Harry Redknapp Denies All Wrongdoing

Look, mate, I don't even know how to spell "bung"

Dawkins Delusion

When Oxford don Richard Dawkins published his book The God Delusion in 2006, I recall that the most telling criticism of its content - and more particularly its tone and style- came not from enraged Christians, who you'd expect to be upset, but from fellow atheists and fellow scientists.

So, when a friend of mine who works in the Department of Ecology and Biodiversity at the University of Hong Kong  and identifies himself as an agnostic offered to lend me a slim volume called The Dawkins Delusion?, I was intrigued enough to take him up on his offer.

The book, by former atheist and molecular biophysicist turned Chrisian and theologian Alister McGrath, picks up on, and is in many ways an extended version of the review of Dawkins' book which was published in Prospect magazine,"Dawkins the dogmatist", which lambasted it for its "incurious, dogmatic, rambling, and self-contradictory" nature.

For me, the most interesting point raised by McGrath is the tendency of Dawkins to set up straw men by digging up long abandoned ideas, or "memes", to borrow one of his own coinages, which he then attempts to discredit. Or is this really his purpose, as the effect of such a rhetorical strategy is rather to perpetuate the obsolete myth rather than to bury it?

One example of this tendency cited by the author is the idea that religion and science are in a permanent state of war, when the true relationship between the two is far more nuanced and complex. You don't have to look far beyond the results of a 1997 survey of scientists, which found that 40% believe in God, to start questioning not just the assertion itself but the reason why anyone would wish to make it, and continue to make it, in the face of the evidence.

Seagull Manager Strikes Again

That consultant has been at it again, but this time his bluff has been called. My friend who works at the large logistics company with three letters none of which is a U or a P or an S has reported to me that he saw the company’s Singaporean-born Kellogg-educated “C-suited” ex-McKinsey director in the Hong Kong Club’s box at Happy Valley last night.

Nothing strange in that, you might think. Many of us enjoy a night at the races. However, whereas the rest of us would wait until the morning to send a non-urgent email to senior management, McKinsey Man sent it when he got home – it’s time-stamped 00:13 on Thursday the 19^th of January.

Just in case anyone might be thinking that the hotshot had been working through the night, my friend had the presence of mind to ask him if he had enjoyed last night's racing and whether he had any tips for the weekend meeting at Shatin.    

Review of Sherlock

The second season (each one has been only three episodes long, so they’re more like autumn in Lapland than any of the four seasons most of us are used to) of the BBC series Sherlock has just ended, with the show getting generally good reviews, bordering on the rave in some quarters.

Starring the man with the most unlikely name in acting since Arnie burst onto the scene in Conan the Destroyer, Benedict Cumberbatch (no prizes for guessing what he was called when he was at prep school), and Bilbo Baggins, AKA Mr. Everyman, AKA Martin Freeman, real name Tim From The Office, Sherlock proved to be very much a curate’s egg.

It was best in Series I: Episode 1, good in Series 1: Episode 3 and Series II: Episode 1, average in the weekend’s finale, poor in Series II: Episode 2 (“The Hounds of Baskerville”) and dire in Series 1: Episode 2. This 90-minute offering had a ridiculous plot involving a Chinese beauty from the impoverished hinterland who for some strange reason spoke Cantonese - “Daaih lou! Cheng lei!” ("Brother! Please!”) - and had become involved in crime because she had no prospects. And this show was supposed to be set in the modern day – when bright, not to mention, beautiful kids like her go to university and feast themselves on the fruits of the world’s fastest growing economy – not in the nineteenth century!

One of the problems with any adaptation of a Conan Doyle tale to the screen is that the stories themselves, in common with Poe’s seminal detective stories, depend to a large extent on atmosphere. Things happens, of course, but not at the breakneck speed at which they tumble over each other in, say, a Robert Ludlum blockbuster, written with one eye on the silver screen.

To make up for the intrinsic lack of action, the team responsible for Sherlock decided to fall back on two tried and trusted remedies: the “bromance” (complete with jokes about “confirmed bachelor John Watson” – nudge, nudge, wink, wink, SAY NO MORE!) and the manic edit. The latter, featuring our hero doing a supersonic mental filing of all the tidbits he’s somehow stored up over his short lifetime on his way to coming up trumps yet again, is a convenient way of papering over holes in the plot but can misfire if the viewer’s willing suspension of disbelief shifts to apathy.    

Verging dangerously close to albino, with eyes the colour of a husky’s, Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is angel-like, not in terms of his character – his impatient arrogance leads to some good dialogue, such as “I can’t just turn it on and off like a tap” in response to his sidekick’s “Don’t get clever!” – but in respect of his ability to perceive things intuitively by direct apprehension. Who needs brilliant powers of deduction or superior reasoning skills, if you can just see the truth?             

Verdict: unlikely to pass the test of time as well as Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

Thatcher Responds to Streep Snub

                            Wasn't thanked by who?

Crash Course?

I was disappointed to read that a proposed "Most Impact Idea Award" has been dropped by a Bangalore bus company after someone pointed out that perhaps this wasn't the best name after all for a new incentive scheme aimed at trying to persuade drivers to get back to the depot each evening without putting a dent in the company's image.

"Most Effective Idea Award" just doesn't have the same ring, somehow.  

Fergie’s Freckles Break Their Silence

We told her women must cover their shame in Muslimcountries but she just wouldn't listen 

All That Money but the Hong Kong Jockey Club Still Can’t Run a Website

Come on, Winfried Englebrecht-Bresges, the C-suited boss of the tail that wags the governmental dog, the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

Put some of that famed German efficiency to work and get your website working! Almost without fail these days, the equine website is down on every race day, which is a bit like a polling station shutting its doors on election day, i.e. no earthly use.

 EB, as he is known (or has he restyled himself “E” since his divorce from the daughter of one of Germany’s top stud farmers, Astrid Bregses? – yes, he really adopted his wife’s name when they got married), is a stickler for high standards with a reputedly short fuse, so heaven help those IT guys when der Boss finds out that one of the club’s major promotional tools – which also hosts his blog – has become something of a joke.

Perhaps he should put wife number two (whose name I don’t believe he has taken, which some might deem inequitable) onto the problem. After all, she shares a reputation for the kind of can-do spirit that characterised another eminent Hong Kong First Lady, Betty Tung Chiu Hung-ping, wife of former Chief Execrable Tung Chee-hwa. Betty, it should be recalled, was given the nickname “A1” on account of her insistence on always travelling in the first-class seat of that description – even when someone else had paid for it.

Gervais on Comedy

Interesting thoughts from the man who co-created The Office:  

"I think you should take the audience to places it hasn't been before, otherwise why bother? There's enough anodyne comedians out there that say exactly what everyone's thinking, what's the point of that?
…

I think that a comedian's job isn't just to make people laugh, it's to make them think. If there's a meaning to it, and a substance and a bit of a depth, then you're doing something. Now, here's the rub: offence, is never given, its taken.
…

I'm offended by things all the time but I haven't got the right not to be offended, and remember this: just because someone is offended it doesn't mean they're right."

Byron made much the same point nearly 200 years ago in Don Juan:

"And I will war, at least in words (and – should

My chance so happen – deeds), with all who war

With Thought; - and of Thought’s foes by far the most rude,

Tyrants anhd sycophants have been and are.

…

The consequence is, being of no party,

I shall offend all parties: never mind!

My words, at least, are more hearty and sincere

Than if I thought to sail before the wind."

Stand by for Gervais's second hosting of the Golden Globes this Sunday. 

Five Predictions for 2012

I am delighted to welcome my guest, Diva Noddle, for the second in an occasional series of pieces. His first was very warmly received and created many calls for more of the same.      

"My first prediction has to do with the field which some people say I have distinguished myself in for more years that I care to remember, and it is namely this: retired bankers will continue to distance themselves from the current crop, so that you wouldn’t know the two groups were related in any way, shape or form.

My second prediction is closely related – and I promise you it will be my last one about banking! Retired bankers will continue to display sour grapes about the current crop raking in larger sums than they ever managed.

Okay, now onto a topic very dear to my heart, the place I am proud to call my home, and which is I think rather proud in return to call me “Dr Eldon” and a Gold Bauhinia Star! I predict that I’m going to claim once again that one of my predictions came true when it didn’t quite. Folks will doubtless recall that last time I predicted that Hong Kong would overtake both New York and London in 2011 in the Global Financial Centres Index rankings. Well, it didn’t, but it got jolly close, which is much the same thing, isn’t it?  

I’m going to really go out on a limb here and predict that 2012 will be the year in which Jiang Zemin goes from looking like a marble bust to becoming a handful of dust. (Excuse me for slipping a bit of doggerel in there, but the muse comes but once or twice a year, and when it does come a-calling, one must heed the call, or one might be permanently museless before one knows it!)

    

My final prediction concerns me – yes, I can hear what you’re saying, that I’m letting that lamp out from under its bushel again! I predict that I will pick up one or two more non-executive directorships in 2012. Heavens knows, one isn’t getting any younger and the odd HK$360,000 or so p.a. – which my colleague tells me is the going rate for these things – comes in very handy as one journeys round the world trying one’s best to make Planet Earth a better and happier place. Like one big happy family, or, as we like to say chez Noddle, like one big bank – without those horrid bonuses they all pay themselves these days."  

UK Liver Doctor OKs Two Days without Booze

              Of course, the Biblical "day" is a metaphorical construct 

Milliband Defames Bob Holness

I'm sorry, but I've been listening to too much Kenny Dalglish.

Hong Kong - Land of the C-Suited Unstructured

A friend who works for a large logistics organisation best known by its three initials has sent me tantalising snippets from a job advertisement it has placed in a trade magazine.

The post, for a "Strategy Specialist, External Affairs", which sounds very hush-hush to me, must be very important, as the ad runs to 342 words, I am told, which must set some sort of record for prolixity.

The body of the ad, it must be said, provides a pretty good profile – not, however, of the kind of person the company is seeking, but of the person who devised and wrote it.

The "Requirements" section (it's followed by a "Responsibilities" section) raises the immediate suspicion that this is the work of a “seagull manager”, AKA a consultant. For it is one mark, indeed, the defining mark, of a consultant to construct an imaginary world in which he is indispensable, rather than to inhabit the real one from which everyone else wishes him well rid.

Thus, the first quality sought in the candidate is five years' experience in "highly analytical jobs (qualitative and quantitative), e.g. management consultancy", as if they existed nowhere else.

It's a bright start but it gets even better. The candidate must have the "ability to interact with C-suited executives". Now, I have to admit that this one threw me. Then, I realised that what our feathered friend meant to write was "C-suite", as in the ridiculous piece of self-aggrandising gobbledegook

Which leaves us with our final requirement. He or she must be a "self-starter" (so don't bother to apply if you get someone else to start you up in the morning) with "the ability to flourish in a team-based but, unstructured environment".

There's so much to like here that one doesn't know where to self-start. The bizarre punctuation suggests a consultant who has spent too much of his life inventing acronyms like CIO and MAE, not to mention "C-Suited", while the "unstructured environment" just has to be the niftiest way ever found for saying "Avoid us like the plague - we make it up as we go along".

Truly a multinational logistics megacorp with Hong Kong characteristics.

Top Places to Visit in Israel: Part IV

The Upper Galilee is one of the most beautiful and interesting parts of Israel. I enjoyed my week there tremendously, and that was in no small part due to the terrific hospitality offered by Erwin and Etha Frenkel at their bed and breakfast in Korazim, located midway between the northern coast of the lake and the town of Rosh Pina.

                               View from Frenkels to Sea of Galilee

Erwin, a very sprightly 70-something, was editor of the Jerusalem Post, and, as may be expected of someone who is both Israeli and a journalist, he has fairly strong views about many things. I think I briefly fazed him when I mentioned that Menachem Begin is something of a hero of mine – not the sort of thing he typically hears from a European, however much the man is missed in Israel itself – but not for long.

American born and bred, the Frenkels cater to a clientele consisting largely of overseas visitors. Erwin says vacationing Israelis turn their noses up at a guest house sans Jacuzzi – they also like a barbecue area cum place for the children to run around in when on their holidays – which all means that this is arguably the most tranquil pension in the whole of Israel, not a country noted for its quietude.

                                         Sunset over Upper Galilee

The major selling point of the B&B, and the reason it rates a staggering 27 5-star ratings out of 28 on Tripadvisor (the other is a 4), is not the breakfasts, which are top drawer and vary each day, or the views (be sure to book the Blue Suite, if it's available), but the conversation. Erwin appears genuinely pleased to discuss anything from Operation Peace for Galilee, AKA the invasion of Lebanon – which he supported – or the settlements in the Palestinian Territories, which he doesn't. If politics isn't your thing, he'll willingly chat about music and books, as well as giving tips on local sites and restaurants.

                                                           Breakfast

If all this seems like a plug, I can only say in my defence that I've stayed in a lot of places and this beats the lot. At 500 shekels (US$130) a night for two, or 400 shekels (US$104) for one, it's pretty reasonably priced. Stay for a week, as I did, and you can get seven nights for the price of six.

                                                                 Bed

There's much to see and do in the Galilee – of which more in another post – and this spot, 300 metres above the lake, and thus 100 metres above sea level, is ideally placed for visits to Rosh Pina, the Kabbalah centre of the world at Safed (also called Tsfat and a host of other names), Hula Lake and the Golan Heights, as well as the Sea of Galilee, AKA Lake Tiberias or Kinneret.

Those who are interested in staying chez Frenkels can email info@thefrenkels.com. 

Names and Looks

In Henry IV Part II, Shakespeare has the future king say of his working-class friend Ned Poins, "What a disgrace it is to remember thy name!", referring to the habit of those possessed with an inflated opinion of themselves of pretending to forget someone's name when it suits.  

This type of practice is a fertile source of laughs in The Black Adder, where Edmund's father, played by Brian Blessed, makes a point of calling his second-born son "Edwin", "Egbert" and "Osmond", when he's not calling him "the other one" or "the slimy one". 

Another common practice of those seeking to assert their self-assigned place in a notional pecking order is simply not to use another's name at all when conversing with him or her, even when they know it perfectly well. Somone wasn't so far off the mark when they said that you can tell who your friends are because they're the ones who include your name when they talk to you. Perhaps. But it's also true that there are some people whose conversational style and overall personality mean that they virtually never use their interlocutor's name, whoever he or she may be.

A new twist on the naming game was suggested to me by a recent reading of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, where the author writes, "But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them."

On reflection, this would appear to be another shibboleth that's not so very wide of the mark.

Beware the Nutters

Last night, my wife told me that our daughter, who in time-honoured blogging fashion I shall simply refer to as Natalie, would be going out with some friends to watch the New Year's Eve fireworks display from the top floor of some office building in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Now, putting aside the fact that New Year's Eve is the most tedious time of the year, and putting aside the fact that a fireworks display is the most mind-numbing form of so-called entertainment - Cantonese television always excepted - as a caring human being dedicated to the art of parenting, I was naturally concerned for my offspring's welfare. 

"I'll ask her to call us before she sets off home," I said to my wife. "There are a lot of nutters out there."

"Oh, I didn't know you were going out," my wife responded quick as a flash - and that is really quick for her. 

20 years married come July and it's come down to this, I thought. Whatever happened to that sweet person I first met all those years ago, and where on earth has she got this acid sense of humour from?

Some things, like dressing up in silly hats, blowing tuneless horns and singing dreadful Scotch dirges, are destined to remain beyond my ken forever.

Suarez Explains Obscene Gesture

I try v-sign once but I can only count to one

Uneasy Sensations versus Pity

"Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. When I am on my way to dine with a friend, and finding it late, have bid the coachman make haste, if I happen to attend when he whips his horses, I may feel unpleasantly that the animals are put to pain, but I do not wish him to desist. No, Sir, I wish him to drive on."
[Boswell, Life of Johnson]

Worth 10,000 words from some bleeding heart NIMBY, eh, sir?

Dalglish Fumes Over Suarez Injustice

I demand protection for Luis from the reaction to my inflammatory words and actions

Our Parents' Lives Enthral and Bind Us

"Had any man spoken of it, it had been the most easy thing in the world, to have taught me, and to have made me believe that Heaven and Earth was God's House, and that He gave it me. That the Sun was mine, and that men were mine, and that cities and kingdoms were mine also: that Earth was better than gold, and that water, every drop of it was a precious jewel. And that these were great and living treasures and that all riches whatsoever else was dross in comparison. From whence I clearly find how docible our Nature is in natural things, were it rightly entreated. And that our misery proceedeth ten thousand times more from the outward bondage of opinion and custom, than from any inward corruption or depravation of Nature: And that it is not our parents’ loins, so much as our parents’ lives, that enthrals and blinds us."

[Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations]

Echoes of Alice Miller, and the words of a man at one with Nature.