A while ago, I wrote a couple of posts on why people saying ‘let’s take the politics out of this’ are invariably actually saying ‘let’s all agree with me’ and how such tactics are often used to benefit those who already hold the power and want to claim that their actions aren’t political.

That was back in 2015 when my major concern about those issues was the way they get misused in local government. Not that it hasn’t stopped happening there – I still see people who’ve been elected to multiple officers as the candidate of a political party claiming not to be politicians, others making pompous speeches complaining that the only reason others don’t agree with him is ‘politics’ and numerous commenters on social media and local news sites claiming that somehow politics is getting in the way of ‘doing what’s best’ – but that was just one small ice cube clinging to the side of a massive iceberg of anti-politics.

At its heart, politics is a process by which we decide who gets what in the allocation of scarce resources. That’s a very simple decision for a very complex field, yet it highlights the two key areas I want to highlight here: politics is about not just the many different decisions we have to choose between, but the way in which we choose to make those decisions. It’s about the process of making decisions as much as it is about the substance of those decisions, but it’s also a recognition that there’s no ideal solution to both of those issues. Just as we have to make decisions about allocations of resources that won’t please everyone, so too do we struggle to find a way of making those decisions in a way that seems fair and right to everyone.

Which brings us to the populist trend we see now across the globe, which I think is best described as a truly anti-politics movement because it rejects both parts of that idea as politics. It proposes that a radical solution to the question of how decisions are made can do away with the need for tough decisions. It often goes as far as to say that the existing political settlement – a system that encourages debate, discussion and compromise between competing ideas and viewpoints – is responsible for the fact that decisions about who gets what needs to be made. The system is corrupt and broken, they argue, and that’s why you can’t get everything you want. Overthrow the old way of doing things in favour of a better way and then we can make everything better. All those old checks and balances are what gets in the way of us all winning, so let me get rid of them and soon everything will be great.

It’s not a new viewpoint, and nor is it one limited to one side of the political spectrum. Indeed, at some levels, the methods of anti-politics are such as to negate any conventional understanding of politics we have, so committed are they to overturning everything about the way things are done. Politics as we conventionally understanding it is a process of dealing with a conundrum that appears to be fundamentally unsolvable and balancing competing ways of answering them within an understanding that we might be wrong and need to change our minds. Anti-politics claims that these issues are not unsolvable because it has the answers. There’s no need for compromise, doubt or the ability to change your mind because there is a true and correct answer, and that negates the need for any of the conventional processes of politics. Indeed, this is where we get the idea of ‘politics’ as a bad thing, for it embodies a process that doubts the true and correct way of doing things.

We can see this in Trump complaining that the established way of doing things is stopping Americans from ‘winning’ and over here, we see it in the claims that ‘the people have spoken’ about Brexit and no one should attempt to ask questions of the process. It’s not about presenting one idea or viewpoint to compete in a marketplace of them, it’s about being the only way and the only solution, the pure unadulterated will of the people that has to be adopted in full without compromise. By rejecting the basic ideas of politics as a process, anti-politics claims it can fundamentally change the outcomes of it too. No longer will we have to debate the allocation of scarce resources, but instead there’ll be everything for everyone. Well, everyone who supports the glorious vision anyway, the rest are doubters who don’t deserve any of the rewards.

(As you might have guessed, I’m still sketching out some ideas on these issues but wanted to put something out there for some debate and discussion in an effort to clarify and develop my thinking. So, comment away…)

I suspect the UK might lose its nuclear deterrent (and with it, its permanent seat on the UN Security Council) before 2020, thanks to Donald Trump. Here's why.

Background: The UK was the third country to test a nuclear weapon, in October 1952; it's one of the five recognized nuclear armed states under the non-proliferation treaty, and since the 1958 UK-USA Mutual Defense Agreement it has cooperated closely with the USA.

The stated goal of the British strategic nuclear deterrent since the mid-1950s has been to deter a Soviet nuclear strike on the UK (and, rather more murkily since 1991, a Russian attack). As such, the stated mission was to be able to wipe Moscow and surroundings off the map in the event that the UK was attacked and the USA declined to get involved in a strategic nuclear pissing match on behalf of its ally. (Whether or not this scenario makes any sense whatsoever is a moot point. Less controversially, the acknowledged strategic nuclear force is pointed to as an argument for the UK's continuing permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.) During the 1950s-1980s the Royal Air Force maintained a strategic bomber capability in the shape of the V-Force, while from the mid-1960s onwards the Royal Navy operated Polaris SSBNs, but air-delivered nuclear weapons were phased out from the early 1980s onwards, along with all tactical nuclear weapons.

Since the 1990s, the British nuclear deterrent capability has relied exclusively on the Trident program. The UK built and operates four Vanguard class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (equivalent to but slightly smaller than the corresponding US Ohio Class SSBN), carrying UGM-133 Trident II ballistic missiles leased from a common pool with those of the US Navy, but with warheads built in the UK. As SLBMs can't easily be serviced inside the cramped launch tubes on board a submarine (unlike land-based ICBMs, which have rather more spacious accommodation), they are returned to the Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic for regular maintenance and replacement; it is believed warheads are removed and reinstalled at HMNB Clyde on Faslane, 25 miles from Glasgow.

As the Vanguard-class submarines entered service in the early 1990s, they've been operating for 20 years already. The Atlantic ocean is a harsh environment, and nuclear submarines aren't immortal; the British government therefore committed in 2016 to procuring four new Dreadnought-class SSBNs, which are intended to carry updated Trident D-5 missiles and to enter service from 2028.

Here are two possible reasons why this won't happen.

Working hypothesis #1: Donald Trump is an agent of influence of Moscow. Less alarmingly: Putin's people have got blackmail material on the current President and this explains his willingness to pursue policies favourable to the Kremlin. Russian foreign policy is no longer ideologically dominated by communism, but focusses on narrow Russian interests as a regional hegemonic power and primary oil and gas exporter.

Clearly, it is not in Russia's geopolitical interest to allow a small, belligerent neighbor to point strategic nuclear missiles at Moscow. But this neighbor's nuclear capability has a single point of failure in the shape of the resupply arrangements under the 1958 UK-USA Agreement. Donald Trump has made no bones about his willingness to renegotiate existing treaties in the USA's favor, and has indicated that he wants to modernise and expand the US strategic nuclear capability. Existing nuclear weapons modernization programs make the first goal pointless (thanks, Obama!) but he might plausibly try to withdraw British access to Trident D-5 in order to justify commissioning four new US Navy SSBNs to carry the same missiles and warheads.

(Yes, this would break the "special relationship" between the USA and the UK for good—but remember, this is Donald Trump we're talking about: the original diplomatic bull in a china shop who decapitated the state department in his first month in office.)

Trump could present this as delivering on his promise to expand the US nuclear capability, while handing his buddy a gift-wrapped geopolitical easter egg.

Working hypothesis #2: Let us suppose that Donald Trump isn't a Russian agent of influence. He might still withdraw, or threaten, British access to Trident as a negotiation lever in search of a better trade deal with the UK, when Theresa May or her successor comes cap-in-hand to Washington DC in the wake of Brexit. It's a clear negative sum game for the British negotiating side—you can have a nuclear deterrent, or a slightly less unpalatable trade deal, but not both.

In this scenario, Trump wouldn't be following any geopolitical agenda; he'd just be using the British Trident renewal program as a handy stick to beat an opponent with, because Trump doesn't understand allies: he only understands supporters and enemies.

As for how fast the British Trident force might go away ...

Missiles don't have an indefinite shelf-life: they need regular servicing and maintenance. By abrogating the 1958 agreement, or banning Royal Navy warships from retrieving or delivering UGM-133s from the common stockpile at King's Bay, POTUS could rely on the currently-loaded missiles becoming unreliable or unsafe to launch within a relatively short period of time—enough for trade negotiations, perhaps, but too short to design and procure even a temporary replacement. It's unlikely that French M51 missiles) could be carried aboard Dreadnought-class SSBNs without major design changes to the submarines, even if they were a politically viable replacement (which, in the wake of Brexit, they might well not be).

Thoughts?

A seat where 62.1% voted REMAIN should in theory be challenging for Corbyn’s LAB

Yesterday I Tweeted expressing the wish that the next by-election along would be somewhere that voted to stay in the EU last June 23rd. Sadly that has come about following the death of the long-standing Labour MP, Sir Gerald Kaufman, at the age of 86.

As can been seen by the map the seat is rather odd shaped covering an area to the south of Manchester city centre and the university area. Thousands and thousands of students live there as well as many who work at the city large universities. Between GE1997 and GE2010 the LDs were in a strong second place at every general election.

At one stage after the Iraq War in 2004 the yellows held 19 of the 21 council seats in the constituency and in the following two general elections had vote shares of 30% plus.

The seat is just to the north of Manchester Withington and close to Hazel Grove which until GE2015 were held by the LDs. There is a largish activist base close by.

If it wasn’t for their disastrous GE2015 performance the LDs would fancy their chances in Manchester Gorton.

Unfortunately for them it was the Green who came second at GE2015 which makes it very much harder for the LDs to establish themselves as the tactical anti-LAB choice.

We could see a debate between the Greens and the LDs over who should fly the Ant-BREXIT flag.

The Tory vote could be interesting.

A lot depends on who gets selected by Labour. They need an unequivocal remainer who is prepared to disagree with Corbyn’s parliamentary BREXIT strategy.

Mike Smithson

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Cornwall, electing a hefty 123 councillors, is another one to keep an eye out for. Of the eleven council by-elections to the authority since 2013, nine changed hands, six of which to the Lib Dems. 

While very unlikely the Lib Dems will secure a majority on the council given the diverse and localised nature of Cornish politics where independents and smaller parties have robust bases of support, it’s almost certain they will retain and build upon their position as the largest party. 

Other authorities may prove fruitful for the Lib Dems. The yellows have had a history of representation in much of shire England, notably coming second to the Tories (beating Labour) back in 2009. 

It can’t be said for certain how well the Lib Dems will perform in these elections, but we should expect them to make a comeback in authorities they once were strong in: Devon, Somerset, Leicestershire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Hertfordshire and the two Sussex authorities. 

Their performance in Cambridge proper, the southern half of Norwich, Eastleigh in Hampshire, Harrogate in North Yorkshire and some portions of the West Country are worth watching as they may indicate where the Lib Dems could, if they do, make a parliamentary comeback.

Just where is Labour’s floor for 2020?

One of the best political tips of the 2015 general election was to back Labour for 0-5 seats in Scotland. When William Hill first put the market up – after the independence referendum – they marked that outcome at no less than 125/1. (I apologise for not being able to namecheck the PBer who tipped the bet; I forget who it was.)

That price was a testament to the inertia of thinking as much as the inertia of politics but those who snapped up the long odds were handsomely rewarded. Those who didn’t presumably believed that such voting revolutions could not occur so quickly, ignoring that in fact it already had done. After the Scotland experience and the Copeland result, the question has to be ‘could it happen in England and Wales too?’.

The simple answer is ‘yes, it could’, though of course that doesn’t mean it will. Indeed, the crucial supplementary is ‘and if so, what are the chances?’.

Even so, the rate at which Labour is testing the capability of political commentators to find historic precedents for polling or electoral phenomena is a good indicator of the state of the party. Who would have thought that the Worcester by-election of 1878 would achieve such a renewed prominence?

One factor that makes Copeland (and Stoke) particularly significant is that they validate the opinion polls. These have been returning figures out of line with local by-elections, where the Tories have been doing a good deal worse and the Lib Dems a good deal better. We can now say with a little more confidence that for Westminster, the polling seems the more reliable.

And that polling has been dire for Labour. Close to two years after the last election, the Conservatives have a lead in at least the mid-teens, possibly the high-teens. Only the Blair 1997-2001 parliament is remotely comparable (and of course, that ended in a second landslide). Worse, since April last year – when they averaged about 32% – Labour has lost a steady half-point a month.

Projection is not prediction and we can’t assume that trend will continue but if there’s one thing that the local by-elections do prove it’s that the Lib Dems are no longer toxic. With Farron’s party still only on about 10%, there’s plenty more potential for Labour defectors. As it is, Labour is within touching distance of a post-WWII low in opposition and, though there are no polls from before the war, it’s probable that the 1983 low was the party’s worst in opposition since at least 1915*.

But there has to be a natural floor, doesn’t there? All else being equal, yes, there does. Labour has several firewalls: in London, in parts of Greater Manchester / Merseyside and in former mining or other heavy industrial areas of Yorkshire, the North East and Wales.

However, two spectral presences should stalk Labour minds. The first is 1981-3. The prospect of a formal split has receded in recent months as Corbyn’s leadership falters, his activist supporters have proven paper tigers in anything other than leadership elections and worries of mass deselections have diminished as moderates wait for the chance to go on the attack. Even so, if the left could rejuvenate, perhaps under a new leader, the risk of a formal split would once again become real. Similarly, if the Lib Dems started polling at or near Labour levels, some MPs might wonder whether the bigger risk would be to stay or to jump.

And the second, returning to the beginning, is Scotland 2015. As yet, there’s no party which could do an SNP: make wholesale inroads into the Labour vote and win 20%+ swings across the country. But maybe there doesn’t need to be. Even though UKIP fluffed their chance in Stoke on Thursday, their average national share has edged up over the last three months. The Lib Dems too are on the up. The risk is that rather than being swamped in a one-party tsunami, Labour’s coalition might just dissolve slowly but continually at the edges in all directions. There is no reason to assume that the 2020s could not be unlike what the 1920s would have been had Lloyd George and Asquith not behaved like a pair of squabbling children: a large conservative party, a large liberal one and a smaller, marginalised left-wing socialist party.

You would expect the natural checks in the system to prevent such an outcome. There are good incentives for MPs and activists to use the tools at their disposal to deliver the changes necessary to prevent disaster. However, those tools were ineffective when tried last year. Perhaps it will be second time lucky. Or perhaps Corbyn will get his act together and finally strike a chord with the public, or perhaps he’ll stand down voluntarily. If so, the country will gain an opposition again. Or perhaps not.

Inertia is a powerful anti-force in politics (as in life). Labour has huge built-in advantages that should enable it to survive the odd crisis. That said, Rome once had even bigger built-in advantages and look what civil war and self-indulgence did there. Nothing is forever.

David Herdson

p.s. I ought to apologise for anyone misled by my piece on Monday, where I tipped Labour to hold on in Copeland after my visit there last weekend. As was noted in the comments, I didn’t have chance to visit the inland parts of the constituency, which in retrospect were more staunchly Tory than I’d anticipated. Also, the final Labour leaflets on the NHS were so hard-hitting that they may have proven counterproductive; voters have a sense of fair play.

* Despite their cataclysmic result in 1931, when the National government won a majority of almost 500 and Labour was reduced to just 52 MPs, they actually polled reasonably well, winning over 30% of the vote. As they gained by-elections fairly steadily through the 1930s, it’s unlikely they dipped below that level afterwards. Much the same can be said for the 1920s: Labour polled 30%+ from 1922 on, and made gains in opposition, indicating that they would have polled higher in the interim had polls been taken. As Labour supplied ministers during the coalitions from 1915-22, we probably have to go back to at least 1915 for when Labour last polled below 23% in opposition. The one possible exception would be after the formation to the national government in 1931, when MacDonald ratted on his party. In that confused period and with Labour divided and in disarray, it’s not unreasonable to think that some very low scores might have been recorded. Unfortunately, no contested by-election occurred between the formation of the National government and the 1931 election, so we’ll never know.

It is in the nature of political junkies, like sharks, to be constantly moving forwards, and like goldfish, to be constantly forgetting what has just happened.  We should try to do better.  In the wake of two extraordinary by-elections we should reflect on their implications.  Because, as it happens this time, their implications are manifold.

The Conservatives did incredibly well

This is one of those rare occasions where the media have actually underplayed something.  The Conservatives’ victory in Copeland is off-the-scale impressive.

Others have written about how Copeland was the first government by-election gain since 1982 and how it represents a new landmark not achieved since 1960, 1929 or 1878 according to taste.  The swing to the Conservatives is bigger than that to any governing party in a by-election since at least 1950.  The last time the Conservatives achieved a gain in vote share at a by-election was 1982 in Beaconsfield (by 0.1% against a Labour candidate called Tony Blair).  In Copeland, the Conservatives put 8.5% on their vote share.

But the Conservatives also did extremely well in Stoke Central.  They started in third but far from being squeezed they put on vote share there also.  Remember, this was one of only seven occasions since 1970 where a government party has put on vote share in a by-election.  To do so from third is quite remarkable.

Bear in mind that sitting governments normally do much better at general elections than in by-elections and the Conservatives are potentially heading for a landslide that would far eclipse 1983 and perhaps 1997.

UKIP now lack meaning

Stoke Central was supposed to be UKIP’s big opportunity.  A seat where they were already in second place with a relatively small swing required for victory, where they had a substantial existing vote share and where Leave had won overwhelmingly, it was by my reckoning in their top ten most promising targets.  But they made no real progress towards winning it.

It would be easy to lay the blame on the candidate.  Certainly he did not help.  Paul Nuttall, through his strained relationship with the truth, seemed to put the nut into Nuttall and in doing so he ensured that UKIP got the all out of f-all.

That would be easy, but it would be far from the whole story.  The Conservatives gained vote share in Stoke Central – even though they started third.  In some ways this was even more astonishing than their victory in Copeland.  By taking ownership of Brexit, the Conservatives have deprived UKIP of meaning.  You might very well argue that represents a victory for UKIP’s ideas, but as an electoral force the purple team now look marooned.

The Lib Dems are barely off the canvass in Leave-voting seats

The Lib Dems have been doing very perkily in local council by-elections and had put in excellent performances in the Parliamentary by-elections in Witney and Richmond Park.  But while they have increased vote share in Sleaford & North Hykeham, Copeland and Stoke Central, they have only done so from deposit-losing levels to barely respectable levels.  They were not remotely in contention in any of these three seats, despite rushes of enthusiasm from their activists (particularly in Stoke Central).

The Lib Dems have sought to position themselves as the party of Remain.  In Leave-voting seats, they have yet to succeed.  Worse, in the 1980s, they were able to scoop all of the None Of The Above vote for themselves.  With the advent of UKIP and the Greens, the NOTA party is not a single party any more.

It’s important to keep perspective.  The Lib Dems have improved markedly in Remain areas.  18 months ago they seemed completely irrelevant everywhere. They have work to do in Leave areas if they are going to be anything more than almost completely irrelevant. But at least they have some areas of relevance now.

Labour are in very very serious trouble

It is hard to overstate just how bad the Copeland result was for Labour.  They didn’t just lose, they were soundly beaten by the Conservatives.  They lost vote share in both Copeland and Stoke Central (and if the combined Conservative/UKIP vote had been as unevenly divided in Stoke Central as it was in Copeland, they would have lost both seats).  It’s unfair to compare Jeremy Corbyn’s performance with the 1997 results -– no one is expecting him to win a landslide – but it’s reasonable to compare his performance with 2005, a fairly run-of-the-mill overall majority.  In under 12 years Labour have lost over a quarter of their vote share in both constituencies.

Since the referendum vote, Labour have lost vote share at every seriously contested by-election.  Opposition parties should be gaining vote share at by-elections in all bar the most extreme circumstances.  The circumstances are extreme.

If any Labour supporters are comforting themselves that at least UKIP were seen off in Stoke Central, they are deluding themselves.  In almost every constituency, the Conservatives are their real opponents.  Both these results showed the Conservatives are doing unbelievably well.

If Labour are to avoid a defeat that exceeds that of the Conservatives in 1997 for severity, they need to act fast.  Time is not on their side.

Alastair Meeks

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Very Seldom Do You Get a Stage Four Writer Being Honest…

Most either play into the myths for fear of hurting their own writing sales or they say nothing. Some figure their way of doing things is just their way and would never work for anyone else.

But Joe Lansdale, in a very simple article, sort of carefully told the truth about his writing.

If you haven’t read it yet either from an original source or my earlier post, do so now.

The Rules of Being a Professional Writer

He started off by giving only two simple rules that I completely agree with. One, you must read. Second, you must write.

It stuns me how many writers miss on both of these and yet claim they want to be professional writers. Can’t begin to tell you how many newer writers I run into that flat don’t read or haven’t read since they started trying to write.

And it stuns me even more (a topic around here regularly) how new writers think they can write very little, work on the same book for ten years, and get better. Doesn’t work that way. As Joe said, you must read and you must write.

Two simple rules.

He then goes on to talk about things that help. He starts off “You have to be excited about what you write.” I call that never writing to market unless you are passionate about the topic of the market. Write what you love, what entertains you. Or as Stephen King says, what scares you to death. Passion, excitement. Joe and I agree completely once again.

I say it in other ways as well. I warn people to keep the writing fun, keep the life events out of the writing, never call writing work. I spend a lot more time and words saying what Joe said simply. He’s good that way.

He tells you to not quit your day job at first. Yup. Kris’s column is about that this week in a way. Writing is a long-term learning experience, both on the business and the craft sides. Give it the time. Don’t put pressure on it at first.

Joe says he has a regular schedule, does regular pages.

And he flat says he avoids multiple drafts. That they confuses him. Yup, they confuse and bore me as well. And he had to learn how to teach himself to write when he traveled. You folks just watched me do that. (grin)

His “polish” at the end, as he says, is seldom a heavy rewrite. I agree. I fix typos and things Kris finds and cut out loops that don’t work. That’s my polish. Doesn’t take long and I agree, I never make any change Kris suggests that I don’t agree with.

And he doesn’t plot and he writes from his own life. Yup. Took a long time for Kris to pound through my head that my strongest stories were set right here in the world I know.

And he ends by saying to never write for other people. “Write like everyone you know is dead.”

Exactly. Write what makes you happy.

And damn, I think I just spent more words agreeing with Joe than he used writing the article. Go figure. (grin)

Yes, one of the great editors in the history of science fiction and fantasy needs a little help. I was surprised when I saw this pop up tonight. I did not realize Ted was still alive. And that he is only 13 years older than I am.

I never managed to sell him anything, but still liked him.

Now it appears he needs a little help, so click on the link and read his letter and see if you can spare a few bucks to help him stay in his childhood home.

https://www.gofundme.com/44r62-save-my-house

I got home from a business trip on Tuesday morning, was a jet-lagged zombie for 24 hours, and between Wednesday morning and now (Friday morning) I have learned:

A new way of exfiltrating data from an air-gapped computer potentially uses malware to modulate the drive activity LED on a PC, which can then be monitored by a drone hovering outside the office window: this is apparently capable of getting up to 6kbps of data off a computer without any physical connection or leaving any signs in device access logs (because it relies on the timing of drive i/o activity).

The North Korean assassins who killed Kim Jong-nam allegedly used VX nerve agent by getting local women who thought they were working for a comedy show to smear it on his face. (Secondary reports say that it was a binary agent, and each woman applied a different precursor: given the nature of VX precursors this seems unlikely, but VX itself could have plausibly been applied by hand. (If confirmed, this falls into the "Polonium 210 is so mundane!" school of baroque state assassination tools.)

Finally, for your delectation, there are people who think this is a good way to deal with Donald Trump (well, if it makes them feel better) ... my only question is, which open source license are they using?

Really, 2017 so far feels like it's fallen out of a novel I wrote in an alternate time line round about 2005, while evidently depressed and suffering from unstabilized hypertension. Or maybe it's just that we swapped out the scriptwriters who showed up in 2001—the ghosts of George Orwell and Philip K. Dick—for a crew led by John Sladek and John Brunner.

You can punch a neo-Nazi who might fall onto the switch lever, which might divert the train away from millions of people, or you can do nothing. Choose.

From Stephanie Zvan.

The final 12 hours of betting on Richmond Park

Above is a chart showing the Betfair exchange prices on the day of December’s Richmond Park by-election. As can be seen those who were following the betting for their inspiration would have got it wrong until about 11:30 p.m.

At that point, it will be recalled, the TV news programmes started reporting that Labour campaigners were suggesting that the Lib Dems had gained the seat by majority of about 2000. As it turned out that was a slight overestimate but the prediction of which way was correct.

Those who had followed betting before that time and had assumed that somehow the market knew what was going on ended up losing money.

I publish this as a warning to punters betting on today’s by elections in Stoke central and Copeland. Nobody really will know anything until at least an hour after polls have closed at 10 o’clock.

The turnout figures could be a good pointer but early guesses and what they mean could be be misleading.

Longstanding PBers might recall the February 2006 Dunfermline by-election. The final price matched on Betfair seconds before the returning officer announced the result had LAB with an 83% chance. The red team lost.

Mike Smithson

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An up-and-coming cartoon voice actor sent me this question and asked that I leave his name out of it…

I was in the audience at one of your Cartoon Voices panels in San Diego, wishing I was established enough to be up there on the stage with the pros. I heard you make a remark that intrigued me and I was wondering if you could elaborate.

I have watched as the industry has transitioned from hand-drawn animation to computer animation and I never imagined that would affect the voice actors. After all, a voice role is a voice role, right? But I heard you say offhandedly that casting voice actors for CGI shows is different from casting them for hand-drawn shows and I can't imagine how. Can you tell me how?

Well, it may seem like a small thing but it does matter. My job in casting is to do the show right with as few actors as we need to pay to come in. As is allowed by the Screen Actors Guild contract, many of those actors will do two or three parts.  Some of the actors in the session will be regulars — folks who voice characters who are in every episode. They may double or triple and do "incidentals" (characters unique to each episode) but I will probably also need a few guest actors to do all the incidentals.

Let's say in a scene for one cartoon, I as the writer want to have a two policemen walk in and each say two lines and exit. Piece o' cake. I describe the policemen I want the artists to draw and they draw them. I as the voice director assign the roles to two of the actors in my session. Simple.  At least, that's how it was in a hand-drawn show.  It was very cheap to bring in a new character so there were a lot of them.

But with CGI animation, every character is a computer model that has to be designed from every possible angle. We need to design them from the back even if you only see them from the front. Someone builds a fully functional computer model and that costs a heap of money. So instead of spending the dough to design two policemen, I have one do it. Right there, there's less for actors to do and if I think small that way throughout, I might need one or two less actors in the session.

Plus, there's this: If you watch a CGI show, you'll notice that if a policeman walks into a scene in one episode, it's usually the same policeman who walked into the last episode. If there's a TV newswoman, it's usually the same TV newswoman. If you look carefully at most crowd scenes, you may notice a lot of "extras" who were major characters in other episodes because each different figure is expensive.

So CGI shows generally have fewer characters per episode…ergo, fewer voice jobs.  And the jobs you do have are usually spread around among fewer actors.

Let's say in Show #1, I have that policeman and since guest actor Victor Voiceover is in that episode playing a big role, I have him also do the two lines as the policeman. Then two shows later, I write an episode about a race of Worm People. The big guest role is that of their leader but one scene calls for a policeman to walk in and say a few lines. On a hand-drawn show, it would probably be a different policeman so it wouldn't matter who did his voice and I could hire any actor.

But in the CGI show, it's going to be the same policeman and often the producers want to keep the voices on repeat characters consistent…so I hire Victor to do guest voices on that episode so he can do the policeman's lines. And of course, since he's there and we're paying him, I think, "Hey, Vic would be great as The Leader of the Worm People" so I assign him that role and he also does the three lines as a pizza delivery guy. And then the week after, since we spent all that cash designing Worm People, I bring them back again, which means I bring Victor back again.

And then a few shows later, I build the main storyline about that pizza delivery guy since we spent so much money making his computer model…and that means we bring Victor back yet again.  Over the course of thirteen episodes, I might need to book Victor eight times to do guest voices.  In a hand-drawn show, I might have had twice as many guest roles and spread them around among a greater number of actors.

There's nothing really different about what the actors do in a CGI show as compared to a cartoon drawn by hand. There's just fewer characters, which means fewer jobs, and a tendency to hire the same folks over and over for guest roles.

Got a question you want me to answer on this blog?
Send it here. No politics, no personal replies...
and tell me if you want me to leave your name out of it.

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Yeah, so I haven't been blogging for more than a week. Sorry 'bout that; I had a guest blogger lined up for while I was traveling, but they turned out to be a no-show and I was too busy to take time out from work.

This week's excuse is that "The Delirium Brief" is being typeset twice—separately for the US and UK releases—and the US page proofs landed in my inbox with a thud and a very short deadline which is going to keep me busy for the rest of this week once I'm over the jetlag.

Note that this isn't a separate edit; the US and UK editions were edited and copy-edited in a common process and share the same spelling, grammar, and word-shaped objects. But the US and UK publishers (who are two different companies who just happened to buy the respective territorial rights to publish the work on their own patch) decided to typeset the copy-edited manuscript independently of one another, which means I need to check a second set of page proofs for errors. It a while to plough through a 400 page book; even if you're just treating it as a reading text and can read at a page a minute, that's nearly seven hours—and checking page proofs for typos and errors is somewhat slower and more laborious. (Normally one publisher takes the lead on production and the others just buy in the typesetting files, but because of [REDACTED] that ain't viable this time round, hence the last-minute round of extra work.)

So normal blogging will probably wait until next week, and I'm going to be scarce in the comments for a bit.

Oh, that reminds me: some of you are wondering if I had any trouble entering the United States, right?

The answer to that is "not really"—the usual questions asked by the Immigration officer at the airport has merely grown by one ("Have you visited any of these countries: Syria, Iraq ..."), and by the time my interrogator got to "Afghanistan" I was visibly finding it so hard not to snigger that he just shrugged and waved me through.

But leaving the United States was a little more troubling.

I always opt out of being scanned by a body scanner on general principle; I think it's an annoying, ineffective, intrusive waste of time and I want to signal my disapproval by not cooperating. The TSA have a set theatrical routine for dealing with opt-outs that requires you to stand in the naughty corner while someone shouts "we've gotta male opt-out!" and some other poor guy has to pull on latex gloves and give you a massage.

It turns out that a couple of weeks ago the TSA rolled out a new pat down process that seems designed to ... well, some folks would pay good money for it, but the main effect seems to be intended to embarrass and deter body-shy people from opting out. I am not body-shy, at least in well-understood/controlled circumstances like a search at a security checkpoint or a naturist club, so the main effect in my case was to embarrass the dude following the orders to pat down my crotch.

But I think it's highly suggestive that this idiotic measure surfaced while everyone was agitated over Trump's ban on people entering the USA from majority-muslim countries that weren't major Trump business partners, and I am now wondering: what other low-key "administrative measures" slid by under the radar while we were all distracted by one act or another in the Washington DC puppet show?

The blog Language Log has occasionally proffered comment on Wondermark episodes that touch on matters of language.

So I was interested to see that a robust discussion emerged around last month’s “In which a Run is made”, posted as Wondermark #1287:

Normally I don’t have much commentary to add about the content of my comics — nothing kills a joke faster than explaining it to death.

But in this case, I’m both tickled that people are interested enough to try and dissect it, and also I’ve noticed that not everyone gets what’s happening here.

So I thought in this case I’d dig into it a little, and address some of the specific comments people have made about this particular strip.

In the comic, the person at the desk (let’s call him Desmond) asks the soon-to-be-wheelbarrow person (let’s call him Willy) to pick him up “two mini-donuts”.

However, it comes to pass that Willy heard this as “too many donuts”, and instead, fetches Desmond THAT. What a helpful sort! And what a pickle we leave them in!!

Some comments:

In the first frame, it’s contradictory for the donut-fetcher to ask “That gonna be enough?” [Given how he heard it,] Too many must be more than enough.

Willy is playing along, making a joke. Sometimes I just have to trust that sarcasm or figurative language will come through from context, in a way that the rhythm of the dialogue will inform.

Mini and Many don’t overlap for me, especially when I was reading the cartoon. Had to read the explanations to get the joke.

I pride myself on getting most jokes, and I read every Wondermark, but I have to admit that I read and re-read this strip several times in an attempt to understand it. I was frustrated in this until I read the title of this post. But…those words aren’t homophones!

(I’m from New York. Now I am curious to find where David Malki ! is from.)

The crux of the discussion seems to be whether these two phrases are really homophones; and if so, where and in what accent; and if the joke is understandable if one’s own internal accent doesn’t “hear” those two phrases to sound alike.

That is all quite fair! I speak (and often write) with my own particular accent. Here is my personal regional dialect “heat map” from the New York Times’ adaptation of the Harvard Dialect Survey:

That makes sense, as that’s precisely the part of the country in which I was born and raised. Even so, my mom grew up in Washington state, and my wife and her family are from Washington state, so I surely have some influence from them as well.

In fact, as I recall, this particular idea came to me in conversation with my wife. Her and my accent are largely the same but not quite. But either of us could plausibly hear someone make the sounds “Too minny” and know it to mean “Too many”.

I think I’d also stress “two mini-donuts” and “too many donuts” differently (treating “mini-donuts” as a compound with primary stress on “mi”, not an adjective + noun phrase with the stress on “do”), which probably didn’t help.

Which makes me wonder, is there a tendency for people to interpret “mini” as an adjective, rather than a nominal prefix like “micro”? Since it seems to be the former for David Malki and the latter for me.

Like Zeppelin, I can’t shake the internal feeling that “too many donuts” and “two mini-donuts” would be fairly distinct prosodically. I feel like “two mini-donuts” highlights the first syllable of “mini”, and “too many donuts” highlights the first syllable of “donuts”.

The question posed here is whether the mini-donuts in question are “mini donuts” (adjective + noun) or “minidonuts” (compound noun).

I think the hyphen is necessary orthographically, but it doesn’t make it clear whether it’s one or the other — and the commenters here are suggesting that whether it’s one or the other will dictate how it’s prounounced, and therefore how likely the term is to be misinterpreted by Willy.

But context might also affect pronunciation. If everyone else were getting donuts, and Desmond wanted especially small donuts, he might ask for “MINI-donuts”, with stress on “mi”.

If, however, mini-donuts were a relatively common thing on the menu, Desmond might simply emphasize how many he wanted: in this case, “TWO mini-donuts.” That’s how I hear the phrase in my head.

In addition: consider that Desmond is under deadline. He’s got reports due before lunch. He’s got Anderson riding his tail for that expense spreadsheet. He’s not enunciating every word. He’s mumbling that he wants “toominnydonuts”.

Know how I know that’s true? Because if that wasn’t how it happened, Willy probably wouldn’t have misheard him! You gotta work backwards from the facts we know.

The question, then, perhaps shouldn’t be “Would Willy really have misheard him?”, but rather, “Given that he did mishear him (it’s right there in the fourth panel), what does that imply about Willy, Desmond, or the situation overall?”

True comics fans know how to read forensically. It really clues you in to a much richer level of character development.

It took me a little while when I first encountered it. What I find interesting is that folks (like me) without the pin-pen merger have trouble identifying the joke, and yet I’m pretty sure (like Mark) that even for those without the merger, the two phrases would be difficult to reliably distinguish in actual speech. That is to say, I think if this were an audible Who’s-on-First-style sketch, the ambiguity would work for most people.

What this suggests, of course, is that when reading we don’t fully translate the words into sounds. (No doubt this is a well-studied area of cognitive science.)

I had no idea what this cartoon meant. Although I do not have the pin/pen merger, I also do not think this cartoon is about that merger. Instead, it is about another pronunciation anomaly I have often wondered about, namely how we came to pronounce the words many and any with the meh vowel (or conversely, why we spell them with an a).

The pin/pen merger mentioned here is common in dialect of the American south. It describes one trait of an accent in which the vowels in pin and pen sound the same.

But as the commenters above mention, I think the words any and many stand outside that particular trait. I pronounce pin and pen differently, but if I listen to myself say many, depending on how fast I’m talking and the surrounding sounds it can vary from “minny” to “menny” to “munny” to “m’ny”. The phrase how many comes out like a single word, “howminy”.

The important thing, though, isn’t really how I hear the words. It’s how Willy, the character in the comic, hears the words. I have no idea where he may be from or what sorts of ulterior motives he may be nursing.

Maybe it was a willful misunderstanding! Maybe this was the grand gesture he finally needed to spark a conversation with Desmond! Maybe they’ll both laugh about it on their twentieth wedding anniversary!!

I saw the joke coming a mile off.

Regarding the donut-fetcher’s “That gonna be enough?” reply:
It’s possible that the reply is sarcastic (especially when paired with the HA HA). After Desk-guy doesn’t back down on the request, which Donut-fetcher assumes is a joke of some kind, Donut-fetcher decides to take it to the next level with a wheelbarrow full of donuts.

I especially like how this interpretation of the situation introduces two levels of misunderstanding.

I’m a native Californian and do not have a pin-pen merger , but i do pronounce “many” more or less like “mini.” It certainly does not rhyme with “penny,” the way i say it.

Thanks. Glad to see y’all get it.

Given the clothing, the office equipment, and the wooden wheelbarrow, I find the phrase “mini-donuts” anachronistic.

Welcome to Wondermark!

An unlikely LAB hold in Darlington kept an unelectable leader in office

So much has happened in the Stoke central by-election that it it looks set to take its place in by election history alongside what many regard as the most sensational of all, Darlington, in 1983.

That took place exactly a month after the Bermondsey when Simon Hughes had an unlikely and still controversial win against LAB. The political atmosphere at the time, like today, was highly charged as the newly formed SDP was fighting to establish a parliamentary presence. The assumption in Darlington was that this would be an SDP gain but it turned out not to be because of the extraordinary public collapse of the party’s candidate.

He was a local television celebrity who was probed incessantly by the great Newsnight journalist, Vincent Hannah, and it became clear that he knew very little about public issues. Hannah was remorseless.

As it turned out the seat was held by LAB with a 4.6% majority over Michael Fallon for Tories. The winner, Oswald O’Brien, only had 3 months as an MP before Mrs.Thatcher called a General Election in which the Tories took the seat.

Many argue that the by-election had two big political consequences. It impeded the SDP’s momentum at a critical time and also helped reinforce Michael Foot position as Labour leader. There are those who say that if Darlington had been lost then Foot’s position would have been untenable and maybe the red team would have been led by Denis Healey at the 1983 General Election.

So the parallels with the current fight in Stoke central are very strong. We’ve seen the UKIP leader and contender struggle hard against a storm of media stories as well, of course, as the questions about the address he used on his nomination form.

I don’t know who is going to win on Thursday but given the poor publicity I think that Nuttall has a massive challenge. We could get a very tight result with four parties being very close to each other.

Mike Smithson

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From The New Yorker:

In 1989, a young professor named Gary Taylor published “Reinventing Shakespeare,” in which he argued that Shakespeare’s unrivalled literary status derives less from the sheer greatness of his plays than from the cultural institutions that have mythologized the Bard, elevating him above equally talented Renaissance playwrights. “Shakespeare was a star, but never the only one in our galaxy,” Taylor wrote. The book was his second major attempt to counter the view of Shakespeare as a singular genius; a few years earlier, he had served as one of two general editors of the Oxford Shakespeare, which credited co-authors for five of Shakespeare’s plays. In “Reinventing Shakespeare,” Taylor wrote that the Oxford Shakespeare “repeatedly shocks its readers, and knows that it will.”

Late last year, Taylor shocked readers once again. The New Oxford Shakespeare, for which Taylor serves as lead general editor, is the first edition of the plays to credit Christopher Marlowe as a co-author of Shakespeare’s “Henry VI,” Parts 1, 2, and 3. It lists co-authors for fourteen other plays as well, ushering a host of playwrights—Thomas Nashe, George Peele, Thomas Heywood, Ben Jonson, George Wilkins, Thomas Middleton, and John Fletcher, along with Marlowe—into the big tent of the complete works. This past fall, headlines around the world trumpeted the Marlowe-Shakespeare connection, and spotlighted the editors’ methodology: computer-aided analysis of linguistic patterns across databases of early modern plays. “Shakespeare has now fully entered the era of Big Data,” Taylor announced in a press release.

It’s no longer controversial to give other authors a share in Shakespeare’s plays—not because he was a front for an aristocrat, as conspiracy theorists since the Victorian era have proposed, but because scholars have come to recognize that writing a play in the sixteenth century was a bit like writing a screenplay today, with many hands revising a company’s product. The New Oxford Shakespeare claims that its algorithms can tease out the work of individual hands—a possibility, although there are reasons to challenge its computational methods. But there is a deeper argument made by the edition that is both less definitive and more interesting. It’s not just that Shakespeare collaborated with other playwrights, and it’s not just that Shakespeare was one of a number of great Renaissance writers whose fame he outstripped in the ensuing centuries. It’s that the canonization of Shakespeare has made his way of telling stories—especially his monarch-centered view of history—seem like the norm to us, when there are other ways of telling stories, and other ways of staging history, that other playwrights did better. If Shakespeare worshippers have told one story in order to discredit his contemporary rivals, the New Oxford is telling a story that aims to give the credit back.

Link to the rest at The New Yorker

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Most recent, viable Tory by-election efforts have been in the South and Midlands, within easy striking distance of most Conservative MPs’ constituencies. Cumbria is rather further away – and, as one MP puts it, some have been surprised to learn that “the North is massive” – which has deterred some from attending.

One of the problems we face as a country is the way the golden triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge dominates our national life ... 

The result of this is that many otherwise educated people have little knowledge of large tracts of their own country and indeed think themselves rather clever because of it.