Isn't this wonderful! It's the winning portrait in this year's Natural History Museum Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award. His name is Troublemaker and he's a young adult Sulawesi black-crested macaque. The photographer is Stefano Unterthiner of Italy.
"Maroni (Italy's current home secretary) should withdraw the police from the streets and the universities, infiltrate the students' movement with agents provocateurs ready for anything and give the demonstrators a couple of weeks to rampage shops, set fire to cars and turn the cities upside down [...] After which, backed up by popular support, ambulance sirens should drown out those of the police [...] in the sense that the police should show no mercy and make sure that everyone ends in hospital. Don't arrest them, given that the magistrates would release them immediately, just beat them up and beat up those teachers who stir them up [...] above all the teachers [...] I don't mean the old ones, I mean the young women teachers [...] There are teachesr who indoctrinate the children and take them onto the streets: criminal behaviour!" (“Maroni […] dovrebbe ritirare le forze di polizia dalle strade e dalle università, infiltrare il movimento con agenti provocatori pronti a tutto, e lasciare che per una decina di giorni i manifestanti devastino i negozi, diano fuoco alle macchine e mettano a ferro e fuoco le città. […] Dopo di che, forti del consenso popolare, il suono delle sirene delle ambulanze dovrà sovrastare quello delle auto di polizia e carabinieri […] nel senso che le forze dell’ordine non dovrebbero avere pietà e mandarli tutti in ospedale. Non arrestarli, che tanto poi i magistrati li rimetterebbero subito in libertà, ma picchiarli e picchiare anche quei docenti che li fomentano […], soprattutto i docenti […] non dico quelli anziani, certo, ma le maestre ragazzine sì. […] Ci sono insegnanti che indottrinano i bambini e li portano in piazza: un atteggiamento criminale!”)
The curator of the exhibition in Bolzano that included this admittedly rather unlovely artwork, by Martin Kippenberger, has just had her contract withdrawn. Corinne Diserens, appointed director of the new Museion to give it a touch of international class and responsible for the presence of the crucified amphibian, has already been excommunicated by the local archbishop, as well as being on the receiving end of protests, hunger strikes, complaints to the authorities and a letter from 'Eggs' Benedict himself. Given that the exhibition, entitled Peripheral Vision and Collective Body (it sounds better in Italian, just) ended in September, Diserens, currently gathering material in China for her next show at the Museion, must have been surprised to be told yesterday that her services are no longer needed. There's surely no connection between her summary dismissal and the fact that the Volkspartei, which had an absolute majority in the province until last week, did rather badly in the local elections. Maybe they should ask for the crucifix back and see if they can attach a scapegoat to it.
Well, today's the big day. The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories is now officially available from all good booksellers. If you pester them. Go on. Pester them. And, of course, from Amazon. You can order it directly from this blog by clicking on the widget on the right. You won't regret it. I'll keep you updated with reviews and the exciting promotional activities Salt and I are dreaming up to make sure that no one in the known universe will be unaware of the book. You can, of course, do your part by telling everyone how wonderful it is, even if you haven't read it yet. And, naturally, it would make a fabulous Christmas present for broad-minded aunts. 
Thanks to Steve Bell for this. If only Thatcher were well enough to enjoy the sight of disastrously deregulated banks being nationalised throughout the free world....
Only yesterday, Italy's minister of justice 'Choochieface' Alfano was talking about rejuvenating the judiciary. Now it appears there are plans to pass one of those ad personam laws for which Italy is becoming sadly famous (or would be if the country had any international standing left). This time, it's an article which removes the age limit for supreme court judges, currently set at 75. And who's the persona for whom this is being done? None other than Corrado Carnevale, a man who earned himself the nickname 'sentence-killer' after annulling a series of mafia convictions on the basis of formal legal quibbles. If the law passes, Carnevale looks set to become the head of Italy's supreme court. He's 80 now and he'll be 83 when he steps down, so he'll be be able to do a fair amount of damage to a legal system that's already under seige from the executive. He's already been saved from prosecution for being associated with the Mafia by another little law passed some years ago (yes, when Berlusconi was last in power), a law that not only granted him full pension rights, but allowed him - to the hooror of most of his colleagues - to be reinstated as a judge. As usual, the question is: Cui bono?
When I first read Borges as a teenager I was thrilled, enthralled, puzzled, inspired. Years later, a collected Borges was published and I thought it would be a good oportunity to reacquaint myself with the entire body of work. As I read on though, I found myself wondering why - despite the fact that the stories were clearly the stories I had read, and loved, thirty years earlier - the language consistently failed to thrill, enthral, puzzle and inspire me. I looked at the translator's name: Andrew Hurley. I went back to look at the name of the translators of the books I'd read as an adolescent: Anthony Kerrigan and, more often, Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Thanks to Scott Pack (from whom I've borrowed this photograph of Borges and di Giovanni) and Warwick Collins (who gives his own account of what he calls the 'greatest literary crime of the century' here), I know a little more about why Hurley's translations have replaced much better ones made during Borges' lifetime and with his collaboration and approval. Di Giovanni now has his own site, with a description of what happened and some previously unpublished texts by Borges. If you love Borges, you know where to go.
"In the ten years since Matthew’s passing, Congress has repeatedly and unacceptably failed to enact a federal hate crimes law that would protect all LGBT Americans. That’s not just a failure to honor Matthew’s memory; it’s a failure to deliver justice for all who have been victimized by hate crimes, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. All Americans deserve to live their lives free of fear, and as Americans, it is our moral obligation to stand up against bigotry and strive for equality for all.
"Today, Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Matthew’s parents, Judy and Dennis, and to all whose lives have been touched by unconscionable violence."
After the extraordinary success on this blog of Silvio Berlusconi's penis, I thought I'd lower the hurdle of acceptability even further by posting this. I don't remember where it came from - maybe someone can help me? What I do remember is falling for Pat Boone in The Voyage to the Centre of the Earth, when I was young and impressionable and PB was
young, though less so, and extremely fit (and didn't sing a note). I remember the way he lost articles, and then sub-articles, of his clothing scene by scene, finally being belched out of a volcano in very little indeed. In fact, almost the only detail that wasn't visible at the end of that film is the one Mr Boone seems so delighted by in the photograph above. The one to the right, on the other hand, shows Boone at some point between the surface of the earth and its centre. Measured in garment loss, this depth is known as the boxer-short stratum. Believe me, he goes deeper. Presumably, the information he picked up on this journey will also have come in useful in his new career as debunker of Darwin.
Yesterday in Rome, the horribly disorganised and fragmented Italian left still managed to pull together something like 250,000 people to walk Rome's streets in protest against the Lodo Alfano, the law that gives judicial immunity to the holders of the four most senior institutional positions in the country: the premier, the president and the heads of the senate and the camera of deputies. The aim of the law is to ensure that the running of the country isn't disturbed by 
This is the Spanish tourist who went for a skinny-dip in the moat of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Clearly not a wise move...
Since Parris will not dirty his hands by entering theological discussions with his readers, perhaps I might answer for religious believers in the purely utilitarian terms which even the lofty Parris is bound to engage with. We disapprove of homosexuality because it is clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease. The AIDS pandemic was originally caused by promiscuous homosexual behaviour. Such promiscuity is itself an evil because its perpetrators merely use others indiscriminately for their own gratification, treating their fellows as sex objects and as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. I should have thought that Parris, having rejected religious belief, might want to construct his moral beliefs on this Kantian humanistic imperative. But I suspect he is not really interested in morality of any kind - except as a special plea to excuse his lust for gratification at whatever cost to human dignity and the sanctity of human life.
It is time that religious believers began to recommend specific utilitarian discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets: Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS. In addition the obscene "gay pride" parades and carnivals should be banned for they give rise to passive corruption, comparable to passive smoking. Young people forced to witness these excrescences are corrupted by them.
Let me continue the comparison with smoking which is banned in most public places. Those committing homosexual acts in public places - such behaviour being a crime in any case under the Homosexual Reform Act of 1967 - should be arrested, tried and punished. Parks, open spaces and public lavatories would at once become more wholesome places. There ought to be teaching films shown in sex education classes in all our schools. These would portray acts of sodomy and the soundtrack would reinforce the message that it is a filthy practice ending with the admonition: "We do, after all, know the importance of washing our hands after going to the lavatory."
I love the idea of passive corruption, although presumably one could be passively cleansed later by watching Peter Mullen commit adultery with a female parishioner, something he appears to have done some years ago. And I'm fascinated by what the soundtrack might be as schoolchildren watch acts of sodomy during their sex education classes, a concept so radical that even the most fervently proselytising gay would blanch and quail at the thought. Any ideas?
"I do feel publishers are under very strong pressure to sell books rather than encourage long-term readers. They have not asked me to dumb down ... but I have a feeling there's a problem. I write literary novels but I can sense my publishers have difficulty in selling me as a genre ... whether in literary fiction, or women's fiction or shopping fiction. They don't quite know whether I'm highbrow or literary," she said.
"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS."
A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.
What’s said remains in the idea of
a certain generosity of saying it,
of speech. The sink’s been blocked
for a week and not until yesterday
did we get some acid. I’m glad
you’re in love. Will it last and,
even if it doesn’t, will you care?
Is that what you intended, for
it to last? For example, I also
love you. A photograph of an almost
empty place, because the people
were walking too fast to be seen,
is another surrender to method that
garners and protects the eventful
silence, and so we’re appalled by
the chemical odours and I, angry,
expect that what’s seen in your
‘blindness’ is merely the figure of a
woman, rushing to scream at the
photographer, who won’t be there.
There is also the utterance
of the fool’s music to be listened to
with as great attention as you
give your own
flat or mysterious dreams.
Invention on the edge of the void.
Stars on the line speak tersely of
‘creative accounting’
and it touches us for this evening
I too should like to be loved.
That fricative dark I
swallow, dropping
the net where it may.
Its curious bifocal effect, like
observing the casual panorama of language,
is literally an effect
in passing, its
every phenomenon is regional, reading
off foolish grids into truth
and the metaphors
we love as our own, revealed.
A humane, political loneliness,
the clouded mirror over the entrance,
your eyes looking up
and rounding on the asymptotic line,
which is also without end
as placid space mimics itself.
And I don’t have to
apologise or make myself scarce
because I am not the subject
of their concern,
In the early light of the morning,
for instance, it remained as a wish to be
companionable and was straightaway
erased and there was the pentimento
which was only a come stain on the sheet
fondly ‘remade’ as a model for future
delight-filled emotional hours in the
company, in the company of admiring
stares where you are smaller than,
hiding behind, what is looked at, more
concealed than what is concealed in your
arms, which is merely restless and
anxious to be gone into the dark,
that silvery mind that reflects your
slightest wish and pushes the tentative
on. Into action and the great claims
made for it and pearly days lit from
an almost notional above and, hanging
over that, the pestering and abuse
and the layers of differently coloured
sand in the bottom become oddly
confused as the lowest levels percolate
up, like wanting it hard and often.
And the vigilantes also prefer this hour.
“Say it ain’t so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”
I had occasion to write about nepotism in Rome's first and largest university, La Sapienza, almost a year ago, when investigations were being conducted into the university's dean, Renato Guarini, and some confusion about a nine-million-euro tender for an underground car park and his daughter's university career. You can find the details here. At the end of the post, I commented:The cherry on the cake? The deputy dean and head of the faculty of medicine, a certain Luigi Frati, whose votes were decisive in Guarini's election as dean, has also been investigated for nepotism. His wife and two children all work, you guessed it, in his faculty.
