Infidelity

I ought to write an entry on this topic as it's on the module. Also, it's:

• usually the most popular topic for assignments
• among the most popular being bad activites, according to the first week confessions
• one of the commonest themes for fiction in all its forms, and that's what I'm meant to be teaching/researching/scholarising
• something that almost everyone has some experience of, from whichever perspective, and whether they know or not

But, I'm not sure that I have the intellectual energy to do it justice. As I don't want to go into personal details I'm just gonna waffle on a bit about what I think about enquiry into the topic, rather than the subject itself.

Infidelity (or adultery, if the partners are married) is, of course, a legitimate topic for academic enquiry. In social policy, it's a key factor in relationship and family breakdown; in psychology (or sexology, at least), there's an interest in examining why people seek sexual encounters elsewhere (assuming they can, if they wish, get it at home); in business studies, I expect that someone can prove that people spend more on Valentine's presents for their lovers than their spouses; in English, film, and media studies, it needs to be recognised as perhaps the most persistent theme in fiction, since the beginning of storytelling.,

Iconic adulterers: Aphrodite (married to Hephaestus, carried on with Ares - http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/AphroditeLoves.html); Abraham (married to Sarah, had a son with Hagar - http://dovepress.net/?p=926); Isuelt (married to Mark, does the dirty with Tristan (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375154/); Emma Bovary (if you don't know this one, then read the book. It's by Gustave Flaubert).

I wasn't at Yasemin's lecture as, for once, I had a better offer. To be more specific, I had an invite to the lauch of my mate Alan's first novel (http://www.tindalstreet.co.uk/books/indeterminate-creatures). Without giving away too much, it deals with adulterous desire as one of its themes. But that's not such a surprise, as so much fiction does!

The image is from this DNA testing site http://www.anylabsaustin.com/dna-infidelity.html, which will test for 'foreign' DNA on any item of clothing you send to them. I feel that "robotic semen extraction" might be mistaken by some clients.

On not marking

Everybody know that studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Marking, though, is a right pain in the arse.

Soon, I should be handing back essays to all the wonderful Being Bad students. However, they haven't all been marked, and as it's not fair and equitable for some students to get their grades and feedback before others, no one will get them.

I expect this delay will annoy many - perhaps most - students. In their position, I'd be pretty pissed off too. However, I'm not in the position of anxiously waiting for the verdict on a piece of work that I sweated over for many weeks, and put heart and soul into. Neither am I desperately hoping that the last minute piece of crap I threw together on the morning of the deadline has just about managed to scrape a bare pass.

Instead, I'm in the position where I seem to be hacking my way through a never ending Amazonian jungle, and never getting any closer to the lost opera house I'm sure is somewhere around here. If you think that's a strange image to come up with, you should catch me when I've just spent several days, evenings, and nights marking dozens of very similar essays, knowing that I've still as many to do.

I'm not asking for any sympathy - it is, after all one of the things I'm paid to do. But it's not the only thing I'm contractually obliged to do, and not everything can be done at the same time.

Next week - I promise....

For a lengthy discussion of providing effective feedback to students, which essentially boils down to "Bloody hell, what a lot of essays I've got to mark" (and also the source for the image below), click here.

Anti-social networking

Just watched last week's South Park - illegally, I'm afraid, via this site - http://www.watchsouthparkonline.net/ - though I see it as kinda legitimate as South Park is freely and legally available online in most of the rest of the world.

Apparently it's a bit of a viral video at the moment, as it took on Facebook and some other examples of what may still be called web 2.0. As far as South Park goes, it wasn't the best of episodes. Parodying Facebook and Chat Roulette is like shooting fish in a barrel; they're already totally stupid and pointless, so identifying their pointless stupidity didn't really stretch Trey Parker very much. Given the relentless criticism of the Pope over paedophile priests in the previous week's episode, I would have expected a few more jokes about abusive grooming online, rather than what was basically a retro Tron parody. Still, good stuff, and perhaps satire about Facebook needs to be kept pretty simple if it's going to be understood - and hopefully influence - most of its loyal members.

For better South Parks dealing with internet culture look for 'Over Logging' from season 12 and 'Make Love, Not Warcraft' from season 10. In the former, the internet disappears, and Stan's family loads up the truck to head to California, where there's rumours that there's still some internet to be had. The Grapes of Wrath parody is a bit simplistic, but the depiction of the internet as good for nothing but porn and chat is savagely accurate. (Computer geeks didn't think so, and 'Over Logging' seems to have prompted some bloggers to claim South Park had jumped the shark - they were wrong.)

Disclaimer - I have a Facebook account, but I haven't logged onto it for about two years. Can't remember the password, and can't be bothered to get it so that I can delete my profile. And after watching South Park, I'm not sure that I dare...

(The) punk is dead

So, Malcolm McLaren - the first M 'n' M - is dead. I was surprised that John Lydon could bring himself to bury the hatchet (or the butter knife, perhaps) and join in the tributes to the Sex Pistols' ex-manager. I was even more surprised at the extent of the coverage in newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, and the respectful tone of the obituaries. Does this mean that punk finally won its war against the establishment, and that we're all the inheritors of punk now? Or does it mean that it lost, was subsumed, and ultimately changed nothing?

To be honest, I haven't a clue. We ran a conference on punk at the university in 2001 (to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sex Pistols' gig at the 100 Club). And although we ripped off the name of the conference, the tag line and the promotional image from the Pistols, we didn't invite anyone associated with the band to speak. The Sex Pistols were a phenomenon, and although they were the public image of punk rock, they were in some ways too big an event to be part of the subculture. We were more interested in how punk changed social practices, structures, and relationships.

Punk remains a major musical movement, of course, even with the recent compromises, bastardisations, and blatant betrayals by those US bands who've claimed its mantle. When the conference page was still up on the university website, it got more traffic than almost any other page. Since it's now gone, I'll insert the poster image and tag line below.

If you can't work out why and how the images above are Pistols rip offs, then go away for a bit and read up on punk. Or watch this excellent documentary, chopped up on youtube.

Could anything like punk happen now, then? I don't just mean a controversial artist. Or the press going into a panic over the effects of gangsta rap, or emo. I mean a cultural movement which is essentially about challenging the ways in which society is organised, not just about getting more money out of the current system. Despite its apparent nihilism (and its kill a hippie attitude), punk was the last gasp of post-60s utopianism. Since then, it's all been a money and fame factory-line.

Soffware downloads

My old Dell laptop has finally given up the ghost, and I've had to shell out for a new computer. As usual, I've bought a PC. I hate Microsoft for its agressive anti-competitive practices (click here for a particularly nasty example of anti-Microsoft sentiment); but Bill Gates is donating lots of money to untrendy causes, and I hate Macs even more. I-tunes is just as virulent as Microsoft in its practices, Mac users are smug bastards (needless to say, I except from that generalistaion anyone wise enough to be reading this blog), and the way the GUI (graphical user interface) works makes me feel slightly seasick. I'm glad to see that Windows 7 has largely gone back to the old, staid, largely stable nature of the Windows 'classic' desktops, and the unfortunate experiment with Vista can be safely forgotten.

(I'd link to the original source for the image above, but it seems to have disappeared from the site. Click here for Charlie Brooker's comments on patronising Mac ad campaigns.)

However, there's still the problem that when you buy a PC with Windows installed, you basically get bog all. Works? What the hell is that? And the shop wanted another £100 for the Office software (ok, they knocked it down to £70 when I looked appalled, but that's still appalling).

Anyway, Gerry (who gave me a lift to the shop as my car's off the road) remembered that staff and students of the university can get an educational discount on Windows software. I rang IT services, and you can get Office 2007 for under a tenner. So, for the first time ever I've laid out some cash for downloaded software.

So, this is a post about being good and doing the legal thing. Sorry. I won't do it again.

Bandits and outlaws

Actually, only one outlaw in this entry. The uber-outlaw, if you will. Robin i' t' Hood. Or Robyn Hode. Or, of course, Robin Hood. Shortly to be personified by Russell bloody Crowe.

Advance reports on the soon to be released Ridley Scott film of Robin Hood here. What I want to talk about is the significance of the chosen origin story in the various versions of Robin Hood. Like all the best hero narratives, Robin often has a point of origin, a decisive event which causes his life to change, and gives a justification for his apparently illegal actions. However, the nature of this origin has changed several times over the centuries of Robin Hood fictions, and this leaves contemporary writers with a wide variety of choices over the backgound, motivation, and nature of their particular Robin Hood.

One of the key choices to be made is Robin's class background. Early versions of the Robin Hood legends always place him as a 'yeoman' - neither an aristocrat, nor a peasant, but somewhere in between. The identification of Robin as minor gentry (Robin of Loxley) or a major landholder (Earl of Huntingdon) came later, and seems to be an attempt to reduce the revolutionary potential of a commoner with a redistributionist habit. Ascribing a personal motivation to Robin - the murder of his father, the seizure of his lands, personal antipathy to the Sherrif of Nottingham, love for Maid Marian, etc. - similarly works to depoliticise the potential rebellion. The relocation of the Robin legends from the time of an unidentified King Edward (anytime between 1272 and 1377) to the earlier reign of Richard I, and particularly in having Robin participating in resistance to John's attempt to overthrow his brother as King of England, makes the standard version of the legend even more supportive of the established order.

The relocation of the Robin Hood legends to the time of King Richard has also led to unavoidable connections to the Crusades. All Robin Hood fictions now seem to have him as a returning crusader, accompanied by a Saracen companion, though the identity of his Muslim friend differs. Most versions of Robin Hood since half-way through the last century seem to carry the symbolic weight of their contemporary or recent wars. The recent BBC series continually referenced the war in Iraq, although its critical stance was somewhat compromised by making Robin both an aristocrat and a bit of a yob - Prince Harry, perhaps.

Most versions of Robin Hood, though, fail to deal with its mythic nature. The tales of Robin Hood are clearly legends - insofar as they lack historical verification, but are located largely within a recognisable version of English history - but the meaning of Robin Hood is more myth than legend. The origins of the name seem to indicate that 'Robin Hood' is a generic term for outlaw, and it's a short step from this to an understanding of Robin Hood as an honorific title, and then to further postulate that Robin is more a social function than a fictional character. Perhaps society needs a figure of prinicpled resistance - someone who fights for the forces of natural justice, not for the established order which has hijacked justice. It is this aspect of Robin Hood that makes him the archetypal bandit, not just a persecuted outlaw from history.

For more on Robin Hood, check out the following sites

http://www.boldoutlaw.com/
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/rh/rhhome.htm

The picture is from what must be the most sanitised version of the Robin Hood legend. Blyton manages  in Tales of Brave Adventure to give the same treatment to King Arthur, though he doesn't seem to have made it onto the cover.

Drugs?

Gerry's session on drugs, in tune with the intellectual aims of this module, wasn't primarily about legislation, social policy, or prohibition. People use drugs for all sorts of different (or similar) reasons; the banning of commercial trade in these drugs tends, however, to be driven by only a handful of motivations. And the main one of these is, it seems, moral outrage.

And so we come to mephedrone. Or m-cat. Or miaow miaow. Miaow. Miaow. You have got to be kidding me... No one would sidle up to someone in a club and ask "Need any miaow miaow?" And, yes, I know that as a 'legal high' there was probably fairly minimal street selling of the drug - so why does it supposedly have a (crap) 'street name' anyway?

The processes whereby drugs develop their slang names is somewhat murky. The etymology of slang generally is barely understood, and when it comes to terms related to criminal behaviour it's even harder to investigate or trace. But my feeling on this (and this is an uniformed view) is that drugs develop names that describe their appearance (weed), are reflective of their effects (speed), refer to an element in production or use (crack), or describe the appearance of the user (smack, dope). I can't see how miaow miaow could arise as a drug term that anyone could use without pissing themselves. And that isn't - as far as I know - one of the alleged side-effects of mephedrone.

As this seems to me a non-story, more related to newspaper sales than public safety, I'm illustrating it with pictures of the two cats that have lived in my house, both of which must have said miaow at some point.

The one of the top was called Charlie - which is a name that kinda screws up my theory of the derivations of drug terms.

For commentary on mephedrone which is somewhat better informed than tabloid scare stories, check out this week's New Scientist.

If you're on campus, or can be bothered to log-in to Athens, you can discover more about one type of drug slang formation in this article -

Antonio Lillo, 'The rhyming slang of the junkie', English Today, 17, 2, April 2001, pp.39-45
Among other nuggets of etymological information is the citing of 'Lou Reed' as rhyming slang for speed. I'd have thought Lou's name  would have been better used for weed, but I suppose that depends on whether you see The Velvet Underground as deviant hippies or proto-punks. I would have thought that might have been a factor in the development of the term, but what do I know?

This is my second post today, because I don't have to conform to the module's assessment criteria. Neither of these posts have any relationship to April Fool's day. Unless, of course, the whole mephedrone press panic is actually being orchestrated by Chris Morris. Cake was a more convincing drug name, though.

Field trip suggestions

I thought I'd comment on the suggestions for field trips. In particular, on why Amsterdam seems to be such an attractive option, even though a day-trip to London eventually topped the poll.

Undoubtedly a great city (the richest in the world in the 17th century), Amsterdam attracts nearly four million visitors every year. What are they coming for? It has some world-class museums, of course. The Rijksmuseum has an excellent collection of Rembrandts, the Van Gogh museum does exactly what is says on the tin, and the Anne Frank House is Western Europe's oldest Holocaust museum.

But I suspect the reasons why the city was nominated for a Being Bad field trip might be different. I presume that it's the twin factors of the red light area and the coffee shops.

Remarkably, Amsterdam manages to maintain a large sex industry without seeming seedy. It is, of course, a misapprehension. Despite the apparent civility in the Amsterdam prostitution scene, it's as ridden with corruption, criminality, and exploitation as the rest of the sex industry - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5400641.ece

The coffeeshops are similarly contradictory. Cannabis isn't exactly legal in the Netherlands; it's just tolerated. And although the coffeeshops can sell you drugs, they themselves are not permitted to buy them. Importation of cannabis into the Netherlands is illegal, as is growing it. And because of the prohibitions against smoking tobacco in public places, if you want to smoke a joint mixed with tobacco you'll have to use a separate room.

So, Amsterdam isn't some kind of libertarian (or liberal) utopia. Its public policy is hypocritical, as is the rest of Europe's. Whether it's more or less hypocritical depends, I think, on your political viewpoint.

All information above taken from Wikipedia, so it must be right.

Moral panics & films & comics

Never mind Kids, teen promiscuity, drug-taking and AIDS-spreading - what I want in a film too hardcore for kids to be allowed in to see it is extreme violence, foul language, and spandex costumes. And so we have Kick-Ass, already getting the Daily Mail in a right old tizzy.

I read the original for Kick-Ass, by Mark Millar and John Romita, quite recently, and thought it was pretty good. It made me laugh outloud once, and chuckle several times. It's got some of the most gory panels I've ever seen in a comic (a fairly mild example on the right). And the story is pretty interesting, even if its central concept (teen dresses up as superhero because he's bored and depressed, gets involved in pretty bad shit) isn't as clever as it seems to think it is.

The reason I read Kick-Ass (I'm not a massive fan of superhero comics, even deconstructionist/revisionist/postmodernist ones, except for Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen) is that Mark Millar's earlier work The Unfunnies is one of the cleverest, sickest, funniest and most fascinating comics I've read for years. Typically, while Kick-Ass is, despite its supposedly controversial content published by Marvel (now owned by Disney), and about to fill every multiplex, The Unfunnies had problems even getting published, and looks unlikely to ever be reprinted. I would have thought that Brass Eye and South Park would have inured people to comic (meaning humorous, here) renditions of paedohphilia, but Millar's use of cartoon animals and their primary coloured-world in a story of child pornography, prostitution, medical malpractice and the occult seems to have been a step too far.

Like the best satires, The Unfunnies forces an examination of moral attitudes and social practices. Inserting social issues into a mode of representation which is usually restricted to certain stereotypical humorous situations forces an examination of how those issues relate to everything else that we do, either in the social world, or in the representations that we consume. Kick-Ass, on the other hand, is just a better take on the same stuff that Heroes ripped off.

Badder cinema (and tv)

The kind of cinema that most challenges moral censors isn't, I don't think, representations of immorality, but an amoral approach to these representations. Kids doesn't seem to suggest any condemnation of its teenage drug users and their promiscuity. More recently, Kidulthood attempted the same uncompromising approach to its juvenile characters. Whenever they hit the tabloid press, as they always seem to, the justification for the methods of these texts is fidelity - that they are a realistic depiction of their generation.

I'm always suspicious of claims towards verisimilitude in fiction, particularly when it's used to justify exploitation, sensationalism, and pornographic representations. However, even if these claims are accepted, realism is hard to maintain, and frequently becomes yet another formulaic melodramatic mode. The path from Kids, through Kidulthood to Skins is clear. Having never been able to maintain interest through a full episode of Skins I'm probably not qualified to comment on its quality. So I'll quote from the series PR puff for the last episode of the current series, instead.

"This is not your usual dose of teenage angst, this is serious stuff. At the end of the last episode, we watched in horror as Freddie was beaten to death by a baseball bat by Effy's psychiatrist. Now, in this dramatic finale, Naomi's house becomes the stage for multiple showdowns as everything comes to a head. 'It's a dramatic ending,' says Jack O'Connell, who plays Cook. 'You'll need the tissues.'" We Love Telly, 13-19 March 2010, p.9.

If that's not a desperate descent into melodrama, then I'm not sure what would be.

You can watch the scene here, apparently recorded by someone on their mobile phone while watching tv. What the hell is that about...?

B-a-a-a-d cinema

I didn't watch Kids this time. Or any other time, for that matter. I've seen it before, years ago, and it's still hard to get the bad taste out of my mouth (metaphorically, of course). Which means, I suppose, it's the ideal film for this module.
The day after the class watched Kids I was in the Light House again, screening (and watching) Chinatown for another of my modules. Plenty of bad behaviour in that too. Murder, adultery, corruption, and more that I can't reveal without spoiling the plot.
The following week we were watching Don't Look Now. More death and depression. Several years ago I realised that all the films on the module (apart from those mentioned, the others are Pandora's Box and Barton Fink) involve death. And, in fact, so does just about every text I teach on every module, except for some of the children's books, and the cartoons. And even the cartoons involve a fair amount of violence.
But this isn't what we mean as 'bad cinema'. In fact, this is mainstream entertainment. Generally, we're not disturbed by murder in films. Although it's relatively rare in reality, murder is an essential ingredient of drama. The requirement for heightened emotional responses leads to extremes of violent behaviour, and also of sexual desire. Love and death, the great staples of drama. Except it's not the kind of death that most of us will experience, which is drawn out, and drepressing, and dull, but violent death.
I'll write some other time on the kind of 'bad cinema' that Kids represents. For now, let's stay in the dramatic highlands with an encyclopedia entry on 'Operatic Death', and a short video example.
http://www.deathreference.com/Nu-Pu/Operatic-Death.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQlmXU1zqfc

The picture is of Death's best starring role, in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Death is on the sinister side.

Masturbation

After talking about history, social attitudes, etc., I didn’t really get to some of the main points of my thoughts on masturbation. So, for the purposes of further discussion and consideration in blogs and assignments, you might think about some of these points:


Why is masturbation so seldom depicted or referred to in fiction or film (other than pornography)? If you took fiction as an accurate representation of society, then it would seem that there’s a lot more sex occurring in the world than there is masturbation, whereas the reverse is certainly true.

When masturbation is depicted in fiction/film, why is it so often treated humorously?

Why is ‘wanker’ (or the equivalent in many other languages) a term of abuse when it’s an activity indulged in by the majority of people at some time or other?

Why is masturbation becoming less problematic as a topic for discussion (I’m assuming everyone agrees that it is, but I find that people are now less reluctant to talk about it amongst friends)?

Is masturbation really – as generally assumed – a replacement for or supplement to sexual intercourse, or is it actually the primary form of sexual activity in that it is entirely focussed on self-pleasure, individually controllable, and not mixed up with other elements such as interpersonal relationships, power dynamics, love, guilt, money, dependency, money?

Following on from the above, might it be true to say that rather than masturbation being dependent on sexual intercourse in terms of being an attempt at the ‘representation’ of sexual activity, it is actually sex that is a continuing and continual attempt to recapture the masturbatory orgasm?

And that masturbation, being based clearly and explicitly on fantasy (unlike sex, which is frequently but seldom honestly and admittedly also based on fantasy) is more productive, creative and expressive than sex?

Are all forms of creative and imaginative works themselves a form of displaced masturbation? Something else to do with your hands…?

Some resources, other than those already listed on WOLF. Useful list of masturbation scenes in mainstream (i.e. non-pornographic) films here - http://sexuality.about.com/od/masturbation/a/masturbation_mo.htm
Survey of historical attitudes to masturbation in the medical sciences, in the form of a review of Solitary Sex by Thomas Lacquer here - Patrick Singy, 'The History of Masturbation: An Essay Review', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 59 (1), January 2004: 112-121 (only accessible on campus or via Athens log-in when off-campus).

The best scene movie showing masturbation releasing the power of sexuality below, from Pleasantville.

Lying

I'm listening to Moonlight in Odessa on the radio. It's a novel about a Ukranian woman who worked for a 'dating' agency serving up Eastern European women to rich men. It's a sign of the times that this includes not only Americans but wealthy Russians. As I write, she's just discovered that the American teacher she's just impulsively - though unpassionately - married is, in fact, a school janitor. He's already showing signs of bullying and jealous behaviour. And she's holding a torch for a gangster back home. Oh, I wonder how it will turn out...

Anyway, Tristan (the yankee janitor) has clearly told a series of pretty big lies to get what he wants. But stupid lies, of course. And he's obviously not going to keep the liee (I know that's not a word in English, but we don't seem to have a word for the addressee of a lie, and we should) now that the falsehoods are out.

What can we learn from this? Firstly, don't tell bleeding obvious lies. Secondly, a persistent smell of bleach about a person must be a sign of something, even if it's OCD rather than a concocted career. Thirdly... er, that's it.

Lies are so much a part of everyday life and everyone's experience that although it's disappointing - and sometimes devastating - to be lied to, it's seldom a surprise. Although we can only function socially by generally trusting people to do and be as they say, we know that this is often not the case, and have to continally have back up plans for when people are lying. This is something we must learn quite early. Psychologists tell us that children learn to lie around the age of four. Perhaps for a while they think that they've made a great discovery, and only they have this special power. But they must learn quite soon that lying is not only possible, but easy, and available to all. And while it might not be possible to permanently adopt the strategy attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Jeremy Paxman of thinking while interviewing politicians, "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?", we should always maintain a degree of scepticism. Perhaps we have to take a lot on trust - but everything we do should be treated as only provisionally true, and open to revision. Especially things that lecturers say.

Bag from http://www.cafepress.com/+indian_name_is_lying_bastard_tote_bag,320809028

Bullying

So many examples of bad behaviour as a result of this story - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-rage-despair - including lying and breaches of confidence. I'll deal with those some other time, but in this post I'll concentrate on bullying.

The allegations about Gordon Brown's behaviour towards his staff led to several carefully phrased responses from government figures. These largely consisted of the old strategy of denying claims that hadn't been made. But the straightforward statement by Mandelson that Brown "doesn't bully people" seems to have been contradicted by the head of the National Bullying Helpline. (This potential breach of confidence by a charity which is supposed to guarantee anonymity has led to a principled resignation by Cary Cooper - great name!)

So, despite the murkiness in the political manipulations of the story, it seems that Labour has lied and Brown is a bully. But - is it so simple? Perhaps not, because bullying isn't easily defined. It's easy enough when it's in Tom Brown's Schooldays, where the school bully Flashman is, of course, an unmitigated bounder. Or when the culprit is the similarly named Flash Thompson, Peter Parker's bête noire in Spider-man.

In fact, the dominant cultural image of bullies and bullying is securely attached to schools. The particular patterns of peer relationships with subtle hierarchies which require continual and visible reinforcement are very much a part of the institutional structure - both formal and informal - of schools, and they seem to almost encourage bullying. Whether this concept can be extended into the much more complex relationships which exist in the workplace is, I think, debatable. That's not to say that 'bullying' can't happen outside of school; but it requires a different formulation if it's not to continually conjure up images of drawing pins on chairs and punch-ups after school. 'Bullying' at work involves issues of exploitation, and harrassment, and economic or structural dominance, which don't apply in the same way to the school environment. It needs to be taken seriously, but this involves addressing institutional management structures, not personalities.

To read an illustrated edition of Tom Brown's Schooldays, which includes this scene of "roasting a fag", click here.

More on Flashman's later adventures, as depicted by George Macdonald Fraser, here.

Flash Thompson's relationship with Spider-man and Peter Parker is delineated here.

For a survey and examination of the cultural significance of bullying in US culture, check out 'A Short History of Bullying, Toadying and Snitching' by Kenneth Minogue.


For more 19th century fag roasting, with a Prime Minister on the end of it, check the video below.

Blogging

Today we're setting up blogs. Fun, huh? There's tens of millions of blogs already in existence, of an amazing variety (http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/) and we're going to add a few hundred more.

For the first episode of the BBC's The Virtual Revolution (which includes a claim that 90% of those millions of blogs are now dormant) click on the link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qn37q

The best song about blogs can be heard on the Nightingales' myspace page, and the lyrics to Wot No Blog? are here. Coincidentally, you can catch the Nightingales at the new Little Civic this Saturday (13 Feb).

I'm not providing the source for the image as it's a commercial site, and it kept trying to do strange things when I went on it. You want a badge, you search for it.

Smoking

As I write this I am enjoying a cigarette. Not clamped between my teeth while I type - the smoke gets in my eyes, and I don't have the labial dexterity for Clint Eastwoodian cigar chomping. But it's smouldering (great word!) away in the ashtray. Ok, the ashtray itself is pretty grubby, and surrounded by a mound of ash and other smoking related debris; but the cigarette itself is a beautiful little cylindrical joystick.

I'm not at work, of course. Though it isn't that long ago (this century, just about) that smoking was allowed not only on university land, but inside staff offices. The changes in social policy which have excluded smoking from enclosed public spaces aren't surprising, given the confederation of forces against the habit. And these policies - a combination of prohibition, financial disincentives, restrictions on marketing - have succeeded in dramatically reducing the number of smokers. But a hardcore of around a fifth of the population continues to light up regularly. And the fact that most of these are people between the ages of 20 and 24 proves that despite general disapproval, and the persistenent policies of the last two decades, young people continue to start smoking.

This dedication to self harm against all the odds is laudable. It was so much easier to start smoking in times past, when children were supplied with training packs.

Click on the imges for their sources.

An exasperated doctor expostulates in the British Medical Journal in 1978.

For more information, search also for candy cigarettes, to include American resources.

Incest

Incest is quite a good topic for Being Bad, because we're all agreed that it's wrong, but no-one is quite able to say why. Even the person who anonymously confessed to a relationship with his or her sister recognises the impropriety of the act, or they wouldn't have cited it as something that they shouldn't have done. Some people, though, insist that incest isn't wrong. See here for several interesting articles about incest campaigning groups and cases studies
Forbidden Love by Johann Hari
Tainted Love by Ruth Elkins

The general confusion over just how wrong incest is is reflected in the variations in international law. Many legal systems have some kind of incest prohibition. But the degree of consanguinity which constitutes incest varies considerably. Some states even criminalise some forms of incestuous sexual relationship, while allowing marriage between such partners... Wikipedia surveys the laws of several states, while an analysis of international variations can be found here - http://www.mpicc.de/ww/en/pub/forschung/forschungsarbeit/gemeinsame_projekte/inzest/inzeststrafbarkeit.htm

Basically, it's a morality minefield...

The image is of Lot and his daughters. It's taken from here, and you can find out more about this Biblical incest story here.