In other news, water wet, Pope Catholic...

Football Fans swear about their own Football teams.

Great Voice and He Knows It

I just saw this on Youtube. Yes, I know it's been there for over a year but, give me some credit - I'm old!!



Anyway, I think this is a great version of the song.

Peter Hitchens' view of Stephen Fry

This made me laugh. From a reference in a post from Ed Feser's combox, here is the article. I love the headline, which is dead on the mark.

"Stephen Fry - A Stupid Person's idea of What an Intelligent Person is Like".

There must be a word for it in Greek...

"The Grimleys" was a minor British comedy from the late nineties which featured a nice conceit that it took place in an alternative universe where the members of the Glam Rock bands of the 1970s had given up their profession before they achieved success and went back to the day job. The most musically sophisticated of that type of band was Slade fronted by Noddy Holder, who, in the series,  played the music teacher in the school.

I can remember not giving the series much of a thought when it came out but I ran across this clip on Youtube in which Holder ends one of the episodes singing what would nowadays be called an "unplugged" version of the Slade hit "Cum on Feel the Noize".

I found the rendition really quite touching. I think it is a tribute to Holder's acting skills that he is able to convey the pathos of an alternative history, replete with missed opportunities and lost promise, that didn't actually happen. And, I suppose, it makes me feel old and contemplate my own missed opportunities.

25 Years of the WWW

One of the strangest thing about the web is the way that information searching and the instantaneous movement of attention from one topic to another, has become second nature.

Today I started on the Wikipedia page where the featured article is about the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade who were used to garrison Iceland after the British Occupation during the second World War. Going to the page on the Occupation, I discovered that the British also occupied the Faroe Islands to prevent Nazi occupation and the resulting threat to shipping. I don't know a lot about the Faroes, even though they are relatively close to Britain and the state of the Scottish national football team is often gauged by how well they would or wouldn't beat the team of part-time players, so I thought I would find out how big and populous these island were (they have a population of about 50,000). As it happens, the islanders are also engaged in a debate about whether they favour independence from the Kingdom of Denmark. In 2011, a new draft Faroese constitution was being drawn up but the then Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, stated this was incompatible with Denmark's constitution and that if the Faroese political parties wish to continue with it then they must declare independence. This was reported in an online news source called "Ice News (News from the Nordics!)" which had a side panel with "Popular Posts" of which, apparently, the most popular is a story about the legalisation, in 2008, of animal brothels in Denmark.

At which point, I start to wonder if it has all been worthwhile... Beam me up, Scotty!

"The only man who could remove Hitler — a man without nerves"

Following up a quote in the combox of one of W. M. Briggs posts, I have been reading about Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. A fascinating man. An ardent anti-Nazi, he personally warned Hitler in 1932 that he would shoot him if he attempted a coup. During the war, he was involved in several plots to overthrow Hitler, and was relieved of his command because of his "negative attitude towards National Socialism". He died of cancer in April, 1943.

According to the Wikipedia article, Heinrich Brüning, leader of the Catholic Center party, who served as German chancellor between 1930 and 1932, called Hammerstein-Equord "the only man who could remove Hitler — a man without nerves". According to the reminiscences of his son Kunrat von Hammerstein, Hammerstein-Equord resigned from the Club of Nobility when they threw out their non-Aryan members in 1934 or 1935, and spoke of "organized mass murder" of the Jews before the summer of 1942. He supplied his daughter Maria-Therese von Hammerstein-Paasche with the names of Jews who were scheduled for deportation or arrest, enabling her to warn or hide them. Two of his sons, Ludwig and Kunrat, took part in a failed plot to kill Hitler and replace the Nazi regime with a new government on 20 July 1944, fleeing Germany in its aftermath. His widow and two younger children were then deported to a concentration camp, and freed only when the Allied Forces liberated the camps in 1945.

The quote that sparked all this off concerned Hammerstein-Equord's special classification scheme for his men:

"I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."

So Tom Jones, Van Morrison and Jeff Beck went into a bar... er.. recording studio...

and came up with this...