Today was the day of the conference at which I had been invited, at rather short notice, to give a keynote.

Not only did I have to get up EARLY especially for a Saturday, I had a rotten night because the lower back decided to kick off and even when it had calmed down a bit it took ages to get back to sleep.

And then as I was doing my final preparations I discovered the battery in one of my hearing aids was flat, which was a bit irksome, because I had been expecting all week for it to do the warning bonging, like the other one did, and had to replace that.

So anyway, I got out, and found that the place I was aiming at was not quite so far distant from the Underground station as had been indicated, and also, even though I was late, so was the start.

Rather few actual in-person attendees - I'm not sure how many there were on the Zoom.

Crisis! there was supposed to be a delivery of sandwiches at lunchtime which Did Not Arrive so we all went out to forage (these later turned up some hours later, what is the point).

So, I think my paper went over okay, and there were some questions, even if some of them got rather off-topic onto more general questions about archives.

Some of the papers were moderately interesting, some of them were a bit hard to hear, and I picked up at least one useful reference (possibly) for one of my own projects.

Met one old academic acquaintance from way back, and a couple of interesting Younger Scholars.

Had already decided that I was not up for going on to meal in restaurant, so came home to flop.

Let's All Remember When We Saved The World:

Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer - signed 16th September 1987 and entering into force on January 1st 1989, [became] the first universally ratified treaty in the entire history of the United Nations....
Much smarter people than I have spent the last 2 decades trying to understand exactly why it was such a resounding success, and let’s be clear here, I am just an idiot with a newsletter. But a couple of details stand out:
The agreement didn’t wait for all the science to be completely firmed up before implementing regulation - which is a good job, because early conclusions about ozone depletion levels were significantly underestimated. Instead, it adopted a “Precautionary Principle” that was enshrined in the Rio Declaration in 1992 - acting on likely evidence to avoid consequences that may be catastrophic or even irreversible if any delay is sought. (This is markedly different from how some politicians seem to think science should work - if their words can be believed, of course.)
Negotiations took place in small, informal groups, to give everyone the best chance of being heard and being understood. More than anything else, this reminds me of Dorsa Brevia, and how utterly exhausting that conference was for all the characters involved. Who knows how many such talks led to Montreal being accepted? But every one of them counted.
There was a clear economic benefit for the industries using CFCs to move away from them - not just on principle or to avoid public backlash, but because CFCs were old tech and therefore out of patent, and shifting to new alternatives would allow companies to develop ozone-friendly chemicals they could stick a profitable patent on.
And so the world was saved - just in time for its next challenge.

“A remarkable discovery”: Rare fern found in Welsh valley 150 years after being wiped out by Victorians:

The plant's disappearance from Cwm Idwal is thought to have been driven by the Victorian fern-collecting craze known as 'Pteridomania', which stripped sites of rare species.
Its rediscovery suggests that the holly fern may be recolonising from spores carried within the national park, or that a hidden population survived undetected.
“This is a remarkable rediscovery," says Alastair Hotchkiss, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s Wales Officer. "The cliffs around Cwm Idwal are seriously challenging terrain for botanists to explore, but the fact that this species remained undetected for over a century and a half is a powerful reminder of how much we still have to learn about our upland flora – and how much we still have to protect.”

These days, I will often find myself puzzling over, what was that person's name? connected with some Thing in the past. I was actually struggling to recall the name of the very weird woman who was the landlady of the bedsit I inhabited near Mornington Crescent in the very early 70s, with whom there came about Major Draaaama (it eventually popped into my mind, as these things do, a couple of days later when I was thinking about something else: see also, finding that book one is looking for in the process of looking for something entirely different.)

I am not sure if this is AGE or the fallibility of human memory, and is it actually AGE and the wearing out of the little grey cells, or just having That Much More stored in them, so that they resemble one of those storerooms in museums where no-one has catalogued anything for centuries and curators have gone in and nicked stuff to sell on eBay -

- I think this metaphor is going a bit too far, somehow.

And yet one can recall quite readily, in fact one might even say intrusively, an obscure pop song by a not particularly renowned group.

That is, after reading that Reacher novel, The Hard Way, the other week, I found myself being earwormed by The Hard Way, a single put out by The Nashville Teens (who were from Surrey) in 1966 which got to all of 45 in the charts. It's not on iTunes even or in any of the compilation CDs, it's obscure. And yet I remembered it and who it was by.

Maybe it was being repetitively played on one of the pirate stations of my youth?

Dept of, inventing the city: Fake History: Some notes on London's bogus past. (NB - isn't Nancy murdered on the steps of a bridge in the 1948 movie of Oliver Twist? or do I misremember.) (And as for the Charing Cross thing, that is the ongoing 'London remaking itself and having layers', surely?)

***

Dept of, smutty puns, classical division: Yet More on Ancient Greek Dildos:

Nelson, in my opinion, has made a solid argument for his conclusions that, while “olisbos” was one of many ancient Greek euphemisms for a dildo, this was not its primary meaning, nor was it the primary term for the sex toy. Rather, this impression has been given by an accident of historiography.

Dept of, not silently suffering for centuries: The 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse.

***

Dept of, another story involving literacy (and ill-health): Child hospital care dates from 18th Century - study:

"Almost certainly she was taught to read and write while she was an inpatient."
He suspects just as part of the infirmary's remit was to get its adult patients back to work, by teaching children to read and write it would increase their employment opportunities.

Dept of, I approve the intention but cringe at certain of the suggestions: How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction:

Active engagement is crucial. This doesn’t mean turning every book into an interactive multimedia experience. Rather, it means ensuring that children are mentally participating in the reading process rather than passively consuming. With toddlers, this might mean encouraging them to point to pictures, make sound effects, or predict what comes next. With older children, it involves asking questions that go beyond basic comprehension: “What do you think motivates this character?” “How would the story change if it were set in our neighborhood?”

***

Dept of, not enough ugh: Sephora workers on the rise of chaotic child shoppers: ‘She looked 10 years old and her skin was burning’

The phenomenon of “Sephora kids” – a catch-all phrase for the intense attachment between preteen children, high-end beauty stores and the expensive, sometimes harsh, products that are sold within them – is now well established.... The trend is driven by skincare content produced by beauty influencers – many of whom are tweens and teens themselves.... skincare routines posted by teens and tweens on TikTok contained an average of 11 potentially irritating active ingredients per routine, which risked causing acute reactions and triggering lifelong allergies.

What I read

A little while ago Kobo had an edition of CS Lewis's 'Space Trilogy' on promotion, so I thought, aeons since I read that, why not? It turned out to have been not terribly well formatted for e-reader but I have encountered worse, it was bearable. Out of the Silent Planet, well, we do not go to CLS for cosmological realism, do we? But why aliens still so binary, hmmm? (okay, I think there is probably some theological point going on there, mmmhmm?) (though in That Hideous Strength there is a mention of 7 genders, okay Jack, could you expand that thought a little?) I remembered Perelandra as dull, at least for my taste - travelogue plus endless theological wafflery - and it pretty much matched the remembrance. However, while one still sees the problematic in That Hideous Strength (no, really, Jack, cheroot-chomping lesbian sadist? your id is very strange) he does do awfully well the horrible machinations of the nasty MEN in their masculine institutions, and boy, NICE is striking an unexpected resonance with its techbros and their transhuman agenda. Also - quite aside from BEARS!!! - actual female bonding.

Possibly it wasn't such a great idea to go on to Andrew Hickey, The Basilisk Murders (Sarah Turner Mysteries #1) (2017), set at a tech conference, which I think I saw someone recommend somewhere. Not sure it entirely works as a mystery (and I felt some aspects of the conference were a little implausible) - and what is this thing, that this thing is, of male authors doing the police in different voices writing first-person female narrative crime fiction? This is at least the second I have encountered within the space of a few weeks. We feel they have seen a market niche.... /cynicism

Apparently I already read this yonks ago and have a copy hanging around somewhere? I was actually looking for something else by Dame Rebecca and came across this, The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose (2010), which is more, some odd stray pieces it is nice to have (I laughed aloud at the one on Milton and Paradise Lost) but hardly essential among the rest of her oeuvre.

At the same time I picked up Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West and the God That Failed: Essays (2005), which apparently I have also read before. It's offcuts of stuff that didn't make it into his biography, mostly talks/articles on various aspects that he couldn't go into in as much detail as he would have liked.

On the go

Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918), on account of we watched a DVD of the movie recently. Yes, I have a copy of the book but have no idea where it is. I was also looking for Harriet Hume, ditto.

Up next

Not sure.

‘I love you too!’ My family’s creepy, unsettling week with an AI toy:

Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.

I thought I'd linked somewhere to the instructive tale of techbro who made, was it an interactive doll or was it a teddybear for his daughter, that would talk to her, and in very short order she turned the thing off and played with it as Ye Kiddyz have played with dolls since dolls were A Thing (Ancient Sumeria???). Can't find it, however.

Anyone else read Harry Harrison's 'I Always Do What Teddy Says'? which also springs to mind, although that is about plot to subvert conditioning via teddy.