I first reported on The Shire – a Tolkien-themed housing development in Oregon almost two years ago. I see that good taste has prevailed, and that foreclosure proceedings against the developer are being brought. While I do feel somewhat sorry for the developer, I thought at the time that the project was doomed from the start.
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Reverse-engineering Religion
Over at a Blog From Hell, Norm Doering draws my attention to a talk given by Dan Dennett at the 2006 TED conference. It’s one that I don’t think I’ve seen before, although it deals with themes that he’s explored before in his work. It’s also an excellent critique of the false assertions contained in Rick Warren’s book: The Purpose-driven Life. Read Norm’s commentary, and then watch Dennett in action.Leave a comment
Unjust Rewards
Johann Hari reviews Unjust Rewards by Polly Toynbee and David Walker. The review prompts me to put the book on my "get it and read it list". By coincidence, I’m currently re-reading Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew by Bernard Hare. This is the true story of a 12 year-old boy (Urban Grimshaw) and his friends. As the dustjacket blurb says:You’re twelve years old. Your mother’s a junkie and an alcoholic, your father might as well be dead. You can’t read, you can’t write, and you don’t go to school. While most kids your age are playing kiss-catch and computer games, you’re sniffing glue. An average day means sitting around a bonfire with your mates smoking drugs or stealing cars. You’ve spent years running away from children’s homes, but now you can run to the shed, where the crew is your family.It’s a glimpse into a real hell, that is by turns terrifying, achingly sad and sidesplittingly funny. Worth reading, if only to realise that the systems in place as described by Toynbee and Walker will continue to produce generations of Urban Grimshaws.Leave a comment
The PC Minefield
In a globally-connected set of societies, then no matter what you do, someone is bound to take offense. Exhibit A: the rumpus over the Spanish Basketball team. I honestly believe that the team meant no harm, but the PC brigades are after their (and the reporter’s) blood. Sigh. As someone who used to be called, as a very young boy in primary school, the "China Doll", because of the shape of my eyes, all I can say to the massed PC brigades is: "get over it, you bunch of Marys".Leave a comment
Rage
Over at the End of the Pier Show, Henry Gee muses on customer service. I know what he means, the sense that one is fighting marshmallow seems to pump up the rage factor with the greatest of ease.I think I’m currently embarking on one such pump at the moment. It involves a bank transfer of a not inconsiderable sum of my hard-earned money which disappeared into the ether of the international banking system almost a month ago without a trace. It’s early days yet, but the first skirmish involved a person at a financial institution trying to pass the buck on any responsibility whatsoever to investigate said disappearance. I batted that back to her, and we’ll see whether she follows it up, as she (reluctantly) said she would. Watch this space.Leave a comment
Typical…
…the one day that I don’t take my camera with me on my daily walk in the woods is the day when I am just 4 metres away from a pair of red squirrels chasing each other around a tree trunk. I stood and watched them for about a minute before they realised I was there and scarpered up into the tree.I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with these rather poor shots of a squirrel from a couple of weeks ago. He was about 15 metres away, watching me from a perch high up in a tree.
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The Slippery Slope
In an excellent article, Johann Hari points out the danger of choosing cowardice over questions. Worth reading. I honestly believe that all of us, believers and non-believers alike, will have grown up a little when the day comes that the equivalent of Monty Python’s Life of Brian can be made about Islam.Leave a comment
Up, Up and Away
Last Monday, I managed to tick off one item on the "50 things to do before you die" list: I went on a trip in a balloon. The farmer next to us had organised it, and as well as taking his family, had a few places left over for neighbours. I was lucky enough to be able to join them. It was a terrific experience, and highly recommended. A few pictures are below – the full set of over 200 photos (well, you know me…) are here.
Looking at the full list of "50 things…", I note that I’ve only done six of the list. Mind you, most of the list I have no interest in doing whatsoever, so it’s no loss to me. I get more pleasure from a walk in the woods than contemplating the thought of such things as flying in a fighter jet, driving a Formula 1 car, or bungee jumping…Leave a comment
Headline of the Year
This story in today’s Guardian definitely has a headline that is a contender for the 2008 prize: Giant Dog Turd Wreaks Havoc at Swiss Museum. I think that the museum itself must also be in the running for a prize for the most fatuous description of an art show, describing it as containing "interweaving, diverse, not to say conflictive emphases and a broad spectrum of items to form a dynamic exchange of parallel and self-eclipsing spatial and temporal zones".Leave a comment
Trepanation
Here’s a straightforward interview with Heather Perry, who voluntarily had a hole drilled in her head to improve her state of mind. It takes all sorts, I suppose. Sample:We went to see Bill’s doctor, who was a GP but he was into alternative kind of therapies. When he checked me over the following morning he said that we’d pierced the first meninges, but he didn’t seem overly concerned. He told me to eat Jello and drink plenty of water to stay hydrated. I had a cough, so I was a bit like a whale – every time I coughed, some fluid would come out of the hole in my head. He gave me some medicine for that and also prescribed me some kind of Chinese herbal remedy. I think maybe we did it in the wrong place because there is an artery there somewhere which is quite close to the surface, so in retrospect maybe we should have done it in a slightly different place.Somehow, I don’t think I will be rushing to emulate her. As someone has already commented, I need a trepanation like I need a hole in the head…Leave a comment
Cod Sushi?
Albert Heijn is a Dutch supermarket chain. We are customers. Carl Zimmer draws our attention to the content of one of Albert’s prepacked fresh cod. Oh dear.Leave a comment
Wait – There’s More…
I mentioned yesterday that the re-emergence of Joyce McKinney was surely evidence that the Silly Season was in full swing. In today’s Bad Science piece, Ben Goldacre confirms that hypothesis by pointing to a credulous article (in the Telegraph, no less) that mentions the QXCI machine. As Ben points out, the QXCI machine is somewhat suspect. Just how suspect can be found here. Ben also points out that the man behind the machine is a gentleman by the name of Bill Nelson. The video of Bill singing his own praises is strange beyond belief. But it gets better – here’s Bill, aka Desire Dubounet, belting out Crying:I’m speechless.Leave a comment
The Amazing Randi
James Randi turned 80 years old a couple of days ago. Belated Happy Brithday greetings to him. Here’s to many more.Leave a comment
The Genius of Charles Darwin
I’m pleased to see that Richard Dawkins’ new series on Charles Darwin is available on the Internet. The first programme was eminently watchable. I did wonder, though, about those schoolchildren. When I was their age, I would never have thought that evolution was not a fact, and that’s forty-five years ago. Has education slipped back so much?As usual, Charlie Brooker puts his finger on it.Leave a comment
The Opening Ceremony
So I watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on BBC HD. All very spectacular, although the combination of little girls and goose-stepping military men carrying a national flag always fills me with unease. But, why oh why do we have to put up with the inane commentary from the BBC team? I kept wishing there was a button to switch off the commentary track and just let me watch Zhang Yimou’s visuals and listen to the music.Huw Edwards, a word of advice: just shut the fuck up!Leave a comment
Re-Joyce
Dear me, talk about a blast from the past – it appears as though Joyce McKinney is still making the sort of news that is perfect for the annual Silly Season.Leave a comment
Whatever Happened To…
… decent programmes about food and cooking on the telly? In the last few years, the quality has gone down the toilet, as expertise, simply presented, has been replaced by the flash-bang-wallop of meeja-studies graduates’ crap. As the latest example, I see that the Hairy Bikers are returning with a new series cunningly entitled Hairy Bakers. Oh gawd. While there may be the whiff of sour grapes about it, Dan Lepard’s piece pretty much nails the horror that the Hairy Bakers will surely be.I think I’ll just crack open another cookery book and go exploring culinary delights that way.By the way, anybody know where I can track down a source of crystallised violets in the Netherlands? I’ve got this wonderful recipe for an Edwardian trifle from Nigel Slater, and he says that they are absolutely essential as the topping… I’d make my own, but I’m fresh out of violets, and I also can’t get gum arabic from anywhere around here either.Leave a comment
Hell Has Frozen Over
Courtesy of Anticant’s Arena, here’s the extremely inventive answer given by a student to a question on a chemistry exam: Is Hell exothermic or endothermic?Leave a comment
Trolls ‘R Us
A very sobering story about the amplifier that is the Internet: when trolls run wild. When I read John Brunner’s fiction many years ago (The Sheep Look Up, Stand On Zanzibar, The Shockwave Rider), I felt a frisson of horror; aghast that anyone could think that society could ever be like this.Hello, welcome to the real world of 2008. It’s going to get much worse. There are over 6.6 billion of us and we have the technology to make it so.Leave a comment
Amsterdam Canal Parade 2008
Last Saturday, I travelled to Amsterdam to watch the annual Canal Parade. This year was the biggest-ever event, with over 80 boats taking part. It’s reckoned that there were over 400,000 onlookers, including yours truly.
I was fortunate enough to get a good spot on the balcony of Cafe Werck, thanks to Nancy and Piet-Jan of Shell’s Pink Pearl LGBT network. From here, sandwiched between the Anne Frank House and the Westerkerk, I got rather carried away and took (as I later totted up) 2,149 photos of the event. After a few days, I’ve now whittled these down to a mere 496 photos of the parade itself, 26 photos of the Shell boat, and 76 photos of onlookers, passersby and sundry characters.
This was a good parade. First because there were more boats than ever before, but also because of the message sent by politicians such as the Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, and the Minister of Education and Culture, Ronald Plasterk, by their participation in the parade.
The Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen:
The Minister of Education and Culture, Ronald Plasterk:
The full set of photos of the parade that I took can be found here; the photos of Shell’s Pink Pearl boat can be found here, and a variety of photos of onlookers, passersby, and characters hanging around the parade can be found here. Lastly, I draw your attention to the HIVOS boat, with its sombre message that not everybody is free to celebrate. Never a truer word was spoken.
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