Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • Waste

    A sad, but typically thought-provoking post from Teju Cole over at Modal Minority. And I was reading it while listening to Rufus Wainwright’s Nobody’s Off The Hook from Release The Stars. Oh boy…

  • Not Just Wrong

    Ophelia makes a very good point about why people who invoke a higher authority are often mad, bad and dangerous to know.

  • The Mouse Wheel

    I think it’s only right that we should pay tribute to Eric Michelman and his invention of the mouse wheel. It’s one of those "why didn’t I think of that" slaps to the forehead.

  • IDAHO

    Today, May 17, is IDAHO day.

  • The Long Take

    I, like many film buffs, find long tracking shots fascinating. Alan Bacchus, over at Daily Film Dose, has collected together an impressive list of examples of the art, many illustrated by clips. The list is headed, quite rightly, by the spectacular tracking shot from Welles’ Touch of Evil (and someone in the comments mentions the comedy homage to that in De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise). There’s some discussion about whether trickery disqualifies an entry from the list, for example where two or more shots are stitched together to make the audience think it is one. Personally, I’m pretty relaxed about it – film as a whole is about illusion, anyway. And it would rule out one of my favourite tracking shots that is the opening of The Birdcage (which no-one seems to have mentioned) – the shot taken from a helicopter far out to sea flying towards the Miami skyline that apparently doesn’t stop until we end up inside the Birdcage club itself. 
     
    (hat tip to Jason Kottke for the link)

  • Amen

    Christopher Hitchens says it very well…
     
     

  • Dark Matter

    Phil, over at The Bad Astronomer, discusses some of the recent evidence to support the existence of Dark Matter in the universe. Pretty pictures, too.

  • The Medieval Helpdesk

    I know just how the man in the black hat feels…
     
     

  • The Bonfire

    One of the things about keeping the garden in check here is the amount of prunings and loppings that is generated. As an alternative to carting it off to the recycling plant (for which we are charged by weight) we decided to go for the cheaper option of applying to the council for a license to burn the rubbish.
     
    We had built up a fair sized bonfire, and the original intention was to set it alight at Easter. In this part of The Netherlands, Easter bonfires (Paasvuuren) are a traditional part of the celebrations. However, we were hit by a double whammy. First, the council informed us that the license we had to light a bonfire was not valid for a Paasvuur, so we could not light it at sunset on Easter Sunday. OK, we thought, then we’ll light it on the Saturday. "Not so fast", replied the Fire Brigade, "because of the dry weather we’ve been having, we will not allow bonfires at all at the moment"… So we’ve had the bonfire sitting waiting expectantly in the field for a suitable moment.
     
    Well, today it suddenly came. The wet weather last week meant that the Fire Brigade’s ban had been lifted, and today dawned dry with relatively little wind. A quick call to the council to tell them we intended to light the fire, followed by the fetching of a bale of straw from our neighbouring farmer, and we were all set. Not ever having done this ourselves before, we asked another neighbour to be on hand and to light the fire. All went exceedingly well as can be seen from the photos. The one bad note was that once the fire was underway, it suddenly became apparent that there was a Blackbird’s nest deep inside the bonfire. One fledgling managed to escape the burning building, as it were, and crawled to safety. We left it to its own devices, but later in the afternoon it had disappeared. Because I don’t think it was able to fly, I suspect that its vanishing was probably caused by a passing crow… Such is Nature…
     
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  • Cult, Religion, or Movement?

    The various channels of BBC TV provided an interesting comparison this evening.
     
    First up was Panorama, on BBC 1, with John Sweeney’s item on Scientology. The old joke goes: "what’s the difference betweeen a cult and a religion? Answer: about 2,000 years". How true this is. I think Sweeney – despite his totally understandable lapse – showed very clearly that Scientology is dangerous guff. Guff, because L. Ron Hubbard very successfully dreamed up this garbage, and dangerous, because Tom Davis was very clearly employing psychological tricks to unsettle Sweeney.
     
    But following this dip into the cesspool of Scientology, came an unexpected bracing from BBC Four with Scouting For Boys. Yes, the jokes are all too easy (scouting for boys?), but ultimately, the philosophy (note: not religion) of Baden-Powell came across as life-affirming. There is something positive about wanting to improve people’s sense of citizenship, and wanting to improve life for all. As his grandson said – he was a bit of a nutter, but it was clear that his heart was definitely in the right pace. Given the choice between people such as Tom Davis and Baden-Powell, then give me Baden-Powell every time.

  • Magnus Hirschfeld

    Jim Burroway, over at Box Turtle Bulletin, reminds us that today, 14th May, is a day of significance to LGBT folks. It marks the day, in 1868 when Magnus Hirschfeld was born; the day, in 1897, when Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee; and the day, in 1935, when Hirschfeld died.
     
    As Burroway says, Hirschfeld organised "the Scientific Humanitarian Committee for the expressed purpose of advocating for the repeal of Paragraph 175, the German statute which criminalized sodomy. Paragraph 175 was the law that the Nazi’s would later use to send upwards of 15,000 gay men to concentration camps. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee is the first documented formal group to advocate for the civil rights of gays and lesbians".

  • Wishful Thinking

    I see that tomorrow marks the start of Compassion To Action.
    CommonPassion.org, in cooperation with many local and global groups, is orchestrating the world’s largest interfaith global meditation and prayer event ever performed. This will be a series of meditation and prayers for community and global peace to be held between May 15th and May 29th, 2007. It is anticipated that over 1,000,000 people will participate in this two-week program from virtually every faith-system, religious group, indigenous community and meditation assembly currently in existence. 
    Apparently they also think that as well as making themselves feel good, they will have a positive effect on the rest of us:
    Concurrent with the prayer-meditation practices we will monitor crime statistics, emergency call data and other social indicators to ascertain change as a result of this peace-creating program.  
    Oh dear, more woo, I fear. I’m sure that they will collect data, and I’m sure that some carefully selected data will show positive correlations. But it would not surprise me if there is other data that doesn’t. After all, they seem to have selected data before…

  • Petal Fatigue

    Apparently, most of what we think we know about the 17th Century Dutch passion for tulips: Tulipmania, is simply not true. Damn, there goes another illusion…

  • Life With A Dog

    Living with a dog can prove stressful at times. Thankfully, ours is so much better behaved. At least, so far. I think.

  • You Cannot Be Serious II…

    Belatedly, I discover it’s not just the UN that appears to be taking leave of its senses. The Council of Europe is just as guilty. Jobs for the boys, and to hell with the people, eh?

  • From The Sublime…

    …to the ridiculous. From Sir Ian McKellen illuminating Shakespeare to the camp extravaganza that is known as Eurovision. Yes, tonight is the night of the finale for 2007. Martin and I will be there in front of the telly, waving the flag along to the High Life pastiche that is Flying the Flag performed by Scooch.

  • McKellen On Richard III

  • You Cannot Be Serious…

    …is this really going to be the candidate country to head the UN’s Commission for Sustainable Development? Has the UN been taken over by Monty Python? Bizarre in the extreme.

  • Gunkanjima Island

    Via BLDBLOG, I came across an island off the coast of Japan called Gunkanjima. Its history is fascinating. And via the BLDBLOG entry, I found this documentary made of the island and the people who lived there. Haunting.
     
     

  • I Am A Strange Loop

    I mentioned, back in January, that Douglas Hofstadter had a new book coming out: I Am A Strange Loop. My copy arrived last month, and I immediately fell to reading it. It is, of course, a fascinating read, even though at times I felt I was only dimly understanding the points being made. Hofstadter has a knack, though, of being able to present some pretty abstruse material in an understandable way by means of analogies or thought experiments.
     
    One thing that surprised me somewhat was that nowhere, in this whole book devoted to the nature of consciousness, was there any reference to the work being done by researchers such as V. S. Ramachandran (Phantoms In The Brain). Indeed, he seems to dismiss neuroscience as incapable of giving insight into the mechanisms of consciousness at all, instead preferring a more abstract, philosophical approach to the topic. That, I think, is a shame and a missed opportunity. I think that a conversation between Hofstadter and Ramachandran would be something that would create some sparks of illumination.
     
    In the meantime, here’s a link to a recent interview with Hofstadter that is worth reading.