Matt Hancock tells the Covid Inquiry that only campaign groups . . . care about his lies
Jul. 4th, 2025 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
history_monkThe former Conservative MP Matt Hancock was the UK's Secretary of State for Health and Social Care 2019-21 and thus responsible for much of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As one would expect, he has been called to give evidence to the enquiry into the handling of the pandemic. Two issues have been quite controversial:
That's a degree of selfishness fully consistent with his decision to use social distancing to undertake an extra-marital affair with one of his senior staff. That forced him to resign as Health Secretary, and he left parliament voluntarily at the last election. However, he's not yet been held to account for his terrible, heartless decisions while in charge of the nations' health.
More details and donations here.
- One was awarding many valuable contracts for vitally needed supplies and equipment to Conservative Party members with no obvious capability to fulfil them, without and transparency. That piece of corruption will be held against the Conservative Party for a very long time. He wasn't responsible for all of that: the entire Cabinet were involved.
- The other was the decision to discharge many hospital patients into care homes for the elderly without testing them for COVID-19. That was his decision, and it resulted in the residents of those care homes being placed at very high risk of infection. And being elderly and frail enough to require care home residence, a great many of them died.
That's a degree of selfishness fully consistent with his decision to use social distancing to undertake an extra-marital affair with one of his senior staff. That forced him to resign as Health Secretary, and he left parliament voluntarily at the last election. However, he's not yet been held to account for his terrible, heartless decisions while in charge of the nations' health.
More details and donations here.
chirps
Jul. 3rd, 2025 10:23 amcalimacChirp. It was the smoke detector in our bedroom, waking us to inform that the battery needed to be replaced. Or so we thought. Upon inspection, it turned out the battery couldn't be replaced on this one. You had to buy a new detector. Wait for the hardware store to open for the morning, then find one of the same model, so it fit on the same brackets. Sort of. Anyway, it's up and alert now.
Boom. That, I presume, was the sound of the warehouse full of fireworks exploding after it caught on fire, a couple days ago. Although it was after hours and out in the countryside, seven people were reported missing. It may be a while before this can be put out; fireworks keep exploding. At least one local town had been relying on those fireworks for its July 4th show, which has been canceled. Be careful out there.
Smof. It means ... well, it means someone experienced in running science-fiction conventions. One such has written that the unopposed bid for the next Worldcon up is woefully unequipped to do its job. This is the sort of thing smofs often say about Worldcon bids, whether or not it turns out to be true. The smof recommends voting No Award, er I mean None of the Above, so that the Worldcon Business Meeting will decide what to do. Reading the very serious comments on this post, I decided it was better not to post my snarky comment, which would have been, "Maybe we should put the Worldcon on a boat." But I'm not sure how many readers will have been around long enough to remember what that's a reference to.
Update: Worldcon bid in question has responded with a puff piece. This does not instill confidence.
Meow. A cat walking in front of my monitor, hoping for an early breakfast, made it difficult for me to read the announcement of the impending publication of Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats. This is apparently a collection of unpublished or obscure pieces, many of them whimsical, rather than e.g. an omnibus of Catwings.
Speaking of cats ... This was on xkcd a few days ago:
Boom. That, I presume, was the sound of the warehouse full of fireworks exploding after it caught on fire, a couple days ago. Although it was after hours and out in the countryside, seven people were reported missing. It may be a while before this can be put out; fireworks keep exploding. At least one local town had been relying on those fireworks for its July 4th show, which has been canceled. Be careful out there.
Smof. It means ... well, it means someone experienced in running science-fiction conventions. One such has written that the unopposed bid for the next Worldcon up is woefully unequipped to do its job. This is the sort of thing smofs often say about Worldcon bids, whether or not it turns out to be true. The smof recommends voting No Award, er I mean None of the Above, so that the Worldcon Business Meeting will decide what to do. Reading the very serious comments on this post, I decided it was better not to post my snarky comment, which would have been, "Maybe we should put the Worldcon on a boat." But I'm not sure how many readers will have been around long enough to remember what that's a reference to.
Update: Worldcon bid in question has responded with a puff piece. This does not instill confidence.
Meow. A cat walking in front of my monitor, hoping for an early breakfast, made it difficult for me to read the announcement of the impending publication of Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats. This is apparently a collection of unpublished or obscure pieces, many of them whimsical, rather than e.g. an omnibus of Catwings.
Speaking of cats ... This was on xkcd a few days ago:
changing of the guard
Jun. 30th, 2025 06:44 pmcalimacThe Music@Menlo chamber music festival is starting up in less than 3 weeks, and I'm getting ready. This is the major festival in SFCV's coverage area, and we blanket it. I'm also one of the few reviewers who lives nearby, so a lot of that goes to me. I have the list of concerts I'll be covering, and the supplementary stuff, like lectures, that I'll be attending to give me supplementary background.
And a big piece of news came out this week. Menlo was founded, 23 years ago, by cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, a married couple who are renowned performers who do a lot of duets and collaborations with other musicians. They've been artistic directors - and coaches, concert introducers, and not infrequent performers - at the festival ever since. It's in their name, it's in their image.
The news is that they'll be retiring after next season. They're both circling 70, I guess they decided it was time to hand it on. And who are they handing on to but their own image in a younger generation: Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park. Just like them, he's a cellist; she's a pianist; they're a married couple; they perform a lot together and with others.
And they know Menlo: they've been playing there for over 15 years, and for the last 5 they've been directors of the young performers program, which brings preternaturally talented 10-18 year olds to Menlo, where they put on their own concerts that you can attend. (And well worthwhile, too.)
Furthermore, Atapine and Park direct two separate chamber music series of their own, plus they're both professors at a music school (University of Nevada). So they're about as well equipped in both experience and training to take over as anybody could be. I was not in the slightest surprised at their announcement.
I expect they'll continue the Menlo mix of programming. Menlo specializes in the standard chamber music repertoire, attempting (and often enough succeeding at) the most exquisite performances of the masterworks. But they also mix in a lot of obscurer historical stuff when it's good enough - Anton Arensky is one composer whose name I've learned to seek out - and, for a festival that doesn't focus on new or modern music, a pretty fair sprinkling of newer works, very carefully selected for things you might actually enjoy listening to.
But the new directors might have a few tricks up their sleeves. Atapine once played here a solo cello sonata by György Ligeti, not the sort of composer you'd expect at Menlo, and Park has done dynamic piano work in pieces by Janáček and Bartók, also not everyday fare here. So you never know.
And a big piece of news came out this week. Menlo was founded, 23 years ago, by cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, a married couple who are renowned performers who do a lot of duets and collaborations with other musicians. They've been artistic directors - and coaches, concert introducers, and not infrequent performers - at the festival ever since. It's in their name, it's in their image.
The news is that they'll be retiring after next season. They're both circling 70, I guess they decided it was time to hand it on. And who are they handing on to but their own image in a younger generation: Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park. Just like them, he's a cellist; she's a pianist; they're a married couple; they perform a lot together and with others.
And they know Menlo: they've been playing there for over 15 years, and for the last 5 they've been directors of the young performers program, which brings preternaturally talented 10-18 year olds to Menlo, where they put on their own concerts that you can attend. (And well worthwhile, too.)
Furthermore, Atapine and Park direct two separate chamber music series of their own, plus they're both professors at a music school (University of Nevada). So they're about as well equipped in both experience and training to take over as anybody could be. I was not in the slightest surprised at their announcement.
I expect they'll continue the Menlo mix of programming. Menlo specializes in the standard chamber music repertoire, attempting (and often enough succeeding at) the most exquisite performances of the masterworks. But they also mix in a lot of obscurer historical stuff when it's good enough - Anton Arensky is one composer whose name I've learned to seek out - and, for a festival that doesn't focus on new or modern music, a pretty fair sprinkling of newer works, very carefully selected for things you might actually enjoy listening to.
But the new directors might have a few tricks up their sleeves. Atapine once played here a solo cello sonata by György Ligeti, not the sort of composer you'd expect at Menlo, and Park has done dynamic piano work in pieces by Janáček and Bartók, also not everyday fare here. So you never know.
Rebuilding journal search again
Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pmalierak posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceWe're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.
Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
it's an opera review
Jun. 29th, 2025 07:38 pmcalimacEncouraged by the blog post and review by Lisa of the Iron Tongue, I bought a ticket for today's matinee performance of the Pocket Opera production of the opera Tartuffe by Kirke Mechem, a contemporary American composer who's also written an opera of Pride and Prejudice which I've also seen. This was the last performance of Tartuffe, and the only one convenient to me geographically, and I wasn't the only person persuaded to go. The small theater in Mountain View's CPA was pretty well packed (the main stage was putting on a musical about James Dean, in whom I have no interest) and among the audience I counted five people I know, including the conductor who put on that Pride and Prejudice.
Like the original play, from which this is significantly simplified (there's no Cléante, for one thing, and the dénouement has a rather different way of arriving at the same ending), this opera is bright and funny. It's through-composed and through-sung, with only a couple set piece arias or duets, in an agreeable modern style. The orchestration (cut down to chamber size by the composer) varies strongly depending on which characters are singing, and there are a couple clever and funny references to well-known bits from the classical repertoire; not worth explaining to non-audience members, but effective at the time.
The title role was sung by the powerful-voiced baritone (he sounds more like a bass) Eugene Brancoveanu, who'd been Darcy in that Pride and Prejudice. Unusually, his voice was not the most distinctive part of his performance here, because there was an equally powerful-voiced bass, Isaiah Musik-Ayala, as the credulous Orgon. Brancoveanu most excelled, instead, in acting the part of the oily and mock-sanctimonious Tartuffe. The other cast member I was familiar with was the bright-voiced soprano Shawnette Sulker as the sly maid Dorine, but they were all good and worked out well in the small space.
I got to the theater after stopping in for the first set of the annual Stanford Chamber Music Seminar's marathon finale, in which all the attending student and amateur groups each play a movement from something. The best I heard here were string quartets, the finale from Mendelssohn's Op. 44/1 and a couple of bright Haydn pieces.
I'd also got to the showcase concert the previous evening, which featured the two best ensembles - again, both string quartets - playing a full work each. We had a highly sharp-nosed performance of Smetana's "In My Life" and a Mendelssohn Op. 80 with a particularly snappy finale. In between the two quartets, the stage crew disassembled and then reassembled the entire string quartet infrastructure - the chairs, the music stands, the little footpads for turning the pages on the tablets - so as to provide for an intermediary performance of a Schubert song. (There was no program, and I don't remember the title.) Was it performed by a soprano? No. A tenor? No. It was a clarinet. B. wasn't there, but she likes vocal music and would have been very disappointed.
Like the original play, from which this is significantly simplified (there's no Cléante, for one thing, and the dénouement has a rather different way of arriving at the same ending), this opera is bright and funny. It's through-composed and through-sung, with only a couple set piece arias or duets, in an agreeable modern style. The orchestration (cut down to chamber size by the composer) varies strongly depending on which characters are singing, and there are a couple clever and funny references to well-known bits from the classical repertoire; not worth explaining to non-audience members, but effective at the time.
The title role was sung by the powerful-voiced baritone (he sounds more like a bass) Eugene Brancoveanu, who'd been Darcy in that Pride and Prejudice. Unusually, his voice was not the most distinctive part of his performance here, because there was an equally powerful-voiced bass, Isaiah Musik-Ayala, as the credulous Orgon. Brancoveanu most excelled, instead, in acting the part of the oily and mock-sanctimonious Tartuffe. The other cast member I was familiar with was the bright-voiced soprano Shawnette Sulker as the sly maid Dorine, but they were all good and worked out well in the small space.
I got to the theater after stopping in for the first set of the annual Stanford Chamber Music Seminar's marathon finale, in which all the attending student and amateur groups each play a movement from something. The best I heard here were string quartets, the finale from Mendelssohn's Op. 44/1 and a couple of bright Haydn pieces.
I'd also got to the showcase concert the previous evening, which featured the two best ensembles - again, both string quartets - playing a full work each. We had a highly sharp-nosed performance of Smetana's "In My Life" and a Mendelssohn Op. 80 with a particularly snappy finale. In between the two quartets, the stage crew disassembled and then reassembled the entire string quartet infrastructure - the chairs, the music stands, the little footpads for turning the pages on the tablets - so as to provide for an intermediary performance of a Schubert song. (There was no program, and I don't remember the title.) Was it performed by a soprano? No. A tenor? No. It was a clarinet. B. wasn't there, but she likes vocal music and would have been very disappointed.
more progress
Jun. 28th, 2025 09:42 amcalimacI'm still buried in copy-editing for the next issue of Tolkien Studies, with more to come, but I'm wondering what I can say publicly about it at this point. Oh, here's one thing: we have three papers so far which cite the recently-published Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, which we've decided to put in our standard abbreviations list as CP. Other posthumous Tolkien books have appeared while we've been publishing this journal, and some have sparked a flurry of papers, but no others have become this ubiquitous this quickly. It's a monument.
I'm adopting a practice of pulling down from my shelf each source item that I have in hard copy when the author first cites it, and then leaving it on my desk, because I may need it again later. When I finish the paper, I put them all away and start on the next one. Of course there's also a lot to look up in my computer files, or online, and I also need to make occasional quick trips to the university library.
In other news, I've learned that Corflu is coming back to the Bay Area, specifically Santa Rosa, next year. I dropped out of SF fandom entirely some years ago, and I missed a few events I probably should have gone to, including the last L.A. Corflu; but I think I'll go to this one. The membership list is the same old acquaintances who were there when I was attending regularly, and it's near enough that I can drive with no trouble. In fact what tipped the balance for me is that I have concerts in San Francisco both Thursday and Friday of that weekend, so staying in Santa Rosa will actually make it easier to get there.
I find little need to make political commentary, since there are online sources doing it for me, but I do wish to express how remarkable it is that for four years, judge-shopping produced speciously-argued holds on Biden administration activity without a word from the Supreme Court, but as soon as it's applied to Trump for blatantly unconstitutional actions, the Court puts a halt on the entire practice of universal holds. They're not even pretending not to be partisan any more.
I'm adopting a practice of pulling down from my shelf each source item that I have in hard copy when the author first cites it, and then leaving it on my desk, because I may need it again later. When I finish the paper, I put them all away and start on the next one. Of course there's also a lot to look up in my computer files, or online, and I also need to make occasional quick trips to the university library.
In other news, I've learned that Corflu is coming back to the Bay Area, specifically Santa Rosa, next year. I dropped out of SF fandom entirely some years ago, and I missed a few events I probably should have gone to, including the last L.A. Corflu; but I think I'll go to this one. The membership list is the same old acquaintances who were there when I was attending regularly, and it's near enough that I can drive with no trouble. In fact what tipped the balance for me is that I have concerts in San Francisco both Thursday and Friday of that weekend, so staying in Santa Rosa will actually make it easier to get there.
I find little need to make political commentary, since there are online sources doing it for me, but I do wish to express how remarkable it is that for four years, judge-shopping produced speciously-argued holds on Biden administration activity without a word from the Supreme Court, but as soon as it's applied to Trump for blatantly unconstitutional actions, the Court puts a halt on the entire practice of universal holds. They're not even pretending not to be partisan any more.
the heat
Jun. 25th, 2025 10:51 pmcalimacHere's an article on the heat + humidity that's currently wracking the central and eastern U.S. It's full of detail on exactly how to measure the danger to human health. I hope those of you currently subject to this heat dome are doing OK, especially those of you without air conditioning.
I say "currently" because we get heat domes out here in the west too - we just don't have one right now. It's been 70s up to mid-80s F lately, which is not too uncomfortable, especially because our humidity is typically low - although that's less often true than it used to be. We've gotten some sparkling high waves here in recent years, up to about 105F, but usually in August-October. And of course it gets much hotter further inland: the shore is typically quite cool here in high summer, with each successive coastwise valley inland getting hotter; we're in the first valley, which can be bad enough, and have no intention of retiring out to the second or third valley as so many lounge lizards do.
So I'm counting us really lucky - so far.
I say "currently" because we get heat domes out here in the west too - we just don't have one right now. It's been 70s up to mid-80s F lately, which is not too uncomfortable, especially because our humidity is typically low - although that's less often true than it used to be. We've gotten some sparkling high waves here in recent years, up to about 105F, but usually in August-October. And of course it gets much hotter further inland: the shore is typically quite cool here in high summer, with each successive coastwise valley inland getting hotter; we're in the first valley, which can be bad enough, and have no intention of retiring out to the second or third valley as so many lounge lizards do.
So I'm counting us really lucky - so far.
unpacking
Jun. 24th, 2025 02:54 amcalimacSo much attention and energy needs to be spent preparing for a trip and ensuring that everything you need is properly packed away where it can be accessed (with extra attention devoted to avoiding glitches at airport security if a plane flight is involved) that it can be possible to neglect the process of unpacking when the trip is over.
I've sometimes let that ride in the past, leaving unemptied bags sitting around for days, but I try not to any more. During trips I keep the laundry clearly separated from the clean clothes, so the first piece of unpacking I do is to throw all the laundry into the washing machine. Next step is removing anything from the suitcase that stays downstairs, like shoes and coats, before hauling the suitcase up to the bedroom and putting away the clean clothes and any toiletries that were in there.
The carry-on bag is handled oppositely. That goes straight up to the bedroom; anything going there or in the bathroom is put away, and things going to my office or which belong downstairs are put in separate piles. Then the office items are taken there, and the downstairs material goes back in the bag and taken downstairs to be distributed.
Lastly, the emptied bags go back in the garage where they're kept normally.
This procedure may all seem obvious, but it's one of those things which took a lot of experience and practice to develop. The key is not to let post-trip exhaustion overwhelm the need to get this basic task done. It's so satisfying when this is all done, the bags are put away, and we're back to normal, and the cats like it that way too.
I've sometimes let that ride in the past, leaving unemptied bags sitting around for days, but I try not to any more. During trips I keep the laundry clearly separated from the clean clothes, so the first piece of unpacking I do is to throw all the laundry into the washing machine. Next step is removing anything from the suitcase that stays downstairs, like shoes and coats, before hauling the suitcase up to the bedroom and putting away the clean clothes and any toiletries that were in there.
The carry-on bag is handled oppositely. That goes straight up to the bedroom; anything going there or in the bathroom is put away, and things going to my office or which belong downstairs are put in separate piles. Then the office items are taken there, and the downstairs material goes back in the bag and taken downstairs to be distributed.
Lastly, the emptied bags go back in the garage where they're kept normally.
This procedure may all seem obvious, but it's one of those things which took a lot of experience and practice to develop. The key is not to let post-trip exhaustion overwhelm the need to get this basic task done. It's so satisfying when this is all done, the bags are put away, and we're back to normal, and the cats like it that way too.
away in a Shakespeare
Jun. 22nd, 2025 09:04 amcalimacThis year's driving visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was a bit precarious, due to both B. and I being ill at various times (just a cold, but nasty enough). B. missed two plays as a result - fortunately not the best ones. I didn't miss any plays, but undertaking the six hour drive there after a night when the cold had given me no sleep was a grim business which shouldn't have been attempted.
There were six plays on our schedule, three Shakespeare:
As You Like It: utterly charming, clever, good-humored, imaginative, a delight in every way - and performed with utterly pellucid line-readings. Everything everyone said was clear and understandable. After a stark court setting, with everyone in antiseptic white, the Forest of Arden burst out as sixties hippie utopia, with everyone in it, from Duke Senior on down, dressed as flower children - except for the melancholy Jaques, who was a leftover beatnik poet in a shabby black suit. Aw, perfect.
Julius Caesar: another production by the upstart crow collective of female and nonbinary performers. The central characters of Brutus and Cassius were good enough but might have done better with the casting exchanged; but Caesar (Kate Wisniewski) exuded arrogance and self-confidence, perfect for the character. Nonspecific modern dress.
The Merry Wives of Windsor: a more conventional production than OSF's last Merry Wives, this didn't tinker with the text or add musical interjection; here the characters expressed their emotional reactions by screaming a lot. An attempt was made to frame the plot around the crafty plans by the merry wives, but this could have been more focused. The costumes were livelier: Falstaff and his cronies first sauntered in as a biker gang, and things just got sillier from there.
and three not:
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde: The director couldn't identify with Victorian England, so set this in the Victorian English colony of Malaya, which had little effect outside the vegetation in act 2 and the place names, which didn't make much sense. (The casting was multiracial, which would lead to genetic impossibilities in this play, so you just ignore that.) Never mind the place names either: the acting was great. Newcomer Hao Feng made a splendidly foppish Algy, and Kiki deLohr as Gwendolen mugged her way through, channeling Miss Piggy.
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine: Supposedly a revival of OSF's 2014 production which we saw, and with some of the same cast, it wasn't the same at all. With much less of the bursting clever imagination of its predecessor and a more improvisationary feel, it was just a good solid performance of Into the Woods that succeeded in making Act 2 more involving than Act 1 instead of more dour.
Fat Ham, James Ijames: Starts out as a very funny and clever resetting of Hamlet in a rural Southern Black family holding a wedding reception barbecue. The Ghost, who is still figuring out how to be one, was particularly amusing. Lots of specific Shakespearean points well translated into Black vernacular. But the author didn't want to kill the characters off, so the plot makes a turn into a closing celebration of former uptight Marine Larry (= Laertes) coming out as a drag queen. Good for him, but something of a nonsequitur in the circumstances.
There were six plays on our schedule, three Shakespeare:
As You Like It: utterly charming, clever, good-humored, imaginative, a delight in every way - and performed with utterly pellucid line-readings. Everything everyone said was clear and understandable. After a stark court setting, with everyone in antiseptic white, the Forest of Arden burst out as sixties hippie utopia, with everyone in it, from Duke Senior on down, dressed as flower children - except for the melancholy Jaques, who was a leftover beatnik poet in a shabby black suit. Aw, perfect.
Julius Caesar: another production by the upstart crow collective of female and nonbinary performers. The central characters of Brutus and Cassius were good enough but might have done better with the casting exchanged; but Caesar (Kate Wisniewski) exuded arrogance and self-confidence, perfect for the character. Nonspecific modern dress.
The Merry Wives of Windsor: a more conventional production than OSF's last Merry Wives, this didn't tinker with the text or add musical interjection; here the characters expressed their emotional reactions by screaming a lot. An attempt was made to frame the plot around the crafty plans by the merry wives, but this could have been more focused. The costumes were livelier: Falstaff and his cronies first sauntered in as a biker gang, and things just got sillier from there.
and three not:
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde: The director couldn't identify with Victorian England, so set this in the Victorian English colony of Malaya, which had little effect outside the vegetation in act 2 and the place names, which didn't make much sense. (The casting was multiracial, which would lead to genetic impossibilities in this play, so you just ignore that.) Never mind the place names either: the acting was great. Newcomer Hao Feng made a splendidly foppish Algy, and Kiki deLohr as Gwendolen mugged her way through, channeling Miss Piggy.
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine: Supposedly a revival of OSF's 2014 production which we saw, and with some of the same cast, it wasn't the same at all. With much less of the bursting clever imagination of its predecessor and a more improvisationary feel, it was just a good solid performance of Into the Woods that succeeded in making Act 2 more involving than Act 1 instead of more dour.
Fat Ham, James Ijames: Starts out as a very funny and clever resetting of Hamlet in a rural Southern Black family holding a wedding reception barbecue. The Ghost, who is still figuring out how to be one, was particularly amusing. Lots of specific Shakespearean points well translated into Black vernacular. But the author didn't want to kill the characters off, so the plot makes a turn into a closing celebration of former uptight Marine Larry (= Laertes) coming out as a drag queen. Good for him, but something of a nonsequitur in the circumstances.