All children are psychic

So says Sue Bishop, whom the NZ Herald describes as “one of Australia’s top ‘intuitives’”:

Bishop says everyone has psychic abilities, “the difference is that most people, before the age of seven, they cut that channel off”.

She says by seven the soft part of the skull fully closes and the age of reason begins, she explains.

Apart from the strange construction of that last sentence, I wonder if anyone at the Herald has ever had children. As Vicki Hyde of the NZ Skeptics comments:

Ask a medical person who actually knows about fontanelles and skulls and they’ll tell you that the soft spots begin to close at about two months, finally completing closure at around 18-24 months. But a basic sanity check of facts doesn’t seem to be required in NZ Herald articles these days....

Cow comfort farm

Stuff reports:

Cow comfort has become a key concern for farmers in the US, who have known for generations that contented cows give more milk. The traditional techniques for keeping cows happy aren't complicated – feed them well, keep the temperature comfortable and give them room to move around. But some dairy farmers are turning to a new array of creative options intended to keep cows as mellow – and productive – as possible.

Right. So how does one pamper a dairy cow?

Some farmers have installed waterbeds for their cows to rest on, while others play classical music. And some hire animal chiropractors to give older cows a tuneup and correct minor issues in calves, all part of the effort to ensure maximum milk output.

I know what you’re thinking:

Do the methods really work?

Good question. 

There’s no sound scientific data to back up the claims, but dairy farmers say they can see the difference with their own eyes – cows are giving more milk, the milk quality is improving and the herds seem to be enjoying the indulgences.

No “sound scientific data”? WTF? “Cows are giving more milk” is measurable; “the milk quality is improving” is measurable. This is what farmers do – measure stuff, to get data. If the story doesn’t give the data, that means the data do not support the claims. Which is not surprising, really.

But wait, there is more: 

And some dairy producers have employed even more unusual techniques [. . .] In Germany, for example, the Dortmund Concert Hall plays recordings of different classical pieces for specific cows. The hall then serves milk from the respective cows during live concerts featuring those same pieces.

 “Which means you’ll now be able to both listen to and taste the musical highlights,” the hall says in one advertisement.

You’d think they’d try Bruce Springsteen’s “Jersey Girl”. Or Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother, the most Friesian-friendly album ever.

So here are Cream in 1967 ripping off Albert King, but doing it in style:

Three magic words: “I was right”

The press release says:

Wellington Ph.D student, Hamish Clayton has won the NZSA Best First Book Award for Fiction – the country’s highest accolade for an emerging writer – for his novel, Wulf.

The honour is one of three New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) Awards announced today which recognise standout new writers across fiction, poetry and non-fiction categories. The Awards are part of the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards; the country’s premier prizes for literature.

Awards convenor, Chris Bourke says the judges described Wulf as one of the most memorable debut novels in recent times.

“Hamish Clayton’s first novel is a work of bravura lyricism, a brilliant feat of imagining that transforms historical events which occurred in early nineteenth century New Zealand into metaphor and myth.”

I read an earlier version of the novel in manuscript form in January 2010 and reported:

This is my most exciting discovery since Linda Olsson’s Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs. It is an astonishingly assured debut. Reviewers will swoon. It would have to win Best First Book Award for Fiction.

I was right.

Great story, great characters, great writing. Three brief quotes from the manuscript: “the season started snapping its salty teeth”; “our desire for trade always turned to the business of fucking”; “he set his carved house on fire and watched the years burn”. I was reminded of John Gardner’s Grendel and William Golding’s Rites of Passage. Yes, it’s that good. If you haven’t yet read it, do pick it up in a bookshop and have a look. Maybe even buy it. 

Synchronicity

A productive afternoon writing the book – will finish another chapter tonight or tomorrow morning, and three more are nearly there. I had Warren Zevon’s album I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead on loud. Usually it’s classical music, pianissimo, but I needed something to drown out the industrial-strength lawnmower at the high school over the fence. About three o’clock I took a break and went to Facebook, as one does. Francis Wheen in England had posted less than a minute earlier and I’m sure he won’t mind me quoting this:

Yes it’s four in the mornin’ and once more the dawnin’ just woke up the wanting in me – the wanting of a first-class ticket on the Nodland Express. No chance of that while we have all the world’s starlings nesting in our eaves. Bloody desperadoes...

followed by a YouTube clip of Warren Zevon’s “Desperadoes Under the Eaves”, the song that was belting out in my office right at that moment. 

So here is Hank Snow with “Four in the Morning”:

What I’m reading: NZ edition

Rachel Stewart in the Taranaki Daily News and other provincial papers has a thoughtful column on gay marriage and civil unions and why they are not for her:

At the risk of appearing ungrateful and churlish, I’m with Mitt Romney on this one. I agree with him that marriage was intended as a union between a man and a woman. Just not for the same strange reasons as he does.

Read on.

Waikato Times columnist Josh Drummond, whom you met at lunch the other day, has published an open letter applying for the job of job of  Press Relations and Regulatory Affairs Manager at the New Zealand outpost of British American Tobacco, otherwise known as B.A.T.:

In support of my application, please observe my video resume, in which I take it upon myself to spread awareness of your suspiciously delicious, curiously addictive  (albeit cancer-causing) products, through the medium of dressing up as a large ambulatory cigarette, who I shall call B.A.T-Man. I trust this will meet with your total approval. As Freud didn’t say: “sometimes, a man dressed as a large ambulatory cigarette is just a man dressed as a large ambulatory cigarette.”

He’s not making it up – he really did dress up as an ambulatory cigarette and accost people in the streets of Hamilton, asking if they smoked and if not, why not. There is a video clip to prove it:

I haven’t heard yet whether he got the job. I hope so. It would pay better than some of the freelance “journalism” he is offered

Nicholas Reid reviews Vanda Symons’ new crime novel The Faceless. Money quote:

As an Aucklander, I applaud all the things she has got right. Some of us really are as revolting as the worst characters in this novel.

 A lovely piece by Mary McCallum on Helen Heath’s new poetry collection Graft.

James Zuccollo, an economist at NZIER, blogs on the Facebook IPO and how the media have reported the drop in share price as bad news for those who bought on Day One – though it’s good news if you want to buy shares today:

[. . . ] news needs to be normatively charged to be worthwhile. A drop in share prices is good for some people and bad for others, but it probably doesn’t involve a loss of social welfare. Yet, to be a good news story, it needs to have a normative dimension with a hero and a baddie.

Chad Taylor has a new episode of his comic out, City Lights II: Planet of Fear, a sequel to January’s City Lights. Words by Chad, pictures by Jonathan King. May contain aliens. It’s fun, and he says it’s fun to do:

It’s cheaper than making films and a break from writing prose: write the characters, action and dialogue, and ping that off / against the images. It would have cost a small fortune to print this in the old days and the night scenes would have gone to black. Now we can play with the whole digital paintbox, for next to nothing.

Philip Matthews praises Beautiful Machine, the “surprisingly excellent” new documentary about Shihad:

[. . .] the Shihad story is rare in that this is a New Zealand rock band whose story is not a failure – not yet, anyway. The band is still together and making a living and if they never conquered America and Europe, they weren’t destroyed by the effort either. 

Finally, LaughyKate has invented a new acronym, WKSGM. I fear that her colleagues and family will be hearing it a lot. 

Q&A

Q: What are we on?

A: A journey.

Q: In which direction?

A: Going forward.

Q: How are our processes?

A: Robust.

Q: What else do we have?

A: Issues.

Q: Where?

A: Around that.

Q: How will we deal with them?

A: Transparently.

Q: How are we?

A: Good.

Q: How many of us?

A: We’re all good.

What I’m reading

There is a wonderful exchange of emails between George Monbiot and Noam Chomsky here. Monbiot wrote a Guardian column on genocide and cited a book on the subject to which Chomsky had contributed a foreword. The book downplays the massacres in Srebrenica and Rwanda and Monbiot, understandably, wondered whether Chomsky had actually read it. So, being a journalist, he asked him. Anger and insults ensued. Clearly Monbiot is right and Chomsky is grievously wrong but the self-importance of both is stunning. (I have never understood the reverence in which Chomsky is held as a political commentator, apparently based on his being an authority on linguistics. Few reverers can have read his books on the subject. I have, so I am not a reverer. Also, from these emails, he seems to be a total prick.) Money quote from Chomsky:

Did you read my article before writing about it? If not, then we can drop the discussion. If you did, then you know that it brought up colossal cases of genocide denial, vastly beyond anything that concerns you, and vastly more important as well for obvious reasons. I’ll keep just to the one case we’ve discussed – there are others — but that you don’t seem to comprehend, for reasons that escape me: the denial of the slaughter of tens of millions in the Western hemisphere, about 10 million in the territorial US alone.

Behind the scenes at James Bond auditions: excellent captions.

Brian Pigeon writes:

I keep getting asked about places to stay for any pigeons visiting London this year for the Pigeon Olympics. [. . .] There’s such a wide variety of ledges available it’s often hard to choose the right one for you. Sheltered? Not sheltered? Do you share, or are you looking for something a little more private?

Accommodation advice for pigeons heading to London here.

Jillian Ewart at Booksellers NZ on the challenges facing New Zealand booksellers, and what they are doing about it. Nice to see her talking to booksellers outside of Auckland and Wellington.

Speaking of the provinces, Stuff reports via AP:

A herd of cows has crashed a small gathering in a US town and bullied the guests for their beer. Massachusetts’ Boxford police Lieutenant James Riter says he was responding to a call for loose cows on Sunday and spotted them in a front yard.

Riter says the herd high-tailed it for the backyard and then he heard screaming. He says when he ran back there he saw the cows had chased off some young adults and were drinking their beers.

Riter says the cows had knocked the beer cans over on a table and were lapping up what spilled. He says they even started rooting around the recycled cans for some extra drops.

This is a very real problem here in Cambridge. We don’t like to talk about it to strangers – it’s a bit embarrassing, really. Where we live we are surrounded by cows – there is a cow paddock about a hundred metres from our house (see below); the children’s school has a milking shed directly across the road. They are everywhere. It’s all right for the people on the south side of the river where the streets are all literary and the cows do not roam, but here on the north side it can get rugged in barbecue season when we’re knocking back a few coldies. It’s the Friesians, you see. They really like their beer.

Meet the neighbours:

Letter to the editor of the month

From the 19 May issue of the Spectator (not online yet):

In praise of darkness

Matthew Parris (5 May) does well to recommend the removal of the hideous, urine-coloured glow of sodium street lamps in the countryside; and it is highly debatable that they are needed anywhere. The eye is more confused than sharpened by bright light at night. Colours are distorted. Gaps of darkness are bewildering traps. Humans appear ghoulishly inhuman, as if made of mustard. And the lights are relentless, merciless; they never go out.

Street lighting should use tungsten and be decorative only, like the pretty strings of lights on a pier. The rest destroys night vision (the dark is never dark!). Apart possibly from places like Cordoba, this planet was totally dark at night until only very recently. It cannot be that there is anything special about the current era which demands otherwise.

William Lambton

Co. Galway

So here is George Harrison with some famous friends at the Concert for Bangladesh on 1 August 1971 performing “Beware of Darkness”, one of the best songs from his post-Beatles album All Things Must Pass. Best line: “Beware of sadness.”

Peter Bland on Gavin Ewart

The 50th in this occasional series of reprints from Quote Unquote the magazine is from the December 1995 issue and is by Peter Bland, who wrote an occasional column for us from London, where he was then living. This one is about his friend and fellow poet Gavin Ewart, who died in 1995: the Independent ran this excellent obituary.

I had lunch with Peter and other writer friends earlier this month. For some reason Ewart’s name came up in conversation: to my amazement, three of us could recite a poem of his from memory. Peter could, of course, but so could I and Paul Litterick too. I think Paul recited the poem quoted below; the one I know by heart is far too filthy to reprint here. Let’s just say it is very inventive in finding rhymes for “Luxor”. (Judging by his poem in the latest Listener, CK Stead has been reading him too – the last line is pure Ewart.)

POSTCARD FROM PUTNEY

South-east England has enjoyed the warmest October on record. It’s been blissfully autumnal. Fruit trees are embarking on a second flowering, the swallows refuse to fly south, and our local house-sparrows are bringing up a very late second brood behind the outside hot-water pipes. I stubbornly go by the calendar year, wear my winter woollies, and point unerringly at the holly bushes, bursting with berries, as a sign of the terrible winter to come.

Most of us over 60 haven’t adjusted to global warming yet. Our minds are still marooned in the freezing smog-filled 50s, where we remain mentally crouched over a single glowing coal, toasting stale bread in our woollen mittens. Nature’s Keatsian tranquillity mellows our social scars but never completely heals them. Perhaps it’s just that the richness of “harvest home” brings with it that misty dark feeling of loss and mortality. (A peculiar mixture of loneliness and fading light that you get in the best late-Victorian and Edwardian landscape and genre painting.)

My friend and neighbour, the poet Gavin Ewart, has just died at the age of 80. He was among the most thoroughly humane, gentle and talented writers I’ve known. A master technician, with a wonderful ear for rhyme and scansion, he was also funny, irreverent and, at times, surprisingly visionary in his imagination.

Some weeks ago we lost Stephen Spender and, more recently, Kingsley Amis. Both seem much more like refugees from an early age than Ewart was. Gavin chose to write about the past rather than being stuck in it. Spender I admired more for his Journals than for his poetry. They’re full of the insights and observations of a self-questioning mind – fresh, intelligent and written in a highly entertaining and readable prose style.

Gavin, like Spender, was an Auden man, the last of that generation. Before meeting him in the late 70s I’d wrongly attributed a number of his funnier poems to Auden, including the famous “Miss Twye”: “... Miss Twye was soaping her breasts in the bath/ When she heard behind her a meaning laugh/ And to her amazement she discovered/ A wicked man in her bathroom cupboard.”

It was a poem Fairburn liked, and one that may have influenced his own Rakehelly Man. Who knows? That was one of the qualities of 30s poetry – it seemed to assume a world-wide audience and a commonly accepted public style.

As far as I know Gavin stopped writing after the war, but was encouraged to start again by Peter Porter (with whom he worked as a copywriter in a London advertising agency) and Alan Ross, editor of London Magazine, who had long admired his earlier work.

Certainly, Porter’s early 60s collections, and Ewart’s Pleasures Of The Flesh, were among the best things to come out of that Swinging London period. Both are full of a fine, irreverent, slightly flashy period flavour, sexy, colourful and technically inventive.

A traditionalist in terms of form and metre, Gavin loved language. As Fleur Adcock wrote of his work, “His technical inventiveness fizzled.” He was extremely chuffed when he became the first modern poet to be banned by the bookselling chain WH Smith.

Now, of course, I’m kicking myself for not seeing more of him. This was a man who’d swapped pints with Auden and MacNeice, who’d helped Dali put on his diving helmet at the 1936 Surrealist Exhibition in London, who’d watched Hammond and Bradman hit centuries at Lords. I wish, like the swallows, he could have lingered.

Finding Faults

My friend Steve Reay has published a paper, “Persistence of Beauveria bassiana (Ascomycota: Hypocreales) as an endophyte following inoculation of radiata pine seed and seedlings” in the latest issue of Biological Control. In case you missed it, here is the abstract:

The entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana commonly causes disease on a range of insects, including bark beetle pests of plantation forest trees. However, using broadcast application of the fungus to control pest beetles in large scale plantation forests could be difficult to achieve economically. B. bassiana has also been found as an endophyte in plants, including the main commercially planted tree in New Zealand, Pinus radiata. In this study we investigated two methods to establish B. bassiana as endophytes of pine seedlings, seed coating and root dip. Two isolates previously isolated from within mature pines were used and the seedlings monitored for 9 months. Samples of unwashed, washed and surface sterilised roots, surface sterilised needles and soil were plated on semi-selective agar at 2, 4 and 9 months after inoculation. B. bassiana was successfully established in pine seedlings using both root dip and seed coating. The fungus was found in soil, non-sterile and sterilised samples at 2 and 4 months, but only one seedling of 30 was positive for fungus in surface sterilised samples after 9 months.

Steve also has a new band, Faults, and a new EP, Invention. It is excellent. Anyone who remembers the Subliminals (not to mention the Haints of Dean Hall) will know he has form. You can download the EP for free here, entirely legally. Rude not to, really.