Here's How to Egregiously Manipulate the Facts of a Case

I saw this poster in a subway station here in Vancouver, along with a few other pro-Israel posters.

Let's just say, I wasn't impressed. Or amused.

Let us be clear: I was not distressed by the fact that the poster was supporting Israel. I think that Israel is both a vibrant, democratic state and a canker that has eaten at the Middle East since its formation. I have no particular problem with media that support or media that criticize it. I was upset that the maps on the poster were selected to imply a blatantly false proposition.

The first map shows the United Kingdom of Israel, which lasted a hair over 100 years. It split into the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the former of which was conquered by Assyria after about 200 years, and the latter of which was conquered by Babylon between 597 and 582 BC. The elite of the Kingdom of Judah were then taken into the Babylonian exile.

The second map shows the British Mandate of Palestine in 1920, the date in which the San Remo conference supported that a "national home for the Jewish people" be set up within Palestine on the understanding that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." There was no intention to commit all of Palestine to become a Jewish State, which is why the word "state" was not used at all. In addition, the land could hardly be called "Jewish land" because Jews were, at that point, a tiny minority. As the League of Nations reported,

There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ. Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or--a small number--are Protestants.

The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years.

The final, current map on the poster is meant to illustrate that the Republic of Israel, even with the West Bank added in, is much smaller than the Jewish Lands were in former days. It implies a gradual shrinking over 3000 years of occupancy.

How misleading this implication is can be shown by looking at a maps of "Jewish land" in 800 BC (rather than 1000 BC), 1919 (rather than 1920) and 1967 (rather than now).

The first map shows the Kingdom of Judah in about 800 B.C. Since the United Kingdom of Israel was ephemeral and the northern kingdom called Israel was incorporated into the Assyrian Empire in about 720 B.C., the Kingdom of Judah represented Jewish Lands from then until about 590 B.C.

In the middle map, there are no "Jewish lands" at all. The Balfour Declaration that Palestine should accommodate a large Jewish population had not been put into effect. Jews in Palestine in 1919 were neither legally nor demographically in possession of a homeland in Palestine.

The last map shows both the Republic of Israel and the lands it controlled in 1967: the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. It is significantly larger than the non-existent Jewish lands in 1919, isn't it?

These three maps support a different inference about the extent of Jewish lands than the maps on the poster. It shows an ancient state which disappeared from the map and a Jewish people who scattered in a diaspora, living without a homeland. It shows that a Jewish state was recently created and still exists. In fact, these maps support a truthful account, as the poster does not.

Whoever designed the poster and the "StandWithUs" group who paid for it should be ashamed of themselves.

Spoken Word Performances on Archive.org (Shakespeare, Shaw, Tolkien)

I used to wander into the University of BC's record collection (pause for definition: records are 12-inch vinyl disks that each hold a sound recording of some kind). Sometimes I'd listen to something funny, such as The Goon Show; sometimes, something musical, such as sea chanteys by the X-Seamen's Institute; sometimes, something spoken, such as Bernard Shaw's play St. Joan.

The biggest name in spoken-word recordings, there and elsewhere, then and now, was Caedmon Records (now Caedmon Audio). Since 1952 it has been recruiting the top authors and actors to perform poems and plays. Check out the list of their first hundred records on this page to see what type of talent it attracted.

My unsolicited praise of Caedmon was occasioned by a visit I made to the Internet Archive site yesterday. On the off-chance that I'd find something interesting, I clicked "Audio" on the front page and then typed "Caedmon" in the Search Box. Much to my surprise, here is what I found: Caedmon recordings of several Shakepeare plays (Othello, Coriolanus, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, Pericles Prince of Tyre, The Merry Wives of Windsor) and a Shakepeare poem, "Troilus and Cressida." Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, Jack Prelutsky's Nightmares to 
Trouble Your Sleep, Kipling's Just So Stories, and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit round out the collection.

Listening to the last item, I was very impressed with how the voice actor, Nicol Williamson, altered his voice and accent to the various characters. Bilbo Baggins, as a hobbit, got a "West Country" accent, as he should, but the dwarves were northerners by the sound of them, perhaps Yorkshiremen.

Here is a link to the page my search turned up. Give a listen to one of the recordings, or just marvel at the list of actors in them. For example, the recording of The Tempest has Michael Redgrave, Anna Massey, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Griffith, and John Hurt. Coriolanus stars Richard Burton.

"London Calling" (from Star Trek: Into Darkness) arranged for piano

The film Star Trek into Darkness (2013) has a scene in which a couple wake up in a future London and leave home to visit their dying daughter. The view from the window in their apartment shows one recognizable building, St. Paul's, but the spires around it are reminiscent of present London buildings such as the Shard and the Gherkin.

The piano music that plays in the background as this happens is "London Calling." A later scene continues the music. In it, the father administers what he hopes will be a cure for his daughter, kisses her good-bye, then pays the price for that cure.

The music is, I think, quite lovely, and very unconventional for a Star Trek movie. The composer, Michael Giacchino, should be proud.

The unified version for piano and orchestra that is found on the CD is nice, but a Youtube user called ThePandaTooth adapted it for piano alone. He plays it faster than it is played in the movie but is, again, worth listening to.

Sheet music of his arrangement is on-line. You can find a couple of other sheet music transcriptions if you poke around the Internet. I don't know enough about written music to tell you which is best.


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Update: Well, aren't I the cultural illiterate! I didn't realize that the title of this piece, "London Calling," was a reference to an album by The Clash. It makes sense, though: Another piece from Star Trek into Darkness is "The Kronos Wartet," an obvious reference to the Klingon Home World Kronos (or Qo'noS), the Klingons' favourite activity (war), and the Kronos Quartet.

If you're not familiar with the Kronos Quartet, their rendition of "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix may come as a pleasant surprise.

New MusOpen Project to Create Free Chopin Recordings

It has been three years since MusOpen concluded its project to release massive amounts of classical music as high-quality recordings of high-quality performances. The project was a huge success, bringing in much more money in donations than it intended. The additional largesse went into recording additional music.

Now, there's another project being started, the recording and release of all of Chopin's music as free files, available to be used for any purpose. Like the previous effort, this one starts as a Kickstarter campaign to raise the necessary funds. Anyone who enjoys classical music and appreciates the idea of freely available and freely reusable files should consider making a donation.


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Update: More than $90,000 were raised in the campaign. Success, and the recording process can begin!

Thaxted

At church today was sung a hymn with a lovely tune and, I add, good words. The title is "Let Streams of Living Justice," and the composer was Gustav Holst. I made note of that and checked it out using Google when I got home. It turns out that the tune is called "Thaxted" and is based on a theme in the "Jupiter" section of the composer's suite The Planets. The Wikipedia page on the tune lists fourteen hymns and four secular lyrics for the tune, so it seems very popular. As mentioned, though, I like the lyrics to "Let Streams of Living Justice." They remind me that Christianity is, or should be, a radical set of beliefs, not a complacent, conservative, mainstream one.

Iain Banks, Seamus Heaney, Louise Manson-Hing

It's been a horrid month for deaths.

Iain Banks was also known as Iain M. Banks. He used the two names to distinguish his persona as a science-fiction author from that of a practitioner of more conventional forms of fiction. I am far from an expert in his work, but I have read the science fiction novels Consider Phlebas, Player of Games, and Use of Weapons. 

The three novels can be considered space opera because of their setting, in which a partnership has been established between organic beings (their various species do not matter so much) and artificial intelligences who are considerably more intelligent but, on the whole, like having us around. The partnership is known as "the Culture." It is space-based, insanely rich, and both libertarian and liberal. It also tends to meddle in the affairs of many less advanced peoples to lead them in the direction of being more libertarian, more liberal, and richer. All for their own benefit, of course. As we know from recent history, such efforts are not always appreciated and sometimes cause more damage than good.

The artificial intelligences have long lifespans and a wide range of personalities. They generally appreciate irony. For example, when a non-Culture ambassador commented on their "lack of gravitas," many of them chose names for themselves that proudly advertised the lack: Experiencing a Significant Gravitas Shortfall, for example. Other names express the ship's attitude, such as Poke it with a Stick, or sense of humour, such as Ultimate Ship the Second.

Even though the Culture novels have a space-opera background, and space opera does not have a reputation for exploring ethical problems or developing rounded characters (may I mention Star Wars?), they do ask if individuals would suffer and grow, even in a liberal, post-scarcity utopia. The answer, very clearly, is yes.

Although Iain Banks is one of the best novelists of our time, I think I can call Seamus Heaney the best poet of our time. I first came across his work, oddly enough, in a Grade 12 English Provincial Exam. The poem was called "Digging." In it, the poet is attempting to write, but hears his father working in the garden outside. The sound of digging causes him to flash back to his father's digging of potatoes, twenty years before, and the children's love of the round roots he exposed for them to collect. Then a further flash back to his grandfather, "the best digger on Toner's bog," hard at work. Then back to the present. Although he is proud of them and their work "I've no spade to follow men like them." So he looks again at his pen and thinks "I'll dig with it."

I've summarized the poem so you can appreciate the delightful pride he expresses in his ancestors and his humility towards his own profession. You should read the poem itself, however.

I was taken enough with it to look up the author, something which I have never done for another poet that I've met in a Provincial Exam. I discovered that he had a Nobel Prize in literature and was often called the best Irish poet since Yeats. You'll have to make your own judgement of that, but how many poets could make it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list with a translation of Beowulf? If that is not sufficient to impress you, consider that "In 2009,...two-thirds of the poetry collections sold in the UK the previous year had been Heaney titles."

I will include my favourite poem by Heaney as my last word on the man.

Limbo

Seamus Heaney

Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back
To the waters. But I'm sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open.

She waded in under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ's palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there.

Finally, I come to Louise Manson-Hing. She is not famous. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways." For about fifteen years, she was the most important person in my life. She would have remained one of the most important, even after my marriage, if I had been able to keep up my contact with her. For reasons that I will not go into, I could not.

I met Louise in the back row of a university class. She offered me a muffin. Not a come-on; just simple fellow-feeling. She was not given to playing games with people's minds. She was very protective of her heart, however. She would sometimes reject people, push them away, to find out if they would go. Even when she was doing this, she was one of the best people to talk to for hours on end, and she never hung up. Her voice was well-modulated and beautiful. Her loyalty was intense.

Her personal courage was immense. For example, at one point in her life she enjoyed taking out her little dog for walks through the streets and parks at two or three in the morning. When she was warned that this was not safe, she simply did not understand why she should have to be afraid. Years after, after she had made contact with women who had been hurt by men, she said she felt ashamed for not understanding their point of view. She never adopted it, though. She could look after herself.

After years out of contact, after my own marriage had changed enough to allow it, I tried many ways to contact Louise again. I phoned her workplace a few times, but was told that she did not work there any more. I found her sisters on Facebook and left inquiries with them. Finally, though I knew that she would never have a web page or blog of her own, I simply searched the internet for her name and I found her obituary here. She had been dead from cancer for over a year.

I am ashamed that I was not there for her when she was dying. I wish, more than anything, that I could apologize to her.

Lights without Electricity; Better Shelters for Refugees

Early on, I accepted Buckminster Fuller's idea that we do not need to accept scarcity of resources because we could do more with less. His example was communication from continent to continent: one could do it using tons of copper laid in transoceanic cables, or one could launch less than a gram of copper into orbit in a communications satellite. The second choice is not only cheaper, it is better, but it requires that we focus our attention on the problem. That is what, most often, we fail to do well.

When we do so, the result cheers me up immensely and gives a little hope for civilization's ability to survive. Two stories have recently appeared that show how such ingenuity can improve the lives of the poor.

The first was a better solution for a vast problem: finding suitable shelter for refugees, who number about fifteen million now. At the moment, many are leaving the violence in Syria and need basic shelter, fast. The traditional solution is to put them in tents.

Tents are solutions, but not good ones. They are dark, cramped, cold, and last only about six months before needing replacement. The better solution emerged when the UN High Commission for Refugees asked the designers at IKEA to create a refugee shelter. As one would imagine, they designed a basic home that can be made in a factory, shipped in flat packs, and assembled with included tools in a few hours. It is bigger than the tents that were used, is wired for electrical lights and small appliances, is designed to last for years, includes insulation, and will cost only £655 ($1066.55 Canadian) once mass production starts, and perhaps a tenth of that later, according to PRI. It is now being tried in Ethiopia. Here is one report on it  on Dezeen and another from MSN News:

It can also be upgraded with, for example, solar panels for the electricity and earth walls for extra insulation.

The other story comes from Alfredo Moser, a Brazilian mechanic, who designed a way to light up homes during the day without using any electricity. It is simple and cheap enough for people to install it themselves. It goes like this:

1. Collect a number of two-litre water bottles.
2. Clean them, remove labels, and fill them with water and two capfulls of bleach, to prevent algae from growing in them.
3. Cut holes in the ceiling that the bottles can fit into.
4. Push the bottle up into the hole, so the top third or so protrudes beyond the roof.
5. To improve the evenness of the light, put an opaque cap on the bottle, such as the plastic container for camera film.
6. Seal the bottle in place with polyester resin, so no water can enter.

The result is that the sunlight that strikes the upper part of the bottle refracts through the clear water and provides an even light in the house. On a sunny day, each bottle provides as much light as a 40 to 60 watt bulb.

It is easy to dismiss this idea if one lives in a developed country where electricity is available, reliable, and cheap. However, it makes a difference where it is not, as Mr. Moser says:

There was one man who installed the lights and within a month he had saved enough to pay for the essential things for his child, who was about to be born. Can you imagine?

A good idea like this spreads. Mr. Moser did a few installations of his lights. Other people saw them, thought "good idea," and did their own installations. Now, the Moser light is being installed by charities in the Phillipines, Bangladesh, and about fourteen other countries. By the start of next year, Moser estimates that over a million people will have installed his lights.