I may return to my increasing involuted reflections on the writings on David Foster Wallace at a later stage, but events, as they say, have intervened. The increasingly bizarre and sinister protests over the putatively anti-Islamic cartoons that appeared in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten have already generated a few clichés, which are being readily embraced by those struggling to adopt an impartial stance on the issue. The other morning I heard an Irish libel lawyer glibly proclaiming that “freedom of speech” does not entail a licence to “shout fire in a crowded theatre.” Now, such a comparison might have struck an opponent dumb in the L&H or wherever, but I was provoked beyond measure by this facile analogy.

First, the Danish cartoons were almost certainly not intended to put anybody’s life in danger—the cartoonists would surely have made the calculation that if their work did jeopardize anyone’s existence, it would be their own.

Second, anyone who is familiar with the origins of the phrase “shouting fire in a crowed theatre” would be reluctant to use it as good example of how freedom of expression should be fettered in certain cases. In the case Schenck v. United States (see Wikipedia for full details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._U.S.), the eminent American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes used the phrase in an opinion rejecting the argument that Charles Schenck had the right, under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, to circulate pamphlets to recently conscripted men exhorting them to resist the draft for World War I.

When the Supreme Court of the United States in 2000 halted the ballot recount in Florida, thus handing the presidency to George W. Bush, many people were shocked at the Court’s apparently partisan actions. This is nothing new. Schenck v. United States is viewed by many historians as part of a larger campaign, which unfolded in the first two decades of the 20th century, of crushing socialist parties (Schenck was General Secretary of the Socialist Party of America and spent six months in prison) and radical trade unions (most notably the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, AKA “the Wobblies”), and also the target of judicial hounding)).

Incidentally, Holmes’s stance was effectively effaced by several later judgements by the Supreme Court.

So, given the catchphrase’s rather tarnished origins, I would advise those who wish to impugn the motivations of the Danish cartoonists—some of whom have reportedly received death threats and have now gone into hiding—to employ a parallel that is a little less resounding, and a little more relevant.

I thought the story that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle about "the Compact"--"About 50 teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals in the Bay Area have made a vow to not buy anything new in 2006 -- except food, health and safety items and underwear."--introduced a commendable idea. Until I reached the following paragraphs:

"The Compact is part of the larger trend of consumers beginning to "tread gently on our planet," said Peter Sealey, adjunct professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

"It sounds marvelous. It's a wonderful example for all of us," said Sealey, a former chief of marketing at Coca-Cola and Columbia Pictures. "It's a crystal-clear statement about what can be done to get us away from being a disposable society."

Dick "Elmer Fudd" Cheney, once made the notorious comment that conservation serves as a signal for personal virtue.

Well, as the film says, even a stopped watch is right twice a day...

They say that supposedly "idle" time is vital to creative people. Although it might appear that the "artist" is slumped on the couch, the remote control in one paw and a mug of cooling tea in the other, this apparent inactivity is actually masking the delicate gestation of an aesthetic concept.

This rather self-serving concept (you can bet it wasn't formulated by, say, a chartered accountant) seems too good to be confined to the "artistic process." I'd like to see it used as a justification for Internet surfing. On the surface, you see, you're merely wasting time, procrastinating in the face of a rapidly accumulating backlog of work. But this apparent time wasting can be seen as a sort of negative capability, diving into the electronic Noosphere in the chance of finding something exceptional.

You might find the later theory a little hard to swallow. (I don't fully accept it myself.) But the other day, while aimlessly hyperlinking, I came across this unsettling image, taken on Valentine's Day 16 years ago.

The accompanying blurb provides some context:

[The image was taken] by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

So can 20 minutes of "wasted time" that comes up with a nugget like this truly be wasted?

I suppose the answer to that question depends on who's paying you.

On Monday night RTE broadcast an unusual documentary, perhaps the hoity-toity term "sound collage" might be more appropriate, that ostensibly addresses my father's latest business project. However, it's far more than that, as my Dad, with his indefatigable storytelling skills, covers such issues as the etymology of the word "gnatting," Singapore dance girls, the cabling of Dublin, the future of education, and, of course, what led him to spend the last few years working on devices that would allow teenagers (and older!) to discover their inner Axl Rose or Richard David James.

Impressively, the music that segues in and out of the spoken segments was created by Cormac (my brother) on software and hardware built by the company, HighAndes.

The documentary is available at: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/flux/

I see that Sinn Féin decided to hold an al fresco recruitment drive today in Dublin.

(Actually, they can probably kiss goodbye to increasing their seats in the next election if the memory of this carry-on remains fresh in the voters' memory.)

A while ago, I came across Charles Baudelaire�s famous poem � une passante in an American journal article that was discussing the evolution of the city during the 19th-century. The poem is often referenced in this context�-the new, impersonal city that emerged in the West at this time-�because it�s considered one of the first works of metropolitan art. It concerns the poet's encounter with, or rather the poet merely sighting, a woman passing by on a city street. Of course, this being from the poet of Les fleurs du mal, this apparently banal episode is not given the Andy Williams�s treatment.

Sure the women in questions is tall and slender (Longue, mince�) but she also happens to be dressed in mourning and exhibiting �magnificent sorrow�: (�en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse.�) Already, the cogs are turning�-we can imagine the scenario, the trophy wife has just returned from the graveside of her plutocrat husband. The observer, who is probably not too flush in the cash department, is struck by this vision of liberated beauty, and is left as frustrated as Tantalus.

Anyway, the poem soon works up a head of steam. But what I want to focus on here is that when I compared the original text with the translation the article�s writer provided, I thought, even given my rudimentary French, that the translator had been a little too free in his English version. But this is nothing compared to the variations I discovered on a web site devoted to Baudelaire: fleursdumal.org. Three different versions reveal that it�s impossible to agree on even the title. Should it be: To a Passer-By, A Passer-by, or even (acknowledging the feminine noun absent from English) To a Woman Passing By?

Even more ambiguous lines prompt even stranger interpretations. The admittedly opaque lines:

Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi, je buvais, crisp� comme un extravagant,

Are rendered as :

Agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue's.
Tense as in a delirium, I drank

Or:

Noble and swift, her leg with statues matching;
I drank, convulsed, out of her pensive eye,

Or:

Swift and noble, with statuesque limb.
As for me, I drank, twitching like an old rou�,

Twitching like an old rou�? Where did that come from? But then to be honest, a phrase like �crisp� comme un extravagant,� probably only has significance in the original.

I suppose if you want to draw any conclusions from this brief survey it might be a) learn the language if you want the real deal or b) be aware that when you are reading any text, particularly when it�s poetic, in translation be aware that additives and colouring have been introduced.

Very profound, I know.

However, I want to end this rambling with something slightly unusual. A competition. What famous quotation should the above digression bring to mind?

A clue: Kinbote.

The first person who makes a comment with the correct answer and why the clue is relevant will, if they include their address, be sent the princely sum of 5 euro, out of my own back pocket.

Let�s see if this doesn�t boost readership!