A Bit of Friday Jazz

Wes Montgomery - Round Midnight



Wes Montgomery developed his unique thumb technique as a response to complaints about noisy practising! Abandoning the pick enabled him to play much more softly. Eventually this became his hallmark sound. Wes was hugely influential and not just on jazz guitarists, Jimmy Hendrix was a big fan. And Lyttelton is still going strong,
42 years after this was recorded!

Ne nostra in fundamenta subeamus

My perfect national motto | Matthew Parris

“Let us not climb up our own bottoms.”

An MP and archetypal young thruster of a Government minister, Liam Byrne, had recently bewailed what he called the West Midlands' “malaise of modesty”. Modesty a malaise! How very new Labour. A pleasantly low-key attitude to themselves is one of the great assets of West Midlanders. So I suggested a new motto for Birmingham, which the audience seemed to like.

Philip Howard, the classicist of The Times, has helped me to translate it into Latin, and the five-word motto would be splendid, in fact, for Britain itself - except that it undermines the whole Brownite constitutional project.

The great Studs Terkel

What A Fearless Journalist Looks Like

"How could it be, at the end of World War II, we were the most honored, powerful nation in the world? 'Honored' is the key word. Today we are the most despised. How come? The American public itself has no memory of the past. Gore Vidal uses the phrase 'United States of Amnesia.' I say, United States of Alzheimer's. What do we know about it -- why are we there in Iraq? They say, when you attack our policy, you are attacking the boys. On the contrary, they're defending those boys. Welcoming them back home with their families. The war is built upon an obscene lie. We know that now. This lack of history has been denied us."

One of the great listeners of the past century, Studs Terkel, at 95, is now losing his ability to hear. He told me: "When Robert Browning wrote, 'Come and grow old with me, the best is yet to be,' he was lying through his teeth. But the one thing you can retain is the memory." His almost photographic memory is matched only by his continued intense interest in people's lives and the movements that make those lives better. He jokes: "My epitaph has already been formed: Curiosity did not kill this cat."

Out damn'd spot...

Bush strategist looks back in sadness

Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. He has been divorced twice. A daughter died two months after she was born. And then there is the added heartbreak -- a word he uses -- of his split with President Bush. Dowd, 46, is one of the nation's leading political strategists, a onetime Democrat who switched sides to help put Bush in the White House, then win a second term. He spent years shaping and promoting Bush's policies -- policies that Dowd now views with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

Via TBogg who comments:

...the best I can say for it is that it is a profile in squishy self-serving courage, and a precursor of many more to come, as members of this misbegotten administration will be busy trying to wash the blood from their hands and the stink from their bodies before the last body drops. Each one will be an admission that it took years of closely working with George Bush before they recognized that, although he is good-hearted, at the end of the day he is still an incompetent boob; something that most people recognize after ten minutes of watching him in a press conference. It's not the Nuremberg defense, but it's close enough for government work.

Don't hit that key! Whoops

Where Are the E-mails?

Why is it taking White House officials so long to restore millions of deleted e-mails from the backup tapes they claim to have? The e-mails in question date from March 2003 to October 2005 -- a crucial period that includes the Iraq invasion, a presidential election and Hurricane Katrina.

White House officials have known for more than two years that the messages were deleted -- a clear violation of presidential records-preservation statutes. But the president's aides won't explain what happened, what sort of backups they have and what they're doing about it.

That obstinacy led a federal judge to step in yesterday and order the White House to preserve every bit of related data in its possession -- just to make sure nothing untoward happens while a civil suit by two open-government groups goes forward.

Anonymous comments

Google Stands Up for Blogger Privacy; Wins Case

Today, a victory was won for privacy advocates and bloggers everywhere, as a school board member failed to convince New York State courts that Google should be required to hand over details about anonymous commenters on a Blogger blog.

Recently, a lot of flak has been tossed in a lot of different directions, much of it towards Google and Yahoo (but of course we can’t forget Facebook) in regards to their various and often conflicting stances on privacy. Today, though, Google took a position on privacy that was commendable in that they refused to hand over anonymized data unless the person to whom the data belonged to consented to its release.

Marcy Friedman, the Supreme Court Justice presiding over the case, ultimately agreed, stating that a decision against Google would have a “chilling effect on protected speech.”

Bridge Over Troubled Water

The World of Bridge in Uproar

And this is what caused it:



Fed up with a cool reception from other players and a lot of anti-Iraq, anti-torture and anti-Bush comments, a team member, Debbie Rosenberg held up a home-made sign scribbled on the back of a menu. Now the women are being accused of treason and sedition (sic) by other bridge players and are being threatened with a year-long tournament ban.

So letting people know how you voted is sedition? Wow! Way to go, land of the free.

Barry George conviction 'unsafe'

As I predicted Barry George, convicted of the murder of Jill Dando six years ago, has won a retrial. I fully expect him to be found not guilty when the time comes.

Oh, and Nick Ross can go fuck himself.

A message from god?

Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Woman makes pancake bearing image of Jesus and Mary (video)




Funny thing that. Something similar happened to me this morning when I made some pancakes:




Spooky, or what?

Run around London and shit in the street

Few women doing enough exercise

More than 80% of women are not doing enough exercise to benefit their health, and young women are only half as active as male counterparts.

And women desperately need greater sporting role models than the wives and girlfriends of football stars, it says.

(Well, we need to counter all those size zero models who obsess about putting on an ounce of fat don't we. Oh! Hang on.)

Earth calling Mothership - Get me outta here!

Warren Ellis - This Happened On Your Planet

Pony is an orangutan from a prostitute village in Borneo. We found her chained to a wall, lying on a mattress. She had been shaved all over her body. If a man walked near her, she would turn herself around, present herself, and start gyrating and going through the motions. She was being used as a sex slave. She was probably about six or seven years old when we rescued her, but she had been held captive by a madam for a long time. The madam refused to give up the animal because everyone loved Pony and she was a big part of their income.

Virgin on the ridiculous

Women get 'virginity fix' on NHS

Women are being given controversial "virginity repair" operations on the NHS, it emerged last night. Taxpayers funded 24 hymen replacement operations between 2005 and 2006, official figures revealed. And increasing numbers of women are paying up to £4,000 in private clinics for the procedure apparently under pressure from future spouses or in-laws who believe they should be virgins on their wedding night. Doctors said most patients are immigrants or British of ethnic origin. The trend has been condemned by critics as a sign of social regression driven by Islamic fundamentalists. Some countries have made hymen reconstruction operations illegal.

Dr Magdy Hend, consultant gynaecologist at the Regency Clinic, Harley Street, London, who started hymen reconstruction more than 18 years ago in the Middle East and the Gulf, said: "In some cultures they like to see that the women will bleed on the wedding night. If the wife or bride is not a virgin, it is a big shame on the family." Dr Hend said he was surprised by the "very good response" to the service and said there is "big competition on the market". The operation can involve suturing of a tear in the hymen, such as might be caused by sexual assault, to help healing. But it can also be conducted as a purely cosmetic procedure. A membrane is constructed, sometimes including a capsule of an artificial blood-like substance. This operation is intended to be performed within a few days before an intended marriage.