Blogoir

Back home after some busy days a-training some sassy young diplomats, straight out of the egg and buzzing with cheery optimism until I arrived.

I also have been visiting an elderly friend in hospital.

Beyond a certain age most of one's friends and maybe even one's close relatives have died.

So there is unique loneliness and despair in being in a hospital ward, largely conscious but unable to move much or to read or talk, knowing that after so many years of life's marathon one at last has entered the stadium and is plodding wearily and inexorably to the finishing line - and oblivion.

The hospital staff bustle around, and try to be positive. But how much can they be expected to motivate themselves to care kindly for people who are beyond being set right by clever medicine yet who somehow linger on defiantly as their body systems edge down, one by one?

What these ranks of aged patients - lying there like so many withered leaves - need more than anything is just love, expressed by someone being there with them as the long hopeless hours drag by.

And people fit enough not to be in hospital themselves are all rushing around, getting on with life. There is just not enough of this unique love to go round.  

Many people do.

It took a while, but I have finally caught up with Rickrolling.

Nick Lowe had the last word to say on this subject, as on most others: 

If you had a camera that took pictures at a stunning 250,000 frames per second, what's the first thing you'd film in ultra slow-motion?

Yes, that's right!

Fungus plants on dung-heaps, shooting out spores.

The 'fastest thing in nature'.

Now, at last, filmed. And set to opera.

Is one answer to gloabal energy problems for us humans to do what electric eels do to generate electricty?

But better?

I am off to London to seek my fortune, as it appears that people with fortunes are selfishly loath to share them with me.

Back on Saturday.

It makes little sense to fly an aircraft half-empty, or play to empty concert-hall seats.

But how to deal with the information management problem of filling those seats as the start deadline looms?

Maybe like this?

Does anyone out there want an exquisite pastel portrait done?

Try Barbara Hamilton Kaczmarowska.

The Oxford Webware maestros are helping me liven things up a bit round here.

 So (within the frugal limits of my ability to recall how to do it) there could be easier YouTube links and more pictures now and again.

Some people ask me, "Did you really have a Mini in your living room on the first floor in Warsaw?".

Indeed. This is how it got there:

And this is what it looked like driving in:

And the launch itself, just as the curtain hiding the car was pulled back to general amazement and wild acclaim:

Made a change from the usual diplomatic cocktail party.

Success.

This website has stormed from a standing start in January this year into the Total Politics Top 200 UK Top Political Blogs list, at position 161.

Not as good as, say, position 156.

But notably better than, say, position 166.

And rising fast next year, in hot pursuit of famous former Ambassador turned blogger Craig Murray who is at position 145, down from position 44 in 2007.

August has been much my best month so far, with some 9000 unique visitors.

Many thanks to all those who both like the product - and have taken the trouble to vote.

Aaaargh.

Reckless carbon use on Earth is now having worrying ramifications at the heart of solar system, viz the Sun.

Please governments. Tax us higher to pay for all those schemes to deal with these problems, otherwise all is lost.

One thing is utterly clear.

The Earth is set to get either warmer or cooler.

Definitely.

The world takes another step towards the Internet Cloud as Google launches its new browser Google Chrome.

We, the vast mass of mere users, have almost no idea of what is happening to deliver these miracles of networked cleverness.

Here (via Charles Johnson) is as simple an explanation as we might hope to understand.

(Oh, and while you are passing by LGF, have a look at this dude, an Obama supporter baffled by McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, and not afraid to say so.)

Few if any entries in the coming week as the sun finally emerges in Florida after Tropical Storm Fay. Back to normal service at the end of August.

Just to add that timeshare salesmen in this part of the world are startlingly good.

We were offered the usual free donuts and coffee plus an $80 gift voucher if we 'took the tour' and heard the presentation. So we signed up.

The first salesman hit us with the first offer to extract $30,000 from us. Charmingly done, but fairly easily rebuffed. Then came three more in Star Wars-like space fighter attack waves, peppering us with amazing deals of ingenious shapes and sizes.

It takes nerves of steel to sit through this and not agree to buy something. They make you feel guilty that you have not bought at least a two-week holiday for $2,000.

Somehow we managed it. And departed with the voucher. Better than last year when I walked out in a rage and skipped the voucher.

Timeshare is easy.

Don't.

Back in the West, there is a health and safety policy I have not seen before here at Aquatica, the new water-park next to SeaWorld in Orlando.

As one waits in line for a good splashy ride, a tape-recording in a prissy male Australian voice tells us all that:

Your security is our number one concern. Therefore, lifeguards may not make eye-contact when speaking to you. Nothing personal, mates. No worries!

Huh?

Does eye-contact with lifeguards make some people feel insecure? Or is it that the lifeguards' beady eyes must be roving ceaselessly to spot potential trouble and so they may not have time to alight on you, so please do not feel offended? Something else?

I have sent a message to Customer Relations to ask. Always nice to know what is going on.

Update: almost instantaneous and friendly replies from Aquatica saying that indeed the point is that the lifeguards need to be looking everywhere so may not have eyes for you when talking. I have pointed out that that is not clear from the way the warning is phrased. Over to senior management.

Busy ploughing through Lonely Hearts by John Harvey.

The hero of this series of well praised detective stories is Detective Charlie Resnick. He has a Polish background which makes a lugubrious appearance now and again.

But if Arrow Books are going to do detective stories with a Polish angle, they ought to get Poles to help the proof-reading.

Imagine my shock and dismay to see on p 249 of the 2002 edition (corrected now?) the Polish national dish traduced by being turned into something with an Albanian flavour: they meant pierogi, but it appeared as pieroqi.

Resnick visits a Polish woman settled in the UK. There on the wall (p 251) is a picture of Cardinal Wysznski. Who or what is he? Can't they spell? They must be referring to Cardinal Wyszynski.

Come on, Arrow Books. These are all easy words.

Try Polish for beetle: chrzaszcz.

Then move on the infamous Polish tongue-twister:

W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie
I Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie.

Which Wikipedia kindly helps one pronounce: 

[fʂʧε.bʐε.ʂɨ.ɲε xʂɔɰ̃ʂʧ bʐmi ftʂtɕi.ɲε]
[i.ʂʧε.bʐε.ʂɨn stε.gɔ swɨ.ɲε]

And means:

In the town of Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed
And Szczebrzeszyn is famous for it.

As it should be.

As Georgia burns we look to the FT to guide us through all the complexities.

And sure enough:

Paris Hilton is no average airhead, as her self-parody shows

They're right. She is way above average airheadnesses.

She is top of the airhead range.

... just when Barack wants to make America cool again, people are being really mean to him.

How cowardly is that?!

Via American Digest.

Is B Obama losing momentum?

If so, is it because he did not take some earlier advice?

This article is fascinating for its Manifest Badness, on so many levels simultaneously.

It's all about:

the latest example of a noticeable social trend, one that we shall call, obviously, “dolliness”, after the woman who embodies its spirit. Think of the Spice Girls tour and the Sex and the City film ...  a new form of female camaraderie that, while clearly not new, is suddenly out, proud and quite deafeningly loud.

I try not to think about such things. But note the writing: four weary adverbs already, bulging the text like cotton wool stuffed in to expand an unstrained M&S bra.

What about this:

A group of grown-up women out on the razz is rarely cool — or sexy, in the traditional sense. But so what? When the rest of life is a performance, a game of pretending to be a grown-up, a complete cool-void can be a relief.

Ha.Grown-up women are all about pretending to be grown-up! I knew it.

But they're for sure brainy:

And it’s a nonsense that conversations at girl-only nights are just “women’s talk” ... What started out as a few women — among them June Sarpong and the writer Kathy Lette — gathering at the home of Ronnie Ancona became a monthly fixture for 30 or more. Sometimes the conversation was about about the burqa; sometimes nail varnish. Usually both.

Doesn't vampy black nail varnish avoid an unseemly and impious clash?

You can love men, live for them, but what a relief it is sometimes to be around people you don’t need to be anything with.

Women together, and vacuous articles in the Times about women together. A load of nothing?

Anglican Bishops have been marching against world poverty - then tucking in to a worthy feast.

Hypocrites!

When Pope Benedict XVI visited Krakow in 2006 the Polish authorities were determined to prevent any unseemly scenes of drunkenness among the vast crowds thronging to see him.

So alcohol sales were banned in Krakow and for miles around.

In Krakow for the Pope's Mass I went for dinner at the Hotel Stary, where as it happened the main restaurant had been booked for a mass of Catholic Archbishops and others from the Church hierarchy. There they were, finely berobed.

Imagine my suprise to see the long bar groaning with bottles of champagne and wine, laid out in long rows beautifully for their benefit. They did not hold back.

Research needed? 

News that the Arabic word for God has been found miraculously enscribed on a piece of meat in Nigeria alas does not impress me.

When I was in Serbia the erudite paper Twilight Zone carried a picture of the image of Milosevic which had been found on a piece of toast.

And these days people are impatient for miracles.

So, praise the Lord, you can make your own.