It's Always More Complicated

Okay, I'm probably being naive in expecting any kind of logic from people who hold Flat Earth conferences and believe that there is this massive Evil Conspiracy to delude people into thinking the world is round and in space, etc etc -

But perhaps I've read too much of the wrong sort of literature, but you'd think that if this was such a major challenge to an evil conspiracy by Satanists and so forth, they would not be thriving as they apparently are and meeting in the open. But would suddenly, silently, vanish away as if they had met the boojum - whereas as far as one can see, all they encounter is snark - that-is-not-a-boojum - in large amounts.

I can see that it sort-of sits comfortably alongside various other kinds of conspiracy theories, but does it necessarily have to fit with religious creationism? (probably?)

Is there any large significance to the revival of flat earth theories? or are they always muttering away somewhere and occasionally being noticed?

Shout-out to the purblind doomsters to plz b knocking it off.

***

In spite of rain and gloom, houndz of spring were going arf at the sight of masses of croci (and a few snowdrops) in Gordon Square today.

***

Book-related PSAs:

Nancy Mitford's Wigs on the Green is being republished, happy dance! She, one gathers, refused to let it be reprinted on the grounds that fascism was no longer funny (didn't stop anybody republishing Wodehouse's books in which Roderick Spode appears) - and I can't see her being intimidated by the thought of her brother-in-law Mosley, 'Sir Ogre', rolling out the libel actions. Possibly there was more of an issue in that one character was largely based on Unity and after her failed suicide the question of good taste may have been involved.

The lovely Greyladies seem to have got stuck into doing the works of O Douglas (Anna Buchan, sister of John of the ilk). 3 to date.

***

Signs and portents in the Duchy of Cornwall: A fin whale has beached on the coast of Cornwall. But where has the 56ft beast come from? And what will happen if it explodes?. Normally this would be Her Maj's property, but the beach in question is part of the Duchy of Cornwall - unfortunately it is a bit late for the Prince of Wales to go and sprinkle the expiring leviathan with his woowoo remedies.

***

And on the subject of woowoo:
The Flat Earth Society has become a byword for sticking your head in the sand, whatever the scientific facts. David Adam tries to make sense of its new president, Daniel Shenton.
which is very hard to do.

Kathryn Hughes, A museum is not an iPod: There's something unique about visiting a real exhibition in real time that you miss online:

According to a new study, led by London School of Economics academic Tony Travers, 42 million visits are made each year in the UK. Apparently this beats the number of people who watch Premiership and league football.

[T]here is something irreplaceable and unique about visiting a bricks-and-mortar museum in real time, rather than gutting its content electronically from home.

Hughes is also captivated by MT Anderson's tale of an African child-prodigy's search for identity in Enlightenment-era America, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.

Interview with Doris Lessing: for someone who has put so much of her own life into her books, she is remarkably (though perhaps understandably) given to being teasingly opaque.

I've been rather skimming Zadie Smith's pieces on writing and reading, but there are some points I rather like in today's concluding article:

In writing schools, in reading groups, in universities, various general reading systems are offered - the post-colonial, the gendered, the postmodern, the state-of-the-nation and so on. They are like the instructions that come with furniture at IKEA. All one need do is seek out the flatpack novels that most closely resemble the blueprints already to hand. There is always, within each reading system, an ur novel - the one with which all the other novels are forced into uncomfortable conformity. The first blueprint is drawn from this original novel, which is usually a work of individual brilliance, one that shines so brightly it creates a shadow large enough for a little cottage industry of novels to survive in its shade. Such novels have a guaranteed audience: an appropriate reading system has been created around the first novel and now makes room for them.
....
[I]f you read exclusively in the post-colonial manner, then only a limited number of books will interest you and even those that you are promised are within the genre will often disappoint and irritate, failing to do all the things you had expected they would.

And then it will come to pass that some writers, knowing your taste, will begin to write novels to please you - novels that feel almost as if they have been written by committee. These are the big idea books and for the young particularly, armed with the reading systems for which they paid good money in college, such books look awfully tempting. A success, on these terms, is one that fulfils the model; a failure, the book that refuses wider relevance. System readers create system writers, writers who can unpack their own novels in front of you, pointing out this theme and that, this subtext, this question of race, this debate about gender. They have the Sunday supplements in mind and their fiction is littered with hooks, ready made for general discussion, perfect for a double page feature.

But what of the novels that don't give themselves easily to such general public discussion?

....

Far from the system critic there is another critic, let's call him the corrective critic, who prides himself on belonging to no school, who feels he knows his own mind. He is essentially meritocratic, interested only in what is good, and good for all time. If a reputation is artificially inflated he will deflate it; if another is unrecognised he will be its champion, regardless of fashion.... His criticism is the expression of personal taste and personal belief - the most beautiful kind of criticism, in my opinion. But there is something odd here: he fears that his personal taste is not sufficient. It is not enough for him to say, as the novelist has, this is what I love, this what I believe. He must also make his taste a general law.
....
He has decided there is only one worthy mission in literature. It is a fortunate coincidence that it happens to coincide with his own prejudices and preferences.

Search on for 'feral man' as mystery deepens over woman lost in jungle for 19 years

Very creepy: Achmat is accused of genocide, for successfully campaigning to get access to HIV drugs for the South African people.

Oliver Burkeman, The joy of giving

The other day, I learned of some breakthrough psychological research which proves that contributing to good causes stimulates the same parts of the brain as receiving large sums of money - only more so. Giving to others, it turns out, really may be the key to happiness. About 35 minutes later, I ran into a charity mugger, collecting for a human rights organisation, and became consumed with a quasi-homicidal rage that only worsened as he trotted after me down the street, stoking fantasies of breaking his clipboard in two and dropping it in pieces at his feet.

Theory of the gift and the creative spirit.

Liz Hollis, When Toys Take Over. Is it really the case that the modern child doesn't play with the boxes the toys came in instead of the toys themselves? O tempora, o mores, etc.

Among the topics of last night's stimulating conversation, creationism figured, and I mentioned my discovery - via a file I'd ordered in error at the Public Record Office (the institution now known as The National Archives), and found so interesting that I read it anyway - of a group lobbying the Board of Education during the interwar period (approx) over the godless teaching of Darwinism, and its suggestions for alternative syllabi. I subsequently wondered, 'Gosh, did the Flat Earth Society do this too?' (though I didn't go so far as checking the Board of Education files). My subsequent speculations led off in two directions.

One was that until that period of educational life when school lessons are structured by an examination syllabus as established by one of the examining boards, there's probably, within the British system, quite a lot of leeway for individuals with, er, non-mainstream notions, to impress them upon the developing minds in their care. I bethink me of Mrs B, who was, believe it or not, teaching in a grammar school of good academic reputation, although in retrospect I note that she was teaching a diverse range of subjects to the junior forms wherever a specialist was lacking, and they didn't, I think, let her loose on the GCE streams. Mrs B, who was teaching our form junior biology, and was, also, a married lady, spent one double biology class in enlightening, or possibly benightening, us on the Facts of Life, whether at her own devising or pressure from above I know not. Mrs B's stated theory of the transmission of venereal diseases took no notice of new-fangled notions like Neisser's discovery of the gonococcus, the slightly later discovery of the syphilitic spirochaete, or, indeed, the rise of bacteriology generally. You got it from promiscuity: if a girl or woman had sex with several men, their seed would ferment within her and produce morbid animacules (not exactly Mrs B's phraseology, but consistent, I think, with the thoroughly exploded model she was drawing on). So I am not altogether reassured that Flat Earthers or Creationists couldn't also have been doing something similar.

The other direction my thoughts went was Kipling's story 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat', in which a group of Flat Earthers (I don't have the text to hand so I can't recall whether they were the real ones or part of the elaborate hoax at the centre of this story) visit a sleepy village and hold a meeting, which includes the singing of Flat Earth hymns to a portable harmonium. Which reminded me of a video I once saw of elderly French Malthusians (who had done time in their youth for this subversive doctrine), sitting round at an anniversary feast, singing Malthusian fighting songs. And this gave me to wonder whether other groups holding views very much a minority within their society, also had their [minority views] fighting propagandist songs and hymns?

***

In other news: today I went for my appointment with the Ovarian Cancer Screening Project: watched a video, completed and signed various forms, had blood taken, and was sent off with a questionnaire to complete and return at my leisure. This took place on the 5th floor of the Royal Free Hospital, which has spectacular views over Hampstead Heath - particularly splendid in today's bright sunshine.

***

From today's Guardian: an article on ketchup, and why Heinz remains the leader in this field, and Germaine Greer walks out of Big Brother. I am cynical enough to wonder if this might have been the agenda from the outset.