Lexicographer

"A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words."  That was how Dr Samuel Johnson described himself after spending nearly a decade assembling one of the great dictionaries of the world.  He was/is known widely as Dr Johnson but he never earned it in the normal way, although he was eventually given an honorary doctorate by Trinity College Dublin when he was in his mid 50s.  Like everyone of his generation he had two birthdays OS and NS to take account of the change (in the United Kingdom) from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar on 14 September 1752.  So Johnson was born on 7th Sept 1709 (OS) but the day was/is generally celebrated after 1752 on 18th September.  For example, his birthplace Lichfield is having a knees-up this weekend.

And to show that  Lexicography is alive and well and living in Chicago, check out Erin McKean and her on-line meta-dictionary wordnik, which offers a word-a-day.  But then so does Anu Garg at AWAD.  McKean's Law aka Muphry's Law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error." been there, done that.

No scientist today working on whatever sort of contract, would tolerate the privations that Johnson endured at the centre of a life in letters.  His great indignant rolling polemic against his 'patron' the Earl of Chesterfield "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it." calls forth a Wildean "I wish I'd said that", and serves to illustrate how his rich pals imagined that he could live on air and invective.

Johnson was famous for other things, like his opinion of The Giant's Causeway "Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see; or his eulogy to our own Oliver Goldsmith "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had" a sentiment echoed in verse by David Garrick 

"Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll" 

and his bewildered contempt for Scotland through which he was dragged by his friend and biographer James Boswell: ". . .the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England. But it is dictionary that we credit and excerpt today.

COUGH A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity.

DEPUCELATE: To bereave of virginity. 

NETWORK Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

OATS A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

PATRON One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.

PENSION An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

And for dessert, less you think that Johnson's is the only dictionary with a sense of humour:
ECLAIR A cake, long in shape but short in duration (Chambers 20th Century).

Viva la Arts Block!

Matisse - a treat

When a man is tired of Matisse, he is tired of life.  I would not put Matisse as strong as Samuel Johnson continued about London "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." but there is something so good for morale in Matisse's late work.  Even as a postcard . . . even as a postage stamp.  The NYT has a wonderful and informative panorama graphic of the soon-to-close exhibition of Matisse's cut-outs at NYC's MoMA.  I've included a snippet above. via Kottke.

Lá an Fhorógra 2016

On Easter Sunday 24th April 1916, Padraig Pearse walked out into Sackville Street from the newly occupied GPO and read a Proclamation to a small crowd of bemusedonlookers from the provisional government of the Republic of Ireland. "IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom etc. etc.[Full text]" Even now there is a slight intake of breath at the hubris of Pearse and his slightly bonkers revolutionaries claiming to speak for God and the dead generations.  But the leaders would all too shortly be joining the entities for whom they claimed to speak, along with 450 other people, the majority of whom were by-catch of the crossfire - 254 'civilians' were killed and about 10x that number wounded over the next 6 days.

Easter was well late in 1916 and it is rather early in 2016 so there is a dilemma about whether to celebrate the week of 24th April or the week of 28th March.  The dilemma is quickly resolved by doing both - and throw in St Patrick's Day as well - because everyone wants to put on the razz for Pearse and Co. Not me, I'm with Samuel Johnson "[harrrumph] patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".  Not least because it tends to precipitate war so you finish up with "A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end".

The number of people who were in the GPO for Easter Week 1916 has grown and grown until there were more revolutionaries inside the building than there were square feet of floor space to hold them - standing shoulder to shoulder indeed.  When the Free State was launched 8 years later, the war having been won, and pensions were on offer for those who had fought for Ireland, there was a real incentive to have been there.

As part of the 1916 Centenary Celebrations, Today 15th March has been designated Proclamation Day and schools and other educational institutions have been incentivised [prizes, project packages] to engage with the idea of nationhood by presenting historical research projects and celebrating the Republic in story, song and dance.  The Institute will be doing its bit for using 1916 to create a vision for 2016 Ireland at 2pm today in the largest lecture hall.  Followed by a reading of The Proclamation outside. I hope that nobody will have the bright idea to dress up some young chap to guy Padraig Pearse [R looking resolutely into the Leftist future] down to a volunteer green great coat and a slouch-hat.  That sort of pantomime is not looking forward to a more equable society in Ireland.  The business manager of The Institute announced the order of events a couple of weeks ago and added, wholly predictably, that classes would carry on as normal during Proclamation Day.

It didn't take long for someone to set down, in a calling-all-cars e-mail, their 1916 credentials and decry the idea that they and their class would be unable to attend because Technical Drawing 106 was scheduled for 2pm Tuesdays this term. Credentials: "My grandfather was interned in Frongoch Camp . . ." - "My grandfather carried dispatches  . . . " - "My grandmother carried dispatches . . .".  After a day of this, another lecturer plaintively asked "Can we all go?"  My (tactfully unsent) response was that you could only go if you claimed a near relative in the GPO.  But as a)  'the dead generations' were now stacked like cordwood in the smoking ruins of the GPO and b) the Irish are 'strong breeders' [except the Protestants!] and c) 3 generations had passed; there was a racing certainty that everyone in the Institute could go.  Of course I was over-egging the pudding, because the best that our German trade union rep could claim was that his ancestors might has supplied the Mausers that filled the Aud before she was scuttled of a beach in Kerry.  The best that my naval ancestors could claim is that they were aboard the Helga directing shells into Liberty Hall from the River Liffey. They weren't, but neither would my family be swimming against the tide of history to admit it.

barracks

 I've written about proximity to my roomies when we worked at The Institute. Back then I was told that the minimum area for offices was 4 sq.m. for each drone. On Tuesdays when both the part-timer staff were at their desks we were possibly the most crowded [within allowable Heath&Safety limits] office in the EU. The HSE has something to say [not our Health Service Executive but the UK Health and Safety Executive]: unless employers allow 11 cu.m. for each person, they are in breach. Assuming a ceiling height of 2.4m, this requires a floor area of 4.6 sq.m. including desk and chair. I thought at the time that this was cramped for professionals working in third-level education and was much less than any office I had in universities. I didn't feel oppressed though because I went to boarding school to acquire a very expensive education . . . and a lot of tics and psychological baggage.

What brought that on? Reading another pop.hist. book by Richard Holmes : Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket (2001) [Guardian review]. I read his The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (2008) when it came out: it describes what happens when Science mugs The Arts Block;  as when Keats references William "Uranus" Herschel [whom prev - and his sister Caroline!] ". . . deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne / Yet did I never breathe its pure serene / Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: / Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken . . ."

Anyhow, back to 19thC soldiers. In 1842, a General Order of the British army decreed that, in barracks on home station, each soldier should have 450-500 cu.ft [13-14 cu.m.] of space: to sleep, eat, chat and maintain his kit. But this ideal fell short in at least Brighton [412 cu.ft = 11½ cu.m. each] and Kensington [363 cu.ft = 10cu.m.] barracks. In 1857 a Royal Commission into the Sanitary Condition of the Army optimistically recommended 600 cu.ft. but it was another 20 years before a barrack-building programme, as part of the Cardwell Reforms, came close to achieving this aspiration. 

This all brings to mind Samuel Johnson's quote about going for a sailor: "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company." Apart from the drowning the same calculus applied to soldiering. And in barracks close packing and lack of washing facilities, let alone hot water and flush toilets was surely bad investment as trained soldiers got sick and died before they could be deployed. And on active service, microbes killed more than "the enemy": Peninsula War 25,000 from disease to 9,000 KIA. Crimea: 17,000 from disease to 4,000 KIA + died of wounds. Although obvs before Koch's Postulates and Pasteur, septic issues were involved in died of wounds,. Hat-tip to Florence the Statistician of the Lamp.

Redcoats is a good read if you like that sort of thing. Plenty of sources and footnotes, although Holmes claims he is not an academic historian. But lots of evocative tales and anecdotes which give a sense of what it might have been like after taking the King's shilling 200 years ago. 

Maybe the last word should go to Thomas Hood's Ben "was a soldier bold" Battle:

'O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches.'

The Canting Crew

Unless you're a professional lexicographer yourself, you might be excused from thinking that Samuel Johnson's  A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, [bloboprev] was the first example of such books.  But you'd be wrong.  "A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew, in its several tribes, of gypsies, beggers, thieves, cheats, &c. with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, figurative speeches, &c. Ufeful for all forts of People (efpecially Foreigners) to fecure their Money and preferve their Lives; befides very Diverting and Entertaining, being wholly New" had been compiled by "B.E." and published two generations previously in 1698. Nobody knows who B.E. be anymore that we know who was Shaxper's friend WH / HW a hundred years before that. The thing about cant, jargon and slang is that it dates quickly.  A phrase will be down with the hood one year and seem quaintly old-fashioned before an adult  can feel quite comfortable using it. I experience this every year with our 3rd year french students, with whom I share some comments in 'french'.  The problem is that all my colloquial french comes from the time my sister lived with a bearded Québécois 40 years ago. Referring to something good as c'est le pied provokes indulgent smirks from la jeunesse française. But I persist in a conscious effort to show the monoglot Irish, who make up the majority of the class, that there are languages other than English out there . . . and even educated people who don't spik Ingles verr gud.  

ANNyway back to the language of the canting crew of 300 years ago. Some of these phrases might, with utility, be given another airing in today's world? You can get the whole text in a variety of formats (plain text is more puzzle than useful; PDF is readable).

• Arsworm - a diminutive fellow
• Baste - to beat as, I'll baste your sides Sirrah, I'll bang you lustily.
• Clunch - a clumsy clown an awkward or unhandy fellow.
• Doxies - she-beggars, trulls, wenches, whores . . .
• Ebb-water - when there's but little money in the pocket
• Flapdragon - a clap or pox 
• Gape-feed - whatever the gazing crowd stares and gapes after; as puppet-shows, rope-dancers, monsters, and mountebanks.
• Hector - a vaporing, swaggering coward
• Yarmouth capon - a red herring
• Zany - a mountebank's Merry-Andrew, or Jester

Losing examples of old slang cuts both ways: some of them have lost all utility / currency and been replaced with other terms for the same thing. But others have become part of standard English.

Northern Lights

Bill Bryson tells a story about going to Hammerfest in the hope of seeing the Aurora Borealis and being told that success was iffy. People would travel hopefully, long and hard to get to the remotest parts of Far North and stay there until they had to go back for work and . . . see nothing except Norwegians drinking beer while eating reindeer steaks and lutefisk. Bryson got lucky on Day 16, and can now die happy. Of course like Simon Clark and my mother, Bryson made his luck by making the laborious trek.

For many people, it's like that with St Kilda [prev], which operates a powerful draw on a certain category of pilgrim souls. It's damnably difficult to get to St. Kilda; even if you have a private yacht the weather closes the place off for weeks on end. Even after you set off for the 5 hour journey in calm seas and a glorious sunrise, a ferocious storm can blow in without notice and kibosh your paltry pilgrim plans.  I've just finished Love of Country: a Hebridean Journey by Madeline Bunting. It's a book, it's a travel book but it's not an original travel book. It's not really a wholly derivative In The Footsteps of . . . [insert one of AlexanderTheGreat | PeterFleming | Hannibal | RobertLouisStevenson] sort of book and it's not a gimmick like Round Ireland with a Fridge or walking the Camino de Santiago in Reverse.
Nevertheless Ms Bunting is standing on the shoulders of others who have sought themselves in the remoter, bleaker edges of this our Western European Archipelago WEA. Despite citing Norman Davies in her references, Bunting slides easily into calling the conglomerate of islands off the NW coast of Europe The British Isles. Aaaaaargh! Nope! That designation is a value-laden label that sits easily only if you live and breathe in London. The title itself has a tendency to rile me up because I'm with Samuel "Dictionary" Johnson on "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Dr.  Johnson is great source for comparison with a modern experience of the Western Isles, and Bunting draws on his views and sardonic comments on Scotland and the Scots. OATS: A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Bunting does get to St Kilda but only on a day-trip. Her plans to spend a couple of weeks there in a tent are set at naught by the weather. On a walk along Tobha Mòr beach in South Uist [pics], she comes across a tide-washed office chair and muses "A sampling of the tons of plastic which circulate the globe was scattered amongst the shells and seaweed: brightly coloured bottles, odd shoes, buoys, bits of old rope and fishing crates."  I don't know if I'll now be able to walk the Hebridean Way with all my gear in a rucksack: the waste of leaving all those fish-crates behind may be too painful. I guess I could leave them alongside the fence at Howmore Hostel [as L].

I think part of my dissatisfaction with Bunting's Hebridean book, in contrast with Poacher's Pilgrimage: an Island Journey by Alastair McIntosh, is that it is editted from a great many visits to the Hebrides over a span of decades. If you're on The Way to discover or reveal some truth about your place in the Universe, then you're better off to commit a chunk time away from the office, the school-run and a familiar bed. If you flit in and out you're not working hard enough to make your own luck. But what do I know? I only saw the kingfisher once on my walk through Spain

I refute it THUS

How do we know? What is reality? These are the questions which philosophers address, and it is easy for scientists to get tetchy with such BIG questions - we find it difficult to imagine making progress across a such  pathless landscape.  Science has made what progress it has largely by adopting a reductionist view of the world - chipping away at a small-small section of the great wall of knowledge rather than stepping back to try comprehending the whole thing.  It has worked - we have transistors and antibiotics; refrigerators and windfarms; GM food and General Motors - by focusing on one thing at a time.

Berkeley Birthday today!  George Berkeley was born 12th March 1685, went to Trinity College Dublin >!huzzah!<, and finished up as Bishop of Cloyne: a metropolis of 1,500 people in Co. Cork - about the same size as another bishopric nearer to us called Ferns.  In those days, just after the founding of the Royal Society, there was no Arts-Science divide; natural philosophers moved easily between the two, at least partly because there was much less to know back then. As JBS Haldane put it "Keats [b. 1795] and Shelley [b. 1795] were the last two poets who were at all up to date with their chemical knowledge”. Berkeley started his publishing career with a book An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision which described his research into and deep thoughts about light and the reality of objects. He later summed up his thoughts as "esse is percipi"- to be is to be perceived. Things don't exist until and unless someone sees them.  This is obvious nonsense until you start to think about it, and Berkeley forced us to question a lot of our unconsidered certainties about what is out there.  It is summed up, maybe even guyed, with the idea "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"  The issue was still exercising people 200 years later when another cleric Monsignor Ronald Knox, Catholic convert and broadcaster penned a pair of limericks:

“There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply:

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

The old curmudgeon Samuel "Dictionary" Johnson had no time for such living-in-your-head piffle.  As related by the world's nicest sychophant James Boswell in his biography of the great man:

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

Yes, yes, but it is more complex than that and it is worth thinking a little on the subject before turning our attention back to checking to TV listings. No better place for that than listening [In Our Time on BBC Radio 4] to Melvin Bragg and his guests being damned clever on our behalf.  U. Cal Berkeley,  preeminent college of the US West Coast, is named for him although pronounced [BURKly] wrong differently.

Spectral optics

Isaac Newton was a relentlessly curious experimenter. In one investigation he inserted a bodkin in behind his eyeball to see how distorting the sphere affected his perception. Apart from gravity, we associate him with the "visible spectrum"; spectrum has become a metaphor for other "within the normal" ranges. Actually, neurotypical folk [which might include me and you - I'm still awaiting a diagnosis] tend to Other people on the autistic spectrum. Othering, especially among school-children, can involve brutal, persistent mental-and-physical hazing, teasing and bullying. It makes life harder than it needs to be for the recipients of this attention.

Diary entry Friday 12 Oct 2018. "There’s a girl on Twitter called Greta Thunberg (we’ve been following each other for a while now) . . ." In hindsight it is hard to credit that, less than 3 years ago, St Greta of Climate was a distant marginalised voice just a girl on Twitter. That entry is from Dara McAnulty's Diary of a Young Naturalist a record shit-happens, mainly in Co Fermanagh and Co Down, from Spring Equinox 2018 to Spring Equinox 2019. In the middle of the book the McAnulty family moves from one side of Ulster to the other which causes a good bit of change-anxiety for young Dara and his younger sibs Lorcan and Bláthnaid who are all somewhere on the spectrum. But here's the thing, first day at the new school Dara is met by a young chap in his class who is his designated buddy; who also shares his interest in the natural world and also the unnatural world of Xbox gaming. There are poignant entries in the diary been here a week and no bullying . . . been here a month and no bullying. Now here's the thing: how is it that one school has systemic bullying and the other doesn't? and what are a) the Head Teacher b) the rest of the staff c) the parents and d) the Department of Education doing about it before the next academic year and the start of another round of institutional inhumanity. Note Greta Thunberg was also bullied in school.

I tease The Beloved about her guru Thich Nhat Hahn being Dalai Lama Light, but that's crass and buys into the Harry Potter Winner-takes-all-ism which is the bane of fame and reputation in our current world system. TNH has a different message, different tech, different presentation, it is othering to bang all elderly meditation blokes in robes into the same ashram as interchangeable cogs in the mindfulness industry. Likewise, it is easy to dismiss Dara McAnulty as Greta-lite on the ecowarrior charts. Obvs Dara is going to get some traction in Ireland because he is Our Ecowarrior but he's got something to say for all of us who are left of the planet. He says, for example, a benison over the 70% of British house sparrows Passer domesticus which didn't leave descendants from 1970.  That's not on the red-list by any means but I remember saying ~50 years ago that soon enough there'll be nothing left but rats, cockroaches, sparrows and starlings after all life's wonderful diversity had been swept clean by whatever Miscreant Humanity had been up to in 1970.

The McAnulty book is pretty impressive for a 17 y.o. but some of the extravagant praise by such Econames as Chris Packham and Robert Macfarlane seems a bit dodgy in its sub-text. It's a little like Samuel "Curmudgeon" Johnson's [prev] — 'Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.'  Where you substitute An autist's writing is . . .".  One thing that I really did get from the book is an insight into one autistic mind. Dara is at pains to note that his brother Lorcan, with whom he's been sharing genes and breakfast cereal for 15 years, has a quite different autistic mind and a different external presentation also.

Buuut, in the Acknowledgements, McAnulty tips a hat to Adrian, at Little Toller, for not trying to 'adult' my voice in the editing process. Which is nice, but a sensitive editor could have done all that and yet suggested some word changes so that this blobby reader was not brought up all standing at the choice of some not-quite-right adjectives. At 17 nobody has had enough time to read enough books or listen to enough podcasts to nail the current nuanced meaning of words in English. Getting this time / experience under your belt is one definition of wisdom insofar as that is different from intelligence [hint - it is]. FWIW, Greta Thunberg's book "No One is too Small to Make a Difference" is even slighter, both in page count and content, than Dara's Diary.

I look forward to seeing this chap develop. I may even get to meet him on a raptor watch if 'my' buzzards and 'his' red kites Milvus milvus finish up on the same mountain shoulder.

Homage to Catalonia

Title is Homage to George Orwell [prevoblobs] who was fighting there in the Spanish Civil War. Ever since I read H2C as a teenager - along with every other word of Orwell's that I could dredge up - I've flagged the Catalans as the Good Guys. The last hold out against the grey tide of fascism. I was schooled to adopt a less black-and-white view of Spanish politics when I got to be good friends with Pepe Malpica 25 years ago. There were good people on both sides of the barricades who were  sincere in their beliefs and anxieties. After such hideous internecine warfare comes to an end, you, me, we have to move on and the Spanish adopted a collective amnesia, so that after three generations the wounds are healing.

I don't really have a locus standi on the independence referendum that was carried out in Catalonia two weeks ago. It's the same sort of thing as Brexit, about which, as a horse European born in a stable in Dover, I have strong feelings. I believe in SS Europe The Good Ship Europa, especially the aspiration to equilibrate upwards: the belief that a larger market and free-movement would generate so much extra wealth that the poorest outposts of the continent would no longer be dispossessed. Poverty is not just about money, it's about culture and different ideas, and sharing. I found out last week that, in PIE Proto-Indo-European, the word for give was the same as the word for take. Back then on the steppes of Kazakhstan exchange was an essential part of life.
And please note, as did my pal Russ, that "believing in SS Europe" would stretch my politics further right than I feel comfortable about. Big red face on those nautical metaphors.

Strange Maps had a commentary on the prospects of succession in Catalonia which included the map at the head of this post which was created by redditor bezzleford.  I love that map: the flags [multiprev], the borders, the quirkiness of the displayed data, the unexpected findings and the new information.  The snapshot doesn't flag the changes to the map of Europe where a region has already achieved its independence.  Think Slovenia, the first of the regions of the Former Yugoslavia to go it alone.  They achieved this aim in a mere 10 Day War  of succession in 1991, at least partly because the central government in Belgrade was stacked with Serbs and there were only a handful of Serbs in Slovenia.

It was bloodier, longer and uglier in, say, Bosnia which I still associate with Srebenitsa, pogrom, and ethnic cleansing. And part of the reason for that is because the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was and is ethnically and religiously heterogeneous. Bosna i Hercegovina aka Боснa и Херцеговина is now separated into two autonomous regions with a yellow cherry on top called Brčko. [map L]. The red area is now an autonomous region of the country which calls itself Republika Srpska or Република Српскa. It is a separate auronomous entity from 'the rest' of the country Federacija Bosne i Hercegovine aka Федерација Босне и Херцеговине. It looks like a desperate example of gerrymandering but actually closely tracks the ceasefire line at the end of the Bosnian War. This wiggly line is known as the Inter-Entity Boundary Line Međuentitetska linija / Међуентитеска линија. Although there are two constituent parts of the country, there are three constituent ethnicities which fall out on consistent religious and linguistic lines:

Group	% Pop	Religion
Bosniaks	51%	Sunni Islam
Serbs	31%	Orthodox
Croats	14%	Catholic

There are three official languages, too, but they are essentially the same as variants of Serbo-Croatian. The Serbs preferring to write theirs in Cyrillic. The two blue exclaves at the top of this map don't make sense until you realise that they are just across the border from Croatia. And what about Brčko, the yellow hinge between the two flanges of Srpska?  There, the demographics between Serbs vs Bosniak-Croats are more nearly equal and it is currently run as a sort of condominium. According to the Guardian 3 years ago; it is a beacon of multicultural hope . . . a bit like Lebanon was before it collapsed into its own civil war 30 years ago. It will come as no surprise that Srpska appears on bezzleford's map with more than 50% of the inhabitants favouring independence. They have to sort out Brčko first, I hope they are less black and white there than they were in Sebrenitsa

Just about 15mm NW on the Eurosplit map above is another purple (>50% wanting out) enclave called Veneto which wants to pursue its own dreams independent of the rest of Italy. Where does that leave Friuli-Venezia Giulia [L. zoomed in and coloured red]? An exclave of Italy, is where! This map also identifies where Slovenia SVN and Croatia HRV fit w.r.t Italy, Austria AUT and Bosnia Herzegovina BiH. While self-determination is all well-and-good some consideration should be given to how your self-determination impinges on other people especially neighbours. Ireland isolated by Brexit, Friuli isolated Venexit, Brčko maybe disolated by Srpska in the future.

That-all only deals with geographic divisions. Many of the self-det movements are driven by an unwillingness to help neighbours less fortunate that ourselves.

• Barcelona wanting to dump Andalucia; 
• London [which is a 12% entity on the Eurosplit map] wants to ring-fence itself from The Tanned Other; There is a vulgar substratum of English yobs who really believe that wogs begin at Calais.
• Lega Nord (full name Lega Nord per l'Indipendenza della Padania), which includes Liga Veneta wanting to ditch "Africa", which they consider starts just South of Rome. Padania is more or less cognate with Cisalpine Gaul which Julius Caesar left when he crossed the Rubicon on his march to supreme power.

Other self-det movements are pushed by a sort of romantic vision of history being used as an aspiration for a still rosier future. Last weekend there was an apologist for Catalan independence talking with Marian Finucane on RTE1 about how being a Catalan wasn't a matter of language or genetics but was a sort cultural sense of being. He mentioned that the Catalan 'spirit' had been stifled, if not actually crushed, by 300 years of Castillian misrule. To which Finucane chirped up that 'we' in Ireland had been similarly oppressed for 800 years by our larger neighbour. In her wobbly little noddle, I know that she was referring to my protestant ancestors. It's only a step from there for her to invite me and mine to go back where I came from to preserve the holy fantasy land of Ireland for Caitlín Ní Uallacháin and young subtle Conchubar, dancing at the cross-roads; Niall of the Nine Hostages tucking into colcannon, and Waterford winning the All Ireland. This is the most egregious sentimental nonsense: I have far more in common with a white man from Boston, a scientist from Turkey or a middle class professional mother of two from anywhere on the planet than I do with half the people whom I meet on the road home from work.

Patriotism? The last refuge of the scoundrel.

Samuel "Dictionary" Johnson