Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2005

  • The Phosphorescent Sea

    This week’s New Scientist carries an item about evidence being found to back up mariners’ tales of the sea glowing bluish-white at night. While I’ve never seen this phenomenon myself, I have seen something similar.
     
    It was probably about 35 years ago. I was travelling on the night boat leaving Douglas for Liverpool. As the boat slipped out from the harbour into Douglas Bay, suddenly the waves and the wash around the boat erupted into a bright greenish-white glow. The glow persisted in the wash behind the boat for several hundred yards. This went on for about ten minutes until the boat got well out to sea. It was clearly some kind of bio-luminescence, but whether it was from plankton, algae or bacteria, I never found out. Whatever the scientific explanation, it remains a magical memory to this day.

  • Third Time Lucky?

    Those of us who use Microsoft products have probably often had the feeling that it takes Microsoft until version three of a product before they start to get it right. It seems to be the case now for version 3.0 of Windows Sharepoint Services. Here’s the list of new features. I see that built-in breadcrumb trails on every page is at the top of the list. About bloody time. I’ve been asking for this since version 1.

  • But Is It Art? – #2

    I’ll simply refrain from comment about this, other than to say that Prague is clearly bent on oneupmanship over Brussels.

  • Freeze-dry Yer Dead…

    I’ve always planned to be cremated when I go, and have my ashes dumped on some unsuspecting rose bush. But now, from Sweden, comes news of an alternative to cremation: freeze-drying and vibrating the resulting corpsicle into powder. The result is a better form of compost. Good news for rose bushes everywhere…

  • The Elephant in the Room

    Martin Rowson hits the nail squarely on the head with his cartoon in today’s Guardian. Meanwhile, Simon Hoggart writes lightly on the topic. It’s left to Curious Hamster to put into words what Rowson put into his image – pure unadulterated bile aimed directly at a deserving target.

  • Blair’s Speech

    What is it with Tony Blair’s manner of speaking? Can’t he manage joined-up sentences anymore? His address at the Labour Party Conference was a prime example. That, and the fact that it was also a brilliant example of newspeak. Thankfully, Justin McKeating over at Chicken Yoghurt was able to control his growing feeling of nausea long enough to be able to give a pertinent analysis of the dear leader’s tendentious twaddle. I’m afraid I reached for the sick-bucket pretty early on.

  • Gerin Oil Addiction

    Richard Dawkins pens an ironical piece on gerin oil addiction in this month’s Prospect magazine. Worth reading.

  • The PM’s Brain Is Missing…

    Some of us are old enough to remember Spitting Image, with the running joke about Ronald Reagan; to whit: The President’s Brain Is Missing.
     
    Now, Curious Hamster, over at the Big Stick and a Small Carrot blog alerts us to the very real problem that perhaps the brain of the UK’s beloved Prime Minister has gone AWOL. I think he’s right to be concerned.

  • Househunting

    Phase 1 of our househunting is completed. After looking at a number of candidates, we found a house that we really liked. This week we put in a bid, and after a bidding round, our second bid was accepted by the current owners.
     
    So we move on to phase 2 now – the drawing up of the contract to purchase. That phase will be completed in a few weeks when we and the current owners sign the contract. In parallel with that, we’ll now be putting our current house on the market. Our neighbours have all said that they’ll be sorry to lose us. We suspect that part of it may be that the peace of the cul-de-sac might be disrupted if a family with children buy the place… We’ve suggested that the neighbours might like to take out an advert in the Gay Krant (the Dutch gay news magazine) offering the house to a gay couple with no children…
     
    Phase 3 will be the completion of the contract, when we formally take possession. That will be no later than the end of March, and may be before if both parties are able to complete beforehand, e.g. if our house sells quickly, and the current owners have found their next house.
     
    The house we’ve found is a converted farmhouse (a woonboederij) in Gelderland. It’s out in the country, down a lane, and has a large garden. So Martin will be able to carry on with his love of gardens, but on a much bigger scale. I suspect I’m going to be roped in to help, which is fine. Despite being in what passes for The Netherlands as "the middle of nowhere", it does have an ADSL connection – so fast Internet access is still possible. As you might imagine, this was a somewhat important consideration for me… 

  • But Is It Art?

    Quote:
     
    "Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen [sic] kidney and bowel".
    Taken from the press release of an art project; a giant pink woollen rabbit sprawled on a mountain hilltop in Italy. 

    Hase

     

  • Pointless, Incessant Barking

    I’m beginning to feel like the dog in this New Yorker cartoon…
    (hat tip to Geoffrey K. Pullum over at the Language Log)

  • Above or Below Sea-level?

    Scott, over at the Adventures – The Next Chapter blog, draws my attention to the Inhabitat  web site, which I hadn’t seen before. It looks interesting, although I have reservations about the preponderance of items that seem to gush on and on about some artsy-fartsy precious piece of design faddery. However, that is balanced by items such as the one that caught Scott’s attention – a piece on whether we are reaching the "tipping point" of Global Warming.
     
    As Scott says, living below sea level does rather concentrate the mind. In our search for a new house, I’ve taken to checking the Geo-Loket Hoogtemeter (the link is on this page). It’s a handy-dandy tool for folks living in The Netherlands – just enter in your postcode, and you are told how high above sea level (or below for half of the country) you are. In the Netherlands, sea level is known as NAP (Normaal Amsterdamse Peil). I note that the house we are currently interested in sits at 19.3 metres above NAP. I know it’s not much, but every little counts, in my opinion… 

  • Just When You Thought…

    … that traditional film was all but dead – killed by digital photography – comes news of a German laboratory that preserves your digital photos by copying them onto film… Oh, the irony of it all…

  • The John Cleese Franchise

    This week sees the 30th anniversary of the start of Fawlty Towers – unbelievable that it was so long ago… Meanwhile John Cleese continues to franchise himself into new areas. As well as continuing the well-trodden path of advertising (e.g. the Institute of Backup Trauma), he’s now branching out into providing the voice of car navigation systems. We’ve been driving around The Netherlands recently, being directed by the voice of John Cleese: "Turn left in 800 metres – what I would call half a mile, but since that little bastard Napoleon, we’re not allowed to say that anymore…"

  • Apologies, Apologies

    …that I haven’t been blogging much in the past week. Various items in real life have been claiming priority.
     
    On the positive side, we’ve been house-hunting again, and we are currently pursuing something that looks interesting.
     
    On the negative side, some worrying news about the health of family members.
     
    Service is likely to be reduced for a little while.

  • The Anthropic Principle

    There was an article in the Guardian earlier this week on the Anthropic Principle. This says something along the lines that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with the fact that we, as a carbon-based life form, exist at this particular place and time.
     
    Personally, I just take it as a truism that if the fundamental constants of the universe were different, then we wouldn’t be here, so the fact that we are here is simply a result of the particular values of the fundamental constants. But then I read the readers’ letters in the Guardian today, where apparently some people believe that the Anthropic Principle is evidence for the existence of a god doing the tweaking of the values – the so-called Fine-Tuned Universe. I just don’t see the connection between the two. In fact, it seems to me that the Anthropic Principle actually undermines the proposition for Intelligent Design (which basically boils down to GodDidIt). Certainly, I see no evidence for it.

  • Public Art

    I see that Marc Quinn’s new work of sculpture: Alison Lapper Pregnant has been unveiled in Trafalgar Square. The work, like its subject, is pretty uncompromising and forthright. I like it. While some may have felt uncomfortable about such a public depiction of disability, I would merely draw their attention to the one-armed, one-eyed figure who is also present in Trafalgar Square, standing on top of Nelson’s Column.

  • They Work For You

    At last, the European Parliament has launched a new web site, which promises to make the process of the parliament much more transparent and accountable to the likes of you and me. There’s even live video streaming of the debates. Now, where’s my bag of popcorn?

  • Hayao Miyazaki

    Hayao Miyazaki is a brilliant animator. He’s responsible for films such as Sprited Away and Princess Mononoke. He rarely gives interviews, but there’s a good one in today’s Guardian. Miyazaki comes across as a slightly pessimistic observer of the human condition. No rose-tinted spectacles for him, but a clarity of vision and feeling for human foibles that deepen the impact of his characters, not turn them into one-dimensional Disneyesque cartoons.

  • Advice for a Manifesto

    Philip Pullman, writing in today’s Guardian, offers some ironic advice to the UK’s Conservative party on how to get votes with a new manifesto. It’s good advice, too; I’d vote for a party that implemented his ideas. Unfortunately, the old ideals of noblesse oblige, service and looking after each other in society seem to have been swept away. Thatcher started the rot, and we’ve all been gleefully stoking the fire ever since.