Disclosure

The internet has done such wonderful things to our perception of concepts like "private"  and  "personal"...


3:44pm Psychopompous

you won't believe what i am doing now

actually you will but you won't approve

christ,  i don't approve

3:45pm John

what?

3:46pm Psychopompous

you know that guy last night i said i was slightly obsessed with?

3:47pm John

yeeessssss

3:48pm Psychopompous

well I'm working on removing the "slightly"

this is so unhealthy

I'm internet stalking him.  It's turned out to be incredibly easy

I was introduced to him exremely fleetingly at the queer film festival by a guy whose blog i read

i found a comment by him on that blog

it links to his own blog profile

he ran his blog for two years (2006 and 2007) but it's still all up there and he used it to basically tell the story of his entire life up to that point...

I am excercising a tiny bit of self-discipline by not actually reading all of it

especially the stuff about his early life

he's even got a link on it to a flickr feed for crissakes

3:51pm John

I think you may have a problem...  hehehe

3:51pm Psychopompous

honestly,  when people are going to make it this easy...

the good news:  I seem to be an amazingly good judge of people

this guy is SOOOO my kind of guy.

the bad news:  i am seriously fucked up

3:53pm John

LOL I kinda always guessed that to be so

3:53pm Psychopompous

you know i even found a photo on his flickr site which features an american guy i knew in berlin.  [Ed.:  probably incorrect - pretty sure it's just an uncanny resemblance.]  i'm thinking if i keep looking through i'll see my own fucking self on there...

the dude spent a couple of years in europe

3:54pm John

mmmmm cultured

3:57pm Psychopompous

he has similar interests to me, similar life history (long-term girlfriend check,  spanish boyfriend check,  time spent in europe check -  and it goes on [Ed.:  but still doesn't get much less superficial than this]),  and he's even been hanging out in the same places and with the same people!

3:58pm John

It must be destiny then...

heehehe

3:58pm Psychopompous

only problem is i'll find out so much about him that i'll get bored and move on without ever actually talking to him :)

Newsflash: word borrowed from German into English!!

The G20 summit in London has highlighted a recent borrowing of a German word into English,  an occurrence sufficiently rare these days to warrant trumpeting it.  Plenty of words get borrowed from English into other languages,  but borrowings in the other direction don't seem to happen a lot anymore.

This one is not just a borrowing,  but that subtle breed of borrowing known to linguists as a calque,  or loan translation.  This is a rather nifty pair of terms for it,  since "calque" is itself a loanword from French,  whereas "loan translation" is even more apt,  being itself a loan translation from the German word Lehnübersetzung.

The marvellous term in question is "to kettle",  with its derived noun "kettle".  The Word Spy website (devoted to English neologisms) defines the verb as "to maneuver protesters into a small area using a cordon of police personnel and vehicles."  The idea is for police to contain groups of protesters - usually those thought to be most likely to "cause trouble" - by effectively sealing them off into a small space,  and holding them in that space for several hours, up to a whole day in some cases.  The noun refers to the tight circle of frustrated protesters thus created.  In German the verb is "einkesseln";  the related noun is usually "Einkesselung".  It's a term I'm personally very well acquainted with in German from street protests in Berlin about five or six years ago.

There are two things that tell us the term was borrowed from German into English and not the other way around:  in German its meaning is broader,  and is used to refer not only to police operations but also and originally to military manoeuvres,  where in English one would say "encircle" or "surround".  It's very commonly the case when a word is borrowed that its meaning in the original language will be broader than its meaning in the adoptive language.

Also, the word is very well-established in German,  going back decades if not centuries in its military sense,  whereas the first instance in English that Word Spy could find is from 2006.  The form in which it then appeared,  namely "kettling in",  is further confirmation of its German origin;  the "in" seems to have dropped off since.  When I first read the term a few weeks ago,  I thought it might have made the leap during the protests in Heiligendamm against the G8 in 2007,  but evidently international solidarity among European protesters has deeper foundations than that.

Dreams

So nice to know it's not just me.

(Then again, my last stint at university finished less than two years ago...)

The Great Man theory

In the past couple of years I've often pondered the effect that just one individual can have on the course of world events.  That one individual usually being George W.  Bush,  of course.  I used to view history as primarily the result of complex,  slow-moving forces all coming together,  a kaleidoscope of factors continually changing to create events,  and was very sceptical of the "Great Man" theory of history.

Then Dubya came along.  It's simply inescapable that the situation the world is in right now could have been radically different if the Bush regime had not taken power following the US predential election in 2000.  An election which ultimately ceased to be Bush versus Gore at the ballot box and became Bush v. Gore,  a case before the Supreme Court to decide whether Florida's recount of votes could proceed,  a recount widely expected to give Gore the presidency.  The case was decided by just one vote.  So one decision,  by one person,  on one day in December 2000,  had a massive,  far-reaching effect on the course of world history for the next eight years and beyond.

That one person is generally considered to have been Sandra Day O'Connor,  the politically centrist judge who usually decided cases in which her colleagues were split along predictable ideological lines:  four conservative,  four liberal.  That day she voted with the conservatives.  I've just watched the interview she did yesterday with John Stewart,  where he asks her to recall that decision;  it's one of the things that motivated this post.

Obviously the word "Man" in my title there is meant in the old-fashioned,  gender-neutral sense.

Now,  thanks to that 5-4 decision,  we are left with an almost impossible challenge to prevent further climate change,  the worst economic mess since the Great Depression,  and a vastly greater threat from Islamist terrorism than that which existed on 11 September,  2001.  To quote an analysis in The Guardian today:

Eight years of neocon foreign policies have been a spectacular disaster for American interests in the Islamic world,  leading to the advance of Hamas and Hezbollah,  the wreckage of Iraq,  with more than two million external refugees and the ethnic cleansing of its Christian population,  the rise of Iran as a major regional power,  and now the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan,  probably the most dangerous development of all.

When it comes to the terrorist threat and especially the mess in Pakistan and Afghanistan,  I'm increasingly thinking that Obama just may not have time to undo the massive damage wrought by the previous regime.  He needs to reduce the American presence in Iraq,  force Israel to finally get serious about peace,  and radically revise the entire Western approach to Pakistan and Afghanistan,  all before Pakistan implodes to the point where the risks get nuclear.  While of course simultaneously pushing through tough moves on climate change and warding off the worst recession in seventy years.

Time will tell,  but can anyone be that Great?