Year: 2009
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Photos of the Year
Here are my photos from 2009 that I am most pleased with. They’re no great shakes from a professional point of view, but I am happy with them…
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Bertrand Russell on God
Funny how we are saying the same things 50 years later, and the message still hasn’t sunk in… -
There and Back Again
A trip from the Himalayas to the furthest known reaches of the universe and back again in six minutes. Wonderful. -
A Queen’s Christmas Message
Bette Bourne delivers her alternative Christmas message. Merry Christmas, Bette. -
Alma
One of the traditions of the BBC is to have a ghost story at Christmas. I don’t know whether there will be one this year, but here’s a short animation that seems to fit the bill. You just know from very early on that it’s not going to end well… -
Getting Colder…
We’re having a cold snap at the moment, and some of the visitors to the garden have noticed the bird feeder…
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The Unconsidered Life
A short video of the philosopher AC Grayling talking about the need for critical thinking, and being a well-informed citizen of the world. -
Storm
I’ve mentioned it before, but here’s another version of Tim Minchin’s wonderful poem "Storm"… -
Depressed? – Very!
Ben Goldacre has another excellent Bad Science column – this week looking at Climate Science – and the truly depressing vile mixture of denialism and conspiracy theories that’s swirling around it. As Ben says, "the same rhetorical themes [are] re-emerging in climate change foolishness that you see in aids denialism, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists". Add to that the fact that Zombie arguments are stalking the land of public discourse in droves:‘arguments which survive to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times they are shot down. “Homeopathy worked for me”, and the rest. Zombie arguments survive, they get up and live again, immortal and resistant to all refutation, because they do not live or die by the normal standards of mortal arguments. There’s a huge list of them at realclimate.org, with refutations. There are huge lists of them everywhere. It makes no difference’.I get very depressed when I read the comments of people who constantly reiterate these Zombie arguments. Rationality has seemingly gone out the window with them. Mind you, I have also little hope that Copenhagen will produce anything of value. At best, it will be a case of too little, too late. Not that this will affect me much – I’ll almost certainly be dead before the more drastic effects of climate change will impinge on me. But my great-nephew is almost twelve, and there seems little doubt that his life will be greatly affected by the changes. He and others of his generation will be quite justified in cursing us for being people who wilfully stuck their heads in the sand and partying like there was no tomorrow. Which, when you think about it, might well turn out to be the case, at least for civilisation as we know it. -
Pretentious? – Moi?
Olympus UK have launched their new PEN camera with a series of video adverts. You can see them here – click on the video tab to choose between them (once you’ve pressed play to activate it).I have to say that I’m in the camp that finds the Kevin Spacey adverts pretentious twaddle; more evidence that Marketing people should be first up against the wall, come the revolution. However, the ‘Stop Motion’ advert is a little gem. It also tells you absolutely nothing about the camera, but as a work of art, it shines. -
Foreign Influence At Work
Another report in The Observer today about the anti-gay bigotry that is growing in Uganda. The report also makes it clear that Uganda is not the only country in Africa where gay people are proscribed – there are a total of 37 countries where gay sex is illegal, in some cases punishable by death. In the meantime, ordinary Ugandans have to tread very carefully. -
‘Tis a Puzzlement…
…that in the 21st Century Archbishop Williams can still state, in all seriousness, that he and his followers should not be seen as "oddities". But, y’are, Blanche, y’are – and what are these awful things that I’m supposed to be doing to you… -
The Running Man Vanishes
Here’s a nicely-performed illusion by Ilya Larionov. He claims that there are no camera tricks, and I think he’s telling the truth. This can be done by skill alone – oh and having a fourth person to help out…Hat tip to Richard Wiseman. -
What Will Happen…
… when the bill becomes law?I’m talking about a particularly pernicious piece of legislation that is before the Ugandan parliament. If this is passed, it becomes possible for gays to be sentenced to death in Uganda. People like this man. -
The Twelve Days of Christmas
An updated version from Carol Ann Duffy. God, she’s good. -
Windows 7 – The Camel In Action
The old saw says that "a horse is a camel designed by committee". When I first saw the default background that comes with Windows 7, I had to agree with Peter Bright – it is simply god-awful. The first thing I did with the three new installations of Windows 7 in our household was to banish the default background to the great bit-bucket in the sky.I wondered how on earth something so bad could have actually ended up being shipped by Microsoft. Here’s the answer. A video of Denise Trabona, who is a Senior UX (User Experience) Lead on the Windows Design and Research Team, talking about the process that ultimately led up to the choice of the default background.The pragmatic Dutch have a very good word to describe this process: mierenneuken. Literally, ant-fucking. The sort of nit-picking that loses sight of the wood for the trees, the inability to recognise that despite all the huffing and puffing over miniscule choices, what you have ended up with is simply not very good at all. -
Books of the Decade
I see that the Guardian has published its list of the 50 “books of the decade” with comments from a variety of authors and critics. It’s worth reading their comments for insight.
Here’s just the list – bolded titles are the ones that I’ve read. Only 15 out of the fifty, not a particularly good score, I’m afraid. However, nothing would ever persuade me to read anything written by Dan Brown – “Bestselling” does not guarantee quality; it’s a logical fallacy. Still, there are definitely some titles here that I would like to add to my reading list; Wolf Hall, for example.
2000
✒ White Teeth, by Zadie Smith (Penguin)
✒ No Logo, by Naomi Klein (Fourth Estate)
✒ The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown)
✒ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers (Picador)
✒ The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman (Scholastic)
✒ How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, by Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus)
✒ Experience, by Martin Amis (Vintage)2001
✒ The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (Harper Perennial)
✒ Atonement, by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)
✒ Austerlitz, by WG Sebald (Penguin)
✒ A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, by Rachel Cusk (Fourth Estate)2002
✒ Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-Wage USA, by Barbara Ehrenreich (Granta)
✒ London Orbital: A Year Walking Around the M25, by Iain Sinclair (Penguin)
✒ Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters (Virago)
✒ Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and the Story of a Return, by Marjane Satrapi (Jonathan Cape)2003
✒ The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (Corgi)
✒ Landing Light, by Don Paterson (Faber)
✒ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon (Vintage)
✒ The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury)
✒ Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss (Profile)2004
✒ The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (WW Norton)
✒ Small Island, by Andrea Levy (Headline)
✒ The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador)
✒ Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell (Sceptre)
✒ Being Jordan, by Katie Price (John Blake Publishing)
✒ Earth: An Intimate History, by Richard Fortey (Vintage)2005
✒ Freakonomics, by Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner (Penguin)
✒ Untold Stories, by Alan Bennett (Faber)
✒ The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (HarperCollins)
✒ Postwar, by Tony Judt (Pimlico)
✒ Saturday, by Ian McEwan (Vintage)2006
✒ The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (Black Swan)
✒ The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Picador)
✒ The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright (Penguin)
✒ The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery (Penguin)
✒ The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock (Penguin)2007
✒ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling (Bloomsbury)
✒ The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)
✒ The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries (Arrow)
✒ Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Harper Perennial)
✒ The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid (Penguin)2008
✒ Change We Can Believe In, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama (Canongate)
✒ The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross (Harper Perennial)
✒ Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill (Harper Perennial)
✒ The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins (Vintage)
✒ Home, by Marilynne Robinson (Virago)
✒ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes (Harper Press)2009
✒ Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)
✒ 2666, by Roberto Bolaño (Picador)
✒ Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín (Viking) -
The Wonder of Parasites
I’ve blogged about my wonder concerning Toxoplasma gondii before. I’ve also blogged about Robert Sapolsky before. It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to be able to point you towards a video of Robert Sapolsky talking about Toxoplasma gondii. This is literally mind-blowing stuff. Go watch it.
Shiver when you consider the fact of the interest from the US military in this parasite. And then wonder if a future autopsy of Jeremy Clarkson will reveal that his brain was riddled with Toxoplasma gondii cysts. I think the likelihood is high.
There’s also a section at the end, which is not reflected in the transcript, about research on premature ageing. That is also worth listening to and reflecting upon.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 