Martin Rowson hits the nail squarely on the head with his cartoon in today’s Guardian. Meanwhile, Simon Hoggart writes lightly on the topic. It’s left to Curious Hamster to put into words what Rowson put into his image – pure unadulterated bile aimed directly at a deserving target.
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Blair’s Speech
What is it with Tony Blair’s manner of speaking? Can’t he manage joined-up sentences anymore? His address at the Labour Party Conference was a prime example. That, and the fact that it was also a brilliant example of newspeak. Thankfully, Justin McKeating over at Chicken Yoghurt was able to control his growing feeling of nausea long enough to be able to give a pertinent analysis of the dear leader’s tendentious twaddle. I’m afraid I reached for the sick-bucket pretty early on.2 responses to “Blair’s Speech”
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I figured it was continuing the beatles theme, set by his wife "when I’m 64", we now had a speech on "Let it be". I’ve put a semi-large rant about it on my blog, you might want a read.Johan/xx
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Thanks Johan, like you I’m becoming pretty disenchanted with the current crop of politicians. Plus ca change…
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Gerin Oil Addiction
Richard Dawkins pens an ironical piece on gerin oil addiction in this month’s Prospect magazine. Worth reading.Leave a comment
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The PM’s Brain Is Missing…
Some of us are old enough to remember Spitting Image, with the running joke about Ronald Reagan; to whit: The President’s Brain Is Missing.Now, Curious Hamster, over at the Big Stick and a Small Carrot blog alerts us to the very real problem that perhaps the brain of the UK’s beloved Prime Minister has gone AWOL. I think he’s right to be concerned.Leave a comment
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Househunting
Phase 1 of our househunting is completed. After looking at a number of candidates, we found a house that we really liked. This week we put in a bid, and after a bidding round, our second bid was accepted by the current owners.So we move on to phase 2 now – the drawing up of the contract to purchase. That phase will be completed in a few weeks when we and the current owners sign the contract. In parallel with that, we’ll now be putting our current house on the market. Our neighbours have all said that they’ll be sorry to lose us. We suspect that part of it may be that the peace of the cul-de-sac might be disrupted if a family with children buy the place… We’ve suggested that the neighbours might like to take out an advert in the Gay Krant (the Dutch gay news magazine) offering the house to a gay couple with no children…Phase 3 will be the completion of the contract, when we formally take possession. That will be no later than the end of March, and may be before if both parties are able to complete beforehand, e.g. if our house sells quickly, and the current owners have found their next house.The house we’ve found is a converted farmhouse (a woonboederij) in Gelderland. It’s out in the country, down a lane, and has a large garden. So Martin will be able to carry on with his love of gardens, but on a much bigger scale. I suspect I’m going to be roped in to help, which is fine. Despite being in what passes for The Netherlands as "the middle of nowhere", it does have an ADSL connection – so fast Internet access is still possible. As you might imagine, this was a somewhat important consideration for me…Leave a comment
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But Is It Art?
Quote:"Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen [sic] kidney and bowel".Taken from the press release of an art project; a giant pink woollen rabbit sprawled on a mountain hilltop in Italy.
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Pointless, Incessant Barking
I’m beginning to feel like the dog in this New Yorker cartoon…(hat tip to Geoffrey K. Pullum over at the Language Log)2 responses to “Pointless, Incessant Barking”
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tsssk! Well I welcome your thoughtful posts (that’s not categorisation!)I had a comment from Colin Dutton – the Vespa photographer – saying he was hoping to get a blog started and post more pictures.
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Thanks for the kind words, Robert. I’m not stopping, but I’m likely to be blogging less. A combination of lowering levels of inspiration and a rising number of other things to be done.
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Above or Below Sea-level?
Scott, over at the Adventures – The Next Chapter blog, draws my attention to the Inhabitat web site, which I hadn’t seen before. It looks interesting, although I have reservations about the preponderance of items that seem to gush on and on about some artsy-fartsy precious piece of design faddery. However, that is balanced by items such as the one that caught Scott’s attention – a piece on whether we are reaching the "tipping point" of Global Warming.As Scott says, living below sea level does rather concentrate the mind. In our search for a new house, I’ve taken to checking the Geo-Loket Hoogtemeter (the link is on this page). It’s a handy-dandy tool for folks living in The Netherlands – just enter in your postcode, and you are told how high above sea level (or below for half of the country) you are. In the Netherlands, sea level is known as NAP (Normaal Amsterdamse Peil). I note that the house we are currently interested in sits at 19.3 metres above NAP. I know it’s not much, but every little counts, in my opinion…Leave a comment
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Just When You Thought…
… that traditional film was all but dead – killed by digital photography – comes news of a German laboratory that preserves your digital photos by copying them onto film… Oh, the irony of it all…Leave a comment
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The John Cleese Franchise
This week sees the 30th anniversary of the start of Fawlty Towers – unbelievable that it was so long ago… Meanwhile John Cleese continues to franchise himself into new areas. As well as continuing the well-trodden path of advertising (e.g. the Institute of Backup Trauma), he’s now branching out into providing the voice of car navigation systems. We’ve been driving around The Netherlands recently, being directed by the voice of John Cleese: "Turn left in 800 metres – what I would call half a mile, but since that little bastard Napoleon, we’re not allowed to say that anymore…"Leave a comment
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Apologies, Apologies
…that I haven’t been blogging much in the past week. Various items in real life have been claiming priority.On the positive side, we’ve been house-hunting again, and we are currently pursuing something that looks interesting.On the negative side, some worrying news about the health of family members.Service is likely to be reduced for a little while.Leave a comment
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The Anthropic Principle
There was an article in the Guardian earlier this week on the Anthropic Principle. This says something along the lines that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with the fact that we, as a carbon-based life form, exist at this particular place and time.Personally, I just take it as a truism that if the fundamental constants of the universe were different, then we wouldn’t be here, so the fact that we are here is simply a result of the particular values of the fundamental constants. But then I read the readers’ letters in the Guardian today, where apparently some people believe that the Anthropic Principle is evidence for the existence of a god doing the tweaking of the values – the so-called Fine-Tuned Universe. I just don’t see the connection between the two. In fact, it seems to me that the Anthropic Principle actually undermines the proposition for Intelligent Design (which basically boils down to GodDidIt). Certainly, I see no evidence for it.Leave a comment
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Public Art
I see that Marc Quinn’s new work of sculpture: Alison Lapper Pregnant has been unveiled in Trafalgar Square. The work, like its subject, is pretty uncompromising and forthright. I like it. While some may have felt uncomfortable about such a public depiction of disability, I would merely draw their attention to the one-armed, one-eyed figure who is also present in Trafalgar Square, standing on top of Nelson’s Column.Leave a comment
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They Work For You
At last, the European Parliament has launched a new web site, which promises to make the process of the parliament much more transparent and accountable to the likes of you and me. There’s even live video streaming of the debates. Now, where’s my bag of popcorn?Leave a comment
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Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki is a brilliant animator. He’s responsible for films such as Sprited Away and Princess Mononoke. He rarely gives interviews, but there’s a good one in today’s Guardian. Miyazaki comes across as a slightly pessimistic observer of the human condition. No rose-tinted spectacles for him, but a clarity of vision and feeling for human foibles that deepen the impact of his characters, not turn them into one-dimensional Disneyesque cartoons.Leave a comment
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Advice for a Manifesto
Philip Pullman, writing in today’s Guardian, offers some ironic advice to the UK’s Conservative party on how to get votes with a new manifesto. It’s good advice, too; I’d vote for a party that implemented his ideas. Unfortunately, the old ideals of noblesse oblige, service and looking after each other in society seem to have been swept away. Thatcher started the rot, and we’ve all been gleefully stoking the fire ever since.Leave a comment
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Platform For Change
Chris Clarke over at Creek Running North reminds us that there are a number of anniversaries associated with September 11. In 1973, September 11 marked the day that President Salvador Allende of Chile was overthrown in a coup backed by the US. Clarke writes movingly in his post of the last days of Victor Jara.Having read that post, I happened to look up at the bookshelves above my computer monitor, and there in sight is a copy of Platform for Change – a book by the cyberneticist Stafford Beer published in 1975. Beer was invited by Allende to implement his ideas on operational research and cybernetics into a real-time computerised system – Cybersyn – to run the Chilean economy. The coup, led by Pinochet, dismantled the system, "disappeared" 3,000 Chileans and imprisoned and tortured 27,000 more.Stafford Beer ends his book with an ironic comment on a lecture he gave in February 1973 on the Chilean experiment. He repeats unchanged, apart from the typographic layout on the page, a quotation from that lecture given seven months before the coup:It appears to me that the government did notanticipate the full vindictiveness with whichthe rich world would react to its actions,which I emphasize have – so far – beenperfectly legal.At any rate, a true resolution of the verypotent conflicts in Chilean society is notdiscernible within the mounting instability,and may be long postponed.But I consider that this is largely a phenomenonof the cybernetics of international power :you could say that the Chilean people have notbeen given a chance.They are being systematically isolated behindthose beautiful Andes mountains, and are in astate of siege.Leave a comment
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Am I Real?
Jason Striegel is a blogger. He’s recently come to the conclusion that in this wired world, he’s unable to convince some people that he’s a human being. The Turing Test as seen through the Looking Glass, perhaps?Leave a comment
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Brave New World – Same Old Crap
The Guardian has launched its new look today, complete with thrusting new articles to boldly go where the Grauniad has never gone before. Unfortunately, one of these articles is a woeful interview with Michael Behe, the guru of Intelligent Design. The interviewer, John Sutherland, clearly either hasn’t a clue that ID is tosh, or willingly pats easy questions to Behe and sits back while Behe spouts disinformation or lies.Thankfully, PZ Myers is on hand to shine the torch of truth into the depressingly dank holes of this interview.Note to Guardian: do try and keep up…Leave a comment
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Surely You Jest?
The news comes that Oxford Brookes University is planning to bestow an honorary degree on Jeremy Clarkson for his "contribution to learning and society". This strikes me as new definitions of the words "learning" and "society" that I have not heard before. The man’s a loudmouthed buffoon, surely?Leave a comment
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