An apology, an apologia, and a brief musing on translations.

Dear Gentle Reader,

This morning I was adjured to cease abnegating my e-life and return to posting.

Hmm?

"You'll extirpate your readership!" your Heroine exclaimed.

...

Who knew that your Heroine read this humble scribe's scratchings?

Who knew that she knew the word extirpate?

Now I have to get the Heroine to start saying aberuncate, as it sounds nicer than extirpate.

(Also, I could claim that I was merely pruning my readership, although aberuncate can mean extirpate, too...)

Anyway, I am back. ...and am pulling an e-Lazarus stunt.

(For clarity, I would consider myself on par with Lazarus, not the other guy...).

...

Why had I forsaken you, Gentle Reader?

...

Out of the country, out of mind, out of health, out of wit, out of words.

Oh, and we had a couple more raft loads of guests at the house.

I also received some unfortunate exam results, a bit late, and, I HATE taking medications. (Although I am, for the record, dramatically pleased with the benefits that Western medicine provides.)

Basically, I was exhausted. (I still am, but never mind.)

So, my absence wasn't really an abnegation of my responsibilities to my e-self, or to you.

At least, it was not a willful abnegation.

It just happened.

Sorry. Please forgive me.

Hopefully some of you will come back, and, hopefully, I will be able to go visiting myself, soon, although I am dreadfully low on an energy level basis.

And, we leave the country again in a couple of days; that may do wonders for my energetic morale, though--travel usually perks me up.

So, today, my apology, my none-too-convincing apologia, and a brief musing on translations. And the first two topics have already been covered, leaving translation, alone.

But it is hard to leave translation alone, when it has, and has had, such a multiplicity of meanings.

In mathematics, a translation is a shifting of co-ordinate values. (Does that show a great deal or a minimum shifting in meaning from how you normally use the word? Hmmm...)

In physics, a translation is a non-rotational shifting of a body from one place to another.

When I travel up to Pingyao, in Shanxi Province, China, or up to the Longmen Grottoes near Luoyang, in Henan Province, my representational location, on a map, will be translated from one series of points to another, but there may be some rotation.

I am hopeful that, as per the method of translation, that there will not be too much rotation on the plane, however, and, especially, on the train...

There are other conceptualizations of 'translation' moving out there in the aether of meaning, too.

When I was visiting Venice, at the New Year, I remarked upon how two medieval Venetian merchants translated the body of St. Mark from its prior resting place in Alexandria, Egypt, to San Marco's Basilica in Venice.

In medieval Europe, translation referred to the movement of the remains of a Saint (like Mark) or of a Hero.

(The Cathedral in Venice claimed the body of St. Mark for itself (for its glory and for the stream of pilgrims who would need to be serviced and sold goods), but the merchants, dispatched to the task of translation by the secular rulers of Venice, 'discovered' that the body would not allow itself to be moved beyond the private chapel of St. Mark's Basilica...beside the Doge's palace...the secular site of power in Venice... and thus San Marco's Basilica became the site of pilgrimage, veneration, and receipts of fees, rather than the Cathedral. Funny how that happens...)

Translation also, in medieval times, referred to the movement of a bishop from one Apostolic See (one dominion of religious and, then, secular power of one particular Bishop) to another.

In later medieval times, translation involved removing the seat of a disease from a sufferer.

Personally, I wouldn't mind that type of translation, but I am happy with the removal of symptoms.

As an aside, many people consider medieval times the "Dark Ages" but there was a significant blossoming of thought, and a rediscovery of much that had been lost.

The Renaissance didn't come from nowhere; it developed with and from , and, in some measure, in reaction to, medieval thought.

Medieval scholars, mostly priests, did a lot of translation as they shifted from one locale, really one Apostolic See, to another.

They didn't need passports for their translations, as there were no border guards, per se, at that time. The monks simply needed funds and/or the ability to feed themselves, or to arrange to be fed, and transported, and sheltered.

Most medieval scholars, however, didn't need to do much translation. They could stay in their cloister, or stay advising their King or Lord or Bishop in his Hall, as ideas moved to them with the few men who travelled. Thus were great ideas translated across Europe.

That geographical shifting of location was all the translation that was required, in the beginning. After all, all educated men (and they mostly were men) spoke and read the same language--Latin.

The unilingualism of academic thought in Europe was one reason why Europe developed European culture.

All European ideas could become known freely throughout the continent as ideas could be readily translated; the geographic locus of awareness of an idea could be readily shifted, or translated, from one Apostolic See to the next and the new idea could be readily understood in its new locale without too much rotation of the underlying concepts.

The reality that the underlying concepts would be unlikely to be rotated in the course of their geographical translation meant that translation, as most of us know it now, was not required.

The translation that most of us know of is that alchemical wonder of imagination and scholarship whereby the expression of an idea is turned from one language to another.

In this way the leaden lump of cross-linguistic incomprehensibility is transmuted to the golden glow of understanding for the listener, or a reader, of a different language than the language in which an idea was initially expressed in.

Your humble scribe loves words.

He just has a problem with language. s.

Your humble scribe is terribly jealous of those who can readily and expertly transform the incommunicable to the communicable (which would be a dangerous things in a bio-medical weapons lab, but is oh so good for the mental meatboxes traipsing around this earth...)

So, today, jealous schadenfreude at a translation gone wrong. (This pettiness explains why I am merely a humble scribe, and not a Hero.)

I frequently see signs, or shirts, or slogans, or descriptions in China that have been translated with unfortunate effects.

But, the following placard, in a museum, took the cake for the most unintelligible translation I have yet discovered, although the underlying gist of Chinese nationalism and cultural pre-eminence is unmistakable...

(In a rare move, by me, you can click on this image to see it larger, to read it in all of its glory.)

Sorry for being away, Gentle Reader.

I'll try to translate myself back through e-space to you, if you will still have me and come visit. And I'll try to make sense.

Tschuess,

Chris

The structure of security, a look at Northern Ireland's past

Dear Gentle Reader,

After Monday's visual post on institutional enforcement mechanisms of the social contract in China, I thought it only fair and reasonable to recall a similar example from the West, and maybe raise a few topics more explicitly, though tangentially.

It was a dark night, in 1988, that I arrived in Belfast.

I had been cycling and hiking around Ireland and Northern Ireland with my girlfriend after a sojourn in Egypt.

Sometimes, in Ireland, it was a challenge to have an English girlfriend, but Popsy was not only lovely, she was my interpreter.

While, allegedly, everyone spoke English, many of the dialects and accents were too thick to fit comfortably into my tiny ears, accustomed as they were to the certain, known accents of General American and of California, broadcast through the air into all of our homes in the USA and in Canada.

Popsy and I had been cycling around, and across, Ireland for a numbler of days. (A numbler is too many to count, especially when it is raining, Irish style--up too, not just down or sideways.)

We had had trepidation about going to Northern Ireland because of the news footage of The Troubles that we had both grown up with, on both sides of the Atlantic, but if you were going to circumnavigate the entire island, you could not avoid Northern Ireland.

We had entered Northern Ireland via Londonderry/Derry (depending upon your regime perspective) a few nights before and we had both been surprised by the arrival maze, the structure for imposing order, and trying to create security, at the entrance to the city.

The arrival maze was a chain-link fence, extending ten feet or so above our heads, where armed soldiers stood on a platform, looking down upon us.

Those elevated soldiers, and others, at face level, protected by bullet-proof glass, scrutinized us for suspicious behaviour or gait or packages or something.

Those soldiers determined who was allowed admittance (definitely to Londonderry only, not to Derry)--and who was shunted off for further inspection and possible detention.

The maze forced you into a serpentine, single-file line and was clearly designed to funnel, channel, control, and regulate large crowds.

For us, however, it was a momentary experience; we arrived in the middle of the afternoon with zero people in the chain-queue and we were through it in a trice.

We were through it so fast that it left just a wisp of a wondering memory. The soldiers, though intimidating, were soon forgotten, like Irish faeryfolk.

It was soon obvious, to us, that that maze was simply some institutional stickiness; a holdover from "The Troubles" that no one had bothered to dismantle or that vested interests wanted to keep to justify security expenditures.

It was obviously a holdover because, as we cycled gaily and drank our way across the Gaelic Northern Coast, we saw no sign of The Troubles.

Within a day, the majuscule Troubles had been downgraded to merely the troubles, a minuscule memory of prior strife and attempted insurrection.

Obviously reason and rationality and common humanity had won out, we decided, but the Press wouldn't let good stories like death and despair drop.

The people we met were uniformly cheerful and welcoming and the villages had a ruddy, wholesome, vivacious appeal.

And, helpfully, we never received any snarky comments, or muttered threats, or curses, about Popsy's obvious Southern English accent and origins.

Wind ruffled hair, but nationalism no longer seemed to ruffle feathers, or concerns, in the Northern Ireland which we discovered.

We skipped from one hexagonal chunk of columnar basalt to the next along the Giant's Causeway in County Antrim and sang taunts to Fionn mac Cumhaill (transliterated to Finn McCool for those with no Gaelic blood in their tongues or their ears), daring him to arise from slumber to test skills with us.

Geologists will tell you that the Giant's Causeway is composed of columnar basalt, specifically igneous basalt (one type of lava), which has cooled quickly, usually as it jetted up from the hot centre of the earth into water.

Mythologists will tell you that the subject of the infamous (in Gaelic myths) Fiannaidheacht, the cycle of myths relating to Fionn mac Cumhaill, threw rocks violently into the harbour, making a pathway to Scotland for a multiplicity of reasons.

Maybe the causeway, later destroyed, was built to have a tussle with a Scottish giant, maybe to provide security for Fionn mac Cumhaill's mythical Irish state from Scottish giant aggression, maybe to facilitate a crossing to Scotland and staying dry the whole while, maybe for an amorous adventure...

Who knows? We tried awakening Fionn mac Cumhaill to challenge him to a duel, the loser having to answer questions truthfully.

Fionn didn't respond to our taunts and we were unable to reduce multiple possible answers to a single truth.

Having played Gaelic football, hurling (an Irish, martial combination of hockey and lacrosse), and engaged in general mayhem in Irish bars with Irishmen and Irishwomen, around the world, I have come to accept that Gaelic answers tend to be multiple, which is wise to know, especially if you offer to buy a round.

"You're buying a round of pints, Chris? I'll take three..." (!)

But, back to that trip. Popsy's right knee had been giving her trouble throughout our Irish expedition.

For four hours of one day I had cycled behind her and would grab her seat (usually the bike's, for clarity) and would sling her and her bike forward as her knee was swollen and too painful to pedal.

Hiking along the Giant's causeway, Popsy started to get twinges in her knee, again, and for the jaunt down to Belfast I suggested that we pack up the hired bikes and take the bus, a suggestion that was accepted with alacrity and relief.

While the bus stopped at some pubs, for liquid relief, prior to entering Belfast, the bus had made no special security stop on entering Belfast itself.

We just coasted into downtown Belfast, alighted from our coach, and fished our bikes and bags from the bowels of the bus.

Well, I fished the bikes and bags out of the belly of the beast.

Popsy stamped her feet against the night's chill and leafed through the guidebook for recommendations on cheap places to stay while I mantled (the opposite of dismantled, no?) our bikes.

And then we set off.

As I said, in the very beginning, it was a dark night when we entered Belfast.

There was a crescent moon hanging in the air, a huge abyss of blackness broken at ground level by weak street lights, and a thin film of wet fog hugged the ground and sniffed, wet and limp, around our ankles and buttocks like an old dog.

Leaving the bus station, we were surprised by another maze, just as in Londonderry/Derry, and here it was a bit of a problem getting our bikes through this maze.

We had to roll our bikes vertically through this maze, on back tires alone, as the walls of this maze were closer, tighter.

This was awkward, as our panniers, or bike bags, were not meant to be suspended at this angle, but, it was night, and the chain-queue was empty.

True, the soldiers seemed surly, but we, again, were through in a trice, as we had been before, the first time we had encountered this maze system.

And, erasing the momentary discomfort of the soldiers' rough scrutiny, straight in front of us was Belfast's baroque revival City Hall, standing proud in the centre of Donegall Square.

We were incredibly fortunate because we had the view of the grand structure floating on the ground-hugging fog all to ourselves; there appeared to be nobody else around.

There were not even any cars.

The city was preternaturally quiet and still and beautiful.

Except for the kids standing still with green glowsticks that I could now make out through the ground-level mist.

There appeared to be a line of kids on both sides of the street, Gothic kids, perhaps, in black, who were hard to make out, but they all seemed to have green glowsticks or something.

Maybe they were Druids, I thought, hopefully.

Had we stumbled on some archaic, once-a-year druidic festival in Belfast?

Excited, I turned to ask Popsy about it, and whether we could ride our bikes now, and to ask her how her knee was, when I noticed the green dots on her chest.

And then I looked down and saw green dots on my own chest.

Popsy looked slightly ashen and told me to keep walking.

She said we had to get through the Square to get to the hotel which she had found in the guide book and had phoned from the bus station.

As we approached the line of stationary Goth kids I realized (a) that I really did need glasses and (b) that these were neither Goths nor Druids.

These kids in black were all elite SAS soldiers with hard eyes, big shoulders, and still adam's apples.

Further, they were all in full flak gear.

With military rifles.

Rifles raised, and ready.

With green laser sights.

And green night scopes.

And fingers on the triggers...

As we approached the column of men on Donegal Square the cluster of green dots on each of our chests reduced to one, one for each us, fixed upon our hearts.

As we walked by the column of men on our side of the street, through the silent, otherwise deserted square, one set of soldiers would train their weapons, and green laser sights, on our chests.

The first set of soldiers would continue aiming their laser sights, and hence their military assault rifles, at our chests as we walked by them.

These soldiers would only remove their aim from our chests, and return to aiming at non-existent oncoming traffic, when the next set of soldiers had trained their weapons, and green laser sights, on our chests.

They were avoiding each other's line of fire, while keeping us covered at all times.

When there were two green laser sights on my chest, at each laser sight handover, I swear I could feel the hot threat directly on the meat of my heart.

It was a physically sobering walk.

The effects of the Guinness, from the last stop of the bus prior to Belfast, left our minds rapidly as an adrenaline cocktail raced through our bodies, purging impediments to our fight or flight instince.

We fought the adrenaline and tried to stay calm, although we did walk much faster when we were through the cordon sanitaire and on our way to our hotel.

Later, that night, safely at our hotel, we were serenaded to sleep by the not-distant-at-all percussionary whumps of bombs.

Enforcement mechanisms frequently have their reasons.

It is the justification, and the triggers, and, potenially, the proportionality of enforcement mechanisms that are tricky and worthy of serious consideration.

Enforcement mechanisms, as security structures in societies, are found everywhere, and in every form of State, although Monday's and today's posts are more of the in-your-face variety.

Most discussions around rights revolve around the personal, civil rights of the citizenry, and the obligations of the State to its citizenry.

Sometimes those discussions stray into the obligations of the citizenry, in return for the rights they enjoy.

Rarely, however, do those discussions, consider the rights which the state reserves to itself, and what the manifestations of those rights can look like, unless the discussion is a diatribe.

Maybe the British government was justified in the soldier's response that night, and many other nights.

Bombs went off.

People died and property was destroyed there, and in England, and the carnage had been ongoing for decades.

Reasonable men and women, ignoring the unreasonable ones, have come to very different conclusions on the neccessity or reasonableness of English actions in Northern Island.

The War Measures Act was imposed, in peacetime, in Canada in 1970--a country frequently seen as paragon of virtuous civil society.

And there are the displays of state force in China.

Nothing is necessarily black and white, however, especially when considering the architecture, or structure, of security operations and apparatus.

Analysis and contemplation are always required.

That I leave to you, Gentle Reader, and I know that I leave it in good hands and minds.

I simply advocate a good look around, even if it is only while judiciously leaving a site.

I generally feel secure about a structure only when I understand its makeup, its rationale, and its footprint.

Tschuess,

Chris

One perspective on the pyschological landscape of Modern China

Dear Gentle Reader,

The social contract in modern China is something like this:

We, the State, provide you, the Worker, with the privilege of the opportunity to make more money; we grant you economic liberties.

In return, you, the Worker, agree to not seek other liberties, or to cause unrest which would perturb the equanimity of the State.

Chinese people, the Workers, have largely accepted and signed onto this social contract in modern China.

And, all good contracts need enforcement clauses.

The following are images that one sees if one dips off the tourist routes onto the locals' pathways, onto the traveller's routes.

Apart from troubled regions, where the social compact appears to be crumbling, or where parties feel that the other side's fulfillment of the bargain has not been maintained, these images are not intended as a show of force per se; they are intended as a reminder of the potential enforcement mechanism, should it be required.

Tschuess,

Chris

An art surprise this morning

Dear Gentle Reader,

As you know, the Heroine, and your humble scribe, plus a father and a family friend, all returned from an outing in Yunnan Province, China, recently.

This morning the concierge brought up a parcel which had arrived in our absence...

It was covered in cryptic markings...

Like these..

And then these two symbols followed...

and

There were many more cryptic picto-images, but this one I understood...

So I opened up the mysterious box...

..and it contains two paintings, obverse and reverse, on a wooden board, by Ben Marlan!

The reverse image is in the theme of a "State of Being" art show that Ben Marlan recently put on, and the obverse image, shown below, was one that Ben was working on as part of his performance art lived blog experience that he is experimenting with.

Because the board is painted on both sides, I am loathe to lie it flat to take a great picture of it, but here is one that I have taken of the obverse, or face, image.

Ben, this piece looks grand.

Thank you very much.

This piece will be making a trip into China, this weekend, to be framed.

I will post post both sides when they are protected by a frame and the textured surface won't be damaged.

Thank you, Ben, and thank you, everyone for your kind comments.

Tschuess,

Chris

Architectural aspects in a state of police, if not in a police state...

Dear Gentle Reader,

The police state bit comes lower down in today's post.

Bear with me, please.

I am still a bit tied up in knots (the Heroine sends her love, though, as seen in the picture) and I will explain my recent e-absence.

First, the Heroine and your humble scribe are back in town.

That is a blurry Heroine in the background.

She is all smiles, as you can see from the photograph.

I am still all grimaces.

Sorry for the delays; I have no recollection of typing up that haiku after surgery a couple of weeks ago--I wouldn't normally post about that stuff.

Surgery, that is. It seems to me that nobody else would be interested.

But, I don't know why, but some of you seem to want some info.

Yes, I have just received your emails.

Thank you very much for your concern.

So...

Some complications set in after I wrote haiku under the influence and out of consciousness.

The surgery was simply a highly invasive checkup (45 internal biopsies! Plus extra things!), but it wasn't that big a deal.

The bad things the specialists feared were not found.

They (the specialists) just couldn't explain what they did find.

All is neither better nor worse, and I am relatively happy with the status quo.

Things, after all, could be much blacker.

For the politically correct legions out there, black has been correlated with the opposite of life, goodness and health in every major religion and mythology that I am aware of, including most African mythologies and religions.

I do use the word most, because, of course, there is one great exception which is also located on the African continent.

That exception, of course, is found in the resident Gods of the mythologies of Egypt, particularly of the lower Nile (the region around Cairo and Alexandria).

There, the black banks of the Nile yielded fecundity and fertility and life.

Benevolent Hor, or Horus, the sky God, is black and his opposite, his nemesis, is Seth.

Seth is red and, throughout the Egyptian Empire, red was associated with the burning, inhospitable sands bordering the life-giving black banks of the Nile.

Anyway, enough self-justification for saying that things could be blacker.

There is much life flowing through your humble scribe, and I am not in denial.

From your perspective, no worries, I am back in the e-saddle and looking forward to both e-writing and e-reading.

So, seeing as how the doctors found nothing particularly vile and unpleasant to tell me, merely unfortunate and importune news, off we all went to China as we had previously decided to take my Dad and another house guest to Yunnan Province, China.

Let me tell you, though, just in case you might not have suspected it... recuperating from surgery during a cross-country jaunt in rural China is not exactly restful.

Also, I would have posted from China, but even when I found Internet access, I could not access my blogger account.

I had no idea why, at the time.

Now that we are out of China, and know all that is happening in Xinjiang, we know why I couldn't access my accounts.

Maybe I will post at some point in time on past trips into Xinjiang.

Lovely part of China.

Lovely people.

Fearsome repression, and that was in the police state that existed in Xinjiang then...

I shudder to imagine it now.

Being back in Hong Kong, now, I am meditating a bit on the nature of the police state. I might well start posting, but my natural reticence is still high with regards to China.

My thoughts did stray, however, to the nature of civil liberties and police states in other places.

Where did my thoughts stray?

Well, I thought of the degree of e-invasion of official, state-installed, closed-circuit cameras in "good, old England".

England, of course, once released a black slave held on an American trading ship which merely docked in an English port.

This, of course, was after England finally criminalised slavery.

The judge freed the slave as he had been in a safe harbour and he determined that England's freedoms had attached themselves to the slave and had transformed the slave into a free man.

Great concern had been raised, during the trial, regarding the international repercussions of the freeing of a person that was seen as a thing, specifically a person seen as an American chattel stored continuously on the vessel flying the flag of a sovereign state, the American flag.

Despite the dire warnings and imprecations delivered through the defense trial lawyer, the judge said, in his decision, "fiat justitia ruat coelum". Translated from Latin the judge said "let justice be done though the heavens (or the sky) may fall".

The power of civil liberties, then, in England, were such that those civil liberties would accrue to a poor, huddled misery that was a man held in indentured slavery. Further, those civil liberties released his shackles.

Now, those same civil liberties have been sacrificed on an e-altar of security, safety, and video surveillance cabling.

That is one architectural illustration of a state of police, if not a police state.

The architectural element here is, of course, the closed circuit television camera.

Another architectural element found in a state of police, albeit more metaphorical, would be the structural wood in the American edifice of criminal justice.

Wood from the forbidden tree.

The famous caveat to the use of evidence gathered by the state in criminal prosecutions via illegal search and seizure law, in the United States of America, is the use of the fruit of the forbidden tree.

This relates to the state's inability to use, in court proceedings, evidence, or fruit, which was unlawfully obtained--which came from a forbidden tree.

This exclusionary doctrine was first developed in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S. Ct. 182, 64 L. Ed. 319 (1920) and was fleshed out, with the famous "fruit of the forbidden tree" tag line, in Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 60 S. Ct. 266, 84 L. Ed. 307 (1939).

But, metaphorical architectural elements do not produce good pictures, except maybe in the mind's eye.

So, finally, and still shying away from China, which actually is a police state, and its use of force in Xinjiang, I think of home, today.

Hong Kong...

Wherever this is, it certainly looks well fortified.

This image comes from Stanley Village on the backside of Hong Kong Island.

This image is repeated at each corner of the Stanley police office...

Many police stations in Hong Kong are this fortified.

One does not just enter a police station, here, to make a complaint or to bring cookies.

Presumably there is a reason for these extra architectural pillbox/garret/turret elements...

And Hong Kong is not a police state.

Although it does have a lot of police, and a lot of quasi-police in various other branches of the state, and a lot of state-sanctioned closed-circuit television cameras.

And, Hong Kong also has a lot of private security...

Group 4 Securicor, a private security company, has over 4,700 security officers in Hong Kong and there are about 900 other licenses issued in Hong Kong for other private security companies...

Anyway, those are some architectural details (cameras, metaphorical wood, and fortified garrets) found in states of police, if not police states.

In absolute police states one just sees things like this...

While these mobile units are not architectural aspects, per se, they make very short work of architectural units. Even Hong Kong garrets.

And dissent, too.

Tschuess, all.

Chris

PS. That previous post on the signal tower in Hong Kong? That was just a draft I had started to work on, and it went up without any further input from me. Sorry about that one, folks, it was still to be worked on and escaped from the lab...