By error or omission, you have reached the website of Joshua Peter Loo.

I am reading for a BPhil at Somerville College, Oxford. From 2020 to 2024, I read for an (integrated) masters at Oriel College, Oxford—in computer science and philosophy (or ‘pedantry and pedantry’, as I typically answer the usual banal questions).

I welcome correspondence by electronic mail: prepend my initials to epistolae.net.

11 January 2025.

From 2015:

DHAKA: For years authorities in Bangladesh have battled to stop men urinating in public, with signs in the local Bengali language failing to halt the seemingly endless number of offenders.

But the Bangladesh religious affairs ministry's recent decision to erect new signs in Arabic has had a marked effect, despite most Bangladeshis being unable to read the language.

On the Sino-Burmese border (19 December 2024):

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and its allies say they have seized a militia base in Khaunglanhpu Township, opening a new front in Putao District on the Chinese border.

The junta called the camp “Lahisen Ma Sote Tan”, meaning “no retreat”.

From p 249 of the novellisation of Cry Freedom:

‘Excuse me,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Could you tell me which is nearer, the British or American Embassy?’

The man looked over Woods equably and spoke without once breaking step as Woods hopped along beside him. ‘We’re a Commonwealth country, Father,’ he said patiently. ‘It‘s the American “Embassy”, but the British “High Commission”.’

Woods was hanging on every word. He knew the distinction and wished he’d remembered it when he’d asked. ‘But which is nearer?’ he implored.

The man calmly pointed his umbrella. ‘The British High Commission is there on the right, just past those columns. The American—’

The posthumous ‘kidnapp[ing]’ (26 December 2024) of Pétain:

In 1973 the dead Pétain was kidnapped. The plot was thought up by the exuberant Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, a lawyer and politician whose rightist views were even more extreme than Isorni’s. His henchmen came across on the ferry with a van, had a good dinner at the Hôtel des Voyageurs and then drove to the grave. ‘As the coffin was raised, the men broke into a rendition of the Vichy hymn “Maréchal, nous voilà”. After a celebratory glass of champagne at the hotel, they took the 4 a.m. ferry back to the mainland.’ Then everything went wrong. They drove the coffin up and down the Champs-Élysées, in order to erase the memory of de Gaulle’s triumphal parade there at the Liberation, but meeting no enthusiasm, surrendered to the police. The coffin was back on the Île d’Yeu within three days.

MTV Lebanon responds (8 December 2024) to the fall of Assad with the world’s worst attempt to pour champagne—although this can’t be the real party: there’s only one bottle of champagne in sight.

The Critic (1 December 2024):

However, their degree of investment in the kinetic phases of the Russo-Ukraine war have turned many progressive internationalists into armchair open source intelligence analyst.

…The rebels stand little to no chance of unseating Assad.

‘Ahem! Your Excellency, you are in contempt of court’ (12 December 2024) Apropos, there’s an interesting chapter on Uganda and Zimbabwe in Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (ISBN 9780511814822).

The way in which the judges conducted themselves differed too. One might not be entirely happy with the intellectual elegance, or lack thereof, of some of the Uganda opinions. No doubt there are times when a judge might be criticized for having given a party too much latitude. But there is sometimes wisdom in issuing messy judgments that create a principle or set a standard, on the one hand, and set aside immediate and drastic action, on the other. Some of the Uganda judgments had that character. By letting cases go ahead despite ambiguous charges while issuing a passport to the defendant, drawing out proceedings until election tempers cooled, allowing a result to stand while condemning violations of the law, etc., the Ugandan courts may have been able to build strength gradually, develop public understasnding and norms, and induce some parts of the government and opposition to trust their actions, even if the results were far from perfect from the standpoint of justice. Although certain government actions provoked condemnation from senior judges, many of the statements were coupled with phrasing designed to calm tempers. The Zimbabwe judgments, which were often elegant, tended to be more hard-hitting, and sharp public statements by judges in the years before the clash may have aggravated relationships. Human rights lawyers might disagree with this assessment, but it is always well to remember that the U.S. Supreme Court issued the murky Marbury in a charged atmosphere and exercised restraint subsequently, gradually building a reservoir of trust. (p 258)

That may have been the best on offer, but I’m not sure that it really has amounted to much, going on the Ugandan experience.

‘The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Monday decided to allow employees of all educational institutions, including teachers, to carry licensed arms on the premises to respond fittingly in case of a terrorist attack’ (13 January 2015).

‘In 1926 the museum was still in existence, the Curator’s minutes recording that the visitors were mainly school children and Americans’ (2004).

An old letter (circa April 2024) in Jom:

Jom’s report on Dr Ang’s presentation at the Singapore Island Country Club originally omitted to mention that in 2014 Dr Ang shared an antisemitic video about “CNN, Goldman Sachs, and the Zio Matrix” by the neo-Nazi leader of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke. This raises the question of what exactly Dr Ang thinks “actually happened on 7 October 2023”, and whether the content of the link amounted to conspiracy theorising.

I do not mention this to detract from the quite extraordinary courage Dr Ang has displayed in her humanitarian work with Medical Aid for Palestinians, and I am glad that there is some space in Singapore to openly discuss the Israel–Hamas war and the wider conflict.

Rather, the incident serves as a reminder that the historically pro-Israeli leanings of Singaporean public and elite opinion and the general paucity of antisemitism in Singaporean history are at best imperfect barriers to antisemitism. Most people of good will, of whatever opinion, seek to distinguish and separate antisemitism from reasoned accusations against the Israeli government. (By “reasoned” I do not mean “moderate”—Jom’s piece on accusations of genocide is a good example.) To effectively make such a distinction, it is not enough to syllogistically repeat that antisemitism is racism and therefore bad; critical evaluation of whether particular material contains antisemitic ideas is necessary. Of that, I am sure that Singaporeans will prove most capable.

3 January 2025.

Whose letters are published in the LRB?

Londoners’, Oxonians’, and ’tabs’, it seems: notebook, map, and repo. The geocoding used is fairly but not entirely accurate, and I have not manually corrected all the entries, although it was fairly obvious that the House of Lords is not in Mumbai.

2 January 2025.

Binding.

A letter on binding; the original follows.

Robin Kinross modestly omits to mention that he himself has had ‘books printed and bound elsewhere…by firms that still understand the workings of paper and glue’, so I hope you will forgive the unprompted advertisement for Hyphen Press (Letters, 5 December 2024). Alas, neither British printers nor large publishers have been shamed into following his example. So what can be done?

Nearly two decades ago, Frank Kermode complained about poor binding (5 July 2007), and Kinross pointed out the problem with hot-melt (Letters, 2 August 2007). But even if reviewers were to complain in each case, readers would have to withhold their custom to create more than a marginal market for properly bound books.

Consortia of academic libraries, on the other hand, have power to jointly withhold custom and large budgets; they have forced concessions on open access and publishing fees. But they seem content to buy even reference works that are barely usable when new and will be difficult to repair after heavy use.

Durably bound books comprise multiple ‘sections’ of sheets folded in half, sewn together and cold glued. Unless the thread fails, a page would have to be torn completely to fall out. When a book is damaged, the thread can be removed, individual pages repaired, and sections resewn. (Hot-melt is difficult to remove from sections without tearing the paper.) Many old books in university libraries will have been rebound thus several times.

I have on my desk a copy of Oxford Handbook of Hume from the Bodleian. It is a ‘perfect’ binding: the pages are simply stacked on top of each other and glued together at the back, and fall out easily when the glue fails; it is difficult to reattach them properly. The glue of course is hot-melt; it is only because the book is so thick that it will lie flat (and only in the middle pages). It is £157.50 new.

I should add that readers also command some institutional organisation, and that we too therefore share part of the blame. I am not aware of a single discussion in a library committee in which the quality of bindings was raised. Indeed, even the prospect of raising such a matter or proposing to take any action of the sort I propose above would seem fogeyish. (I should be happy to be corrected.) For this, we get the glue we deserve.

Edwin Cameron on L.C. Steyn’s ‘towering but parsimonious intellect’.

Classical Chinese poems in English.

12 December 2024.

L’Orient–Le Jour suite au décès de Gebran Tuéni :

Il y a des hommes que l’épreuve grandit, au point qu’ils en deviennent immenses et qui, avec des mots simples et dignes, touchent les cœurs pour toujours. En prenant le micro devant la foule en pleurs, Ghassan Tuéni est entré définitivement dans la légende. « Il est rare, a-t-il dit, la voix juste un peu enrouée, qu’un homme fasse ses adieux à son fils à l’endroit où, soixante ans auparavant, il avait fait ses adieux à son père. Je me souviens comment Gebran Tuéni est mort foudroyé le 11 janvier 1947, alors qu’il prononçait un discours dans lequel il défendait l’unité de la Palestine et son arabité, ainsi que l’adhésion du Liban à la cause arabe. Il m’avait laissé ce message et, à mon tour, j’ai repris le flambeau et inculqué ces principes à mon fils. Celui-ci a suivi la même voie et scandé ces mêmes idées dans ce serment devenu un slogan repris par toute une génération de jeunes. » « Je dis cela, car je pense souvent à ce que vous dites, Monseigneur (Khodr, archevêque grec orthodoxe du Mont-Liban) : “La mort est une résurrection et Jésus est ressuscité des morts.” Aujourd’hui, vous avez affirmé que Gebran est parti pour nous préparer une place à la noce finale. Dois-je aller à sa rencontre ?… » « Aujourd’hui, je voudrais que les haines ainsi que les mots qui divisent soient enterrés en même temps que Gebran. Je n’appelle ni à la vengeance, ni à la rancœur, ni au sang. Je voudrais au contraire que nous reprenions d’une seule voix ce serment qu’il avait lancé à la place des Martyrs le jour de l’intifada 2005, dont il est la victime : J’appelle tous les Libanais, chrétiens et musulmans, à rester unis au service du Liban, cette grande patrie, et au service de sa cause arabe. »

8 December 2024.

Charles Glass in the LRB of 4 August 2005:

When the historian Kamal Salibi was 17, he watched the French army’s reluctant retreat from Lebanon. Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement with Britain in 1916, France had assumed a mandate, later ratified by the League of Nations, to govern Syria and Mount Lebanon. Its mission civilisatrice to the Christians of Lebanon led it to expand the borders of the Christian statelet, incorporating so many Muslims – both Sunni and Shia – from outside the Ottoman governorate of Mount Lebanon that the Muslims inevitably became a majority. The Sunnis in Damascus and the Druze in southern Syria revolted against French rule again and again, and the French bombarded Damascus and the Druze villages. By the time the French departed, even the Christians were in the streets demanding that they leave. ‘The French left very nicely on the last day of 1946,’ Salibi recalled, sitting in his West Beirut flat near the American University where he taught for forty years. ‘The Lebanese gave them a 21-gun salute. They were thanked for what they did for the country. The ugly side of the mandate was quickly forgotten.’ Only a compromise – the unwritten National Pact that distributed government offices by religious sect – saved Lebanon from fratricidal violence in 1946. Every sect took its share of the spoils: from the presidency, the prerogative of the Maronite Catholics, through the Sunni prime ministership and the Shia office of house speaker, down to the lowliest post in the civil service. Now, almost sixty years later, Salibi, the author of the standard history of Lebanon – A House of Many Mansions – was watching the Syrian army pack up and go home across the French-created border. There was no 21-gun salute. ‘If they had withdrawn gracefully of their own accord, they would have left with some courtesy and perhaps some gratitude. Instead, they left like housebreakers.’ To pre-empt embarrassing televised scenes of toppling statuary, the Syrian troops took with them imposing statues of two men: Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president who sent his army into Lebanon in 1976; and his heir, Bashar al-Assad, who under international pressure brought the troops back in time for the United Nations deadline of 30 April.

October–November 2024.

Bilingualism.

On the Circulaire Peeters (via Wikipedia):

Sinds 1963 wordt het faciliteitensysteem op eenzelfde wijze toegepast: wanneer een Franstalige particulier eenmaal aan de administratie een Franstalig document had aangevraagd, bleef hij/zij dit document automatisch in het Frans ontvangen. …De regering wees erop dat de faciliteiten beperkend moeten worden geïnterpreteerd als tijdelijke overgangsmaatregelen, teneinde het de Franstalige inwoners in de Rand mogelijk te maken zich te integreren in het Vlaamse gebied. En daarom moet een Franstalige versie van de documenten telkens opnieuw worden aangevraagd.

(Machine translated:) Since 1963, the facilities system has been applied in the same way: once a French-speaking individual had requested a French-language document from the administration, he/she automatically continued to receive this document in French. …The government pointed out that the facilities should be interpreted restrictively as temporary transitional measures, in order to enable French-speaking residents in the Rand to integrate into the Flemish area. And that is why a French-language version of the documents must be requested each time.

Le « Décret 71 » au Tchad (Contentieux linguistique arabe–français) :

L’un de ces moments de crise aura été, incontestablement, après le débat sur le statut de la langue arabe à la CNS, celui où fut institué le bilinguisme dans le système scolaire tchadien. C’est le fameux « Décret 71 », stipulant que, désormais, « l’arabe et le français sont les langues d’enseignement dans les établissements publics ». Aussitôt, ce fut une levée générale de boucliers: l’Imam, au nom du Conseil Supérieur des Affaires Islamiques, dénonça dans cette décision « un Plan programmé pour anéantir les Ecoles Arabes ». À l’opposé, le parti Tchad-Avenir, constitué de cadres du Sud, affirma que le « bilinguisme n’est qu’un cheval de Troie, l’objectif final étant l’instauration d’une République islamique ». Comment avait-t-on pu en arriver là ? Un titre intelligent et malicieux du journal Le Progrès nous aidera à le comprendre : « Bilinguisme. Les madrassa vont (beaucoup) se franciser et les écoles vont (un peu) s’arabiser ».

Recipes.

Chicken.

Some years ago, Ottolenghi published three recipes for slow-cooked chicken in The Guardian. My mother and I have revised the second.

The ingredients we use are nearly entirely the same, except that we usually forget the bay leaves, often use more chicken, and sometimes use different pasta. At some point we started to add celery, which I think is a good choice. There is therefore much more vegetable in the broth than in Ottolenghi’s variant. I am often lazy and use frozen sofrito; about 750–1000 grammes of it for 1.5 kg of chicken works for dinner party catering.

1. Warm a large dutch or casserole on the stove or in the oven.
2. Soften first the garlic, anchovies, shallots, and onions (unless the latter are to come from frozen sofrito) in the stove, and then celery and carrot (or frozen sofrito if using). I have obtained the best results by softening them in the oven at about 110C for half an hour, browning the base slightly; the vegetables should be introduced at the earliest after five minutes or so of softening, and preferably later. The herbs should also be thrown in at this point.
3. Put the vegetable stock in, and then the chicken. Leave in the oven for two or three hours.
4. Some of the chicken will have browned because it was exposed. Remove all the chicken, and return the chicken that hasn’t been browned into the oven on a separate tray.
5. At the same time, reduce the sauce (without the chicken) either in the oven or the stove.
6. When serving with pasta, ladle some of the sauce out of the casserole and into the pasta to mix, and mix with the rocket.

The principal difference from Ottolenghi’s recipe is that the chicken is browned in the oven rather than seared.

Crispy purple broccoli.

1. Cut and wash the broccoli.
2. Dry it. In the absence of a salad spinner, it is possible to dry it with several towels. First: wrap all the broccoli in a towel and then shake the towel vigorously, until the towel is so wet that it is no longer drying the broccoli. Repeat two or three times with fresh towels.Second: place all the broccoli on a towel (without stacking) and leave for a few hours. A fan helps.
3. Drizzle oil over the broccoli, and pour garlic powder, chilli (and, optionally, anchovies) over it.
4. Distribute the broccoli (as loosely as possible) over a tray and leave in the oven at 160C fan until dry. (It usually takes twenty minutes for me.)

À nous qui demandons aux Libanais « comment ca va ? »

Gilles Khoury dans L’Orient–Le Jour :

À chaque fois, c’est la même consternation, la même désolation, le même « je suis désolé(e) de ce qui vous arrive ». La même manière de nous regarder, avec parfois les yeux baissés et les mains jointes, avec la même pitié et le même embarras de ceux qui ont eu la chance d’être nés du bon côté de la planète. La chance de n’avoir jamais rencontré le désastre, le vrai. La chance de n’avoir jamais goûté à l’odeur de la poussière et du sang. La chance de n’avoir jamais été réveillés en pleine nuit par le chuintement d’un avion ou l’explosion d’un missile qui déchire sa ville.

…Quelques minutes plus tard, avec une ponctualité démoniaque, viennent les routes bondées de gens qui fuient avec des morceaux de leurs vies d’avant dans des valises de fortune, puis les explosions, les nuages de fumée, les enfants arrachés à leur sommeil par le bruit des avions, les parents à bout qui ne savent plus comment les consoler et ceux qui sont loin qui les appellent frénétiquement pour s’assurer qu’ils sont encore en vie. Voilà comment ça va, au Liban, de ce mauvais côté du monde, où nos vies sont des poussières sur la balance des vies humaines…

Ariel Rubinstein…

…on ‘the catastrophe, after which everything will, probably, be different’:

The flagship issues for the relgious-Zionist camp are unity of the people and unity of the land. They are getting all of the land via the settlements and the occupation. And they’re getting all of the people for free because most of us are addicted to the mantras and refrain from speaking the truth: almost a half-century of occupation and settlement is separating us, the “faithful of the Jewish people”, from them, the “faithful of the Land of Israel.”

Our lot is not with them. There is no place for false groveling or shows of reconciliation. This false unity is enabling the settlers to achieve all their goals. Instead of searching for common ground, we should be declaring our glaring differences. The Israeli right also only understands credible threats. The religious-Zionist public will be compelled to reexamine its positions if it is made to understand that spiritual redemption is not around the corner, and that fealty of the land is going to shatter the unity of the people.

And if this last force is of no help, all that will be left to do (for me, at least) is to stay here, watch with horror the oppression of the Palestinians, watch as a society whose values I don’t respect takes shape and await—with trepidation—the catastrophe, after which everything will, probably, be different.

…on ‘correct Zionist action’:

These young people are here simply because this is their home and in any other place they would feel that they do not belong. They are here not because of the tax benefits but because of the familiar brand of instant coffee. They are here because they are actually dying to do reserve duty, even if only to have the opportunity to refuse to serve in the territories.

His ‘internal commission of inquiry’:

Here in Israel, this is the season for commissions of inquiry. And I feel the need to appoint an internal commission of inquiry. On this committee, there will be one member (me), one witness (me) and one person under scrutiny (me). The committee will focus on the question: How did I ever become an enthusiastic supporter of Amir Peretz, the Labour Party leader, during Israel’s election campaign earlier this year?

Is it too much to ask that nobody will have to ask the same question of another incarnation of the parliamentary left?

June 2024.

Thesis.

I have uploaded a copy.

Singapore-on-Thames is further upstream than you think!

Banning all dishonesty on university or college premisses? It sounds like the sort of moral policing one would expect from the fever dream of Singapore’s trente glorieuses. Instead, one finds this (amongst several delights) in now-withdrawn proposals to amend Oxford’s Statutes, now Completely Illustrated in unedifying detail.

Thin non-breaking spaces

should be in the .XCompose of anybody who regularly types French; I am ashamed to say that I only just got round to placing them there.

7 May 2024.

Lentils for the garlic-addled.

Pre-heat the oven to 150C or so. Soften garlic, shallots, onion, and chilli (or perhaps peppercorns) with thyme and parsley in a dutch oven. For each 200 grammes of lentils to be included, pour in a tin of tomatoes; for each 400 grammes, ½ litre of stock. Then pour in the lentils (puy or green work). Leave in the oven for about 50 minutes.

I find this goes quite well with couscous and spinach: cook the couscous for ⅔ the cooking time recommended, quickly blanch the spinach, drain, then reheat the lentils until bubbling.

20 April 2024.

Wikipedia says that the total track length of Calcutta locals is 1,501 kilometres, which is most impressive. By comparison, Mumbai locals run on 428 kilometres of track.

Dans une communiqué daté du 11 mars 2024, la Haute Autorité de la Communication du Mali « invite tous les médias…à arrêter toute diffusion et publication…des activités à caractère politique des associations ».

Le 20 mars 2017, Éric Duhaime « annonce publiquement son homosexualité durant l’emission de radio Duhaime et Drainville le midi. …Cette annonce précède la sortie de son livre La fin de l’homosexualité et le dernier gay. »

Robert Stevens, with barely concealed incredulity, recounts several utterly bizarre episodes in the storied history of the JCPC, as various more or less racist types attempt to save Privy Council appeals.

24 March 2024.

20 March 2024.

Salmon.

5 February 2024.

1 February 2024.

Two reviews: Lester on Biggar and Anil on Sanghera.

Srinivasan on free speech in universities. I did not know that Land Rover makes bikes until I bought one, which has rather increased my grocery bill since Waitrose biscuits are now in reach.

There may as well be a link to France Musique here.

18 January 2024.

Rory Stewart in the TLS (archived) on Afghanistan:

So when Rumsfeld says he has no idea what the US is doing, or what the mission is, or “who the bad guys are”, he does not mean, as Whitlock implies, that nobody has been producing plans or objectives or analysis. He means that he doesn’t like what he sees. The same is true when others later say that Rumsfeld himself did not have a plan. Or when various generals arrive claiming there is no plan, write a detailed plan, and then hand over to a successor who claims there is no plan, before writing a detailed plan and handing over to a successor feigning bafflement.

But what if the interviewees and Craig Whitlock are telling you more about themselves than about Afghanistan? What if there was indeed deep corruption in Afghanistan, but that there were also highly intelligent and dedicated public servants, including President Ghani himself? What if there had never been a conscious conspiracy to conceal the problems of Afghanistan? What if the US could have kept 2,500 troops relatively safely and indefinitely in Afghanistan (as it keeps 25,000 troops, seventy years after the cessation of formal conflict, in South Korea)? What if the sunk costs of the intervention were immense, but the marginal costs of remaining were minimal? What if no magical plan could have existed for Afghanistan but, nevertheless, keeping a very few troops would have saved the country from a Taliban government, protected basic political and civil rights, supported women – at least in urban areas and much of the rural Centre and North – prevented the economy and the health and education systems from collapsing, and kept millions from the edge of starvation?

What if the US withdrawal was determined not by the “Bloody Battle in Affghanistan” but by the “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States”? What if Afghans were not cowards or incompetents but instead as smart and good as you and me?

An EPW brouhaha—characteristically litigated on its own letters page; Dharma Kumar’s letter of 3–10 August; P Radhakrishnan’s defence; T.N. Srinivasan’s response; P. Radhakrishnan’s later denunciation of the post-Raj EPW; Dharma Kumar’s right of reply exercised: ‘I have no quarrel with your decision to close the correspondence on the editorial policy of the EPW (in fact, I suggested it.)’

Meanwhile in Kyrgyzstan:

“There are lot of people who hold the view that the current flag looks like a sunflower. And because of that, our state has been unable to rise up since it could do nothing but gaze upon the sun,” [the President, Sadyr] Japarov told a journalist[.]

Where the rays in the older design were soft and wavy, they are now straight and spiky.

As the word began spreading that somebody might have composed a flag with the wrong number of rays — and the detail is important as the number of rays is meant to represent the 40 Kyrgyz tribes — officials scrambled to limit the damage.

Sure enough, on the night of January 3, Bishkek municipal workers were filmed lowering the flag and counting the rays up to the requisite number.

That has not convinced the doubters, who suspect the wrong flag was simply substituted for a corrected version under the cover of night to enable this piece of choreography.

It appears that subsequent to lawmakers giving their blessing to a new flag, the government tinkered further, thereby defying parliament’s prerogative to make final decisions on such matters.

This all means at least four — not to say almost certainly more — types of Kyrgyz flags in total exist out in the world: the original, parliament’s version, the government’s version, and, it appears, a defective 39-rayed variant of the government’s version.

“The new flag should have been raised in the presence of a guard of honor. At least in the presence of the secretary of state. And the national anthem should have been played. (Only an enemy force sneaks in and swaps the flag),” he [Tazabek Ikramov, a lawmaker] wrote on Facebook.

Japarov’s team has grown weary of all this. The head of the presidential administration, Kanybek Tumanbayev, has called for punishments for anybody spreading what he termed “fake information” about the number of rays on the flag.

Tumanbayev is concerned, among other things, that continued discussions on this topic are going to embarrass Kyrgyzstan.

“Not only does such false information create discontent among many people, but now our Kazakh neighbors are discussing it too,“ he moaned.

Human rights activist Gulshayir Abdirasulova wrote on January 4 that the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, the successor agency to the KGB, has been summoning people grumbling about the 39 rays matter for questioning.

Letters.

There used to be a promise to compile my letters here. To promise to do so exhaustively would be dishonest, so I have removed it.

A letter in the Economic and Political Weekly in response to Professor Chenoy’s article on Russia’s invasion to Ukraine; Professor Chenoy’s response; my rejoinder.

Another letter to The Guardian on mathematically questionable claims about University Challenge. Perhaps with a view to eliciting the response they did, the editors omitted the words ‘I don’t object to his other arguments’ at the beginning. More unforgiveably they removed my boat race joke: Oxbridge wins frequently because it is actually good at it (cf. the Boat Race)…

Terminal preliminaries.

Oxford.

Matters universitary.

Statistics on results at first and second public examinations by school status.

Circular and miscellaneous walks thence and possibly thither

I have found the following to be feasible; in determining the applicability of that datum, it may be noted that I am not particularly athletic, although walking is not terribly strenuous since I am not particularly big.

About four or five miles: from central Oxford to the towpath, turn away from Port Meadow towards University Parks, thence down Mesopotamia and through the verge of Cowley back to the High Street.

A reasonable approximation of a half marathon proceeds from the High Street down St Aldate’s to the river, turns right and follows the river before following Castle Mill Stream and the canal path until Godstow; turn left to the Isis, and follow it until the path finally meets Wytham woods, before following the Green Belt Way in a loop back to the Thames path; follow that southwards opposite Port Meadow, and through Osney, before breaking off at St Aldate’s again, and returning to the city centre (perhaps the High Street). The path is not very well-maintained beyond Port Meadow.

About nine miles: down the towpath to Port Meadow, following the foot of which one reaches the Thames Path—continue to Wolvercote, turn right through the urban fringe and along the A40 briefly before a rather obscure turn leads to the Cherwell, leading eventually to University Parks and a choice of Mesopotamia or a more direct route.

About twenty-five miles: as above to the Thames Path, which should be followed until Farmoor Reservoir, whence Cumnor, I think Boars Hill and Kennington, and then back down the Thames to central Oxford.

About forty miles: down the Thames Path to Reading, with a stop at a pub for lunch; take the train back from the station.

Miscellany.

Uffpuffle.

Chris Mullin’s LRB diary.

Richard Wollheim’s ‘review without expedition’.

See also the now meticulously digitised Elizabethan.

The plural of octopus is octopi.

Miscellaneous miscellanea.

Bernard Williams on Maurice Cowling: ‘At the end of this volume, at any rate, it is clear that Cowling’s thoughts, when they extract themselves from the activities of merely quoting, commenting and sneering, are in a state of such abject confusion, and his relation to what he believes is so evasive, that some special infusion of intellectual and spiritual grace will be needed for him to do better than Norman, or to feel his own situation more clearly.’

The ministry is approached as an Oxonocantabrigian essay crisis.

Why disappear dissidents when you can lose paperwork instead?

Anthony Samrani (rédacteur en chef de L’Orient–Le Jour) remercie Hussein Hajj Hassan, ancien ministre de l’industrie et de l’agriculture du Liban, d’avoir accepté son invitation. Hajj Hassan : « c’est mon devoir ».

Henriette Caillaux ‘refused to be transported to the police headquarters in a police van, insisting on being driven there by her chauffeur in her own car, which was still parked outside. The police agreed to this[.]’

Daniel Rothschild in Mind: ‘Barristers in England are obliged to follow the ‘cab rank rule’, according to which they must take any case offered to them, as long as they have time in their schedule and can agree on fees. This rule is designed to ensure that unpopular people and causes can get legal representation. In philosophy, by contrast, we know we need no structural rule to ensure that seemingly hopeless causes receive representation from the brightest minds. And so we find Timothy Williamson, who famously defended epistemicism about vagueness over a quarter of a century ago, turning in his new book to another unpopular cause, the view that the meaning of ‘if’ is given by the material conditional.’

A.R.D. Matthias: ‘Category theory = dialectical materialism’.