Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDGBLOG, has an intriguing entry on RoboVault, a robotic storage facility in Florida. It’s also worth visiting RoboVault’s actual web site, if only to hear the corny voiceover extolling the virtues of the facility. Mind you, if the web site is anything to go by, I don’t think I’d entrust anything of value to them. The web site is peppered full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Nothing can go wrong… go wrong…. go wrong…
Year: 2008
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Creature Creator
I see that the launch date of Spore is at last getting within reach. The makers have just released the Creature Creator, which allows you to design your own animals for the Spore worlds. I’ve always wondered what it must feel like to play Mother Nature, here’s my chance to find out. -
Would You Like Mayo With That?
And just to illustrate how little UK society seems to have moved on since Section 28, here comes the news that a Heinz advert has been pulled because it features two men sharing a peck on the cheek. I don’t know who is the more stupid – the arses who complained or Heinz for having less spine than an E-coli bacterium.Update: it appears as though the American Family Association are the men behind the curtain. Personally, I wish that Toto would chew their bollocks off. They deserve nothing less. And, as has already been said by others: shame on Heinz. -
Section 28
Johann Hari has a very good article on a piece of UK legislation that has now been consigned to the rubbish bin of history, but whose toxic impact is still felt within UK society. Go and read about it. -
The Asylum and its Administrators
It begins to seem as though the insane have indeed taken over the running of the asylum. Ophelia has the story. I find this ominous. The UN Human Rights Council seems to be concerned with nothing of the sort. Perhaps it should be renamed as the UN Religious Police Council for clarity. As Ophelia says, it would seem that it is now little more than an alliance of thugs. -
Hello Hal
Another quiz, which, with its nod to 2001, I simply had to do:One of the questions asks you to classify yourself into an age group. It came home to me that I can no longer think of myself as "middle-aged", but now should start thinking of myself as being in the "elderly" grouping. Bugger.(hat tip to Obscene Desserts for the link) -
Knobs and Knickers
I see that the conservative faction of the Church of England is getting its knickers in a twist over the fact that two men (both members of the clergy) dared to hold their civil partnership union in a church. Very sad, but I confess that I laughed out loud when I read the sublimely unwitting comment from the Reverend who led the service:"I am surprised and disappointed by the fuss. It was a joyful, godly occasion. Why turn it into a controversy? It was not a rally or a demonstration," he said. "Nor is it the first time there have been prayers, hymns or readings following a civil partnership. It may be that this ceremony had rather more knobs on. It may also be the only one we know about."Well, yes, considering that the loving couple were both male, I suppose one could say that, self-evidently, the ceremony had rather more knobs on than most. Fifty percent more, in fact. Mind you, I can’t help feeling that the biggest knobs in the whole affair are the conservative Christians with their self-righteous anger. -
Anniversary
Today is our tenth wedding anniversary. Last Sunday, our friends and neighbours sprang a surprise party on us to celebrate the fact. They turned up completely unexpectedly with food and drinks in the afternoon. As it was hot in the sun, we moved tables and chairs into the shade of our little wood and celebrated. Thank you to all of them for the thought.
Oh, the poster behind us was done by the six-year old granddaughter of one of our neighbours. A nice touch.
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Love Threatens
I see that the work of art in the Rijksmuseum displayed by today’s edition of the Rijkswidget is L’Amour Menaçant by Etienne-Maurice Falconet. I’ve always liked the expression on this Cupid’s face. It’s somewhat unsettling. Here’s a closeup.
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Hot Weather
We’re currently experiencing a spell of hot weather. That’s brought out the dragonflies to hunt over the ponds. This specimen of Libella depressa uses this iron rod by one of the ponds as its favourite perch.
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Crows and Memes
And if to illustrate the point that I made in the last entry (that memes are not the sole province of humans), here’s Joshua Klein talking about the intelligence of crows. He uses examples of memetic behaviour to demonstrate it… -
Genes, Memes and Temes
Susan Blackmore’s talk at the year’s TED conference is now available online. As usual, thought-provoking, although, judging from the comments on the TED site, many people dismiss her ideas almost out of hand. She’s accused of anthropomorphising memes, whereas I don’t think she does at all. To me, the central idea is sound – evolution must occur when there are replicators and selection. The fact of understanding that the substrate on which this occurs is not always of a genetic basis is the clue to being able to see what she’s driving at.Mind you, I think that her implied claim that we are the only species where memes occur is false. We may be the species that is a hyper-producer of memes, but I think that limited memes can be observed in many species. I am also not yet convinced that we are at the stage of temes – here heredity is not something that is common, and this is a necessary condition, it seems to me. Still, interesting talk. -
Mrs. Mortimer
I was curious to see how many members of LibraryThing have a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus. Apparently, there are 76 of us, all sharing a taste for this decidedly odd book. That got me thinking about weird and wonderful books, and I saw that LibraryThing members have been discussing some of the examples in their libraries. That led me to discover the Victorian authoress Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer. She was a devout woman who wrote improving tales for children. To most modern sensibilities, they are outlandish in the extreme. If you thought that Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter was hardhitting, then how about this little extract from Mrs. Mortimer’s Peep of Day:
How kind of God it was to give you a body! I hope that your body will not get hurt. Will your bones break? Yes, they would, if you were to fall down from a high place, or if a cart were to go over them. If you were to be very sick, your flesh would waste away, and you would have scarcely anything left but skin and bones. … How easy it would be to hurt your poor little body. If it were to fall in the fire, it would be burned up. If hot water were to fall upon it, it would be scalded. If it were to fall into deep water, and not to be taken out very soon, it would be drowned. If a great knife were to run through your body, the blood would come out. If a great box were to fall on your head, your head would be crushed. If you were to fall out of the window, your neck would be broken. If you were not to eat some food for a few days, your little body would be very sick, your pulse and your breath would stop, and you would grow cold, and you would soon be dead. … Kneel down and say to God, ‘Pray, keep my poor little body from getting hurt.’ God will hear you, and go on taking care of you.
Not for the fainthearted, obviously. I note that Peep of Day is still available. At first I thought it was still being published as a curiosity, rather like Struwwelpeter, but then I found that Grace and Truth Books (“Character Building Books for the Family“) describe it as a “family devotional guide”. Clearly for evangelical versions of the Addams Family.
If you’d like to get a full flavour of the madness of Mrs. Mortimer, then I refer you to the Project Gutenberg’s publication of Far Off. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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The Singularity
IEEE Spectrum has an interesting issue devoted to looking at the subject of the Singularity. An intriguing topic, but I definitely remain a skeptic about the wilder predictions of transhumanism. It seems to me that some of its proponents haven’t thought through some of the tricky issues which were dealt with back in The Mind’s I, first published in 1981. Indeed, I came across one of the principle stumbling blocks in Clifford Simak’s Way Station, first published in 1963. A copy is not the same thing as an original, no matter how identical it might be – and the image of the tanks of acid below Simak’s "farmhouse" haunted my teenage mind for some time. -
Insect Behaviours
Carl Zimmer has another of his terrific (in all senses of the word) posts on parasitic wasps and their victims. This time it’s about Glyptapanteles glyptapanteles. Definitely worth reading and his piece conveys not only the stuff of nightmares, but also a wonderful illustration of the workings of nature and the struggle for survival.I’ve just got his latest book Microcosm and already, after only a few pages, I know it’s going to be good. -
A Tragedy’s Final Act
Last April, Rand Abdel-Qader was killed by her father. Now, her mother has been killed, quite possibly for daring to speak out against him and a society where "honour" killings are considered just. -
A World Without Bees
I’d heard of the phenomenon of the disappearing honeybee before, of course, but this article by Alison Benjamin in today’s Guardian pulls the story’s strands together in a compelling way. She paints a worrying picture. Apparently, the article is an extract from her book. Another one for the wishlist, then. -
Filth
Last night, the Beeb showed a TV drama about the clash in the 1960s between Mrs. Mary Whitehouse and Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, then director-general of the BBC. Entitled Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, it was an entertaining look at the woman and her campaign. I refer you to the great Nancy Banks-Smith, and her review of the programme for more detail. I think I would agree with her that the Julie Walters‘ playing of Whitehouse was probably more lovable than the real person. My one experience of seeing Mrs. Whitehouse in the flesh, as it were, still leaves me – at a distance of thirty years – with feelings of anger and disgust.Update: Anticant has a review of the programme. He had personal experience of just what a nasty piece of work Whitehouse could be. Worth reading to understand the less lovable side of her. -
The Plague and the Party
Earlier this month, I pointed to a good interview with Elizabeth Pisani, who has just published a book on HIV and the AIDS prevention industry. Now I see that she has an excellent article on the subject in this month’s Prospect magazine. Worth reading, and she repeats her sobering message that:…living with HIV is not all abseiling down canyons at sunset. It’s about going to the clinic for viral load monitoring and taking toxic drugs, for the rest of your life, at an annual cost to the NHS (the National Health Service) of about £16,000 per person (which means an annual bill of about £1.2bn). And the virus is beginning to outwit some of the drugs we have developed, raising the prospect of strains of HIV that don’t respond to treatment. Plus, we don’t know what effects even the oldest drugs might have in the long term—many men who have been on antiretrovirals for over a decade have osteoporosis and failing livers; they’re suffering not from the infection but the remedy.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 