Month: August 2013

Beware Hurricane Bachmann

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The pressure group Climate Name Change has published an hilarious video on YouTube, imagining a world where the World Meteorological Organisation names extreme storms not after everyday, innocent people (thereby tarring their names by association with devastating natural disasters), but instead after some of the more intractable anti-science climate change deniers currently serving in the US Congress:

 

I must say, I do quite like the idea of a Hurricane Bachmann or a Tropical Storm Steve King:

“Senator Marco Rubio is expected to pound the eastern seaboard sometime early tonight”

or

“Now, Michele Bachmann is on the way folks, and specifically the eye of Michele Bachmann will be hitting Florida in a few hours”

This is not to say that I am totally intolerant of climate change skeptics. I can certainly appreciate the potentially distorting effects of groupthink in the scientific community, and at a stretch I can see how some of the data points, correlations and trajectories may have been exaggerated to better fit a pre-ordained narrative, intentionally or not.

What I have no time for, however, are the mouth-breathing troglodytes – serving Republican members of the U.S. Congress – who talk about dinosaur flatulence or a literal interpretation of the Bible’s account of Noah’s flood as a way of trying to discredit scientific evidence. All in the cause, they innocently protest, of “having a fair debate about the issues”.

Semi-Partisan Sam says “no” to all of that.

Royal Academy of IKEA

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

The blog Standing Ovation, Seated takes a look at the “innovative” new work of architect Richard Rogers, who is going round pimping out what he calls the “shellhouse idea” – basically cheap, prefabricated, garish, plasticy-looking constructions, modular in form and “stackable”. I suppose in his mind this is revolutionary and never-before-attempted. In my mind (and I am at pains not to sound too much like Prince Charles here – I love the new skyscrapers and commercial buildings transforming the London skyline), this looks like just about every new residential building popping up in towns and cities across the UK. Cheap, bland, thoroughly forgettable and almost certain to age badly, just as the brutalist concrete architecture of the 1960s and 70s is doing. Still, a fascinating blog post well worth a read.

artmoscow's avatarStanding Ovation, Seated

Richard Rogers RA is an innovative architect who is behind the shellhouse idea. In short, this is IKEA concept extended to building houses. Pre-fab, cheap, fast, waterproof. And it can be stacked up to have more floors.

This weekend, the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts was turned into a construction site for a sample shellhouse.

The house is meant to be completed by tomorrow, the 13th, when it would become a colourful pendant to Joshua Reynolds’ somber monument, and RA visitors would be able to appreciate its beauty from the inside as well.

The building must be easy-to-assemble, for I’d not seen much of constructing going on in those few hours I spent there popping in and out of the RA for alfresco coffees (though “al cemento” would be a better term).

During all that time, Joshua Reynolds was sadly trying to reach the semi-erected house with his brush…

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On Dreams

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On Wednesday 28th August 1963, nearly three hundred thousand people marched on Washington, D.C. for jobs and freedom, and Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech:

 

Fifty years later to the day, a black man holds the office of President of the United States, and spoke from the same spot to mark the anniversary of an event which was critical in ensuring the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

 

Among their other grievances and demands, the people who marched wanted the simple, unalienable dignity and civil right of being able to vote – to fully participate in the American democracy. I doubt many of them would have believed it had they been told that within fifty years, not only would black people in the South be able to vote freely without let or hindrance (more or less), but that a black presidential candidate would successfully run for the highest office in the land – and then win re-election in a landslide four years later.

As President Obama rightly noted in his remarks, much work remains to be done by those who, in their own ways, continue the march today. And in many ways, the issues that drew people to the National Mall on that day in 1963 – unemployment, living wages, equal access to justice, an end to discrimination – remain as intractable now as they were then.

But by God, we’ve come a long way.

Middle East Crisis Explained

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As is sometimes the case, Guido Fawkes says it best. Courtesy of Guido, a cut-out-and-keep guide to who supports, hates or tolerates who in the Middle East. It was posted a couple of hours ago, so is probably already out of date.

A Positive Story From Syria

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

A brief but welcome glimmer of light in the darkness that is today’s Syria – a grieving father is reunited with the son that he believed had been killed in an attack by pro-regime forces.

 

Max Fisher, writing at The Washington Post, breaks the story for a western audience, and gives this context:

The man who first appears when the video opens isn’t the father – he’s someone else, perhaps another relative. It’s not until a minute in that the boy’s father appears, his face twisted in joy, running out of the house to see his son.

Even if you don’t speak a word of Arabic, the family’s body language says everything. There is a lot of crying and hugging and grateful recitations of the Takbir (“Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!”).

I am still collecting my thoughts on the latest developments in Syria – the irrefutable use of chemical weapons by regime forces or others loyal to Assad, and the seemingly inevitable military response from the west.

Barring the unveiling of some hitherto-unseen wise and strategic foreign policy or diplomatic initiatives from Barack Obama and David Cameron (neither of whom have stellar track records in this area), I am convinced that nothing good can come of any of this. I genuinely don’t see how any of the likely military scenarios that may play out in the coming days will benefit the innocent civilians of Syria, the national security goals of the west or (somewhat materialistically) the economic and financial wellbeing of anyone at all.

But at least, among the many stories of loss and mourning, there is at least one human story from Syria today with a happy ending.

The short piece concludes:

If you can hold it together through all seven minutes, you’re stronger than I am. But this video provides a welcome, if all too rare, moment of solace and joy in a war that has had precious little of either.

I’m with Max Fisher on this one.