Nasty men try to kill noble savages to get rare mineral; some enlightened scientists and a crippled soldier help the noble savages drive out the evil humans with bows and arrows and send them back to their own planet which is not green; in fact Gaia earth is dead. Finis.

And it was very long.

Other than that, I enjoyed it from the professional perspective of marvelling at how many hours it took to render so many pixels for so little edification.