I don’t suffer from earworms, I enjoy every moment of them – y’all on the other hand may not be so lucky. Hadn’t thought about this song in years, didn’t even know who the hell sung it in the first place until five minutes ago, but the wonders of the internet and Youtube never disappoint. This has been going through my head for a week or so; now it’s your turn…
Shards of Honor – Lois Mc Master Bujold (reread)
Shards of Honor
Lois McMaster Bujold
313 pages
published in 1986
I’ve reviewed Shards of Honor before, way back in 2001. Chronologically it’s the earliest story in the Vorkosigan series, with the exception of Falling Free. It is also the earliest published novel in the series and was based on an idea Bujold had for a Star Trek story. In the original story, the roles of Aral and Cordelia would’ve been played by a Klingon warrior and a Vulcan scientist; you can still sort of see the traces of this in the published book.
Cordelia Naismith is the captain of a Betan Planetary Survey Mission investigating a newly discovered planet, when her expedition is attacked by a Barrayaran force. She’s stunned and when she comes to she’s alone with the leader of that force, Aral Vorkosigan, left behind for death by his own internal enemies. They negotiate an uneasy truce to try and survive on a hostile planet to reach a survial cache left behind by the Barrayarans. After a long and ardeous terek they reach the cache, but something unexpected has happened in the meantime: they’ve fallen in love.
De laatste X
Neither Britain nor Holland needs an army
Simon Jenkins says what I’ve been saying for a while now: countries like Britain do not need armies anymore:
Six months ago I proposed in the Guardian that if Britain was short of money it should cut defence. I did not mean reduce defence, or trim defence. I meant cut it altogether. We are desperately short of money and absolutely no one is threatening to attack us now or in the foreseeable, indeed conceivable, future. Besides, as we have seen this past week, other ways of ensuring security make more pressing claims on us. We just do not need an army, navy or air force. So why are we paying £45bn for them?
[…]
The argument can take amazing forms. Come now, say the high priests. Just suppose another Hitler rose again, built a new Luftwaffe and U-boats, and bombed London and sank all our coastal trade. We would need a carrier. Suppose Russia falls under the sway of an oligarch with a grudge against Harrods and a business rival in Kensington Palace Gardens. Suppose he decides to nuke them. Supposed 100 suicide bombers block-booked themselves on Eurostar and went to every Premier League match. You would look pretty silly, Jenkins, wouldn’t you?
I would look pretty silly, and probably I wouldn’t be the only one. But for the time being, I regard such unrealities used to justify massive spending as no less silly. We can only meet realistic threats. We do not build 1,000 NHS hospitals and leave them to await the return of bubonic plague.
If Britain does not need an army nor cannot actually afford one, what about Holland? We’re spending about eight billion euros a year on “defence”, yet still had to cannibalise our army, sell off equipment that had barely entered service just to pay for our “missions” in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting people that had never threatened nor harmed us. That we could do, but against a real enemy our army is just too small to be a credible defence and anyway, who is going to attack us anyway, Belgium?
New mushroom species discovered in Holland
You’d think that in such a densely populated, crowded and completely manicured country like the Netherlands the only new species to be found to be single celled, but you’d be wrong. Because late last month an entirely new mushroom species (Dutch) was found in Schouwen-duiveland, an island in my home province of Zeeland.
The new species was discovered during a research week organised by the Nederlandse Mycologische Vereniging (Dutch Mycological Society), who regularly organises this sort of trips to less well researched parts of the country. the new species wasn’t the only surprise, as they also found several species new to the Netherlands.
It seems that despite the fact that it’s almost impossible to think of any part of the Netherlands as being nature, rather than nature park, we can still be surprised by new or rare species.