The art of conversation

Overheard at Stanford:

Girl: “I’ve had three nervous breakdowns and they’re not that bad.” Nervous breakdowns? “[You know,] to the point where you can’t stop crying for days.”

Heavily made-up girl: (in an indignant tone) “You know, everyone is always bashing Western civilization.”

[From Aaron Schwartz’s Blog.]

I don’t believe it!

Meet the smartest three-month-old in the world.

Not my photograph, alas, but one taken by a proud parent and sent on by understandably proud grandparents. What I love about it is her expression of intrigued astonishment — like that of a retired colonel reading an article about body-piercing.

Stuff happens…

… as Donald Rumsfeld famously said. Who’d have thought that David Blunkett, the Home Secretary (that’s Minister of the Interior to non-UK readers) would have a glamorous mistress (who also happens to be the publisher of a right-wing magazine)? I always thought of Blunkett as the kind of serious chap who, when not devising measures for curtailing civil liberties in the interests of “law and order”, read the works of St Thomas Aquinas. It just goes to show that, as my dear Ma used to say, one cannot judge a book by its cover.

Mr Blunkett has now fallen out with his inamorata and is involved in a dispute over (i) paternity rights and (ii) whether he used his influence improperly to secure a visa for her nanny. Item (i) is meat and drink to the British tabloid press, while (ii) is of great interest to the chattering classes. Accordingly, his extra-curricular activities tend to dominate the news agenda, much to the dismay of his boss, Tony Blair, who had fashioned an entire electoral strategy around Blunkett and his tough, no-nonsense, law ‘n order agenda.

It all reminds me of something that Harold Macmillan, Britain’s most entertaining post-war Prime Minister, once said. A journalist asked Mac what he feared most. “Events, dear boy, events”, he replied.