Maria

Chris de Burgh, you are a legend. Yes, you are completely MOR and haven’t changed your music or hairstyle in 30+ years. And yes, many people who are too cool for school are probably embarrassed to admit how much they like you. Not me.

Kids, Chris de Burgh was never the hippest cat, but he has sold a gazillion records in a bucketload of countries. And he makes people happy – crazy happy, in fact, jumping up and down dancing and singing on a Monday night in Dublin where the economy has gone down the toilet, flushed away by a wet and dreary summer. The Irish Times critic was emphatically not happy, however, and wrote a sharp, witty and just a tad ungenerous review of the gig.

In return, the singer/songwriter of Lady in Red (I liked his earlier stuff much better) wrote a letter to the editor with the most good-temperedly vitriolic comeback to a critic I’ve seen in a long old time. It has all the essential elements.

First off, de Burgh gets in a dig against the Irish Times’ former music critic (Joe Breen, who’s actually pretty good – you just wouldn’t want to be Chris de Burgh, is all I’m saying). Then humorously points out how shitty it must have been for the critic to be the only person at a knickerstastically cult-like gig who by definition DOESN’T WANT TO BE THERE.

It’s all very parochial and petty, with the current and previous Irish Times music critics getting the classic small-country put down: ‘my friends know you and they say you’re crap’. But then de Burgh bangs this on the head, asking the critic if his career plan is to continue “to be an occasional critic in a country with the population of Greater Manchester”.

He closes with the classic rejoinder to critics everywhere, fake sympathy for a professional life spent “in the shadows, riffling through the garbage bins of despair and avoiding those who think that you are an irrelevance, an irritation to be ignored and laughed about.”

As fans of Chris de Burgh might agree, the good stuff never gets old.

Speaking of how the world needs many more assertive humanists to counter the seemingly irresistible forces of wingnuts and indifference, Chris Patten’s name is in the ring for Europe’s first proper foreign minister. The FT reports that Lord Patten is ‘not campaigning for the job, but would be very positive about it if approached’. Patten would do a superb job.

Patten’s thankless work on policing in Northern Ireland brought about a huge leap forward and must have required no small physical courage on his part. His stint as the last governor of Hong Kong got valuable concessions from the Chinese that someone more worried about their ego and reputation couldn’t have delivered. And Patten’s and Javier Solana’s outwardly amicable and respectful managing of their conflicting EU foreign policy roles in the early 2000’s is a credit to both. Patten is uniquely qualified to be the face (and the brains) of Europe’s foreign policy.

There are other good reasons, too. The FT points out David Cameron’s likely discomfort with a fellow Tory being in such a prominent EU role. Also, putting Patten in as Number 2 may make it all that much easier to refuse Tony Blair the top job. And Patten has proven he can actually do all the deal-making and consensus-building the job requires (even more reason why the member states should think of Patten for President of the union, not least to preserve their own sovereignty).

But here’s my reason. Sometimes the good guys should win. I want someone in the foreign policy job whose judgment, experience and, above all, integrity I respect. Someone who may disappoint in the particulars, but who is sound on the fundamentals. In both organizational and political life, I don’t want to believe that only the cynics and brown-nosers, the bullies and yes-men will come out on top. Patten is living proof that successful leaders can be deeply moral and highly effective. That’s something we can all aspire to.

And think about the book he would write afterward…

Full disclosure: I’ve met Lord Patten a few times at the 21st Century Trust, an organisation of which I’m a fellow and he is the Chair.

I’m struck by the number of people amongst Capitol Hill’s 2009 50 most beautiful who are from big families, i.e. of 6 or more kids.

A Brussels friend once said the Irish are so numerous in the European Commission because so many of the first wave of them were from big families and were therefore natural masters of deal-making and compromise. Until the last decade or two, probably most of the Irish population were middle children of large-ish families. We do seem to have a disproportionate number of countrymen in the European and other international institutions, and some of them have done remarkably well. (Alternative theories may include mass emigration in the 1970s and 80s and a bit of path dependence since whatever other qualities the Irish abroad may have, we love to give a leg up to our compatriots. Also, there are more people from big families because, well, there are more of them.)

More Hill staffers than I would have expected come from big families. (Alternative theories: lots are from recently immigrated families, or maybe the profile writers draw more attention to the big families because they’re unusual, or maybe beautiful people are inexplicably more likely to have many siblings…) Intuitively, people who’ve grown up in a large family will have been doing power-plays, coalition-building and breaking, and all sorts of tactical shenanigans since before they could talk. Perhaps the early practice gives them an edge?

I’ve never rated the emphasis placed in popular psychology on the roles of the Eldest Child, Middle Child and Youngest Child. I’m one of the 60% of my siblings who are middle children and I never noticed a particular bent towards peace-making amongst us. But maybe there’s something to it.

In any case, check out the Wyoming cowboy on page 2. I wouldn’t mind building a coalition with him.

In other cool things about L.A., I have to admit the non-mortal earthquakes are pretty great. I’ve sat through two of the 5+ richter ones and was about 4 miles from last night’s epicenter. The most striking thing is that in the first few seconds of an earthquake, a completely random explanation for it pops into my mind. The first time around I got quite irate that our upstairs office neighbours were thumping around making such racket that the building swayed. Last night, although I live 2 miles from the freeway, I instantly thought ‘wow, that’s one big truck passing by. Or maybe it’s a tank?’.

It turns out that’s not an unusual reaction. Human brains are very good at rationalising the immediate aftermath of a disaster into business as usual. But, contrary to popular belief, not panicking isn’t all that successful a survival strategy. A book I read last year ‘The Unthinkable; Who Survives When Disaster Strikes’, says much of the planning around plane crashes, fires, etc. assumes that the first thing people will do is panic and run around doing stupid things that impede their escape. In fact, the most common and dangerous reaction is to just go limp, stay passive and assume that the nightclub fire is really not all that bad or that you should sit in your crashed plane seat until help arrives. Or that the hostage situation is all a terrible misunderstanding. That’s a very good way to die.
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April Fool stories tend to be more ‘heh’ than LOL. (A couple of Internet geek ones I’ve gotten today; one is ‘heh’ and the other is ‘eh?‘) But just seeing a tagline with April 1st underneath it makes me doubt any post’s veracity, even totally plausible and unfunny ones like “Brian Barry’s Obituary” (which, by the way, I’m surprised doesn’t mention ‘Sociologists, Economists and Democracy’, the only one I’ve read so presumably the most mainstream.)

Perfect example of a spoof that’s too plausible to be all that funny (or is it a spoof…?): today’s from George R.R. Martin saying he has engaged Howard Waldrop as his writing partner on Ice and Fire. It all sounds plausible, especially given the amount of abuse Martin gets from his overly entitled fans for being so late in delivering the latest of the unwieldy Ice and Fire series. (They grudge him watching football, seriously.) But the last bit where Martin says Waldrop will knock out the rest of the novel in a month or two while Martin is “in the hot tube with some babes in bikinis, sipping some Irish Mist and watching my TIVO replay of the Giants victory over the Patriots in the last Super Bowl but one” gives it away. Still, if old George really did want to outsource his sprawling epic, there are probably worse ways to go about it.

With the day that’s in it, I have a few random complaints to lash together into a not-too-coherent post. First off, it sucks to be Irish in the US on St. Patrick’s Day. Sorry, I know it’s churlish, and on my better days I agree that all the enthusiasm and interest and desire to party is actually quite sweet, but there it is. If I have to smile politely at one more person telling me they’re Irish (really? whip out your passport, then.), giggle appreciatively at one more crap – invariably Scottish – accent, or spend one more penny listening to Loreena McKinnit or some similarly bogus disneyfied version of Oirish music in the ladies’ loo of the Culver City Radisson where I am already suffering through a full-day operations planning session, I may stab someone. I know the day is not about celebrating Ireland, but about Irish Americans, who are a fine bunch of people now that their Noraid-supporting and parade-homophobia days are behind them. Another thing, no one I have ever known in Ireland has ever eaten corned beef. Ever. It’s the most Enid Blyton food there is, and not remotely Irish. Just saying.

Secondly, I groaned out loud when I heard on the radio that our current Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, was in the White House to meet President Obama. Again, I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but my immediate response was ‘Oh no, once he meets Biffo, Barack won’t think we’re cool any more!’. But I’ve got to hand it to Reuters. They’ve put out a picture of the ceremonial handing over of the green muppet skin where President Obama looks an even bigger nob than Brian Cowen.

Finally, Bono. [click to continue…]

In the interest of keeping CT as highbrow as possible, I have an observation about kissing. Namely, on-the-lips kissing between not-mutually-attached ladies and gents.

I do a fair bit of cheek-kissing and hugging, both socially and at work, probably more than most but not unusually so (I haven’t had any complaints yet). It’s really come in amongst the anglo-saxons in the past decade or so. Time was when only the French did cheek-kissing when they met. Perhaps as the result of many forlorn French exchange summers, or maybe just aping our more sophisticated Continental neighbours, the Irish and British middle classes began to do single-cheek kissing in the eighties and nineties.

I kiss a French person once on each cheek (twice if they’re a close friend or family friend), three times in total for a Belgian or Dutch person, and just one single-cheeked peck for a fellow anglo-saxon. In the last few years, a new variation has crept in. Married men who kiss me – just a peck – on the lips.

Cheek(y) kissing is now so common that perhaps for very good friends something more is called for? Or maybe it’s just an opportunistic twist in a situation where you can suddenly get away with kissing women other than your wife. God knows, I don’t dislike it (though I’ve never lingered), but I’m not in the habit of snogging other women’s husbands either (long live teh Patriarchy!). To call it a guilty pleasure would be to concede there’s something going on where it shouldn’t be – and there clearly isn’t, as none of my lip-kissers has ever made a pass at me – but I have to admit that I enjoy it probably just a little more than I should.

Science fiction is, more than anything, a literature of ideas. And Charles Stross has more ideas than is probably healthy for one man. How many writers truly grapple with what it is to be human, with or without post-human technology? Accelerando bravely risks alienating you from the characters by propelling them off into multiple iterations far removed from the original meat-space versions. It reminded me of the second half of Wuthering Heights, when the original cast of characters is dead or unrecognizable, and a set of translucent copies play out the same drama. Less satisfying emotionally, but it makes you grasp intuitively the big questions beneath; what is free will? Am I the same person I was before puberty, when I left home, or even this time last year?
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I’m sorry to say that longtime Dublin independent TD, Tony Gregory, has died. Apparently, he’d had cancer for some time. Despite being a thorn in the side of practically every other politician and civil servant he encountered, Tony Gregory is universally and warmly praised by them in today’s reports.

Gregory’s extravagant pork-barreling in the early 80s was much vindicated by his decades long commitment to one of the poorest parts of Dublin. My generation probably remembers him best as the man who refused to wear a tie in Dail Eireann. Obliging little conformist that I am, I remember my ten year old self wishing he’d just wear a tie so he could get on and do things for his constituency. Later, I realised that it was precisely because Tony Gregory refused to roll over and play nicely that he was able to get things done and command voter loyalty for decades in one of the most alienated parts of the country.

Ugh, I feel ill. I had been mellowing on Pope Benedict. It’s hard (not to mention wrong) to keep hating on someone you pray out loud for every Sunday. But now he comes out with this: ‘saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rain forest from destruction’.

“(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration. “The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.” The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound”. The pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work”. [click to continue…]

Most families have their own cooking lore, developed through accident and necessity into an unimpeachable canon of family food. The culinary canon of my childhood seems quaint, now that I live in California. Orange juice was a Christmas day treat. Corn on the cob was a summer treat (though we bought it frozen – in fact, I never saw a cob with the leaves around it until I was 18 and came to America for the first time). We competed for second helpings by gnawing off every bit of flesh till the cob was as bald as a loofah.
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Now I know what it’s like to be blonde. Today I wore my moveon.org / Obama t-shirt around the 5th arrondissement of Paris. The reaction was extraordinary. Talk about turning heads. I hesitate to blog about this because for many Americans, the excitement Obama inspires in the rest of the world is a disqualification for the US presidency. But honestly, it would do your heart good to experience first hand the joy and enthusiasm and just plain old-fashioned hope people express when Obama is mentioned.

After too many years of Americans being unpopular abroad, now everyone wants to talk to them and wish them well. My first suitor was a Moroccan builder who flagged me down in the street. He wanted to know if I was American and could vote for Obama. I’m not, so we both fervently shared our hopes about the US election.

Later, in a bookstore, a young woman working there wished me the cheeriest hello I’ve ever received in a Parisian shop. I told her I’m not American and don’t have a vote there, but figured wearing a shirt was one way to say what I think. She said she wished you could get them in France. She asked what date the election was, and talked excitedly about how wonderful it is to see so many Americans walking around the 5th wearing ‘hope’ buttons.

I know there are many in the US who think the support of ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ is something you can do without. But much of what animated the French in opposition to Bush is their almost fan-boy type love for what they see as truly American; an open-hearted curiosity about the rest of the world, and the sometimes naïve desire to make it a better place. Often in France, you get the sense of an old, old culture made weary and cynical by its long experience. Today, on a beautiful autumn day in Paris, America’s hope made an old city feel young again.

First, may I say the triptans are a marvelous class of drug? When you’re wading through a 5 day migraine and liquids, not to mention solid food, are a distant memory. When the right side of your brain wakes you up every hour or two to pound a little harder on the left. When you haven’t been able to complete a sentence for days, but that’s just fine as you can’t leave your house to find any humans to talk to and you wouldn’t be able to find your way back home anyway. When you know, you just know that there’s one last zomig in the house if only you could find it. And then you do.

Joan Didion wrote that she came to regard her enemy, migraine, as a friend. Susan Sontag pointed out that describing illness with military metaphors has certain failings, not the least of which is to make ill people feel defeated. I don’t hold with making an ally of migraine, but I will grant you that the first day after the enemy decamps is a Red Letter Day. Today I am so full of vim and vigour that it seems a shame to waste all that energy on work. (Sadly I have so much to catch up on, I’ll have to.) The world is a bright, clear and shiny place today, even if my 401(k) is worth 53% less than what I’ve spent on it. So be it. Feeling like this, I could work until I’m 106, rather like that cheery nun who hasn’t cast a vote since Eisenhower, and who’s thrown her veil in the ring for Obama.

To business; why are triptans so expensive? Fair enough that nobody knows whether migraines are caused by bad chemistry or bad wiring. (Presumably it all looks the same at the molecular level.) So we’re not quite sure why triptans work so well for some people. But when they work, they are transformative within minutes. In Belgium, a month’s supply used to cost me about $100. Here in the US, my gold-plated insurer gives them to me more or less free. But someone’s making a lot of money either way, and migraine has such a huge impact on productivity/absenteeism that getting the cure for cheap would help hundreds of thousands of people and their employers. When did we invent this miracle drug, and will we be sharing the bounty any time soon?

Some time back, I mentioned in passing that living in Los Angeles has never been my life’s dream. As of last week, I’ve lived here for a full year, and I’m glad to report I’ve mellowed on it a bit. Well, just the decision to put less energy into disliking it helped.

On another CT post of mine today, commenters geo and Delicious Pundit gently point out that it’s silly to hate on a relatively decent place like L.A. I agree. There are worse places to be dragged to by your job. It’s several months since I felt a true twinge of jealousy of a friend whose work took her to Astana for a few years (turns out they have quite good skiing nearby). L.A. has quite a few good things. Among them, Delicious Pundit exhorts me to “come to the Sunday Farmers’ Market in Hollywood and get some avocados and strawberries (Gaviotas, the kind that don’t ship), some tamales, and maybe some watermelon lemonade from the nice people who come down from Solvang.” Which sounds very nice indeed.

The best thing about L.A. is of course the weather. Nuff said. The first moderately ok thing about L.A. actually reminds me of Brussels: it’s a bit crap until you get used to it, but there are lots of good day trips and weekend trips to be made nearby in the meantime. So far, I’ve driven to Ensenada in Baja Mexico, Joshua Tree National Park, a couple of presidential libraries (both Reagan and Nixon are well worth a visit, whatever your political preferences), San Juan Capestrano, Santa Barbara and Solvang, and down the coast to L.A. from San Francisco. There’s no shortage of places to go from L.A., and they tide you over while you wait to find the city less soul-destroyingly ugly. Now that I’ve become indifferent to the strip malls and freeways, I’ve begun to like some of the nicer bits.

Good things about L.A.: many, many outdoor things, 5k and 10k runs every weekend that let joggers explore the city, some good cinemas and lots of cultural stuff scattered around a 30 mile radius. Life for me picked up an awful lot when I got a car and moved away from the office.

Bad things: well, let’s not focus too much on those, but I was surprised at how dirty the sea water is, and it’s a bit sad that so many good, independent book shops seem to be closing down at the moment. (Oh god, reading this back it sounds so Stuff White People Like, I’m mortified.)

I’m drawing a blank, but am sure there are plenty more good things, right?