Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2005

  • Oo-er.

    The Improbable Research blog comes up with a corker today: the boar semen collection music video.
     
    I don’t know where to start with this. I dislike corporate videos that have totally inappropriate background music, but this one is in a whole new league. And then the use of the pneumatic tube system… I have fond memories of a childhood where these things were used in department stores to collect money and return change from a central cashier. Those memories have been seared from my brain as a result of this video.

  • Plot Number 3, Subplot 5A

    I see that Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian today, has jumped into the currently fashionable discussion about Narnia and Christianity. Actually, I tend to take Zoe’s position, which is essentially: who gives a toss? As she says, the Bible is a narrative blueprint for a lot of western culture. Mind you, there’s a lot in the Bible that borrows from older mythologies.
     
    Joseph Campbell with his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces proposed the idea of a monomyth over fifty years ago. While he may have pushed the hypothesis to straining point, there’s more than a nugget of truth in there, I feel. There’s a basic number of plots and subplots that recur again and again throughout human history.
     

    Zoe ends her piece by saying it is not the time of year to be unfair to Christians. We pinched their festival. We can hardly talk about "underhand". Er, excuse me, they pinched Christmas from Yule and the Saturnalia. Pot, kettle, black, I think.

     
     
     

  • Pets Ahead

    One of the things about our move to the farmhouse next year is that Martin will once again get to have a dog. He hasn’t had one for the last twenty years because he didn’t think it would be right to keep a dog in a town. Once we are in the country, then there’ll be plenty of space to exercise a dog. We are also planning to get a cat to keep the mouse population down around the farmhouse.
     
    Of course, pets are not just for Christmas – they need to be looked after. And as a timely reminder, Tom Reynolds, over at the Random Acts of Reality blog, reminds us of an old, but gold, piece of advice: how to give pills to pets.

  • The Final Resting Place

    Another post about graveyards – but for ships this time. Geoff Manaugh posts some striking photos by Edward Burtynsky over at BLDBLOG and ponders the fate of ships and cathedrals – and the human worker ants who toil in their recycling.

  • The Final Question

    There’s an article by Claire Rayner in The Observer today about the choices open to her about her burial.  It’s got me thinking. Like her, I had assumed that cremation would be my obvious choice. But she does have a point about the waste of fossil fuel and the greenhouse gases. And like her, I certainly don’t want to end up in a religious cemetery. 
     
    Perhaps the answer is freeze-drying and being turned into compost – as I reported a couple of months ago. But I’m sure the freezing process is not particularly energy efficient.
     
    Claire mentions natural burial as the green alternative – and I’ve discovered there is a natural burial ground in The Netherlands in the Bergerbos near Sint Odilienberg.  The Bergerbos looks to be a beautiful area, and I certainly wouldn’t object to being buried there. Just so long as there’s not a piece of the ghastly public art that the Dutch seem to go in for in the near vicinity. Such as that awful butterfly in the 13th photo on the web site. The woods themselves are all I would wish for.

  • The Hairy Bikers

    A few years back, the unlikely combination of Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright – otherwise known as the Two Fat Ladies roared on to our TV screens with their somewhat bizarre cookery programme.
     
    Now the men are going to have their turn, in the shape of two hairy bikers – Dave Myers and Simon King. Their series starts next month. I caught the pilot programme earlier this year, and I predict that they will be a big hit.

  • Samorost 2

    Samorost 2 is out. It’s a quirky little adventure game constructed using Flash technology. Has a sort of Jan Svankmajer or Roland Topor feel to it. The first part can be played online (although the servers are currently experiencing a heavy load from the interest), or both parts can be downloaded for a modest sum and played on your PC or Mac.

  • Latte Art

    The Dutch Latte Art Championship took place last month. Some of the winning entries are here. I suppose it beats carving rice grains, but probably not by much…
     
    (hat tip to Mike at Coffee Corner)

  • Computer Animation

    There’s quite a good article in The Economist this week that traces the history of the last few years of computer animation. The history starts, a little late in my opinion, with Toy Story (1995). I think that there’s a case to be made that the first full-length feature film to make extensive use of computer animation was Tron (1982).
     
    The article also asks the question: "will computer-animated humans ever look realistic on the screen?". I think the answer is almost certainly: yes, it’s only a matter of time. But the article doesn’t mention what is probably the main barrier to progress: the "uncanny valley".

  • Mentos + Pop = Whoosh

    This experiment takes me back in time. When I was ten, I discovered this chemical reaction for myself. Except I used sugared almonds and Qualtrough’s best lemonade. The effect was the same. I didn’t try a whole packet at once though. Too much of a good thing can get quite messy.

  • Cultural Conditioning

    Lauren, over at the Feministe blog, posts a powerful tale about culture, courage, prejudice and a piece of cloth. Go and read it.

  • Take The Test

    Another fun test that probably means nothing, but passes the time… I certainly don’t feel androgynous – but I do fancy Neo’s leather coat and dark glasses, even though I know they’d make me look a complete prat…
     
    Androgynous
    You scored 60 masculinity and 63 femininity!
    You scored high on both masculinity and femininity. You have a strong personality exhibiting characteristics of both traditional sex roles.

    My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

    free online dating free online dating
    		You scored higher than 16% on masculinity
    free online dating free online dating
    		You scored higher than 58% on femininity

    Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test
     

  • RIP, Robert Sheckley

    Robert Sheckley, the author, has died. I enjoyed his absurdist SF tales such as The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton. I should go back and re-read them.

  • Justice is Done

    I mentioned the case of the sparrow blasted to smithereens last month because it knocked over a domino (or two). Well, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service has spoken and fined the killer 200 euros for the heinous act.
     
    It turns out there’s even a somewhat bizarre back story to these events. The evidence of the crime (i.e. the remains of the sparrow) are currently in a freezer somewhere in the bowels of the Public Prosecution Service. There’s talk of sending them to the Nature Museum in Rotterdam. The chief conservationist, Kees Moeliker, is wondering how much actually is left for him to stuff and mount. He would like to display the little fellow in a forthcoming exhibition as "an icon of the love for sparrows". Er, Kees, it was shot… What I mean, protests Kees, is that the exhibition can become "a place of pilgrimage". Yes, thank you, Kees, and goodnight.
     
    Meanwhile, the director of the Nature Museum in Friesland (the region where the crime was committed) has mixed feelings. He would have liked the sparrow for his museum… The papers don’t report what his intentions were for the corpse. Better not to ask, I think.
     
    Update: I should have recognised the name of Kees Moeliker. He’s the author of that stirring piece of research: The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae). Silly of me. But today’s entry in the Improbable Research blog has put me right.

  • You Cannot Be Serious…

    "Serious Organised Crime"? This is obviously a different definition of "serious" than the one I am used to. It might well have been "organised", but I for one would not view it as a "crime". Clearly, I’m not paranoid enough…

  • The Artistry of the Blaschkas

    Rudolph and Leopold Blaschka were a father and son team of artists working in glass in the 19th Century. I first came across them when Martin and I visited the Ware collection of Glass Models of Plants at Harvard University in 1992. The Blaschkas made over 4,000 botanical models of plants and flowers entirely out of glass. They are staggeringly beautiful and accurate models. What I didn’t know, until today, was that the Blaschkas were also responsible for glass models of marine animals as well. Equally staggering.

  • Harold Pinter

    Harold Pinter will receive the Nobel Prize for literature on Saturday. The text of his acceptance speech has been printed in The Guardian today. Go and read it, for it is powerful stuff.

  • Chocolate Fountain

    Willie Wonka, eat your heart out! So kitsch, it’s wonderful!

  • Yo-yo Art

    When I was young, I briefly toyed with the yo-yo. I was pretty hopeless at it, and could never be bothered to practise for long. This young man doesn’t seem to have had the same problem.

  • Safe Art

    It’s a bit late, because I’ve been waiting for better pictures. Here’s what they did in Buenos Aires to mark World AIDS Day…