The thrill has gone.
Topic: Poker
Note: If you're not a regular visitor to the Gutshot club or its website, then the following will make little sense to you. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Observant followers of the Gutshot forum will have noticed that I have not posted since the end of February. That was the moment when I realised that the fun had been squeezed out of it, for myself and several friends, by a relentless tide of nastiness from one rather sad individual. Since my withdrawal, others have been on the receiving end of the abuse. Here is a piece of world-beating hypocrisy and stupidity from a March 27th entry concerning my friend Allan Engel:

'Evil Engel thinks he's the Lone Ranger with Willy Purle, Plug and Comic Boy fighting wrong wherever it is typed on a forum. Of course logging in under a false name and abusing Gutshot and Mr Lloyd is all part of noble fight....

Got that? Allan Engel is a Lone Ranger, along with three other people!??! And isn't it awful that he posts under an alias? Who does such a thing?

Matters reached a new low yesterday when this person said this concerning 'Catman':

'Catman tells us this just before a photo of the famed Marbella Fiasco, a delight indeed as he breaks down like a little girl who lost her parents.'

He's talking about the a Channel Four documentary in which Catman did indeed break down ... rather like a grown man who had lost his parents. Both died in the year prior to filming and that was made clear in the programme. His father had in fact committed suicide following the death of Catman's mother. Hardly comic material.

I made Gutshot aware of this and the offending material was removed. But now this troll is claiming that it never happened. Specifically he writes:

I have never made snide remarks about the death of anyones parents on an internet forum. You accuse me of something that has already been sorted out by The Catman and Baby in private.

Judge for yourself. By the way, if anyone is prepared to crawl through the sewer that this person's posting history, let me know if you find a post that contains any poker content at all. There might be one, but I can't think of any from memory. Don't get your hopes up.

And don't expect consistency either. That March 27th entry informs Allan: 'I granted Mr Young a truce a while ago, something it looks like you don't know about, he's free to post without mocking by me. If he does not want to, thanks for the memories.'

Allan was indeed aware of what I had been told. But he correctly surmised that it was not a truce, as the exact wording of the message I got was:

Mr Young I shall leave you alone for a while, enough people take the piss out of you without Baby tearing you a new arsehole every week.

Be lucky

which Allan and I both instantly recognised as what Islamic scholars would call a Hudna. That is to say that it is a truce with a time-limit (note the words 'for a while'). In any case, not long after I received note of the Hudna, this appeared on the forum (Feb 28th)

You know full well why I dislike you, we have done it to death, you treat people(dealers, casino staff, players you don't rate) like shit and you are a hypocrite. I am prepared to draw a line under it, but if you want to continue fine, Baby won't dodge a challenge.

Thanks for saving UK poker.

The above followed a post in which I made it perfectly clear that my attempts to preserve poker in the UK had failed, and that it was TV's Late Night Poker that rescued it from decline. Presented, again, with the declaration that I mistreated casino staff and dealers 'like shit', I gave a list of 8 Gutshot dealers and asked which of them had a problem with me. Given that I always get welcomed by the dealers at the club, I looked forward to finding out. Alas, answer came there none.

I hesitated to write about this sad troll on my website, but eventually I decided that someone had to point out the sad decline of a once-fun forum. New contributors will come and go. But if abuse of the order that I, Catman, Dom Sutton, Engel, Commie Boy, Jamie, Gryko and Roland have been expected to tolerate carries on, then many will wonder why they are providing free content in return for abuse. The troll thinks this is all part of the deal and tells one victim:

You always come back for more Dom, Baby is like the custard slice, you just can't resist.

Some of us are closing the cookie drawer for good.

Various poker thoughts.
Topic: Poker
Online Game Selection

A review of a book by Phil Gordon in Bluff magazine starts with the words 'If you never throw away the best hand, you're calling too much' and continues 'If you never get caught bluffing, you're not bluffing enough'. To these I would like to add DY's rule of online game selection 'If you don't think your opponents are complete morons, you're in the wrong game'.

I have a reputation among some of my critics for being a bit arrogant and condescending. So it's a surprise for me to realise in the last few weeks that a key fault of my online play hitherto has been crediting my opponents with a modicum of intelligence, instead of treating them as total idiots. I first noticed this in my NL play, but later found it to be just as true in limit. I decided that to improve my results I needed to focus more on value betting. It's where all your profit comes from online. In the case of limit poker, I think it's the main thing that UK players who dabble in it fail to appreciate.

Most UK players who try limit report back on how hard it was for them to bluff or get people out of the pot. While I have been in many tough limit games, it's generally true that people call too much in them. But it's not enough to realise that you should bluff far less than you would in pot/no-limit. You must also realise that you should react to this by betting hands that you would never think to bet in big-bet poker. This is where the British get it wrong I think. They think they have lost because of their failed bluffs and the outdraws they have suffered but the real culprit is their unwillingness to make the extra value bets with one-pair on the turn and river that a limit professional would make.

Here is an example:

In a recent six-handed game, I'm on the button with K-10. Two people call before it gets to me and I raise. The blinds fold and the limpers call the raise. On a flop of A-9-3 rainbow, they both check to me. My note for one of them says that with top pair he always leads into a raiser. When they check I decided to bet. I am not under any illusion that anyone will fold an ace here. But I could easily have the best hand and it suits my purposes to get rid of someone with a weaker holding.

They both call, which is a surprise. The turn card is a 10, giving me a pair of tens. Again they both check. I'm still confident that I know for sure that one of them doesn't have an ace, but am worried that the other might, since there was no reasonable draw on the flop he could have been drawing to. So I check behind. On the river they both check again. This time I feel sure that I'm ahead. In the past I would have just checked this hand down. But now I want to earn more. I think it very likely indeed that the one on whom I had a note is holding a pair of 9s and that he will call me down because I checked the turn. So I bet the 10s on the river in the expectation of being called by something worse. In the event, that player did indeed call me. I showed the 10s and he mucked. I can't say for sure what he had, as the VC hand history doesn't show it, but I'm confident it was a pair of 9s.

The Showdown Poker Tour.

A new European-based poker tour starts soon. It's the Showdown Poker Tour. I've nothing against a rival tour to compete with the EPT, but I'm puzzled how this is going to work out. I think it could do well if it pitches itself at a smaller buy-in range than the EPT, but instead it seems to want to go the other way. Its Lithuanian leg is €5,000. France is €7,500 and Germany, where I would love to play poker, is €10,000! Where is all this money supposed to come from? If they can find a way to get runners then great, but am I alone in thinking they have bitten off more than they can chew?

UPDATE - I looked at the Showdown site again and found that Betfair will be running satellites for the inaugural €5,000 London leg at Gutshot, as will the Gutshot online site itself. That may help for that event. But I'm not sure how they can fill the others. The €2,000 event I played in Vienna did not sell out and turnout was down on last year, despite satellites on Party Poker. Pokerstars seems to be the site that can make the most difference and they certainly won't be involved, as they back the EPT.

If only 230 or so people will go to Vienna for a €2,000 event, what are the prospects for a bigger event in Lithuania?

The days are just packed!
Topic: Misc.
I had the privilege of meeting the 2027 WSOP champion today - Mr Jake Brian Banner Hawkins. His mother and father were in town for the #1,500 main event at the Victoria and I met up with all three at the local Marriott. He's a delightful little boy of five months now. It was great to catch up with Keith and Katharine. Favourite moment of the meeting was when Keith noticed his son staring at the window (right of picture) - 'He's fascinated with those blinds' he said. 'Like father like son', I thought.

Later on I made a long awaited trip along the central line and down the northern line to Tooting Bec, that magical tube station immortalised by Jo Haslam at Acehighwins. I wanted, of course, to see the stickers with which she decorates the posters on the escalators and to bask in the magic of the place for myself. First impressions were positve.

But as I walked up the central staircase gazing at the posters on both sides, I began to worry that something was wrong. I couldn't see any stickers at all. Could it all have been a hoax? Had she been lying all along? Or had I turned up on the wrong day, when new posters were put in place, before she had a chance to cover them. I was getting downcast until I saw this:

At last! It's the pig with the cake in his stomach. I've finally seen one of her stickers in situ ... truly a day of achievement!

Does TV have all the best writers?
Topic: Television
I wasted two hours of my life last night watching the third movie in the 'Matrix' trilogy. Don't ask me what it was about. I've really no idea, as it was so boring my mind wandered throughout most of the action. I thought the first of the series was excellent, as it had some novel ideas. It's a shame they didn't end it there.

So many film makers seem to think that special effects can make up for a lack of ideas. They can't. I've been lent some great lower budget films by my flatmate recently and found them far more satisfying. Do see 'Max' (John Cusack and Noah Taylor), 'Nine Queens' (Argentinian) and 'Bullet Boy' (low budget British film, set in Hackney). You won't be in a rush back to the cinema again. When you don't have the budget for special effects, you're forced to think of interesting plots.

All the best writing seems to be in television now. Last year I went to Blockbusters and my local lending library several times and found myself ignoring most of the films there. Instead I rented Series 1-5 of the 'West Wing', 'The Jewel in the Crown' and Season 1 of '24'. I've also enjoyed 'House', 'CSI' and 'Desperate Housewives' on TV. Unlike today's movies they aren't aimed at teenagers or naive social activists.

When looking at a list of the films nominated for the Oscars this year, I realised that I had only seen one of them: the Wallace and Gromit film! I'm mildly interested in seeing 'Capote', as Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent in almost everything he does. But I've little or no desire to see the issue films of George Clooney, as I don't want to be subjected to their biased point of view. On the subject of which, full marks to my sister for walking out of 'The Constant Gardnener' due to its anti-corporate bias. I've never walked out of a film before the end, but have great respect for those who do.

Now with added RSS.
Topic: Misc.
I've been looking at the settings on my blog and discovered that I can enable something called RSS. I don't really understand what it is, but I recall James Butler writing to me to say that I should get an RSS feed. About 20 minutes later, after my failure to establish one, he wrote back to say that he would no longer be bothering to read this site if I couldn't be bothered to quit the stone age. That was several months ago.

I've no idea what this RSS thing will do. According to Tripod - "Non-paying users will have a more basic page generated for them". As I am on the free service, don't expect too much.

Try harder.
Topic: Misc.
The actor Bruce Willis recently said in an interview that the US should invade Colombia to stop the production of cocaine, because its supply to the US was "a form of terrorism".

I quite like Willis as a person, as he's refreshingly right-wing by Hollywood standards. However I can't help thinking that the facts support the opposite conclusion; that it would be fairer for Colombians to demand an invasion of the US. That's because I have a different view of who the victim is in the drug trade.

It's common to think that drug users are the people who suffer from drug use. They are victims of course, but their suffering comes about through their own choice and is a by-product of something that they find rewarding. The people who suffer most are those innocent people in the countries where the drugs are produced, whose society is made ungovernable through the corruption of the police, judiciary and government caused by so much wealth flowing into the hands of criminal gangs. They are the people whom I feel sorry for, not the idiots who have heart attacks after years of using cocaine. The latter know the risks and have a choice. The former have none.

On stability in Iraq.
Topic: Politics
"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

That was President John F. Kennedy.

No mention of 'exit strategies'.
No mention of 'stability'.
No mention of 'legality'.
Just an unapologetic and defiant declaration of the need to fight for freedom.

I am sometimes held to have been 'wrong' about Iraq, because of the continuing violence there. While I did not forecast the savagery that has persisted, I remain convinced that the war has been right. And the savagery that persists, in a peculiar way, shows that some people do understand that I'm right. Those people are the terrorists themselves, who grasp that a successful, prosperous and free Iraq would be a mortal blow to their long term plans, because prosperity and freedom would divert muslims from victimhood and the quest for jihad.

While I would like stability for Iraq and indeed anywhere else, I must again stress that stability for me is a necessary but not sufficient condition of success. Stability is only meaningful if it applies to a just society. And whatever you may think about Iraq now, it is more just. If you only want stability, go to Auschwitz. It's tremendously stable. But it's associated with the greatest injustice of all time.

Moreover, stability is an illusion. Nothing is ever static in the affairs of man. What we've learned from decades of containment is that in the end, it's the container who gets contained. The rogue states play games with weapons inspectors, bribe UN officials to release funds for illicit purposes and while this illusion of stability is maintained, the free world slumbers in a false sense of security until disaster strikes and it's forced to fight - just as in 1939. I don't want that to happen again.

If you haven't already read it, check out the essay 'Stability, America's enemy' in the essential reading section of the left hand sidebar.

No gloating until I get back, please.
Topic: Misc.
I'm off to Vienna this afternoon with the intention of playing the ?2,000 E-WSOP main event, so blogging will be light or non-existent while I am away. This is the comp I've always wanted to play, but never felt like pulling up for. However I've done very well in the last six to nine months and it's now only a small proportion of my bankroll. Although I don't play anywhere near as many comps as many of those who are going, I am happy that I have an edge in the game. I won two comps online last week (one with 400+ runners, another with only 70) and I won a two outright last year and from memory came second in another, with a few other money finishes. Not bad given that I play so few of them.

But before leaving, I have to remark on the strange 'gloating' messages I have had recently. I'm not against gloating per se. In fact I have encouraged it before.

But some of the gloats I've had aimed at me recently make little or no sense at all. In particular, the person who said that the election of Hamas had been "a Bit of a slap in the chops for you" clearly didn't read what I wrote on Dec 21 last year:

https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=1312774

which concludes:

"Fundamentalists can shout empty slogans like 'Islam in the answer' and never be disputed as long as they are kept out of power. Islamism must be given the chance to fail, democratically."

The same person also tells me "What you expect of Islam is never going to happen". Well I can't see the harm in trying! Because the alternative of doing nothing is so much worse. And if you really believe that muslims can't adapt to democracy, then Europe has as much of a problem as Iraq does. Bosnia and Turkey are likely to be admitted to the EU in the next ten years or so!

I'm also puzzled by the civil war jibes about Iraq. I appear to have more faith in the common sense of the average Iraqi than such critics. But again, if I'm wrong then Britain has as much of a problem in the long term as Iraq does. For all the people who insist that the Shia and the Sunni cannot get on together, I've yet to encounter one who goes on to wonder why then this country allows muslims of both groups to live here.

And while we're on the subject of 'civil war', can we at least be clear that for there to be an Iraqi civil war, then both sides must be Iraqi? In the case of the most repugnant suicide attacks, it's clear that many of the bombers themselves have come from outside Iraq.

As for the snipes about not responding to my right-wing critics (!!) who say that I'm overlooking the threat to America's dominance through its Imperial Overstretch and loss of world reserve currency status, I have explained before why I don't discuss this. It's because it brings back painful memories of something I did over ten years ago. As I explained to James Butler not long after I started this site. Specifically:

https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/control.comment?a=add&entry_id=154994

in which I related how I was required to prepare a talk about a subject of my choosing for a public presentation course while I worked at Midland Bank. Bizarrely I decided to talk about 'Decline of the United States'. As I later wrote:

Several years ago I was worried about it too. I even went as far as to buy a bestselling book about it: Paul Kennedy's `Preparing for the Twentieth Century'. And nicely gathering dust it is too. In the four or five years since I've bought it, I haven't read more than one paragraph. I did however read another doom-and-gloom book by William Rees-Mogg and James Davidson called `The Great Reckoning'. So worried was I by the predictions of its chapter about urban America (titled `Drugs, delusions and the imperial culture of the slums') that when I needed to prepare something for a presentation course at Midland Bank, I delivered a talk on `The Decline of the United States'.

I cringe now to think that in the decade or so since I gravely told my audience of the forthcoming collapse of the US, the country went on to record nine consecutive years of economic growth. Didn't they know that they were supposed to suffer economic disaster? The cheek of those damn yanks! And I was so solemn too.

After the briefest of recessions, the US economy is now growing at over 7 per cent! For an advanced economy, that is a truly incredible result. I guess in part, I'm trying to spare Butler the embarrassment I now feel. Don't dig any deeper James, you'll only regret it! He writes: `But how much longer will it last? When the money runs out and the heathens batter their doors down then they won't be as happy as their TV persona would suggest. Yet again he is obsessed with the decline of empires. In particular the one he has read about the most. In James' world, all odes lead to Rome.

I've heard of this idea of the decline of the dollar. I've read about Imperial Overstretch. I've bought the book, drank the Kool-Aid, and worn the T-Shirt. I just hope nobody has a picture of me wearing it! It's too embarrassing.

All the best until I get back!


*See also: https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=109560

Why do British people associate the metric system with Europe?
Topic: Misc.
AOL has a poll asking users whether the UK should switch its road signs from miles to kilometers. Here is a typical comment from an angry opponent:

Malcolm62001:

"It's only because the goons in Brussells want to run our country, and a lot of our MPs are letting them. We were a once a world leader but now we are a mixture of everywhere. Let's not lose our English ways - lets stay with miles."

Do people like 'Malcolm' not realise that Australia, New Zealand and Canada all use kilometers? Did they succumb to pressure from Brussels or did they just figure that life is easier when your measurements are based on the number 10? I don't have strong views on this topic, but I do feel grateful that the old imperial money system of pounds, shillings and pence was scrapped when I was two. So perhaps future generations will be grateful to us if we switch away from miles. When I was in school in the seventies, every textbook used Kms. It frustrated me that I never encountered them in daily use.

There are many things that are worth conserving in Britain. The imperial system of measurements probably isn't one of them.

At last, a Tory rethink on housing.
Topic: Politics
Last year, on election day I wrote here about my frustration with the Conservative Party's protectionist attitude to new housing construction:

Quote:

"The one policy where I find myself in agreement with Labour is on housing. The Conservatives vilify Prescott for wanting to build more housing on the Green Belt, but I think Prescott's got this right. There is an urgent need for more housing in the South East of England and I feel that he's facing facts, while others bury their heads in the sand. I do feel sickened listening to some middle-class southerners prattling on about defending the Green Belt. While they may think that they are speaking for the defence of rural tranquility, what they are actually saying is that people who live in overcrowded and overpriced towns and cities should be made to stay there. It sickens me. The Tories express their opposition to 'Prezza's digger' in terms of giving local communities a voice, but we all know what this means because nobody has any incentive to say 'yes'. Every community would say no to more housing, because the people consulted are those who don't benefit from greater supply. The poor and the homeless wouldn't have a voice in this process.

Before anyone leaps to the assumption that I'm wanting government interference in the market to suit my own needs, I should stress that I'm not. What I would like is for the market to be made more free. What we have at present is unrestricted demand, but highly restricted supply. The number of bodies who have the right to object to new housing construction has risen in recent decades and the result is a big anti-development bias. This must be reversed. The Tories are supposed to be the party of free enterprise and it disappoints me to see them being so protectionist on this matter."

It's therefore a great relief to read this article in the Times today:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25610-2031797,00.html

which reports:

In a speech that ignored much of last year’s election manifesto, George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said that he would change the tax regime, planning system and supply of public housing to increase the number of affordable homes.

In 2005 the Tories said that they would oppose all of John Prescott’s homebuilding plans in the South East and establish more green belts with even tighter planning regulations. Although popular with traditionalists, the policy was a turn-off for young families looking for affordable homes. In an attempt to revive the spirit of Margaret Thatcher’s "homeowning democracy", Mr Osborne said that the party would help first-time buyers.

"I want the modern Conservative Party to become again the champion of affordable and sustainable homeownership," he told a housing industry conference in South Wales. "I want us to look afresh at the planning system, and tackle the delays and obstruction that is damaging the the affordability of our housing."

I would love to think that someone in the Conservative Party had read this article about 'Affordable family creation', but I doubt it.

Affordable family creation

Worth reading if you have the time, but the executive summary is:

"In parts of the country where it is economical to buy a house with a yard in a neighborhood with a decent public school, you’ll generally find more Republicans."

If I worked in Tory Central Office I would paint that message in large capital letters on the walls.

What chance, romantic love?
Topic: Misc.
An article in the Observer titled "Women demand tougher laws to curb abortions" caught my eye last week. It reports that that a "survey by MORI shows that 47 per cent of women believe the legal limit for an abortion should be cut from its present 24 weeks, and another 10 per cent want the practice outlawed altogether." On first glance it seems a surprising finding, as there is nothing like the same hostility to abortion in the UK that one sees in the US. What has happened?

It got me to thinking about the so-called Roe effect in American politics, which basically states that the introduction of legalised abortion leads to a fall in support for legal abortion, as pro-choice parents will have fewer children than they might otherwise have had, while anti-abortion parents will have larger families as a consequence, as they will not exercise their right to a termination when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Looking at the last two presidential elections, I think that the theory holds a lot of water.

Taking the idea further, I have begun to wonder about the long-term future of romantic love. How did your parents meet? The chances are that if you're reading this, you're in a Western country and you take it for granted that you have the right to choose your future marital partners and indeed the right to have none at all if you wish. But how common is that world-wide?

I don't know, but I'm starting to think that it's going to be a lot less common in the future that it is now. Check out this pictorial representation of the world, as illustrated by fertility rates.

http://www.pregnantpause.org/numbers/fertility.htm

The countries coloured in red are those with fertility rates below replacement level, countries that can expect declining populations. Those in blue are countries where the average woman has more than four children in her lifetime, where the population can be expected to rise greatly. Note that the countries with the high birth rates are places where arranged marriages are common and where younger people have far lower expectations about romantic happiness and instead take it as their duty to produce a family. The countries with the declining birth rates are those where people are led to believe that they will meet and attract their 'one-true soulmate' by themselves. Reality, as indicated by the high divorce rates, low birth rates and rising number of people living alone, suggests otherwise.

Assuming present trends continue, how many generations will it be before romantic love becomes the exception rather than the norm on a global basis? Perhaps it will account for less than half of all marriages at some point during your lifetime!

Hints and cheats.
Topic: Misc.
I completed URU: Ages beyond Myst this morning. It's a puzzle game based on the idea of exploring an ancient but extinct civilisation. Actually, I say I completed it, but I needed a lot of assistance. In fact without the hints I found online, I don't think I would have ever done it given a million years.

Spoiler:

Take the final scene for instance. In order to know that it exists at all, you have to realise that a comment you hear from a recording of a woman's voice talking about giving back what you have taken, means that you should return to all four levels that you've visited and undo the last thing you did while there.

Doing this takes you to another place, where you are supposed to note down the symbols drawn on the floor. You then return to the place where you started, from which you're meant to go back to the room where you first encountered a hologram and select those symbols on the .... Oh sorry am I losing you?

My point is that I'm struggling to believe that ANYONE could have completed this game without going online for hints. So many times I got half-way through a puzzle, having done the hard part of sketching out diagrams of stained-glass windows or hieroglyphics before coming to a dead end. Sometimes consulting the hints led to a reaction of 'but of course!', but on most occasions, it was 'how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?'.

Spoiler:

A case in point - in one level, you find that you can't access an area of a cave because it's pitch black. You're supposed to realise that you have to go to a different area of the same level and walk into a swarm of fireflies, some of whom will follow you.

Except it's not that simple. The fireflies only cluster around you if you walk. As soon as you run, they vanish. They also don't like rain, so if it starts raining you have to get under a covered passageway until it stops. In the least logical bit of all, you have to somehow figure out that the flies will follow you if you cross water ONCE but not a second time. This is supposed to drive you to devise a river crossing using some discarded barrels.

I honestly don't think that a team of Stephen Hawkins, Alan Turing and Albert Einstein could have worked all that out. In my case, I never even noticed the fireflies in the first place. I thought they were spores from the nearby plants.

Having said that, I did have fun with the game. The landscapes and the soundtrack are amazing and when you do figure something out and advance to the next level, there is a real sense of accomplishment and excitement at the coming revelations.

But no more jumping in puzzles games ... EVER, please.

Rejoice, eh!
Topic: Politics
Rejoice rejoice! Canada has elected a Conservative government. Another country swings to the right. In Canada's case, levels of corruption and crony-capitalism that exceed anything we're used to in the UK have finally pushed Canadian voters to reject the Liberal Party, which had become hopelessly tainted with sleaze.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4641954.stm


Meanwhile, a new survey by the BBC reports that people in Afghanistan and Iraq are the among most optimistic people in the world when it comes to their economic future.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4641396.stm

I wonder what those two countries have in common!

My obsession, in any language.
Topic: Misc.
It's about time I told readers of my curious obsession. I love buying teach-yourself language books. I don't mean the ones that only aim to impart a few phrases for people on brief holidays. No, I want the ones that teach the entire grammar and syntax.

I've long admired those who can learn the language of another country. When I came out of the film 'JFK', I was struck by the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald had learned to speak fluent Russian. I can speak reasonable German and French and a bit of Russian and got into Portuguese for a while in the late 90s. But I'm not fluent in anything. It remains my fantasy to become fluently multilingual, rather like the Matt Damon character in The Bourne Identity. I know that's utterly absurd, but a man can dream, can't he?

For the time being though, buying the books is about as far as I get. I hate myself for not finishing any of them, but that's one of the drawbacks of having played so much online poker in the last few years. You feel that you should be at the PC earning money all the time.

Somewhere in the middle of the photo below there is 'Teach youself Norwegian'. I bought that because I wanted to be able to read Vampus Verden, written by the 'Nordic Eva Braun' (copyright Jamie) who commented about Hurricane Katrina here.

I'm reminded of her today, as I've just learned that she won the 'Best Political Blog' award in Norway's second biggest Newspaper, Dagbladet. There's hope for Norway yet!

Former Vice-President of Syria demands change.
Topic: Politics
Only one news story seems important to me today and it's not the resignation of Charles Kennedy.

Khaddam calls for Syrian revolt.

Former Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam says he wants to see President Bashar al-Assad ousted through a popular uprising. Mr Khaddam told the BBC that Syrians were frustrated with the current regime and should be mobilised by the opposition groups in the country.

This is exactly the sort of positive knock-on effect that the invasion of Iraq was supposed to produce.

It's also nice to see someone having a conversion on the journey back from Damascus. :)