And continuing on the theme of language, Jason Kottke has found a clip of Peter Sellers demonstrating his mastery of British accents…
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Fast Film
And, of course, sometimes radio isn’t enough… Here’s a quite brilliant piece of animation that is a sort of origami of film culture. See how many films you can spot.Leave a comment
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Google Maps Nederland
Ogle Earth reports that Google Maps now has The Netherlands properly covered.Leave a comment
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Sometimes Behaves So Strangely
Here’s a link, courtesy of Crooked Timber, to a quite amazing radio broadcast dealing with the connection between language and music. There’s an interview with Diana Deutsch, a psychologist who deals with the psychology of music. I love the way the makers of the radio broadcast play with the interviews to create a soundscape that has a beauty of its own. Terrific stuff. And I have to say, it brought it back to me that for things like this, I really prefer listening to radio than to watch TV. No irrelevant flashy images – just the sparking of one’s own imagination.Leave a comment
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Not Bad For Jumped-up Apes…
I know that I come across as a misanthrope – gawd knows that as a species we do enough bad things to make that almost inescapable as my response to things. But then, every now and then, something happens to make me feel proud to be a hairless ape. This time it’s not in the area of morality or of helping relieve the burden of fellow-apes. It’s in the area of pure science – what’s out there, why is the universe the way it is – and so forth. Look at these pictures of the surface of Mars and think about the implications, That’s something to take a teensy bit of pride in. Next up, let’s find a cure for AIDS and stop global warming…One response to “Not Bad For Jumped-up Apes…”
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That took my breath away Geoff. Just what I needed. All my life I dreamed of seeing the other planets. That is fantastic, looking forward to more pictures. What a damn shame we can’t put the same ingenuity and vision in to things here on the ground.
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Meaning? I Don’t Need No Steenking Meaning…
I do despair about my species. It’s not bad enough that they feel impelled to invent a god to blame their existence on, but that even those who dismiss the idea of a god feel impelled to dream up the Goldilock’s Universe. Paul Davies says:“Somehow,” he writes, “the universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding. The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unravel the plot.”What exactly is Davies saying? His starting point is the “highly significant” fact that the universe supports people who understand its laws. “I wanted to get away from the feeling in so many scientific quarters that life and human beings are a completely irrelevant embellishment, a side issue of no significance. I don’t think we’re the centre of the universe or the pinnacle of creation, but the fact that human beings have the ability to understand how the world is put together is something that cries out for explanation.”Er, no, Paul, it doesn’t cry out for anything of the sort. It just is. If the physical laws were slightly different, we wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t have a book that you’re trying to peddle. On the other hand, in that alternative universe perhaps there would be a nexus of fningian energy with a koob to lles. Either way, I don’t buy it.2 responses to “Meaning? I Don’t Need No Steenking Meaning…”
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Why is the cosmos ideally set up to support life? I never did quite get this. Is the cosmos ideally set up to support life? Or just this life? Perhaps as you say, if it needs this, random chance has brought it about, or maybe some other form of life would have come about under other conditions?
However, I agree that Dawkins sits at the same table as the raving fundamentalist in that each has closed the possibility book. We all need to allow room for what we just don’t know (yet?). My God belief is not that of others, its not so rigidly (and so my mind) so suspiciously framed as some, it’s more an acknowledgment of things I ‘know’ that just don’t fit. One way or another, I hope to hell we get the answers sometime, someway, but I guess if not, if we are no more than mere serendipity, then it won’t matter anyway.
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You ask "why is the cosmos ideally set up to support life?" That’s a false question, in my opinion – another of the "why does a fish need a bicycle?" type. The very fact of posing it as a question implies that there is some sort of agency behind it. Whereas I see it as quite simple – life is here as a result of the cosmos being the way it is. If the laws were different, then life as we know it could not exist. That’s it. No need to imagine any sort of agency beyond the physical laws.
And I strongly disagree with you about Dawkins. To say that he "sits at the same table as the raving fundamentalist in that each has closed the possibility book" is so far from the truth of how Dawkins views the world as to beggar belief. I suggest that you pick up and read The God Delusion.
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More Fish In A Barrel
Ophelia has her doubts about limbo. It doesn’t surprise me. I find the whole concept of thirty theologians deliberating over a pile of nonsense utterly contemptible – the more so because millions of people are fooled into taking it seriously instead of treating it as the rubbish it is. Why on earth do people continue to ignore the man behind the curtain? Life is too short and too unique to be in thrall to memes that devour rationality and shit out needless guilt.Leave a comment
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Good Art, Bad Art…
Alright, I know that I’ve had a humour bypass over the subject of fashion. Put it down to bad experiences with fashionistas in the 1970s. But I really do not understand what anorexic females wearing fabric have to do with the meaning of life in any real sense. And now we have fashion that feels. A note: you have to skip forward about nine minutes into the video before you see anything that has evolved beyond paint-drying. From Boing-Boing’s panting review:Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan premiered his Spring/Summer 2007 collection this week, and it’s full of Swarovski-crystal-embellished animatronic couture. The clothes wriggle, unfold, collapse, and transform by themselves. The final act in Chalayan’s show, at left: this piece began as a dress, morphed into a hat, then rained down as a cloud of Swarovski crystal dust. Hot.
Er, not. I am reminded of Boswell’s dog. And aurally quoting the soundtrack from Forbidden Planet was depressingly gauche. At least Boing-Boing didn’t plumb the depths of this review:This was fashion addressing the subject of fashion, a dissection of our contemporary habit of recycling "vintage," and an embrace of high technology, all at the same time. It wasn’t just the uncanny sight of the self-undressing clothes (tech-genius courtesy of the team who made the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) that provided the chills. That would have left it at the level of childlike entertainment. What really gave the show a disturbing sense of wake-up-to-reality was the soundtrack. Here, the changing shapes were connected to the sounds of the twentieth century—fragments of music, trench warfare, the ranting of Hitler, aerial bombing, jet engines, the beating of helicopter rotors.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Catch yourself on, Mary, as a good friend says to me when I spout crap. It’s a fashion show, it’s not reality as the vast majority of the world knows it. You silly, silly, woman.2 responses to “Good Art, Bad Art…”
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You ever read Private Eye Geoff? My favourite part is the ‘crap-speak’ they highlight. You should send that in. They pay, and its a doozy.
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I used to read P.E. on an occasional basis. I recall that they had, in those days, "Pseud’s Corner", which sounds like the "crap-speak" whereof you speak. I think I’d have to go to Amsterdam to find a copy of P.E. now. Newsagents in this neck of the woods will never have heard of it.
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More Money Than Sense
Obsession is a strange thing. I suppose the saving grace of this is that while someone thought that a model of a fictional form of transport was worth half a million dollars, it was an obsession that did not cause the ending of another human life. But it’s still a case of someone having more money than sense.Leave a comment
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A Day Out
Our neighbour is the secretary of a horse and carriage club. The club had a day out today – a roundtrip starting at her farm and with a route going through the local woods. I positioned myself at the entrance of the wood to take some photographs. At the end of the ride, Martin and I joined them for pancakes in the barn section of the farmhouse.
2 responses to “A Day Out”
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Excellent photos again Geoff.
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Thanks. I’m quite pleased with a couple, but I need to improve my technique. It was a good day. What I appreciate about living here is that simple pleasures can also be most satisfying – walking the dog as the sun comes up, or seeing people enjoying a day out with their horse and carriage.
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Do We Laugh Or Cry?
As regular readers know, I follow the blog of Dr. John Crippen over at NHS Blog Doctor. Dr. Crippen has now found a kindred spirit in Dr. Francis Rant, whose eponymous blog – Dr. Rant – is a masterpiece of bile directed at the goons who appear to be in charge of the British National Health Service. Take this entry, for example; it’s a wonder that the good doctor doesn’t burst a blood vessel. Mind you, I think he/she is absolutely right to be pissed off at the fatuous 5-a-day initiative. Looking beyond the jolly web site reveals the true horror. Reams and reams of turgid management-speak apparently produced by dozens of brain-dead drones, who sit around murdering the English language all day. That’s where the 10 million pounds of British lottery players’ money is going. For example:The five pilot sites also carried out their own evaluations. These were mainly aimed at understanding the process for implementing the intervention. They also assessed any changes in the influences on fruit and vegetable consumption. The evaluation methods included countywide surveys, postal questionnaires, in-depth interviews with individuals and food mapping.Doncha just love it: "understand the process", "implement the intervention", "in-depth interviews", "food mapping". And then after this drivel, you suddenly realise that they can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery:Each site developed its own evaluation strategy and tools, so it is not possible to compare results of the five local evaluations.Erm, didn’t anyone think that it would have been a good idea to have been able to design the pilots so that data could have been compared? Of course, then, there would have been a single design team. This way, we got five teams (doubtless at five times the cost) all busily reinventing their own particular wheels. Dear god, words fail me.Leave a comment
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Tongland Dam
Nothing to See Here has a good entry on Tongland Dam and the hydro-electric power station that was built in the 1930s. I’ve seen the outside many times (it’s just outside Kirkcudbright where members of my family live). But I didn’t realise that you could get guided tours around the inside of the station as well. Something to do the next time I’m in that neck of the woods…Leave a comment
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Irony Is Lost On Alton Verm
I swear, you couldn’t make this up if you tried, because you would be thought of as pushing things to a ridiculous level. But no, Virginia, there are people in this world like Alton Verm, who clearly has had an irony bypass operation at some point in his existence. I particularly like the tidbit that he wants to ban the book even though he has not read it.3 responses to “Irony Is Lost On Alton Verm”
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"Other themes include conformity vs. individuality, freedom of speech and the consequences of losing it," Guess he didn’t read far enough to get this bit. It would be sad if it wasn’t so dumb.
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I’m sure it’s also escaped him that the Bible is one of the most violent tomes in the canon of literature. Sheesh.
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With a name like Alton Verm this is what transpires.http://66bricks.com/
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It’s That Man Again
Keith Olbermann with another rousing piece of oratory – this time on the many lies of President Bush.Leave a comment
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Bent
A sad coincidence. Martin Sherman’s play Bent opened in London in a revival last night, the day after Tom Bell, who played Horst in the original production, died at the age of 73.I saw the original production of Bent at the Royal Court theatre in 1979, with Tom Bell and Ian McKellan in the main roles. It was an extraordinarily powerful production and their performances were electrifying – quite literally so for one of the protagonists. The play has also been made into a film, which has its moments. McKellan appears in it, but this time in the role of Uncle Freddie, rather than as Max. There’s also an interesting turn by Mick Jagger playing a drag queen. If you can’t get to see the play’s revival, then the film is worth tracking down. Just don’t expect a jolly evening – this isn’t Cabaret. It’s much darker – a descent into Hell.One response to “Bent”
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Tom Bell died?? Ohh. I missed that. I’ve always thought him vastly underrated as an actor. He’ll be missed.
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Hang On A Minute…
…I want more than this. It’s like something shouted to me as you whizz by en route to somewhere much more interesting. I need more – come back!Leave a comment
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The Importance Of Footnotes
A lovely piece of trivia about how a footnote in a science fiction novel has spawned a whole area of scientific research. Thanks, Fred!Leave a comment
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Klaatu Barada Nikto
This is very good on a number of levels. Humour, cultural reference, security holes and so forth.(hat tip to The Bad Astronomer)Leave a comment
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