Whack-a-mole

If, like me, you have no idea what Boris is talking about when he uses the whack-a-mole phrase, look no further! I have answers.

Originally a fairground game using a wooden mallet and (presumably fake) "moles" which keep popping up, the fiendishly clever Japanese invented an early arcade game in the 1970s called Whac-a-mole. モグラ退治 (mogura taiji, "Mole Buster") 

[I hope fiendish isn't thought of as racist; to me it's a term of endearment]

Why whack moles? Why not crocodiles? Wasps? Ants? I guess ants are too easy, wasps too hard and crocs more likely to counter-attack. Those moles have such cute baby faces with their twitchy whiskers and bobbing heads and ..... wait! You mean you wanna whack these little guys? What kind of person are you? I know, dear readers, you'll be thinking of me killing enemies in my computer games. But spaceships, yes. Weird aliens, fine. Fellow citizens of our planet, not so much. I can honestly say I have never whacked a mole - real, fake or electronic.

Now I know farmers, greenkeepers at golf and croquet clubs and suburban gardeners will be telling me they are pests which cause damage. I don't care. Farmers, build some mole homes for the little guys and run an education programme to show them how anti-social their behaviour is (ASBOs for moles). Golf clubs, put your greens somewhere else - maybe in those lovely sand pits you have. Croquet lawns, build a maze of underground tunnels to direct the moles onto a neighbouring property. What do you mean the moles have already built those tunnels from the neighbouring property to yours?

OK, maybe they are a problem. But they're your problem, not mine.

Anyway, why does Boris keep uttering this phrase? I am told that it is a commonly used phrase to describe the process by which you solve one problem and another then pops up, and then another and so on. In insurgent combat, inner city law enforcement, computer program debugging and spam attacks. I don't think this colloquial usage necessarily implies that solving one problem can unexpectedly cause another (with which I am definitely familiar in programming) but that can sometimes be the case.

Boris uses it to describe the UK government's current strategy to control resurges in covid-19 infections. You ease the lockdown but retain measures to control local popups of the virus - as currently in Leicester.

But Boris there is a messaging problem with the analogy. First of all it implies a lack of control rather than mastery. Secondly it concedes the inevitability of such ongoing infection spikes. Thirdly it suggests that it's not a solution to the problem; rather a Band-Aid (other sticking plasters are available). Fourthly, it implies that the government is at the mercy of, rather than in control of, events ("Events, dear boy" - Harold Macmillan). Is that the message you want to give?

A good sound bite maybe needs to be a tad more substantive, Boris. Think again.

And stop encouraging people to whack moles!

Fabulous Huawei

And so begins my campaign to attract Chinese followers. Although the fact that this blog is written in English might be a problem. You'd imagine though that Chinese intelligence agents have foreign language skills.

I have been watching a lot of ads for Huawei phones. Is it true they take the best photos? Perhaps that would get me some nice Camel Trail photos, MiceElf. Maybe Huawei could sponsor the blog; are you listening guys?

The West, America in particular, seems obsessed with China as Enemy Number One. We Brits know better; they don't call us Perfidious Albion for nothing. Actually they don't call us that at all; that was Elizabethan England. Wait, we are Elizabethan again. Maybe Perfidious Britannia. So we'll wag a finger at China for its (obviously legitimate) actions in Hong Kong but welcome Huawei into our 5G infrastructure. "Don't worry, Donald, we won't allow it", then we do. Very perfidious.

I like the Chinese people. Fine, upstanding chaps. Keeping the world safe. So they have a President For Life. He's doing a great job, so why not? @GoXi

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A milestone - and a Marvelous name

I've reached 50! Not my age, that was a long time ago. This is my 50th post on this blog.

When I started writing, I had no idea what to expect. With the support of some loyal readers, to whom I give thanks, I have continued my ramblings - I do enjoy a ramble.

I really am grateful for the support of family and friends. I try to tailor my content to their interests, as much as my own. Walking, films, TV, football; that's the diet you'll get here (sums up my lockdown lifestyle). Little or no politics, although I'm not averse to the occasional dig at the whole political class. I don't really aim to be opinionated or controversial, just hopefully interesting.

Writing has proved an enjoyable pursuit for me in difficult times. I'm a quite private person, so opening up my innermost thoughts (occasionally) has been a difficult judgement but the blog can sometimes be about me as well as the world at large.

I get enjoyment too from researching topics, often set off by an article I read in the Times or other online content. A reference to a book leads not only to reading that book but to a blog post too. That was the case with the Three Body Problem and Freakonomics.

I'm watching football on TV while writing this and am intrigued by one of the Aston Villa players - Marvelous Makamba. What a name! He's Zimbabwean, so is Marvelous a common African name? Or is it a nickname? I found Marvelous Marvin Hagler, an African American boxer; that was at first a nickname but he changed his name to become Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Very modest. Other than that, nothing. But all credit to Makamba's Mum  and Dad; good name. Although checking out his footballing skills, he may be struggling to live up to it. For balance, I should report that he is actually a Zimbabwean international.

Ten minutes to go and Villa are one goal down. Maybe Marvelous can score an equaliser?

No, he's been substituted. Anyway, Villa are a hopeless case I think. They are probably going down.

More rambling.

Das Boot

Das Boot is a TV series, originally aired on Sky Atlantic. At first sight it doesn't seem like something you'd want to watch - life on a German U-boat in WW2 sounds like dark, moody soap opera at best. I didn't actually watch it when it first came out, for that reason. But I have recently watched season 1 and it is much better than it promised.

There are two strands to the story. The crew of the U-boat provides one, French resistance activists the other. Connecting the two narratives is a a young Alsacian woman working as a clerk for the German occupying power in Vichy France. Her brother is on the submarine. The series is their tale.

A tale of love, death and betrayal. The more remarkable in that it is made by German TV and shows the occupation of France by Nazi Germany in all its rawness.

And that's just season 1. I'm about to see the second season and will report back in due course.

Sharp Objects

I've not really connected to Amy Adams in  the past - I suppose early in her career. I actually haven't seen her in many movies. The one I do remember was a tsunami disaster movie with Ewan MacGregor. I can't remember what it was called and can't be bothered to look it up. I wouldn't say it was bad but it wasn't gripping - as disaster movies are supposed to be.

However, the TV series Sharp Objects is absolutely outstanding and stars Amy Adams.

I have an aversion to TV series which get an unwarranted second season - not because they are too bad to warrant it but precisely because they are too good to warrant it; they have said what they have to say and to contrive a follow-up undermines the quality of the original. So I hope Sharp Objects doesn't get a second season, because this is The Best.

It's easy to list TV shows that went on too long. Even the classic West Wing - should have finished when Bartlet ended his second term; there was no point to the rest. Homeland - should have finished when Brody died; the Carrie/Brody relationship was good, afterwards Carrie just went crazy.

Conversely, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (like West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin) was so good and there was plenty left in it. The characters were ripe for further development. Don't know why the studio cancelled it. Ratings, I guess.

So, Sharp Objects, based on a novel by Gillian Flynn. Adams is Camille, a journalist who is assigned to an investigation into why a young girl - and others previously - have disappeared. In her home town, to which she is not keen to return. Camille is a seriously flawed character but gets to grip with the mysterious circumstances. She decides to stay at her family home. Her mother (Patricia Clarkson won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress) is not exactly delighted to see her and - what she (the mother) sees as - her disruption of small town life as she relentlessly probes into current and recent tragedies.

  

Eliza Scanlen (recently Beth in Little Women) plays Camille's rollerblading younger half sister and Chris Messina a detective (Willis) is brought in from another force to help with the investigation. He and Camille are the outsiders and are duly resented by the townsfolk. The interactions between these four main characters make a great show.

To tell more would be to spoil, so suffice to say that the acting is universally superb, the plot is a dark depiction of small town middle America and the music is amazing.

The 8 episode series aired on HBO in 2018, after which HBO announced there would not be a sequel. Well done, HBO! It simply doesn't need more.

One final thing: do not switch off during the final credits of the final episode; you will miss an important coda.

Freakonomics

This is a book jointly written by a journalist and an economist. It has one central theme, which I describe as "don't confuse correlation with causation". In other words, if two measures X and Y both move in the same direction by the same amount, you cannot infer that either causes, or even influences, the other.

If you are a person who, like me, has spent his life absorbed by and interested in numbers, statistics and politics, this book has nothing to say to you. If not, however - maybe you are more interested in words than numbers - the book has lots of entertaining examples of how this matters. And because there are lots, it becomes quite repetitive and you may well get to the point where you say "OK I get it; move on".

Which is what I did, after reading half the book.

It is pretentiously sub-titled "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". Don't let that encourage you. Or put you off. This is not Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything). It's a publisher's tag line.

Newspaper sub-editors often ignore the correlation/causation issue. Misleading headlines abound, even though they may be negated by the detail in the article. Do they want to encourage lazy readers? We - you and I, valued readers - know that just because the number of covid-19 positive tests goes down one day, it doesn't necessarily mean that fewer people have become infected.

Donald Trump knows: "Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!"