If you've got a diploma hanging on your wall, chances are it didn't come cheap. Of the 3 million or so college seniors who donned a cap and gown this year, about two-thirds of them went into debt -- an average of $22,500 -- for the privilege of that diploma. The debt of graduate and professional...
Q How long is the average stay at a nursing home and at an assisted-living facility? That information would help me determine how much risk to take in my investments and how much insurance coverage I'll need.
If you have gold chains in your dresser drawers, those commercials offering to take jewelry off your hands in exchange for "cold hard cash" might sound mighty tempting. Cash4Gold.com even ran a Super Bowl ad featuring Ed McMahon.
"The Waxman Report" explains, at least, how Congress can work, and it is fun to read. You finish it with gratitude to the voters of Beverly Hills and nearby areas who keep returning this ornery fellow to the House to challenge entrenched special interests.
Considering it didn't even exist 19 years ago , the Web browser has done pretty well. No other program on a computer can do so many things -- e-mail, mapping and calendars, to name a few -- thanks to all the Web services now available.
AP - President Barack Obama sought to rally support for his domestic initiatives, while Sen. John McCain called for Americans to support Iranian election protesters. The one-time presidential rivals both cited the spirit of the nation's founders in their Fourth of July radio and Internet addresses.
A piece I wrote from Berlin has become one of the most-quoted pieces I've ever written. Maybe I should travel more often. Getting out of the country, writing while America sleeps, 120-degrees of jetlag, all seem good for whacking quotable phrases out of my brain.
Yesterday Jeff Jarvis quoted a line from that piece. "The sources never got paid. So the news was always free, it was the reporting of it that cost."
Which inspired a thread by two-time Pulitzer winner Howard Weaver, who I visited by train in Sacramento in June. In that thread Weaver said something that I couldn't respond to in a mere 140 characters. It was that good.
Weaver: "Is it news if it's not reported? I don't think so."
Weaver is the perfect foil because he says things like that. He's not wrong, given his background, where he spent his youth, his level of accomplishment, his justifiable pride, he has to think that.
And equally, given all my experience, I have to think the other way.
I blogged because there was news the press wasn't reporting.
4/5/97: "The press only knows three stories, Apple is dead, Microsoft is evil, and Java is the future."
I understand this is a semantic debate. Weaver chooses to define news as what was reported. I choose to see news everywhere, that it exists before it is reported, that reporting isn't even a necessary part of the news. I see his view as the means by which the press controlled us, but that control is slipping.
An example of the futility.
I was shocked for about 20 seconds to hear that Sarah Palin had resigned as Alaska governor. It was news the instant she made the announcement. I had to rush out to a lunch meeting at the Jupiter in downtown Berkeley. When I got back, it slipped my mind that there was a "breaking story" I could watch on CNN. I noticed some bloggers talking about it. I thought to tune in for about 5 seconds, even got so far as locating the SlingPlayer icon on my desktop. But before I could click, I was already bored.
At least for me, the reporters are as irrelevant as paper delivery of the NYT, WSJ and SJM had become in 1994. I know what they're going to say before they say it. I also don't feel their ability to set an agenda anymore. The only reason Palin has any viability is that the press remembers who she is. For me, and I'd bet a huge chunk of the electorate, she's a fading memory of an election we've put way behind us as we've turned to face our futures. For me the last election was only important in that it got Bush and the Republicans out. Having accomplished that, I don't care what the press thinks is news. I decide that for myself now.
I guess that's the point I'd like to make in response to Howard's excellent quote. I decide what's news. I don't delegate that. Maybe others want to accept the filter of the press, that's their right. But I don't care what they think is news. It's not that I decided not to care, it's that I truly don't care.
PS: To be clear, I do care what Weaver thinks is news. Perhaps that's the subject of another piece, or perhaps something to talk about on Monday's RTN.
The blaze at Lakanal flats in Sceaux Gardens, Camberwell, began on the fourth floor of the 12-storey block yesterday afternoon and was said by firefighters to have "spread rapidly" to the 11th floor. A three-week-old baby, a six-year-old and a seven-year-old were killed, along with three adults.
Speaking at the scene, the Southwark police chief superintendent, Wayne Chance, said the cause of the fire was still unknown and the tower block was being treated as a crime scene.
He said the victims came from a "number of families" and were still being identified. The bodies of the six-year-old, a woman in her 30s and another adult were still in the building.
The blaze started inside a flat on the fourth floor, from which 30 people were rescued, he said. Fiften were taken to hospital, including the baby, the seven-year-old and an adult woman who died. Eleven people had since been released while one man, a firefighter, remained in hospital. His condition is not thought to be serious.
Chance said officers were dealing with a "large and complex scene" and the investigation was likely to take "some time".
The Southwark council leader, Nick Stanton, said it would be "days if not weeks" before tenants could return.
Of the 150 people left without accommodation, the vast majority were staying with friends or family and 20 were given accommodation by the council.
Today neighbours described the panic as those inside the building tried to flee.
"The people were in the windows, screaming out for help," said Lincent Johnson, 28, who lives across the street. "There was panic, there were a lot of people screaming."
He said he first smelled the fire from his nearby flat. "It wasn't that big at first but it started to spread so quickly."
Abenet Tsejage saw people screaming for help and said she saw one mother dangle a baby from a window as if she was about to drop the child. But she said the woman did not let go and she believed they had been rescued.
"Quite a few people were in shock and very upset," said Tsejage, who has lived in the area for 15 years. "It makes you really frightened. As a community you would like to give all those who live there a home but you just don't know how to help."
Charles Douglas, 56, was in his top-floor flat when the blaze broke out.
He said he did not want to rush down the stairway with everyone else so waited on his balcony until he saw he had a clear escape route.
This morning, with a towel wrapped around his neck, Mr Douglas said he was anxious to retrieve his clothes and possessions and had been told he may be allowed back into the tower block later this afternoon.
He said there were 96 flats in the block and the fire spread rapidly.
"A lot of people were panicking but I tried to stay calm and think clearly," he said.
He criticised the layout of the flats which he said made it difficult for everyone to escape quickly.
Carol Cooper, 38, who lives on the seventh floor, said the firefighters took too long to evacuate people.
"Everyone was here. But it took too long for them to get in there and do something. It just seemed like it took too long. I think that's because it's just like a maze in there."
She said the tenants had called for the block to be demolished three years ago but had been told it was a listed building. She said it was one of the earliest council houses in south-east London and could not be knocked down.
Instead, the council fitted new windows and electrical cabling.
The Labour MP Harriet Harman, whose constituency includes the tower block, said: "It's clearly a very tragic situation and the emergency services are working together. The people remain calm but it's a very distressing situation."
• South Korea reports launch of seven ballistic missiles • Tests on US Independence Day violate UN resolutions
North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast today, according to South Korea, a violation of UN resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the United States on Independence Day.
The launches, which came two days after North Korea fired four short-range cruise missiles, will likely further escalate tensions in the region as the US tries to muster support for tough enforcement of the UN resolution imposed on the communist regime for its May nuclear test.
South Korea's joint chiefs of staff said three missiles were fired early this morning, a fourth around midday and three more in the afternoon. The defence ministry said the missiles were ballistic and are believed to have flown more than 250 miles (400km).
"Our military is fully ready to counter any North Korean threats and provocations based on strong South Korea-US combined defence posture," the joint chiefs said in a statement.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted military officials as saying the missiles appeared to be a type of Scud missile, which are considered short-range.
North Korea is not allowed to fire either Scuds, medium-range missiles or long-range missiles under a resolution that bans any launch using ballistic missile technology. Thursday's launches, however, did not violate the resolution as they were cruise missiles rather than ballistic, according to South Korea's foreign ministry.
Ballistic missiles are guided during their ascent but fall freely when they descend. Cruise missiles are fired straight at a target.
The North has a record of timing missile tests around the US national holiday. During the Independence Day holiday in 2006, Pyongyang fired a barrage of missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 that broke apart and fell into the ocean less than a minute after liftoff. Those launches also came amid tensions with the US over North Korea's nuclear programme.
A senior official in South Korea's presidential office said today's missile launches were "part of military exercises, but North Korea also appeared to have sent a message to the US".
He said North Korea could fire more missiles in coming days, but there was little possibility it could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, as it threatened to do in April.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to media.
North Korea's state news agency carried no reports of the launches. But the North had warned ships to stay away from its east coast until 10 July for military exercises – an indication it was planning missile operations.
The chief of US naval operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, said the American military was ready for any North Korean missile tests.
"Our ships and forces here are prepared for the tracking of the missiles and observing the activities that are going on," Roughead said after meeting Japanese military officials in Tokyo before the news of the launches.
South Korea and Japan, which are within easy range of North Korean missiles, condemned the launches as a "provocative" act that violated the UN resolution.
South Korea "expressed deep regret over the North's continuous behaviour that escalates tensions in north-east Asia by repeatedly defying" the resolution, the foreign ministry said.
Tokyo declared the launch "a serious act of provocation" against the security of neighbouring countries, including Japan.
In Beijing, a foreign ministry spokesman said he had no immediate comment. China is the North's closest ally.
The US said last month it had positioned more missile defences around Hawaii as a precaution against a potential long-range missile launch by North Korea. Such a test would further flout the UN sanctions resolution punishing Pyongyang for its 25 May nuclear test.
But spy satellites have apparently not detected any of the preparations that would normally precede such a launch.
Pyongyang wants to show Washington that it is not yielding to pressure, and the regime is likely to save a long-range launch for later, according to Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University and an expert on the country.
by Minute-by-minute report, Barney Ronay at 03:28 AM, 07/04/2009
Hit refresh for the latest updates and email SW19's barney.ronay@guardian.co.uk with your predictions or even your best efforts at a caption for the picture below
1.10pm Also, I saw someone who really looked like, and I'm pretty sure was, Ian Bell wandering around. He was explaining something really intently to PR-ish, hospitality-type of woman. When I passed them all I heard was him saying "...with Sure for men". But he said it Australian interrogative style. "...With sure for Men?" I wonder why. Maybe he's tying up a massive deal with them. Maybe he really stinks and he's eager to do something about it.
1.01pm And it's properly raining here. The covers are on and the roof will no doubt follow on Centre Court. The met office said there was a 10% chance of rain today. So if I'd taken them up on it and put a tenner down, they would now owe me 100 quid plus my original stake. Or I go round there and threaten them with a length of lead piping.
12.50pm Just been out watching a bit of the old blokes doubles. Alarmingly youthful, liberal-minded, bicycle-riding Dutch pair Jacco Eltingh and Paul Haarhuis against grizzled, old-preppy types Todd Martin and David Wheaton. Martin looks exactly the same ie. really old. People giggled at unfunny stuff they did, expecting some kind of old-guy clowning. It didn't come.
12.25pm Just noticed that Ben Stiller is a guest in the royal box today. I love Ben Stiller. Ben Stiller in the royal box is even better. Why not send me your suggestions as to what would happen if Ben Stiller sitting in the royal box at Wimbledon was a major set-piece scene in a "gross-out"-style Hollywood comedy. I'm thinking Ben Stiller sneezing a massive globule of snot on to the back of Princess Michael of Kent's neck - and then trying to grab it back with hilarious consequences. Or Ben Stiller thwacked in a really painful place by the ball and getting his trousers ripped off live on TV by court-side medical staff. Or maybe something entirely non-PC involving Ben Stiller and his comically boorish best mate - played by Will Ferrell - being righteously beaten up by fellow box dwellers Martina Navratoliva, Billie-Jean King and Conchita Martinez. Why not send me your suggestions to barney.ronay@guardian.co.uk and I'll patch them together to make a hit comedy screenplay and then move to Los Angeles. Otherwise, please do send your score and ace-count predictions (prize if anyone gets it right) plus the usual incisive comment, childish abuse and gossip.
12.01pm Hello and welcome to Wimbledon for Ladies' Singles Final day. Wimbledon seems a slightly quieter place today. There's a brass band playing sombre music to the day-tripping housewives on Bogdanovich mount (or whatever it's called). And I've just been watching Serena Williams having a hit. Very relaxed she looked too, casually dressed in skintight white jodphurs. No hworfing when she's practicing. You've got to love the Williams sisters. They are just so effortlessly good. And they're fun too. Plus they're also going to win the ladies doubles final against Some Other Women on Centre Court later on this afternoon. If they were allowed to win the men's doubles - which is sandwiched in between - I'm sure they'd do that too.
Are you as gutted as a north sea cod that Andy Murray was beaten by Andy Roddick? Yes, well so's he. But he vows to be back stronger than ever in the US Open.
North Korea fired seven Scud-type missiles toward the Sea of Japan, said the South Korean government Saturday, calling the move "a provocative act." Four similar missiles were test-fired off the east coast Thursday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
Fans continued to register by the thousands early Saturday, hoping to be among the 8,750 people who will be randomly picked to attend the memorial service for singer Michael Jackson next week.
Two children were killed when a fire broke out in a high-rise apartment building in south London on Friday afternoon, officials said. Sixteen people were injured.
The Iranian government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners, often subject to sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, rights groups say.
Bruce Schneier points out that keypad wear is a form of "information leakage": "There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234."
Task organiser that's more about tasks than organisation
iPhone App Review Task manager apps all pose the question: 'How organised are you?' They imply that you're not very organised at all, or you wouldn't be considering software to help you get on top of things.…
Video. Adolf Hitler is pretty pissed off to learn that Michael Jackson has died and won't be able to perform at his birthday party. Evidences the true marks of a great internet meme: infinite expandability, extremely bad taste in multiple respects, and an unfairly long lifespan. (via @andrewbaron)
The head of the Organization of American States said Friday he has found no willingness among leaders of Honduras' interim government to return President Jose Manuel Zelaya to power.
After 30 years of operation, Compuserve Information Service has shut down. Although Compuserve the brand lives on in a newer incarnation and as a dialup internet service provider, the service which was shut down Wednesday was the original: in recent years called 'Compuserve Classic,' it had its origins back in 1979 as a consumer-oriented sideline to Compuserve's core commercial offerings. Claimed to be the "first service to offer electronic mail capabilities" and "the first online service to offer real-time chat online," at its peak in 1995 it had more than three million members, each paying hourly rates to access the service. At least a few people were still using it, and Compuserve has indicated that members can continue to use their CIS user IDs to receive email through a newer interface.
(Via HN)
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon was denied permission to see Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, reporters traveling with the secretary-general said Saturday.
Manny Ramirez, returning from a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy, went 0 for 3 and provided little help in the Dodgers’ 6-3 win over the Padres.
With more athletes using Twitter, Facebook and personal blogs, one Web site is trying to provide a centralized place for fans to keep up with the increasing amount of content.
The disclosure of the test results from 2003, however, has no direct bearing on assertions about drug use that have put Roger Clemens, the former pitcher, in legal jeopardy.
Tiger Woods overcame a rough patch to post a 10-under-par total of 130 and blew past Anthony Kim, who missed nine fairways and bogeyed three holes one day after posting a 62.
Livan Hernandez was chased in the fourth inning and took his third straight loss as the Phillies moved two games ahead of the Mets in the National League East.
Fred Perry of England won Wimbledon in 1934, 1935 and 1936. His countrymen’s wait for the next homegrown men’s champion will last at least one more year.
djBC, consistently my favorite mashup producer/creator (he's the guy behind the Beasties/Beatles remix "The Beastles"), has released an entire album of remixes of Muppet music! He sez, "In honor of my daughter's first birthday- and one month late- I'm rolling out 'Muppet Mashup.' Ten mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. With the legendary McSleazy (of MTV Mash and GYBO), Dunproofin, ATOM, Martinn, Uncanny Valley and yours truly, dj BC. I'm particularly proud of my 'I'm Happy' track, which is built on Edwinn Starr loops, Muppet Show samples, and a fun, funky playground acapella from some little girls on Sesame Street."
I've just listened to this straight through, with the baby, and we were both captivated. Bravo!
This first-hand account of the construction of a clandestine shortwave radio by British POWs in a Japanese camp in Singapore really reminds me of James Clavell's magnificent novel King Rat, my all-time favorite war-novel, which revolves grippingly around the construction, discovery and consequences of a hidden shortwave in the Changi camp (both Clavell and Ronald "St Trinian's" Searle were interned in this camp).
BJ: Can I just ask you - the components for the low voltage battery cells that you produced, where did you get all the components from?
RGW: Well, zinc wasn't hard, there was some sheet zinc lying on the aerodrome and we pinched quite a bit of that because that would be eaten away during the use of the cells for the low voltage. I don't know what would have happened if that ran out. I think someone produced two lantern cells which did for a while, but it was mainly on this home-made cell system, which wasn't efficient but nowhere near as inefficient as the rectifier was. We must have been consuming... Ah Ping said he had to turn up a lot of power to keep the lights what they wanted. We were dispersing such an amount of power in this four test tube rectifier for the high tension.
A variable capacitor was another component we had to bring in. We couldn't make a variable capacitor, it was impossible. We had to take two plates off the one we had to get a high enough frequency. Yes, I can't remember why we didn't go up a bit in inductance; it was largely a trial and error business really. Except that in a regenerative receiver you had some idea when you were near a station because the receiver was so sensitive as all regenerative receivers are.
It had a piece of meat skewer type wood which I had a hole drilled in by a pen-knife, and we glued this in with some of our glue or something, into the capacitor shaft so that we could tune it by holding a little stick across it, fixing it at about six inches because one couldn't get one's hands any closer to the set because it was in a state of very near oscillation where the maximum sensitivity is, just before it bursts into oscillation. With a fairly clear HF band, it wasn't long before we knew roughly, by putting a couple of marks on the stick, where it was. We knew that the Voice of America was due for a transmission and I don't think we ever knew the frequencies because the BBC didn't announce frequencies, they just came on the air and broadcast.
Etsy seller Plastique's got laser-cut acrylic rings boasting pointy world monuments. As knuckledusters, they create the possibility of growling, "Right, mate, you're geography," before you bust your opponent in the chops.
"Homeopathic A&E," a sketch from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look invites us to imagine an emergency room (A&E is British for Accidents and Emergencies, the UK equivalent of ER), as run by newage woo woos.
After 30 years, Compuserve is finally, totally, mostly dead (the email addresses still work). I was always a local BBS and GEnie guy, but there's no doubting the power and influence of Compuserve in introducing the idea of networked communications to a generation, and proving the business-case for commercial online activity:
The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down this past week by its current owner, AOL. The service, which provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service, had seen the number of users dwindle in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from online travel (Eaasy Sabre), online shopping, online stock quotations, and global weather forecasts, just to name a few, were standard fare on CompuServe in the 1980s.
CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all the features supported by that software, from forums for virtually every topic and profession known to man to members' Ourworld Web pages, has been shut down. Indeed, the current version of the service's client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999.
The chairman of the virtual bank in EVE Online, a space-trading/piracy game, absconded with billions of virtual credits, swapping them for $5,000 in cash to make a house payment. The embezzlement caused a run on the bank and has rocked the economy of EVE.
The run on the bank has come to about 600 billion ISK, which has been withdrawn. However, we have a very big group of excellent supporters, who have deposited about 105 billion ISK sitting in Sweep to keep us liquid. We are extremely grateful for this. Currently the run seems to be mostly over with only a slightly higher withdrawal rate still, than deposit rate. That's to be expected, and in-line with EBANK's strategy to shrink to a more managable level.
EBANK has always been extremely sound, due to our massive reserves. Our checks and balances have proven themselves to work as a mitigation device and by having the reserves spread out over several directors, the embezzlement was kept to a minimum. However, the run on the bank had the potential to do great damage to EBANK as people frantically made withdrawals to ensure they would not be caught if the bank ran short.
We have also had several offers from very large entities, regarding big loans, should we need to cover any insolvency. Frankly, this has yet to be needed. But we are grateful for the support.
Sarah Palin said Friday that she will step down as Alaska's governor by the end of the month. She will not seek election to a second gubernatorial term in 2010. Palin, a Republican, was elected governor in 2006. She was tapped as Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate last year.
Latin American nation tops index ranking countries by ecological footprint and happiness of their citizens
Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.
Britain is only halfway up the Happy Planet Index (HPI), calculated by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), in 74th place of 143 nations surveyed. The United States features in the 114th slot in the table. The top 10 is dominated by countries from Latin America, while African countries bulk out the bottom of the table.
The HPI measures how much of the Earth's resources nations use and how long and happy a life their citizens enjoy as a result. First calculated in 2006, the second edition adds data on almost all the world's countries and now covers 99% of the world's population.
NEF says the HPI is a much better way of looking the success of countries than through standard measures of economic growth. The HPI shows, for example, that fast-growing economies such as the US, China and India were all greener and happier 20 years ago than they are today.
"The HPI suggests that the path we have been following is, without exception, unable to deliver all three goals: high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and 'one-planet living'," says Saamah Abdallah, NEF researcher and the report's lead author. "Instead we need a new development model that delivers good lives that don't cost the Earth for all."
Costa Ricans top the list because they report the highest life satisfaction in the world, they live slightly longer than Americans, yet have an ecological footprint that is less than a quarter the size. The country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of what NEF calls "one-planet living": consuming its fair share of the Earth's natural resources.
The report says the differences between nations show that it is possible to live long, happy lives with much smaller ecological footprints than the highest-consuming nations.
The new HPI also provides the first ever analysis of trends over time for what are supposedly the world's most developed nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
OECD nations' HPI scores plummeted between 1960 and the late 1970s. Although there have been some gains since then, HPI scores were still higher in 1961 than in 2005.
Life satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased 15% over the 45-year period for those living in the rich nations, but it has come at the cost of a 72% rise in their ecological footprint. And the three largest countries in the world – China, India and the US, which are aggressively pursuing growth-based development models – have all seen their HPI scores drop in that time.
The highest placed western nation is the Netherlands. People there live on average over a year longer than people in the US, and have similar levels of life satisfaction – yet their per capita ecological footprint is less than half the size. The Netherlands is therefore over twice as environmentally efficient at achieving good lives as the US, Nef says.
The report sets out a "Happy Planet Charter" calling for an unprecedented collective global effort to develop a "new narrative" of human progress, encourage good lives that don't cost the earth, and to reduce consumption in the highest-consuming nations – which it says is the biggest barrier to sustainable wellbeing.
Urban gardens were key to helping New Orleans's Vietnamese population return and reestablish their close-knit community just weeks after Hurricane Katrina.
President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.
Rich and Debbie Sulkovsky of Herndon had been looking for months for a place near the ocean when they saw a yellow house with green shutters in a creek-front community not far from Rehoboth Beach.
She survived Katie Couric and Tina Fey, searing scrutiny, rumors about her baby, anonymous taunts of "whack job" from those who once touted her credentials to be a heartbeat away.
President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.
Sarah Palin demonstrated once again yesterday that she is one of America's most unconventional politicians, following an unpredictable path to an uncertain future.
by Philip Rucker and Eli Saslow at 21:00 PM, 07/03/2009
Sarah Palin, the Republican Alaska governor who captivated the nation with a combative brand of folksy politics, announced her resignation yesterday in characteristic fashion: She stood on her back lawn in Wasilla, speaking into a single microphone, accompanied by friends and neighbors in baseball...
LOS ANGELES, July 3 -- A Missouri mother said she never should have been prosecuted for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old girl who ended up committing suicide.
And 20 percent may not be far-fetched, it turns out, because of two other groups never counted as unemployed. One is those on government disability: 7.5 million Americans, like 57-year-old Bob Zawacki, a Chicago carpenter."
The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office on Friday released a second sketch of a man believed to have fatally shot four people in less than a week near Gaffney, South Carolina.
Iranians worried about their loved ones detained in the protests that followed the presidential election got the ear of a former president, who wants the detainees released, an Iranian reformist party newspaper reported on Thursday.
• 'I prefer strong leaders,' says Formula One supremo • Max Mosley could be a good Prime Minister, he adds
The Formula One commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, has stoked up controversy by claiming that Adolf Hitler was a man who "was able to get things done", that democracy has not worked out for Britain and that his colleague Max Mosley would make a good Prime Minister.
Ecclestone had previously stirred outrage when he suggested in 2008 that racist comments on a website about the British driver Lewis Hamilton had "started as just a joke".
Yesterday a spokesman for the board of Deputies of British Jews said: "Mr Ecclestone's comments regarding Hitler, female, black and Jewish racing drivers are quite bizarre. He says 'Politics are not for me' and we are inclined to agree."
Ecclestone, who has been fighting recently to prevent a damaging breakaway by formula one's leading teams, said: "In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done," he said.
He added: "I prefer strong leaders. Margaret Thatcher made decisions on the run and got the job done. She was the one who built this country up slowly. We've let it go down again. All these guys, Gordon and Tony are trying to please everybody all the time ... Max would do a super job, he's a good leader." Apparently referring to the fact that the president of the FIA, the sport's ruling body, was the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, he added: "I don't think his background would be a problem."
He continued: "Politicians are too worried about elections. We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein, he was the only one who could control the country. It was the same with [the Taliban.]"
However, he did appear to row back on his earlier comments about the Hamilton jibes when he said: "If they do it again, I will go and find them and make them come and meet Lewis Hamilton." And he backed up Hamilton's controversial decision to move to Switzerland for tax reasons. "I would like to see the people earning most in this country paying less tax as it is an incentive."
• Rivals believe she wants a shot at the White House • Republican opinion split on timing of move
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate who electrified her party's campaign last year, has resigned as Alaska's governor in a decision that has fuelled speculation she is positioning herself to run for president.
After a sometimes rambling speech in which she compared herself to American soldiers wounded in battle in Kosovo, and said only dead fish go with the flow, Palin's critics accused her of a "flaky" decision and walking away from her post.
Palin, who built strong support among conservative Republicans as John McCain's running mate last year, said she will step down in three weeks because she can contribute more away from politics.
"We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities," she said.
But Palin also hinted at continuing political ambitions when she repeated a quote she attributed to General Douglas MacArthur: "We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction."
For someone who is supposedly stepping back from politics, Palin's resignation speech was weighty with policy specifics which prompted speculation that she is positioning herself for a 2012 presidential bid or seeking another office which would move her from distant Alaska to the heart of Washington politics.
But coming during Independence Day, the move raised questions among some Republicans who accused her of attempting to escape falling poll numbers in Alaska as a series of economic problems and ethics investigations take their toll. A prominent Republican strategist, Ed Rollins, who directed Ronald Reagan's election campaign, said Palin had made a serious mistake. "She was a shooting star who dimmed in recent months and now she's crashed," he said.
Another Republican strategist, Tony Blankley, disagreed and said Palin appeared to have made a smart move to position herself for a run for president.
"It looks like she's moving down a path toward it," he said. "It frees her up. The normal rules don't seem to apply to her. She's a fascinating character who seems to do things her own way."
Blankley said that it makes sense for Palin to resign as governor if she is seeking higher office.
"This is going to be a pretty tough time for incumbents the next couple of years in America with everything going to hell, and this may be a pretty good time not to be in office," he said.
Blankley also said that Palin faced particular difficulties trying to juggle a national campaign with being governor of Alaska, several time zones from Washington. Palin will need to spend time in the capital developing relationships with key Republican strategists.
Palin remains a frontrunner among Republicans nationwide as a potential presidential candidate.
But other Republicans were more critical, including John Weaver, a long time confidant of McCain.
"We've seen a lot of nutty behaviour from governors and Republican leaders in the last three months, but this one is at the top of that," Weaver told the Washington Post. Palin's resignation was swiftly criticised as "flaky" by her Democratic opponents who said it was part of a pattern of "bizarre" behaviour. The Democratic National Committee said she is "leaving the people of Alaska high and dry ... or she simply can't handle the job now".
The timing of the announcement led some critics to accuse her of trying to bury the news of her resignation. But given that almost nothing else was going on, it might have been a move to dominate the news bulletins, as it forced Michael Jackson's death from the top slot.
Palin addressed the ethics investigations launched to examine her alleged misuse of office by saying that taxpayer money was being wasted and deriding them as part of the "superficial political blood sport" against her since she shot to prominence as McCain's running mate.
Palin will hand power to her deputy, lieutenant governor Sean Parnell.
Republican favourite
Sarah Palin's rise through politics was rapid after her election as a member of the council of the small Alaskan city of Wasilla in 1992. Four years later she was Wassilla's mayor before going on to chair Alaska's oil and gas conservation commission and then becoming the youngest elected governor of the state in 2006.
Two years later she was spotted by John McCain's presidential campaign team as he searched for a running mate who could bring on board conservative Republicans who were suspicious of his more moderate views.
While Palin reinvigorated a lacklustre campaign, there were growing tensions with McCain as she was seen as positioning herself to advance her own ambitions at his expense, particularly as it became apparent that Barack Obama was likely to win the election.
Since the campaign, Palin has remained a favourite of Republican conservatives at a time when their party is largely leaderless and lacking a strategy to win back voters.
"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one."
Andy Roddick ended hopes of a first British winner in the men's singles since Fred Perry back in 1936
Different Brit, same outcome. The 73-year wait for a British men's Wimbledon singles winner will stretch to at least 74 after Andy Murray lost in four sets to an inspired Andy Roddick on Centre Court. A scrap of consolation is that Murray is still only 22 and remains a likely future champion on these lawns.
Roddick was asked by American reporters "what it was like to shoot Bambi". But the victor praised his victim: "He's going to break through and win one of these titles, and probably numerous ones. He's too good not to. It's not a question of if, but when."
In retirement, Bunny Austin, the last British male finalist, complained that all anyone wanted to talk to him about was "Fred, Fred, Fred", meaning Fred Perry, who won three consecutive singles titles from 1934-36. Austin was lucky to endure it only for a few summers, because there are elderly people in this country who have now been hearing that name for more than seven decades.
The current British No 1 endeavoured to make the world talk about "Andy, Andy, Andy," but in the end he lacked the necessary aggression, and Roddick prevailed 6-4, 4-6, 7-6, 7-6 to earn a place in Sunday's final against the five-time champion Roger Federer. In defeat, Murray was his usual imperturbable self: "I'll move on very, very quickly and go and work on my game and come back stronger. It's a pathetic attitude to have if you lose one match and you go away and let it ruin your year."
For the game on these islands this semi-final was just about the most meaningful match ever played in SW19. No surprise, then, that anticipation-fatigue turned Centre Court into a house of angst. Too tense to be excited, too scared to imagine him here tomorrow, the crowd fretted and fussed through the opening set. For the hardcore – the ones who resisted the temptation to issue such inane shouts as "Come on, Tim" – this was a day not to enjoy but to endure. It felt, if you can forgive the tinge of melodrama, like a trial of national character. Four thousand watched on screens from Court Two and 3,000 huddled on Henman Hill.
There is something about the ace as a weapon of subjugation that scares tennis crowds, and Roddick brought some of his biggest bombs to the opening exchanges, firing a serve down at 140mph in the opening game. Setting up his ambush perfectly, the American took the first set in 38 minutes after breaking Murray's serve in the final game.
Championship tennis is often a matter of how elite players respond to adversity and Murray's reaction was impeccable. He bounced out for the second set and broke back with fizzing cross-court winners. The second set was his, 6-4, but Roddick is a former US Open winner, and still only 26, so there could be no hope of him helping the All England Club out with their bad historical itch. His mojo returned at the worst possible juncture for the British game.
The threat always was that Murray would meet an adversary who had the arsenal, on a good day, to cut him down. In all the inquests into British failures down the years, almost no mention is made of Centre Court's capacity to inspire foreign players to win on ground they are constantly told is hallowed.
In the third set Murray was warned for an audible obscenity, but insisted he had simply said: "Come on, pass," as in, "come on, play the passing shot." But the umpire thought he heard some exclamation of distress. One was certainly due, because Roddick was playing the superior tennis, and Perry's little crypt in tennis history was starting to look impregnable once again.
Only when Murray broke Roddick's serve to bring the third set back to life did the audience remember it was their job to flood the court with patriotic energy. This was not their finest day. Maybe there was a faith-deficit there all along from the four anti-climactic Tim Henman semi-finals.
The end of the third-set propelled the match into classic Wimbledon dogfight territory. In a tie-break Murray approached that transcendent state when the battle is the only thing, but Roddick was too formidable, winning two tie-breaks to close the deal.
One wondered whether it was ever so suffocating for Austin or Perry. Neither ran into an opponent of Roddick's booming power, nor perhaps, one who was so inspired for a day. Pack up the circus. Same again next year.
When I was very small, I had one of those horses on springs. I would jump on
it and bounce around furiously while my Dad would urge me on, calling out to
me to "Ride that horse down the bumpy road to Bodie!"
Before I was born, my family had taken a trip to the High Sierras and my Dad
and Mom never forgot the potholes they had to navigate their 56 Chevy station
wagon over. It was a memory they spoke of often. When I got a little older, I got
a chance to visit Bodie with them, navigating a slightly more modern Chevy
station wagon over those same potholes. Bodie became a lasting part of my
consciousness as well.
On my personal blog, Late Night Coffee Shops, I just posted a documentary
on Bodie (and its nine inhabitants) from the mid-1950s. If you love the
otherworldly feeling of stillness in places like this as much as I do, this video
will make your day and fill your dreams with the beautiful sound of wind blowing
through sun bleached boards.
Today, Gay Pride. Last week, Glastonbury. Wherever the masses gather, it seems, Sarah Brown is also to be found, smiling for cameras whilst twittering merrily away.
The omnipresence of the prime minister's wife has been startling in recent weeks. Whether at first lady Michelle Obama's side, or posing with socialite heiress Paris Hilton, or updating her 300,000 Twitter followers on her home-grown strawberries, Mrs Brown is everywhere.
"Clearly, they think it is a worthwhile attempt at softening Gordon's image. And they have to do it, because Cameron is so good at this soft stuff," said Danny Rogers, editor of PR Week.
So, has Downing Street unleashed its most effective weapon to save Project Gordon? As her embattled husband's popularity wanes, hers soars. Never before has a No 10 spouse been so, apparently, accessible.
But opinions over her motives are divided. The prime minister's advisers will tell you there is no agenda, beyond promoting her charities. At Glastonbury, with model Naomi Campbell, she was raising awareness of the White Ribbon Alliance, the international charity on maternal mortality. Twitter – her idea – is just one more effective tool.
Friends concur, dismissing suggestions of a "cynical marketing ploy". Kathy Lette, the Australian novelist and a friend for many years, said: "The only reason she didn't tweet before is because it wasn't invented.
"She's a natural communicator. She thinks it's hysterical that I am so technologically retarded and can't tweet. I prefer carrier pigeon.
"So this is not some desperate attempt to make Gordon more appealing. It's just her natural instinct to communicate good positive messages about her charitable passions like maternal morality. The woman should be rushing off for a halo fitting."
Though still short of Barack Obama's reported 1.3 million followers, her Twitter friends include Queen Rania of Jordan, presenters Davina McCall, Emma Freud and Stephen Fry, DJ Chris Moyles, actor Kevin Spacey, and comedian Eddie Izzard.
But no one can forget she is a consummate PR, widely regarded as one of the best before she ditched her career and maiden name to marry the future prime minister.
The veteran PR Max Clifford sees her recent "visibility" as a "deliberate ploy by a very loyal wife". He said: "It is a personal one-woman marketing campaign to get to know the thoughts and feelings of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, because her husband isn't getting very good advice as to what the public think or feel."
A natural networker, the friendships she has struck with Mrs Obama and Carla Bruni, wife of the French president, could stand her husband in good stead for a job on the international stage. Some believe she is laying the groundwork for a dignified exit from No 10.
Yet, others are bemused by her approach. One in her circle believes her tweets make her come across as an "airhead – which she most certainly is not".
Aside from the charity and issue messages, they reveal very little of the real Mrs Brown. Never unguarded – she has been described as having an in-built censor – little can be gleaned beyond that she likes getting out in the sunshine and trips to the beach in Fife.
She's "excited" about her strawberries, spends time baking and making cookies going to London Zoo, and when she's not telephone chatting with girlfriends she enjoys watching "BGT" – Britain's Got Talent – and the Eurovision song contest.
Anything remotely political is avoided. Indeed she displayed an almost Neroesque attitude to the maelstrom that consumed her husband during his frenetic cabinet reshuffle.
Thus, as the work and pensions secretary James Purnell resigned and the chancellor Alistair Darling contemplated whether he might have need of a removals firm, she was tweeting about going to the cinema – albeit for a worthy screening on the plight of the world's fish stocks – and how much she loved Twitter.
But she has also used it as an effective air-brushing tool. "Finished day with amazing British vets at Arromanches – kept thanking us for coming when we should thank them," she tweeted, ignoring the muffled boos that greeted the prime minister in Normandy on the 65th D-Day anniversary last month.
Likewise her tweet "Quite a moment with the Gurkhas and their families in Downing Street garden out in the beautiful sunshine" belied no hint of the bludgeoning Brown had sustained at the hands of deadly Gurkha campaigner Joanna Lumley.
"She is formidable," said Ross Furlong, digital PR specialist who is still in awe of her performance when she stepped out to introduce her husband at the Labour party conference. "I couldn't work out how he could avoid getting a kicking, then she stepped in."
But, he warned, people want a genuine portrait of a person. "If she is just purely doing her PR spin, then people might start to question it online. In a sense, you can miss a trick by not being personal enough."
Danny Rogers agreed. "These are powerful tools," he said. But she was in danger of trying to be all things to all people, "one minute with Paris Hilton, the next home cooking with the kids.
"My advice to her would be, be yourself, be open and join the conversation. And don't try to be something you're not, because it is an unforgiving medium. People will see through it and there will be a backlash."
Tweet nothings
Sarah Brown may be a regular Tweeter, but she divulges very little about life with husband Gordon inside No 10, as this selection from her Twitter site demonstrates.
• "Have emerged from a weekend of gardening, baking cakes and cookies"
• "Am loving Twitter conversation on Eurovision – almost better than the TV coverage"
• "Peppers and tomatoes are shooting up"
• "Too much girlfriend chatting on phone last night – and BGT (Britain's Got Talent) – and I missed out on Tweeting"
Case against father for drug dealing collapses after performers and production members challenge official story as witnesses
A black family wrongly prosecuted for assault after the father was falsely accused of drug dealing by police outside a London theatre has won "substantial" damages and an apology from Scotland Yard, four years after the case collapsed.
The Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, has agreed a payout to O'Neil Crooks, 45, his son Divanio, 25, his wife Patricia and a family friend, Yasmin Adbi. The only independent police witness failed to show up during the case, and the Crown Prosecution Service identified one of the four officers involved as an "incredible" or unreliable witness.
The Met said one officer subsequently received "words of advice" about failing to tell a senior officer of complaints from Crooks. The department of professional standards investigated the CPS allegation that the other officer had been deemed an "unreliable" witness but "concluded that this claim was unfounded".
The officer claimed she was assaulted by Adbi outside the Apollo theatre in the West End, but witnesses accused her of striking out with her baton. Mrs Crooks, who is partially disabled, was injured.
The encounter, which led to Crooks, his son and Abdi facing charges of threatening behaviour and assault, occurred in 2005 in front of performers and production members of the musical Big Life. Six witness accounts, including three from cast members, challenged the officer's version of events.
Bill Kenwright, the musical's backer, paid for the family's legal fees. Today he hailed the Met's decision to settle.
While the amount of compensation is not disclosed, the case is noteworthy because the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into the arrests initially found "no criminal or misconduct offences for officers to answer".
All fingerprints, DNA evidence and photographs taken at the time will be destroyed. Crooks, a builder from south London, has been asked to speak about his experience to police recruits at Hendon.
"It has been a horrific experience," he said. "It has devastated me, my family and Miss Abdi. I am not going to label every police officer, but the way we were dealt with was terrible."
Louis Charalambous, the solicitor who represented the Crooks and Miss Abdi, added: "Despite an IPCC report into this incident that ruled overwhelmingly in favour of the police, the Crooks family and Miss Abdi have at last received vindication. After four years of seeking redress, they can finally move on with their lives."The Big Life, about a group of West Indians who came to Britain on the SS Windrush, was nominated for an Olivier award and was the first black British musical to transfer to the West End.
Kenwright said: "I am pleased the Met has looked into it properly. The incident marred what should have been a joyous end to a joyous production.The West End is for everyone."
In a statement, Scotland Yard said it has apologised to the Crooks family and Miss Abdi and "regrets the upset and distress that this must have caused to all concerned."
• Minister praises diplomats for supporting rights • Issue could be addressed at Commonwealth talks
The Foreign Office is to risk the wrath of homophobic regimes worldwide by encouraging British ambassadors to do more to support gay communities.
Chris Bryant, the new Foreign Office minister, who is gay, has started writing personal letters of congratulations to British diplomats who show public support for gay rights. He is praising them for such support even if it draws anger from national governments or local homophobic groups.
On the eve of today's Gay Pride March in London, Bryant sent handwritten letters of personal congratulations to three British ambassadors in eastern Europe after they were angrily accused by national governments of promoting gay rights.
He has also decided to ask British high commissioners in the Commonwealth to promote the rights of gay people, even though this will run contrary to the teachings of some local churches and governments.
Bryant would like to see gay rights addressed at the Commonwealth summit in November in Trinidad, due to be attended by the Queen and Gordon Brown.
In a letter to the British ambassador in Poland, Ric Todd, Bryant wrote: "I wanted to congratulate you on your flying of the Rainbow flag next to the Union flag last year, and your guide to lesbian gay and bisexual and transgender rights translated in Polish this year. I know you had some flak, but frankly more power to your elbow. Britain is not just a tolerant country. We fully respect the rights of everyone, regardless of their sexuality."
Todd was criticised for exceeding his authority by Janusz Kochanowski, the Polish civil rights ombudsman.
Bryant also wrote to the British ambassador in Bulgaria, Stuart Williams, who sent a message of support to the Rainbow friendship rally in Sofia earlier this year. Bryant wrote: "I fully support what you have done. I am sure that your coverage will have given confidence to many."
He is also to write to the British ambassador to Bucharest, Robin Barnett, to thank him for attending the gay rights march in the Romanian capital last month.
The purpose of the Bryant letters is to spell out that the British Foreign Office policy of support for gay and lesbian rights is not just a formality, but instead a central part of the government's drive for human rights that diplomats are to champion as part of British foreign policy.
Bryant's determination to take this campaign within the Commonwealth will be hugely controversial if he pushes the message and diplomatic pressure hard. Many Commonwealth states maintain laws criminalising homosexuality—including most of the countries of the Caribbean and more than two-thirds of African nations. In four African countries, including Nigeria, consensual homosexual acts are still punishable by death.
Lentils, aubergines, tomatoes and herbs - what's not to like, says Yotam Ottolenghi
I am willing to bet this will turn into one of your favourites. Serve warm or at room temperature - and taste before serving, because lentils tend to "swallow" flavours. Serves four.
Lentils with grilled aubergines
2 medium aubergines Salt and black pepper 2 tbsp top-quality red-wine vinegar 200g small dark lentils, such as puy or castelluccio, washed and drained 3 small carrots, peeled 2 celery sticks 1 bay leaf 3 thyme sprigs ½ white onion 3½ tbsp olive oil 12 cherry tomatoes, halved 1/3 tsp brown sugar 1 tbsp each roughly chopped parsley, coriander and dill 2 tbsp crème fraîche (or yogurt)
Put the aubergines on an oven tray lined with foil and place under a very hot grill for 45 minutes, turning them a few times, until the skin cracks and dries in places and the flesh is cooked through and tastes smoky - don't worry if they burst. Remove from the oven and, once cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh into a colander, avoiding the black skin. Leave to drain for at least 15 minutes, then season generously and mix in half a tablespoon of vinegar.
Meanwhile, put the lentils in a medium saucepan. Cut one carrot and half a celery stick into large chunks and throw them in. Add the bay, thyme and onion, cover with plenty of water, bring to a boil and simmer for up to 25 minutes until the lentils are tender - skim the froth off the surface from time to time. Drain into a colander, discard the carrot, celery, bay, thyme and onion, and transfer to a bowl. Add the rest of the vinegar and two tablespoons of oil; season generously. Stir and set aside.
Set the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Cut the remaining carrot and celery into 1cm dice and mix with the tomatoes, a tablespoon of oil, some salt and the sugar. Spread in an ovenproof dish and roast for 20 minutes, until the carrot is semi-cooked. Add the cooked vegetables to the lentils, followed by the fresh herbs, and stir gently. Adjust the seasoning to taste, then spoon on to serving plates. Pile some aubergine in the middle, top with a dollop of crème fraîche and finish with a trickle of oil.
• Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron at Ottolenghi in London.
Get ready for funkyzeit as Austria's greatest fashionista arrives on the big screen this week. But how would Bruno advise Gordon Brown, style Obama and deal with the BNP? We found out
Bruno – it's just Bruno – has four major loves in his life: fashion, celebrities, entertainment and homosexuality (his and everyone else's). It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the latter that gets Sacha Baron Cohen's Austrian TV reporter into the most trouble. If you thought Borat bringing a plastic bag full of his own excrement to the table was uncomfortable, imagine how the people of Fort Smith in Arkansas felt when they'd bought $5 tickets for a Redneck Rumble only to see Bruno and another chap strip down to their smalls and get it on. Cohen, almost unbelievably, is still alive and his film is set to be the feel-dirty hit of the summer. But upsetting stupid people is easy- what's hard is bringing real and lasting change to the world. So how would Bruno solve some of this season's biggest issues?
Hello Bruno, how are you?
For a herpes-free 19-year-old with a perfect body, ich am pretty good – alzo ich have lost ein gramme since ich last weighed meinself an hour ago.
What are you wearing?
On my feet, a pair of powder blue Cavalli snakeskin courier boots, on my legs, a pair of low-rise velvet Vivienne Westwood culottes und on my chest, ze sweat und "manmilch" of a Cuban roomservice waiter named César.
Be honest: could the Guide get away with it?
Ich don't think so; César is pretty choosy, he is not like some dog marking his territory.
That Eminem incident … we think he looked dangerously aroused. What about you?
Ja he vas very aroused. Let me tell you, the real Slim Shady vas beginning to stand up. Ich vas not so bothered. Ich vish ich had landed on Kanye Vest und he had assumed ze role of ein "Bruno Digger".
The British political scene is in crisis, MPs have never been so reviled. How would you restore confidence?
Ich do not like to talk about politics. Ze last time an Austrian got involved in politics it resulted in ein horrific var, which resulted in ze annihilation of all major European fashion shows for six years. Ich know it's controversial – but in my opinion – Hitler vas a bit of a bitch. I know someone who vas ze grandson of his personal assistant; apparently behind ze scenes he vas a real tyrant. Vorse zan Elton!
The ex-home secretary's husband tried to claim his adult movie habit on expenses. He watched Raw Meat 3 – do you know it?
Nein, ich do not vatch adultmovies. If ich am feeling horny ich vatch Daniel Radcliffe movies. Zey are best watched on DVD vhen ich can pause it, und not run ze risk of accidentally finishing meinself off vhen ze old vizard ist on the screen.
Britain is about to be taken, if not roundly thrashed, by a group of smooth-cheeked public school boys. What should we do?
If you're you are not into ze spanking, pull out ein dildo. Most guys will run quicker zan an Austrian child who has just found ze door to his dungeon unlocked.
How should Gordon Brown improve his YouTube hit count?
Lose ze grimacing: he has ze sort of creepy smile zat makes you check your drink for Rohypnol! He alvays looks so sad – ich think he needs some new batteries in his love eggs und ein makeover. He needs to go in some skinny jeans, und change his name to "DJ Shadow". Und get some shpray tan – hello.
The crypto-fascists of the BNP are on the rise in our country. Do you have a message for them?
It is the wrong vay to get your message across! Look at Adolf, everyone remembers him for ze invading und ze fighting. No one remembers his bold use of colours and inventive accessorising. Or ze fact zat he could co-ordinate zose big shows vith thousands of people und hundreds of costume changes. Let me tell you, if Donatella Versace had been in charge of ze Nuremberg Rally, it vould have been a disaster! Ich have seen zese angry men mit zere shaven heads hanging abaus outside gay clubs. Too scared to come in. Ich says zere's plenty of room in ze Jacuzzi for all types of guys. Not all gays like immigrants you know, so it's no big deal, vassever.
Quantitative easing – is it a good thing?
Is this ze new colonic process? Ich think Gwyneth Paltrow vas talking about zis. Zey flood your arschenhalle vith yoghurt und you vear ein nappy for a veek vhile it seeps out. Nicht for Bruno.
How do you feel about Barack Obama's first 100 days?
He has been OK, but Bruno vould have liked it more if he'd have set up en actual Fashion Police Department vith full powers of arrest. Zey should be able to baton-charge anyone in sweatpants.
Would you style him differently?
Ja, ich vould set that hot body free from its prison made of suits! He should follow Bruno's rule: treat your clothes like you would do a pet. Love zem for a week, zen stick zem in a zip-up bag und throw zem in ze Danube. Then again Obama has to vear ein suit, or else zose gay marines who guard him vould be all over him like puppies on ein dropped ice cream.
Are you planning more Prop 8 demonstrations?
Of course! It is disgusting zat gay people don't have the same rights as straights: the right to be trapped in a loveless sex-free marriage that ends in a massive legal fight over a house. And as for kids, why shouldn't gays be able to adopt? Ein Third World baby is zis season's must-have accessory, and it is discrimination to deny zem this.
Could you design a car that would save General Motors?
Ich had a dream about a car made of denim! Great for parking, you just fold it up and put it in a bag. If ich had to design ein car ich vould start mit ze driver und zen accessorise. You vould build your own car every morning like you build your look for ze day. You're vearing platforms – make ze seat higher; going to ein fetische party – build it from wipe-clean PVC.
Is Bin Laden right? Is Obama antagonising Muslims?
Zose Al Qaida guys are so touchy! But then if all ich had to vear vas a black sheet und some sandals, I vould blow myself up too.
How would you tackle the Taliban's takeover of Pakistan's Swat region?
All ze problems in ze vorld and ze politicians just stumble around avoiding ze obvious solution – call Bono.
How will Bruno The Movie get around China's internet ban?
Ze Chinese abuse of ze internet sickens me: everyone should have ze right to use it for vas intended for – porn und looking at how fat Britney's got. If zey don't allow access to mein movie via ze internet, then I suggest ein United Nations airdrop of it. Zis is ein humanitarian crisis und ve need to act now. Und vhile zey're about it zey should drop ze Chinese some decent clothes. Zey all dress like zey are all still vorking on ein Olympic stadium building site.
Dubstep and electro-pop is the sound of the UK's summer. What's rocking Bruno's iPod right now?
Ich have ein really vide taste in music – everything from early-90s techno to mid-90s dance. Ich like literally everything from Aqua to Scooter. Recently ich have got into Pink – he's so hunky! Ich have several playlischts on mein iPod – Chillaus, Maximum Techno Love Party, und Bulimian Rhapsodies – zis is actually just Paris Hilton's album on repeat. Brings up ze cookies every time.
What three changes would you make you heal the world?
* Ban ze elasticating of jean vaists. * Free colonic hoses on street corners. * Make Karl Lagerfeld head of ze UN – he got Tyra Banks to appear on ze same runvay as Naomi, he could easily fix ze Middle East.
There are some events that are simply too overwhelming and terrible to confront immediately How should fiction tackle subjects as immediate as the expenses scandal or Bernard Madoff's fraud? Which novels and plays - from Dickens to David Hare - have best captured current events? Ferdinand Mount on what makes politics work in literature
At some stage in their lives, writers of all sorts hear the call to write about the political events of their own time. They may think of it as a moral duty, an undertaking that it would be cowardly to resist, or they may think of it simply as an intriguing challenge. But for one reason or another, they take the plunge. They do not often tremble on the diving board. Is trying to make literature out of politics different from other kinds of writing? Are there peculiar dangers or interesting possibilities in tackling a subject so immediate, so familiar to your audience as the dodgy dossier or the expenses scandal? They may already have passionate views on the subject. Are there artistic dangers when you preach to the converted (preaching against the converted is more likely to endanger your personal safety)?
It is all very well to take the decision to engage, easy to choose your theme, what Henry James called your donnée. But as James never tired of pointing out to his friends and inferiors - HG Wells, Edith Wharton, Hugh Walpole - it is what you do with the donnée that counts, how you handle the material, which bits you select and which you leave out, what you are trying ultimately to achieve. The danger in choosing a political theme is always of not working it through properly, of revealing the thing in all its miserable nakedness as a book or poem or play about Iraq, or unemployment, or abortion, and nothing more than that. The audience becomes aware that the author is a kind of unlicensed intruder whose motives are too gratingly ulterior. The nest collapses under the cuckoo's weight. The problem is not so much the bad faith which intellectuals agonise about. The problem is bad art.
Take Harley Granville Barker's play Waste. Barker was perhaps the most intelligent English playwright of the 20th century. No one thought more deeply about stagecraft or playwriting, or especially about Shakespeare. At first sight, Waste looks like a richly wrought and carefully conceived piece. That is what entices talented directors in every generation to revive it. Yet however you produce it, it never quite comes to life, even in Sam West's fine recent production at the Almeida. The critics were not, I think, quite able to put their finger on why it didn't work. It certainly was not because of the actors: Will Keen was magnificent as the icy but passionate Henry Trebell and Phoebe Nicholls affecting as his sister. The themes of the play - political hypocrisy and abortion - are certainly not outdated. What several critics hazarded was that modern audiences could not be expected to warm to Trebell's obsession with his bill to disestablish the church. This was dismissed as a fusty theme with no relevance to our lives. Yet audiences have warmed to themes no less fusty, for example the supremacy of the church in the time of Henry VIII, as tussled over in A Man for All Seasons. Disestablishment mattered intensely in 19th-century politics and it has, as a matter of fact, resurfaced in church debate today.
The fault in the play is a rather different one. Barker simply tells us too much about the Disestablishment Bill, the arguments for and against, the difficulties of getting it through parliament, all those things that are the bread-and-butter of political life. He is too conscientious. He lacks the ruthlessness of the great artist. Disestablishment needs to be treated simply as a conflict about which the characters are passionately concerned but the precise details of which need not detain us. That is the lesson that Alfred Hitchcock taught so brilliantly. What he called the McGuffin is selected as the main driving force of the film, the holy grail, the object of everyone's frantic search, but to define it too exactly would only slow us down and might undermine our faith in the whole enterprise.
Real-life politics is full of McGuffins. That's the trouble. What occupies the obsessive attention of the Westminster world tends to be an imbroglio so complex and in many respects so absurdly trivial that it does not translate easily into art. In 1986 the Westland affair caused Michael Heseltine to stalk out of the cabinet and set off the internal conflict that destroyed the Conservative party for two decades, perhaps the worst civil war in the party since the reform of the Corn Laws. Initially, what the argument centred on was whether Mrs Thatcher had illegitimately manipulated the cabinet agenda; then it shifted to whether her allies had leaked a letter of advice from the solicitor general in defiance of long-established convention. For days, debate revolved furiously round this point, leading eventually to the forced resignation of the home secretary. Yet it was a pure McGuffin, because apart from the relative insignificance of the letter it was doubtful whether any such convention existed. In any case, to become absorbed in the actual details, as we all were, is to become a journalist. The artist simply seizes on the McGuffin and runs with it. He is interested only in the specifics that illuminate his theme.
Considered as literature, the perfect text is often one that offers no clear answers. In Little Dorrit, for example, what exactly is the nature of the debt which William Dorrit is imprisoned for non-payment of? What precisely does Mr Merdle do to make his mountains of money? What is Daniel Doyce's brilliant invention that the Circumlocution Office refuses to support? Dickens offers us the barest minimum of information about such things. Indeed, we are told that "nobody knew with the least precision what Mr Merdle's business was, except that it was to coin money". It is his marvellous mysteriousness that makes all his investors feel so privileged to be allowed to put their money with him, from his fellow millionaires down to Pancks the rent collector, who assures Arthur Clennam: "I tell you, Mr Clennam, I've gone into it. He's a man of immense resources - enormous capital - government influence. They're the best schemes afloat. They're safe. They're certain." The point is that Pancks has not gone into it, any more than the just-sentenced Bernie Madoff's willing victims went into his business. The suspension of disbelief is the first secret of the fraudster's art. And it is precisely by denying the reader all those financial details that you would find in a modern bestseller about Wall Street that Dickens breaks through to a finer truth.
Merdle is based on the real-life Madoff or Maxwell of his day, John Sadleir, an Irish banker and MP, who took poison after his enormous swindles had been exposed and was found dead near the Spaniards' Inn on Hampstead Heath while Little Dorrit was being written. What fascinated Dickens was Sadleir's utter lack of flamboyance or personal magnetism: he was a cold, sallow-faced, wrinkled bachelor who appeared to take no pleasure in his fortune or in human company. Merdle too, we are told, did not shine in company. Just like Madoff in Florida, he seems to have reassured investors by his combination of relentless hospitality and personal inconspicuousness.
Dickens's urge to fictionalise and politicise real contemporary events was both immediate and passionate. While he was writing Little Dorrit, he wrote to Angela Burdett-Coutts that he remained "a Reformer heart and soul. I have nothing to gain - everything to lose (for public quiet is my bread) - but I am in desperate earnest because I know it is a desperate case". Not only does the book satirise the appalling ease with which fraudsters could relieve the public of huge sums, it is also directed against two other scandals of the day: the injustice of imprisonment for debt and the maladministration in Whitehall which was responsible for hardship and delay at home and disease and death in the Crimea. All three scandals were red-hot at the time - the Crimean war was still going on - and although specific prisons reserved for debtors no longer exist, all three issues remain red-hot today, substituting only Madoff for Merkle and Iraq for the Crimea.
Dickens's techniques were much resented by the Sir Humphreys of the time. His satire was said to be unfair and exaggerated and to take no account of the real problems of governing the country. I remember, when I first read Little Dorrit, feeling that the Circumlocution Office was a rather crude caricature. That was before I had any direct experience of the higher bureaucracy. Re-reading Little Dorrit now, I am struck rather by the brilliance of the description of Clennam storming the Circumlocution Office to try to find out why William Dorrit is still in the Marshalsea after so many years. After several false starts, he is directed to the room of Mr Wobbler in the Secretarial Department: "He entered the apartment, and found two gentlemen sitting face to face at a large and easy desk, one of whom was polishing a gun-barrel on his pocket-handkerchief, while the other was spreading marmalade on bread with a paper knife." I might have found this fanciful if I had not once entered a private secretaries' room in Whitehall at a quiet time in the parliamentary recess and found one of the inmates with his ear to Test Match Special while another in his braces was aiming paper darts into a waste-paper basket.
In a larger sense, Dickens communicates his political message by transcending it. We never lose the sense of the Marshalsea as a grim, enclosing institution, but what anchors it in our minds are the ways in which the inmates have made a home and a society out of a prison. We share Dickens's exasperated affection for all Dorrit's pompous self-deception, just as we too are carried away along with the punters by Mr Merdle's air of knowing the secrets of the financial universe.
Here perhaps we begin to glimpse an essential condition for turning politics into literary art: that our affections have to be engaged, even against our best intentions. If the monsters are to be real, they must seduce us a little. I remember one or two complaints that either David Hare and Howard Brenton or Anthony Hopkins, or a combination of the three of them, had made the monstrous colonial press baron Lambert Le Roux in Pravda too devilishly attractive. To mount an effective attack on press corruption, the argument went, he should have been unmitigatedly repellent. But, like it or not, in real life the Beaverbrooks and the Murdochs are attractive, albeit in a piratical, reptilian way. It is often only this menacing charm that conceals the tycoon's inner dullness. That is partly how they got where they were, and that is why Pravda succeeds so brilliantly and in its heightening is truer to life. To fail to see this is to fail to see the boundary that separates agitprop both from literature and from life.
In David Hare's most recent play, Gethsemane, the characters again appear to be based on recognisable real-life models: the cabinet minister whose husband is in trouble with the law, the minister's rebellious daughter, the oily fixer who thinks he is running the prime minister like a puppetmaster. But the characters don't seem to have much juice in them, or to have been conceived with any affection, even of the unwilling sort. The satire seemed rather inert. Is this perhaps because it is difficult to denounce Tony Blair and New Labour for betraying the party's old ideals, when the whole point of Blair's successful pitch for power was that this would be the first Labour administration which would not try to impose the party's ideals on the public? Or is it rather that the problems of defining and delivering the didactic message prevent the play from breathing its own air?
How exactly should a "political" playwright conceive his mission? Ibsen, we know, took it as an insult when he was congratulated and thanked for the help he had given to the women's cause. He told the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898: "I have never written a poem or a play to further a social purpose. I have been more of a poet and less of a social philosopher than most people seem inclined to believe." He added in characteristically grumpy vein: "I am not even very sure what women's rights really are." I am indebted for this quotation to an essay in these pages by AS Byatt who said, it seemed with some surprise, that each time she reads A Doll's House, she finds Nora less and less sympathetic. But that surely is why it is a great play. The cramping social restrictions which deny women a proper life operate all the more perniciously upon a wilful, difficult temperament. The play is about Nora, not about woman's place in modern society, just as Macbeth is about Macbeth and not about kingship in 11th-century Scotland. Nora needs to be played not by someone who instantly rouses our sympathy but by one of those actresses who are so good at playing irritating women, like Peggy Ashcroft and Juliet Stevenson. The same is true of Hedda Gabler, superbly done by Eve Best in a recent production.
The word to describe what I think must be avoided is "portentous". That word is derived from "protendere", to stretch forth, and it's that effortful stretching forward to bring out the politics which pulls the work out of shape. The leading American novelists of the past 30 years are much admired in Britain for their willingness to tackle what Melville called "mighty themes", especially what they see as the mightiest of all, which is the state of America. Every time they sit down to write, they have their sights set on the Great American Novel, described by the literary editor John Walsh as "the big one, the single perfect work of fiction that would encapsulate the heart of the US, interpret its history through the light of a single, outstanding consciousness, unite the private lives of the characters with the public drama of its politics".
But is this what a novel should be doing? Over the years, I have certainly enjoyed most of the novels of John Updike and Philip Roth and Richard Ford, and quite a few of Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer. Yet I cannot disguise the sensation that creeps over me halfway through most of these novels, that the message is being over-inked. Something is being said about American society - its racism, or its anti-semitism, or its solitary bleakness, or its greed - but it is being said too loudly and too often to allow the book to breathe. Something is also being said about the Kennedy years, or the Nixon years, or the Reagan years, as though human life and culture took its cue from whoever happened to get elected president. There is not enough sense of human existence going on independently of political events or social trends, little sense in particular of human relationships; for relationships, especially those between men and women, appear to have the life smothered out of them by that "single outstanding consciousness", invariably a man's.
Let me offer, by way of contrast, Alice Munro, Jane Smiley, Anne Tyler, Annie Proulx. As Elaine Showalter points out, "serious women writers are much less likely than their male counterparts to celebrate themselves", and as a result they are much less likely to be celebrated as Great Writers. Yet their reach is no less large, their wit no less wicked, and their sympathies no less broad. There is nothing "domestic" about their scale. I would argue that their best books are more fully realised as works of art because they manage to deal with all the big themes without being overwhelmed by them. And I find more human relating in a single short story by Munro, recently awarded the international Booker prize, than in 500 pages inflated by the great Bellows.
A couple of years ago I happened to read no fewer than three American novels about estate agents: Ford's The Lay of the Land, Smiley's Good Faith and Tyler's Digging to America. You can see why the theme occurred to them all: the restlessness and impermanence of a people always on the move, the eating up of the land, the churning of homes into money. All three novels are highly readable, yet in the Ford the theme seemed too relentlessly forced, whereas Tyler and Smiley managed to deliver the message, if message there was, without being enslaved by it. I do not mean to imply merely that the women's novels achieve lightness, though they do. They are not just soufflés that have risen. They are aircraft that fly with a full payload.
At first sight, the theatre of Bertolt Brecht might seem to defy my contention that the politics must somehow be absorbed for the piece to succeed as a work of art. Surely the whole point of Brecht is to disdain artifice and give us the political message full-frontally. But Brecht simply takes another route to a similar destination. Yes, he puts his political anger nakedly before us, but he also presents it in a highly stylised way, like a Japanese play. This famous Verfremdungseffekt is only another way of transforming, a variant of the art that conceals art. It is certainly not to be belittled because it is a different way.
When I argue that the work needs to escape from the message or to transcend it, I am not seeking to erase the message or to deny that it may be perfectly valid. I see here twin fallacies that mirror one another. The first is what might be called the "agitprop fallacy": that the work is of value only in so far as it promotes the message and that a work which lacks any political purpose is worthless because it evades our moral responsibility for the state of the world. That, I think most people now agree, is a narrow and misguided view of both life and literature.
The mirror image of the agitprop fallacy is the belief that art should steer clear of politics and that any work which is inspired by political passion is flawed and lessened. We might call it the "art-for-art's-sake fallacy". This seems to me to relegate politics to a uniquely underprivileged role, reminiscent of the convention supposed to operate at Victorian dinner tables that certain topics, such as women and religion, were not to be mentioned. Political themes and passions surely have every right to muscle in on the act. The question remains what role they are to perform? What effect do they have or should they have on the world?
One point of view is that baldly expressed by Shelley in the closing sentence of his Defence of Poetry: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." That famous phrase appears to assert that it is poets who are the advance guard of reform, the trumpeters at the head of the column. Yet the sentences just before this thumping conclusion qualify it. Shelley tells us that "an energetic development of the literature of England . . . has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will." So poetry doesn't always come first, it may happen alongside. Nor is it necessarily the case that poets think up the new stuff all by themselves. "The electric life which burns within the words" of the most celebrated writers of the present day may not be all their own work. In fact, "they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations, for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age." Poets are "the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present." In Shelley's formulation, they sound almost like spirit mediums, not responsible for the messages they give voice to.
At first sight, Shelley appears to be contradicted by Auden's equally famous axiom in his "In Memory of WB Yeats": "for poetry makes nothing happen: it survives in the valley of its making". Which sounds as if poetry is and should be cut off from the real world. Yet Auden too qualifies his utterance. At the end of the verse, he tells us that poetry "survives, / A way of happening, a mouth". So ultimately Shelley and Auden are not that far apart. What poetry does is give voice to the spirit of the age. It speaks for our hopes and fears, our sense of outrage or despair. I rather like the medieval poet's term "my plaint" - from plango, I beat, hence I beat my breast, hence I lament. The poet is the village breast-beater, the counsel for the plaintiff.
This giving-voice may have consequences in the real world. It may incite people to do things, it may unify them, give them hope or consolation. In old age, Yeats himself looked back on a public life sporadically concerned with political causes:
Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot?
Did words of mine put too great
strain
On that woman's reeling brain?
Could my spoken words have
checked
That whereby a house lay
wrecked?
And all seems evil until I
Sleepless would lie down and
die.
But this insomniac reverie is a medley of the public and the private. Yeats is thinking not only about his responsibility for helping to incite the Easter Rising but also about his affair with the mentally unstable actress Margaret Ruddock and about the abandonment and loss of his beloved Coole. Life of all sorts flows through literature; there is no special reserved status for politics.
Nor is there any standard time-relation between the political cause and the literary outflow. Political passion may flow hot and strong and instant, notably in writing about war. The war poems of Sassoon and Owen came straight from the western front. Their disillusion and disgust were as direct and unmediated as had been the enthusiasm of Julian Grenfell and Rupert Brooke at the outset of the war. Tennyson wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in only a few minutes after reading the account of the disaster in the Times. There was a similar instant response to unemployment and hardship, in both the 1930s and the 1980s. The anti-Thatcher songs were not slow in coming.
Sometimes those who might seem best qualified to write directly about politics feel under no compulsion at all to do so. Goethe was for 10 years and more chef de cabinet to the Duke of Weimar, more or less prime minister of the little duchy. Yet his political experience does not find much immediate reflection in his work. Certainly he does not tell us a great deal about his encouragement of the textile and mining industries in Weimar or his reforms of the school system there. I do not mean that as a writer he was impervious to the outside world. On the contrary, as a young man he was a leader in the passionate romantic movement across Europe, patented in Germany as Sturm und Drang. In later life, he was a leader in the rediscovery of classicism which also spread across Europe in architecture and painting as well as in poetry and drama. His attitude towards Germanness developed in parallel with his stylistic development, all these sides of him being brought together in that extraordinary broken-backed masterpiece, Faust. Yet you would not think of Goethe primarily as a political poet or playwright, and you would not be surprised to be told that he had spent his whole life living by a millstream and had taken no part in politics at all.
Sometimes, too, one is struck by the complete absence of literary reaction to great events, by a silence that may seem more awesome than speech. The two greatest Italian poets of the 20th century, Eugenio Montale and Giuseppe Ungaretti, both fought in the first world war on the Italian front, which was just as horrific as the western front, the trenches just as muddy, the slaughter as terrible, the senselessness even more evident, and the mountain terrain infinitely harsher. Yet Montale published only one, rather elegiac and personal, poem about the front, and Ungaretti's war verse, which remains very popular in Italy, tends to look for lyrical transcendence in the moonlight over the mountains and soldiers bathing in the river.
In prose too, the horrors of the Italian front were passed over in near-total silence, until Mark Thompson's wonderful history, The White War, came out last year. There was one glorious exception to this long silence, and that too was written by a non-Italian, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I thought, in a superior way, that I had grown out of Hemingway, but when I re-read the book recently I was recaptured from the first page. What I now know from reading Thompson is that A Farewell to Arms also gives a pretty good account of the war, being closely based on Hemingway's experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver. When the narrator comes to his famous denunciation of the cruel and senseless nature of the war, it is not glib but fully earned.
There are some events that are simply too overwhelming and terrible to confront immediately. That may be more or less what Theodor Adorno meant by his well-known declaration that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric". For some unlucky nations, writing recent history is too raw, too painful, too embarrassing. It may take years for writers who have been through such terrible times to find the proper voice to write about them. Often the literature does not "accompany or precede", as Shelley claimed. It lags a long way after. A Farewell to Arms was not published until 1929, more than 10 years after the events it describes, and the same year as other classics of the Great War: Goodbye to All That and All Quiet on the Western Front. Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer came out the following year.
The horrors of the Holocaust were known and undeniable as soon as the camps were liberated and the living skeletons stumbled out in front of the newsreel cameras. But it was years before memoirs and novels began to explore those horrors. Sometimes this was because the writers could not face reliving the experience. Sometimes it was because publishers thought that their readers did not want to face it. Primo Levi wrote most of If This Is a Man in 1946, only a year after being freed from Auschwitz, but only an amateur publisher would take the book and it sold a mere 1,500 copies. It was not until 1958 that Giulio Einaudi brought it to a wider audience.
It has taken longer still for German writers to confront the Hitlerzeit. In the end, the task has been left to the generation who were either children or not born at all in those years, so that the sins they are writing about are not their own but those of their fathers and grandfathers.
In Britain, we have been energetic in writing about the misdeeds of other peoples, but we have had our own Great Silence. During the years immediately after the union flag was hauled down, first in India then across the rest of the British empire, there was a remarkable reluctance to think or write about the imperial experience. It was old hat, an embarrassing joke. We told ourselves that the whole thing had really had remarkably little impact on us. Then, quite without warning, the outpouring began, in novels and memoirs, and radio reminiscences and huge TV series. The outpouring seemed to be all the more heartfelt for having been so long delayed. Our sudden eagerness to recall the Raj and every other outpost of empire was also pushed on by the appearance, equally unexpected, of writers of brimming talent from every quarter of the imperial diaspora. In some years, it seemed there was scarcely a native British writer on the Booker shortlist. In fact, native British writers began to look rather dowdy and provincial, as though excluded from (if not actually deaf to) a globalised culture that revelled in diversity and displacement. It was almost like a reverse colonisation.
There is something rather impressive about these Great Silences. They seem to be observed by some mutual agreement that is itself tacit. They are like the silences observed on Remembrance Sunday, except they last 10 years rather than two minutes.
And the silences teach us something that is useful beyond their immediate context. They teach us that in whatever sense you choose, broad or narrow, local or global, politics is as fit and necessary a subject for writing about as anything else in life. But it is not therefore an easier subject. On the contrary, it is often much more difficult and requires reserves of tact and ingenuity and imagination. You do not score any points simply for being "political". You certainly do not score any for trying to make a text more relevant to the politics of your own times. Art is difficult, and it is not made easier or more accessible or more valuable by turning it into a subdivision of or a surrogate for politics. That is merely to engage in a form of polemical journalism, and not good polemical journalism at that.
Politics in literature does its business best when we are least aware of its presence: when we are watching Little Dorrit scurrying to reach the Marshalsea before lock-up, or when we hear Nora announcing that she has a greater duty than her duty towards her children which is her duty to herself, when we see Hemingway's bersaglieri marching off down the dusty white road to attack another hill they will never take. Politics works when it is lost in art.
Want to speak like a native but don't fancy spending your entire trip in a classroom? These holidays combine lessons with activities and the chance to hang out with locals
French
Surfing: Biarritz
If only school could have been this relaxed. At a solar-powered surf camp in a 300-year-old farmhouse close to Les Casernes beach, near Biarritz, language lessons take the form of informal two-hour chats over beers in the afternoons. Mornings are spent riding the waves, and five days of surf lessons (for 1½ hours per day) are included. The camp has plenty of places for practising tenses in your free time - in the garden, hydro-pool, hammam, tree hut, canoe or hammock. Suitable for beginners and improvers.
• A week costs £606pp, including surfboard and wetsuit hire. 08445 020 445, golearnto.com.
Outdoor adventure: Verdon
Perhaps you're more likely to remember new words if you learn them while scared out of your wits. A French immersion course in Moustiers, in the Parc Naturel Regional du Verdon, includes morning lessons (beginner to advanced available) in a converted hilltop monastery, plus afternoon exploration of the river Verdon by canoe, treks into the Garrigue with a forest guard, games of pétanque in the village square, dances at a bal populaire or viewings of French films, all accompanied by teachers to ensure French is spoken throughout. At the weekend, the adventuring ratchets up a gear with canyoning, rafting, kayaking and abseiling where no doubt you will learn the French for "Help!" and perfect your pronunciation of merde
• Course €1,670pp for 14 days, accommodation €458 per week, 0121 430 7660, experiencelanguage.co.uk.
Wine: Bordeaux
Many people's language priority is being able to order food and drink. But imagine how impressive you'll sound when you can not only stammer out "Un verre de vin, s'il vous plaît", but are also capable of ordering a fine Bordeaux, commenting on its complexity of flavour and describing the time you visited the very vineyard where it was created. This seven-day French and Bordeaux wine course will set you well on the way to talking about terroir like a native, with four 45-minute sessions of French a day (there's a test on day one to establish your level), three afternoon sessions on Bordeaux wines, including tastings at l'Ecole du Bordeaux, and excursions to Saint-Emilion and Médoc vineyards.
• Courses start 20 July, 17 August, 14 September, 12 October, £705pp. Homestay accommodation from £170 per week, flight from £115pp return. 0871 230 8512, statravel.co.uk.
Spanish
Walk the talk: Pyrenees
"When we visit my neighbour Hilaria's vegetable garden, if you pick tomatoes, you'll learn how to talk about them," says Georgina Howard, who runs the Pyrenean Experience, a language course in the Baztan valley that teaches Spanish by living Spanish. Language tutors are always on hand to help guests in conversation practise while they ramble through the Pyrenean mountains, meet local farmers, visit bars and hamlets, have lunch with the neighbours or host parties at the seven-bedroom farmhouse, and generally live the Basque life. There are more formal morning lessons on a terrace, and weeks for beginners, intermediate and advanced speakers are run separately.
Insted runs language courses in Austria, Spain and France that are combined with skiing or surfing. Its Tenerife course runs year-round from a central base in Puerto de la Cruz, a thriving town with busy bars and restaurants serving Latin American and African-influenced dishes. Minutes away from the classroom are the beaches, where the breaks have earned the Canaries the title "Hawaii of the Atlantic". Accommodation is with a local family, or in an apartment sharing with other students from the course.
• Homestay with family from €165pp per week B&B in private room, €200 half board. Apartment from €165pp for private room. Two week minimum, €220 per week for the course. 00 33 450 530 366, insted.com.
Tango: Buenos Aires
"Bailamos?" is Spanish for "Shall we dance?" - as those returning from this trip will know. In the historic centre of Argentina's capital, near the bohemian San Telmo district, pupils take a daily four-hour classroom lesson of Spanish, and Argentinian and Spanish culture, politics and history in groups of up to seven. Afterwards they don their dancing shoes to learn one of the world's sexiest dances at a nearby milonga, or tango hall.
• Six nights including homestay with from £467pp, tango classes £4 per hour. Hotel accommodation available. Journey Latin America (020 8747 8315, journeylatinamerica.co.uk).
Portuguese
Capoeira: Brazil
Practise whirling your limbs to the moves of capoeira while learning to twirl your tongue around the Portuguese language on a two-week course combining the two in Salvador. Classes of eight study beginners' Portuguese for 20 hours a week, then concentrate on the acrobatic Brazilian dance/martial art twice a week; both take place in a language centre. A samba lesson and cookery class are also included, and homestay accommodation is available so that you can practise over dinner (the language, not capoeira).
• Course £285 pp for 14 days, homestay accommodation from £89 per room per week. 08445 020 445, golearnto.com.
Italian
Food and cookery: Tuscany
For an indulgent foodie break with a side serving of language lessons, Sanctuary Villas puts up large groups of friends or two families in a luxurious converted farmhouse villa with an outdoor pool, sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi, near the medieval village of San Gimignano. The company can arrange extras including cookery classes with local chef Giuseppina and language lessons, taken in your villa, the garden which overlooks rolling, cypress-lined Chianti hills or wherever you prefer. Villa La Terme consists of two large houses, together sleeping 10 plus two children.
• From £5,824 per week (£69 pp per night) accommodation only, language lessons from £41 pp per hour with Sanctuary Villas (01242 547 902, sanctuary-villas.com).
Photography and cycling: Umbria
Northern Umbria is a very untouristy part of Italy, a bonus for language learners as locals are unlikely to revert to English when you chat, and because they have more time to do so. Guests at the Labbazia school in the Upper Tiber Valley will meet plenty of them on trips to local markets and bars in the nearby medieval villages, where they'll put into practise all they learned that day in class (three levels available). There's usually some sort of local pageant, dance or festival to attend, and many other activities are arranged on demand, from photography classes to tai chi, cycling or horse-riding.
• From €1,050pp per week, full-board at the agriturismo where lessons are held, including 20 x 45min lessons, transfers from Perugia and guided trips. 00 39 075 857 3004, labbaziaschool.com.
Greek
Beach and culture: Syros
On this two-week course at the OMILO centre on the Cycladic island of Syros, there are classes at the Pension Echo in Azolimnos (which is also one of the self-catering accommodation options) from 9.30am to 1.30pm each day. Then it's time to hit the beaches right by the centre for swimming and sunbathing, before moving a short distance to the village's lively tavernas. Excursions such as Greek dance lessons, museum visits, guided walks and local concerts are included and everyone goes along to a sociable first night meal. The island's capital, Ermoupolis, an affluent harbour of neo-classical buildings, mansions, marble-paved streets and white houses, is 4km away.
• Catch a ferry from Athens. Next dates September, €590 for two weeks. Rooms from €35 per night. 00 30 210 612 2896, omilo.com.
German
Watersports: Bavaria
Lindau is a beautiful town on its own island in the eastern side of Lake Constance, with a historic medieval centre and pretty harbour. It's a great base for learning German - after classes, pupils cool off by sailing and waterskiing on the lake, cycle around it or go on excursions to Meersburg, Salem Castle and Liechtenstein.
The Dialoge language school provides 20-25 lessons per week, and has a sports hall for basketball, volleyball and football games. Social evenings with barbecues, wine tastings and the cinema are arranged too.
• From €490 per week including accommodation with a host family or the school's apartments, €330 without. 0808 234 8578, studytravel.com.
Arabic
Interaction: Cairo
Pupils of the Bridge Abroad programme will learn the Egyptian dialect (one of the easiest to pick up) as well as classical Arabic on a week's beginners' course in Cairo. The focus is on learning through interaction with some of the city's 14.5million residents, after daily lessons in a school 15 minutes from the centre. Afternoons are spent among the throng, picking up more vocabulary in the souks, cafes and squares, and at lectures, concerts, cinemas and the famous sites.
• Three weeks (minimum) including accommodation costs from $878pp, $399 without accommodation, or from $711 per week private tuition, from $855 with accommodation. 0808 120 7613, bridgeabroad.com.
Japanese
Cooking and karaoke: Tokyo
Nowhere gives a culture shock like Japan, so throwing yourself into the local way of life is as important as learning the lingo if you are to have a hope of ever fitting in. Alongside a beginners' course that also covers Japanese culture in a centrally-located school, pupils can take workshops on calligraphy, tea ceremonies, noodle cooking, judo and karate, and interact with native Japanese speakers on nights out bowling, to quizzes and, of course, singing karaoke.
• From $2900 for two weeks including accommodation with a host family, in student dorms or apartments with World Link Education (0046 5580 3720, wle-japan.com).
Mandarin
Live-in learning: Beijing
Moving in with your teacher would have been an abhorrent notion when you were a teenager, but now it could be the best way to develop your language skills. Instead of trawling through a textbook twice a day, you can chat to your tutors from breakfast to bedtime while staying in their home on Go Learn To's "home language courses". These suit all levels and give the option of staying with your teachers, couples and families around Beijing as well as informal tuition. Guests get a set of keys and are free to come and go as they please, but are usually invited to join in with their teacher's life, to meet relatives and friends, go shopping and explore the nightlife.
• Seven days from £864pp per week full board, 08445 020 445, golearnto.com.
Russian
Culture: St Petersburg
Russia is one place where you're unlikely to pick up much of the language without some serious tuition. A course that includes 20 lessons per week in St Petersburg is a good place to start. After class, it's time to absorb the city's rich culture at its many sites.
Bi-weekly group activities include visits to the theatre and ballet and to other places such as the riverside city of Novgorod. Go in the summer and you can join in many vercherinkas - small parties with caviar, vodka and Russian folk songs. Beginners' and advanced courses are available, but everyone is asked to learn the Cyrillic alphabet before arriving.
• Two weeks from $2,170pp all inclusive, but excluding flights, languagesabroad.com.
• Don't miss our free phrasebooks every day next week, plus Italian the week after
When Germany was divided during the cold war, nature took control of the deserted border area. Today it forms a reserve as fascinating as the country's recent history
When I told friends I was setting off to explore the former border that once separated East and West Germany, several of them, even the German ones, scratched their heads and dug out their maps to find out where it ran. Unlike the Berlin Wall, the infamous symbol of the cold war that separated West Berlin from East, the much longer border that ran through the heart of Germany, has been largely forgotten.
German nature lovers, however, are well aware of the scar left by the iron curtain, once one of the world's most heavily fortified borders. For four decades up to the end of the cold war in 1989, around 600 threatened species of animal and plant life were given a free rein in a no man's land overshadowed by minefields, metal fences and watchtowers. The legacy is a unique and extraordinarily rich chain of ad hoc nature reserves running for nearly 1,400km in a gentle zigzag from the Vogtland region, near the German-Czech border in the south, to the Baltic Sea in the north, now interlinked to form a grünes band, or green belt.
It is an impressive living monument to recent European history that is accessible to walkers and bikers. Eckhard Selz, a ranger and former East German from the Harz national park, summed it up over a bowl of pea and sausage soup atop the Brocken peak, one of the highlights of the route: "The division of Germany was a travesty that robbed people of their freedom, but a positive side effect was the way the sealed border allowed nature to flourish."
It has created a treasure trove of wildlife, including black storks, wild cats and winchats, a range of rare mosses and wood grouse. The newcomer is the lynx, which has been successfully reintroduced to the region since the border came down.
In four days we hiked around 100km of the green belt, starting at the Torfhaus visitor centre in the Harz national park, just outside the picturesque former mining town of Goslar. It was organised for us by the Harz tourist board and the Green Belt initiative, who will arrange guides, luggage transfers, routes and accommodation, allowing you the freedom to concentrate on the surroundings. Alternatively you can do the hikes alone. The paths are well marked and the local tourist offices on the route are stocked with plenty of maps and information about activities.
In Torfhaus, our guide, biologist Jens Halves, offered everything from reflexology foot massages in the park's cool mountain streams to tours that trace the past journeys of Hans-Christian Andersen and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to reconstructing the lives of the 18th- and 19th-century charcoal burners who lived in the forest and served the steel industry.
In Goslar - home to the delicious Gose beer that is brewed with a high concentration of malt and the region's soft and mineral-rich water - we stayed at the Kaiserworth Hotel, once a 15th-century cloth traders' guild house. The following day our rucksacks were picked up by a luggage taxi for delivery to our next destination while we set off on foot to the charming town of Hornburg. A room in the local museum details the West German town's precarious proximity to the iron curtain, including a model of the automatic spring guns that the East German authorities installed at the border. Triggered by movement, they sprayed would-be escapees with bullets.
"It was like living at the edge of the world," said Hinrich Schüler, our guide, who worked as a forester on the border and recalls the day in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. He and his colleagues had to act rapidly, cutting paths through the forest and laying temporary roads for the thousands of Trabants and pedestrians rushing from East to West. Now the towering 69-year-old was accompanying us on a brisk walk through a forest in Lower Saxony into the 1,030-year-old village of Osterwieck in the former East.
Osterwieck has received millions of euros in grants over the last 20 years to help restore its stunning collection of 400 half-timbered houses. But much of the former East is revealed in the many abandoned homes of the thousands who have been forced to leave because of lack of work.
In Ilsenburg we spent the night in a former East German army barracks, now the swish Berghotel, from where we trekked in drizzle through the pine and rock landscape of the Brocken along the distinct border patrol path, constructed out of perforated slab concrete, that runs like a seam for practically the entire length of the former border.
"The Brocken is to the Germans what Ben Nevis is to the Scots," explained Friedhart Knolle, a national park geologist.
The 1,141m mount was also a favourite haunt for British tourists as far back as the 1830s, when they were lured by the promise of the Brockengespenst - the Brocken spectre - an illusion formed, it is believed, by the thick fog and the shadows of climbers cast upon it. The seminal role it played in the history of broadcasting, when the 1936 Olympics were transmitted from the world's first television tower here, is explained in a museum at the summit.
The GDR authorities turned it into a military zone, out of bounds for all Germans, so today it is one of the most potent symbols of German partition and reunification.
A 19th-century narrow-gauge steam railway, the Brockenbahn, took us downhill to the pretty town of Schiercke (in the former East), close to our next destination, the town of Braunlage (former West). At the foot of Wurmberg mountain there, slalom skiers were once instructed to concentrate on curbing the end of their runs lest they ended up cruising into the forbidden East.
Hartmut Dörge, a former customs officer on the West German border who now gives tours of the area around Braunlage, pointed out the gaps in the heavily-fortified fences where foxes, rabbits and badgers were able to tunnel their way through.
Our walk took us past a brook, just 1m wide, that was pedantically split down the middle by the international border, a house in the forest where secret agents once met and a former East German army barracks turned asylum seekers' home.
Dorge gave me a piece of the metal mesh border fence as a souvenir before handing us over in the pretty town of Hohegeiss to our next guide, his former colleague Manfred Gille. He led us on a steep path through a spectacular pine forest that was so thick and dark it would have been the ideal setting for a Grimm fairytale. In a clearing near the East German village of Sorge, he pointed out how the tilling of the earth in search of landmines inadvertently churned up seeds and helped a wealth of birch and pine saplings to take root all along the former border. There are still bare patches, however, where industrial weed-killer sprayed by GDR authorities to ensure unbroken views of their borders, have killed all the nutrients.
Gille recalled a bizarre encounter he had with a Westerner who fled to the East, saying he was sick of the capitalist system: "He clung to the fence, rattling on it and crying 'Let me in!' while ignoring our suggestions that he should think twice about what he was doing."
At the Ring of Memory near the village of Sorge (which, fittingly, means "woe" in German), landscape artist Hermann Prigann's sculpture of naked concrete pillars encircled with charred wood piles celebrates how the forest has enveloped the former border area.
We met Inge Winkel, the mayor of the 120-soul village, who admitted she still stuck to the border patrol path for fear of stepping on an undiscovered landmine if she strayed into the forest. She stood at the fence marking the first of the two metal fortifications that once separated Sorge from the West and dwelt on a detail that has haunted her for years. "It's the highest quality steel, especially chosen by a regime that needed to keep its citizens locked in, otherwise they'd have run away," she said.
We ended our four-day journey in Eichsfeld, a Catholic enclave that is famous for successfully defying the regime, and rested our weary limbs on a bench at the former border - a gift to the green belt initiative from none other than the man who had initiated the monumental changes, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Way to go
Getting there
Air Berlin (0871 5000 737, airberlin.com) flies Stansted-Hanover and Stansted-Berlin from £48 rtn inc tax.
Border trail
German tour operator Wandern im Harz (0049 5322 559603, wandern-im-harz.de) arranges hikes along the border trail from April to November. Hikes last four to six nights; the four-night tour costs €230pp, including hotel accommodation, transfers to and from the nearest railway station, breakfast, packed lunch, introductory talk, map, information material, luggage transfers and SOS assistance, but no guide.
Further information
Harz Mountains Tourist Board: +5321 34040, harzinfo.de. For details of the wider route across Europe: greenbelteurope.eu.
Ah, scientists. "Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester." Well there you go.
Oddly, though, the title of the press release for the same research was: "Promiscuous men more likely to rape." Normally we berate journalists for rewriting press releases. Had the Telegraph found some news?
I rang Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester. She was surprised to have been presented as an expert scientist on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, as she is an MSc student, and this was her dissertation project. Also it was not finished. "My findings are very preliminary," she said.
She had been discussing her dissertation at an academic conference when the British Psychological Society's PR team picked it up, and put out the press release. We will discuss that later.
But first, the science. Shaw spoke to about 100 men, presenting them with "being with a woman", and asking them when they would "call it a night". The idea was to explore men's attitudes towards coercing women into sex.
"I'm very aware that there are limitations to my study. It's self-report data about sensitive issues, so that's got its flaws, and participants were answering when sober, and so on," she said.
But more than that, she told me, every single one of the first four statements made by the Telegraph was an unambiguous, incorrect, misrepresentation of her findings.
Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped? "This is completely inaccurate," Shaw said. "We found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober."
And what about the Telegraph's next claim, or rather, the paper's reassuringly objective assertion, that it is scientists who claim that women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped?
"We have found that people will go slightly further with women who are provocatively dressed, but this result is not statistically significant. Basically you can't say that's an effect, it could easily be the play of chance. I told the journalist it isn't one of our main findings, you can't say that. It's not significant, which is why we're not reporting it in our main analysis."
So who do we blame for this story, and what do we do about it?
Shaw said: "When I saw the article my heart sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they'd got this study."
Since I started sniffing around, and since Shaw's complaint, the Telegraph has quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate.
But there is a second, less obvious problem. Repeatedly, unpublished work, often of a highly speculative and eye-catching nature, is shepherded into newspapers by the press officers of the British Psychological Society, and other organisations.
A rash of news coverage and popular speculation ensues, in a situation where no one can read the academic work. In this case I could only get to the reality of what was measured, and how, by personally tracking down and speaking to an MSc student about her dissertation on the phone. In any situation this type of coverage would be ridiculous, but with a sensitive subject such as rape, it is blind, irresponsible foolishness.
This is the mysql man page, I'll put other information on here some other time.
mysql is a simple SQL shell (with GNU readline
capabilities). It supports interactive and non-interactive
use. When used interactively, query results are presented
in an ASCII-table format. When used non-interactively (for
example, as a filter), the result is presented in
tab-separated format. The output format can be changed
using command-line options.
If you have problems due to insufficient memory for large
result sets, use the --quick option. This forces mysql to
retrieve results from the server a row at a time rather
than retrieving the entire result set and buffering it in
memory before displaying it. This is done by using
mysql_use_result() rather than mysql_store_result() to
retrieve the result set.
Using mysql is very easy. Invoke it from the prompt of
your command interpreter as follows:
shell> mysql db_name
Or:
shell> mysql --user=user_name --password=your_password db_name
Then type an SQL statement, end it with `;, g, or G and
press Enter.
You can run a script simply like this:
shell> mysql db_name < script.sql > output.tab
OPTIONS
mysql supports the following options:
o --help, -?
Display a help message and exit.
o --batch, -B
Print results using tab as the column separator, with
each row on a new line. With this option, mysql does
not use the history file.
o --character-sets-dir=path
The directory where character sets are installed. See
Section 7.1, "The Character Set Used for Data and
Sorting".
o --compress, -C
Compress all information sent between the client and
the server if both support compression.
o --database=db_name, -D db_name
The database to use. This is useful mainly in an option
file.
o --debug[=debug_options], -# [debug_options]
Write a debugging log. The debug_options string often
is 'd:t:o,file_name'. The default is
'd:t:o,/tmp/mysql.trace'.
o --debug-info, -T
Print some debugging information when the program
exits.
o --default-character-set=charset
Use charset as the default character set. See
Section 7.1, "The Character Set Used for Data and
Sorting".
o --execute=statement, -e statement
Execute the statement and quit. The default output
format is like that produced with --batch. See
Section 3.1, "Using Options on the Command Line" for
some examples.
o --force, -f
Continue even if an SQL error occurs.
o --host=host_name, -h host_name
Connect to the MySQL server on the given host.
o --html, -H
Produce HTML output.
o --ignore-space, -i
Ignore spaces after function names. The effect of this
is described in the discussion for IGNORE_SPACE in the
section called "THE SERVER SQL MODE".
o --local-infile[={0|1}]
Enable or disable LOCAL capability for LOAD DATA
INFILE. With no value, the option enables LOCAL. It may
be given as --local-infile=0 or --local-infile=1 to
explicitly disable or enable LOCAL. Enabling LOCAL has
no effect if the server does not also support it.
o --named-commands, -G
Named commands are enabled. Long format commands are
allowed as well as shortened * commands. For example,
quit and q both are recognized.
o --no-auto-rehash, -A
No automatic rehashing. This option causes mysql to
start faster, but you must issue the rehash command if
you want to use table and column name completion.
o --no-beep, -b
Do not beep when errors occur.
o --no-named-commands, -g
Named commands are disabled. Use the * form only, or
use named commands only at the beginning of a line
ending with a semicolon (`;). As of MySQL 3.23.22,
mysql starts with this option enabled by default.
However, even with this option, long-format commands
still work from the first line.
o --no-pager
Do not use a pager for displaying query output. Output
paging is discussed further in the section called
"FBMYSQLFR COMMANDS".
o --no-tee
Do not copy output to a file. Tee files are discussed
further in the section called "FBMYSQLFR COMMANDS".
o --one-database, -O
Ignore statements except those for the default database
named on the command line. This is useful for skipping
updates to other databases in the binary log.
o --pager[=command]
Use the given command for paging query output. If the
command is omitted, the default pager is the value of
your PAGER environment variable. Valid pagers are less,
more, cat [> filename], and so forth. This option works
only on Unix. It does not work in batch mode. Output
paging is discussed further in the section called
"FBMYSQLFR COMMANDS".
o --password[=password], -p[password]
The password to use when connecting to the server. If
you use the short option form (-p), you cannot have a
space between the option and the password. If you omit
the password value following the --password or -p
option on the command line, you are prompted for one.
The password should be omitted on SysV-based UNIX
systems, as the password may be displayed in the output
of ps.
o --port=port_num, -P port_num
The TCP/IP port number to use for the connection.
o --prompt=format_str
Set the prompt to the specified format. The default is
mysql>. The special sequences that the prompt can
contain are described in the section called
"FBMYSQLFR COMMANDS".
o --protocol={TCP | SOCKET | PIPE | MEMORY}
The connection protocol to use.
o --quick, -q
Do not cache each query result, print each row as it is
received. This may slow down the server if the output
is suspended. With this option, mysql does not use the
history file.
o --raw, -r
Write column values without escape conversion. Often
used with the --batch option.
o --reconnect
If the connection to the server is lost, automatically
try to reconnect. A single reconnect attempt is made
each time the connection is lost. To suppress
reconnection behavior, use --skip-reconnect.
o --safe-updates, --i-am-a-dummy, -U
Allow only those UPDATE and DELETE statements that
specify rows to affect using key values. If you have
set this option in an option file, you can override it
by using --safe-updates on the command line. See the
section called "FBMYSQLFR TIPS" for more information
about this option.
o --secure-auth
Do not send passwords to the server in old (pre-4.1.1)
format. This prevents connections except for servers
that use the newer password format.
o --show-warnings
Cause warnings to be shown after each statement if
there are any. This option applies to interactive and
batch mode. This option was added in MySQL 5.0.6.
o --sigint-ignore
Ignore SIGINT signals (typically the result of typing
Control-C).
o --silent, -s
Silent mode. Produce less output. This option can be
given multiple times to produce less and less output.
o --skip-column-names, -N
Do not write column names in results.
o --skip-line-numbers, -L
Do not write line numbers for errors. Useful when you
want to compare result files that include error
messages.
o --socket=path, -S path
The socket file to use for the connection.
o --table, -t
Display output in table format. This is the default for
interactive use, but can be used to produce table
output in batch mode.
o --tee=file_name
Append a copy of output to the given file. This option
does not work in batch mode. Tee files are discussed
further in the section called "FBMYSQLFR COMMANDS".
o --unbuffered, -n
Flush the buffer after each query.
o --user=user_name, -u user_name
The MySQL username to use when connecting to the
server.
o --verbose, -v
Verbose mode. Produce more output. This option can be
given multiple times to produce more and more output.
(For example, -v -v -v produces the table output format
even in batch mode.)
o --version, -V
Display version information and exit.
o --vertical, -E
Print the rows of query output vertically. Without this
option, you can specify vertical output for individual
statements by terminating them with G.
o --wait, -w
If the connection cannot be established, wait and retry
instead of aborting.
o --xml, -X
Produce XML output.
You can also set the following variables by using
--var_name=value options:
o connect_timeout
The number of seconds before connection timeout.
(Default value is 0.)
o max_allowed_packet
The maximum packet length to send to or receive from
the server. (Default value is 16MB.)
o max_join_size
The automatic limit for rows in a join when using
--safe-updates. (Default value is 1,000,000.)
o net_buffer_length
The buffer size for TCP/IP and socket communication.
(Default value is 16KB.)
o select_limit
The automatic limit for SELECT statements when using
--safe-updates. (Default value is 1,000.)
It is also possible to set variables by using
--set-variable=var_name=value or -O var_name=value syntax.
This syntax is deprecated.
On Unix, the mysql client writes a record of executed
statements to a history file. By default, the history file
is named and is created in your home directory. To specify
a different file, set the value of the MYSQL_HISTFILE
environment variable.
If you do not want to maintain a history file, first
remove if it exists, and then use either of the following
techniques:
o Set the MYSQL_HISTFILE variable to /dev/null. To cause
this setting to take effect each time you log in, put
the setting in one of your shell's startup files.
o Create as a symbolic link to /dev/null:
shell> ln -s /dev/null /.mysql_history
You need do this only once.
FBMYSQLFR COMMANDS
mysql sends SQL statements that you issue to the server to
be executed. There is also a set of commands that mysql
itself interprets. For a list of these commands, type help
or h at the mysql> prompt:
mysql> help
List of all MySQL commands:
Note that all text commands must be first on line and end with ';'
? (?) Synonym for `help'.
clear (i Clear command.
connect (
) Reconnect to the server. Optional arguments are db and host.
delimiter (d) Set statement delimiter. NOTE: Takes the rest of the line as new delimiter.
edit () Edit command with .
ego (G) Send command to mysql server, display result vertically.
exit (q) Exit mysql. Same as quit.
go (g) Send command to mysql server.
help (h) Display this help.
nopager (
) Disable pager, print to stdout.
notee ( ) Don't write into outfile.
pager (P) Set PAGER [to_pager]. Print the query results via PAGER.
print (p) Print current command.
prompt (R) Change your mysql prompt.
quit (q) Quit mysql.
rehash (#) Rebuild completion hash.
source (.) Execute an SQL script file. Takes a file name as an argument.
status (s) Get status information from the server.
system (!) Execute a system shell command.
tee (T) Set outfile [to_outfile]. Append everything into given outfile.
use () Use another database. Takes database name as argument.
warnings (W) Show warnings after every statement.
nowarning (w) Don't show warnings after every statement.
Each command has both a long and short form. The long form
is not case sensitive; the short form is. The long form
can be followed by an optional semicolon terminator, but
the short form should not.
In the delimiter command, you should avoid the use of the
backslash (`) character because that is the escape
character for MySQL.
The edit, nopager, pager, and system commands work only in
Unix.
The status command provides some information about the
connection and the server you are using. If you are
running in --safe-updates mode, status also prints the
values for the mysql variables that affect your queries.
To log queries and their output, use the tee command. All
the data displayed on the screen is appended into a given
file. This can be very useful for debugging purposes also.
You can enable this feature on the command line with the
--tee option, or interactively with the tee command. The
tee file can be disabled interactively with the notee
command. Executing tee again re-enables logging. Without a
parameter, the previous file is used. Note that tee
flushes query results to the file after each statement,
just before mysql prints its next prompt.
Browsing or searching query results in interactive mode by
using Unix programs such as less, more, or any other
similar program is possible with the --pager option. If
you specify no value for the option, mysql checks the
value of the PAGER environment variable and sets the pager
to that. Output paging can be enabled interactively with
the pager command and disabled with nopager. The command
takes an optional argument; if given, the paging program
is set to that. With no argument, the pager is set to the
pager that was set on the command line, or stdout if no
pager was specified.
Output paging works only in Unix because it uses the
popen() function, which does not exist on Windows. For
Windows, the tee option can be used instead to save query
output, although this is not as convenient as pager for
browsing output in some situations.
A few tips about the pager command:
o You can use it to write to a file and the results go
only to the file:
mysql> pager cat > /tmp/log.txt
You can also pass any options for the program that you
want to use as your pager:
mysql> pager less -n -i -S
o In the preceding example, note the -S option. You may
find it very useful for browsing wide query results.
Sometimes a very wide result set is difficult to read
on the screen. The -S option to less can make the
result set much more readable because you can scroll it
horizontally using the left-arrow and right-arrow keys.
You can also use -S interactively within less to switch
the horizontal-browse mode on and off. For more
information, read the less manual page:
shell> man less
o You can specify very complex pager commands for
handling query output:
mysql> pager cat | tee /dr1/tmp/res.txt
| tee /dr2/tmp/res2.txt | less -n -i -S
In this example, the command would send query results
to two files in two different directories on two
different filesystems mounted on /dr1 and /dr2, yet
still display the results onscreen via less.
You can also combine the tee and pager functions. Have a
tee file enabled and pager set to less, and you are able
to browse the results using the less program and still
have everything appended into a file the same time. The
difference between the Unix tee used with the pager
command and the mysql built-in tee command is that the
built-in tee works even if you do not have the Unix tee
available. The built-in tee also logs everything that is
printed on the screen, whereas the Unix tee used with
pager does not log quite that much. Additionally, tee file
logging can be turned on and off interactively from within
mysql. This is useful when you want to log some queries to
a file, but not others.
The default mysql> prompt can be reconfigured. The string
for defining the prompt can contain the following special
sequences:
Option Description
v The server version
d The current database
h The server host
p The current TCP/IP port or socket file
Your username
YOUR FULL USER_NAME ACCOUNT NAME
\ A LITERAL ` BACKSLASH CHARACTER
A NEWLINE CHARACTER
A TAB CHARACTER
A SPACE (A SPACE FOLLOWS THE BACKSLASH)
_ A SPACE
R THE CURRENT TIME, IN 24-HOUR MILITARY TIME (0-23)
THE CURRENT TIME, STANDARD 12-HOUR TIME (1-12)
M MINUTES OF THE CURRENT TIME
Y THE CURRENT YEAR, TWO DIGITS
Y THE CURRENT YEAR, FOUR DIGITS
D THE FULL CURRENT DATE
S SECONDS OF THE CURRENT TIME
W THE CURRENT DAY OF THE WEEK IN THREE-LETTER FORMAT (MON, TUE, ...)
P AM/PM
O THE CURRENT MONTH IN NUMERIC FORMAT
O THE CURRENT MONTH IN THREE-LETTER FORMAT (JAN, FEB, ...)
IA COUNTER THAT INCREMENTS FOR EACH STATEMENT YOU ISSUE
S SEMICOLON'SINGLE QUOTE"DOUBLE QUOTE.PP ` FOLLOWED BY
ANY OTHER LETTER JUST BECOMES THAT LETTER.
IF YOU SPECIFY THE PROMPT COMMAND WITH NO ARGUMENT, MYSQL
RESETS THE PROMPT TO THE DEFAULT OF MYSQL>.
YOU CAN SET THE PROMPT IN SEVERAL WAYS:
O USE AN ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE
YOU CAN SET THE MYSQL_PS1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE TO A
PROMPT STRING. FOR EXAMPLE:
SHELL> EXPORT MYSQL_PS1="(@H) [D]> "
O USE AN OPTION FILE
YOU CAN SET THE PROMPT OPTION IN THE [MYSQL] GROUP OF
ANY MYSQL OPTION FILE, SUCH AS /ETC/MY.CNF OR THE FILE
IN YOUR HOME DIRECTORY. FOR EXAMPLE:
[MYSQL]
PROMPT=(\U@\H) [\D]>\_
IN THIS EXAMPLE, NOTE THAT THE BACKSLASHES ARE DOUBLED.
IF YOU SET THE PROMPT USING THE PROMPT OPTION IN AN
OPTION FILE, IT IS ADVISABLE TO DOUBLE THE BACKSLASHES
WHEN USING THE SPECIAL PROMPT OPTIONS. THERE IS SOME
OVERLAP IN THE SET OF ALLOWABLE PROMPT OPTIONS AND THE
SET OF SPECIAL ESCAPE SEQUENCES THAT ARE RECOGNIZED IN
OPTION FILES. (THESE SEQUENCES ARE LISTED IN
SECTION 3.2, "USING OPTION FILES".) THE OVERLAP MAY
CAUSE YOU PROBLEMS IF YOU USE SINGLE BACKSLASHES. FOR
EXAMPLE, S IS INTERPRETED AS A SPACE RATHER THAN AS
THE CURRENT SECONDS VALUE. THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLE SHOWS
HOW TO DEFINE A PROMPT WITHIN AN OPTION FILE TO INCLUDE
THE CURRENT TIME IN HH:MM:SS> FORMAT:
[MYSQL]
PROMPT="\R:\M:\S> "
O USE A COMMAND-LINE OPTION
YOU CAN SET THE --PROMPT OPTION ON THE COMMAND LINE TO
MYSQL. FOR EXAMPLE:
SHELL> MYSQL --PROMPT="(@H) [D]> "
(USER) [DATABASE]>
O INTERACTIVELY
YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR PROMPT INTERACTIVELY BY USING THE
PROMPT (OR R) COMMAND. FOR EXAMPLE:
MYSQL> PROMPT (@H) [D]>_
PROMPT SET TO '(@H) [D]>_'
(USER) [DATABASE]>
(USER) [DATABASE]> PROMPT
RETURNING TO DEFAULT PROMPT OF MYSQL>
MYSQL>
EXECUTING SQL STATEMENTS FROM A TEXT FILE
THE MYSQL CLIENT TYPICALLY IS USED INTERACTIVELY, LIKE
THIS:
SHELL> MYSQL DB_NAME
HOWEVER, IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE TO PUT YOUR SQL STATEMENTS IN
A FILE AND THEN TELL MYSQL TO READ ITS INPUT FROM THAT
FILE. TO DO SO, CREATE A TEXT FILE TEXT_FILE THAT CONTAINS
THE STATEMENTS YOU WISH TO EXECUTE. THEN INVOKE MYSQL AS
SHOWN HERE:
SHELL> MYSQL DB_NAME < TEXT_FILE
YOU CAN ALSO START YOUR TEXT FILE WITH A USE DB_NAME
STATEMENT. IN THIS CASE, IT IS UNNECESSARY TO SPECIFY THE
DATABASE NAME ON THE COMMAND LINE:
SHELL> MYSQL < TEXT_FILE
IF YOU ARE RUNNING MYSQL, YOU CAN EXECUTE AN SQL SCRIPT
FILE USING THE SOURCE OR . COMMAND:
MYSQL> SOURCE FILENAME
MYSQL> . FILENAME
SOMETIMES YOU MAY WANT YOUR SCRIPT TO DISPLAY PROGRESS
INFORMATION TO THE USER; FOR THIS YOU CAN INSERT SOME
LINES LIKE
SELECT '' AS ' ';
WHICH OUTPUTS .
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BATCH MODE, SEE SECTION 5,
"USING MYSQL IN BATCH MODE".
FBMYSQLFR TIPS
THIS SECTION DESCRIBES SOME TECHNIQUES THAT CAN HELP YOU
USE MYSQL MORE EFFECTIVELY.
DISPLAYING QUERY RESULTS VERTICALLY
SOME QUERY RESULTS ARE MUCH MORE READABLE WHEN DISPLAYED
VERTICALLY, INSTEAD OF IN THE USUAL HORIZONTAL TABLE
FORMAT. QUERIES CAN BE DISPLAYED VERTICALLY BY TERMINATING
THE QUERY WITH G INSTEAD OF A SEMICOLON. FOR EXAMPLE,
LONGER TEXT VALUES THAT INCLUDE NEWLINES OFTEN ARE MUCH
EASIER TO READ WITH VERTICAL OUTPUT:
MYSQL> SELECT * FROM MAILS WHERE LENGTH(TXT) < 300 LIMIT 300,1G
*************************** 1. ROW ***************************
MSG_NRO: 3068
DATE: 2000-03-01 23:29:50
TIME_ZONE: +0200
MAIL_FROM: MONTY
REPLY: MONTY.SPAM.COM
MAIL_TO: "THIMBLE SMITH"
SBJ: UTF-8
TXT: >>>>> "THIMBLE" == THIMBLE SMITH WRITES:
THIMBLE> HI. I THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. IS ANYONE FAMILIAR
THIMBLE> WITH UTF-8 OR UNICODE? OTHERWISE, I'LL PUT THIS ON MY
THIMBLE> TODO LIST AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
YES, PLEASE DO THAT.
REGARDS,
MONTY
FILE: INBOX-JANI-1
HASH: 190402944
1 ROW IN SET (0.09 SEC)
USING THE --SAFE-UPDATES OPTION
FOR BEGINNERS, A USEFUL STARTUP OPTION IS --SAFE-UPDATES
(OR --I-AM-A-DUMMY, WHICH HAS THE SAME EFFECT). IT IS
HELPFUL FOR CASES WHEN YOU MIGHT HAVE ISSUED A DELETE FROM
TBL_NAME STATEMENT BUT FORGOTTEN THE WHERE CLAUSE.
NORMALLY, SUCH A STATEMENT DELETES ALL ROWS FROM THE
TABLE. WITH --SAFE-UPDATES, YOU CAN DELETE ROWS ONLY BY
SPECIFYING THE KEY VALUES THAT IDENTIFY THEM. THIS HELPS
PREVENT ACCIDENTS.
WHEN YOU USE THE --SAFE-UPDATES OPTION, MYSQL ISSUES THE
FOLLOWING STATEMENT WHEN IT CONNECTS TO THE MYSQL SERVER:
SET SQL_SAFE_UPDATES=1,SQL_SELECT_LIMIT=1000, SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE=1000000;
SEE SECTION 5.3, "SET SYNTAX".
THE SET STATEMENT HAS THE FOLLOWING EFFECTS:
O YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO EXECUTE AN UPDATE OR DELETE
STATEMENT UNLESS YOU SPECIFY A KEY CONSTRAINT IN THE
WHERE CLAUSE OR PROVIDE A LIMIT CLAUSE (OR BOTH). FOR
EXAMPLE:
UPDATE TBL_NAME SET NOT_KEY_COLUMN=VAL WHERE KEY_COLUMN=VAL;
UPDATE TBL_NAME SET NOT_KEY_COLUMN=VAL LIMIT 1;
O ALL LARGE SELECT RESULTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY LIMITED TO
1,000 ROWS UNLESS THE STATEMENT INCLUDES A LIMIT
CLAUSE.
O MULTIPLE-TABLE SELECT STATEMENTS THAT PROBABLY NEED TO
EXAMINE MORE THAN 1,000,000 ROW COMBINATIONS ARE
ABORTED.
TO SPECIFY LIMITS OTHER THAN 1,000 AND 1,000,000, YOU CAN
OVERRIDE THE DEFAULTS BY USING --SELECT_LIMIT AND
--MAX_JOIN_SIZE OPTIONS:
SHELL> MYSQL --SAFE-UPDATES --SELECT_LIMIT=500 --MAX_JOIN_SIZE=10000
DISABLING MYSQL AUTO-RECONNECT
IF THE MYSQL CLIENT LOSES ITS CONNECTION TO THE SERVER
WHILE SENDING A QUERY, IT IMMEDIATELY AND AUTOMATICALLY
TRIES TO RECONNECT ONCE TO THE SERVER AND SEND THE QUERY
AGAIN. HOWEVER, EVEN IF MYSQL SUCCEEDS IN RECONNECTING,
YOUR FIRST CONNECTION HAS ENDED AND ALL YOUR PREVIOUS
SESSION OBJECTS AND SETTINGS ARE LOST: TEMPORARY TABLES,
THE AUTOCOMMIT MODE, AND USER AND SESSION VARIABLES. THIS
BEHAVIOR MAY BE DANGEROUS FOR YOU, AS IN THE FOLLOWING
EXAMPLE WHERE THE SERVER WAS SHUT DOWN AND RESTARTED
WITHOUT YOU KNOWING IT:
MYSQL> SET =1;
QUERY OK, 0 ROWS AFFECTED (0.05 SEC)
MYSQL> INSERT INTO T VALUES();
ERROR 2006: MYSQL SERVER HAS GONE AWAY
NO CONNECTION. TRYING TO RECONNECT...
CONNECTION ID: 1
CURRENT DATABASE: TEST
QUERY OK, 1 ROW AFFECTED (1.30 SEC)
MYSQL> SELECT * FROM T;
+------+
| A |
+------+
| NULL |
+------+
1 ROW IN SET (0.05 SEC)
THE USER VARIABLE HAS BEEN LOST WITH THE CONNECTION,
AND AFTER THE RECONNECTION IT IS UNDEFINED. IF IT IS
IMPORTANT TO HAVE MYSQL TERMINATE WITH AN ERROR IF THE
CONNECTION HAS BEEN LOST, YOU CAN START THE MYSQL CLIENT
WITH THE --SKIP-RECONNECT OPTION.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE REFER TO THE MYSQL REFERENCE
MANUAL, WHICH MAY ALREADY BE INSTALLED LOCALLY AND WHICH
IS ALSO AVAILABLE ONLINE AT HTTP://DEV.MYSQL.COM/DOC/.
AUTHOR
MYSQL AB (HTTP://WWW.MYSQL.COM/). THIS SOFTWARE COMES
WITH NO WARRANTY.
2008 scandalz.net
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A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
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