Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
I’m referring, of course, to Michael Howard, leader of the UK Conservative Party. During the press session to introduce the Conservatives’ manifesto, he came out with:
"On May the fifth you can let the sunshine of hope break through the clouds of disappointment we all feel!"
The soundbite is worthy of a particularly oliagious Hallmark card. No wonder many of the assembled hacks of the Press started laughing out loud in an unseemly fashion.
Although I’ve categorised this post as "Science", it could equally have been "Society" or even "Art".
What it is, is a reference to a beautiful and thought-provoking essay: The proper reverence due those who have gone before, written by Paul Z. Myers and posted on his Pharyngula blog. It is a wonderful example of the essayist’s art.
An example of the beauty:
That’s another thing; a bone isn’t just beautiful operational engineering, it’s a trace of a person. It’s a melancholy memento of all that’s been lost…here is this human being who struggled and loved and dreamed and hurt for sixty years, and all that I had of her was a few exquisitely patterned swirls of hydroxyapatite. So much was gone, so much lost, and that’s the fate of all of us—all it takes is a few generations for all personal memory to fade away, and all that’s left is abstractions. For most of us, there won’t even be bits of dry bone in a box in a forgotten room, we’ll be ash and slime, our existence unremembered.
And to get our brains thinking, Myers points out that if you take the Bible to be the record of the history of a people (hundreds of thousands, if not millions of individuals) covering a span of 2,000 years, then you would need 1,600 Bibles to cover the span of time that lies between us and Lucy.
Do your brain a favour – go and read his post.
Well, you feared it, I feared it, and it looks as though it’s gone and happened – the film of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is completely fucked up beyond all belief.
Now, I have to say that I haven’t seen it, so there’s a faint chance that all will be well and it will be a wonderful adaptation. But, and it’s a big but, I’ve just read the reviews on the Planet Magrathea site. A short sample:
"The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad it is. I mean, you might think that The Phantom Menace was a hopelessly misguided attempt to reinvent a much-loved franchise by people who, though well-intentioned, completely failed to understand what made the original popular – but that’s just peanuts to the Hitchhiker’s movie. Listen.
And so on…"
Oh dear me. Oh bugger. This is bad news indeed.
But don’t take it from me. Read either the short review or the long review – and weep.
Update 26 December 2007: Well, I’ve now seen the film. And you know what? It isn’t as bad as I feared.
There are plenty of opposing views to this review. A nice collection is here:http://cheerleader.yoz.com/archives/001947.htmlI've seen the movie and I loved it, and I’ve been a hitchhiker fan since 1979. It might not be the movie you’re expecting but it’s still a fantastic hitchhiker movie.
Jim, thanks for that comment – I’ll definitely check out the reference. I’m usually a pessimist in life, so it will be nice to be proved wrong!
The BBC News web site is carrying a story at the moment saying that: "South Africa’s health minister has called for good nutrition to become the frontline treatment for HIV saying it was vital for people living with Aids" (my emphasis added).
Frontline treatment? I would have thought that Anti-RetroViral (AVR) drugs were the frontline treatment. It may well be that Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is being quoted out of context. However, since she is previously on record as promoting garlic and beetroot as a treatment for HIV, I fear that once again she has opened her mouth merely to change feet.
It would be funny, were it not for the fact that she holds the power of life and death over those unfortunate enough to be HIV+ in South Africa. She is a misguided woman who is doing great harm to those she is supposedly serving.
I found a very useful set of tips and pointers about getting the best out of blogging in an entry on Dave’s Imaginary Sound Space:
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Blog Building Tips For Business And Pleasure
If you’re looking for sound advice on how to build a better blog then read on. Sharing practical tips built from experience is one of the best ways of learning about effective blogging. This handy collection of blogging resources is designed to help beginners and the financially motivated gain control of their blog space. I’ve included some tools that I find useful for blogging along with a few tips of my own.
General blogging tips
This group of links covers essential blogging tips and answers the most frequently asked questions. There’s advice here for both beginners and experienced bloggers to digest.
- Building a Better Blog by Brian Bailey, presents his Top 10 ideas for how to build a better blog. Good back to basics advice and tips dealing with topics like categories and content.
- How to Blog is a piece by Tony Pierce, winner of the Bloggies 2005 category ‘best article or essay about weblogs’. 30 topical tips on style, technology and telling it like it is.
- 47 key tips from the World’s best BLOGGERS serves bite sized chunks of wisdom with links to each guru’s weblog.
- Blog Tips – Central Register has a collection of links to blogging tips covering many important aspects of blog building and maintenance.
Business blogging tipsThese links focus on commercial blogging interests. If you’re interested in monetizing your blog or blogging professionally you’ll find some helpful info on how to approach it here.
- Pro Blogger has tips and hints on how to market and profit from your blog.
- Blog Business World posts on marketing, public relations and search engine optimization. The blog has a good list of links to other business related websites.
- Winners of the 2005 Business Blogging Awards is a good place to check out some highly rated blogs about business.
Useful blogging tools
A few of the tools I use, how and why I use them. There are lots more tools scattered around the home page that come in handy from time to time.
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There’s lots more stuff in this entry, so check it out.
Ah, the wonders of serendipity… Today, I was idly checking out Blogmap, to see who was blogging near me. And then I came across the Encyclopedia Mythica, because one of the contributors (or the editor?) is based in The Hague.
I see that it has some entries on Celtic mythology, including references to the Isle of Man (e.g. Mannan – but I think that should be Manannan). I’ll have to check this out further…
That title from an old Fats Waller song seemed appropriate for this site that determines just how big your ecological footprint is.
I’ll wager that you’re living beyond the planet’s means to sustain you (just like me).
I feel in a Victor Meldrew mood this morning, so I’m not feeling particularly receptive towards the Yellow Arrow(TM) global art project. I suppose, given the colour, you might say that I’m feeling somewhat jaundiced about it… To me, it’s as irritating as the meme for reversed baseball caps.
The basic idea is that if you see something of interest, or something that is meaningful to you, you mark it with a sticker in the shape of a yellow arrow. The sticker has a unique code on it, and using the code, you send an SMS to a central number (in the US) with your message and the code. Then, anyone else who sees the arrow can send an SMS, using the unique code, to retrieve your message from the central number.
Call me a cynic if you like, but who’s making the money out of all these SMSes?
An item from the Human Rights Watch organisation is a salutary reminder that millions of gay men and women are unfortunate enough to be born in countries where the mere fact of being gay brings the threat of punishment, prison or even death.
Sometimes I forget how lucky some of us are to be living in countries where a more enlightened attitude is enshrined in the law. As Harvey Fierstein said at the opening of the Gay Games in Amsterdam back in 1998:
"The journeys that we made by train, boat and plane to get to Amsterdam were short in comparison with the journeys in our souls to reach this place. We were carried here on the backs of the millions of gays and lesbians that went before us… some of whom paid for the struggle against prejudice with their very lifeblood."
And millions continue today in that struggle.
Another advert about storage. This time from Hitachi, extolling the virtues of a new way to store information on microdrives.
So, I ask myself, why on earth would I ever want to listen to 30,000 songs? Still, the pseudo-70s feel of the soundtrack brings back some nice memories.
Update: Hey, I managed to beat Gizmodo by 3 days!
Hi Geoff,My iPod is increasingly filling up with spoken word (either ripped Real audio from e.g. BBC 4 – In Our Time etc or audiobooks from CD, e.g. Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). A single "song" of spoken word easily fills up an entire audio CD. As a result I’m running out of space on my 40GB iPod.Now of course, a question is when I’m going to find the time to listen to this all, even as a "retired stiff"…P.S. Following your example, I have created an MSN space too, however I do not intend to blog for the time being,Cheers,Jim
Hi, Jim. I suppose you’re right – after all we both remember the "640KB should be big enough for anybody" days. Someone (can’t remember where I saw it) wrote recently that storage is beginning to flip from the centre to the edge – in other words, there will be more storage in connected clients than in the central servers.I saw your plekje – let me know if you do start adding stuff to it… Cheers
Today is the day when one of the great spectacles of showbiz will be played out in Rome. Amongst all the thousands of broadcast hours and acres of newsprint pouring unctuous praise on the former pontiff are a few quiet voices of reason and balance.
One such belongs to Polly Toynbee, writing in today’s Guardian.
"The Vatican is not a charming Monaco for tourists collecting Ruritanian stamps or gazing at past glories in the Sistine Chapel. It is a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy. It has weak temporal power, so George Bush can safely pray at the corpse of the man who criticised the Iraq war and capital punishment; it simply didn’t matter as the Pope never made a serious issue of it or ordered the US church to take strong action.
The Vatican’s deeper power is in its personal authority over 1.3 billion worshippers, which is strongest over the poorest, most helpless devotees. With its ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries, in Africa and right across the world. In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young Aids orphans are today’s immediate victims of the curia. Refusing support to all who offer condoms, spreading the lie that the Aids virus passes easily through microscopic holes in condoms – this irresponsibility is beyond all comprehension."
Amen to that.
… and you takes your choice*.
According to Radio Netherlands press review, the Dutch Authorities were "generally pleased" with the results of the disaster exercise held recently.
But according to the BBC, the Dutch are "not prepared for an attack".
I think this is one of those situations that I really would prefer not to be a "glass half-full or glass half-empty" kinda thing… In these situations, I want to feel that "my cup runneth over", thank you very much.
* Cockney speech recorded in Punch, vol. 10, no. 16, 1846.
I hope that this particular robot found on Gizmodo is a joke.
I don’t think I would be prepared to trust myself to its tender ministrations.
Marcel Duchamp – eat your heart out!
Aargh! I missed the first of this year’s Reith Lectures yesterday! Oh well, I see that the Beeb is offering both the chance to listen to it again via Internet radio and the chance to download it as an MP3. The Beeb is even getting into podcasting – perhaps I should too…
You may have noticed that the blog looks different today. Microsoft has just introduced a bunch of new background themes, and I thought it was time for a change. I chose this fairly neutral background because I am not a teenager anymore 🙂
Microsoft has also tripled the amount of storage available for photos, so I’ll be able to add some more there as I go along. Apparently there will be some further improvements available over the next few weeks/months, so I await with interest what other features will be turned on.
Paul Stamp writes:
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Google is expected to enable video blogging in its next generation service for blogger.com
Sounds like a good idea, maybe something Microsoft will anable in its next gen spaces.
BBC Article >>
End Quote
A good idea? Hmm, I’m not sure about that. As Theodore Sturgeon once said: "90% of everything is crud". I feel on safe ground when I claim that blogging has pushed that figure up, and that video blogging will push the percentage even higher.
Data is not the same as information; information is not the same as knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
Unfortunately, too many humans (and I include myself in this) conflate data and wisdom as being the same thing. That misconception will probably lead to our inevitable extinction ahead of any external factors.
Now that the worst-kept secret in UK politics has finally been revealed, Paul Stamp asks the question: who are you gonna vote for?
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Well we now know when the election is going to be 05/05/05
BBC Election special >>
So who are you gonna vote for ?
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Well, if I still had a vote in the UK, it would be for Labour, but through gritted teeth. I, and my parents before me, have always been socialist. However, over the years I have come to dislike and distrust Blair with a passion. While Old Labour, with its deals done in smoke filled rooms, had plenty wrong with it, at least at its best it had solid principles and a belief that there was such a thing as society. Noo Labour, with its emphasis on focus groups and image seems to me to be more show than soul.
I find the Conservatives’ campaign, with its creepy slogan: "Are you thinking what we’re thinking" simply pandering to people’s prejudices. Michael Howard still has more than "something of the night" about him as far as I’m concerned. I think Andrew Marr got it spot on when he said last night on the BBC that the Conservatives’ campaign had more to do with the message of "vote for us, because that will be one in the eye for Labour" than a message of "here’s all our great policies, and that’s why it makes sense to vote for us". It’s interesting, as Marr pointed out, that the Conservatives have appointed Lynton Crosby as their election mastermind who ran an extremely effective campaign in Australia along precisely the same lines. It puts me in mind of magicians, who are the masters of misdirection ("don’t look at my left hand, concentrate on the right"). People continue to be fooled because they simply can’t keep their eye on the real ball…
Lib-Dems? Nice people, hearts in the right place. I also think that they speak more honestly – about the need to raise taxes where necessary, for example. Perhaps a cynic might claim that they can afford to be honest because deep in their hearts they know that they won’t form the next government. Could they be effective in government? I doubt that we will find out this time either.
Labour has done well with the economy, and that comes down to Brown. It seems to me that Labour has to persuade their voters to swallow their distaste of Blair and look beyond him to the handover to Brown, and ideally that should be to pass on to him the office of prime minister, rather than the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
Bill Hill is a Scotsman who started out life as a newspaperman and became a typographer, but ended up working for Microsoft. He’s a fascinating guy, with a fund of stories that I can listen to for hours.
Channel 9 has just published a second video interview with him – following him around the Microsoft campus as he talks about nature, reading, and why the most important operating system is Homo Sapiens 1.0.
It’s a long interview (almost an hour and a half), but well worth sitting back and listening to Bill. See it here
[…] I’ve mentioned before, our operating system is still at Homo sapiens version 1.0, despite our strides in technology, so […]
When I, and my fellow IT architects, designed a taxonomy for Shell’s IT architecture, we included Haptic devices in the class of input devices. A haptic device is one that provides feedback to a human via the sense of touch. An example that many gameplayers are becoming familiar with would be a joystick that provides force feedback. In Shell, we were thinking that in 3D virtual reality environments (used to simulate and explore underground oil reservoirs), then Haptic devices such as cybergloves would become readily available at affordable prices. The added dimension of the sense of touch might give new avenues to explore when interpreting data.
Of course, the human mind is an ingenious thing. While it was to be expected that given the human race’s propensity to pursue sex in all its forms that Teledildonics would emerge, some of the new uses of Haptic technology are, shall we say, a little more esoteric in nature.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Bovine Palpation Rectal Simulator! The saviour of timid veterinary students everywhere.
Attention Chris and Ed – this one’s for you… The wry smile for the day.
Take one copy of Photoshop, a pile of "Mills and Boon" covers, a little imagination, and these can be the results.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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