For those part time Leveson watchers, Today has been a good one. Heather Mills  suggesting that Piers Morgan wasnt telling the truth, and this afternoon, Paul Dacre getting slapped around by Hugh Grant's lawyer, and trying to be obnoxious and brazen it out, to the extenet that firstly he appeared to annoy Judge L to the extent he appeared to give Grants lawyer free reign, and secondly to give the imnpression that he was being exactly the opposite of truthful..

Strangely many journalsits seem to be seeing it as a Win for Dacre, I can only see it as Stockholm syndrome.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

3/4 of the way there.

Very impressed by the weather news in bulgaria tonight, the entire northern half of the country is below -15.

Meanwhile in Sandanski, it roared up to 4 degrees, that's +4.

Just hoping that Sofia airport will be open next tuesday

keep to the Fen Causeway

I watched Ghost Writer today and found it quite naïve

To assume that someone like Tony Blair acted the way he did during the Iraq war because he was a CIA agent is being really naïve as old Tony had nothing but £££ and $$$ signs in his eyes and did not require the CIA indoctrination.

Rasmussen Reports

With positive ratings for Congress at an all-time low, it may come as no surprise that a plurality of voters nationwide believes a group of people randomly selected from a telephone book would do a better job than the current legislators.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that 43% believe a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree with that assessment, while another 19% are not sure.

43% of Americans still know what a telephone book is?

Hungary's central bank burns old currency notes to help needy in cold snap - Telegraph

Hungary's central bank is burning old monetary notes to help the needy in Europe's deadly cold snap. The bank is pulping wads of old notes into briquettes to help heat humanitarian organisations.

On one of the reviews of Graeber (sorry, I can't track it down) , the reviewer mentioned Graeber's claim that debt owned by a child to it's parent is not expected to be repayed. Somebody commented, mentioning that Valentin wrote a tongue in cheek letter to his daughter asking just that. I found it and here are some excerpts:

München, den 3. Februar 1932
Sehr geehrte Tochter!
Anläßlich unseres letzten Beisammenseins in München, am 5. August 31, gestatte ich mir, jetzt die Rechnung für deine Existenz zu übersenden und hoffe, dass du mit den Preisen einverstanden bist.
Hebammenkosten, bezahlt am 21. September 1910    Mk.    20,--
1 kleine Blechbadewanne                                             "    6,--
lauwarmes Wasser 6 Jahre lang, tägl. 5 Pfg.               "    219,--
Schwammbenützung, 6 Jahre lang, tägl. 5 Pfg.             "      108.50
1 Wickelkissen und Babyausstattung                             "     100,--
Täglich 1 Liter Milch, ca. 6 Jahre lang, Semmelmus     "      438,--
Schmerzensgeld bei Geburt, von Mutter billigst berechnet  "  100,-   

[...]

Kleidung vom 14. - 21. Jahr, pro Jahr Mk. 500,-- incl. Wäsche      "  3.144,--
Unterricht Französisch, Englisch, Literatur                               "  540,--
Klavier- und Gitarreunterricht                                                      "   700,--
Reise nach Königsberg                                                              "   83,--
Briefmarken und Telephongespräche nach Königsberg              "   150,--
                                                                                            Mk. 24.625,20

Bezugnehmend, daß du mein eigenes Fleisch und Blut bist, habe ich 10 % Ermäßigung zugestanden   

                                                                                               "      2.462,50

                                                                                            Mk.    22.162,70

Binnen acht Tagen zahlbar, da ich sonst zu meinem Bedauern gezwungen wäre, gerichtliche Schritte zu unternehmen.

Mir vorzüglicher Hochachtung
Karl Valentin

Here's the Graeber review I couldn't find before.

It's a hard book to review, though, because it's doing several irreducibly different things at once (which I'll try to lay out in as logical a fashion as I can manage). Despite the singularity of its title, Debt is more like James Frazer's Golden Bough than one of those books on How Cod Explains History or whatever; it's a dazzlingly syncretic, coherent, and multi-faceted effort to re-narrate virtually the entirety of human history, by starting from a concept and opening outward to include everything else.

[...]

f this is an obvious point, forgive me; I make it again because the first line of the New York Times' review of his book observes that "David Graeber has a strong claim to being the house theorist of Occupy Wall Street," and you find this sort of statement being made all over the place. Some people attribute the coining of the "We are the 99%" formulation to him, and since Graeber was involved with Occupy Wall Street since the beginning, he sometimes seems to be a kind of spokesperson for the movement's "anarchist roots."

But what would it mean to say that an anarchist (or at least radically horizontal) movement has "roots," a spokesperson, or a house theorist? Can a slogan like "We are the 99%" have a person who "coined" it? With a tiny bit of effort one finds that Graeber himself not only avoids such claims but is quick to disavow them; instead, the attribution of personal prominance tends to be made on his behalf, by institutions like the New York Times or in Bloomberg Businessweek (God help us). This should give us pause. What, after all, could it mean for Graeber to be able to claim that privilege, that position, that prominence? What does the movement owe him, the person who "coined" their slogan? How would he claim it? And why is it claimed for him, on his behalf?

Words like "claim" and "coin" are not innocent, and the power of Graeber's book is that I can't, now, read a phrase like "David Graeber has a strong claim" (or use a phrase like "coined the slogan") without feeling the need to think more carefully about the deep logic of those terms. A "claim," as he shows in excruciating etymological detail, is literally the token that proves you to be a creditor, that proves someone or someone else to be in your debt: having given tht other person a loan, a gift, or a reprieve, a "claim" is the physical manifestation and residue of that person's promise to recipricate. More than that, it's the means of forcing or at least coercing them to do so, and of legitimizing that force. Behind a "claim" is the social force (and threat of violence) that enables you to force payment. To talk about "claims" is to talk about power.

Madonna fans beg Netanyahu to put off Iran strike until after concert

http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/israeli-fans-beg-pm-to-hold-off-iran-attack-over-madonna -show-1.412014

Great interactive gadget to see who was the anti-Romney of the month...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/presidential-poll-tracker

Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Amidst mounting geopolitical tensions, Iranian officials said Wednesday they were increasingly concerned about the United States of America's uranium-enrichment program, fearing the Western nation may soon be capable of producing its 8,500th nuclear weapon. "Our intelligence estimates indicate that, if it is allowed to progress with its aggressive nuclear program, the United States may soon possess its 8,500th atomic weapon capable of reaching Iran," said Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, adding that Americans have the fuel, the facilities, and "everything they need" to manufacture even more weapons-grade fissile material. "Obviously, the prospect of this happening is very distressing to Iran and all countries like Iran. After all, the United States is a volatile nation that's proven it needs little provocation to attack anyone anywhere in the world whom it perceives to be a threat." 

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Bird numbers plummet around stricken Fukushima plant - Asia - World - The Independent

Researchers working around Japan's disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant say bird populations there have begun to dwindle, in what may be a chilling harbinger of the impact of radioactive fallout on local life.

In the first major study of the impact of the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, the researchers, from Japan, the US and Denmark, said their analysis of 14 species of bird common to Fukushima and Chernobyl, the Ukrainian city which suffered a similar nuclear meltdown, showed the effect on abundance is worse in the Japanese disaster zone.

The study, published next week in the journal Environmental Pollution, suggests that its findings demonstrate "an immediate negative consequence of radiation for birds during the main breeding season [of] March [to] July".

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}