Recoder

Christopher Hitchins - memorably described as a ‘drink-soaked Trotskyist popinjay’ by George Galloway - has argued that there are degrees of ‘extreme interrogation’, not all of which amount to torture, in response to the furore surrounding the revelation of American’s use of water-boarding as a means of interrogation.

Vanity Fair invited him to be filmed being water-boarded to see if it refined his views on the practice. He agreed to it. You can watch the video here.

Holland goes smoke free today, but a lot of coffeeshops are getting around the law by permitting only pure cannabis to be smoked on their premises. Cue a great quote, proving that Dutch humour exists.

Proper implementation of the law would require inspectors to check each cannabis joint for tobacco content. “It’s absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette; here they’ll look to see if you’ve got cigarette in your marijuana.”

In other news, a 14 year old girl was left with a ’sucking chest wound’ after being attacked by a grizzly bear in Alaska. I cannot think of anything that scares me more than the thought of being attacked by a bear.

Merely reading the words “Situation 3 - Bear has detected you and shows signs of aggression” on a computer screen sends a shiver down my spine.

You can’t win. They can run faster than you, climb trees better than you, dig deeper than you and can certainly out-wrestle you. A lot of American tourist websites recommend that you ‘accept the basic reality that you may encounter a bear’, which at this stage in my emotional development I’m unwilling to do, but this site in particular offers detailed advice and is worthy of a bookmark if you ever plan on visiting bear country.

I like the way it says the tips on these pages will help reduce the likelihood of meeting ‘Master Bruin’. I can just imagine greeting a bear with a cheery “Why, hello Master Bruin!” as it clamps its claws into the flesh around my collarbone moments before the brutal creation of my pulsing arterial wounds.

Sadly, once the bear spots you and decides to mess you up, even pepper spray won’t help you. Well, you might delay the inevitable for a few more seconds, but the smell of pepper can act as an attractor to other bears! It’s true!

The rest of the tips cover hand to paw combat and the art of playing dead. I remain sceptical that the author of these tips has himself survived a bear attack.

I can’t help myself. Like a tongue compelled to explore a broken tooth, I cannot let a week pass without making some form of contribution to a lively debate on an internet forum.

For many people, the world is black and white. If you oppose the invasion of Iraq, you support Saddam Hussein. If you object to DNA databases, you are pro-rapist. If you accept the democratic legitimacy of your nation’s Government, then you are responsible for every decision they make.

Even the minority of people who are able to understand and articulate nuance exhibit a natural arrogance, as if they alone have a special insight into the complexity of the world and all the solutions to its problems. Perhaps it’s the medium, as I’m providing an example of it now.

The internet provides an opportunity for widespread discussion of important subjects without the influence of mass media and career politicians who share a broad agenda and frame debates accordingly.

In some senses, we’re making progress in this direction. For example, it’s a lot harder for politicians to tell porkies these days.

Everyone I know discusses things on internet forums, and everyone I know loathes themselves for doing it. When I follow a discussion thread, on, for example, Comment Is Free, it always seems to be at best a missed opportunity for the evolution of ideas, or at worst, a compelling reinforcement of my latent misanthropic tendencies - “Why are people so fucking stupid?”

I’ve long thought that democracy is pointless without rationality and intelligence on the part of the electorate, but I’m starting to think all serious discussion is pointless unless everyone who participates understands logic and reasoning.

Casting my mind back an alarmingly long time, I’m pretty sure my comprehensive school general education did not include any lessons on logic and reasoning. I remember hours of tedious quadratic equations and drilling holes into metal sheets, but no time at all on recognising straw man arguments, or deductive errors, or false dilemmas, or circular arguments, or fallacies of presumption and so on.

How valuable would it be if all children were formally taught logic and reasoning from a young age? A generation of empowered bullshit detectors? A scary prospect for some.

A few muscle twitches and headaches convinced me that I needed a week of detox, meaning no caffeine, no nicotine, no ‘herbal supplements’, no red meat, and no alcohol.

I chose the wrong week to abstain from drinking.

My company celebrated the launch of a new enterprise today with beers in the office, and as I write these words, most of my colleagues are beginning a company-card-behind-the-bar drinking session that will undoubtedly prove to be the stuff of legends tomorrow morning.

I stuck to my resolve, and cycled home via Tescos. All was going to plan as I filled my basket with avocados, beetroot, cucumber, tomatoes, pumpkin seeds and peppermint - foodstuffs befitting a man who is calling a cessation of hostilities on his body after a prolonged bombardment of artillery fire.

Then I arrived at the booze aisles. Budvar - the proper Czech stuff that tastes as if it’s brewed from God’s tears - is being offered at a price that would tempt an elderly Methodist preacher into a well-lubricated life of bonhomie. The boundaries between vivid imagination and hallucination were blurred as I heard a lascivious voice whisper ‘I’m two for one, take me home. Drink me deep, Richard.’

My immense strength of character, amply illustrated by my panicked, wide-eyed, sweating sprint towards the checkout, was tested a final time by the Pimms & Lemonade sample stall outside Surrey Quays shopping centre. Ordinarily, I would step over my Grandmother for a fine glass of Pimms on a summer’s day, but I achieved a perfect 3/3 record for temptation resistance.

Two days gone, five to go until I can mark Germany’s victory in the Euro football championship with a Weissbeer or two.

I caught a few minutes of Coldplay performing live on BBC2 last night. Around 700 people were at the BBC Television Centre to watch them, joined by camera crews and helicopters.

Throughout their set, the cameras cut relentlessly to the irritating sight of Ricky Gervais grinning gormlessly in the crowd.

While at some level aware that the BBC cameraman was unable to hear me, I began an onslaught of questions. ‘Why do you keep cutting to Ricky Gervais?’, I hollered. ‘What the fuck does he have to do with Coldplay?’, I raved. I concluded that the cameraman was fulfilling the implicit demand of the viewing public.

Is it not possible for people to enjoy something unless they know Ricky Gervais is being simultaneously enriched by the same experience? Were people singing along to ‘Yellow’ only tentatively until the sight of Gervais in full-voiced accompaniment roused them into straining their vocal chords with new found enthusiasm?

I like Ricky Gervais in the sense that Extras and The Office are very entertaining, but I don’t find his mere presence at a concert sufficient reason to piss my pants with excitement. How long until the Gervais Cutaway is mandatory in any live television event to validate the tastes of the viewing public? How many commissioning editors will turn down pilot episodes on the grounds that they don’t contain a sufficient abundance of Gervais Cutaways?

If we don’t nip this worrying trend in the bud, this Gervais Cutaway situation could get out of hand. It’s terrifyingly easy to imagine a newly retired baby boomer couple sparked into conversation this way.

‘Oh, look Jean - Ricky Gervais is in the crowd of gawkers on the Antiques Road show.’

‘So he is, Terry! He’s lurking behind the George III Period Mahogany Canterbury!’

‘It was only the other day that he was in the audience of that Britain’s Got Herpes show too!’

‘Do you remember when you caught Herpes, Terry?’

But I digress.

I hereby announce the start of my ‘Limit the Gervais Cutaway To Only A Couple Of Times During Live Televised Cultural Events’ campaign. Join me while there’s still time.

Alison’s been interviewed by the Guardian about a most heinous subversion of justice on the internet. I’m jealous. Click on me.

I’ve long suspected that mass murderers share a tendency towards physical ugliness. It makes sense. They seek revenge on a cruel world through violence and tyranny on a mass scale as an ultimately futile expression of their physical inadequacy.

A handy tyrant guide lends credence to this theory. Augusto Pinochet? A slack-jawed insult to the senses. Ivan the Terrible? My eyes fail with tears. Hitler? Short-arse.

Wandering aimlessly around a bookshop on Charing Cross road, this prejudice was challenged when my eyes were drawn to Simon Montefiore’s biography of the ‘Young Stalin’.

Wait a minute - Stalin’s dishy! The wavy hair, the dreamy eyes, the emo scarf, the carefree stubble, the retro jacket - he’s well put together, and was probably as popular with the ladies as he was with the chaps.

You can imagine hoards of friends disappointed by his failure to join them at the pub yet again.

‘Where’s Joe tonight?’
‘He can’t make it. He’s with his new girlfriend.’
‘ANOTHER girlfriend? Joe’s never off the job!’
‘I wish I was as cool as Joe.’

Etc.

How does a good-looking young writer go from arranging delicate verse to condemning millions to the Gulag? I suppose I should read the book to find out.

Most people who pay attention to current affairs (as well as being vaguely depressed all the time) will be aware that in order to demonstrate within a kilometre or so of Parliament Square, you need written permission from the police.

At the time of the introduction of this repressive law, its apologists said it was needed in response to the threat of terrorism, but that the police must give permission for the protest to go ahead. However, they can impose conditions relating to, amongst other things, where the protest may happen, when it may happen and how long it may go on for.

It so happens that George Bush is in London today, and a proposed march in protest of his visit has been banned by the police. Perhaps technically, they haven’t given permission for it to happen today. Of course, if someone’s only visiting for the day and you can’t protest his visit on that day, you have effectively been silenced.

How appropriate that his presence this weekend provides such a vivid example of the libertarian principles he has helped to flush away.

There is an elegantly written open letter to Bush published in the Guardian today which modestly reflects upon his long eight years in office that is well worth eight minutes of your time. Read it here.

On making my first tenuous steps into the innocent world of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, I was alarmed to discover that I am pitifully stupid.

In one of the daily exercices, the charming Dr Kawashima quizzes you on simple arithmetic while you scribble the answers onto the screen of your DS. Your score is determined by how quickly you can make a given number of calculations, with mistakes penalised by time added.

It seems I have no grasp of what six times seven is without really thinking about it. Not, ‘Oh, right, it’s forty-two’, I mean a real Descartes-esque display of furrowed brow, worsened by the pressure of a ticking clock.

In my defence, I cannot easily recall an occassion when I’ve been required to calculate six times seven as a matter of temporal imperative, but it troubles me that there are single digit multiplications that push the limit of my numeric capabilities.

In another round, Dr Kawashima implores you to draw, from memory, a sketch of whatever he says. The software then examines your sketch for distinguishing features, such as pronounced ears in the case of a Koala.

I was called upon to sketch a Koala, a Kangaroo, and a map of Australia. It pains me to say this, but my picture of a Kangaroo was a more accurate depiction of a map of Australia than my map of Australia.

Dr Kawashima told me I was as thick as a tub of cement and that I should return to his brain training acadamy at the earliest opportunity. I place myself at his mercy.

I had a bad Monday morning. It is reasonable to ask if there is any other kind, but as with all things it is a question of relativity.

After achieving a record level of unwelcome physical intimacy due to minor delays on a sweltering underground train, I rushed to work stopping only to use a cash machine. I intended to withdraw £40 in order to meet the petty financial demands of the usual traders, delicatessen owners and publicans that I will encounter throughout the week.

While I was typing in my PIN, a vague acquaintance approached me and inexplicably decided to initiate a stop-and-chat by tapping me on the shoulder. I dislike physical contact almost as much as conversation before 11am, but I successfully suppressed my instinct to tell him to fuck off and began the sadly familiar ritual of making small-talk with someone I’d ordinarily cross the street to avoid.

Perhaps it was because I was highly distracted and not yet fully awake that I managed, without any conscious effort, to retrieve my debit card from the machine and walk away without taking the fucking money.

My internet bank statement shows that £40 was withdrawn, but it’s not in my wallet. Who interrupts someone in the middle of a transaction? I want to kill the guy. I will concede it’s at least 60% my fault, but that still means he owes me £16. Where do I stand legally?