A nice summary of the status of same-sex marriage around the world. Unsuprisingly, it’s practically a non-issue here in The Netherlands. Alas, the same can’t be said for other parts of the world.
Year: 2007
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Phantom Limb
I’m nudged, by not one, but three, entries on Norman Geras’ blog, to the realisation that I have a literary phantom limb. I clearly remember a hardcover edition of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach in my parent’s bookcase. Where the book ended up, I do not know. All that is certain is that it did not end up with me. And yet, I wish I had read it at the time. I saw the film (which Shute himself hated) and it haunted me. Time to track down a copy of the book for myself and to reattach it into my library. -
Be Careful What You Wish For
The news that Boris Johnson has thrown his hat into the ring in the contest for London’s mayor has me staring into the abyss. Yes, he’s a celebrity darling, but would you want him to be in charge of anything more consequential than a stuffed toy? Red Ken may have his shortcomings (a blindspot for islamic scholars for one), but he seems to me to be a stronger candidate than Johnson could ever be. Still, when did the human race ever prove that its collective IQ was more than that of a lemming? Stand by for the outcome foreseen here. I have at least the distance. Thank the lord. -
WHS Is RTM
That means Windows Home Server is Released To Manufacturing for those of you who are not acronymphiles.
I, along with thousands of other folks, have been testing this software at home. I’ve found a few bugs, but most have been cured along the way. I’m still getting the “database inconsistency” bug, despite trying the steps to fix it. I see that Microsoft say that this bug will “more than likely be fixed by RTM”, so we’ll see.
But one thing that is not yet clear is whether WHS will open up the ability to access all flavours of Windows operating systems via the internet. At the moment it does not, even though you might be forgiven for thinking that it does if you just listen to Microsoft’s marketing.
Still, kudos to the development team for a product that has much to commend it.
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Pronunciation
Jerome Weeks tells a good, and possibly apocryphal, tale about a student who completes her dissertation on Samuel Pepys without ever realising that she has never learned the correct pronunciation of his name. Speaking as someone who didn’t realise until recently that Pharyngula was pronounced so as to rhyme with "singular", I’m certainly in no position to cast the first stone. -
Don’t Try This At Home
This white-coated gentleman tests the validity of the proposition that it is possible to blend an iPhone. What it has proved to me is that while I still have absolutely no desire to own an iPhone, I would kill to have a blender as powerful as that. Where can I get one?(hat tip to PZ Myers) -
The Canon
Earlier this month I wrote about James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia. In it, he calls for the creation of a guidebook to science:What we need is a book of knowledge written so well as to constitute literature in its own right. Something for anyone interested in the state of the Earth and of us – a manual for living well and for survival.The quality of its writing must be such that it would serve for pleasure, for devotional reading, as a source of facts and even as a primary school text. It would range from simple things such as how to light a fire, to our place in the solar system and the universe. It would be a primer of philosophy and science – it would provide a top-down look at the Earth and us. It would explain the natural selection of all living things, and give the key facts of medicine, including the circulation of the blood, the role of the organs. The discovery that bacteria and viruses caused infection diseases is relatively recent; imagine the consequences if such knowledge was lost.Coincidentally, I came across a book published in May this year that sounded as though it might fit the bill, at least partially. That book is The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier. The publisher’s blurb sounded promising, too:The Canon is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time – from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it’s for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is. Angier’s sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works.Sounds good, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too, so I bought a copy.But, oh, what a disappointment I am finding this book to be. Admittedly, I am not yet quite halfway through, but so far it is proving a real struggle to keep going. The problem is Angier’s style of writing which I find irritating quite beyond belief. The publisher might think she has "sparkling prose and memorable metaphors", but I feel as though I am constantly being bludgeoned over the head by the author’s clever-clever remarks and witticisms (well, she thinks they’re witty) and metaphors that, far from being memorable in a good way, make me go WTF?And when I say "constantly bludgeoned over the head", I do mean constantly. Hardly a sentence goes by without Angier wanting to slip something in. For example:…Georg Simon Ohm, a German physicist who determined the relationship between voltage, current , and resistance in an electrical current, and who is rumoured to have practiced yogic meditation when he thought nobody was around.From Ohm we get ohm, the unit used to measure resistance in an electrical circuit or device. And though no one expects you to master the nuances of units or their namesakes (except to remember who the real watt’s Watt was and what that Watt was not), the ohm is a good place to start talking about the electricity coursing through your cords, and what it says about all of us.That’s a fairly typical example of her prose, which strikes me as being far too precious for its own good. I feel as though I’m drowning in warm maple syrup. Against all this constant barrage of wordplay, the actual science is getting lost. Angier clearly loves science, as do I, but in her desire to convey the attraction she has had the effect, at least for this reader, of making me want to turn my back on this book. I’m sorry, I did want to like this book, but I only give it half a star out of five. Lovelock’s guidebook to science needs another author to tackle it. -
Puppies
The mother of our labrador, Kai, has just had her last litter of puppies. We went to see them today. We also saw two litters of Jack Russell terriers. All together now: aaah!
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What I Did Wrong
That’s the title of a book by John Weir. I’ve mentioned it before, but now I see that Matthew Cheney, over at Mumpsimus, has a glowing review of the book. It’s on my pile of to-be-read books, but I see that I have to bump it up closer to the top. -
Take The Mickey
Marina Hyde, as usual, hits the mark exactly. Instead of cowering in fear we should be laughing at terrorists. That’s the way to break down their walls of virtue. -
Clueless In Ghana
I’m sorry, but I don’t have too much sympathy for this pair. They may be only 16 years old, but they appear to have no nous whatsoever:"There were basically two boys over here who gave us two bags, and told us to bring it, [that] it was an empty bag … We never thought anything bad was inside … and they told us to go to the UK and drop it off to some boy … at the airport … The two boys gave us bags in Ghana to bring to London, to give to the boy in London." She added: "They didn’t tell us nothing, we didn’t think nothing, cos basically we are innocent, we don’t know nothing about this drugs and stuff."Yup, you certainly didn’t think. And I am fascinated by the little factoid that their families thought the girls were on holiday in France, when in fact they were in Ghana. Something tells me there’s more going on here. -
Tom Remembers George
This is a nice tribute to the late, great, George Melly written by Tom Robinson. Go and read it. I remember the times he describes well, and people like George and Tom were beacons in the gloom. -
The Handmaid’s Tale
Well, bless her, Margaret Sanger’s heart (and wishful intellect) was certainly in the right place when she penned this in 1923; but unfortunately, things didn’t always turn out quite as she would have wished… -
Art As A Spandrel
I love it. things such as this: the Rite Of Spring done as a stop animation with retired people wearing opposite sexual prostheses (men with merkins, women with penises). It’s things like this that make me go: fuck the selfish gene, folks just want to have fun…(hat tip to David Byrne) -
The Island Of Forgotten Diseases
And, while we’re on the wonders that can be thrown up by the internet, let me just draw your attention to this entry from Geoff Manaugh over at BLDGBLOG: The Island of Forgotten Diseases. It’s like something out of J. G. Ballard… Wonderful and terrifying, both in the same heartbeat… -
The Ramírez Codex
BibliOdyssey has a wonderful entry on the Ramírez Codex. Gawd, I love the internet… -
Post Mortem
It seems as though the fount of Schadenfreude is inexhaustible at the moment. Following on from my skepticism about the return of Steorn, Ben Goldacre, over at Bad Science, rubs salt into the wound. Truly, my cup runneth over. -
Families
Terrance, over at The Republic of T, is blogging about the holiday cruise he’s currently on with his husband and young son, Parker. He’s enjoying it, and makes the point, without labouring it, that families come in all shapes and sizes. It’s worth reading, so please go and do just that. -
Pause For Thought
I must admit, when I read that German writer Günter Wallraff, wants to read Salman Rushdie’s "Satanic Verses" aloud in Cologne’s eventual new mosque (now under construction), I immediately thought that this would be rather like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. But having read what Wallraff says on the matter, I can agree that it would be a rather good litmus test. I have my doubts, though, whether this particular litmus paper will ever be allowed anywhere near the solution to be tested…
Geoff Coupe's Blog 