These three forthcoming books are now on my list of books to read.
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Such An Interesting Shade…
2 responses to “Such An Interesting Shade…”
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These two are obviously a couple. Another great photo.
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Could be a couple, but I rather thought of them as "the Bewlay Brothers"…
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The Wine Cellar
One thing that we do not have here in our new farmhouse home is a cellar. And that’s a pity, since it would be useful to have a nice cool cellar in order to store our wine. We’ve toyed with getting a temperature-controlled wine cabinet, but then the spiral wine cellar seems eminently more sexy. If the Premium Bonds come up, then the spiral gets sunk…Leave a comment
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God Moves In Mysterious Ways
If that’s a "gift from God", then I’m rather thankful that I’m an atheist.2 responses to “God Moves In Mysterious Ways”
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It’s a hobby, cheaper than fishing, less complicated than macrame.
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Snicker… 🙂
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Time Fountain
Ben Goldacre, over at Bad Science, draws our attention to the latest incarnation of strobe lighting illuminating a fall of water droplets. I remember seeing an example of this forty years ago using ordinary lighting, but I think the UV LEDS and the fluorescent water is a nice modern touch.Leave a comment
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Dance, Monkey, Dance
This video is a small voice of sanity in an insane world. Go and watch it, now.Leave a comment
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Accidents Waiting To Happen
I agree that these ads by the Red Cross in Canada are striking and thought-provoking. I just can’t help feeling, though, that one day they are going to cause an accident by themselves. Some poor schmuk is going to be at the top of the stairs and rush down, thinking about helping the "person" lying spreadeagled at the bottom. Halfway down, they will trip, fall headlong, and break their necks…Leave a comment
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Wang Qingsong
Extraordinary photographs. I’d like to see them full size, spread out on a gallery wall. Watch the video of the shooting of the Archeologist – it’s almost a work of art in its own right…One response to “Wang Qingsong”
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That was amazing. The archaelogist video especially. I loved the bit when he was done shooting and the ‘bodies’ all got up and poured out of the pit. I love the surreal style of his photos. Thanks Geoff.
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My Beautiful Restaurant
The Queen was directed by Stephen Frears, who also made My Beautiful Laundrette over 20 years ago. The film, with its story of a gay love affair between a British Pakistani and a white racist, raised a frisson or two, not to say outrage, in the British Asian communities. Now comes Nina’s Heavenly Delights, directed by Pratibha Parmar. It too contains a gay relationship, a lesbian one this time, and one that is less angst-ridden than that between Omar and Johnny. Times they may be a-changing. This article in today’s Guardian about the film and the reality for some gay British Asians gives me hope for the future.Leave a comment
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The Queen
I’m no monarchist, but I do want to see The Queen, and reading this review makes me want to see it even more.Leave a comment
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Living In The Country
We’re into the second week of having the work done on the kitchen and other parts of the house. That includes renewing the electricity distribution panel in the meter cupboard. Tonight, I was seated in my usual place (at the computer) and heard scratching sounds coming from the meter cupboard in the room next door. On investigation, I discovered the culprit…
Not sure how he/she got there, but it was safely transported back outside to the garden.Leave a comment
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Two Fathers
Typical, I live in the Netherlands, but I discover this video of a boy singing about his home life via a blogger in America. Thanks, Terrance, and the song’s not bad either.Leave a comment
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Like Fish In A Barrel
The wonderful duo of Penn & Teller on religious icons. Never underestimate the gullibility of humans. And, we have a worthy successor to Dr. Pierre Barbet. Step forward, Fred Zugibe! Your sterling work to prove the authenticity of the Turin Shroud will not go unremarked.Leave a comment
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Dilbert On Success
Ever since Scott Adams (the man behind Dilbert) showed himself to be a wanker over Intelligent Design I’ve not bothered to follow his cartoons any more. Still, Dilbert pops up from time to time. This cartoon was commented on today in Language Log. Adams is mining the usual stereotypes, but I was interested to see that his efforts are pretty weak when compared to the great James Thurber.Leave a comment
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Matmos Meets Turing
I came across an article in Seed Magazine today about the music duo Matmos. I hadn’t heard of them before, but was immediately intrigued. First, because of their name – the Matmos was the living liquid underneath the city of Sogo in the film Barbarella. The film is a cult favourite of mine. Second, because they have created a musical tribute to Alan Turing, and used, as the basis, recordings of an actual Enigma machine in action. The result can be heard here. Fascinating.In addition, there’s also a video lecture given by the duo at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute on this piece.Leave a comment
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Work for Google
Google is trying out a way of assigning keywords ("tags") to online images. It asks people to participate in a game of labelling images. I note that you don’t get paid for taking part, even though presumably you are driving up the quality of Google’s search, and hence presumably making the shareholders very happy. At least with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk you can get paid for your work…
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Maupin Interviewed
There’s a nice interview of Armistead Maupin in today’s Guardian. As well of the man himself, you also get a sense of how he was shaped by the city that he lives in: San Francisco. It reminded me of the time (in 1995) when we were there and went on the walking tour of the Castro that was organised by Trevor Hailey. She used the tour to give our little group a fascinating history lesson on the society and characters of the city through the span of a century.
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Technical Refresh
If you’ve been trying out the Beta 2 release of Microsoft Office 2007, you might be interested to know that a technical refresh of the software will be released tomorrow. If you are also playing around with Vista RC1, then you definitely need this technical refresh.Leave a comment
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Murder In Amsterdam
Here’s a book review that makes me want to go out and buy the book immediately (or, this being the Internet age, go to Amazon and click). The book in question is Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.The book gets a glowing review. Interesting that Buruma is another observer who sees characters such as Bouyeri (van Gogh’s murderer) as self-loathing losers. As the reviewer (Claire Berlinski) writes:Buruma finds him virtually the embodiment of the archetype described by the German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger as "the radical loser": young, talentless, self-pitying; a man whose loathing of himself could be converted with only scant coaxing into a violent loathing of others. (This character was also foreshadowed, of course, over and over again, in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.) Bouyeri was pudgy. He was no good at sports. Dutch women snubbed him. His parents, bewildered immigrants from a remote village in the Moroccan Rif mountains, appeared to him whipped, subservient, humiliated.The review itself is worth reading – it looks as if Buruma has captured aspects of multicultural Dutch society and pinned them like butterflies onto his specimen board for us to gaze at and ponder on. They are not always a pleasant sight. And Buruma apparently offers no solutions. But understanding what we are dealing with is the first step in the right direction.One response to “Murder In Amsterdam”
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[…] Recently, I mentioned the new book by Ian Buruma. I bought a copy and have just finished it. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance is every bit as good as I hoped for. Buruma interviewed a wide range of people in Dutch society for the book, from all sides and walks of life. The result is a cross-section of voices that illuminate the scene and show that there are many strands of attitude and belief. […]
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The Moral Sense Test
Want to volunteer for some research being done into the nature of human moral judgement? Then take the Moral Sense Test. I’m intrigued, by the way, by that description on the web site that the testing is being done on human moral judgement. It makes me fantasise that someone in the next department is testing the moral judgment of non-humans…Leave a comment
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