Month: March 2005

I completely forgot to do a Burst of Weirdness this week. I mean, I just plain didn’t think to do it.

So it’s a good thing that Kevin Drum linked this collection of photos of George W. Bush rubbing the heads of bald men. And in the comments to that post, I found this even more extensive collection of such photos. This is just funny and disturbing on so many levels.

(This isn’t a political statement, by the way. Longtime readers will know that I enjoy pictures of Presidents doing odd stuff. Say…that might be a fun idea…an entire book of Presidential weirdness. I mean, we’ve elected some weird guys to that office.)

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Andrew Cory sent me these in e-mail, and I answer them here. Behold!

1) What genera of fiction makes you all gooey-week in the knees? Which example of that genre do you think exemplifies the highest qualities of that genre? Which is of so low quality that you’re embarrassed to admit you like it, and wouldn’t have liked anything of similar quality in another genre?

In recent years, I’ve become less of a “genre” reader — there are genres I like a lot, but none that completely captivate me, as genres-in-themselves. Likewise, I’m not against any genre; I’m more a “good book” kind of reader. A good book in any genre is more likely to thrill me than a mediocre book in a preferred genre, if that makes sense.

That said, my SF reading tastes gravitate toward big-scale space operas — the more planets and spectacular battles and clashes with good and evil, the better. I tend to not like Military SF as much, but I did like the first two Honor Harrington novels (by David Webber) quite a bit (even if his constant infodumps are really annoying, and I hear they get even worse as the series goes on).

2) Heinlein’s multiverse theory turns out to be correct. Two warring factions grab the best Admirals in all of fiction and make them face each other in an intergalactic, interdimensional war of annihilation. One side grabs Ender (from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and sequels), the other gets Grand Admiral Thrawn (from Timothy Zahn’s post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars novels). Who wins?

I haven’t read Ender’s Game, so I’m going to have to stick another Admiral in there. And the one that leaps to mind is one whose career as an Admiral was notable but short: Admiral James Tiberius Kirk.

To put it bluntly: Kirk would defeat Thrawn, but only after something of a pitched battle. I’m not sure exactly how he’d win, but at some point he’d make a grand speech about humanity, and at some point he’d talk Thrawn’s servant droid into self-destruction by using a logical contradiction to confuse it to death.

3) Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb: Why is this a trick question? What is the answer to the real question?

Well, by strict definition, no one is “buried” in Grant’s Tomb, since the former President and his wife are entombed in above-ground sarcophagi. (BTW, if memory serves, this question was on one of the original Trivial Pursuit cards, with the answer reading, “Ulysses S. Grant and his wife”. When people answer “Grant” but omit the wife, they get the question wrong. Suckers!)

4) What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?

Geez, that’s a toughie. There’s the awful Beaches, which everybody swore would have me in tears by the end — and yet, there I was at the end, glaring in anger at the screen because I was supposed to be moved to tears when some woman dies after she’s spent the entire movie treating her supposed “best friend” like dirt (and vice versa). Nauseating crap.

And then there’s The Usual Suspects, which annoyed me because it wasted what could have been a fascinating drama about some interesting low-lifes on the dumb “Who is Keyser Soze?” mystery, the solution of which I spotted within two minutes of the first mention of the name “Keyser Soze”.

I could also mention Aliens, which I found boring as every single event that was heavily foreshadowed in the first half unfolded like clockwork in the second half.

And there’s the supremely stupid Scream, which couldn’t make up its mind if it was a straight teen horror movie (a genre I genuinely hate, by the way) or a parody of a teen horror movie, and didn’t do either well at all.

But I guess the prize has to go with Highlander, which may be the single dumbest instantiation of fantasy I’ve ever seen. God, that is a bad movie, with a colossally stupid premise that wastes not one but two of my favorite actors (Sean Connery and Clancy Brown). Pure crap. Ugh!

5) Humanity is doomed. We’ve all contacted some horrible, horrible disease. What’s worse is that it attacks scientists and medical people first, so there won’t be a plucky young heroine teaming up with a beautiful young man to save us all from certain doom. No matter how amusing the antics of a certain ex-president-turned sidekick, the doom is, in fact, certain…You’re at the end of the world party, and Kofi Annan reveals to you that he is in real-time communication with aliens. The aliens can use their teleportation technology to fit just one piece of artwork, and a drunken Secretary General asks you to pick the art. To make sure that no one else contract the Human Virus, the Earth’s Star (Sol) will be destroyed, taking Earth with it. Whatever piece of art you choose will be _everything_ that remains of humanity. What do you choose and why?

Since we’re not quibbling for size, I’d save the Sistine Chapel. (Since this is happening present-day, I assume that the Voyager Record is still intact, somewhere in interstellar space. So at least something of our music will survive.

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I was named by PZ Myers as a recipient of a book-meme that’s whipping its way around Blogistan, and I am naturally honor-bound to answer its queries. Here goes:

(Wait a minute! Dr. Myers complains that I haven’t even noticed this thing yet in an update to his post. I did too notice — a link from him invariably causes a spike in my traffic, so welcome aboard, Pharyngula readers! — but with my work day starting at 7:30 a.m., not ending until 3:00 p.m., and then the next two to three hours being filled with things like getting The Daughter off the bus, going to pick up Little Quinn from the sitter, returning home, opening the mail, checking e-mail, reading a few blogs, and doing Little Quinn’s 5:00 p.m. feeding, I don’t get around to generating new content here until at least 6:00 p.m. on the days when The Wife and I both work. I’m not one of those lucky college profs, who hold the best part-time jobs in America! (I stole that last quip from an actual, tenured college prof of my own. The same guy also quipped that in January, we have a holiday for a great civil rights leader; in February, we honor the Presidents of the United States; in March, we honor one of the great heroes of Irish history; and on April 1, we honor college administrators. That prof was an equal-opportunity offender.)

OK, where was I? Oh, yeah — the book-meme. Here goes:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Well, assuming that I would be stuck inside Fahrenheit 451 in my current state of knowledge, I could call it a day with the screenplays to the five extant Star Wars movies. But keeping to the spirit of the game, I’m not sure. This is basically picking one book that I think needs to survive into the ages, so I’d commit T.H. White’s The Once and Future King to memory.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Well, I come pretty close with Wonder Woman, don’t I? But no, not really. However, I have had the experience — several times — of encountering people in real life who look almost exactly the way I have envisioned a character in The Promised King or in one of my stories. I haven’t formed a crush per se, but I’ve definitely stared a bit, enough so as to suddenly become uncomfortable when I realize what I’m doing. I’ve often wondered whether, if I’m caught staring, my real explanation would sound like a lame pick-up line.

The last book you bought is:

The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Celtic Music, by Fiona Ritchie.

The last book you read:

Ditto. (I’ll write more about that book sometime in the future, but suffice it to say that it’s a really good book for anyone with a beginning interest in Celtic music.)

What are you currently reading?

Oh, crap — this reminds me that I haven’t updated that part of the sidebar in, like, forever. I’ll try to do that later, but right now I’m reading Evenings with the Orchestra by Berlioz, The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to the Popular Standards (whose author escapes me at the moment), and Deathstalker by Simon R. Green.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Ah, that old chestnut. How much variety, quality, and sheer volume can I pack into a mere five works? (Of course, I cheat a bit by citing complete works, even if they require multiple volumes. Heh, heh, heh.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
Cosmos by Carl Sagan
The Oxford Book of English Poetry
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon (Never read it, and it’s in three volumes)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

Well, with this thing cruising around Blogistan fairly quickly, I have to pick people who basically haven’t done it yet. So on that basis, I turn it over to Darth Swank and to Morat at Skeptical Notion. I also bop it over to Jason Streed, in hopes that it will give him something to post about (it’s been a month!). And since I almost always disregard constraints on answering blog quizzes, I’m going to kick this to a fourth person: Patrick of Fantasy Hotlist.

And though I’m not officially passing this quiz onto them, I wouldn’t complain if Sarah, Drew, or Nefarious Neddie answered it. Heh.

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I was trying not to say a thing about the whole Terry Schiavo affair, because I find the entire thing so bizarrely surreal that I can barely decide what to say about it. But I followed Bella‘s lead to this post by Holly Lisle — who once speculated on a former version of her blog that the whole issue descends from a botched attempted murder by Michael Schiavo — where Ms. Lisle insists that since Terry Schiavo never put her wishes in writing, the current case in its entirety should never have existed at all:

Schiavo’s case should never have been a case. Lacking any sort of documentation stating that she wanted to be permitted to die, every effort should have been made to save her life and return her to her highest level of function. Everything — EVERYTHING — has been done wrong because of her husband’s talent for publicizing the aspects of the case that he wanted publicized. In the end, however, this is, in fact, a no-brainer. No documentation = presumption that she wanted to live, and follow-on treatment to make that possible.

Strange that successions of Florida state judges have managed to completely miss this bit of obvious legality. Or, maybe it’s not so strange after all, because Ms. Lisle is stone, cold wrong, as Dahlia Lithwick once explained:

One needn’t take a position on the right-to-life/right-to-die controversy to be appalled by the events in Florida. Whether one believes that Terri Schiavo is in a “persistent vegetative state” or a “minimally conscious state” is immaterial. Whether one believes that her blinks and smiles are signs of cognition or automated reflexes is similarly not the issue. All that matters is that these disputes are governed by law, that the law says Michael Schiavo is her legal guardian, and that his decision ought to have been final.

For the actual legal background of the case — i.e., not Ms. Lisle’s legal opinion based on what somebody in nursing school said one day — read Ms. Lithwick’s entire article. The Schiavo case did not arise in a legal void, and the various judges involved did not make it up as they went along. As judges do, they followed established legal precedent, and that precedent is this: In the absence of Ms. Lisle’s written documentation, decision-making power is handed to a court-appointed legal guardian, who is almost always the spouse.

As long as I’m commenting on this whole affair, I note that Ms. Lisle accuses Michael Schiavo of basically being a publicity-hound. I suppose that Mr. Schiavo may just be that, but I note that he’s not the one who has the Majority Leader of the United States Senate making medical diagnoses from watching a videotape. Say what you will about Michael Schiavo, he hasn’t managed to get high-profile Republicans to make medical diagnoses on his behalf outside their medical specialty without ever seeing the patient in person. And I note that for a case where Ms. Lisle maintains that Mr. Schiavo is the publicity hound, the photograph that accompanies every single story I’ve seen or watched on TV about this case is the one where Terry Schiavo is “smiling” to her mother. If Mr. Schiavo is the publicity genius, he’s not doing too well at it.

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Sean e-mailed me this link to people who look great on HDTV, and people who…don’t.

Britney makes one of the two lists. Guess which one…heh!

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Terry Teachout has a neat-looking quiz, and as my regular readers know, my knees turn to jelly in the presence of a quiz. (At The Store, they won’t let me go anywhere near the shelves where the issues of Cosmopolitan are kept.) Here’s the quiz, with Mr. Teachout’s answers removed and mine substituted. Because, well, reproducing his answers would be kind of dumb.

(Since this quiz seems to require a high degree of self-knowledge, I’m going to call it “The Self-Delusion Quiz”.)

What is your most marked characteristic? Warmth, I hope. I aspire to chivalry.

What is the quality you most like in a man? The ability to not be willingly obtuse.

What is the quality you most like in a woman? A willingness to laugh, and a smile to match.

What do you most value in your friends? The fact that they accept my own absurdities often with little comment.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Laziness.

What is your favorite occupation? Does this have to come up in every quiz these days? Writing. Maybe I’ll learn to do it someday.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? I don’t know, really, but I know that it needs to be shared.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Loneliness.

In which country would you like to live? This one, right now. While I’d love to experience New York City in the 1950s — Broadway at its height, Leonard Bernstein on the podium at the NYPO — there’s too much stuff I’d have to give up to go back there. I’m not trading DVDs to have the 50s.

Who are your favorite writers? Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Barbara Tuchman, Edward Gorey, Harold Schonberg, Carl Sagan, Stephen King

Who are your favorite poets? Shakespeare, Tennyson, Whitman, Robert Burns, Poe, Alan Jay Lerner, Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter (What, I can’t consider lyricists to be poets? Well, it’s my blog, and I’m doing it.)

Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.

Who is your favorite heroine of fiction? Jehane bet Ishak in The Lions of Al-Rassan.

Who are your favorite composers? Mozart, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Copland, Wagner, Brahms, Beethoven, Turlough O’Carolan, George Gershwin, Frederick Loewe, Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Duke Ellington, John Williams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa (or Rosza — I cannot imprint the correct spelling of his name upon my brain), Howard Shore. (The question doesn’t specify genre of music, so I see no reason to do so, either.)

Who are your favorite painters? John Constable, Arthur Hughes, Alan Lee, Tad Naismith, Adolph Schaller, Jon Lomberg. (I don’t know many painters.)

What are your favorite names? Katherine, John, Paula, Jennifer, Maria, Eliza, Luke, Matthew — heck, pretty much any Biblical name. There are some amazing names in that book. (Except “Obadiah” — I never liked that one. Or “Job”.)

What is it that you most dislike? Broccoli. Highlander (the movie). Britney. Ravel’s Bolero. The New England Stupid Patriots. People who live in Buffalo but bitch about how much they hate living in Buffalo. People who never seem to have any inkling that maybe, just maybe, their religion isn’t quite right in all the particulars. People who look down on what I read, what I listen to, what I write. I dislike all of those things.

Which talent would you most like to have? I’d like to be able to dance a bit — especially those wonderful Irish step-dances. I could probably learn some of that stuff, if I took the time and expended the effort.

How would you like to die? Painlessly, after a long and full life. (Or not at all, until I’m throroughly sick of everything.)

What is your current state of mind? I could go for a bit of pizza. Or, less specifically, I vacillate between a sense of high optimism and a certainty of unrelenting doom.

What is your motto? “Here’s a health to one and all, to the big and to the small; to the rich and poor alike, and foe and friend! And when I come back again, may my foes have turned to friends, and may peace and joy be with you until then!” (Alternatively, my motto is “I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”)

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…and the number of the Chapter thou shalt readeth shall be Six.

Yup, it’s been two weeks, and it’s time to catch up on what’s been going on for Our Heroine and her merry band of tag-alongs. So bop on over to The Promised King and read Chapter Six of the novel, in which some stuff happens. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll never look at life the same way again.

Remember: Chapter Six is up. Get thee hence, laggard! (I mean, really — what are you doing reading this paragraph anyway, when the preceding paragraph says it all? Yeesh!)

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The other day I expressed strenuous disagreement with a recent post of Eugene Volokh’s, in which Volokh stated outright — not suggested, not hinted, not said “Hey what if…”, but stated outright — that we should take a page from the book of the Iranian justice system and start using cruel and unusual punishments for heinous crimes. I figured I’d just express my strenuous disapproval and let that be it, but now I see that a blogger whose politics are quite a bit to the right of mine, but still a blogger whose thoughtfulness and, yes, adherence to reason I’ve respected ever since I discovered his blog, Michael Lopez of Highered Intelligence, has cast his lot with Prof. Volokh.

My intention here isn’t to enter into debate on this matter, since I am personally aghast that anyone thinks that there’s anything to debate here at all. Since 9-11-01, the American people have been told repeatedly, ad nauseum, that we are at war with the Islam world, and that this conflict represents no less than a clash of our “enlightened” Western values against a more, shall we say, “medieval” enemy. That we are now told that, the war aside, there are things we could learn from these medieval enemies of ours in the realm of criminal justice strikes me as a particularly ghoulish irony. Believe me, folks: I may be an admitted, and proudly admitted, liberal, but I am not a postmodernist, Western-civilization hating, “destructive multiculturalist” leftist. I do not personally subscribe to the “Good West against the Heathen Islamics” view of what’s going on in the world today, but that doesn’t mean that I’m an admirer of a lot of what goes on in the Islamic Middle East these days. As far as I am concerned, the less my country has in common with present-day Iran, the better. And, quite frankly, I object strongly to Michael’s characterization of this view as a general Western approach to such matters as (his words) “Let’s be pansies.” I’m not interested in “being a pansy”. I want to be better than the other guy.

I’d like to respond to a couple of Michael’s other specific points. First, he says this:

That’s where I think flogging and burning at the stake and so forth can be useful: as an expression by society that this criminal has forfeited the security of society, that the criminal has so violated our agreed upon behaviors, that we are withdrawing even the most fundamental protections. By torturing such a criminal to death, we are reinforcing the idea that mercy, and even such a thing as a “clean death” are punishments reserved for those who walk among us, not those who declare war on us.

That’s almost persuasive — except for one thing. Michael’s claim is that a torturous, brutal death would serve as a statement by society. But a statement to whom? The criminal who has already demonstrated, by way of action, his complete apathy for any statement society might make? or is it a statement to society, a kind of reinforcement of an idea? Well, if the former, then it’s useless, and if the latter, it’s precisely as useless, because members of society already believe these things. I don’t see where any purpose is fundamentally served by the course of action Michael and Prof. Volokh support.

Michael then proceeds to what I think is the most compelling argument against Volokhian torture: that it diminishes our humanity. It makes us lesser people. Our willingness to say to a criminal that we are prepared to do to them exactly what we abhor them having done to us reduces us, in a very real way. Prof. Volokh disputed this claim (resoundingly unconvincingly), but Michael’s reponse to this idea is more troubling: he basically says, “So what?” If we grant that we become a lesser society when we do such things, well, so be it, because at least we’re not as bad as the serial killer or rapist or whatever. Well, as a moral argument, the “At least we’re still better than that guy” argument has never impressed me. That Saddam Hussein did horrible things to his people doesn’t mean that Abu Ghraib was the right thing to do. Since I’m concerned with the betterment of society, this argument is, so far as I can see, a complete non-starter.

Underlying Michael’s post is a machismo that I find more than a little odd. His general position seems to be that if we don’t allow “society” to act upon criminals with brutal force, it’s because we’re soft, we’re “effete wusses” — again his words — who are more concerned with our individual humanity than “protecting the institution” of society. But since society is comprised of individuals, I fail to see just how a wholesale degrading of one area of individual morality, across the board, can strengthen the society of which those individuals are its atoms.

In the end, Michael wraps up with this:

I think that the world would be a better place if we had a little more savagery in the way we deal with certain types of criminals. I think it’s ludicrous that every TV reporter and panel expert I’ve seen agrees that it is just as likely Scott Petersen will die of old age as it is that his sentence will be carried out. But if I want to see a better world come about, I’m going to have to do some convincing. I can’t just say “we’ll agree to disagree” and call it a day.

Consider that: the world would be a better place if we did as the Iranians do. Again, this very thought throws me into cognitive dissonance: we can see a world right now where people do as the Iranians do. It’s called Iran. Is that really the model we want for our “better world”?

I’m reminded of all the brutal forms of punishment that once existed, but are no longer used. People are no longer put in iron maidens. Neither are they burned at the stake. Sailors who commit crimes are no longer keelhauled. We in the West tend to look down on the rigid adherence to Islamic law that proscribes that women found guilty of adultery be buried to their necks and then stoned to death. (Click that link, and note the country where that’s apparently still part of the criminal justice system’s bag of tricks. Again: is this our model?) I would also point out that we are on the threshold of one of Christendom’s holiest days — the holiest day, in fact — which commemorates the brutal punishment meted out upon the Son of God, and the failure of that punishment to stymie His message. I’m not sure that last is relevant, but I note the irony of timing.

And beyond just the matters of brutal punishments we don’t use anymore, the world keeps making progress, doesn’t it? Consider just the last 150 years or so: slavery in the West has ended, although it’s got a way to go before it’s eliminated worldwide. Women in the West not only can vote just about everywhere, but several Western countries have even gone so far as to entrust their highest political offices to women. No one would claim that racial relations in America, while still disturbingly troublesome, aren’t better than they were just a few decades ago. Five years ago we closed out a century that saw the rise of both Communism and Fascism, and the defeat of each (well, Communism’s still kicking, but not with nearly as much vitality). We’ve made progress in science, in the environment, we’ve flown and gone to space.

Would the world be a better place if we in the West went back to doing the things to criminals that Michael and Prof. Volokh suggest? I prefer to think that the world is a better place, at least in part because we don’t do these things anymore.

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The major airport in Western New York is the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, which used to be a really grungy place until the old airport, with its East and West terminals neither of which had the same architecture as the other, was basically demolished in favor of the really nice airport that services the region today. I actually tend to really enjoy airports; they’re a great place to people-watch, and if you’re attentive you’ll witness moments of sadness as people leave their loved ones to go traveling as well as moments of happiness as loved ones return. The saddest airport moment I ever saw was while I was waiting for a flight, and at the next gate over, it came time for some poor little nine-year-old girl to board her flight to go back to her mother, having just spent a couple of weeks with her divorced father. It was a really sad scene to behold.

But anyway: the very name “Buffalo Niagara International Airport” implies that the airport is a regional one, serving the entirety of our region, and that’s about right: just about all commercial air travel in these parts takes off from BNIA, and well it should. It is fairly centrally located, and unlike many regional airports, it’s neither hard to get to nor an absurd distance from, well, everything.

But there’s another airport in Niagara Falls, NY, that has basically been sitting idle for years. Now, it’s not totally idle — there is a small air cargo industry that operates there, charter flights use to Niagara Falls land there, and the NFIA’s runway is shared by an adjoining United States Airforce Base. And it’s the runway that’s the most interesting thing about NFIA: it’s much longer than the runway at BNIA, since it has to be able to service those gigantic aircraft that take off and land from the USAF base. Which means that the NFIA is something of an untapped resource, and there have been sporadic efforts in recent years to tap it.

First there was a bizarre attempt to lease the entire facility to some Spanish company for a very low amount of money, with the exact benefits of doing so a bit unclear — no one knew if this company really planned to upgrade NFIA and start using it as a passenger airport or what. That deal was scuttled. Other attempts to bring in low-cost carriers to NFIA have failed, since there simply isn’t enough demand for new passenger air travel into the region. BNIA serves the region’s passenger air needs just fine, although charter overflow is well-directed there. And there have been rumblings about turning NFIA into the hub of a greatly-increased air cargo industry. I personally find that idea fairly compelling, although I’m really not at all convinced that it’s feasible. ArtVoice, Buffalo’s independent weekly newspaper, used to tout this idea with regularity, although they seem to have backed off it more recently.

The latest item of interest for NFIA is interesting indeed: it seems that Airbus needs to build a manufacturing facility somewhere in the United States, and NFIA has been submitted as a possibility. The requirements are almost perfectly suited to NFIA:

Among the specifications the prospective sites must meet are: access to an extra-long airport runway, railroad lines, and the availability of a deep water port for transfer of aircraft fuselage and wings to the production location.

I like that last part especially, since I assume that Buffalo would be the deep water port (although I suppose it could be Rochester as well). This would be a hefty shot in the arm for the local manufacturing base, as well as put the Buffalo Niagara region on the “international commerce” map.

Landing this deal is, of course, far from easy: twenty-three states are expected to submit three sites each for consideration. But I hope that our civic leaders around here, such as they are, aren’t in the least bit daunted by that. We’ve landed Geico and we’ve landed Bass Pro. Now let’s get the big fish on the hook and reel it in.

(Alan and Craig also like this idea.)

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I’m not sure why Jostein would want one of these, but then, you know those whacky European Socialist kids. They’ll buy anything.

Which reminds me: back in the late 1990s, when catalog shopping was significantly more popular than it is now, I received a couple of installments of a catalog that was devoted purely to Russian memorabilia and, well, generally Russian stuff. You could buy tins of caviar from them, as well as matryoshka dolls that stood a foot tall and included upwards of twenty-five or thirty “interior” dolls. And you could also get all manner of memorabilia from the Soviet military, the most spectacular example of which was — I kid you not — an office desk chair fashioned from the ejector seat of a decommissioned MiG fighter jet. Wow.

Anyway, I did a little bit of Googling to see if I could find a website for that catalog, and I didn’t find it, but I did locate this emporium of Russian and Soviet collectibles. I guess this is your one-stop shop for your John Le Carre novel-reenactment party needs.

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