How many of the Seven?

I fell to musing about the Seven Deadly Sins and how many I am guilty of - or, at least, just guilty enough to admit to.

Lust. “Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love [and] peace...”

There are things - not people, you'll be pleased to know - that I would rather like to have. A private plane, to visit my Australian family and friends. A television with decent sound. A magic weight loss formula. But probably not to the degree that Lust implies. So No. Anyway, "youthful" counts me out.

Gluttony. “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Oh dear, if this means eating and drinking too much of things that may not be good for me - burgers, cream horns, Armagnac - and for my sake, rather than God's, then this is a definite Yes.

Greed. “Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have."

In the sense that I want more than my fair share of the pie, or a richer lifestyle, definitely No. 

Sloth. “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise.”

That's me. I'm the sluggard. Yes

Wrath. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

I consider myself a courteous driver, maybe even very much so, but on occasion I might get angry - and shout extremely loud - when someone does something very stupid and dangerous on my piece of road. Does this count? I definitely leave it to the wrath of a Higher Being, so I suppose this is a Yes.

Envy. “A sound heart is life to the body, But envy is rottenness to the bones.”

This is a No. Can't say more than that.

Pride. “...Let not the mighty man boast of his might"

This is the most solid Yes. I generally believe I am the cleverest, most intelligent person I know. Brain the size of a planet. A view which takes a constant hammering when playing my son at Connect 4 sadly.

Total: 4/7. That's bad. Maybe I should repent and become a monk.

The Spell of the capital

Capital cities cast a spell over their countries. They are magnets, drawing to them money, culture, tourism, commerce and, in the case of London, Russian oligarchs and their 'unexplained' wealth (see Catherine Belton's Putin's People for her explanations), houses, yachts and the GRU. And now sanctions. Because of a country whose capital city's name has undergone a makeover. All my long life I have known that Ukraine's capital is Kiev. No longer. It's now Kyiv. Why?

I learned in school that the capital of China was Peking. We had to start using Beijing as its name in about 1979. I know, that's a post-colonial transliteration thing but worth mentioning. Maybe Kyiv is too.

Ho Chi Minh City used to be known as Saigon until the locals heard the musical Miss Saigon and hated it. Claude-Michel Schönberg flatly refused to rename it Miss Ho Chi Minh City. OK, it's not the capital; just thought you'd like to know.

I'm tempted to sneer at the fact that New Delhi is no longer new but it appears that ND is a district within what Wikipedia calls the 'megacity' of Delhi.

Capital cities seem to be a root cause of inequality within a country. What if we (the UK) declared that from now on Middlesbrough is our capital? Would that city shoot from #1 in the 'most deprived places in the UK' list of the highly esteemed Daily Mirror right up to #1 in their 'least deprived' list? Surely worth a go. If it works, we could move the capital around the country every ten years [this happens in Dido's Phoenicia in Civilization VI] and reap the benefits of capitalisation. Memo to Michael Gove, Secretary of State responsible for the government's 'levelling up' strategy.

Anyway, I'm off to the opera in Middlesbrough, followed tomorrow by a visit to the Middlesbrough Tate and dinner at the Middlesbrough Ritz. See, it's working already.

Oh and no, I'm not meaning to make light of the lot of the people of Ukraine - or those of other currently war-torn countries: Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar (let me know if I have omitted your country).

Federalist Paper No. 9

The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection is the title of No. 9 in the series of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, eventually titled the Federalist Papers and setting the foundation of the United States constitution. In No.9 Hamilton argues "A FIRM Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection", interpreted by some as an argument against political parties. P. J. O'Rourke [see below] claims that Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, presages the 'tyranny' of today's two political parties in the US. Madison wrote ("with eerie prescience ... [describing] our Democratic and Republican presidential primaries and caucuses 228 years into the future", according to O'Rourke):

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

It seems the Founding Fathers were generally not in favour of political parties. According to history.com, in an essay by Sarah Pruitt entitled The Founding Fathers Feared Political Factions Would Tear the Nation Apart, Alexander Hamilton once called political parties “the most fatal disease” of popular governments. According to O'Rourke, Thomas Jefferson claimed to oppose political parties and George Washington "detested political parties and didn't belong to one". 

I learned all this from a book I'm reading entitled How the Hell Did This Happen? by the afore-mentioned P. J. O'Rourke, of whom I hadn't heard until he died recently. Whereupon a number of political columnists whose writings I enjoy lauded him and quoted from his works. O'Rourke was a "political satirist" who wrote pieces - of a style of mini essays or (as I would say) blog posts - for various American publications.

How the Hell Did This Happen? - subtitled A Cautionary Tale of American Democracy - is a collection of 30 such pieces on the subject of the 2016 Presidential Election, from the early primaries until the election itself. This was the Trump vs Clinton election, which both candidates won - Hillary simply got more votes than Donald but apparently that wasn't good enough.

O'Rourke himself is a Republican supporter, although from what he describes as the "sane and moderate" wing of the party (In a later book he talks of being, politically, of the 'far-middle'). He mercilessly mocks the candidates of both parties who line up to attempt to win their party's nomination. As far as the Republican candidates are concerned, it's a bit like Jeff Daniels mouthing Aaron Sorkin's anti Tea Party rants in The Newsroom.

Perry, Santorum, Walker, Webb, Chafee, Pataki, Huckabee, Jindal, Graham, O'Malley, Paul, Fiorina, Biden, Bush, Christie, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, Sanders, Clinton and Trump. That's not a list of presidential candidates. That's the worst law firm in the world.

Rubio is the least insane candidate (low bar) with the best chance (faint hope) of actually beating Hillary.

... typical of modern Americans is Trump's bad taste ... he puts his own individual stamp on gaucherie.

... the candidate who was so far ahead of Hillary that we didn't know who it was yet was the screwy-kablooey commander of the Vermont-Cong, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Claiming, as [Mike] Huckabee did on July 26, that the president of the United States "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven" is not a cogent critique of the Iran nuclear deal however bad the deal is.

[Biden] told the House Democratic Caucus, "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong".

Maybe Carly Fiorina could run America the way she ran Hewlett-Packard ... Between July 1999 and February 2005, when Carly was CEO, H-P's stock price fell 65 per cent.

Members of the electorate would go into the ballot booth, see the two names Clinton and Bush and think to themselves "Gosh, I'm getting forgetful. I did this already".

This is a very entertaining, amusing and beautifully written book. Not a page goes by without a reminder of how witty and insightful the author is. These are pieces I wish I could have written.

In the final pages, The Revolt Against The Elites, O'Rourke discusses how we (it applies not just to the USA) are "daunted at the pace of material change, unnerved over social transfigurations,  fretful about economic instability, and terrified by terrorism." He concludes ...

Fear is a bad schoolmarm. We've got a monster at the blackboard. How can we learn even 1 + 1 when all we can think is, "EEEK! Teacher is huge and slimy and has tentacles and two ugly heads!"

So we turn to the big, stupid bully at the back of the classroom. 

Yats

Apparently there's a new craze. Yats. A Yat is a singular collection of five emojis. A super-emoji. You can choose your five emojis, combine them into a Yat and use it as a social media signature. Or even your username.

Each Yat is unique so, once you have bought your Yat, no-one else can have that combination of emojis. I don't know how many possible combinations are possible because I don't know - or care - how many emojis there are in existence.

Note that word 'bought'. You have to purchase your Yat. And that may cost you tens of thousands of dollars, payable in some kind of cryptocurrency I think. Although presumably you can sell your Yat in a few months' time in the online Yatmarket and make huge profits. Or losses.

It's like going to your local rubbish dump, picking up hundreds of dirty, useless items, packaging them in groups of five items in shiny coloured foil and selling them as unique works of art on eBay. Equally valuable contributions to society.

Compare this with Wordle. I've never used Wordle but it was created to allow people to use the power of the internet and smartphones to simply have some fun - for free. Whoever created Yats - I'm not going to name them because they don't deserve recognition [although, come to think of it, I'm writing about their product] - are guilty of egregious greed, exploitation of the free resources of the internet, creating an unsustainable bubble, you name it, there isn't a cultural crime they haven't committed.

But, if you're rich and stupid, give it a go; have some fun. Yats were designed for you.

And yes, I know, the Wordle creator sold out to the New York Times, so maybe from now on providing people with fun may become less of a priority. We'll see.

Less than One - points don't always mean prizes

When playing Championship Manager - the classic 01/02 version obviously - when your team gets promoted the target for the first season at the higher level is, in my experience, to make sure you have at least the number of points equal to the number of games you've played. If you end up like that at the end of the season you'll generally avoid relegation. In the Premier League, with 20 teams each playing 38 games, you'll mostly be safe when you get to 38 points.

As with all the best simulation games, this reflects real life. In only 4 of the last 18 seasons has that not been enough. In 2002/2003 West Ham were relegated with 42 points so you need to be cautious about applying this 'rule'. Maybe they eased off when they got to 38, or perhaps they were  playing too much Championship Manager. Anyway, I thought I'd check out how this revelation affects teams in the top 4 English divisions at the moment.

In the Premier League there are actually seven teams - all the way up to Brentford in 14th place - with fewer points than games played. Seven struggling teams; I know because I watched some of them this weekend. This should definitely give encouragement to those in the bottom three places.

In the Championship, four teams seem to be battling it out on this basis. It's affected by the fact that Derby County were deducted 21 points, and Reading 6 points, for various breaches of financial rules, meaning their positions are probably not true reflections of their performances. You'd guess this means the bottom two, Peterborough and Barnsley, are near certainties for relegation, even at this stage.

League One (I know, for those of you baffled by almost everything about the noble sport of Association Football, these are prime examples of the weirdness of our national game) has four clubs within the points < games rule but plenty of teams immediately above them who could get sucked into the relegation battle. This league also features four relegation places so maybe this means you need points > games, I'm not sure about that.

League Two has only two clubs relegated at the end of the season (often a relief to CM 0102 players) so I'd guess you could be safe with fewer points than games. There are currently three within the recommended margin but another four very much in the mix. Although this seems like the easiest league in which to avoid relegation - and heart attacks when playing the game - there is going to be a rare old battle in real life this year.

Good luck to all these teams - I'll be following your progress.

Today's a big day for Australia

Australia. My second home. Well, that's an exaggeration but my Son #1 lives there. In Newcastle. Not the cold, windy one up north in the UK but the other in sunny New South Wales. My daughter in law is an Aussie and they moved there, I dunno, about 15 years ago. It's a great country and I have enjoyed many a trip there over the years, particularly at Christmas times.

Australia has had one of the strictest border policies in the world to attempt to keep Covid out - ask Novak Djokovic - but today is Freedom Day. The day when they open their borders to fully vaccinated visitors (again, ask Novak for details). I haven't seen my Aussie grandsons for over three years so am actively thinking about a trip. The temptation is to go sooner rather than later but definitely Christmas is on the cards. We'll see.

Box of Brilliant Beers

I was given a box of zero alcohol beers as a birthday gift. Styled as Another Box of Brilliant Beers. Presented by Beer Hawk.  Just started sampling; over the next couple of weeks I thought you'd be interested in my tasting comments (it'll be the last couple,of weeks by the time you read them).

It's worth noting that up to 0.5% alcohol is defined as 'alcohol free', although supermarket self service checkouts don't seem capable of recognising that and require the same authorisation as full alcohol beers do.

Jupiter 0.0%: A lightish but fairly hoppy Belgian beer. I like it.

Jever Fun 0.3%: This Pilsener is dry and unexciting with not much taste.

Maisel's Weisse 0.5%: A wheat beer that has a very fruity taste - Ocado calls it a banana flavour and I can definitely taste that. I really like it for its flavour but for me it's let down by being excessively fizzy. But another plus in this case is it's a 500ml bottle!

Bitburger Pils 0.05%: A slight pleasant sourness on this Bavarian beer. Perfectly drinkable.

Franziskaner Weissbier 0.5%: A flavourful, slightly fruity beer which is one of the best so far. 500ml!

Wheesht 0.0%: This is the real deal! By which I mean it's very much to my taste. A dark ale brewed at Harviestoun Brewery in Scotland. A great taste with a hint of chocolate. 'Wheesht' is apparently old Scottish slang for 'shh'! I don't imagine they mean to keep quiet about this product! I discovered you can buy a 12 bottle case of this for £12.60, although (a) there's a flat rate £5.95 for shipping orders of less than £50 and (b) the bottles are only 330ml. Needs a bit of thinking about.

Tiny Rebel Clwb Tropica 0.5%: Very fruity and fizzy pale ale brewed in Newport, Wales. A nice light drink for those who like a lager top. Although bubbly out of the can, it quietens down quite quickly.

Ghost Ship 0.5%: A well-known pale ale brewed in Suffolk by Adnams. Pour this into a wide-bottomed glass and you will see the gorgeous amber colour. Matched by the strong, earthy taste.

Lucky Saint 0.5%: I've come across this before. Brewed in Bavaria for Not Another Beer company, it's a light lager very similar to Heineken Zero. Not my favourite.

Leffe 0.0%: A Belgian brew which has quite a nice sweet taste and very little fizz. I think there is added sugar, as the calorie content is 40 per 100ml, compared with say my favourite St Peters Without at 29. Despite this, I could drink more of it, although it's not as hoppy as I prefer; just different for an occasional early evening drink.

Zero Five 0.5%: Brewed at Thornbridge Brewery in Derbyshire, this is fruity - apple? mango? - and very fizzy. Pleasant enough but not in the Top Five for me.

Hoegaarden 0.05%: A wheat beer brewed "with coriander orange peel" in Belgium. I really like the wheat beer taste and this one is not excessively bubbly.

My top five from these? Not in order, I could happily drink the two wheat beers - Hoegaarden and Maisel's - as well as Franziskaner, Wheesht and Ghost Ship.

I've recently bought a mixed case of my favourite St Peter's Without but I'll be looking out for these five.

Thanks for the birthday present Dan!

Reader suggestions sought

Consider this.

Boris Johnson, an innately radical politician, leads an innately conservative party.

Keir Starmer, an innately conservative politician, leads an innately radical party.

It makes no sense. They should swap. Then what ...?

It's Eunice for us, Dudley for you

Storm Eunice hits the UK's South West. Meanwhile Storm Dudley rampages through the Midlands. What if they meet? Storm Dudnice? Presumably Dudley has alphabetical priority so move over, Eun; your time will come.

I may be the only human on the planet (as opposed to those on the Moon or Mars) who thinks the whole storm naming thing is ridiculous and patronising. Are we so stupid we need everything dumbed down? If the storms keep coming two at a time we may reach Zak by Christmas. Actually that can't happen as there are no Zs in the storm alphabet. Or Ys, so it'll be Willemien - remember the Dutch participate in our naming system. Anyone know why the French don't?

Yep, I do. European nations are grouped for storm naming purposes:

Western Group (United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands)

South-western Group (France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Luxembourg)

Eastern Mediterranean Group (Greece, Israel and Cyprus)

Central Mediterranean Group (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Malta)

So far we are winning; we're up to Eunice, the Spanish only Blas, the Greeks Elpis (so level with us - come on us Brits!), the others only Apollo (which I thought was Greek so seems like an interloper). If you don't live in Europe, look up your own; I don't care.

I feel I've gone on for too long about this nonsense. Indeed, you may not have got this far; don't blame you. 

Don't Lose Damian

It's a well-known fact (to me anyway) that Homeland lost the plot after Damian Lewis left the cast. I'll long remember that iconic image of Brody hanging from a noose in Iran at the end of season 3; what came after for Homeland is instantly forgettable. Homeland's point was always the question of Brody's loyalty and Carrie's relationships - professional and personal - with him.

Lewis leaves the cast, Homeland dies.

Now there is a repetition of this point with Billions. This excellent TV series hinged around the tense relationship between two protagonists - Paul Giamatti's District Attorney Chuck Rhoades and Lewis's hedge fund billionaire Bobby Axelrod. It was one of those shows where your empathy with the characters constantly shifted. Brilliantly written and acted, it was an outstanding watch. At the end of season 5 Rhoades wins, Axelrod has to sell his company and go into exile in Switzerland; Lewis leaves the cast. In the last few weeks we have seen season 6. What a let down. The new owner of Axe Capital is Mike Prince, who turns out to be ... nice. He is going to clean up the hedge fund, only accept squeaky clean investors (good luck with that) and bid for the Olympics. What? Rhoades is baffled - he hates billionaires and here's an acceptable one!

In the latest episode we, the viewers, are confronted with the strange device of graphic images overlaying the appearance of each character, the graphics showing their clothing and accessories and their valuations. It's like one of those movies where you see things through the lens of a robot or android - I think it may have been Blade Runner but I'm not sure; maybe Terminator or Ex Machina? Anyway, it's a very irritating device for two reasons: 1. There is so much text that you can't read it before it's gone (Louis Vitto Manhattan $10,000, Gucci Jeans $3,100, Gucci Stuart Hughes Bel ... wait, it's gone! I haven't got to the shirt yet!) 2. It's pointless flammery, as if the producers need to remind us of the show's title. Not for me.

Lewis leaves the cast, Billions dies.

If you're thinking of casting Damian Lewis in a TV show, people - make sure he's contracted through to the final episode ever.

How well do I know my sons?

I recommended Money Heist to Dan, my younger son. The recommendation was a success as he rated it "probably in my top 10 [TV series] ever". Which led me to think what the other 9 would be. So I'm going to give it a go and he can tell me my score in the Comments. Maybe he could even take up my offer of a guest blogger spot!

Bear in mind he's 35 years younger than me so I have to avoid some of my own preferences - e.g. Only Fools And Horses - he was 2 at the time. Here goes. No particular order.

The Sopranos

Game Of Thrones

Stranger Things

The Wire

Breaking Bad

Dexter

Friends

The West Wing

For the final guess it's a toss up between Succession, Billions, The Thick of It and Homeland. I'll go for...

Homeland

I eagerly await my score..... 

Other readers can post their top 10s!

The Sinner

I was brought up in an evangelical Christian household and spent my formative years in membership of the Salvation Army. The SA was founded in the east end of London in the middle of the 19th century, where the alleviation of poverty as its central social mission was fuelled by a deep hatred of alcoholism and other vices of the poor. So I had an instinctive understanding of the concept of Sin - the sins of drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and much more were a fundamental part of the organisation's message and of the prohibitions of membership.

You can imagine the temptations this brought to an inquisitive and intelligent teenager; they were probably the origins of the rebel I became and arguably continue to be.

I pondered this when I started watching the Netflix series The Sinner. It's a psychological  drama covering four seasons, each of eight episodes. The central character, Harry Ambrose, is a detective who appears in all four seasons although the rest of the cast of characters changes for each season. In each case there is a murder and we know the perpetrator straight away. But Ambrose looks beneath the plain facts and seeks to understand the murderer's motivations, believing that there may be ameliorating circumstances which could affect the justice system's treatment of the case. With the perpetrator he acts as therapist as much as investigator.

As the seasons follow, the scenarios grow darker. Season one features a - on the face of it - perfectly normal wife and mother who unaccountably stabs someone to death on the beach. Season two gives us a glimpse into an ugly cult through the eyes of a young boy who poisons two of the cult members.

As things progress, we learn about Ambrose's own background and understand more of why he relates to these abused people whom he sees as victims (of their pasts) rather than offenders. It seems to me that he is the eponymous Sinner.

Season three for me just got too dark. A teacher, husband and father is involved in the death of someone whom he knew and was very close to. As we are shown flashbacks to their relationship we come to see that person as someone very destructive indeed. He came across to me as almost the personification of evil and I simply felt - halfway through episode four - that it was disturbing me too much and I should stop.

So I did.

I spent some time debating whether I should post this. But, if I'm going to describe movies and TV shows which I enjoy and think you might too, I felt a responsibility to mention those which I would dissuade anyone whose sensibilities are similar to mine from watching. It's fair to say that there has been a degree of critical acclaim for The Sinner and it has many good points. It's just that, for me, it went too far into the dark side.

Distinguished and Commemorable News

Johann Carolus' newsbook entitled Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (Account of All Distinguished and Commemorable News) published in Strasbourg was the first European newspaper. Indeed the World Association of Newspapers recognises it as the world's first.

In fact it was more like a newsletter or court circular, listing who was where, why and what for. Carolus was a bookbinder and bookseller by trade and had begun writing newsletters, which had been popularised at the turn of the 16th/17th centuries. Relation was first published in 1605 and was such a success that it spawned not just copies but a whole new industry. Two new industries in fact, since the spread of news led to questioning about the veracity and provenance of the 'information' and very soon to a 'fake news' bandwagon. Robert Burton, an Oxford don, wrote in his Anatomy of Melancholy:

A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, corantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, etc. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays ... treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies of all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions.

Robert was not a happy man, it's fair to say. Or maybe he was simply illustrating the melancholy of the title. BTW corantoes  "were early informational broadsheets, precursors to newspapers. Beginning around the 14th century" [Wikipedia].

All this I learned from the latest book from my reading list: TRUTH - subtitled A Brief History of Total Bullsh❌t. It's am amusing read although to be honest the central premise - that you should be very careful what you are being persuaded to believe - could have been expressed in perhaps half the book's 266 pages. The book describes misinformation, scams, politics and various amusing delusions. For instance, in August 1835 the New York Sun published a series of articles "describing" life on the Moon for the race of bat people who lived there. The Great Moon Hoax was presented by a new editor who wanted to boost circulation. It worked! You can read all about it on that great purveyor of truth, Wikipedia. Also: a 1614 pamphlet described a dragon living near Horsham in Surrey. Although, on reflection, maybe that was true; who knows?

TRUTH is a sequel to the author's HUMANS, also with a subtitle but one unsuitable for the sensitive and youthful eyes of my younger readers. Tom Phillips, the author, works as the editor of Full Fact, a charity which describes itself as "a team of independent fact checkers and campaigners who find, expose and counter the harm it does". Sounds like a noble pursuit.

If, like me, you are of a cynical disposition, you will find this grist to your mill. Although you will probably already be a member of the "don't believe anything you read" club. It's a depressing approach to human intercourse but the problem is alleviated in the book by the writer's wit and inclusion of many anecdotes illustrating the basic point.

Doesn't know his [] from his []

Boris in a hospital today. Checking out a large hi tech machine.

"Like something out of Star Wars, Rishi" (Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak was with him)

"Beam me up, Scottie"

Doesn't know his Star Wars from his Star Trek.