"Never mind all that, now...did Paracelsus play chess, or not?"
Some days have the words "follow ups" written in ghostly crayon circles around them on the calendar. That's more of an oblique, general observation, for the sake of rationalising a crowded taskbar, and nearly a dozen currently active browser tabs, than anything relating directly to the content of this post, but I thought it'd be nice to briefly romanticize low-level chaos, before impotently cocking a snook at blatant absurdity, thus:
"At the start of today's proceedings the coroner issued a warning to anyone commenting on the value of the hearing." - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=517176&in_page_id=1770
In the highly unlikely event that any jury members at the Princess Diana inquest may be reading this blog, I must insist that they utterly disregard anything I say here.
"I again urge great care that nothing is said, written or published that may influence the jury." - Lord Justice Scott Baker (ibid).
You heard him. And so did I. More to the point, hypothetical members of the jury reading this blog, you've heard an Egyptian businessman speaking his mind:
"Earlier this week, Mr al Fayed told the jury his son was "slaughtered" by MI6 on Prince Philip's orders because she pregnant with Dodi's child and the couple were about to get engaged." (Ibid. And the missing word there, one presumes, is "was", and should be inserted between "she" and "pregnant". Yes, I'm so glad that I chose the Daily Mail website as the source for this section of the piece. *Rolls eyes.*)
The trouble is, you see, even though court reporting inevitably carries a payload of journalistic selection, editorialising, contextualising, and "soundbiting" as part of the news production process, the element of "drama" inherent in the original setting is utterly lost, regardless of how long drawn-out matters may become in reality. (Don't forget - the events under scrutiny at this inquest took place more than half of some of your lifetimes ago!) If you ever have the (mis)fortune to sit on a jury, be called as a witness, or park your bum in either the public or press galleries, sooner or later you will hear (assuming you don't utter it yourself) a variation upon the phrase, "It's not like it is in the movies, is it?"
Indeed it's not. Sometimes it's actually better, and even more entertaining. Yesterday's "star turn" at the Diana inquest was Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the "overseas" branch of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and it was international interest in this rare instance of the arcane being made very public which prompted both the speculation that everyone's just wasting their time (and rather a lot of public money) with all this morbid, sensationalist nonsense, and Lord Baker's adamant - if woefully unrealistic - finger-wagging. You can read (and view) the Channel 4 TV News coverage here:
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/spook+says+mi6+did+not+kill+diana/1614047
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Time out for what I call a bit o' "Fantasy Casting", and astartesyriaca has had advance notice of this one:
Fidel Castro - The Biopic.
My choices? Liam Neeson (younger Castro) and Christopher Lee (older Castro).
_____________________________________________
Back to "spooky" spy stuff for a moment, and our increasingly strident Home Secretary, Jacqui "Ooh, I could murder a kebab" Smith, has rather brazenly ruled the Wilson doctrine "inapplicable" in The Case of the Bugged MP. This one will probably run for a bit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7256421.stm
_____________________________________________
There's definitely something funny going on at Sheffield Hallam University, not least someone's slightly alarming reliance upon Wikipedia there. Codenamed "Lupin", s/he maintains a (publicly accessible) "watchlist" which popped up on my radar via the codewonk watchers over on JournalSpace:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lupin/watchlist
And, in case you were wondering about the Subject line of this post, I actually don't have an answer as to whether or not ol' Theo ever played chess. Although I do know that "Glaurung" was some sort of chess program, because I remember someone boring the arse off me about it some years ago, and the issue raised its head again more recently in the context of the Tolkien industry, and who's making the most money out of it all (http://sensaes.livejournal.com/472663.html).
_____________________________________________
Edit: *Sigh.* Another day, another earthquake. Nevada, 6.3...
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/149481-Magnitude-6-3-Earthquake-Hits-Nevada
"At the start of today's proceedings the coroner issued a warning to anyone commenting on the value of the hearing." - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=517176&in_page_id=1770
In the highly unlikely event that any jury members at the Princess Diana inquest may be reading this blog, I must insist that they utterly disregard anything I say here.
"I again urge great care that nothing is said, written or published that may influence the jury." - Lord Justice Scott Baker (ibid).
You heard him. And so did I. More to the point, hypothetical members of the jury reading this blog, you've heard an Egyptian businessman speaking his mind:
"Earlier this week, Mr al Fayed told the jury his son was "slaughtered" by MI6 on Prince Philip's orders because she pregnant with Dodi's child and the couple were about to get engaged." (Ibid. And the missing word there, one presumes, is "was", and should be inserted between "she" and "pregnant". Yes, I'm so glad that I chose the Daily Mail website as the source for this section of the piece. *Rolls eyes.*)
The trouble is, you see, even though court reporting inevitably carries a payload of journalistic selection, editorialising, contextualising, and "soundbiting" as part of the news production process, the element of "drama" inherent in the original setting is utterly lost, regardless of how long drawn-out matters may become in reality. (Don't forget - the events under scrutiny at this inquest took place more than half of some of your lifetimes ago!) If you ever have the (mis)fortune to sit on a jury, be called as a witness, or park your bum in either the public or press galleries, sooner or later you will hear (assuming you don't utter it yourself) a variation upon the phrase, "It's not like it is in the movies, is it?"
Indeed it's not. Sometimes it's actually better, and even more entertaining. Yesterday's "star turn" at the Diana inquest was Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the "overseas" branch of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and it was international interest in this rare instance of the arcane being made very public which prompted both the speculation that everyone's just wasting their time (and rather a lot of public money) with all this morbid, sensationalist nonsense, and Lord Baker's adamant - if woefully unrealistic - finger-wagging. You can read (and view) the Channel 4 TV News coverage here:
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/spook+says+mi6+did+not+kill+diana/1614047
_____________________________________________
Time out for what I call a bit o' "Fantasy Casting", and astartesyriaca has had advance notice of this one:
Fidel Castro - The Biopic.
My choices? Liam Neeson (younger Castro) and Christopher Lee (older Castro).
_____________________________________________
Back to "spooky" spy stuff for a moment, and our increasingly strident Home Secretary, Jacqui "Ooh, I could murder a kebab" Smith, has rather brazenly ruled the Wilson doctrine "inapplicable" in The Case of the Bugged MP. This one will probably run for a bit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7256421.stm
_____________________________________________
There's definitely something funny going on at Sheffield Hallam University, not least someone's slightly alarming reliance upon Wikipedia there. Codenamed "Lupin", s/he maintains a (publicly accessible) "watchlist" which popped up on my radar via the codewonk watchers over on JournalSpace:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lupin/watchlist
And, in case you were wondering about the Subject line of this post, I actually don't have an answer as to whether or not ol' Theo ever played chess. Although I do know that "Glaurung" was some sort of chess program, because I remember someone boring the arse off me about it some years ago, and the issue raised its head again more recently in the context of the Tolkien industry, and who's making the most money out of it all (http://sensaes.livejournal.com/472663.html).
_____________________________________________
Edit: *Sigh.* Another day, another earthquake. Nevada, 6.3...
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/149481-Magnitude-6-3-Earthquake-Hits-Nevada