Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Visiting Cornwall and Mrs Dalloway

Hanging out with Mum, Dad and Hanna was a real highlight of our trip deep into Cornwall over the weekend, as well as getting to know Morten a bit more. It was good to get a glimpse of some of the things Hannah is drawn to. Visiting St. Michael’s Mount and the Minack Theatre were wonderful experiences, but it was the company of loved ones which made the five hour journeys too and from London more than worthwhile.

The Minack Theatre was amazing! It really needs to be seen to be believed; best in person, but here’s a Flickr slideshow of others’ photos (since mine, as alwasy, seem to be on a time delayed release).

Last week I started reading Mrs Dalloway[1], my first foray into Virginia Woolf and managed to finish it off this morning on the Tube, after coming agonisingly close last night on the train back from Penzance.

It’s probably been the highlight of my book reading year so far (although it’s been a very lean year for book reading). There’s no question it deserves it’s slot on the classics shelves.

…but here the other clock, the clock which always struck two minutes after Big Ben, came shuffling in with its lap full of odds and ends, which it dumped down as if Big Ben were all very well with his majesty laying down the law, so solemn, so just, but she must remember all sorts of little things besides…

Without question, my favourite part is her use of Big Ben. And how it’s used; to keep time[2]; evoke and emphasise time; to conjure up images of London; to represent England and its might and majesty; to pull the flowing streams of though back to reality; and most of all to evoke feeling, so many feelings. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. What I wouldn’t give to match that imaginative ability.

  1. You can read Mrs Dalloway for free online courtesy of Adelaide University’s eBooks collection. []
  2. The Hours, what a wonderful title that would have been. I must watch the movie. []

Tolerance v. Acceptance

I drafted this a week or so ago but didn’t hit the publish button because I have a fear of making myself look stupid by talking about stuff I know nearly nothing about. I hope that doesn’t happen.

I’ve just been reading another exquisitely written post[1] over at scepticlawyer about World Youth Day 2008 and the Government’s heavy handed, unnecessary and damaging anticipatory laws which, in my opinion, affect civil liberties severely and negatively. Wow, that’s a lot of adjectives. I wanted to highlight what was labelled as an aside.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the width of liberal societies’ ‘range’ has constricted in recent times thanks to minority demands for acceptance rather than tolerance. The two words have very different meanings, yet proponents of the latter often confuse it with the former. Something of this difficulty may be gleaned from reading the Wikipedia entry on the term. It is possible to be homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, sexist or what-have-you (insert rotten attitude du jour here) while still maintaining tolerance. Intolerance comes about when people act on their prejudices.

Personally, I’m all for tolerance and acceptance, but in the fight for a better society maybe the emphasis should be placed on achieving higher levels of tolerance. I suspect tolerance might actually be a fairly useful stepping stone on the path to acceptance.

  1. I’m genuinely in awe of Helen’s writing. It has convinced me I need to think more and learn more about developing and presenting coherent arguments to convey my thoughts and opinions. []

Rebuilding/Renewing Social Norms

I’ve just been reading about the nanny state over at skepticlawyer[1]. In her post, Helen (who I’ve just discovered has a Wikipedia entry) included a video by Drew Carey about how the US Government, or it’s many state Governments, have a particular penchant for banning things. Much like the Australian Governments of recent times. Although I wouldn’t agree with everything in the Drew Carey video being ‘un-banned’, it does make a great point. Helen has made the even better point that the law entering the fray where social norms used to do the job quite nicely is not the best solution or a good use of public resources.

I love the idea that the social fabric could be renewed[2] in line with more modern social ideologies. But how? What needs to change, and who’s going to start changing it? I suspect the key is education, but I’ve nothing to back that up and no idea how to convince the powers that be to work hard(er) at improving educational outcomes[3].

The following is a little off topic for the post at SL, and why I decided to make this into a post rather than a comment over there. The UK (and London in particular) seems to be going through somewhat of a knife crime epidemic of late. Having been here only a short time I’m still not sure if this is something new or rapidly escalating as the papers make it out to be, or if that’s just the media doing its thing. However, I do suspect it’s escalating. For those unfamiliar with the situation, there have been 18 teenage murders (mostly stabbings and mostly perpetrated by young people as well) this year. That’s more than one per fortnight. The cause of the escalation doesn’t seem to be clear. Some, though seemingly not the majority, are probably gang related. I’m sure I’ve got no real capability to understand their motive, but some of the perpetrators seem to be committing these horrible crimes at a whim. As though it’s just what people do.

These are horrible crimes which require and deserve the full force of the law (as opposed to a ban on break-dancing in Trafalgar Square[4] or a ban on annoying behaviour[5], neither of which should require the law at all). However, the escalation in these crimes is in part, I suspect, the extreme end of the loss of ’social glue’ touched on by scepticlawyer. What I don’t understand, and maybe someone can explain it to me, is why these kids don’t understand that if you kill someone it will ruin your life. Even if you’re not caught (which you almost certainly will be in this kind of murder), there will be other consequences which will change you forever.

  1. Run by Helen Dale and Legal Eagle, skepticlawyer is an Australia/UK based legal/political/social type blog well worth following. []
  2. As opposed to ‘re-built’ because I don’t want to sound stupidly conservative, which I’m not. []
  3. Let’s hope Andrew Leigh is able to exert some of his influence during his secondment to the Australian Treasury. []
  4. Yep, I made that up. []
  5. Nope, I didn’t make that one up. []

WP-Footnotes 3.2: Release Notes

This week saw the long awaited release of an update to the WP-Footnotes plugin for WordPress. WP-Footnotes is to easily add footnotes or sidenotes or a bibliograpy, etc. to any post using a simple mark-up which degrades (kind of) gracefully in the event that for some horrifying reason this plugin no longer works.

These notes actually cover releases 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 which all happened in quick succession.

What’s been fixed

  • Some invalid mark up was being generated. Hopefully not anymore.
  • The notorious ‘a’ bug (I really hope).

What’s been improved

  • Add two new styles of footnotes:
    • Repeated symbol, and
    • Leading zero decimal.
  • Reorganisation to encapsulate fully in a class.
  • Security. I’ve hopefully addressed all know security issues for the plugin[1].

One further improvement is that you are now able to change the footnote style on an individual post basis by adding a custom field[2] to your post. If you add a field with the key ‘footnote_style’ and one of the following as the value:

  • decimal
  • decimal-leading-zero
  • lower-alpha
  • upper-alpha
  • lower-roman
  • upper-roman
  • symbol

What’s been changed

I removed the ’smooth scroll’ feature. If you want smooth scroll I suggest you add it to your theme. Instructions for doing so using jQuery (which is built into WP) are here.

  1. There were a few XSS vulnerability allegations floating around, which were founded if your host is stupid enough to have register globals turned on. []
  2. Custom fields can be added on the write post screen down the bottom under ‘Advanced Options’. []