(Hat tip to my online mate John Wilkins over at Evolving Thoughts.)
Norbert
Guardian: Hurricane Norbert batters Baja California and heads north-west
Do you think they're starting to scrape the barrel when it comes to hurricane names? Norbert: what sort of name is that for any tropical cyclone worth its salt? I mean, it's not even a real name. Have you ever met anyone named Norbert? Me neither.
Apparently, Norbert means ‘famous in the North’. Not in this bloody North he's not. Up here, I guarantee, you won't hear tales of the legendary Norbert, who famously did something famous for which he is now remembered throughout the region. In fact, I can honestly say, I have never even heard of anyone named Norbert, let alone actually met someone with that unfortunate monicker. It's a made-up name. It's a joke name. In fact, I've just consulted the Famous People Named Norbert web page and it only lists five men, all but one of whom are dead, and absolutely none of whom you will have heard of. Not even Norbert Leo Butz, the ‘#1 person named Norbert’, who famously graduated from Webster University and the University of Alabama before beginning his career as a Broadway performer, and who then went on to appear on such television shows as The Deep End, Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Smash.
Do you think that Norbert Leo Butz, in an attempt perhaps to turn the inevitable topic of conversation away from his surname, tries to impress strangers with the fact that, according to the Famous People Named Norbert website, he's the #1 person named Norbert in the whole world? I suppose it's a claim to fame of sorts. But, as with the hurricane names, it smacks of barrel-scraping.
I mean, just imagine if your house got flattened, and you had to explain that you had been made homeless by Hurricane Norbert. Where's the dignity in that? People would just piss themselves laughing, or think you'd made it up.
No, enough is enough! You can't have a hurricane named Norbert. Whatever next? Hurricane Robin? Hurricane Keith (no offence)? Actually, no, it turns out these things are planned in advance. The next Eastern North Pacific hurricanes of the 2014 season, if there are any, will be named (I'm not making this up): Odile, then Polo, then Rachel, then Simon, then Trudy, then Vance, then Winnie, then Xavier, then Yolanda, then Zeke.
Actually, perhaps Norbert isn't such a damn stupid name for a hurricane after all.
Who says Americans don't do irony?
BBC: Survivor singer Jimi Jamison dies aged 63
Jimi Jamison, the lead singer for US rock band Survivor, who sang the theme tune for hit TV series Baywatch, has died aged 63.
Privilege
Gavin Francis, writing in this week's London Review of Books (subscribers only link):
In New Problems in Medical Ethics (1956), Peter Flood, a Benedictine, stated that Christians in pain should accept suffering ‘as permitted by God for our betterment’. Pain was a ‘privilege, in union with the redemptive sufferings of Christ’. It was essential that a physician tell people they might be close to death, even if they weren’t sure, so that the patient’s opportunity for repentance wasn’t squandered and their admission to heaven put at risk. Pain relief might be administered in small doses, except to those such as lapsed Catholics—the fear being that even small doses might prevent them from returning to the religion of their baptism. In the same volume Eugene Tesson, a Jesuit, sanctioned physicians to administer pain relief only to the dying who had ‘made an act of submission to the Divine’ and those ‘in danger of falling into despair and blaspheming the goodness of God’.
These are the sort of religious, moralistic nutters who, in 2014, think assisted dying is against God's will.
Right here in North Creek!
Picture round
You know the picture round from A Question of Sport, where they show you a subtly obscured photo of some sporting celebrity you've never heard of, and you have to try and guess who it is? Well, my Dad and I attended a practice day at the Open yesterday, and I took a picture-round-type photo. See if you can guess who it is:
You will note that, while I insist on referring to the so-called World Cup as the Soccer World Cup (there being more than one World Cup), I refer to the British Golf Open Championship simply as The Open. This is because my Dad has drilled it into me for decades that, while there are French, American, and other golf open championships, as well as open championships that aren't even golf, the British Golf Open Championship is rightly referred to simply as The Open. As if to prove him annoyingly right, the Royal & Ancient has even managed to bag the theopen.com domain. So there.
[The answer is Ernie Els, by the way.]
Shaken, not stirred
BBC: Cambridge Five spy ring members 'hopeless drunks'
Members of the Cambridge Five spy ring were regarded by their Soviet handlers as hopeless drunks incapable of keeping secrets, newly-released files suggest[...]A short passage describes Burgess as a man "constantly under the influence of alcohol".
Written in Russian, it goes on to recount one occasion when Burgess drunkenly risked exposing his double identity.
"Once on his way out of a pub, he managed to drop one of the files of documents he had taken from the Foreign Office on the pavement," translator Svetlana Lokhova explained.
Moving on to Maclean, the note describes him as "not very good at keeping secrets".
It adds that he was "constantly drunk" and binged on alcohol.
Not wishing to be pedantic, but it sounds to me as if Burgess and Maclean, far from being ‘hopeless drunks’, were actually extremely accomplished drunks.
T'oo-er!
Le Tour de France passed through Hebden Bridge this afternoon. Boy, were they ever lost!
Jen and I headed off across the moor to cut them off at the pass, but they still managed to get through.
The best joke of the afternoon came from Jen. As the lead, breakaway group of seven cyclists passed, she turned to me and said, “Is that it?! What a huge disappointment! I was expecting a lot more riders than that.”
Well, it made me laugh.
More photos here.
The boy who decried Woolf
From Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf:
Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied, ghostly—why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.
Far be it from me to find fault with the late, great Virginia Woolf—the woman whose writing inspired my own mini-masterpiece, The Aftermath—but read those words again very carefully:
Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied, ghostly—why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.
Do you see Mrs Woolf's utter howler, there? Her schoolgirl error, so to speak? The sort of mistake that, when realised, would almost compel any writer worth their salt to fill their pockets with stones and take a long walk into the nearest convenient river?
What do you mean, ‘No’?! IT'S STARING YOU IN THE FACE!
How can a ‘seedy-looking’ man possibly be ‘nondescript’? Nondescript means not distinctive enough to be described. But she's just described him: she said he was ‘seedy-looking’! Anyone who can be described as ‘seedy-looking’—or, indeed, as anything else—is, ipso facto, most definitely descript.
If I might make so bold, I think what Mrs Woolf meant to write was something along the lines of:
Then, while a seedy-looking, otherwise nondescript man carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied, ghostly—why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.
(My emphasis added.)
Sloppy, Ginny! Sloppy!
(Gobsm)hacked
BBC: Hacking trial: Coulson guilty, Brooks cleared of charges
Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson has been found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones.Ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was cleared of all charges in the phone-hacking trial.
This is the foot of our stairs:
… I just went there to eat my hat.
To tide us over while Andy Coulson awaits sentencing, surely nothing can beat a little Lone Justice: