The plagiarism of ourselves

But what we call experience is merely the revelation to our own eyes of a trait in our character which naturally reappears, and reappears all the more markedly because we have already brought it into prominence once of our own accord, so that the spontaneous impulse which guided us on the first occasion finds itself reinforced by all the suggestions of memory. The human plagiarism which it is most difficult to avoid, for individuals (and even for nations which persevere in their faults and continue to aggravate them) is the plagiarism of ourselves.

Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu

Of course Proust is merely noting how subjective our notions of experience can be, how quickly we lapse into habitual responses. Hardly unfamiliar territory, but do we make use of such insights?

Well surely Proust's point is that we generally don't - it is too difficult. Even nations don't and these days we may add bureaucracies to the list.

So political promises about reforming the EU from the inside are empty for this reason. External events may cause habitual responses to be changed, but it is almost impossible for internal events to initiate similar changes. 

As Proust says - this isn't how we are made.

Fatty the Third

According to the The Fiji Times, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has attracted the nickname "Fatty the Third" in China.

NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong-un strikes fear into some hearts, but photos of a Chinese street food vendor with a distinct resemblance to the Pyongyang strongman have fuelled online mirth.

Thousands of Chinese internet users commented on the images, with many referring to Kim by the nickname "Fatty the Third", a reference to his weight as well as his inheritance of his position from his father and grandfather.

I suspect "Fatty" is not a common nickname for North Koreans.

Queen and country

I've often wondered what the Queen thinks of the EU. After all, she has been the reigning monarch while successive governments handed her country to a bunch of unelected EU bureaucrats and assorted political scrotes. No only that, but she did it without so much as a publicly raised eyebrow. Total silence.

I don't really enjoy criticising the old dear though. I'm no monarchist, but I've no faith whatever in presidents and anyway it isn't easy to be too hard on her in the face of such dedication to the job - which must be an appalling grind at times. Here I sit in comfortable retirement and she's still at it.

What with the prospect of bequeathing Charles the Loon to us as our next king, the whole Diana business, and a bunch of grisly Prime Ministers to put up with - well in all fairness one can't say too much.

Maybe the Queen sees Europeans as cousins and can't see the harm in snuggling up to them politically, even if it does mean chucking away centuries of comparative independence.

Or maybe she thinks that as we voted for a bunch of lying, sneaking, lickspittle europhile bastards over many decades we have no cause for complaint.

If so she has a point.

Speed-reading with Spritz

From spritzinc.com

I am a reasonably fast reader, but I often skip potentially interesting blog posts and online articles simply because they seem too long. I've half persuaded myself that anything worth saying can be said briefly, but I also know this could be wishful thinking.

Spritz is a soon-to-be-released app for reading text on small screens - and reading it much more rapidly than we’re accustomed to.

So I recently tried the Spritz speed-reading demo, easily managing 600 words per minute. Do I wish to read like this though? I'm not sure. The effect is an impressive demonstration of how fast we can take in written information, but somehow it isn't satisfactory - at least for me.

What about graphs, diagrams, illustrations etc? Maybe it's a question of familiarity, but an article from the Association for Psychological Science explores what seems to be the biggest problem with Spritz - the inability to backtrack.

The results, reported in an article to appear in the journal Psychological Science, clearly demonstrate the importance of eye movement control to understanding. When readers are kept from going back to re-read words—with the trailing mask in this study, and more generally with the RSVP technique—they have poorer comprehension of the material. Notably, this is true for both difficult and simple sentences. These findings provide powerful evidence that that reading without the ability to re-read parts of the text, when necessary, diminishes understanding.

Row over EU crayon law

A row has broken out over new EU data protection laws which also cover manually recorded data. The new regulations require all writing implements to produce indelible marks which last for a minimum of ten years, including crayons and felt-tip pens designed for children.

“All marks made by manual writing implements are data and as such should not be erasable,” said an EU spokesperson. “This proposal is simply a housekeeping measure to clarify the position of manually transcribed data marks previously known as writing.”

Daz Bright, leader of the newly formed Campaign for Real Crayons blasted the proposed laws as “senseless meddling gone mad in my opinion.”

“What about cases where kids draw rude words on another kid’s face?” Mr Bright demanded at an angry public meeting in Matlock, Derbyshire. “As parents know, this can happen so how are we supposed to wash it off if the stuff is totally undelible?”

When challenged to prove that this really is a significant problem, Mr Bright gave a personal example.

“My youngest, DK-Maxxi, recently came home with a very rude word scrawled on his face. I’d complain to human rights, but I’m sure it’s wasn’t one of the teachers even though little Maxxi can be a bit of a handful. But if kids in the playground do this kind of thing we can’t rub it off afterwards can we?”

Nobody from the EU was available for comment.

Abortion switch

One issue on which I changed my mind only a few years ago is how we should describe abortion. Although it has never affected me directly or indirectly, I always tended to see abortion as some kind of unfortunate necessity of the modern world.

For me it was a matter of words. I joined no debates and rarely read the writings of either side, yet I was happy enough to use words such as abortion and foetus. I absorbed the progressive meme, happy enough to veer away from issues such as when this tiny scrap of humanity becomes a baby and oh so inconveniently human.

I can’t claim to have had any kind of Damascene conversion, but eventually modern verbal contortions over the issue became - well they felt absurdly furtive. Even somewhat silly if I’m to plumb the depths and admit all of it. I felt I’d been foolish in going along with such a transparently evasive narrative.

Abortion involves killing unborn babies.

I know it seems a little thin and bloodless to see the abortion issue as a matter of verbal behaviour, but to a great extent these highly-charged issues are exactly that. We must have our justifications whatever our sins, so we are obliged to analyse them, but too often we don't.

It was strangely refreshing to discover I’d changed my mind, especially on a socially significant issue. As I say, it was no Damascene conversion so I can’t put my finger on exactly when I made the switch. It must have seeped in into my mind over a number of years because it was never an issue I gave much thought to.

But there we are. Abortion is killing unborn babies – currently numbered in the millions. Yes there are special cases where impossibly difficult moral choices shake almost anyone’s principles, so I want nothing to do with any fanatical pro-life lobby.

So for me it is not a crusading issue, but verbal behaviour is important. Even morally important because this is how we are morally deceived. We usually begin by deceiving ourselves - as I did.

Two out of ten for cheek

A number of dodgy science stories caught my eye recently. This for example from the ever unreliable BBC.

River pollution could be increased by wetter winters

A research team from Lancaster University concluded that increased, more intensive winter rainfall is likely to wash more fertiliser out of soil and into rivers.

This could artificially nourish plants, including toxic algae.

The research team is now embarking on a project to help predict and ultimately mitigate agricultural pollution.

This nutrient runoff issue has been well understood and closely monitored for years. The toxic algae issue became prominent in 1989 when several dogs died after drinking water from Rutland storage reservoir. The increased rainfall claim is standard climate bollocks.

So what's the score for this research? Two out of ten for cheek?