matters

After the knife scare of ten day ago, I'm glad to report that things didn't turn out too bad. Garrad was back in his shop a few days later, almost as if nothing had happened. Something terrible had of course happened, and it was impossible to deny it. From what I could gather, the attacker had been caught but then quickly released. He was apparently mentally unstable, though I can't say how that's a justification for anything.

In my conversations with him, Garrad saw the positive side to this mess and appreciated the fact that nothing serious had happened to him. Notwithstanding the stitches he got and the scars he will keep, he was lucky. Physically, he'll be fine. Mentally, he seems to have suffered more. He keeps talking about moving on, about closing shop and leaving North End Road.

I can't blame him. You're rather exposed in a brightly lit internet café that's open late. But I don't think the street or the neighborhood is all that bad. London has much dodgier parts. What happened here was a freak incident that's by no means representative of the area. But if you're on the receiving end of casual violence, this matters little.

This post could end here, but speaking on the subject of what matters, I have to share an article I saw in the Daily Telegraph today (and don't ask how I came across it). The Telegraph is the newspaper for tweed-and-corduroy conservatives of a certain age. It's not a newspaper I ever buy. Yet the article that caught my eye is absolutely brilliant, not so much for its content, which is just a rehash of what's been published elsewhere but for its clever use of stock photographs.

The previously published information appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the U.S.A., a science weekly of considerable esteem, and concerned the correlation between male attractiveness and penile length. This is your tax money at work. The conclusion: Size matters. This is what the Telegraph highlights. But whose idea was it to illustrate the point with Condi's fierce face and a gesture that must surely be fortuitous?