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My history teacher from school has been found guilty of molesting his pupils, and sentenced to 4 years in jail. As far as I can tell from the newspaper stories, the incidents all happened while I was at the school, and probably involved boys in my class.

The teacher’s name, believe it or not, was Dick Small. He was probably Richard to his friends, but amongst his pupils he was known as “Small, Dick”. Happily I cannot speak to the anatomical accuracy of the description. I do clearly remember that he was a large rotund man with a prominent beer gut, a hair-trigger temper, a bellowing voice, and a face prone to flushes of redness. In fact, if you look up the word “beery” in an encyclopedia, you might find a picture of him.

His sexual proclivities were often the subject of discussion after classes. Those who were unlucky enough to sit at the front desks often had their comfort zones invaded as he rested his ample gut on their desktops and leaned over them to deliver invective to a student at the back who had offered a particularly lame answer to a question. It was commonly believed that Small Dick had inappropriate feelings towards his pupils.

I remember the lessons clearly, not so much because of Small’s behavior, but because they were so terrifying on an academic level. For homework most weeks, we would be told to go and research a particular topic, and put together an essay of a few hundred words on the subject. The authors of the best essays would be invited to read out parts of them. To ensure that this did not inadvertently reward underachievers, the poorest essays would also be read out, ridiculed, and the authors loudly berated. Desks would be pounded upon by large fists, sometimes gripping rulers.

It wasn’t always that much fun, though. Mr Small’s favorite academic innovation was the “Timed Essay”. We would be given a week to study, in our own time; then in the next classroom lesson, we would be made to sit and write an essay. We would know the approximate topic of the essay in advance, but not the specific title. The essay would be written under examination conditions—complete silence, and no access to any form of reference material. Imagine having to face that every month, and perhaps you can understand why I still have issues regarding exams.

At some point, several pupils were allegedly invited by Mr Small to visit a local pub and start work on beer guts of their own. It’s said that they felt flattered by the attention, and hoped that maybe he would go easy on them in class if they went along. One lad was singled out and invited to a wine bar, even.

After a while, Mr. Small began giving lifts to at least one of the boys. Soon the journeys began to involve diversions to quiet spots in the Chiltern Hills, and indecent assault. One boy reported what had happened to a teacher, who reported it to the headmaster. Not much happened, initially; the police were not informed, and neither were the education authorities. The boy attempted suicide by jumping from a railway bridge. He survived, and told his parents it was an accident.

Finally, in my last few weeks at the school Mr Small suddenly and very quietly “resigned”. There was no announcement; we found out because the pupils who would have been in his class the following term noticed that they had been assigned to a different teacher. A friend told me the actual story; I’m not sure how he found out, and I’ll never know now because he died a year later after drinking way too much and choking on his own vomit. He also told me other things that haven’t appeared in the newspaper reports, which I’m not going to write about here for legal reasons. (I’ve had enough trouble after posting public information.)

As to Mr Small, he took the obvious career path for a child molester with anger management problems: he got a job with the Conservative Party. He worked as campaign manager for anti-gay Tory MP David Lidington. However, the boy who had attempted suicide suffered a couple of decades of serious depression, which he attributed to his being abused. In 2002, he finally decided that he had to go public about the whole thing. In 2003 after a detailed police investigation Mr Small was arrested, there was a trial, and he plead guilty to five counts of indecent assault against three boys.

The sad thing is that when he wasn’t terrorizing or molesting his pupils, Mr Small was a very good teacher. He emphasized that history wasn’t about facts; it was about connections. He expected essays to discuss cause and effect, coincidences, the why of history. It’s not useful to know that Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin in 1793 unless you know why he invented it and how his invention changed things. He expected us to be resourceful and able to do our own research, like real historians, and if that left me in terrified tears after working until midnight to prepare for a timed essay, well, that was just an unfortunate means to an end.

And ultimately I did learn, and came to find history fascinating, and passed my “O”-Level exams with flying colors. For what it’s worth, Mr Small never touched me, inappropriately or otherwise, as far as I can recall. I sat in the far corner near the fire escape door, a row forward so as to make it clear I wasn’t one of the “won’t work don’t care” kids in the back row, and I worked like crazy.

There is one thing that I can’t believe about the whole business: it’s that the person who taught us about the disaster of the Victorian “Payment By Results” education system, and about the effect of the Industrial Revolution on the working poor, was secretly a loyal Tory the whole time. Still, I suppose if you live one big lie, it becomes a habit that’s hard to break.

[If you are reading this and happen to have relevant information regarding this specific case that you wish to share with police, I understand that you can reach the child protection and sexual crime unit on 08458 505505.]

The story so far:

Looks like being a shill for the Bush administration can be pretty lucrative. I particularly love the irony of McManus calling his column “Ethics and Religion”.

What I want to know is: where’s my back-hander? I would have thought that an occasional pro-Bush posting from someone who’s not a right-wing religious freak would be far more likely to sway the Bush-hating masses than the steady drip of propaganda from people like McManus. I figure that I therefore deserve at least a few thousand in spite of my smaller audience.

Scientists at Duke University came up with an interesting experiment. They set up a system to let monkeys pay in fruit juice to see pictures of other monkeys. They discovered that male monkeys would pay good juice to see crotch-shots of female monkeys. They were also willing to pay to see photos of high-status monkey celebrities, but had to be paid to look at pictures of low-status monkeys.

I guess we’re not all that distant from our genetic cousins after all.

Update: Hot or not?

Theodore Dalrymple writes about the German psyche, and how even now Germans find it hard to feel national pride, or even anger at what was done to them in Dresden. My German roots are distant enough that I’ll have to take his word for that. However, he then goes on to diagnose a deep malaise in modern Germany:

The urban environment of Germany, whose towns and cities were once among the most beautiful in the world, second only to Italy’s, is now a wasteland of functional yet discordant modern architecture, soulless and incapable of inspiring anything but a vague existential unease, with a sense of impermanence and unreality that mere prosperity can do nothing to dispel. […] Nor are the comforts of victimhood available to the Germans as they survey the devastation of their homeland.

Of course, that pre-supposes that modern architecture is “devastation”. Apparently Dalrymple feels that the proper response to the end of World War II would have been to replicas of the destroyed classical architecture and make Germany a kind of Weimar Disneyland with compulsory lederhosen for all.

Instead, the influence of the bauhaus is everywhere. Though a few old Gothic typeface street signs remain, minimalist sans-serif typography is almost ubiquitous. And why not? The bauhaus is a piece of 20th Century culture Germany can be proud of; it profoundly influenced the entire world—and Hitler hated it.

So, I say better to look forward with modern architecture, than to build faux reproductions of the medieval Germanic buildings that Hitler loved.

Collective pride is denied the Germans because, if pride is taken in the achievements of one’s national ancestors, it follows that shame for what they have done must also be accepted.

What can I say? Apparently Mr Dalrymple hasn’t spent much time in the company of ordinary Americans. Even now, US torture is being written off as the responsibility of a few “bad apples”, as the architect of the policy gets moved into the Attorney General’s office, and SUVs sport magnetic “God Bless Our Troops” ribbons.

A young German once said to me, “I don’t feel German, I feel European.” This sounded false to my ears: it had the same effect upon me as the squeal of chalk on a blackboard, and sent a shiver down my spine. One might as well say, “I don’t feel human, I feel mammalian.”

Hyperbole aside, it’s not surprising that a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph would be horrified by the thought of identifying as European. But what’s wrong with saying “I don’t feel human, I feel mammalian”? Am I the only person to have thought that while reading the newspaper?

Coincidentally, National Geographic reports that scientists have successfully fused human and animal cells, and that plans are underway to engineer mice with human-style (albeit very small) brains. There’s an obvious joke about chimp/human hybrids, but I don’t really need to spell it out, do I?

The news from the House of Pain led one person on Slashdot to ask: if we can “uplift” animals to a more human-like state, why shouldn’t we do so? My response was that if we do, they might start thinking and behaving like humans. If you want to know what’s wrong with that, ask a German.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a number of wonderful human beings. I’m just not wild about humanity as a whole. In that respect my philosophy has something in common with that of Bill Hicks (authentic Texan): as he put it, “We’re a virus with shoes”

Wouldn’t it be great if you could stick something the size of a quarter on the gas tank of your car and suddenly get better fuel efficiency?

The OCN SmogBuster™ Disc is a custom holographic disc that is able to store and project proprietary programming that affects the properties of the gasoline or diesel fuel, causing it to burn cleaner and more efficiently.

The press release has more details:

The disc is about the size of a quarter and easily installs on the gas tank. The proprietary technology has consistently reduced smelly, smoky exhaust and in addition increases gas mileage and engine performance. Many who have tried the product report a change in emissions in a matter of minutes and a burn off of carbon deposits, increased gas mileage after a few tanks of gas.

How much would you pay for one of these marvels? Five bucks? Ten? Think again—the SmogBuster is $299. However, you can get it for a mere $199 if you join their innovative pyramid multi-level marketing scheme.

Of course, there are always critics:

“It doesn’t work,” says Dr. Terry Parker, a physics professor at the Colorado School of Mines. Parker and graduate student John Dane of the chemistry department tested the device for 9News.

“It’s clear that it’s just a sticker and nothing else,” Dane said.

—Denver Post

Ever wonder who has exclusive ownership of the phrase “Back that ass up”?

Well, now the question can be answered:

In its Jan. 13 opinion, the 5th Circuit sets out the following facts: In 1997, both rappers recorded songs with similar titles—D.J. Jubilee, also known as Jerome Temple, recorded “Back That Ass Up,” while Juvenile, also known as Terius Gray, recorded “Back That Azz Up.”

[…]

After a 2003 trial, a jury ruled in favor of defendant Juvenile, finding that D.J. Jubilee failed to prove that his version of “Back That Ass Up” was substantially similar to Jubilee’s version of “Back That Azz Up.”

D.J. Jubilee appealed to the 5th Circuit, arguing that many of the jury instructions were flawed, including instructions on substantial similarity, specifically when applied to the use of the phrase “back that ass up.”

Juvenile believed that the songs were substantially different and used different hooks; D.J. Jubilee’s hook was the phrase “back that ass up” while Juvenile’s was a sample from the Jackson 5′s song “I Want You Back.” But D.J. Jubilee believed the jury should have been instructed to review specific portions of both songs, rather than both songs as a whole, according to the 5th Circuit’s opinion.

The appeals court disagreed with D.J. Jubilee’s arguments and affirmed the jury’s verdict. The jury, as instructed, likely believed that the hook in Juvenile’s song was not the phrase “back that ass up” but rather a sample from the Jackson 5′s song, according to the opinion.

“And that belief would explain why the jury determined that the songs are not substantially similar,” wrote King in an opinion joined by Judges Jerry Smith and Emilio Garza. “Accordingly, we cannot say that the jury instruction, even if it had been erroneous, probably resulted in an incorrect verdict.”

Next week: Who the phrase “I’m Rick James, bitch!”? Dave Chappelle, or the estate of Rick James?

A little fun from the RISKS digest:

1. Go to http://mappoint.msn.com/DirectionsFind.aspx
2. In the Start section, select “Norway” from the listbox and enter “Haugesund” into the “City” field
3. In the End section, select “Norway” from the listbox and enter “Trondheim” into the “City” field
4. Click on “Get Directions”
5. Enjoy!

I could never deal with the standard shoelace knot. I think it was the lack of symmetry, combined with my moderate ambidexterity; it was aesthetically unappealing and hard to master.

Hence, for most of my life I have tied my shoelaces with a bunny ears knot. However, the change from habitually wearing trainers to wearing actual shoes has meant the use of slippery, circular cross-section shoelaces. This in turn has led to annoyingly frequent knot slippage.

I suspect that part of the problem is that I was sometimes not tying the bunny ears the same way as the initial knot, and hence ending up with a slip knot. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution—and it’s symmetrical. I now (when I remember) tie my laces with a secure double-bunny-ears knot.

I recommend this secure knot to everyone as an excellent upgrade to the traditional and customary shoelace technology you were taught as a child.

The Guardian yesterday had interesting news from Iraq:

Babylon, a city renowned for its beauty and its splendour 1,000 years before Europe built anything comparable, was chosen as the site for a US military base in April 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq.

Military commanders set up their camp in the heart of one of the world’s most important archaeological sites and surrounded the enclosed part of the ancient city. At least 2,000 troops were installed, daily passing relics such as the enormous basalt Lion of Babylon sculpture.

In September 2003 the base was passed to a Polish-led force, which held it until today’s formal handover of the site to the Iraqi culture ministry.

Can you guess how it turned out? I think you can.

John Curtis, keeper of [The British Museum’s] Ancient Near East department and an authority on Iraq’s many archaeological sites, found “substantial damage” on an investigative visit to Babylon last month.

[…]

Among the damage found by Mr Curtis, who was invited to Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, were cracks and gaps where somebody had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate.

He saw a 2,600-year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and including broken bricks stamped with the vainglorious boasts of king Nebuchadnezzar.

Vast amounts of sand and earth, visibly mixed with archaeological fragments, were gouged from the site to fill thousands of sandbags and metal mesh baskets. When this practice was stopped, large quantities of sand and earth were brought in from elsewhere, contaminating the site for future generations of archaeologists.

The paper has photos of some of the damage, including “UT TEXAS” graffiti.

Still, at least we’ve achieved the goal of preventing Afghanistan from being the center of terrorism:

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists, according to a report released Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,” said David Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. “There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.”

—Chicago Tribune

This is how the universe works: The day when you decide “Oh, to hell with it, I’m not going to bother shaving!” is the day when the VP will decide he wants to meet you.

I’m back in Austin. The second flight was delayed, but not too badly. I sat and listened to This American Life, which I had downloaded to the Zodiac 2. One episode was about people who love their cars entirely too much, and I’m starting to understand that—it was good to see the round butt of a Prius again. The car says it needs its 5,000 mile service, so I’d better get that sorted out.

Private Eye refer to “The Curse of Gnome“: they note that companies that manage to screw them over generally came to a nasty karmic end soon afterwards. For the record, I haven’t been sticking pins in a Brad Fitz voodoo doll…but I can’t help feeling a little schadenfreude at the entire LiveJournal system going down, redundant backups and all. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. If you’re one of the affected, now would be a great time to plan that migration and work out how to use an RSS aggregator instead of a “friends” page.