The French. Doncha just love them? They’ve given us paté de foie gras. They’ve given us Debussy, Ravel, Berlioz and Bizet. They’ve even given us the guillotine. And now they’ve given us the SpermCube. OK, now I’ve drawn the line.
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Simplicity
Don Norman has a good article over at his blog about simplicity in design, and how we are often ambivalent about it. Most people, including me, ask for good design to make things simple and effective to use, but when push comes to shove, we often buy things that have lots of bells and whistles because it looks more impressive.I’m not sure that I really fall into that group – I really do prefer to buy something that does the job with the minimum of fuss. For example, I still have an old-fashioned Nokia mobile phone – it can’t play music or take pictures and I have no intention of trading it in for a newer model. My hi-fi is an ancient Quad, with the absolute minimum of controls; no fancy graphic equalisers or other such nonsense. And we still have the simple toaster described by Norman – one knob to adjust the degree of toasting (which hasn’t moved in years), and a lever to lower the bread into the toaster. I mean, really, what more do you need?Update: Here’s an article about what Philips think about Simplicity. I’m not convinced, particularly when I read guff such as: "using creative chaos to affect lasting change". Pass the sick bucket, Alice. BTW, the comments on the story make interesting reading too. A MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) that has 2 hours as a data point? My advice to Philips would be to improve the quality of the product before marketing Simplicity.Leave a comment
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Oops…
Well, it’s in the nature of experiments that they sometimes go wrong… Today’s performance of Cosi fan Tutte has been cancelled because the computer-controlled stage set has failed… Bloody computers again…It reminds me of the time we saw Peter Pan at the National Theatre in London. The same thing happened to the huge stage set of Peter’s island – it refused to revolve, and the performance was stopped for an hour while the technicians sweated blood trying to get it moving again…Leave a comment
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Culture for the Masses
Interesting experiment today in The Netherlands. The Dutch National Opera are performing Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte in the Stopera in Amsterdam. The performance is also being transmitted live on Dutch TV, to a number of cinemas throughout the Netherlands, and over the Internet. The other two operas in the Da Ponte trilogy will be performed in the same way over the coming weeks.Leave a comment
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Plus ça Change
A couple of weeks back I mentioned a couple of books, published in 1917, that divided girls and boys into traditional groups. The girls were supposed to like needlecraft and housekeeping, while the boys got to make things, or mess about with electricity.Here we are, 90 years later, and things don’t seem to have changed much at all. Sigh.Leave a comment
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The Active Denial System
And talking about denial, here is news about a new weapon, which has been given the odd name of the Active Denial System. Steven Poole over at Unspeak points out some of the other Orwellian language used by the military to describe it. As he says, the definition of a non-lethal weapon seems to be one which only kills people by accident.Doubtless it won’t be long before the trickledown effect ensures that the weapon becomes available to criminals and security forces. Then we can probably look forward to reading about it being used to restrain a student trying to gain entry to his university library like this – tasers will be soo last century…Leave a comment
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Chalk and Cheese
For those of you who are not Dutch, but have a passing interest in the outcome of the recent Dutch elections, here’s a useful article about the process that is being followed to form the next Dutch government. The problem that we have is that the parties involved in forming the coalition hold radically opposing views, so don’t expect a new government to be announced any time soon.Oh, and yesterday I had a telephone call from a civil servant at the local townhall to tell me that my application to become a Dutch citizen has been approved. So I can trot down there next week, sign a few papers and pay my 133 Euros and then I’ll have dual nationality. Apparently there’s even going to be some sort of ceremony held the day after my birthday in January to mark the fact. Doubtless there’ll be a little group of disparate people gathered in front of the mayor, who will deliver a little speech at us, followed by coffee and cakes. All very homely, and typically Dutch.2 responses to “Chalk and Cheese”
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Brilliant! Have a slice for me.
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Gelert, thanks. I’ll probably take the camera along to capture the event for posterity. Watch this space.
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Scary Mary
Imagine Disney’s Mary Poppins as a horror film… This is what the trailer might look like. Very well done indeed.(hat tip to Not Saussure)Leave a comment
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In Denial
I watched the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson ask George Bush if he was in denial about Iraq. Bush’s answer reminded me of a fish flopping at the end of a fishing line. I see that the Guardian’s Simon Hoggart had a similar reaction, only with him it seemed like a dead fish twitching on the fishmonger’s slab.But the really grisly thing, which makes the laughter die on the lips, is the reality that Bush and Blair, and the rest of their crew, have given birth to in Iraq. And it’s not as though the results were not foreseen before the invasion. We seem an awful long way from "Mission Accomplished" now.Leave a comment
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I’m Melting, I’m Melting…
Nice article in the Guardian today about Frank L. Baum and his Wizard of Oz stories. It’s written by Gregory Maguire, who knows a thing or two himself about taking the traditional motifs from fairytales and writing his own idiosyncratic take on them (Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and Mirror Mirror). The excuse for the article is the fact that a brand new print of the Wizard of Oz is winging its way into British cinemas next week. And of course, the Judy Garland film remains one of the classics of cinema. Even today, it stands up well.Leave a comment
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Dividing By Zero
Sometimes I feel thankful that I managed to be educated in school without being exposed to either too many crackpot ideas on how children should be educated or too many crackpot ideas, period. It would seem that there’s a rise in the latter in particular (the former will probably always be with us). For example, the attempt, now spreading to the UK, on trying to teach Intelligent Design as though it were a science. But here comes another, a real beauty. I’ll hand you over to Dr. Ben Goldacre to take up the story. I note that Dr. Anderson is from the University of Reading’s Computer Science department. I am now also thankful that I went to the University of Liverpool’s Computer Science department all those years ago…Leave a comment
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Gifts To Avoid
In the spirit of trying to be helpful this Christmas, here is a gift that I most certainly would not like to receive, nor will I be inflicting it on others.Leave a comment
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Peake and Dickens
Giornale Nuovo has a marvellous entry celebrating the art of Mervyn Peake. It uses the illustrations that Peake did for a projected edition of Dicken’s Bleak House, which, alas, never came to be.Leave a comment
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The Antikythera Mechanism – Part II
Further to my mention of the Antikythera Mechanism, here’s a link to the article in Nature about it.One response to “The Antikythera Mechanism – Part II”
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[…] I have mentioned the astounding Antikythera mechanism before, but here’s something really brilliant: it’s been reconstructed using Lego. What I like about the video is that it demonstrates how the various component parts work together and end up as a machine for predicting solar eclipses. Quite wonderful. […]
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Something on the Brain
Carl Zimmer, over at The Loom, reminds us of his fascination with parasites. In this case, the Cordyceps fungus, which takes over the brain of an ant. David Attenborough narrates. I was particularly struck by the fact that other ants, on discovering one of their fellows suffering from the onset of symptoms of Cordyceps infection will carry away bodily the unfortunate victim to a safe distance beyond the colony, so that the spores will not infect the rest of the colony.Leave a comment
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The War On Christmas
No, not the rather tiresome complaints by cultural conservatives in the US complaining about the secularisation of Christmas, or indeed the Archbishop of York complaining about the systematic erosion of Christianity from public life.Nope, here in The Netherlands we have our own particular war on Christmas. To be exact, it’s a war between two versions of St. Nicholas. Ladies and gennelmen, I give you, in the red corner: Sinterklaas; and in the other red corner, the non-Dutch challenger: Santa Claus.Sinterklaas is celebrated on the 5th December. But recent years have seen a blurring with the non-traditional usurper figure of Santa Claus. This year, the town of Noordwijk, instead of holding a traditional parade of Sinterklaas with his retinue of Zwarte Pieten (Black Peters), had a parade with Santa Claus. Cue 1,400 protest mails, and the disapproval of the Vereniging tot Behoud van Sinterklaas (the Association for the Preservation of Sinterklaas).Actually, I have a sneaking support for Sinterklaas over Santa Claus. It is something unique to The Netherlands and Belgium, and it will be a pity to see it being pushed aside by something that is just the same as everywhere else. That’s just boring. And I admit I take a gleeful pleasure in the political incorrectness of the Zwarte Pieten.Leave a comment
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