But then, that’s the beauty of language. It can change the way you see things without actually altering anything in the physical realm. It turns good into bad and bad into good and back again without anyone lifting a finger.

Take “fun-size” chocolate bars. They’re tiny. Gone in a single bite. They don’t last as long as a regular chocolate bar. Being individually wrapped, they’re fiddly and environmentally unfriendly. And pound for pound, they’re more expensive than their standard counterparts. But, back in the mists of time, some genius decided to label them “fun-size”. And it worked. As a kid, the mere sight of a bag of fun-size Mars bars could work me into a flurry of excitement. These were dinky novelties you could eat! Hooray for fun-size!

But the magic of language didn’t end there. As well as instantly transforming each and every shortcoming of these miniscule snacks into a thrilling bonus, the sly association of the word “fun” with the concept of “small helpings” had the side-effect of making regular-size chocolate bars seem less decadent, less naughty by comparison. If little ones were fun, regular ones were pedestrian slabs of edible workload.

Some time later, of course, king-size Mars bars hit the market, thus imbuing an act of calorific gluttony with an unwarranted air of imperial glamour. This was an imposing, statesmanlike snack to be reckoned with; a nougat mothership; the Mars bar of royalty. Language had worked its magic once again.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I’ve been thinking some more about the “Ground Zero mosque” debate. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the horrible brilliance of the opponents’ endlessly parroted, emotionally charged phrase “Ground Zero mosque”, used to describe something which – at the risk of regurgitating last week’s column – isn’t at Ground Zero and isn’t a mosque.

Conservatives, generally, are far more adept at politically reframing concepts by giving them snappy-but-misleading nicknames than liberals. “Loony left”. “Boom-and-bust”. “Flip-flop”. “Ground Zero mosque”. All simplifications or outright lies – but they worked. Like advertisers, the right seems breezily unconcerned about the truth of the slogan, provided it rings up a sale. They slap the words “fun-size” on the packaging and wait for the public to buy it.

The left, meanwhile, tends to respond by flinging back tired old insults. Bastards! Fascists! Racists! This is wrong on several counts. For one thing, it’s counter-productive. Nothing riles an anti-mosque demonstrator more than being called a bigot. It’s a grotesque, misleading smear on a diverse group of individuals – a bit like claiming all Muslims are terrorists (which, coincidentally, the guy beside them is currently doing through a loudhailer). But worse than being insulting, it’s just plain unimaginative. At least the right bothers to invent a new buzzword each time it wants to fart some monstrous new lie into the ecosystem. And they’re often infuriatingly well-crafted buzzwords – combining impact with audacious disingenuousness. There must be an evil Don Draper tucked away somewhere coining these things, these catchy fibs, these deceptive jingles.

Have you tried doing it yourself? It’s not easy. I was hoping to illustrate this article with some self-created buzzwords for leftwingers to use. The first one I came up with was “molehill mountaineer”, a pejorative term to describe the sort of perpetually furious rightwing weevil who spends their life calculatedly conflating issues such as the “Ground Zero mosque” into gigantic media crapgasms. But then I realised that “molehill mountaineer” could equally be applied to many on the left too. So that’s no good.

Then I tried to invent a shorthand term to describe the sort of perpetually furious rightwing weevil who claims to be a patriot, not a bigot, then immediately muddies the water by saying lots of bigoted things. It’s possible to be a patriot without being a bigot, just as it’s possible to be a weather forecaster without being a stripper, but if a weather forecaster took her clothes off halfway through a forecast, its fair to say the striptease element of her performance would greatly overshadow any meteorological merit. Still, a lot of people erroneously believe that saying “I’m a patriot” automatically absolves them from any and all charges of bigotry. And the best word I could come up with to describe these people was “Patrigot”. I quite like it, but it won’t catch on. Too clumsy.

Which is a pity. Because in today’s 2,000mph technological freefall, he who coins the catchiest buzzword generally wins the debate by default. Few people have the time to delve beyond the ticker-tape headline, to discover the reality behind a misleading brandname such as “Ground Zero mosque”. There’s a famous propaganda technique known as “the big lie”: the bigger the lie you tell, the more the public will believe it. But today’s audience is too distracted to digest big lies. Now the trick is to cram as much misleading information as possible into a succession of tiny verbal snacks, inaccurate but memorable.

In other words: Lies aren’t big any more. They’re fun-sized.

(Charlie Brooker, The Guardian, 30August2010)

If, at around 10pm, Ellis did slip quietly into the basement of Concrete, a former industrial space reclaimed for the pleasure of the hedonistic twenty- and thirtysomethings who throng to London’s Shoreditch on a nightly basis, he might not have immediately recognised the spectacle before him as a bookish sort of gathering. Literary Death Match was reaching its climax. In the couple of hours before, four writers – Milly McMahon, Clare Pollard, Lee Rourke and Nikesh Shukla – had read their work in strictly timed seven-minute segments, and found themselves the subject of an instant critique from a panel of judges. Among the highlights had been a somewhat painful account of a virginity long in the losing and, from Shukla’s forthcoming novel Coconut Unlimited, which tells the story of a group of teenage Asian wannabe rappers in Harrow, the author’s crowd-delighting version of Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype”.

Now Rourke and Pollard were slugging it out to claim the title; but that involved neither earnest declarations of literary intention nor intricate comparisons of imagery. Instead, in what amounted to a gameshow finale, audience members flung themselves at the stage to the tune of 80s pop songs to declare their allegiance. By the time Rourke, author of the novel The Canal, finally won through, the scene resembled something like Mike Reid’s Runaround mashed up with The Late Review. “I usually read in little bookshops in front of about 20 people,” Rourke told me. “I guess LDM brings literature to those who wouldn’t necessarily step into a little bookshop to hear an author read.”

But if the face that Literary Death Match presents to the public is determinedly chaotic and endearingly amateurish, then its rise demonstrates a rather steelier business acumen. Launched in 2006 in New York, it has now enjoyed 97 outings in 23 cities, spreading from Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco and Dallas to London, Oxford and Paris, where Zuniga now lives. In August, it will take to the Edinburgh stage for the first time, and make a return visit to Beijing’s Bookworm bookshop, the scene of the first international Death Match last year. It’s no surprise to hear that Zuniga, who originally saw it as a way to promote Opium, now envisages it attracting corporate sponsorship.

Any potential literary angels, however, may note that they are arriving in a bustling marketplace. Up and down the country, particularly in the previously unfashionable areas of densely populated cities, in the spare spaces of pubs, clubs and restaurants, in arts centres and at micro-festivals, a new breed of literary event is flourishing. Often influenced by trends wafting in from the other side of the Atlantic, for example, celebrated New York storytelling event the Moth, and drawing heavily on the relaxed, interactive ethos of comedy nights and bring-your-ukelele music sessions, they are youthful, energetic, imaginative and defiantly lo-fi – and a world away from their rather more strait-laced cousin, the book reading. Just as literary festivals have begun to tend towards the small and to become tailored to their surroundings – the inaugural Stoke Newington Literary Festival, this May, was designed by organiser Liz Vater to pay tribute to the north London enclave’s history of radical thinking and included a powerful audience with Tony Benn – so too have standalone events started to reflect the preference for spontaneity and ad hoc amusement of their audiences.

During the course of my evening at Literary Death Match, I was told of at least half a dozen other literary performance series that are currently thriving; indeed, Damian Barr’s Shoreditch House Literary Salon was in full flow next door at exactly the same time. Perhaps the quirkiest event mentioned, organised by the poet Tim Wells, involves (self-declared) Fat Men Reading Poetry, with a pair of scales on the stage dictating the running order. Shukla, a fan of the Death Match’s “silliness, bonhomie and good nature”, himself runs a literary pub quiz called the Complete Works, because “I have this secret desire to be a quizmaster and because I want people to enjoy themselves. Also, the competitive element means you get people coming along for the quiz and then seeing readings by ace writers like Stuart Evers or Gavin Bower and going out and finding their work.” One of his favourite evenings, he adds, is Book Club Boutique, created by Salena Godden and Rachel Rayner, which now has a monthly residency at the House of St Barnabas in Soho. Shukla explains: “It has a stellar network of writers, poets and musicians who are all thick as thieves . . . It’s great when the performers look like they’re having fun. And the audience is definitely having fun.”

The Book Club Boutique provides an interesting glimpse into the phenomenon of the new literary event. Describing itself as revolving around “books, booze and boogie-woogie”, as “London’s hippest literary salon” and as a book event that takes place in “a speakeasy environment”, it blends the traditional reading with cabaret, featuring a house band and frequent trips to carefully selected festivals such as Latitude, Camp Bestival, Port Eliot and the Standon Calling music festival in Hertfordshire. It makes collaborations with campaigning organisations such as Burlesque Against Breast Cancer, UK Feminista and First Story, the charity founded by the writer William Fiennes, and produces a fanzine called Yours Generally. In short, it is a perfect example of the new wave of artistic cottage industry: participatory events with a homespun feel that owe their success not only to the enthusiasm of their creators but also to their committed use of social networking tools. Contributing recently to a BBC World Service item about the influence of the new media on the world of literature and publishing, Godden noted that, when she performed her first gig 20 years ago, publicity consisted of photocopying fliers and sticking them together with Sellotape; now it means ensuring a constant flow of new and tantalising information on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Literary Death Match, the Book Club Boutique and other series – most notably Homework, a “Night of Literary Miscellany” that takes place in the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in east London, and To Hell With the Lighthouse, the live offshoot of independent press To Hell With Publishing, which also produces limited editions, new fiction and a literary journal – have doubtless flourished because of a perception of them as clever outsiders: witty, iconoclastic and unfettered from the constraints of the traditional, and largely corporate, publishing agenda. If they are beneath the radar of the capital’s mainstream live arts offering, then that is where they want to be. In Homework’s case, it started out as an improvised night organised by writing collective Aisle 16, designed to encourage its members to produce new work and share it with others. Over time, explains poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne, one of Aisle 16’s key members, the night grew in popularity and they began to invite special guests, among them Jon Ronson, Kate Nash and Kevin Eldon. Sometimes, particular nights went down so well that Aisle 16 developed them into touring shows – for example, Found in Translation, a piece about the group’s quest to join the experimental French writing movement Oulipo. The appeal to the audience, says Dunthorne, is that “they get to see (for a fiver) a live literature show that can take in poetry, video, songs, stories, animation, comedy, ‘multi-vox’, slide shows, mini-lectures, performed by writers who are great at writing, but also great at communicating their work.”

It’s easy to identify the advantages to the performers at these sorts of events: a chance to put their work before the public, to foster word-of-mouth recommendations, to boost, by however small a margin, book sales, and an opportunity to hook up with other writers and take a night off from staring at the computer screen. But what, precisely, has made audiences so receptive right now? Inundated with entertainment opportunities, probably already in possession of a number of books on their “to read” pile, able to access recommendations, reviews and footage of live performances in the comfort of their own homes, what attracts them to a literary cabaret?

One answer lies, perhaps, in the unexpectedly widespread rise of the do-it-yourself book club. One minute, you had heard a distant rumour of a few friends-of-friends who met over a glass of wine and a frittata in a knocked-through sitting room to mull over the finer points of the new Colm Tóibín or Margaret Atwood; the next, you were no one if you weren’t part of one. Publishers started producing reading guides to help proceedings along; people either swotted furiously for them or conceded that they were largely a genteel cover for a good old-fashioned knees-up; and suddenly they were both a mainstay of a certain kind of British life and an invaluable asset to the precarious business of selling books. When Richard & Judy got in on the act in 2004, and sent the sales figures of writers such as Joseph O’Connor, Alice Sebold and Jodi Picoult sky-high, book clubs also underwent a social expansion. They were no longer the preserve of the chattering classes; they were for everybody who enjoyed a good story and wanted to talk about it.

Add to that the more general democratisation of cultural criticism, and a picture begins to emerge. Conventional book readings – still the backbone of large, established venues, literary festivals and bookshops – have maintained their popularity, providing readers with a familiar setting in which to come face to face with a favourite author, ask questions, have a book signed. At the Southbank Centre, for example, the London Literature Festival has recently run to packed houses for 18 days; its programme also included a live StorySlam, dramatisations of classic texts and a “Litweeter” Festival, curated by the Southbank Centre and Shukla. But readings still carry with them the stamp of a cultural hierarchy: the author, occupying a privileged space before his or her appreciative audience, usually with an intermediary asking the questions on the readers’ behalf; the respectful queue at the book-signing table; the rapid disappearance of the central figure after the last copy has been signed. For audiences eager to experience closer and less formal contact with a writer and – perhaps even more importantly – to feel part of a literary moment, that isn’t quite enough.

And book readings don’t usually place the same emphasis on fun. At their best, they can be magical events, affording a unique insight into a writer’s work and craft and prompting the reader to return to their books renewed, informed and inspired. But when they are not quite at their best, they can also tend towards the dry. In those circumstances, it’s unsurprising that the audience feels there is little chance for escape or diversion. Rosie Boycott, the journalist and writer who earlier this year launched a series of storytelling events called 5×15, told me that the idea came to her when she found herself stuck in a less than scintillating talk that lasted for over an hour. As a riposte, she devised an evening in which the reading is banned. Instead, five writers give a quarter-of-an-hour talk based on their work. At first, notes weren’t allowed, but Boycott and her team relented; however, performers who exceed the time limit will find themselves yanked from the stage mid-flow, no matter whether they are in sight of their punchline or not.

At the event I attended earlier this summer at the Tabernacle, a former evangelical church in west London that is now a community arts centre, Boycott’s decision to programme without a specific agenda in mind was much in evidence: Fatima Bhutto, Andrew O’Hagan, Yotam Ottolenghi, Frances Stonor Saunders and Maureen Lipman – a memoirist, a novelist, a chef, a historian and a comic actor – shared the bill, with a musical interlude of “politically incorrect” songs from the writer Terence Blacker. Given its location – Holland Park and Notting Hill are barely a stone’s throw away – it’s perhaps unsurprising that the audience was a slightly older and better-heeled group than the punters most likely to attend a Literary Death Match or make their way to the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. Indeed, when 5×15 ventured beyond these shores in June, it landed in Paris, as part of bookshop Shakespeare & Co’s summer festival. “This gig,” as Lipman remarked during the 15 minutes that she spent telling jokes and performing one of a series of comic monologues that she’s currently writing, “is like a cross between the Comedy Store and the Women’s Institute.” If the assembled company, packed in like sardines, tucking into plates of antipasti and sipping dry white wine, took that as a slur on their credentials as sophisticated cultural consumers, they weren’t letting on.

A week or so later, I returned to the Tabernacle for a far more long-established event. The novelist Patrick Neate’s Bookslam, a combination of “high-end literature and low-end pop reggae” and “the first/best/only literary nightclub”, was one of the first events to try to expand the brief for writers in performance. Over the six years that it’s been running, with Angela Robertson and Elliot Jack joining Neate, it’s grown from an intimate gathering of a hundred or so to a consistently well-subscribed organisation that now spins off podcasts, has its own YouTube channel and this year hosted a celebratory summer barbecue. Performers have included William Boyd, AL Kennedy, Dave Eggers, Hari Kunzru, Nick Hornby and, most recently, Zadie Smith. What’s noticeable is that, despite its familial feel – Neate takes to the stage to compère without feeling the need to introduce himself or indulge in scene-setting formalities – it steers clear of some of the more pyrotechnic inventions of newer arrivals. In other words, even though readings are shortish and punctuated by live music, they are still essentially readings. It’s just that they are readings during which the audience, seated around tables rather than in serried ranks, feel as though they won’t be shot if they nip to the bar.

For some, though, even more participation is the order of the day. Storyteller Mary J Lockwood, who is about to take her show, Mary’s Extraordinary Story Club, to Edinburgh, began the Story Slam in her home town of Lancaster a year ago, subsequently running a regular event in London. One of her first moves was to make contact with Bill Hillmann, who started Chicago’s Windy City Story Slam at the beginning of 2008 and has now seen attendances grow from an initial crowd of seven to 900. Recently, Lockwood invited Hillmann to bring a team over for an International Story Slam, in which two teams of five storytellers, one American and one British, would do battle; amusingly enough, they were playing by British rules, which demand that randomly selected members of the public rate each performer by holding up a scorecard, rather than, as in Chicago, simply going by the decibel level. In other words, the vibe is more Strictly Come Dancing than Spartacus: Blood and Sand. For those inspired by what they saw, there was the promise of an open-mic slot to finish.

Lockwood is keen to promote a supportive atmosphere, and even includes tips for slammers on her website (including having your last line in your head to avoid meandering and not fretting if you leave something out). When people ask her what demographic she’s aiming for, she says she can’t narrow it down because everyone, she believes, loves stories. Slammers’ ages have ranged from 16 to 80. At the International Slam, I think I’ve hit on something when I note how heavily biased the audience is towards women; in fact, the men are just waiting until the last moment to unveil themselves. Unsurprisingly, the performances – given that the storytellers are not allowed to use notes – tend towards the raw and unstructured; they also occasionally blur the distinction between oral literature and stand-up comedy. But they are also fresh, free-wheeling and enthusiastically delivered as part of an ensemble evening of light-hearted and unpretentious entertainment.

And entertainment is where it’s at – and the more inclusive, the better. The perception of literature and literary life as a citadel with the public kept firmly behind the gates is not merely passé, it’s positively antithetical to a new generation of readers aware of the power that their interest represents to a medium in danger of cultural marginalisation. Craig Taylor, editor of the online literary magazine Five Dials, has even identified that emblem of closed-door literary life, the launch party, as a forum for involving his readers, inviting subscribers along to an event – from Paris to Montreal – each time he’s ready to press the “send” button. “At Five Dials we want to invite as many people as possible into the tent for the launches,” he explains, “then have fun and send out the issue and have faith that subscribers and attendees will read the magazine later when they’re sitting in a comfortable chair. People seem increasingly to want to be at these livelier literary events because they like the kind of people who attend. They don’t want to hear hours of readings. They want to drink and dance and flirt and talk and listen to short, interesting readings and then go back to the other stuff. It’s fine if you’re going to have a debate or a reading or a long discussion with two writers sitting in two chairs, but please, please, please remember there has to be some element of theatre.”

There is one problem posed by the increased focus on a writer’s capacity for performance. What of the writers who can’t, or don’t want to? Those for whom the words on the page are the thing, not their talent for doing a turn? In the past few years, the incursions into what writers might have optimistically thought of as their private space have multiplied, with publishing’s shakier finances dictating that authors find themselves on the road, or in front of a class of creative writing students, rather more frequently than before. If, in addition, we’d like them to become fully fledged variety acts, we may have to take the consequences in the quality of the prose on offer – and we might have to search all the harder for those who prefer to stay in their studies.

Yet my experiences in the salons and at the stand-up recitals of the new literary scene suggest that, despite the occasional piece of irritating modishness, the hyperbole with which some events are trumpeted and the odd ropy performance, there is an energy and invention on offer that the established scene and its practitioners might do well to allow to rub off on them. Which is not to say that readers won’t continue to enjoy the hushed reverence of a traditional reading, nor its still unparalleled ability to focus the audience on a text; they just might like to see a flash of ankle as well.

(Alex Clark, The Guardian, 31July2010)

At the end of June 2010, he was rehabilitated – at least by the citizens of Anzio, the port south of the capital where he was born and where the remains of his sprawling summer palace can be seen above a sandy cove.

A statue was erected in his honour.

The query is: what sensible formula is there that relates the evil a person does to the time needed before the craving for tourist dollars leads to the person’s rehabilitation?

Published in 1891, Emile Zola’s Money deals with financial speculation – its highs and its lows. Inspired by the collapse of the French financial house, l’Union Generale, the main character Aristide Saccard raises money to set up a bank, supposedly to back projects in the Middle East but principally to make money for himself. Saccard ramps his stock on the Paris stock exchange, even buying newspapers to sing its praises and all goes well – until the bubble bursts. Thrilling.

2. The Way We Live Now

Augustus Melmotte, the mysterious financier at the centre of Anthony Trollope’s masterpiece, is one of the great characters of 19th Century fiction. A Victorian Madoff, he lures well-to-do Londoners into a get-rich-quick scheme to build a railway from California to Mexico. None of these backers ask how or when the railroad is going to make a profit. This magnificent 1875 novel is about so much more than money – the hypocrises of class, anti-Semitism – but greed and financial speculation are at its core.

3. Money: A Suicide Note

Martin Amis’s savage satire features the greedy, debauched John Self who spends money on everything he shouldn’t – booze, drugs, pornography, junk food – as he tries to make his first feature film. Dark, funny and downright dirty.

4. The Pit

This 1903 novel by Frank Norris about commodities trading in Chicago centres on Curtis Jadwin who attempts to corner the wheat market by bidding up the price of grain. He ends up losing his fortune but love triumphs in the end.

5. Madame Bovary

Illicit sex and romance (poor Emma Bovary doesn’t receive much love) may be at the heart of Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece, first published as a book in 1857. However, debt is the heroine’s fatal flaw. Emma’s desire to live the high life (to escape the tedium of a humdrum time in the provinces) leads her hopelessly into the black – eventually leading to …. (musn’t give the end away). Stirring stuff.

6. How Much Land Does a Man Need?

Leo Tolstoy’s brilliant short story features Pahom, a peasant, who begins the tale boasting that if he owned lots of land he would not fear anything, even the Devil himself. Unfortunately, for him, the Devil is sitting behind his stove and decides to teach him a lesson. Pahom acquires some land but soon finds that what he owns is never enough. By encouraging his greed the Devil takes his revenge.

7. The Financier

From an early age, Frank Algernon Cowperwood, the anti-hero of Theodore Dreiser’s 1912 novel, is interested in only one thing – making money (although he is also quite hooked on power and women). Full of double-dealing and betrayal, The Financier is a scathing critique of the American dream.

8. Martin Chuzzlewit

Money issues make an appearance in many of Charles Dickens’ novels, but Martin Chuzzlewit makes the list because of the Ponzi-style insurance scam – the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan & Life Assurance Co – which is critical to its plot. Several of the main characters get embroiled in the scam which collapses leaving many of them ruined. A rich feast.

9. The Bottle Imp

Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story offers a neat twist on the conventional get-rich-quick tale. It focuses on a strange bottle containing an imp who will grant whoever owns the bottle whatever they wish for. The catch – the bottle has to be sold for less than the owner paid for it. Anyone left owning the bottle when they die will be damned to eternity. As the story progresses the price of the bottle falls until it almost reaches zero, but there is always someone willing to take the risk of buying it.

10.The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas’ magnificent mid-19th Century page-turner traces Edmond Dantes’ plot to take revenge against the scoundrels who got him thrown into prison for being a traitor. By a circuitous route he eventually appears in Paris as the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, a title that he bought on his travels. The Count then manipulates the government bond market to destroy a large part of his enemies’ fortune. Bad luck on the stock market does the rest.

(The Times, 24March2010)

1. George C Parker (1870-1936) made a career of “selling” New York landmarks, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Statue of Liberty, to naive newcomers. His favourite was Brooklyn Bridge, which he flogged an average of twice a week for years – complete with impressive “title deeds” – before being sentenced to imprisonment for life at the notorious Sing Sing in 1928

2. Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845) invented the Central American state of Poyais, a fertile territory of 12,500 square miles rich in precious metals. He appointed himself its cazique, or prince, “sold” land and rights there to gullible British investors and raised a loan of £200,000 on behalf of the Poyais Government. When the scam was exposed here, he took it to France with some success

3. Victor Lustig (1890-1947) operated swindles across Europe and America before being sent to Alcatraz. His first success was the repeated sale of a “money-printing machine”. This cost the buyer $30,000 and produced two $100 bills, then blank paper. He is best known for posing as a corrupt offical to “sell” the Eiffel Tower to a scrap metal dealer for a large sum, plus bribe

4. Frank Abagnale (1948-) passed bad cheques for $2.5 million as a teenager during the 1960s. He also posed as a Pan Am pilot, doctor and attorney to milk various perks. As a “pilot”, for instance, he took advantage of free “deadheading” flights to 26 countries, complete with hotel stays. He served four years in prison, escaping once, and now advises businesses on fraud

5. Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), made millions from the pyramid scheme which now takes his name before it collapsed in 1920. After serving a jail term in Massachussets, and running a second scam selling swampland while out on bail, he was deported to Italy. There he advised Mussolini on finance before fleeing to retirement in Brazil with a chunk of the dictator’s treasury

6. Philip Arnold (1829-1878) perpetrated the Diamond Hoax of 1872 with his cousin John Slack. The pair bought cast-off stones and planted these across a field in Wyoming, which they showed to prospective investors, including Baron Rothschild and Charles Tiffany of Tiffany & Co. The latter bought the cousins’ interest for $660,000. He later sued, but the case was settled out of court

7. Howard Welsh (1953-) and his partner Lee Hope Thrasher reportedly made $31 million from a Ponzi scheme that targeted Christians with a “tax-free investment” marketed as “a divinely-inspired mission that behaves like a diocese, a church, a mission or assembly”. The couple were arrested in Shropshire in 2004 after a two-year FBI manhunt and later jailed in Virginia

8. Gerd Heidemann (1932-), a journalist on Germany’s Stern magazine, sold the rights to the “newly-discovered diaries of Adolf Hitler” to his employer for $6 million in 1983. These were a crude forgery by his friend Konrad Kujau but nevertheless fooled historian Hugh Trevor-Roper among others. Heidemann maintains that he was conned by Kujau but was convicted and jailed for three years

9. Shaun Greenhalgh (1961-) made a series of forgeries which duped leading art institutions in a garden shed in Bolton. These included a “Gauguin” sold to the Art Institute of Chicago and an “ancient Egyptian” statuette authenticated by the British Museum. Greenhalgh’s parents were convicted with him in 2007 for posing as the cash-strapped owners of his numerous creations

10. Bernie Madoff (1938-) perpertrated the largest swindle in Wall Street history with a £36 billion Ponzi scheme that fooled the financial world before its collapse last year. Victims included HSBC, charities and a plumber invited to participate after he saved the life of Madoff’s son. The sometime philanthropist pleaded guilty yesterday, but just $700 million of his haul has been traced

(Money Central of the Times Online, 13March2009)

Pandemics – Risks and Reactions to an Issue of Public Health

The topic of pandemic is especially pertinent at this time, as we are currently involved in the H1N1 flu pandemic. One of the important points made this evening was that we are not through with H1N1, even though it is no longer newsworthy, and there may be a third wave of the virus, as has been evidenced in the past with other pandemics.

The introductions were made by Dr. Paul Koobs, head of a new institute in Calgary, the Alberta Sepsis Network: Viral, Fungal, and Microbial. It’s housed in the new building on the grounds of the Foothills Hospital. He discussed how the major problem with the H1N1 virus was not the virus itself, but the body’s overreaction to the invasive phage. The hyperactive immune system condition, called sepsis, actually causes more damage than the virus does. This is how the great pandemic of the 20th century, the so-called Spanish Flu, killed its victims by proxy, when the white cells’ caustic chemicals used to kill phages turn against body tissues. Five hundred million people died, most of them young, fit, and healthy. Sepsis is so dangerous that the death rate today is 50%, while the death rate from a stroke is 20% by comparison. Twenty years ago, the sepsis death rate was closer to 100%. Some fascinating videos were shown on the PowerPoint presentation of white blood cells ‘searching and destroying’ invasive phages.

From Dr. Koob’s introduction on the microissue of what is happening in the body, Alberta’s Deputy Medical Officer of Health, Judy MacDonald, who made the case for Alberta’s preparedness, spoke about the macroissues of public health. Public health is a very big job, with timely and effective vaccine production and distribution one of the many responsibilities. The H5N1 virus was first detected in Hong Kong in 1997, later named the Bird or Avian Flu, as this was its animal vector, and resulted in an undetermined number of deaths before the Chinese government took the radical step of slaughtering 1.5 million fowl in the poultry markets. This was the first indication that an influenza phage, present in all migratory birds and most domestic ones, could be passed directly to people without the intermediary host of the pig, which serves as a ‘mixing vessel’ to incubate and transform the virus into one that can attack humans, due to the remarkable physiological similarities between humans and swine. Alerted to the possibility of a new, more dangerous flu, nations began cooperating on an unprecedented scale for pandemic contingency planning. In the midst of this, another shock as delivered in the form of SARS in 2002, which forced the issue of faster and better pandemic planning through the World Health Organization. Canada now has a dedicated manufacturer for antivirals as a result of this planning. The next virus arrived in mid-April of 2009, from Mexico, another version of swine flu, now called H1N1. Dr. MacDonald said that preparedness is expecting the unexpected from viruses because of their rapid mutation and today’s rapid travel, which can move a virus planet wide within days. By June 11, a pandemic was announced, with 28,774 confirmed cases in 74 countries, and 144 confirmed deaths. Canada’s antiviral manufacturing committed to producing a dose for all 36 million Canadians, with priority given to the ill and health care workers directly involved. A huge public messaging program for hand hygiene was developed, but the vaccine dosed didn’t arrive until October 26th, well after the initial surge of reported cases. So far, only 33% of Canadians have taken the dose, as the media have ignored the fact the pandemic is still on, and may produce a ‘third wave’ of renewed infections. One of the indicators are schoolchildren – the ‘canaries in the coal mine’. Once school absenteeism reaches 10%, school health officials are required to report that to Alberta’s Public Health as an outbreak. Winter is the high season for outbreaks of flu, but H1N1 chose summer of 2009, coming in at double the normal seasonal illness rate.

Dr. Chip Doig, AMA president for Canada and U of C intensive care specialist, discussed that H1N1 was more treatable with Alberta’s available 300 intensive care beds as it occurred through October, the ‘shoulder season’ when demand for intensive care was not as great. During the summer, ICU capacity hovers around 90% because of summer recreational injuries, and it was fortunate that October had the available space for those H1N1 victims. The white blood cells ‘overreact’ to the phage, and victims effectively drown in their own lung fluids. The process is not yet clearly understood, but the treatment is extremely intensive, long and very expensive. Heart attack victims use a cardio pulmonary bypass machine for perhaps 2 hours of surgery, while H1N1 victims need 14 days on the machine, in addition to a dialysis machine and ongoing, real time blood chemistry testing. The cost can exceed $10,000 a day for treatment, lasting over 2 weeks just for the victim to overcome the white cell overreaction and complications. Another 6 – 8 months of recuperative time is required before the victim is even close to the same fitness as before the attack. It’s a serious business. Dr. Doig assured the audience that Alberta’s health care is among the best in the world, despite media sensationalist reports to the contrary. In 20 years, we have moved from a non-survivable prognosis to survivable in most cases.

All in all, this Science Café was excellent, in both the content and presentation. If you’d like to learn more, Science Café is on the web as a co-production of the U of C and the Telus World of Science, and is presented the last Tuesday of each month, nine times a year, December and June and July excepted. Sign up for notifications via e-mail or Facebook. See you in February!

Jeff Pugh

Summary:

Two Boer Wars were fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic), founded by settlers known as Voortrekkers who made the Great Trek from the Cape Colony.

The war most commonly referred to as the “Boer War” is the Second Boer War.

The First Anglo-Boer War (1880–1881), also known as the “Transvaal War,” was a relatively brief conflict in which Boer settlers successfully resisted a British attempt to annex the Transvaal, and re-established an independent republic.

The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), by contrast, was a lengthy war – involving large numbers of troops from many British possessions – which ended with the conversion of the Boer republics into British colonies (with a promise of limited self-government). These colonies later formed part of the Union of South Africa. Unlike many colonial conflicts, the Boer War lasted three years and was very bloody. The British fought directly against the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The bloodshed that was seen during the war was alarming and many of the British soldiers faced unfit conditions.

The Second Boer War was a major turning point in British history, due to world reaction over the anti-insurgency tactics the army used in the region. This led to a change in approach to foreign policy from Britain who now set about looking for
more allies. To this end, the 1902 treaty with Japan in particular was a sign that Britain feared attack on its Far Eastern empire and saw this alliance as an opportunity to strengthen its stance in the Far East. This war led to a change from “splendid isolation” policy to a policy that involved looking for allies and improving world relations. Later treaties with France (”Entente cordiale”) and Russia, caused partially by the controversy surrounding the Boer War, were major factors in dictating how the battle lines were drawn during World War One.

The Boer war also had another significance. The Army Medical Corps discovered that 40% of men called up for duty were physically unfit to fight. This was the first time in which the government was forced to take notice of how unfit the British Army was. This led to individual investigations by Booth and Rowntree into the poverty in Britain, and ultimately gave the Liberals ideas on which to base their Welfare reforms, beginning in 1906.

Another significant event was the British policy of rounding up and isolating the Boer civilian population into concentration camps. The wives and children of Boer guerrillas were sent to these camps with poor hygiene and little food, although this was remedied to some extent as time went on. The death and suffering of the civilians, according to many scholars, is what broke the guerrillas’ will. The “pacification” theory has been repeated many times in warfare since.

Scott Hain used his own gun to fire several shots into his wife, Meleanie, 30, while her video chat was active and perhaps as she washed dishes in their kitchen, police said. Mr Hain, 33, later killed himself in an upstairs bedroom.

Mrs Hain’s loaded pistol — with a bullet ready in the chamber — was in a backpack hanging from the front door. Mr Hain was seen firing the gun at his wife over the internet.

(The Times, 10October2009)

[Proof, isn’t it, that a gun in your desk or backpack or purse isn’t good enough. A bad guy could approach you in the street or walk into your yard when you’re unprepared. You need a gun by your side, and preferably in your hand, with the safety off. Get somebody else to do the dishes and put your kid to bed.]

The question for August is whether we may now sleep easier in our beds.

(by Richard Owen, Times Online, 16Jine2009)

(by catherine philp, michael evans and tom coghlan, Times Online, 11 March 2009)

The 2010 national budget released Thursday by the White House projected a 1.2 percent decline in G.D.P. over the course of 2009. The economy grew 1.1 percent during the full 2008 calendar year.

In all, Unknown Quantity – like Prime Obsession – is a treat. I was enthralled.

(by bill allin)

(from Curiosities for the Ingenious, 1825, with thanks to Patricia Almost)

(CBC, 17 December 2008)