So, where the hell have I been? (If you even noticed I was away … )

I’ve been remiss, certainly: but the last two weeks has been a non-stop travel extravaganza. I’ve been in Switzerland, Oxford, London and the Peaks District in just under two weeks.

Executive summary (it's a long post)

Switzerland was cold, wet and less full of Swiss people than one might expect (admittedly, I was in Geneva, which is 50% foreigners).

I was in Oxford for a Friday afternoon, and found it pleasant enough that I may have to go back for a weekend, despite it being “The Other Place” and having backed the King in the Civil War.

Then a quick weekend in London with Peter and Jasmine, my tirelessly hospitable hosts in the metropolis, before heading off for three days of hostelling in the hilly bit of England.

Geneva

Friday 16 September I set off for a weekend in Geneva, pretty much straight from presenting a paper at a conference in Cambridge. I was greeted at the airport by my host (an Australian buddy from the LLM who works in – wait for it – international law), and was swept off to drink wine in a funky little bar.

Not sure what I was expecting of Geneva. It felt like most of the place was erected out of concrete in the 1970s. Or maybe it was just that my host lived in the student quarter. Saturday we tootled round the Romanesque/Gothic confection of the Cathédral Saint Pierre, had lunch at a café and in the face of flaying wind went shopping. (Yes, I found bargains in Geneva). I then went to a fun party of ex-pat Anglophones in what would have seemed a big flat, had it not contained about 40 people.

Geneva is apparently dead on a Sunday, so we headed up to a wine festival in the little village of Roussin with some of my host’s Red Cross buddies. We drank wine, ate sausage and watched a gloriously amateurish parade of oompah-bands from villages in the district, followed by little floats principally stocked with sombre-faced Swiss kids in costume.

In a very me moment, I got lost on the way to the train station on Monday, and so wound up jumping in a cab (“l’aeroport, s’il vous plait!”) to prevent a repeat of my Edinburgh easyjet non-departure.

Oxford and London

Friday 23rd I had a chance to have a discussion with a senior law of the sea academic in Oxford.

Bizarrely, there is no train from Cambridge to Oxford (though there is, apparently, a line that was last used in the war). The options are to spend a freak-load of cash and make a two-hour train trip going into London transferring from Kings Cross to Paddington and heading out again; to spend even more and fly "Don Air"; or spending a fiver and getting an epic three-hour, stopping all villages, bus.

Poverty won over common sense, but at least it was a chance to catch up on some reading.

The interview went well, Oxford was pretty (when it stopped raining on me) and has some amazing vintage clothing stores, and I had an agreeable time drinking with friends of my sister’s.

Then off on a bus to London Friday night. Saturday was a whirlwind social round catching up with my Australian lawyer friends for lunch or drinks, before a late train home to Cambridge so I could catch a visiting former flatmate for breakfast on Sunday.

Peaks District

Then, earlier this week, I was away Monday through Wednesday at a youth hostel in Edale, in the peaks district, for outdoor activities with 100 new scholars from my funding body.

Predictably, I managed to take a seat on the bus leaving Cambridge directly in front of an Australian lawyer, who’d been to the same law school, worked at the same firm and was at the Sydney Federal Court while I was at the Fed in Melbourne.

Unlike the uber-adventure-activity mistress Marissa, I opted for the soft (if occasionally damp) elective activities such as raft-building, canoeing and hill-walking over high ropes and caving. My height of adventure was a 40 minute walk through darkened cow fields to the pub (not without its risks!) and badly bruising one finger near the tip when I got it caught in a three-strand chain bridge and then fell off arse-backwards into the woodchips during a “team-building” exercise.

Now I’m back in the ‘Bridge, panicking about my state of readiness for supervising undergraduates, and reflecting on the alarming fact that half the new Masters students in college appear to be 12.

Scariest recent moment ...

I held the gate at Wychfield open for a newly arriving couple. After some pleasantries, I introduced myself.

“I’m Doug,” I said, honestly enough.

“Do you have a blog called courting disaster?” asked he.

Ye gods.

Now this cannot be good news ...

25% alchohol beer, anyone? Unleashing such a product on Australians or Brits would seem to be a recipe for disaster.

Fortunately it tastes like a "quirky mixture of beer and sherry", according to its creator.

Even in Cambridge, possibly the world's last significant population centre for under-60 sherry drinkers (an 60 really should be the minimum legal age for sherry-drinking), that doesn't sound like a taste sensation likely to catch on ...

Classic viewing: "Edge of Darkness" (BBC DVD)

Undoubtedly one of the best BBC TV dramas ever made, “Edge of Darkness” first screened in 1985 and reflects the dark mood and preoccupations of the time.

Starting with a simple tale of human tragedy, the plot slowly widens to encompass national and international concerns. Bob Peck delivers an extraordinarily controlled and nuanced performance as Yorkshire detective Ron Craven whose young daughter, Emma, is gunned down outside their home. Still grief-stricken, Craven discovers a handgun and a Geiger counter in Emma’s room. Was the gunman after him, or his daughter?

As Craven makes his own investigation of her death, several strands slowly come together: his own past in counter-terrorism in Northern Island, his daughter’s environmental activism and the current inquiry he is meant to be conducting into a rigged election at a Yorkshire mine refitted as a low-grade nuclear waste containment centre. These threads come to form one line of inquiry, taking him inexorably into the heart of a trans-national nuclear state.

What unfolds is, in effect, an extremely intelligent five-and-half hour action film mixing espionage, conspiracy theories, environmentalism and a touch of science-fiction. Quietly compelling, it is made with astonishing attention to detail. It uses both silence, and a terrific score by Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton, to great effect.

It has a gorgeous sense of surrealism as well: two frighteningly, clinically British spies (one all army charm, the other a glumly FT-reading lawyer) are funded by the Endowment for the Arts as “strolling players”; while larger-than-life Texan CIA man Darius Jedburg (Joe Don Baker) is obsessed with golf and British ballroom dancing.

But, as one review brilliantly puts it:

“The moment that most lingers in the mind is the sequence where Baker and Peck find a [disused] bomb shelter buried deep in [a] nuclear plant. Fine wine, the best books, and, of course, a classic motor car. The two settle down for a gourmet dinner.

“It's hypnotic enough for its oddity alone, but what is even more striking is that this relaxation occurs in the middle of a fraught chase sequence. Character development amid the action? Doesn't happen these days.”

Watching it again, I was amazed how much I recalled from seeing it as a kid in Australia. It holds up amazingly well, and its commentary on the links between industry, energy and the military and the way a society deals with terrorism and ecological concerns are also still more than relevant. Really excellent viewing, even if the parts of the final episode (“Fusion”) are a little melodramatic.

Further reading: Wikipedia, DVD Times, imdb, BBC Cult TV.

Notes from the Edinburgh Fringe: overlong and overdue, part 2

What I seemed to spend most of my four days in Edinburgh doing was buzzing between plays. I only caught six shows in the end, but that seemed more than enough. I know enough thespy Cambridge types that I could only see about half my friends’ shows – and I kept bumping into student theatre friends on the street … mostly while they were passing out promotional flyers to tourists.

So, highlights. Best Cambridge shows would have been a marvellous production of Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera” in the sweltering sauna that is the C Too venue; and an astonishingly physical production of “Macbeth”, cut to a bare one-hour script.

“Macbeth – The Hour” was competing in a fierce field of Scottish play productions: it’s something people seem compelled to stage at the Fringe. Still, this was different. It had a junk yard staging, with all walls, fences, tables, beds, etc being provided by a series of planks held with handles by cast members allowing lightning-fast scene changes.

To give one small sample of the physical staging: I’ve always found the witch’s cauldron scene pretty camp. Not here. Three half-naked men, kneeling, hands joined behind their backs represented the cauldron. As the witches recited their foul list of ingredients they mimed (very effectively) force-feeding the human cauldron’s three mouths, the actors gagging and choking all the while. Nasty, but surprisingly creative in a play where it’s easy to think you’ve seen it all before.

Of the new theatre I saw, “The Guardians” and “Angry Young Man” were easily the best. “The Guardians” is a dark comedy about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal; and the faked photos run in British tabloids of similar atrocities supposedly perpetrated by UK soldiers. Two talking heads, a female US soldier (clearly based on Private Lynndie England) and a sleazy, erudite, sadomasochistic, Oxford-educated tabloid journalist. The England character came off relatively sympathetically, and despite the nameless journalist being a bit of a stereotype, the American writer’s ear for English idiom was flawless. Worth seeing if it tours other places.

“Angry young man” was a straightforward farce about a dodgy doctor from an ex-Soviet republic fleeing to England to avoid being struck off. Following a misunderstanding with a minicab driver, he loses his identity documents and is mistaken for a people-smuggled refugee by a clueless upper-class would-be do-gooder. Following adventures with ducks, skinheads, predatory girlfriends and the English countryside a happy ending ensues. The clever bit was that the entire thing was acted by four men in identical suits, taking turns to play various roles (each has a go at the central character) and narrate the action.

Best line? Approaching the bar in an illegal club occupying a disused air-raid shelter, we have the following exchange:

Doctor: “It was, how you say? A typical English pub.”

Barman: “G’day, mate.”

The Fringe is simply an unconquerable cliff-face of theatre. But with a little research and some local advice I was pretty pleased with what I saw.

Notes from the Fringe: overlong and overdue, part 1

So a few weekends ago now, I was in Edinburgh during the Festival season.

I went to the ‘Burgh ostensibly to visit some delightful Cambridge friends in their new terrace house (home ownership among people younger than me really freaks me out), catch up with another Cambridge mate who’s doing some research up there and to have a discussion with an academic at Edinburgh Uni about my PhD research. I did, though, spend a good deal of time at the Festival.

Edinburgh’s a town of about half-a-million, which apparently more than doubles during the Festival season. It’s easy to believe: almost every down-town cash machine is perpetually out of service. At first I thought it was just bad luck or poor maintenance: then I realised they were all out of money. I had to ask for cash back when buying a sandwich in Marks and Spencers.

The Royal Mile becomes something like a crowd scene from a medieval movie. Hordes of people thronging below the castle while people in bizarre costume pass out flyers for their shows, and street performers increase congestion by simultaneously clearing an area and drawing a thick crowd. Madness best held at bay with an iPod.

When you can find some elbow-room and a beer, the people-watching is fabulous. Every third person is speaking a language other than English, or is carting props, costumes or fellow-performers to and from a show.

I had a number of Cambridge drama friends in shows, and have seldom been more glad to have politely refused to go to auditions. Most of ‘em didn’t look like they’d slept since arriving two weeks prior. “It’s so good to speak to someone who looks relaxed, alert and normal!” one all but yelled at me in a frenzy over coffee. (For the record, I was travel-stained and spaced out.)

It’s always potentially a bit embarrassing bumping into people who you didn’t know were in Edinburgh for a show.

“What are you doing in Edinburgh?” I asked one, meaning “what show”?

“Oh,” she replied in her light Edinburgh accent, smiling. “Waitressing. I’m just indigenous.”

Ground, swallow me now.

I also enjoyed an inadvertent return to childhood during my stay. I was informed on arrival that my host and her boyfriend in a fine bit of mutual consultation had double-booked the single bed in the spare room (which had belonged to my host as a child). I was welcome either to the futon in the lounge, or I could haul the component out from under the spare bed required to turn it into a bunk and share with the other guest “Ant”.

“Ant said he’s totally up for it,” I was told. So, never being one to act the killjoy I returned on my first night a little shy of 11 pm and started assembling a bunk. It swayed a little when I got in.

“Comfy?” asked my hosts.

“Fine,” I said, gently rocking our two-man berth, “I really like its slightly nautical air.”

Songs that are speaking to me at present

Having been tagged with this five-tracks meme by Daniel, I thought I’d comply (“Resistance is useless!”).

So, here’s five songs I’m enjoying at present:

Barenaked Ladies, “If I Had A Million Dollars”: “If I had a million dollars / I’d build a treefort in our yard … / You could help it wouldn’t be that hard … / Maybe we could put a refrigerator in there”.

A couple of guys and their string guitars mucking around with off-the-wall lyrics and a tune that just forces you just to grab a friend and dance in the kitchen (100% proven fact). It sounds like a parody C&W song, but is about a zillion times funnier.

Ani DiFranco, “The Arrivals Gate”: “Gonna go out to the arrivals gate at the airport / And sit there all day / Watch people reuniting / Public affection so exciting / It even makes airports OK”.

Other than the echo of the sappy Hugh Grant speech at the beginning of “Love Actually” this is a touching little tune, especially for someone who flies home at Christmas. The faintly on-edge feel of the sampling and techno-pop nicely match the dislocation of airports.

The Waifs, “The Waitress”: “I thought I’d move to Sydney to get a little piece / Of the city life they talk about in the 90’s / Where everyone I meet don’t want to know my name / They want to know what I do for a living.”

Apart from a damn catchy tune, this song summarises – despite the handful of good friends I made there – everything I disliked about Sydney.

The Cruel Sea (no website at present), “You’ll Do”: “The only reason that you can forgive me / Is cause you can't remember what I said / Your always sayin’ that you wanna leave me / But first you gotta get out bed”.

As Tex Perkins said introducing this song at a Canberra gig I once went to, “This is a song about the quest to find your one true mate, it’s called … You’ll Do.” The concept that this could be a love song embodies the laconic Australian humour and understated sincerity I sometimes miss over here.

The Cat Empire, “Hello”: “she stopped me in my tracks / and I said ‘mmm hchello hchello...’”.

So OK, the lyrics could have been written by girl-crazy fifteen year olds: but this song is just plain raucous fun, funk in a head-on collision with big band which manages to side-swipe a scratching DJ as well. A tune that’s always capable of getting me up to face the day.

Doug and Neighbour K, a-puntin' 

Pirate punt-tacular

So, I took Thursday afternoon off to enjoy the weather and spend time with friends heading off for September. (Let's ignore for the moment the fact that I only ever blog about taking time off - the PhD is advancing.)

So, how did neighbour K want to celebrate her birthday, and how did the American Archeologist want to relax after turning her dissertation in?

A pirate punt trip, is how!

I was press-ganged to write the e-mail advertisement for the event:

Ar me hearties!

Ye is warmly invited, and firmly (ar!) commanded, to attend K's birthday-and-the American archaeologist's-handin'-in-day afternoon of pirate puntin', grog swillin', ale quaffing and parrot husbandry.

Eye patches optional. Ar.

"Avast!" I hear you cry, and: "But where and when can I set sail on this debauched and larcenous extravaganza of outlawry?"

"Thursday!" be the word.

2 pm in the MCR to don make-up and costumes, 3 pm at Trinity Punts to set sail with the jolly roger hoisted high and unleash terror upon the high seas - or as much of Old Father Cam as we can subjugate to our nefarious plans.

Be thar, or walk the plank!


... and for those who don't speak pirate: Thursday 2nd at 2 pm in the MCR for an afternoon of pirate punting. Do bring costumes, swords, beverages, edibles (chocolate gold coins a must).

Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the outing was my ability to costume myself almost entirely out of my own wardrobe (the fetching paisley headscarf set me back £1.99 at Oxfam).

Passers by on the Cam seemed to get into it as well, answering our hail of "Ar me hearties" or crying back "Shiver me timbers!" or enquiring as to what grog we be drinkin'. Fun afternoon. And there are photos.

Oh, and check out international talk like a pirate day.

Japan would be well advised to stop going reckless

A fantastic headline don’t you think? It introduced this little gem of North Korean journalism: “Its moves to escalate the tensions under the pretext of ‘threat’ from the DPRK would only invite stronger rebuff at the debate on the regional issues. The Japanese reactionaries would be gravely mistaken if they think their sanctions could frighten the DPRK or bring it to its knees.”

Finally these gems are properly available on line. This wondrous little item came to my attention via Reuters recently:

Few can denounce the "imperialist ogre" or "kingpin of evil" as well as the writers at North Korea's official news agency, and a California graphic artist is now cataloging their rhetorical masterpieces on a Web site.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, is the only regular source of the views of the secretive government of Kim Jong-il available to diplomats, journalists and scholars.

But there was no way for them to search the archives of KCNA until Geoff Davis, fighting boredom during a rainy San Francisco spring, decided to hone his Web design skills on a topic he had followed in news reports on the North Korean nuclear crisis.

"Their propaganda is often unintentionally hilarious and I couldn't find an existing searchable database of the KCNA on the Web. Thus, NK News was born," Davis told Reuters.

Davis has also created the endlessly entertaining KCNA insult generator, capable of churning out such gems as:

“You black-hearted gangster, you are sadly mistaken you think you can browbeat the DPRK!”

Marvellous, just marvellous.

Me and the Ruminator, packed fit to explode with lunchy goodness at the Free Press. 

A fine visit

Marissa, the Ruminator, old friend and first-ever flatmate visited Cambridge for the weekend.

We punted, we looked at colleges, we bought lunch from the cheese shop and ate it on the college lawn, we looked at colleges, we had a beer from the Mill in plastic cups by the Mill pond. And that was just the first four hours after she got off the bus from the train station.

Our first day was mostly walking. Including walking up to my balcony to prove that the slim resistance offered by a bottle of Marsanne was, indeed, useless. Followed by a stroll to two of my favourite pubs (the Castle and the Pickerel).

Yesterday was mostly cycling in gloriously atypical sunshine, having discovered a spare bicycle left in the care of neighbours by a departing Masters student, which wasn't widly too big for Marissa - though posed its own unique mounting/dismounting challenges on occassion.

We cycled round Jesus Green, darted irresponsibly up pedestrian-only streets, got into Kings Chapel (having parked the bike), and cycled over to a compulsory stop in the Doug tour: a pub lunch at the Free Press.

I felt happy to dispatch Marissa on her travels confident she'd been well fed, watered, and exercised. What more can you do for a visiting friend?

Her report of things is over here. All I'll say is, just in case you got a false impression, the jacket in question was brown velvet, not brown pinstripe. Ahem.

A view from my balcony 

A summer day to live in memory

In April I boasted about getting into a habit of going for a run most mornings, which I slid out of around May Week and the following rush of family visitors. Recently, with the aid of friendly neighbour K, I’ve been running again. Usually about 2 km.

Most mornings we aim to head out at 8.30, if we’re going, and check if the other wants to come. Rigorous experimentation has now proved we run further and faster with a buddy: not in any competitive spirit, just coz it’s more fun.

This has usually been followed with breakfast at the kitchen-across-the-way. I’m the only resident left in the kitchen in my four-room corner, while the “flat” opposite mine is more inhabited. The habit of breakfast with the neighbours resulted from my fondness for stovetop-made coffee and microwave porridge. My kitchen lacks a microwave, and for a while the stove stopped working. So what commenced as necessity has become a pleasant ritual.

Last Wednesday morning, though, was a little more solitary. I headed out for a run with only the solace of the iPod. A neighbour passed through at breakfast but lacked time to linger.

I got in a couple of decent hours work, and decided to go read articles on my balcony. Shortly before noon the Ruminator called to catch up and discuss details of her impending visit. Lovely. Another call or two back home seemed in order while I was at the phone.

Then, with two hours work under my belt, my resolve cracked. It was 27c outside. The sky was cloudless blue. It was one of those rare days in England worthy of the name “Summer”, one of those moments when the sunlight goes straight to your head, erases the trauma of a grey five-month Winter, and makes you think maybe Ol’ Blighty ain’t so bad after all.

Fortunately, an excuse to abandon work was at hand. Neighbour K and I had an appointment with the Jesus Green outdoor pool. Jesus Green is a devastatingly pretty park, especially when cycling to the pool you pass over the lock.

We swam briefly in bitingly cold water until the blood began to stir and it wasn’t so bad. After a brief bout of exercise, we flopped in the sun and chatted, dipped again and after a pleasant couple of hours headed home for a snack.

For “snack” read “gin and tonic on the balcony”. Another neighbour brought us corn and avocado salad for dinner.

Graduate student life, it’s a tough game.

Talking Danish Westerns with Lyn: "Dear Wendy"

Doug: Heya Lyn.

Lyn: Hi Doug. Um, don’t you feel uncomfortable appropriating my voice like this?

Doug: Not especially.

Lyn: Just checking.

Doug: I mean, especially since you’ve done it to me in the past …

Lyn: I said, ‘just checking’, OK?

Doug: and since you’re not updating Lynscreens at present …

Lyn: Yeah, a change of subject anytime now would be fine.

Doug: And especially since we’re going to be talking about movies.

Lyn: So, what’ve you been seeing?

Doug: Ooh, astounding conversational flanking manoeuvre there.

Lyn: But you’ll fall for it, won’t you? C’mon, recent viewing. I want opinions, dammit!

Doug: Right, well I’ve seen “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. I take it back, Depp does outdo Wilder; I like the new material, and the tone is much more suitably dark for Dahl. I went to see “Fantastic Four” – trash, but good, amiable clean-cut trash. And I, despite myself, loved “Wedding Crashers”: I did not expect to be laughing at cringe comedy for two solid hours.

Lyn: You never bother saying anything that concisely. So, what’re you saving the words for?

Doug: “Dear Wendy.” Man, that is an amazing, but really pretty damn disturbing film.

Lyn: I’ve heard it called a Danish Western. The script’s by Lars von Trier, right?

Doug: Yeah, but it’s not really a Western. And it’s not terribly Danish – other than the director, crew, funding and the locations. It’s an American small-town tragedy, and it’s about how the fear of violence gives rise to violence.

Lyn: Gimme a narrative hook here.

Doug: Jamie “Billy Elliot” Bell is a loner/loser in a small mining town until he stumbles across an old gun, which despite his pacifist convictions he can’t throw away. Forging bonds with other outcasts, he soon has a small club of “armed pacifists”, who carry their “partners” for “moral support”. They develop their own code of “Dandyism” (with nods to Oscar Wilde and Brideshead Revisited), grow as people and swear never to use their guns to kill. In fact, they don’t even use the word “killing”, they refer to it as “loving”.

Lyn: That, right there, does not sound especially healthy.

Doug: Hell, wait ‘til you hear how their private language interacts with the retro-cool Zombies soundtrack.

All the action takes place in a tiny town square, or one of two mines nearby. Yet without the Fight-Club-esque device of framing of much of the movie as an extended flashback, making it perfectly clear things are going to go badly wrong, the little fragment of a town would really not have any oppressive sense of claustrophobia.

People talk about their fear of gangs with guns, and about being beaten up at school. But we never see these things. Their square is a strangely innocent oasis. The characters also have some of the misfit innocence of Depp in “Edward Scissorhands”, which I saw last night on a big screen, too.

Lyn: Stick to the point here. So, it has an innocence. I think you’re circling the word “Romanticism”.

Doug: Yes, it definitely explores Romanticism, and its obsession with death and mortality and also the connection between fear and violence. A town that imagines gangs of armed youths summons one into being. Also, for all their preternatural skill with their weapons, it is painfully apparent that this is not a Western where the heroes will be able to take on vastly superior numbers of black-hats and win.

Dandyist armed pacifism has been seen as a satire of Western foreign policy, but I think it’s a far more disturbing exploration of the empty heroism of symbolic acts.

Lyn: You use the word “exploring” a lot. You don’t think von Trier’s moralising, then?

Doug: No. This is a tragedy, in the true sense of not being about unhappiness, but in the remorseless working out of events.

Lyn: So, is it realistic, then?

Doug: No, but it’s compelling. It is has a sense of heightened unreality, a deliberateness that gives the characters depth despite occasionally too-smooth dialogue. It’s a great film. Disturbing, yes. But well worth seeing.

Understanding suicide bombers

With similar incomprehension British society has been asking of the 7 July tube bombers “How could young men, born in England, personally unaffected by events in the Middle East, seemingly functional members of society, commit these acts?” Or more simply, “How could people who enjoyed cricket do this?” Obviously, in Britain and elsewhere, it has lead to a certain amount of soul-searching about whether multiculturalism has worked.

This misses the point.

The migrant experience has always involved initial ghetto-isation. The problem has never been the first generation’s coping with a new country, it has been the experience of their children.

The only place I’ve seen the point made was in a short literary essay (which shamefully, I failed to make a note of and have not been able to find on-line) on novels dealing with the alienation and anger of some children of migrants and their distinctively different experience to the generations before and after them. It was an idea I kicked around with a few friends recently, and this is a summary of my tentative conclusions.

Most migrants move for a better life. They don’t expect it to be easy and expect to work hard. Often migrants are prepared to take a step down the social ladder. Think of the archetypal foreign-trained professional who, with locally unrecognised qualifications, takes up unskilled work. Why? So their children have a shot at a better future.

Which can put a lot of pressure on the kids. One of my friends provided an example of a girl in her high-school with two African parents who had decided their first-born would be a doctor and their second-born a lawyer. Of course, the first had the gift for languages and the second for maths, but they were pressured to stick to the plan regardless. I can think of a uni friend from a migrant family (her father a successful developer), and she and all her siblings are now either doctors or lawyers.

This isn’t limited to migrant families, obviously. Many families who’ve recently “made it”, typically self-made entrepreneurs, will want to see their kids with “safe” qualifications in law, medicine, accountancy and so on.

However, second generation migrants are brought face-to-face with the hypocrisies in any society. Most western democracies are built on an egalitarian vision that “anyone can make it”. And while anyone can make it in Britain, Australia, Canada or the US – not everyone does, and there are fewer barriers for some than others. Children told by their parents they’ve come to a land of opportunity and pressured to succeed will have a more negative experience of the usual levels of incidental discrimination and suspicion of “new” migrant communities.

They may be able to make it, but will have to work harder for it than many, particularly in a post-industrial society with a shortage of blue-collar and entry-level positions.

On top of this, of course, is the potential dislocation of being caught between “home” and “national” culture. The second generation, as native speakers of the local language, are often the interpreters and intermediaries between the family and the outside world. A fine example of this, of course, is the popularity in some quarters of radical Imams who preach in English.

Caught between two cultures, the appeal of a pan-ethnic, supra-national religious identity must be strong. If already angry and alienated from your “local” culture, identifying with the suffering of Muslims elsewhere in the world can’t be particularly difficult.

None of this is to suggest that every second-generation member of a migrant community is a fiery, disaffected potential terrorist. Just that the pressures upon them are distinct and possibly unique.

A fact of the Australian experience is that by a third and certainly a fourth generation most migrant communities have lost any ability to speak fluently their “home” language. Indeed, many would regard it as pretty poor taste to suggest everyone who looks kinda Chinese, Greek or Italian should be able to speak Chinese, Greek or Italian.

Put simply, in the long run, local culture wins out.

Thinking of which, it’s not as if disaffected, violent masculinity organised on tribal lines is anything foreign to Britain. But football hooligans are no more representative of blue-collar former steel and coal towns, than the tube bombers are of their communities.

If you have a sufficiently large number of disaffected young men in a population, anger and violence is more or less inevitable. The “root causes” may lie in a lack of justice in the Middle East, but they may equally lie in social inequalities much closer to home.

If we’re going to tackle potential home-grown terrorists in multicultural societies, we need to stop thinking of them as somehow fundamentally alien and the special responsibility of “their” communities to weed out.

Judicial activism

When in need of a cheap shot for quick political points, blame judicial activism.

Frustrated with the lack of quick fix solutions in the war on terror? Blame it on judges for striking laws down.

Michael Howard, lame-duck Tory leader, has decided to trot out the tired old judicial activism line as he did while he was Home Secretary and in Government in an article for the Daily Telegraph. (Here’s a the complete article.)

His tone was a little more restrained in dealing with the issue on Radio 4 this morning, backing away from the quote “aggressive judicial activism” and emphasising that his point was that the UK Human Rights Act placed a burden on judges, meaning they had to engage in a balancing of individual rights and community interests best left to Parliament. His concern was to open debate on amendment or repeal of the Act.

Put simply, the HR Act gives the UK courts a kind of limited constitutional review function: if judges find a law infringes UK obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, they can refer it back to Parliament for amendment. In the meantime, the Courts still have to apply it, even if it can't be interpreted so as to be consistent with the Convention.

It’s hard to see how this transfers power to the judges, which is the usual criticism of any proposed bill of rights in Australia. All it gives judges the power to request that Parliament, “Have another go.”

If an Act clearly cannot be reconciled with international human rights, it cannot be struck down on that basis. If it can be interpreted consistently with Convention rights, that is the interpretation that must be given.

Regardless, the courts have never been the mere “interpreters” of parliamentary law, they are there as a check on parliamentary power and especially on ill-thought-out solutions.

Yes, conservatives can now, after the 7 July bombings, beat the courts and libertarians with their own rhetoric of “The real threat to the life of the nation … comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these”, but the law and its guardians should not back away from one of their first functions: to preserve fundamental values even in the face of emergency.

Further, judicial restraints on arbitrary detention are an important part of a successful campaign to counter terrorism. The terrorist recruitment base is always disaffected, radicalised youth. The experience of internment in Northern Ireland, imprisonment with no trial or with decisions on detention made by secretive security tribunals, was that where the wrong people were locked up they were radicalised by that very experience.

The complicity of the legal system in internment was an unmitigated disaster, creating further grievances that helped fuel a terrorist conflict. We should, as a society, be very wary of calls for the courts to give effect to the will of parliament and to exercise restraint in times of national emergency.

This is not to say the court system couldn’t cope with some reform to deal with new situations. Apparently, phone tap evidence is not admissible in British courts. While I can see, in principle, a conflict with the right to silence, that right is already one so heavily qualified as scarcely to be worth the name and I can imagine few citizens having a problem with saying, “Put all the evidence in the ring for a judge and jury and let suspects answer it if they chose.”

Undermining fundamental liberties, such as indefinite detention without due process, however, is another matter altogether, one as likely to fuel problems as quell them.

Criminal stupidity?

So, there’s been a fair bit in the news about 19 year old Sydney-sider Angela Sceats and her trial in England. Her offence? Running late for a plane and sending a joke SMS to a friend (Angela Forster) asking them to call the police and phone in a bomb threat to hold up the plane.

She was acquitted of any offence by a jury in 30 minutes. Once you read the texts, the reason is pretty obvious, though a full transcript of them is hard to come by.

Sceats text to Forster read: "Can you call the police. There is a bomb on board. The flight is 8.10. Leaving from Stansted. Going to Dublin. The number is 999. Do it now."

Forster texts back the message: “serious”, as in "[Are you] serious [?]".
Sceats replies: "Absolutely. Hurry up. Do it from the payphone outside. Put on an accent. Tell them there is a man with a gun to your head telling you to make the phone call."

Forster then calls 999 and apparently says: “I just got a message from my friend who is meant to be boarding the 8.10am flight from London to Dublin. She has just messaged me to say I have got to call the police. There is a bomb on board … I am not sure of the whole situation."

As a result of this call, Sceats is arrested at Stansted.

Several things strike me as more than a bit rough about this story.

The first is that anyone was so foolish as to take the texts seriously.

The second is that the judge held Sceats would have to pay her £15,000 legal costs because (in a dubious bit of reasoning) if convicted she would have gone to jail, and her actions still caused a security alert and created fear and a waste of public resources.

This seems to be using legal costs to impose a fine, on a person found innocent of any offence. Sceats has also had to remain in the UK pending her trial and missed what should have been her first year of uni.

The third is that Forster wasn’t charged with anything, or even summoned to give evidence. Okay, making out intent against her would have been pretty hard.

Still, it’s a high price to pay for a poor taste joke and a friend’s stupidity.

Imminent injury averted

When returning to Cambridge from Windsor my Mum expressed some entirely human misgivings about my using the tube.

Doug: “Well, I’m more likely to be injured in a cycling accident in Cambridge than in a terrorist incident in London.”

Mum: “That’s really not very reassuring.”

Doug: “Fair point.” Internally: Mental note, really must get my bike’s brakes fixed.

One of life’s minor joys is finding reliable trades people. Over the long summer break, things move at a slower speed around college and I’ve had a chance to chat with some of the staff at my accommodation site. I’ve had some interesting conversations with my Polish cleaner and a lovely guy from maintenance who came to replace a flickering light.

More crucially, as a car driver I always faced the peril of trying to find reliable mechanics. Nowadays I need reliable bike mechanics – and having moved across Cambridge this year, needed some new ones.

And some new brakes. The hideous screech of my bike and it’s 30 metre stopping distance was beginning to draw attention. (Yes, Malcolm – I know when you sold it to me you said the brakes needed attention, dropped the price and recommended mechanics. I’m just lazy.)

So, two years in this country and I’ve finally found the yellow pages on line (www.yell.co.uk, not super intuitive, frankly). And through it – a local(ish) bike mechanic.

He was a little Italian dude with a face that appeared to have emerge from a gnarled olive tree of the type visible in the somnolent, dusty background of “Stealing Beauty”. I was in two minds as to whether, under the moustache he had only three teeth, or whether he just had three giant teeth dwarfing their neighbours.

He praised the “they-don’t-make-them-as-good-as-this-anymore” character of my brake assembly, pointed out where one horse-shoe component was a little out of alignment and said he’d probably just replace the brake blocks.

I got about 7 words in 10 of his English; but that’s a hell of a lot more than anyone’d get of my Italian, he was friendly, seemed to know what he was on about, ran a tidy workshop (I’m always reassured by mechanics with an ordered working environment) and didn’t overcharge me.

Yay, a local gem. And it always feels good to support owner-operators over a bigger outfit.

Diary of a spending spree

I recently earned a surprising sum of money doing some research work (of which, more later). What does one do with unexpected riches? Spend it, seems to be the answer.

Thus, Tuesday, the night I discovered my rate of pay for two days work was much higher than expected I stood seven or eight friends a round of cleansing ales at my local, The Castle.

I also ordered in a mixed case of white wine for summer drinking, and spent £20 or so on light reading on Amazon.

Poorer, but with funds in reserve, I thought I’d let off enough steam to just leave the rest in the bank.

No, no, no. I went to Windsor. Not an elopement with royalty, or just the rush of disposable income to the head left me standing in Market Square crying: “The Hounds! To Windsor - and Damn the Expense!” Just catching the parents as the exit the country.

Windsor is pretty. It is tidy, well presented and has a lot of whitewashed heritage buildings facing out onto tidy, unlettered streets. It has two charming railway stations, both rendered rather recently it seems in red brick. It is pleasant, affluent and agreeably dull. In short, it is what you expect Britain to be like, as opposed to the slightly dingy post-industrial malaise you find most places larger than a hamlet.

Also, other than having Windsor castle (of which, more later too), it has some fearsomely good shopping. And I was there for the sales.

My assimilation into Cambridge life is now almost completed by possession of the following staples:

a seriously nice summer linen suit;

a ¾ length, high-buttoning ‘autumn-weight’ tweed jacket; and

another pair of stripey trousers (charcoal and light grey).

I am doomed to assimilate. And am a hopelessly shallow consumer at heart.

But it was all half-price, dammit.

This after buying a second-hand morning suit for £36 on the Isle of Wight, as well. Clearly, travel gives me strange ideas about financial prudence.

Absolute power 

Absolute Power

A small delight of living in Britain, with its woeful free-to-air TV (excluding some docos and Doctor Who) is the new series of “Absolute Power”. I missed its first run on TV, and the radio series but it’s refreshing to have a weekly dose of Stephen Fry, especially as the irredeemably smarmy PR guru Charles Prentiss of the firm Prentiss McCabe.

It’s not exactly laugh-a-minute comedy, more like a recognisable, yet surreal satire. The closest I can think of is “The Games”. It has a touch of the same deliciously dark topicality, such as Prentiss McCabe preparing a TV advertising campaign to sell the UK public on identity cards. After a man looking like an Islamic cleric delivers a cringe-worthy speech about making things easier for terrorists to camera, Fry claps him on the shoulder and calls out to the film crew: “Bring on the paedophile!”

While it doesn’t always hit the right nerve, it isn’t afraid of cutting close to the bone.

Seaweed: Isle of Wight 

Sea crossings and unattended luggage

Yesterday: I’m sitting on a train from Sainsbury to Waterloo Station, ‘twill be interesting to see how I manage to navigate from Waterloo to Kings Cross with the tube closures. Anyway, I’m coming to the end of a week away with the visiting parents.

We were on the Isle of Wight most of that time, staying in the yachting port Cowes the week before the annual Cowes regatta (most amusing local brand: “Mad Cowes” clothing). We had a pleasant, low key holiday that featured rambling round pretty villages and National Trust and English Heritage establishments.

But getting there was another story entirely. Despite Mum’s apprehensions we made the motorway journey from Little Walden (north of Cambridge) down to the London orbital road and out to Portsmouth without a hiccup. We were in fact, the better part of two hours early for our booked Isle of Wight ferry.

Which seemed a good thing, the traffic to the ferry terminal was so backed up. We discovered eventually that our 4.30 ferry would be 60-90 minutes delayed by three breakdowns in the ferry fleet. We were requested first to come back at 4, then to come back again at 4.30. This involved fairly stressful and tedious escapades best not related featuring British multi-story car-parks of the kind despised in detail by Bill Bryson and parking on double-yellow lines. Eventually, we got into the holding pen car-park, were directed into another queue and issued a windscreen boarding sticker.

Now all that remained was a wait in the blazing sun in a shadeless car, right?

Oh, no. The holiday street theatre occasioned by unattended baggage was yet to kick off. We were politely requested to leave our cars and queue on the far side of the road, then asked to back up to the corner, while the yellow-jacketed car queue managers and a single bobby broke out some blue and white police tape.

There was an oddly well-behaved block party atmosphere to the whole thing. No grumbling, not a great deal of mixing among different groups, but a general good humoured wandering about aimlessly in a little street-area between the police tape and cones blocking traffic. Vans of police came and went, the odd idiot driver ignored the cones and came up to the tape before being turned back.

One of the dull, loud, stupid “hooray Henry” types from the next car appointed himself in charge of moving cones out of the way of arriving police vehicles, and then putting them back. A small crowd of middle aged men, in bad floral shirts, worn shorts, socks and sandals listened attentively to a policeman telling them exactly nothing.

It was all rather amusing. I wandered about in my iPod watching people.

Even after what the newspapers are rather tackily calling “7/7”, everyone was calm and knew that this was what it looked like, and eventually proved to be: an inadvertantly abandoned bag.

This phlegmatic acceptance of inconvenience in the name of the public good is probably the best part of the British character, even if present comparisons to “the spirit of the Blitz” are tawdrily overstated.

PS Well, I’m now on an express train back to Cambridge from Kings Cross. The mood on the tube seemed … sombre and quiet. Mid-afternoon Saturday is hardly a peak time, but still, I couldn’t help but feel there were fewer people on the trains than usual.

There was a higher police presence, pairs of officers roaming platforms at Kings Cross station (not the Underground) in their high visibility yellow jackets.

It was all a little salutary, and I’m not sure the UK outside London has fully come to terms with the implications yet.

Roof terrace, our hostel in Barcelona 

Hola, Barcelona!

My sister and I got back from Barcelona two weeks ago on Wednesday. On a second visit it loved up to my impression of being one of my favourite holiday destinations of last Summer.

We had a magnificent time, and took rather a few photos. The things I love about Barcelona boil down to the pace of things, the locals, the food, the shopping, the variety of local districts and architecture …

What impresses me about the locals, compared to England, is how relaxed the people are. People dress in a way that is distinctively European, yet very relaxed and summery: a kind of smart casual Australians have yet to quite master. Everyone’s also terribly good natured and charming towards bungling English speakers with phrase-book Spanish (the local language is actually Catalan, anyway).

And the food! The sister and I had lunch somewhere different every day, always trying (even if it involved ordering at random) the menu del dia. Our best score was the only place I deliberately went back to from last year: a little restaurant called Barcelonia behind the closed markets near the city park. Three excellent courses, including the best home-made strawberry ice-cream I’ve ever tasted, wine and coffee for 11 euro a head.

Other than eating, drinking a lot of beer, taking in a bit of local culture and lazing on the beach, I got some shopping in. I think my summer-wardrobe top-up is probably done after the acquisition of a couple of short-sleeved tops, a stripey shirt, some chocolate brown linen slacks with a white pin-stripe and some cheap Converse knock-offs.

I also developed a hankering to learn Spanish in the new academic year. Yes, yes, I know Catalan is rather different – but I made some progress in “menu Spanish” this year, and even once or twice got presented with the Spanish language guide for museums just by trying to say “Hello, one please” in Spanish. Encouraging.

The gift of a departing Californian

Despite my threat to implement military rule at Wychfield and pass an executive Order for the Conservation of Excessively Cheerful Personalities, my flat is slowly dissolving. The Steamy Kitchen is no more.

Still, one of my neighbours left me her copy of “Jeeves and the Impending Doom”, with the following in the front:


Figure 1 

To which all I could say was: “Aw, that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said.”

“The fact that you’re the only person who’d think that is what makes it the perfect gift,” she laughed in reply.

An odd time to be blogging

So, I woke up late this morning and checked bbc.com before showering. It seemed a power surge had caused five explosions in the London Underground.

My phone bleeped. A friend in Italy had texted, cryptically: "Hi Doug, what's going on? Are you OK?"

I thought this a little odd, but SMS syntax maybe doesn't translate so well. "Hi, I'm fine," I replied. "Just back from Barcelona with my sister. Where are you now? How was Budapest?"

The reply answered my immediate questions but added: "There have been bombs in the London tube. Turn on the TV."

My first reaction, the emotional immediacy of the event, chimed strongest with the experience of hearing about September 11. I was working for a law firm in Sydney at the time, was woken at 4 am by the news, and then went to work in a very tall building. That firm had a lot of secondees in New York.

So, I knew the drill. I wrote a pre-emptive e-mail home to assure people I was fine, and then started e-mailing friends in London.

I'll let Peter and Jasmine tell their own stories in their own time if they want to, but I was glad to hear from them. I knew it was only a one in a thousand chance that they'd be hurt, but was still relieved. Other Aussie lawyer friends in London all seems, some rather shaken and many were basically confined to their buildings for the day. How they got home this evening (or if they're still trying) I have no idea.

Anyway, all of my friends will make it home safe and unscathed. I know that many hundreds of people in London will not be able to say that. They will know one of the dead, or the hundreds of injured.

Obviously, this atrocity has killed many fewer than the Madrid train bombings, let alone the Trade Centre attacks. Nonetheless, even in a country used to terrorist incidents to some extent, the first question for everyone in Cambridge today has been: "Are your friends OK? Is there anyone in London you haven't been able to reach?"

After Jesus: my sister among the survivors (more photos here) ...

May Balls

With its usual flair for idiosyncrasy, May Week in Cambridge – the Bacchanalian interval between final exams and graduation ceremonies – takes place in June each year. It commences on “Suicide Sunday”, two days before the St John’s College ball, which always falls on a Tuesday. May week wraps up around the Friday of that week with the First and Third Trinity Boat Club May Ball.

So John’s and Trinity tend to be the mega-balls, tickets are sold only in pairs and tend to be pricey. That said, the events tend to drown in champagne, fireworks and high-profile headline acts. They are also in a position to attract considerable corporate sponsorship. They’re also among the more exclusive balls: you have to apply for tickets through a member of the college. Most balls it’s enough to be a member of the University to apply.

I went to John’s last year, and had a great time, but decided to try and take my sister to a big-ish and a small-ish ball rather than one mega-event.

So, we went to Jesus on Monday (theme: “Xanadu”, as in Coleridge, not ABBA) and Darwin (“Moulin Rouge”) on the Friday, and ducked down to London for some theatre Wednesday night.

Jesus was a great night: they have an enormous set of grounds, which allowed for an ample number of food and drink stalls and activities and dancing tents. As one friend put it, it was a good fun-to-queuing time ratio. The best activity of the night? Dodgem cars (or, over here, “bumper cars”). Oooh yeah. You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen people in black tie and ball gowns packed into kiddie-size dodgems. (“Would people please ensure that all of their dress is inside the car,” pleaded the ride announcer.) We also jumped ourselves breathless on the jumping castle.

“How do five year olds do it?” I asked collapsing after what seemed too short a time.

“Well, for a start, they don’t drink alcohol,” answered a friend.

Not that there was that much drinking. There was plenty to drink, but I didn’t see anyone passed out, throwing up or getting aggressive. At five in the morning in the Ceilidh (“kaylie” or Celtic dancing) tent did get a little too much into their high-powered spinning, sending my sister diving out of their way as they took out one collapsible chair and the girl wound up doubled over the back of a second.

Darwin is a smaller venue, and sells a much smaller number of tickets. They have a lovely set of gardens, including an island, backing onto the Cam. Despite early rain (which made queuing for admission a joy), the atmosphere inside was festive and uncrowded – the only long line being for crepes.

This time I got into the Ceilidh, and Salsa and stick dancing classes – as well as some night punting.
For both balls I made the morning-after survivors photo at dawn, and then trooped home in the company of fellow Trinity Hallers. I need to go check on ordering them, actually …

Darwinian survivors 

The season of farewells

Right, back from Barcelona, my "recovery" holiday with my sister after the madness that is May week. Both deserve special entries I'll try and write in the coming days, but for now, a brief note on the end of Lent term.

One of the harshest, but most apt pieces of advice I was offered by a friend on returning for the PhD was: "Don't get too attached to the new MPhils. They're gone before you know it."

It's both a happy and sad season, at the moment. There are a lot of graduation celebrations going on, and a lot of farewells to be said. The peril of being a PhD student in a collegiate environment is the slow exodus of one-year MPhil students. My MPhil was a dizzyingly intense year, academically and socially, and while the pace of life as a PhD is quite different you can stil get quite swept up in college life and become close friends with a lot of the newbies.

And now many are leaving. It's a frustrating time, as courses finish on different dates, graduation cermonies are scattered across the calander, and people leave Cambridge over a similar range of dates. So there are as many nights being spent at pubs, but more often to say goodbye than hello.

That said, the lovely thing about it all, is the sense that with many it's not "goodbye", it's "until next time."

Aye me.

Chaos, terror, madness … May Week

Ah May Week, ten days of post-exam revelry, in June.

But what have I, a continuing PhD, done to deserve to join in the debauched bacchanalian revelry of undergrads and completed M.Phil students? Passed my first-year viva is what.

Alright, so my supervisor had told me my first-year paper was fine; so my second examiner busted me crashing the LLM farewell buffet lunch and eating Masters students’ sandwiches and told me it was “basically unproblematic, I only have a few nitpicking points.” Threatening to fail me for sandwich-fraud, however, was … well, justified under the circumstances.

So passing was not unexpected. Indeed, passing is a formality provided you turn in a paper that shows some sort of thought and effort.

My big challenges? I need to find a criminological literature on drug smuggling to show why that aspect of my study is relevant. And I need to speak to the government lawyers of some shipping nations outside the Australia, UK, US triangle of my present research. And I need to speak to flag-States – Liberia and Panama, anyone?

Panama could be fun to visit, Liberia I think I’d rather find people to phone. Or stalk at diplomatic conferences.

Speaking of conferences – am presently trying to nail down a conference paper. I shouldn’t have got all enthused about submitted for a conference that’s tangential to my field. My paper is, so far, a horror. A shambling, re-animated monstrous wrack of a beast, stitched together from unhappy specimens that could quiet happily have been left dead or dying. One of those awful, banal conference papers people complain about.

Loudly. And throw things.

Okay, so that may not happen, but as usual I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Wise was the man who said, “never attempt to eat anything larger than your head.” The law of the sea is, indeed, larger than my head.

So, there are my liabilities. Assets: as of lunch today, I’m giving up work for a bit. I’ve got a black tie dinner tonight, my sister arrives tomorrow and we’re going wine tasting and punting, Sunday is wall-to-wall garden parties, I’ve May balls on Monday and Friday, theatre in London Wednesday and leave for Barcelona on Sunday next week.

I’m looking forward to seeing my sister immensely. But it may take a long procedure to decontaminate her after three days in Oxford. (She arrives in England and the first place she goes is Oxford – the base treachery of it all.) I forsee punts and champagne being involved.

Posting may be more erratic than usual in the interim.

PS The Queen owns an iPod. I'll be sure to toast that tonight.

Medical use of marijuana

In Gonzales v. Raich the US Supreme Court has held that a federal government law on inter-state trade and commerce, banning the possession and production of marijuana over-rules the Californian Compassionate Use Act. The Californian Act allows people suffering serious medical conditions to use marijuana where recommended by a doctor and allows them, or their carers, to cultivate it for that purpose.

Whatever your political views on recreational use, the medical benefits of marijuana for cancer sufferers are established. It is an effective form of pain relief and, just as crucially, is an effective means of regaining appetite after aggressive chemotherapy – weight gain after the wasting effects of chemo being important to survival.

The politics of the decision are bizarre: a number of politically liberal judges had to back the Federal ban to maintain their position on strong federal government; a number of conservative judges in the minority opinion would have preserved the Californian Act in order to uphold States’ rights.

Legally, though, I find the majority opinion not entirely credible.

The essential argument is Congress has the power to regulate inter-state commerce. This is a power to regulate the national market. It can thus decide there will be no national market for a product. This can only be upheld if there is no State-level market, therefore it can ban intra-State commerce in that product.

That is the majority found that: “Congress’ power to regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic 'class of activities' that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce is firmly established.” Further, considering comparable case-law, the majority found that “production of the commodity [in question] meant for home consumption, be it wheat or marijuana, has a substantial effect on supply and demand in the national market for that commodity.”

I’m no economist, but this strikes me as odd. Sure, if everyone grew their own apples, there’d be no national market in apples. But the Constitutional power is to regulate “commerce”: which would seem to be a question of trade, not its absence. It seems odd that this power should extend to situations where there is no trade taking place, or where home-production's impact on demand means there will be less commerce to regulate.

More bizarre is the idea that home-grown (or even purely locally traded) products, even in small quantities have a “substantial effect” on the national market. The majority decision’s references to Congressional “rational” concern about “diversion into illicit channels” also seems simply puritanical. The average terminally ill person, it seems to me, is unlikely to start dealing in MJ for the hell of it.

Not that there’s anything the Court can do about it, of course, but marijuana is also classified as a Schedule One narcotic on the basis that, among other things, it has “no accepted safety for use in medically supervised treatment”, which is simply a factual error. Unfortunately, there’s no reversing a factual error entrenched in legislation judicially.


In the face of this, Justice O’Connor’s paean for Federalism is welcome:

One of federalism’s chief virtues, of course, is that it promotes innovation by allowing for the possibility that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

Which I’m sure sounds familiar to any Australian who’s ever lived in the ACT or Northern Territory.

The minority has been criticized for being too pro-States’ rights: opening the door to a pre-New Deal era of ineffectual Federal regulation. I think this overlooks the emphasis in the minority’s reasoning on the need to find a “substantial” impact or relationship between the measure in question and interstate trade or commerce. It seems a much more nuanced approach to the case law than that of the majority.

The decision also contains a fascinating history of the legal regulation of marijuana in the US.

Porters and wildlife

My attempts to go for a short run each morning are, sporadically, continuing. My innate disinclination to exercise is battling with the endorphin rush of actually being able to go outside without freezing, being sliced to shreds by a howling Ural-fresh wind, or rained on.

So, Sunday morning I was out doing a few laps of the college sports ground. Pete the Porter (you couldn’t make these things up) was out on patrol with Sam. The Porters’ uniforms are a black jacket and slacks, white shirt and black tie with a pattern of white college shields. Sam is a dark, dark honey-coloured golden retriever. Seven years old and still wildly excited about tennis balls. Whenever Pete is on duty at the Wychfield site, Sam tends to come along.

I’m fond of Sam, but don’t really spend enough time playing with him. He reminds me of my family’s old goldie, a wonderful dog called Hunny.

I waved to Pete as I jogged past the fenced tennis courts. Pete was inside, checking on the nets and rounding up a few stray balls. Sam was on the outside, intently watching Pete for any sign he might bring a ball back outside the fence with him.

On my next lap I noticed Pete shooing Sam away from something and picking up a limp, black shape in his hands. At first I thought he had a dead bird in his hands. Something in the tall trees by the pavilion was cawing raucously. Sam was very quiet, but looking at the bird Pete was holding with an intensity normally reserved for tennis balls.

I jogged over. Pete had a black bird with white wing markings cupped in his hand, and was coaxing it to sit on one of his stout fingers.

“What have we got here?” I asked, puffing.

“Carrion crow,” answered Pete quietly. “That’s Mum and Dad up in the tree complaining.”

He looked at the bird a bit: “I should get you on a branch somewhere.”

I jogged off. It was a strangely compelling image: a big man with a weathered face, tending a juvenile crow; both in their black-and-white uniforms against the white of the pavilion wall.

Absolutely priceless 

Batting for the other team … in pristine whites

So, I’ve caved. As the least sporting Australian I’ve ever met (even my female flatmates have spent more time martial arts classes), cricket is finally growing on me.

Of course, it’s a special team that accepts me as a player.

The type that needs bodies. Last year’s recruitment e-mail (see 6 April 2004) for the college team read:

“While some may chose to spend the summer lazing beside rivers and quaffing champagne, the more discerning amongst us elect for the greensward and the thrill of clattering wickets. To feed this passion there exists the Trinity Hall MCR cricket team. This august collective has a long and proud history of sending players boldly into competition, to be thrashed soundly by the other team.

“You too could be part of that tradition.”

Having sallied forth into the field, principally for the Pimms and scones at tea-time, I’m developing an affection for the game. If no talent.

That said, I detect a thread of improvement. I’ve even purchased some whites (slacks and shirt, a mere 15 quid at the cheapest sport’s stores 70% off sale) so I don’t visibly lower the tone.

In a bout of enthusiasm for self-development, I even went into the nets before today’s game to sharpen my skills as a tenth man. Which came in handy.

We opened bowling as the other team had only summoned seven players to our field, and as we were overstaffed with fielders I volunteered to sit out the first 10 overs at the scoreboard and rotate on at half-time.

(Not actually scoring, mind; just puddling about with the metal numbers.)

When the sixth wicket fell, our captain called out: “Doug, do you want to get some pads on and get out here? Let them finish batting?”

I responded a little alarmed to the opposition: “Um, I’m not sure you want me batting for you.”

“Well,” said the batsman then returning to the pavilion, “it’s not like you can score negative runs.”

Looking at the board, I saw the merit in his phlegmatic words. Their position couldn’t really be worse. Eight overs, six wickets, 15 runs.

I went to get my pads.

“Now, no rush,” said my fellow batsman, “it’s just you and me out here for 12 overs. Take your time.”

Right.

In my defence, I was last man out, blocked what would have taken my wicket and (more through luck than skill) left the others alone. For the visitors, I was part of one of the more successful partnerships – five runs, not that I scored any off my own bat.

Facing those of our team who genuinely can bowl was a bit scary at first, but like a good ninja assassin I just relied on my training. “Eye on the ball, top hand over, angle the bat down, step into it,” I muttered. They also took it a little easy on me.

From Andrew’s hand ball still whistled, literally hummed cheerfully, as it sailed by. The balls were curving a lot on the bounce, which saved me as often as it made trouble, frankly.

Fielding in my usual habitat (the boundary), I even managed to stop the odd ball that came my way, and caught one rather neatly on the bounce.

Not a bad way to pass an afternoon. Especially when your team wins its second game in a week.

President Bertie Wooster

A friend drew my attention to the NY Times article, “From Jenna's Ex to a Presidential Jeeves”, a piece on President Bush’s personal aide Blake Gottesman (think Charlie in “The West Wing”, just to muddle the cultural references some more).

What I particularly adore is the (rather less than?) inadvertent intimation of a Woosterish President:

“But Gottesman, what are we going to do about Aunt Agatha’s stranglehold on Supreme Court nominations?”

“I have observed her grip tends to weaken after her third or fourth post-prandial refreshment. I would recommend, if it were my place, the holding of a State Ball immediately prior to the hearings.”

“And then a few whiskies and light on the soda, eh Gottesman?”

“As you say, sir, the merest intimation of soda would ordinarily suffice. The following day I suspect she would not have her usual appetite for drawn out skirmishes in the committee room. The tie perhaps a shade shorter, sir, if I may?”

“But if this first-rate plan of yours fails to ignite, I shall be left beaten and cowed, cowed I say, for the rest of the Senate session!”

“Well, sir, in that eventuality, one could always retreat to a safe distance until tempers had subsided. The former Soviet republics are particularly charming in the Spring.”

“I’d never make it out of the residence without her noticing.”

“Well sir, I have observed that there is a particularly stout drainpipe immediately adjacent the Lincoln bedroom balcony …”

Damn, missed it.

Me in the kitchen last night with the girls and MC Lars and chocolate cheesecake:

"Um. Sorry I missed the show. I was waylaid by the force of darkness."

Pause.

"... and they had gin."

Since turning in my first-year paper 24 days early (have I mentioned that, yes, I have), it's been a hard week.

Monday I went to an open meeting of the MCR and told someone holding forth for far too long on whether we could/should vote in undergraduate committee elections to drop the subject because (1) the proposal "has an air of unreality verging on the ludicrous" and (2) the meeting was inquorate by this time so there was nothing we could do about it anyway.

Several were impressed by my 60 second tirade of constitutional lawyer babble. Apparently, though, what really commanded public acclaim was the way I then swirled the dregs of wine in my glass and tossed it back to punctuate that I was done talking. Ooops.

(I later apologised to the guy I'd more or less shouted down. But it did get the meeting over much faster.)

After I hit the bar with my friend who's working on a defence team at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She'd had a pretty intense first three weeks in the job, but it was probably for the best she'd started so close to a break in the trial. Summing up our conversation, inflicted on an engineer, she said: "... and three beers later, we've dissolved the UN. Excellent work, Doug. Time to go home."

Since then there's been a lot of dining. Dinner party Tuesday. Grad Hall Wednesday (sat opposite a fellow who was kind enough to share a very nice Chianti with me). Formal at Girton college last night. Formal dinner at New Hall tonight. Also need to get to the Cambridge Beer festival, dammit.

Anyway, though, last night Girton formal degenerated into more law-talk in the basement bar at Girton after watching the Spring dalyight fade around 8.30 pm over port in a wonderful college garden.

This proved incompatible with getting across town to the MC Lars gig by 10 for my dose of post-punk laptop rap. MC Lars is a good friend of one of my Californian neighbours and one helluva nice guy in person.

What I've heard of his music online has real wit and he apparently puts on a great show: one to watch out for if your in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane next month.

Funky new shoes 

A rather fine weekend: or "Glad that's behind me"

Friday: Midday. Beg off going to London on Saturday, as I'm feeling a bit flat and aiming to turn in my first year paper Monday.

4 pm. Supervisor (or "he who wields mighty red pen fiercely) informs me that my paper looks fine to submit and informs me the date of my first-year viva. I make "meep" noises and go to inform a flatmate.

5.45 pm. Yoga-riffic yoganess of yoga. Spend an hour with some of the other girls (when it come to yoga we are all, even at our most manly, one of the girls) in the new college sports pavilion. The weights room currently lacks, well, weights. Perfect space for yoga: lovely view of the grounds, and finishing with the sound of heavy rain on a tin roof.

8.15 pm. Float to the pub and curry, conversational speed down to 10 words a minute.

Saturday: decide I will go to London if I can get enough done by lunch. Buzz round to the library, check a few footnotes; print two copies of paper at the one place I can use a printer for free (even if the print quality's a little off); collect some stationary supplies prior to binding.

Bolt to London. Evening commences when I meet Jasmine and Peter and head to Sonia and Michael's drinks. A minor pub-crawl around Liverpool St ensues when it become apparent that (1) The Light Bar doesn't open until 6 pm; and (2) it's FA Cup Final day.

Evening finishes with mango daiquiris at a house party in East Putney. Or more aptly, with wandering past Regent's park looking for Marylebone Street at 3 am.

Not noticing, of course, that Marylebone Street in fact runs past Regent's park - in the opposite direction to the way we needed to be going from Baker St station.

I hate it when I confidently say: "We need to go left!" before contemplating that the Station may have exits on two different streets.

Sunday: return to Cambridge via a stop in the Camden markets for a quick goat curry and a spot of shoe-buying. Arrive in Cambridge too late for cricket, in time for the Pimms, and with long enough to scrub up before a blind wine-tasting.

Monday: submit first year paper by 11 am, 24 days early.

Proceed to lounge in the sun.

Academic life can be hell.

Well, it may yet be. My viva is scheduled for 10 am the morning after the Grad Law Ball. Nothing like turning up to an exam in black tie, empty champagne bottle in one hand and a glass of berrocca in the other ...

PS annual dinner photos are up ...

Piracy on the High Teas

From a recent reminder e-mail to my "People's Direct Action Committee" revolution-themed cake-club ...

Subject: Avast ye cake-loving sea dogs!

Ar har!

This week the revolution goes piratical! Bring your salty sea-biscuits to

The MCR! (Ar!)

At 4.00 pm! (Ar!)

On Thursday! (Ar har!)

But remember, piracy isn't all funny hats and parrots, it's a serious crime
placing you outside the bounds of civilisation and the protection of the
law.

So, come be an enemy of all mankind, and eat cake.

Peg-leg Doug

... yes, my PhD is getting to me.

Film reviews: because someone has to ...

While Lyn continues to spurn a deeply-jilted blogosphere on the slender pretext of respecting workplace internet-use policies, I present brief reviews of my recent outings to the St John's college film group.

The Aviator

Who would have thought DiCaprio could act? Didn't see that coming. OK, his portrayal of Howard Hughes' superhuman energy and determination came through largely in a vertical crease of furrowed brow from nose to hairline, but what of that?

Despite moments of Scorsese-esque self-indulgence ("writhe like a madman Leonardo, you know you want to!"), it was thoroughly engaging and didn't feel like three hours at all.

Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn? Swaggeringly, brusquely perfect.

Yes, yes, it's about boys and toys, Hollywood navel gazing, and ... well, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn; but it's none the worse for any of those elements - especially the last-mentioned.

(Did I mention our Cate was good? She really was, you know.)

House of Flying Daggers

Holy chinese-puzzle box of a plot, Batman! This one's a cryptogram, wrapped in an enigma, bundled into a rebus, drowned with a puzzle and lost somewhere behind the couch.

Okay, the plot twists and turns aren't quite that bad, but they do arrive in rather a rush, turning the whole show from a kind of quest/entrapment plot into, well, melodrama.

But hey ho, no-one ever went to see a subtitled martial arts film for the plot, right?

This delivers a full quotient of really gratuitous cinematic beauty, lush costuming, extravagantly autumnal lanscapes and martial arts prowess that leaves the laws of physics and probability hanging by their fingernails.

On the action sequences, cinematography and use of colour alone this was threatening to displace "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" among my all time favourite unnecessarily beautiful martial arts pics (and it still wins "best fight in a bamboo forest") until somewhere in the last third of the film.

To say the ending is unnecessarily drawn out, with operatic emotion reaching a more than faintly cringeworthy heights would be ... well, about right really. I dislike a climactic fight sequence where you really can't help thinking: "Why aren't you dead yet, you tedious person?"

So close to greatness, but as a wise man once said, "Close don't count unless you're throwing hand grenades."

Punt-tastic photos of Spring ... 

More photos

I somewhat belatedly have some photos up of Spring in DC and Cambridge.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to play cricket.

Or maybe just stand in the outfield and hope a ball doesn't come my way before the tea-break. (Mmmm ... Pimms and cucumber sandwiches and scones ... )

Another glorious spring afternoon 

Tennis anyone?

All this sunlight is going to my head. For the second time this Spring, and possibly the third time in my life, I strode out to a tennis court on Monday to manfully swat a ball about a bit.

My companion, a terribly dry-witted historian, was fortunately as unskilled as me, but considerably more versed in the theory of the game.

We played what I dubbed "gentleman's rules" - you can serve anywhere, return outside the court and the ball can bounce twice your side of the net. No score kept. 50 or 60 hours of this and I might improve enough to be able to play.

I had full-spectrum returns: I could miss the ball, return it, or send it merrily spinning beyond the confines of the Court, arching high over the fence onto the sports ground on the left, or equally as high to the right to land over the netting on the next court with about equal frequency. Quite impressive. Though not half so good as the amazing shots where it went straight up and came down somewhere over my right shoulder.

We got in just before a glorious afternoon turned to thunder.

Vistor

I had last week the pleasure of another visitor, an old Balmain flatmate still incarcerated at the Big Evil Firm where once I toiled (soul not so much sold as leased with a right in reversion).

I managed to give him the full treatment. Arriving on a Wednesday afternoon, we buzzed round my standard selection of Colleges and the Backs, went to a pre-dinner talk on international law where I was presenting the speaker (my favourite guru of all time) and then went in to a formal dinner in hall.

Afterwards, drinks in the MCR and Bar and off to a late show at the ADC theatre, where I knew both actors involved, the director, producers and (by fluke) most of the people in the bar. I was apparently rather visibly and distractingly drunk in the front row. I'm sure I put no-one off their lines.

My former flatmate later said he felt he'd packed into his first 8 hours in Cambridge more experiences than in 4 days in London, certainly not a bad review.

He also appreciated getting out into the English countryside. Shame he was so allergic to it ...

A note from the frontlines of democracy

To my vast amusement, as a resident Commonwealth citizen I was allowed to vote in the general election on Thursday.

The voting process seemed a bit, well, amateurish. You’re assigned one polling station to go to on the day. If you don’t like it, you need to apply for a postal vote. It makes the queues short and the electoral roll small, but the atmosphere is pretty quiet. First past the post voting is weird as well: one big childish cross in one box.

You could vote in crayon.

Anyway, I did my bit to get a LibDem elected in Cambridge, ousting the New Labour incumbent (who was I believe anti-war personally but has suffered for the sins of her PM).

In recent weeks the papers were filled with new revelations about the Attorney-General’s advice on the use of force against Iraq, but I doubt it affected the result. Those who opposed the government on the war had long since made up their minds.

Iraq was more of a lightning-rod for disaffection with Blairite government than a pivotal issue itself.

The whole “Iraq memo” scandal strikes me as odd anyway. The allegation is that the Attorney-General was pressured into changing his mind. It’s a fine argument: it seems in the original advice he lay out an arguable case for the legality of the war, but cautioned other States might disagree as might international courts. (Indeed, almost all international lawyers outside the US did disagree with him, so it was a worthy note of caution.)

Later he stated, in summary form, his “position”: being that war was legal, but without the caveats. More than anything it lends to the impression that nothing comes out of Blair’s Number 10 that isn’t heavily spun and that Cabinet is often not fully briefed.

Frankly, the idea of the memo is a little silly. It appears to have been demanded by the head of the Defence Force to provide “legal cover” against subsequent war crimes prosecutions.

If true, this shows a very poor understanding of international law on the part of Admiral Sir Michael Boyce. The only Court he could have had in mind is the ICC. The ICC will not have any jurisdiction over a government’s decision to go to war until the parties to the Rome Statute agree on a definition of the crime of “aggression”. (Don’t hold your breath: the UN has been battling over that for 50 years.)

Even once defined, it could not apply retrospectively to the Iraq conflict. Further, the legality of going to war (“jus ad bello”) cannot affect the legality of the conduct of the war (“jus in bello” or the law of war crimes and humanitarian law).

Put another way, the fact that a war is “legal” in no way means that the side that is “right” is incapable of committing war crimes.

But of course, the real reason for commissioning the advice was to try and bolster a moral case on the rather tortured ground that what is legal is also right. The kind of confusion an ex-barrister PM might make, but not one that cuts much ice with sensible people.

The protestors’ argument, that because it was illegal it was also wrong, is much more intuitive.

Here's a groovy visitor having his first go at punting! Happy birthday Jase! 

Land of the seven-hour garden party

Today I went to cricket practice at 3, then left to go to a garden party on Darwin Island, arriving at 3.30. A perfect Spring day in Cambridge by the river, finishing with drinks outdoors at the Anchor.

Got home at 10.30 from the pub and practiced my seminar presentation to the PhD group tomorrow. It needs trimming.

This week? Not too busy.

Give a seminar tomorrow (no, wait, later today dammit), then go train for Ultimate Frisbee. Going to formal hall at Cauis (say "keys") on Tuesday. Have a vistor Wednesday, and am organiser for a pre-dinner talk (in charge of publicity and looking after the guest speaker). Formal Hall after the talk (I have 5 or 6 guests and the speaker), followed by opening night of a friend's play. Thursday I have a reception hosted by the trustees of my funding body, followed by an election-night party. Friday another 30th birthday. Saturday a Dr Who viewing, and Sunday a cricket match.

I'm also supposed to squeeze in a game (OK, hit-about) of tennis at some point.

But the weirdest part of my life recently? Farewell drinks for a friend off to Rwanda to be part of a defence team for a general implicated in the genocide.

Surreal? Never.