One uploads what one thinks is a modest but worthy piece on vernacular history and custom, as evidenced by the English pub and its signs and then to bed.
Come the morning like Topsy it growed and in all directions. John's serious discourse on symbiology and the Trinity and Mary and her blooming limericks. And Hugh as usual is just thoroughly interesting.
So, on the subjects of Edgars, Lions, Alberts and Chequers, below:-
The Edgar Wallace pub just off the Strand in London. I have walked past this many times but don't have my own photograph of it yet. I must therefore acknowledge that the photograph top left  is the work of Graham Mason from the Pubs Galore website.
The Red Lion Thetford Norfolk.
The Albert Victoria Street London
The Chequers Billericay. These are my own.

From The Times
Islamist extremists said yesterday that they planted the bomb that derailed a Russian express train, killing 26 people and injuring more than 100.
The claim of responsibility came from Chechen militants linked to Doku Umarov, a separatist warlord in the violent Russian North Caucasus.
A statement posted on a website sympathetic to the militants said that the attack on the Nevsky Express between Moscow and St Petersburg had been “prepared and carried . . . pursuant to the order of the Emir of Caucasus Emirate”.
Mr Umarov declared himself head of a “Caucasus Emirate” in 2007 as part of the rebels’ campaign to turn Russia’s Muslim-dominated republics of the North Caucasus into a single Islamic state.
Police told the Interfax news agency that they had no direct evidence linking Friday’s bombing to Chechen militants, but the chief Russian investigator, Aleksandr Bastrykin, said that it bore their hallmarks. His office disclosed that he had been injured when a second bomb exploded at the crash scene on Saturday.
The regional chief in St Petersburg of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told reporters that the terrorists may have been plotting a much bigger disaster. Leonid Belyayev said that the Nevsky Express had been due to pass a train coming in the opposite direction at the spot where the blast occurred but that it had been running a minute late on the night. “If the two trains had met, the tragedy could have been worse,” Mr Belyayev said.
About 1,500 people gathered for an anti-terrorism rally in St Petersburg yesterday, organised by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.
In a sign of fears stirred up by the attack about a new wave of terrorism, some held up banners urging the authorities to “find and annihilate” those responsible.
None of the British 'Lets give the poor alienated youth lots more of our luvverly money for a sports centre, gym, libary and games'

Breaking news. Reports of casualties vary according to the agency
This is Sky news
A bus has exploded in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The blast took place in the busy suburb Sayyida Zainab, killing up to a dozen people, according to local reports.
Scores more are said to have been injured.
Witnesses said that the explosion targeted a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims.
The suburb is home to a shrine dedicated to the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad and attracts Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims.

(CNN) -- An explosion at a graduation ceremony (at the Shamow Hotel) in the Somali capital Thursday killed at least 15 people, including three government ministers and nine students, local journalists told CNN.
Also among the dead in Mogadishu were two journalists and a professor.
At least 50 students were injured, said the reporters, who witnessed the blast. All were attending graduation ceremonies for health students. I wonder how many of them were newly qualified midwives or nurses?
Education Minister Abdullahi Wayel, Health Minister Qamar Aden (a woman) and Higher Education Minister Ibrahim Hassan Adow died in the explosion.
Sports Minister Suleman Olad Roble was hospitalized in critical condition, his relatives told local media. Initial reports after the bombing said Roble was killed in the blast.
The journalists killed in the blast were Mohamed Amiin Abdullah of Shabelle Media Network and freelance cameraman Hassan Ahmed Hagi, who worked closely with the network.
CNN regularly works with Shabelle Media
Several sources say the bomb was carried by a suicide bomber. According to the New York Times that suicide bomber was disguised as a veiled woman. Further some of the dead were surgeons, a scarce resource in a violent country.
Reuters says that suspicion has fallen on the al Shabaab group responsible for numerous bombings already.

John Derbyshire reminds us of the greater (and more long term) realities of science and Western civilization in the wake of climategate.

Vladimir Nabokov, inventor of the emoticon (ROFLMAO :-), would be pleased to see that it has acquired a touch of nuance. From Newsbiscuit, where it crumbles, cookiewise, every day:

Two new emoticons were unveiled at a Microsoft Conference in Philadelphia yesterday. Martin Groonstadt, of the University of Utrecht’s Emotional Intelligence Unit hailed the new graphics as a great leap in communications, ‘For years bloggers have been constrained by the lack of range in Emoticons. For example, they can be happy :- ) or very happy :-> or indeed laughing :- D but not expressing mild wry amusement or the kind of half-smile that seems to concur with another person but actually signifies complete disagreement :-} These new quizzical emoticons occupy a much-needed place in our emoticon lexicon.’

In a separate issue, validation of the so-called ‘continental nose’ ( :¬) sparked a certain amount of controversy in the European Union Emoticons Standardisation Committee. On an emoticon message board, Dean from Colchester branded it a ‘diabolical liberty’, while Chantal from Billericay wrote ‘hnds of our Englsh Nses. i dnt wnt any of yr bnt forign nses on my fone’.

Klaus Unterleiben of the Munich-based Emoticon Graphic Design Consortium, IchBinEinLittelFacshelSchmiler said the continental noses were much clearer in design terms than the straight English noses, and would replace them as a matter of Historic Inevitability. Martin Groonstadt, attempting to calm the controversy, expressed a wish that ‘In time to come, a so-called continental nose will be as unremarkable as a crossed seven.’

Until then, all E.U. emails and text messages will be translated into all European languages with the appropriate emoticon for that region, costing an estimated 750 million Euros. :¬{

I'm sure NER readers will be relieved to learn that a new edition of Fowler's is coming out with the blood pumped back into it that had evidently been drained from the last edition. Luckily, I am in possession of a 1957 edition - true to the original - given to me some years ago by a thoughtful friend. (h/t: Arts & Letters):

Henry Watson Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage is an unabashedly prescriptivist tome, which is to say that it doesn’t waffle in describing the right way, and the wrong way, to use English words. The archetypal usage manual, commonly called just “Fowler’s,” was initially published in 1926. It has undergone two revisions since, the product of the first of which, a book judiciously and lightly edited by Sir Ernest Gowers, was released in 1965. F.W. Bateson, the English literary scholar, reflected the general feeling when he wrote that Gowers was “remarkably successful . . . in retaining Fowler’s ipsissima verba while making the minor corrections and qualifications that time has made necessary.”

Similar approbation did not greet the second revision of Fowler’s, published in 1996 and helmed by the late lexicographer and linguist Robert W. Burchfield. John Simon, reviewing that book for the New Criterion, wrote that Burchfield — who before editing Fowler’s had edited both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Cambridge History of the English Language — had “made himself a true citizen of Oxbridge.” “But an ox bridge,” Simon quipped, “can be no better that a pons asinorum.”

The trouble, simply put, was that Burchfield had expunged Fowler from Fowler’s. Gone were some of the original author’s beloved subheadings (“Pairs and Snares” was pared, “Unequal Yokefellows” unyoked) and gone, too, was his jaunty, slightly mischievous, scything-while-grinning tone. Most objectionable was that Burchfield had changed Fowler’s from a prescriptive book to a descriptive one. Usage was no longer to be judged but understood. Entries that had earlier attacked ambiguity, castigated the careless, and lowered the boom on barbarism were suddenly more interested in explaining the origins and development of the English language’s scofflaws than in pointing them out and locking up. The warden had become the prison psychologist.

William Safire wrote that the first Fowler’s was “a body-and-soul book, rambling through the byways of usage” and “written with a style all its own: certain, authoritative, unafraid to make decisions.” Burchfield’s edition is not at all that. It is a fine reference manual assembled by a first-rate scholar, to be sure, and anyone seeking edification about the historical iterations of words and phrases would do well to consult its pages. But it does not follow its predecessor on a merry march through the English language, nor does it do much for Henry Fowler’s originally intended reader, that “half-educated Englishman of literary proclivities” who just wants to know: “‘Can I say so-&-so?’”

Today’s half-educated supplicants, those less than obsessive about scouring used-book shops, have had to content themselves with Gowers’s interpretation of Fowler’s because the original version was long out of print. And young people growing up on Burchfield’s book no doubt find Fowler’s just another among the plodding reference manuals to be occasionally consulted and then quickly reshelved. Not a fine state of affairs. Thankfully, Oxford University Press has now swept to the rescue with the rerelease of the first edition, in effect putting Fowler back in charge of Fowler’s...

Senate votes to keep Medicare cuts in health bill

Senators voted 58-42 to reject an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would have stripped more than $400 billion in Medicare cuts from the nearly $1 trillion measure. It would have sent the entire 2,074-page bill back to the Senate Finance Committee for a redo.

Republicans said the proposed cuts to health insurance plans and medical providers mean seniors in the popular Medicare Advantage program will lose benefits. And they predicted lawmakers will ultimately back away from the cuts, once seniors start feeling the brunt.

"Medicare is already in trouble. The program needs to be fixed, not raided to create another new government program," said Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Democrats said seniors will not lose any guaranteed benefits. The cuts — amounting to a 2 percent slowdown in spending — will help keep Medicare solvent by making it more efficient, they contended. And they pointed out that the health care overhaul bill improves preventive care and prescription coverage.

"My colleagues on the Republican side have resorted to the politics of fear to preserve a broken health care system," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "What we're hearing are scare tactics designed to mislead seniors."

AARP, the seniors' lobby, threw its weight behind the Democrats.

The votes Thursday came after three days of angry debate in which Democrats accused Republicans of stalling to try to kill the bill, and Republicans protested that they were only exercising their right to give the complex legislation full scrutiny.

The first votes were held under a special agreement requiring 60 votes to prevail. That tested the coalition Democrats are counting on to move President Barack Obama's signature issue. The margin was close on the women's health amendment, which aims to safeguard coverage of mammograms and preventive screening test under a revamped system.

The 61-39 vote on a provision by Democrat Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine was the first substantive ballot in an acrimonious debate that promises to go on for weeks.

After that will come an amendment to restrict abortion funding, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Drafted by an abortion opponent — Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska — it looms as a major challenge for the Democrats.

Though Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate, two Democratic senators voted against the Mikulski amendment — Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Nelson. The measure was saved by three Republicans voting in favor — Snowe, David Vitter of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine.

Thursday's vote followed the heated controversy over a government advisory panel's recent recommendation that routine mammograms aren't needed for women in their 40s. Although the advisers' recommendation was nonbinding, it prompted fears that the health care legislation would usher in an era of rationing.

The Mikulski amendment gives the health and human services secretary authority to require health plans to cover additional preventive services for women. The Congressional Budget Office said the amendment would cost $940 million over a decade

Mikulski said her amendment would guarantee that decisions are left to women and their doctors, not placed in the hands of government bureaucrats or medical statisticians. She accepted a modification to her amendment by Vitter that would specifically prevent the controversial recommendations on mammograms from restricting coverage of the test.

However, Republicans said that Mikulski's amendment still left too much discretion to the HHS secretary. A competing amendment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, would prevent the government from using the recommendations of outside advisers to deny coverage of preventive services, including mammograms and Pap tests. It was defeated by on a vote of 41-59.

The Medicare vote went to the heart of seniors' concerns that cuts from the program used to finance coverage for the uninsured will undermine the quality of their care.

Furious with opposition from AARP, McCain railed on the Senate floor and delivered a message to seniors:

"Take your AARP card, cut it in half and send it back. They've betrayed you," he said.

Underscoring the political stakes, McCain, recorded "robocalls" in states that are home to key moderate Democrats asking voters to support McCain's amendment stripping the bill's Medicare cuts. The calls, paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, targeted Nelson, Bennet and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

"On Monday, I introduced the first Republican amendment to the massive health care bill, which would send the bill back to the Senate Finance Committee and stop the Democrats from cutting vital Medicare coverage for our seniors. I need Sen. Blanche Lincoln to join me in this effort," McCain says in the call heard by Arkansas residents.

He asks them to go to an NRSC Web site and sign a petition to Lincoln "urging her to join my effort to fight a Washington, D.C., government takeover of your health care."

The scripts in the other states were identical. Another call by a live operator was heard by voters in North Dakota, which prohibits robocalls, and it delivered the same message, targeted at Sen. Byron Dorgan.

Two Democrats voted with McCain against the Medicare cuts, Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia.

A competing amendment by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., underscoring that no benefits in traditional Medicare will be cut by the legislation, was approved 100-0.

___

Rabbi urges more tolerance for Muslims in Europe

December 3, 2009

PARIS (JTA) -- France’s chief rabbi said Europe must change its attitude about Islam.

Rabbi Gilles Bernheim said a Swiss vote Nov. 29 forbidding the construction of minarets alongside mosques was a clear sign that Western European leaders had “failed” at building tolerance toward Muslims, and he called on “all religions” as well as political leaders to increase interfaith dialogue.

“Today we need to act so that Europeans, and not just the Swiss,  change their opinion about Islam,” he wrote in an editorial published Wednesday in the French daily Le Figaro.

He compared the law aimed at minarets to past sanctions against European Jews.

“The problem” with the Swiss vote “is the discrimination that it introduces by authorizing the construction of church steeples and tall buildings by all other religions except Islam.

Bernheim noted that in the past, Jews were forbidden to construct synagogues taller than churches.

Opening synagogues, mosques and churches to leaders and members of different faiths would help “fight prejudices,” he suggested. He said some of the tolerance building should be done "in Muslim countries,” as well as in Europe.

Since the Swiss popular vote, polls in France and some other European countries have shown significant support for a ban on minarets and other Muslim symbols.  A French Institute of Public Opinion poll conducted early this week said 46 percent of the French did not want more minarets in France, versus only 40 percent who would accept them.

________________________

Here's a little more on this idiot savant from the French press:

"Le nouveau Grand rabbin de France Gilles Bernheim, 56 ans, se veut d'abord "le rabbin des rabbins" et le "guide de la communauté". Présenté par ses opposants pendant la campagne comme un intellectuel distant, face au Grand rabbin Sitruk effectivement très populaire, Gilles Bernheim est plutôt urbain, soucieux de pédagogie et d'exactitude des mots. "J'ai un discours serré", dit-il en souriant, ajoutant qu'il est important de "donner à penser". Il insiste particulièrement sur son orthodoxie religieuse "égale à celle du Grand rabbin Sitruk", en référence aux moments les plus polémiques de la campagne qui a été extrêmement tendue."

"Un intellectual distant"? He's not nearly "intellectuel" enough. He's a dab hand at "dialogue" and is, one gathers, the kind to offer a predidtable prayer at the altar of the Idols of the Age. He's not what the age demands. But it's what the age, cette epoque, cette belle epoque-la, apparently has provided. Too bad. 

Has-been, absurdly leftist but occasionally funny, Liverpudlian Jewish comedian Alexei Sayle's best sketch is the simplest. It juxtaposes the quick (and not so quick) and the dead, and, with no trace of nuance, asks why:

Jimi Hendrix - dead. Phil Collins - alive. Ginger Rogers - dead. Sue Pollard - alive. Francis Bacon - dead. That bloke out of Kula Shaker - alive. Death be not proud - who wrote that? That's right, it was John Dunne. He of course has snuffed it, whereas Sir Andrew Lloyd Stinking Sir Bloody Webber is still stinking bloody with us! Shakespeare - dead. The wankers who wrote 'Three lions on a shirt! Football's cummin 'ome!' - still alive. Bill Shankley - dead. Graham Taylor - alive. Karen Carpenter - dead. The carpenter who fucked up my bleeding kitchen! Alive! It's as if God has developed a nasty mean streak. Anybody the least bit decent and wallop! Up they go! And what are we left with? The shite - that's what! I'll give you some more examples - bloke down the pub who said he'd do my accounts and introduce me to some powerful people in American television - dead. Bloke down the pub, 120 years old, spits in his beer, tells me about the great war - doesn't sound so bleedin great to me - he's still alive. Bloke down the pub owes me 80 quid - dead. Bloke down the pub who says he's going to rearrange my testicles if I don't find the electric hedge trimmers that he lent me six months ago - alive, alive, cockles and muscles bleedin o! Bill Hicks, John Lennon, Orson Welles - dead. Michael Bolton... Michael bleeding Bolton - alive. Roger Whittaker... Roger leaveitalone bleeding stinky poxy Durham Town Whittaker still bleeding alive! I'll give you another example - bloke down the pub, he said to me 'Charlie,' cos he's always too pissed to remember my bleeding name, he said 'Charlie, life is like a double-decker bus. It's red, it's got an upstairs and a downstairs. Sometimes there's a conductor, but these days usually just a driver.' And yes, you've guessed it - he's still alive, the twat! I mean if you're mean, if you're selfish, if you've got no bleeding talent you can do what you like forever. But if you're the least bit good, if you're the least bit talented then...... No. It's alright. I'm shite!

I'll put in my two penn'orth:

Maggie Jones, who played Coronation Street's Blanche Hunt with a tongue like a viper and no hint of rhyming slang, is dead. From The Times:  

Maggie Jones, the actress best known for portraying the sharp-tongued Blanche Hunt in Coronation Street, has died at the age of 75.

[..]

Maggie Jones [...] will be missed. Hugely. To many Coronation Street fans Blanche was a finer battleaxe than the legendary Ena Sharples. To many (including myself), Blanche — who came back to the Street full-time in 1998 after odd appearances down the years — was our favourite character. She gleefully defied the maxim that if you hadn’t anything nice to say about somebody, you shouldn’t bother saying it. Instead, she broadcast her malevolence from the rooftops and to her victims’ astonished, deeply offended faces.

In contrast, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber whose name Cockneys could not conjure with, and who was released, in August, on the "compassionate" grounds that he had but three months to live, is alive and bloody kicking.

Two colleagues and co-founders of Former Muslims United, Nonie Darwish and Dr. Wafa Sultan were in Boston within 24 hours of each other. They both confronted threats to their security. Both went on to make their presentations, despite daunting intimidation and security arrangements that confront apostates from Islam who speak out at universities and communities in America.

Last night, prior to Nonie Darwish’s scheduled speech at a CAMERA Campus event at Boston University, a suspicious fire broke out in women’s rest room on the second floor of the Boston University (BU) College of Arts and Sciences, not far from the room in which Darwish was going to speak.  The BU Student newspaper, The Daily Free Press had this report, “CAS evacuated after bathroom fire -Boston Fire Dept. suspects vandalism:

Two Boston Fire Department trucks and four Boston University police cars responded to a fire Wednesday night in the women’s bathroom on the second floor of the College of Arts and Sciences.

BFD received the call around 6:45 p.m. and had extinguished the fire at about 7:15 p.m., officials said. CAS was evacuated and occupants could not reenter until officials had ensured the air quality was safe.

BFD spokesman Steve MacDonald said they suspect the cause of the fire was vandalism. An individual must have ignited a roll of paper towels, which then fell off the dispenser and rolled, scorching both the floor and wall—though it still under investigation by the arson squad, officials said.

When I spoke with Darwish last night, she said that as they were approaching the College of Arts and Sciences Building, the original site of last night’s program they notice the fire apparatus. They were told by BU police at the scene that the building was closed and evacuated.  Her CAMERA Campus talk was displaced to Hillel House also on the BU Campus, where she spoke to a limited audience.

Darwish remarked that during the past several months she had experienced the worst treatment in endeavoring to speak on college campuses since she started doing that in the wake of 9/11. She noted the disruptive Muslim Students at the Univesity of Seattle, as well as, the recent cancellation of speaking engagements at two Ivy League schools, Princeton and Columbia.

The University of Seattle event was harrowing. Darwish’s talk was disrupted by a group of Muslim students lead by a faculty member, a Palestinian from Jordan, who accused her of insulting Muslims. Darwish soldiered on despite the accusations. After the talk she was approached by several Muslim students from Egypt, Palestine, the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, who thanked her for coming to speak and argued with fellow Muslim students, that their antics confirmed what she was talking about-invasion of free speech rights here in America. 

Darwish noted that these events at university campuses where she had been scheduled to speak are particularly troubling as they all occurred after the mass shooting event by Major Nidal Hasan.  Muslim student opponent s of her appearances may have been emboldened committed by Major Hasan’s Jihad at Fort Hood.

That is why the suspicious fire at B.U. last night is questionable. If the allegations are proven it marks a new phase in intimidation to shut down events by apostates like Darwish, Sultan and other critics of Islam.

On Monday, November 30^th, a New York Daily News editorial, “Gagged by the Ivies: Columbia and Princeton won't let woman critical of Islam speak,” discussed Darwish:

So much for the vigorous exchange of ideas, however controversial, at even the finest of American universities. The concept doesn't apply to Nonie Darwish, a commentator and advocate who espouses strong views on Islam.

An Arab woman, Darwish was raised in Egypt as a Muslim. Thirty years ago, as an adult, she moved to the U.S. and converted to Christianity. She has published several books - you can get the flavor of her thinking from the title of her latest work: "Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law."

The other week, Darwish was scheduled to speak at both Princeton and Columbia universities. Both events were abruptly canceled.

We understand from Darwish that the New York Post and the New York Jewish Week will also be running columns on what transpired at both Ivy League campuses. At least these mainstream general and American Jewish newspapers are getting the message about what is happening to free speech.

Another courageous woman and critic of Islam, Dr. Wafa Sultan, was in Boston for a series of radio talk show interviews and an appearance at the synagogue of Rabbi Jon Hausman, Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Hausman made history by being the first American rabbi to sponsor a talk by controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders in the US.

Wilders gave him the title of ‘warrior rabbi’, which has since become his moniker.

I talked with Hausman this afternoon about the Darwish event of last night. He extended an open invitation for Darwish to speak at his synagogue. Hausman explained that neither he nor his congregation take security of speakers like Sultan or Darwish lightly. “It’s the first thing on our list of to-dos,” to make sure that these signature events come off. Hausman said they do multiple sweeps and lockdowns of the facility. Personal security is provided from portal to portal from the time they arrive at Boston’s Logan Airport until their departure. There will be a compliment of local police, both uniformed and plainclothes personnel, inside the social hall, conducting screenings, augmented by former Army and Marine specialists in counterterrorism.

Notwithstanding this, Dr. Sultan asked Rabbi Hausman if her talk tonight caused any disruptions. Rabbi Hausman told her there had been emails accusing her of being a bigot, un-American and requesting that the synagogue cancel her appearance. Hausman said: “we act accordingly. We simply make sure that the speaker has security to speak freely.”

Hausman has learned from experience how to deal with audience members who are disruptive during events sponsored by his synagogue. After an appearance by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., founder and President of the Center for Security Policy when a disruptive audience member was ejected, his synagogue put up a sign at the entrance of the synagogue social hall saying: “no disruptive behavior will be tolerated; such people will be escorted off the property."

Both Darwish and Sultan are accomplished speakers. Darwish is one of the more effective speakers on college campuses primarily because she doesn’t engage in ad hominem attacks instead focusing on criticizing Sharia and Jihad doctrine. Sultan is a fearless critic of Islam and the environment of subjugation it has created for Muslim women. 

The BU incident may cast a pall on future events for both women, as Muslim advocates on college campuses appear to be emboldened while faculties and fellow students are intimated into remaining silent. That development is an ominous one, as it vitally affects the exercise of free speech as guaranteed under our Constitution’s First Amendment. However, conscious security arrangements like those provided for Gaffney, Wilders and Sultan at the Stoughton events are exemplary of what one has to do to assure civil discourse in an open forum.

Listen here.

In the notes provided by the YouTube up-lifter, he says that Al Bowlly was born in Durban, Natal. I don't know if he has new information. I have always read that Al Bowlly was born in Lourenço Marques, just like the wife of John Kerry. And I don't think what distinguished Al Bowlly was the "sincerity" of his delivery but the "seeming sincerity" of his delivery. These are different things.