Steven Poole, over at Unspeak, decodes Tony Blair’s resignation speech.
Year: 2007
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Plus Ça Change
You didn’t really think that Nicolas Sarkozy and friends would change their spots, did you? -
A Bit Rich
Alexis Petridis has a rather amusing review of Rufus Wainwright’s latest album: Release The Stars. He thinks it is great stuff, but probably too rich for commercial success. Well, I think I’ll probably buy it, but I don’t think that will help tip the balance. -
The Past Is Another Country
Christopher Hitchens has an excellent article about his visit back to London’s Finsbury Park area, where he grew up. He finds it has changed, and in ways not necessarily for the better. A consumate wordsmith, he makes you smile before you realise the full import of what he has just written. For example:Until he was jailed last year on charges of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, a man known to the police of several countries as Abu Hamza al-Masri was the imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque. He was a conspicuous figure because, having lost the use of an eye and both hands in an exchange of views in Afghanistan, he sported an opaque eye plus a hook to theatrical effect. Not as nice as he looked, Abu Hamza was nonetheless unfailingly generous with his hospitality. Overnight guests at his mosque’s sleeping quarters have included Richard Reid, the man in whose honor we now all have to take off our shoes at the airport, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the missing team member of September 11, 2001.The "exchange of views" is very droll, and that "not as nice as he looked" phrase is a brilliant touch. Go and read the whole article. The Q&A session accompanying the article is worth reading too. -
Quirkology – Take Two
Following on from my mention of Quirkology last week, I see that Professor Wiseman has an article in New Scientist listing his favourite studies into the quirks of our species. Worth reading – the revelations about female van drivers is pretty scary stuff. -
Wonders Never Cease
For the first time ever, I can agree with something that Inayat Bungawala has written. Staggering. -
Planed
Get yer Planed here… Piping hot; only until 10th May 2007… And I missed the programme as well. Damn. -
What Is Life?
I become increasingly uncertain as to where borders and interfaces lie when I read articles such as this. -
Composition Or Randomness?
Joel Hruska has an article over at Ars Technica about a new venture by the Who’s Pete Townshend. The Lifehouse Method is supposed to produce a musical portrait of a person by using a variety of sound and image inputs. I can’t say that the results that I’ve heard strike me as being very interesting. As Hrsuka says, the portraits sound to me as having similar compositional skills to those of Nora, the piano-playing cat. Over to you, Nora… -
Safety First
The Silly Season in the media seems to be coming earlier every year. Here’s the story of a Welsh council which has banned its workers from answering the phone in Welsh because of fears from the union that "it could damage their voice". But it gets better, a councillor has condemned the ban as "an infringement of human rights". Oh, pur-lease!Dunno about Welsh damaging one’s voice, they should think themselves lucky that they don’t have to speak Dutch… -
Achitectures For Conversation
This may seem a little esoteric for many people, but since, in a former life, I was an IT Architect, this presentation by Andrew Hinton certainly resonated with me… -
The Seven Year Itch
It would appear that the US Republicans are assembling a less-than-star-studded cast of contenders all hoping to be the next President of the United States. Last week, for example, we had the revelation that three out of the ten candidates do not accept the theory of evolution. Now we have the fact that one of them, Mitt Romney, apparently believes that in France people frequently get married under contracts that expire after seven years. Where do they get these idiots from? -
Isabella Blow
I’d never heard of her – fashion being an industry that I tend to avoid – but it sounds as though we’ve just lost a real character in Isabella Blow. The Guardian obituary is a real hoot: "She is survived by Detmar and a considerable hat collection". -
It Never Rains…
…But it pours. After nearly seven weeks without a drop of rain, nature has decided to get with the programme again. It has been raining for most of the day; at times reaching torrential proportions. I’m not really complaining; the garden needs it, and the farmers around here are heaving sighs of relief as well. -
No Words
Sometimes, I just feel like giving up in despair. That quip of the last post: Homo sapiens 1.0 seems horribly true; we are in desparate need of some new brain software. Anything to make this sort of thing history (my emphases):What happened next was captured in a mobile phone video. It shows a dark-haired girl dressed in a red track suit top and black underwear with blood streaming from her face. As she tries to rise to her feet she is kicked and hit on the head with a concrete block. Armed and uniformed police stand by watching her being killed over several minutes. Many in the crowd hold up their phone cameras to record the scene. Nobody tries to help her as she is battered to death.I’ll let Twisty Farmer speak for me. I cannot, and do not want to, watch the video.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 