PZ Meyers, the intelligence behind the Pharyngula blog, has done it again with a sly, metaphorical take on our need for fairytales. Read the Planet of the Hats to see what I mean. I’m proud to be hatless!
Year: 2005
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Passing the Exam
At the moment, if you travel around The Netherlands, you will see a lot of houses that are flying the Dutch flag, and hanging from the flagpole will be a school bag, or a backpack. This is the sign that in the house lives a schoolchild who has just successfully passed their last set of school exams.
In the group of eight houses where we live, two houses are flying the symbol. It’s also usually an excuse for a party, so last night Martin and I joined the rest of the neighbours for two parties. My head this morning was a little the worse for wear.
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When Librarians Become Barbarians
OK, it’s not the end of the world, but naturally the story about a university library just dumping books in skips would tug at my soul, bibliophile that I am.
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Another Story
A fairy story this time: the tale of Princess Tony and the Ugly Face Man. Like all good fairytales, there’s a serious point being made in it. In this case that the liberties of UK citizens seem to be more often eroded than strengthened by Blair’s government.
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Story of the Week
On a more serious note, go and read Trey’s autobiographical story over at his web site: Daddy, Papa and Me. At least he has survived – I can only hope that Zach manages to do the same.
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Movie of the Week
Very, very black humour. Watch this film about Finland’s rarest exports.
Update: Sorry, the movie’s now been removed from that link. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the IMDb entry for Rare Exports Inc.
Update 2: Hang on, maybe this link will still work…
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Margot Wallström Again
I mentioned Margot Wallström a couple of weeks ago (pay attention at the back!). She’s just added a new entry on her blog that also mentions the EU Consitution post-referendum survey in The Netherlands – something I need to download and digest – so I will. Thanks, Margot!
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Breathe Deep, Breathe Deep
One of the things about surfing the Internet for inspiration for the Blog is not: how difficult it is, but: how difficult it is to keep one’s nose above the slime.
So before I become too depressed about the human condition, let me give you a link that made me breathe a little easier. No, it’s not great art. No, it won’t change your life. No, it is not injurious to your health or addictive. No, it won’t pay the bills or make you more attractive to the sex that you wish to be attracted to. But, ladies and gentlemen, there’s something here about an obsession about an aspect of our existence that is sooo human.
I give you: Lacing Shoes.
Thank you, Ian for allowing me to rest awhile before returning to the never-ending tide of human dross. All I need now is a blast from Beethoven, and I’ll be as right as rain (and that’s not singing in it – at least not in that sense, Alex).
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9 Billion Flies Can’t Be Wrong…
…and presumably neither can Spanish cardinals and archbishops, who hope that up to half a million demonstrators will join them tomorrow to protest against the introduction of same-sex marriage in Spain.
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Let Them Eat Cake
This is the sort of thing that I mean when I say that Blair’s New Labour has lost it… Margaret Hodge, Minister for Work and Pensions in Blair’s government, said later that she didn’t mean to say that the skilled workers from the closed Rover plant could work in Tesco’s supermarket. Well, sorry, Mags, but that’s how it came across. Of course, she’s no stranger to controversy. Clearly not a person I would ever choose to have as a friend, he said, knitting furiously.
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Don’t Click It!
Now this, this is excellent: Don’t Click It! – an experiment, a work of art, a thesis. Go there – now – and try it out.
I particularly enjoyed hearing Orson again – just in time before a new incarnation comes via Spielberg…
And the mousewrap is the perfect solution for all you masochists out there!
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2,083
Following on from the last post, I now have 2,083 books – another package from Amazon dropped through the letterbox today.
And, joy of joys, it’s "The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth" by Malcolm Pryce. This is the third novel by Pryce set in an Aberystwyth that hails from some parallel universe to our own. Reading the books is like reading Raymond Chandler crossed with The League of Gentlemen – noir, bizarre, and laugh-out-loud funny. The synopsis of this book will give you an idea:
There was nothing unusual about the barrel-organ man who walked into private detective Louie Knight’s office. Apart from the fact that he had lost his memory. And his monkey was a former astronaut on the Welsh Space Programme. And he carried a suitcase that he was too terrified to open. And he wanted a murder investigated. The only thing unusual about that was, it took place a hundred years ago. And he needed it solved by the following week. Louie was too smart to take a case like that but also too broke to turn it down. Soon he is lost in a labyrinth of intrigue and terror, tormented at every turn by a gallery of mad nuns, gangsters and waifs and haunted by the loss of his girlfriend, Myfanwy, who disappeared one day after being fed drugged raspberry ripple…
Pryce has a knack of writing sentences that become instant aphorisms, or that immediately conjure up strangeness – like looking at life in a mirror that ever-so-slightly distorts – or putting your foot down expecting a step that isn’t there… Examples from the first few pages in the book:
"…there’s nothing lonelier than the bought smile of a harlot."
"She was a small monkey, and very old, with fur turning white around the muzzle and deep sad dark eyes, like two wishing wells that hadn’t seen a penny in years."
"I wouldn’t go so far as to say she smiled – she was a capuchin monkey and they generally keep their cards close to their chest – but a look of heightened interest was evident."
Oooh, I think I’m going to like this novel as much as the first two…
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Books and Reading
As you might know, I like books. At the moment, I have 2,082 of them – a few dozen which I can hear calling out to me: "Read me, read me!" – while many more are whispering "No, re-read me!".
I simply cannot imagine being someone who doesn’t read books if they have the opportunity to do so. And to be someone who actively disdains books – well, Farenheit 451 cannot be far away.
And so, when I read Flea’s Too Many Books Isn’t Enough over at One Good Thing, I knew instantly what she meant.
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Consultant Culture
There was an interesting article earlier this week in The Guardian about the consultancy firm of McKinsey, and the influence it is having on the UK government.
There is no doubt that McKinsey has a very strong organisational culture – as the article states, McKinsey has nicknames such as The Brotherhood, The Firm, or the Jesuits of Capitalism. During my working life, I encountered McKinsey on a couple of occasions (and also their kin, Accenture, on more than a few occasions), and I can attest to the sense that I was working with people with a very particular worldview.
The Guardian article questions whether in fact the McKinsey culture is a totally benign influence on the UK government, and of course we shouldn’t forget that Enron was regarded as "the house that McKinsey built". For my own part, I believe the influence of such a monoculture to be pretty baleful, and I have commented before on my impression that the Labour party of Blair has no soul, and disturbingly few principles that chime with me.
I use the term monoculture, because that is the strongest impression that I have of McKinsey – you have to fit with the culture, or you’re out. I’m sure that they view this as a source of strength, but having a lack of diversity can be a weakness. In fact, there’s been work to demonstrate that diverse teams outperform monoculture teams, providing that the diversity can be managed properly.
Dr. Carol Kovach has done research at the Graduate School of Management at UCLA that demonstrated that cultural diversity can have both positive and negative impacts on teams. Diversity has been shown to augment potential productivity, but it also increases the complexity of the processes that must occur for a team to reach its full potential. Highly productive teams differ from less productive teams in how they manage their diversity, not, as is commonly believed, in the presence or absence of diversity. When well managed, diversity becomes an asset and productive resource for the team. When ignored, diversity causes process problems that diminish a team’s productivity. This is illustrated in the simple diagram here.
And I know from my own experience that the most exhillarating (as well as at times, the most frustrating) team I ever worked with was one that by design was set up to be as diverse as possible. When we learned how to manage our diversity, we were extremely productive, and came up with great results.
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Madonna is a Scientist
UK Students, aged 13-16, were asked to name a famous scientist in an online survey carried out by an examination board. Depressingly, only two out of nearly 1,000 students managed to name a living scientist, and even then it was the highly suspect David Bellamy.
Bizarrely, other students cited Madonna – please tell me that was a teenage joke?
The Guardian carries a full report on the survey.
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The End of an Era
Gizmodo reports that Kodak will cease production of Black and White paper in 2006. Digital photography marches on.
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A Minefield for Surgeons
Sorry, but how could I resist this story in this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian?
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No Promises of Paradise, No Fear of Hell
Echidne of the Snakes writes about life. I empathise totally with how she feels, and her philosophy of how to live one’s life. Go and read it, and think about how you can make a difference.
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Carlo Maria Giulini
Carlo Maria Giulini has died at the age of 91. There’s an obituary in today’s Guardian.
I never did have the experience of being present in person to hear Giulini conduct. I have only ever heard his work via the medium of radio or recordings. I still have, and treasure, recordings by him of Verdi’s Requiem (with Schwarzkopf, Ludwig, Gedda and Ghiaurov) and Verdi’s Don Carlos (with Domingo, Caballé, et al). I’ll be playing the Requiem today in memory of him.
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Peak Oil and Climate Change
Another post that deserves multiple categories: Science, Politics and Society. I’ve chosen the last, because the impact of the scenarios are likely to be so far-reaching.
Data point one: Interview in today’s Guardian with Lord Ron Oxburgh, chairman of Shell:
The basic facts of climate change: since the industrial period carbon dioxide levels have risen from 270 parts per million (classical for all previous warm periods) to 379ppm today, and are rising at 2ppm per year. In 10 years’ time they will be at 400ppm; at 500ppm, Greenland’s ice will melt entirely – it’s already receding by 10 metres a year – and the sea level will rise, drowning coastal cities and entirely changing the contours of the earth. Most scientists now agree that unless we stabilise the earth’s atmosphere by 2050, there will be no way to halt the disaster.
Lord Oxburgh: "We have roughly 45 years. And if we start NOW, not in 10 or 15 years’ time, we have a chance of hitting those targets. But we’ve got to start now. We have no time to lose."
Data point two: Peak Oil, Beyond Optimism and Pessimism – article by Jim Hill:
Statistically speaking, I am due to live another 40 years. During that time, I will witness the complete collapse of free-market capitalism. The project of globalisation will fail, and the consumer culture within which recent generations have been raised will end. A massive reduction in living standards, unlike any other readjustment in history, will be experienced by 99% of us living in the industrialised world. A hundred thousand things that we all take for granted today will have ceased to exist by the time I reach my allotted lifespan. This will happen.
(hat tip to Chicken Yoghurt for the pointer)
Data point three: The advisor to the Bush Administration who fiddled with the scientific report on climate change has landed a plum job with ExxonMobil. No surprise there, then.
Why do I get the feeling that, despite the "crisis, what crisis?" mentality of ExxonMobil, climate change and peak oil are the Scylla and Charybdis of the 21st Century?
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
