samedi 16 mai 2009

The mysterious disappearance of M. Julius Beezer

One of the links to the right reads juliuzbeezer.

Of course, at first I had an s as would be conventional in choosing the name "Julius." The conversion occurred for a couple of reasons: I did want to make a slight inflection in my blogging style. For the last ten years or so, my on-line persona was, deliberately, as faithful to my real world identity as was humanly possible. Of the first few things I wrote, one in particular yielded personal information to the internet in a way that I judged would compromise my already flimsy tissue of anonymity to the point of pointlessness. So I retired juliusbeezer into what I'd hoped'd be, by internet standards, relatively quiet obscurity.

But my new identity: "M(onsieur). Julius Beezer" has been constructed to maximise my freedom of expression without compromising any desires I might have for privacy. There is also the issue of my former patients' confidentiality to consider.

You can probably still find out who Julius Beezer is without too much difficulty, but I've tried to separate out my online identities as cleanly as I can. If you do know/work out my true identity feel free to keep it as quiet as you like.

Anyway my juliusbeezer comments at the Guardian weren't backed up locally, because it was so convenient to nip back to the Guardian site and look it up. I may even have made a bookmark (control-D folks). Tonight I'm using another machine, I go to look... juliusbeezer is gone! His handful of textual comments on Guardian material seem to be have been retired from the Guardian site, though a single summary page of interests exists that at least acknowledges he once existed. The Ministry of Truth parallels are a little alarming. What else can I say? Put it back? You've got my email. You could at least give me a little notice so I can go and scoop my own jewels before you cast them into complete obscurity.

Kids! If it ain't backed up, it ain't worth crying over. Dive into the cloud and do no wrong! But ALWAYS ALWAYS backup! See you on the road!

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Update 28 June 2014: Achieving industrial strength internet anonymity is more hassle than I have resources for.  In any case, I realise that the space between what I was willing to say as "Douglas Carnall" and what I was willing to say as "Juliu(s|z)|Beezer" was rather small, the difference merely a cowardly loss of nerve to be resisted if at all possible. And anonymous coward is hardly an admirable position. So I've outed Julius Beezer, and stand by his works, which are mine.

2 commentaires:

  1. http://crookedtimber.org/2008/04/28/war-crimes-questions/



    It is surely for the people of the USA and the UK to prosecute their leaders in this situation. But it seems there is little appetite for this: indeed Blair and Bush were both re-elected even after their pre-emptive war was found to be baseless, even on the terms chosen by the leaders themselves.

    So nationalist sentiment, misguided, trumps notions of international legality. But more and more people see that if we go on like this apocalypse is inevitable.

    The International Criminal Court at the Hague makes clear that they are a court of last resort when national processes have failed.

    The calls for an enquiry in the UK are muted precisely because the British establishment know that if all the law and all the circumstances surrounding the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 were examined fully, it would be more than just Tony Blair in the dock. Most obviously the attorney general of the day, but also the 414 MPs who followed them into the lobby, including the so-called “opposition.”

    And if Gordon Brown had resigned along with Robin Cook it would have made a huge difference politically. Instead, he stayed on to write all the cheques.

    Then there’s the British electorate (well, 22% of them) handing them back power in May 2005, confirming the received wisdom that foreign policy does not swing elections, and the futility of our two party system which offered no meaningful choice in any case.

    This is just too big a target for the legal profession in the UK to handle, though doubtless many lawyers within it are as livid as I am at the failure of the British political system to avoid this wicked tragedy.

    There is this.
    International calls for those responsible to face justice are entirely proper. The UN security council should be reformed. And Britain needs a republic and a constitution, because handing anyone a Royal Perogative in these days is just a nonsense. Collective intelligence is what we want.

    O, and I don’t think anyone, anywhere in the world, should face the death penalty, not even Saddam Hussein. We’re supposed to be better than them, right?

    “My big idea is one must forgive the pope. Firstly, he has more need of it than anyone. And secondly it’s the only way we can set ourselves above him.” (Camus, The Fall)

    Vengeance is not justice. But there is no peace without justice.



    Wow I missed the Hague Invasion Act too. Thanks for the link! Simply amazing.

    Agreed with Glen Tomkins and Douglas Carnall, we should clean up our own messes. The odds against that seem astronomical but perhaps when gas is $20/gallon the reining administration will need to put on a sideshow to redirect the anger of the masses.



    “it would be more than just Tony Blair in the dock. Most obviously the attorney general of the day, but also the 414 MPs who followed them into the lobby, including the so-called “opposition.”

    And everyone else who spoke for the war as well I assume?

    I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer, merely a former subject of her majesty. I decided I really couldn’t square my conscience with any sort of collaboration with the government after the news (Jan 2006) that British troops were involved in torture of Iraqi civilians. Even if you refuse your income tax, you’re still paying the f*@#$rs every time you walk in a shop. Plus I was a doctor so I had to put up with all the NuLab bullsh*t at work. So I thought I’d give the nearest republic a try and have moved to France to take up horticulture.

    It’s been hard. I can understand why people exile themselves only under the greatest duress. My seething anger at my fellow countrymen has calmed a bit, but from where I’m sat they’re still a bunch of craven collaborators with a criminal regime.

    The futility of the “peace” movement angers me more in a way. It’s like we were pathetic sops for anyone left who had a conscience and some sort of belief in politics to point at, so they can say “I live in a democracy” while filling up on petrol with the other hand, and moaning about the price.

    Yes I do think my former countrymen are guilty, because they demand oil, and when push comes to shove, don’t care how it’s got: that’s why we pay politicians, right?

    But a minimum requirement for democracy is a sentient electorate, which Britain and America have proved they don’t have. So what is it? Some sort of horrid, spectacular, celebritised, nausea-inducing neocapitalistfascist thang, which cares not if a million Arabs die as long as everyone can drive to the supermarket.

    Politicians are the biggest victims really. It’s an unpleasant job guarding all those lies, and come the crunch, there’s going to be a lot of very angry people at home, never mind along their travel itineraries. They’ll be just as stuffed as everyone else: and hated and useless.

    I suppose it’s just as bad in France, but the move has brought me some relief from a sense of responsibility for it: my French is less than rhetoric quality.

    Le paix est notre pays. J’espere.
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    Conor Foley 04.29.08 at 4:56 pm

    Well fair enough Brownie but then why launch a manifesto calling for the reform of international law? Or why does does Norman Geras write so many articles on the topic:
    http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/04/is-internationa.html

    There are a whole range of subjects that I do not know very much about, but I try not to shoot my mouth off about them.
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    Brownie 04.29.08 at 7:49 pm

    My seething anger at my fellow countrymen has calmed a bit, but from where I’m sat they’re still a bunch of craven collaborators with a criminal regime.

    That’s no way to talk about your newly-adopted country, Donald.

    Well fair enough Brownie but then why launch a manifesto calling for the reform of international law?

    Um, because as it’s currently constituted it’s something of a sick joke? That’s my guess.

    I’m sure you think you’re making a devastatingly incisive point, Conor, but I’m afraid it’s wasted on me.

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  2. My earlier remarks appeared again. Spooky. I can't post them here en mass (comments are limited to 4096 characters, which I didn't know) but this one gives a flavour:

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    A bad smell is hanging around our pop
    juliusbeezer's comment 04 Mar 08, 12:07am

    Long ago I attended a lecture on the physiology of human intestinal flatus. The take home message? Everyone farts an average 1.5litres/day. How do we know? Gas-tight Mylar pantaloons, that sorta thing. (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1727181)

    Now, if say 300 people are in the same room for 2 hours and emit their flatus as it arises--i.e. without the pre-frontal lobes inhibiting the anal sphincter--one would expect about 37.5 litres of gas to be emitted in that time.

    Whether or not it is emitted is generally the choice of the individual concerned. The use of drugs that reduce frontal lobe inhibition (alcohol, cannabis) is likely to result in higher levels of flatus in the room, more so if alcohol is taken in the form of gassy beer.

    Crowds with a low prevalence of farting might be classified as uptight and straight; conversely farty parties are loose and relaxed. Fart smell, therefore, is an important indicator of the collective frontal lobe tone of the social milieau, an old truth newly unmasked by the smoking ban.

    The origins of cultural taboos around farting are shrouded in mystery, so it's best just to make it up. The fart taboo--and the attendant human evolutionary selection pressure for anal sphincter competence--seems likely to be closely linked to early militarism, not only as understandable etiquette when dining en masse, and as a display of respect to chiefs and others, but to avoid treachery at dinner (is that guy going out to let off or get his dagger?). "Let me have men around me who have high frontal lobe tone!" as Julius Caesar didn't say, nor Shakespeare either.

    A tendency towards competence in the pelvic floor musculature also has the effect of increasing male pleasure during penetrative sex, possibly at the expense of more difficult labour in childbirth. That's yer patriarchy.

    Ironically, a meat-oriented diet that reduces human flatus, amplifies the production of greenhouse-inducing methane elsewhere, leading, naturally, to attempts to tax animal flatus: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/06/19/newzealand.gastax/

    So there you have it, the whole of existence in a FART. Which makes sense. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/02/15/mocking-our-dreams/

    PS: if you think gigs are bad for farting, try yoga class.

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