This is a good, and atmospheric, use of Flash technology.
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How’s Your Memory?
In this month’s issue, Wired asks the question: "Are our memories suffering from our reliance on gadgets?". I think it’s certainly true that, like a muscle that doesn’t get exercised, certain aspects of memory will atrophy. So, if you have a mobile phone with all your numbers in it, you are likely to rely on the mobile, and not your memory.
By way of illustration, my mother, right up until her death a few days short of her 97th birthday, had a prodigious memory for telephone numbers. She could recall telephone numbers with no problem. This was almost certainly the result of being a telephone operator in the 1920s. Her job exercised that particular "muscle" in her memory – number memorising and recall – and she never lost the knack.
On a related ability, Isaac Asimov wrote a nice short story about this called "The Feeling of Power". Go and read it. I learned my "Times Table" in school – we didn’t have calculators in my day. I wonder if the facility for mental arithmetic is quite so well-developed in the average schoolchild today?
(hat tip to Mind Hacks)
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Microsoft Office To Use Open File Formats
It’s been a long time coming, but finally Microsoft has announced that the default file formats for Microsoft Office will be non-proprietary and open. They will be based on XML, and as well as being supported in the forthcoming Office 12, Microsoft will also release add-ons to make them usable by Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003.
I remember asking Microsoft for non-proprietary file formats back in the early 1990s – in the days when I was a customer representative in the X/Open consortium (now The Open Group). At the time, we thought such formats would probably be based on HTML, but it wasn’t until the advent of XML that the dream really became a practical possibility.
Microsoft sort of toyed with the idea of XML-based formats in Office 2003, but as Owen Allan points out in his blog, a) they aren’t the default file formats and b) they create huge files "Some word documents that were saved in the XML file format were so large that they had their own weather systems".
Channel 9 has a video interview with Brian Jones, a Program Manager for Microsoft Word, talking about the new format. He also has an entry on his own blog talking about the new format, with pointers to more technical information.
With all the hoopla going on about this, I do find it interesting that no-one from the Microsoft camp seems to have referred to the Open Document Format initiative of the EU Commission. Even Microsoft’s press release claims that the reason they are doing this is to make it "easier for companies to adopt Office 12". Not a mention by Steve Sinofsky about the ODF initiative, despite that fact that he has been in correspondence with the EU Commission about it. I suppose that he didn’t want to admit that European governments, in particular, are likely to require open document formats as a basis for doing business with them.
The ODF initiative led to the setting up of a technical committee in OASIS to develop an XML-based Open Document Format. They delivered version 1.0 of the specification last month. I’m sure the timing of the me-too Microsoft announcement is pure coincidence. So now we will have two XML-based open document formats going forward. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to build a bridge between them.
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Brainfood
Wow – get it while it’s hot. Audio streaming of events from the Hay Festival.
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The Dutch Referendum
Over at A Fistful of Euros is a good summary of the background to the Dutch Referendum on the EU Constitution.
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Commenting on The Science Survey
Following up on my post pointing out The Science Survey, I think it’s only right to tell you that now four of the survey respondents offer their thoughts on What is Science For?
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Fashion for the Feebleminded
In the long gone days of my youth, I was romantically involved with a young man who moved in the circles of the Fashion Industry, Fashion Designers and their clotheshorses, sorry, models. I always found it a very bizarre world, and still do.
To be sure, every now and then I see a garment and think that it has beauty of its own, but most of the time I see things like this and wonder WTF they are thinking of. Even more bizarre to think that there will be people willing to pay good money for this.
Of course, moving further along the spectrum of bizarrity, we reach items such as living works of art, such as Leigh Bowery (although he’s now dead, alas). And then, strangely, I find I have respect for people such as him. I need to analyse this a bit more.
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The Brig
Echidne, over on her blog, posts a powerful essay, and asks some thought-provoking questions about the long term impact of the abuse of power.
2 responses to “The Brig”
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Hi there, i thnk your webpage is lovely! The place you live looks amazing and you and your husband look so cute!
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Thanks, GMfan10 – I’ll tell Martin that you think he looks cute! I’m sure he will be delighted. 🙂
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The Holy Womb of Antioch
I think that Kameron Hurley has just pre-empted what I will probably think of Revenge of the Sith. I am not sitting here with bated breath waiting to rush and see it. In fact, I think I’ll wait for five years and pick it out of the bargain bin at my local DVD store.
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The Meatrix
Along the lines of Store Wars, which I pointed to the other day, I found another piece of advocacy that uses humour and popular culture to put across its message. This time it’s The Meatrix – a spoof on The Matrix – to put the case against factory farming methods.
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The Gay Divide
I’ve just noticed that I missed what looks to have been an interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 last Monday night: The Gay Divide. From the BBC’s web page:
Throughout the Moslem world homosexuality is a taboo, punishable in several countries by death. On the West Bank and Gaza women or men who have sex with people of the same sex face imprisonment and torture. They are also rejected by their families and the rest of society. Several hundred Palestinian gays and lesbians have fled to Israel.
Because they’re Palestinian, they’re illegal and cannot readily obtain asylum in Israel. But having tried in Israel, it is virtually impossible to obtain asylum in another country, as you can only apply for asylum once.
Fortunately, the BBC allows for the re-hearing of many of its programmes via the Internet now, and there’s a link on the web page to the audio file. I’m off to listen to it – I suggest that you do the same.
Update: Here’s a link to the story on the Radio Netherlands web. It also has a link to the audio story.
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Baroness Blatch
I see that Emily May Blatch, Baroness Blatch of Hinchingbrooke has died. I know I’m being uncharitable, but I can’t say I’m sorry to see her go. She willingly took up the torch of homophobia and anti-gay prejudice from Baroness Young following her death in 2002.
Reading the words of these Baronesses in the records of House of Lords in debates over, for example, Section 28, is a salutary experience. However, bit by bit we move into the 21st Century, and hopefully towards more enlightened views. Though I fear the process is slow and easily reversed.
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Bunny Suicides
I’m just tying a couple of threads together here.
Scaryduck has another of his laugh-out-loud posts today. This time on Bunny Suicides. And that made me remember Andy Riley’s The Book of Bunny Suicides.
As Kenny Everett used to say: "All in the best possible taste!"
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Physicists Examine The Eurovision Song Contest
I missed this when it was news earlier this month, but a group of physicists at Oxford University have published a paper on Connections, cliques and compatability between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The paper is quite interesting, but what has been really fascinating are the howls of anguish from social scientists who have got quite huffy about physicists muscling in on their turf. As Henry Kissinger is reputed to have said: “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
Really, life is too short…
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The EU Constitution – Part Two
So the French have given a resounding thumbs-down to the Constitution. I suppose it was only to be expected. I have a feeling that it got caught in the crossfire of at least two opposing groups: those patriotic French who thought that it was anti-France, and those who thought that it did not go far enough.
I expect also that we’ll get a repeat performance this week in The Netherlands, and probably for much the same reasons. Although I said last week that I would vote Yes! (that is if I were to be allowed to vote), on reflection, perhaps it’s not as straightforward as I made it appear. I’ve been reading the full text (available as a PDF from this page). The first thing to say is that it is clearly a camel (i.e. a horse designed by a committee) and overlong (probably because it’s a camel). There are good things in it, but there are some things in it that prickle the socialist hairs on the back of my neck – e.g. the uncritical extent to which privatisation is believed to be a "good thing".
I came across this entry on Steeph’s Blog about the constitution, and I agree with his list of "good things" and "bad things". His conclusion was that the constitution doesn’t go far enough, and hence he will vote No. I suppose I’m more of a "let’s take what we can and work further on it afterwards" sort of person, but I can see where he’s coming from.
Who knows, a resounding "No" vote may indeed make the politicians wake up and address the shortcomings, but somehow, I’m cynical enough to think that they ain’t going to do any radical surgery.
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Berlin Cabaret Songs
I’ve been thinking about possible choices for music for boats in the Amsterdam Canal Parade in August. The line of thought took me back to the Berlin of the 1920s, and the music performed in the cabarets of the time. If you’ve seen the musical or the film “Cabaret“, then you’ll be aware of how some of the songs had political undertones. However, Kander and Ebb’s songs in Cabaret were only a homage to the real thing.
The real songs from that time were often bitingly satirical, or revolutionary in intent. So much so that the Nazis banned them as “degenerate music” (entartete musik). As Kara Kellar Bell writes:
Some of them make fun of Hitler himself, as well as the Nazis in general. They also criticise the Weimar Republic, the ban on abortion, sexual hypocrisy, homophobia, and the general dishonesty and corruption of the culture.
Kellar Bell is reviewing a collection of these songs put together by Ute Lemper. There are actually two versions of this collection: the songs sung in English (the one reviewed by Kellar Bell) and the songs sung in the original German. Whichever one you listen to, the power of these songs, magnificently sung by Lemper, comes roaring through.
My favourite has to be The Lavender Song by Spoliansky and Schwabach. An extract:
We’re not afraid to be queer and different
if that means hell–well hell, we’ll take the chance
they’re all so straight uptight upright and rigid
they march in lockstep, we prefer to dance
We see a world of romance and of pleasure
all they can see is sheer banality
Lavender nights are our greatest treasure
where we can be just who we want to be.There’s still a frisson in the opening of the third verse:
Round us all up, send us away
that’s what you’d really like to doBecause of course, that’s just what the Nazis started to do when they came to power.
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Blogging a Viral Pandemic
Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to get across ideas. On that theme, and bringing it right up to date, this week’s issue of Nature has a go at predicting what a viral pandemic might be like by telling it in the form of a blog.
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Human Changing
I’ve just come across another Blog called WorldChanging – which looks at the ongoing interactions between human culture, science, nature and politics – a heady and dangerous mix, if ever I saw one!
I started with Human Changing – the record of a conversation between James Hughes, Ramez Naam and Joel Garreau, exploring the implications of human enhancement technologies. Fascinating stuff.
Of course, the whole conversation is from a Western perspective – it would be interesting to have some views from a radically different culture that is likely to have the will and the capability to implement some of the GRIN (Genetic, Robotic, Information and Nano-) technologies – i.e. China.
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Whipping therapy cures depression and suicide crises
I would like to think that this was a joke – but it’s been reported in Pravda – so it must be true. Remind me not to get too close to Dr. Speransky and his colleagues. I’m not convinced that he has my best welfare at heart.
Dr. Speransky has been in the news before. Improbable Research reports that he was mentioned in a paper on parapsychology a decade ago, when he was studying "anomalous communications" (read: ESP) in white mice.
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Robert Sheckley – Back in the US
One piece of good news: Robert Sheckley is now back home. As I reported here, Sheckley had been taken ill in the Ukraine and was unable to pay the medical bills for the Kiev hospital, or for a flight back home to the US.
An item in today’s Russian News & Information Agency says that he was able to fly back home on last Friday. Mind you, it also says that the doctors weren’t happy with his condition (he has a serious respiratory disease), so perhaps the 76 year old author isn’t entirely home and dry yet. Here’s hoping that he pulls through.
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Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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