Wednesday, January 1, 2003
I should have been a pair of ragged claws «
The animalplanet page below reminds me of the Time Machine. I can’t remember where it is in the book, but at some point the traveller goes far into the future, to near the limits of the range of the machine (about a million years) when the sun is dying and the earth (or the part he visits, which is a beach) is overtaken by giant crabs. If anything shows how science has changed our perception of the world it is that. Wells could not have guessed how much older the earth really was. (In the 1920s geologists came to believe that the earth was around 2 billion years old — it’s around 4.5 — while astronomers estimated the age of the universe at 1 billion — current theories range between 10 and 20.)
If there is a time without religion, and a time beyond that without even man, then Wells’ vision was, consciously or not, athiest. Even in the moments when I want to believe in something which might as well be called supernatural, my beliefs about the size of the universe gets in the way. To quote Douglas Adams:
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Like Voltaire, I just can’t conceive of a deity who could create the universe and be concerned about some insignificant corner of it. (How insignificant we are is a fact repeated in my childhood astronomy and space books, and in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.)
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:55 pm GMT
Animalplanet.com has a rather morbid consideration on the continuing evolution of animals millions of years in the future. Morbid because it casts down on man as nature’s last word (to quote Gussie Fink-Nottle). I’d like to think I know better, but the thought of the future being without humans is a disconcerting to me as the thought of the past without humans was to the Victorians.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 9:39 am GMT
Hogmanay in Edinburgh. Voted 4th best in the world and better than Glasgow’s.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 9:33 am GMT
Thursday, January 2, 2003
The hunt for the great white suit «
I buy too many books. Though I’m a snob about many things (and an underinformed one a lot of the time), I can’t resist the "pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap" 3 for 2 offers at Waterstone’s. I’ve bought the odd gem by accident that way.
One such, that I bought in the autumn and didn’t read, and took to Chicago in October and didn’t read (though I managed to leave it in a bag with a not-properly-closed water bottle and soaked, and spent part of the flight home tearing up the financial pages of some paper and sticking the shreds between pages to sponge up some of the damage) was Toby Young’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.
It starts badly. You get the impression that he deserves to lose friends and wonder how he had them in the first place. And then it takes off. It’s far more like a ‘quality essay’ in something like the New Yorker, lots of back story and think interludes than any review had prepared me for. He’s generous to some people, sharply observant with others. And there’s a goddam arc! It has a beginning, when he closes down the Modern Review, and life changes (he moves to America, and loses his girlfriend), and he ends up cynical (at least I assume he does; I haven’t finished it yet).
Now I was going to cleverly segue into a riff on Tom Wolfe, but despite having had this in the back of my head all day so far, it hasn’t settled and I doubt that it’s going to. The ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ (an overlong and dull book) is discussed in passing. I thought that Christopher Hitchens was the inspiration (too strong a word for such a lifeless book) for the English lush, but Young is sure that it’s someone else.
Now if anyone taught me to love proper writing, in this case outside of science fiction (which the reader may gather that I once liked, a lot) it was Tom Wolfe. His writing in the 60s which I read in my late schooldays had the urgent fizz of newly discovered and prohibited drugs. If anyone claims that I have a certain fashion ne sais rien, it’s because all my life I’ve hunted for a white suit with unbuttonable cuffs.
But, rather than attempt to polish my own feeble efforts, I’d rather slouch somewhere and read the rest..
Hurriedly scribbled @ 3:32 pm GMT
Friday, January 3, 2003
Apres moi, le deluge «
Widespread flooding in winter again. The same thing happened about 20 years ago in Cardiff, and in living memory before that. It’s not the end of the world. However, the global warming meme has now taken hold and everyone seems to believe in it. I was sceptical at first, but I think I hope that global warming gets taken more seriously, especially in the States, whether it’s true or not.
Who was it said that all the houses in the South seem to have been built by the first two little pigs? I can’t really believe in an environmental catastrophe where it hurts in America, and anyway, the rich would only move. But maybe, maybe they’ll take CO2 pollution seriously. Or maybe the next Gulf War brings an end to car culture… they can’t ignore that.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:59 pm GMT
Monday, January 6, 2003
Roy Jenkins «
I’d really like to be able to contribute something to the plaudits to Roy Jenkins, who died yesterday. I just don’t feel able to. For most of my life, I regarded him as a traitor to the Labour Party; recently, I’ve been less sure.
I was impressed by his biography of Winston Churchill which was one of those rare works which deserves the term ’magisterial’. I made the mistake of reading it on a plane, and not carrying a dictionary along. Almost every page had a word I didn’t know, or was unsure of. Still, I ought to read his Disraeli tome now…
Hurriedly scribbled @ 11:25 pm GMT
Tuesday, January 7, 2003
Some excuses for being quiet «
How to Write Like A Wanker (via Metafilter) made be laugh like the proverbial drain. Like all the best jokes, it’s one that I should have written myself but didn’t.
To RSS or not RSS? The downside is that it does seem to mean that your content can be syndicated without consent. The upside seems to be that it’s the future. Allegedly. I’ve downloaded the Greymatter mod for RSS, but I’ve played with the file that it’s a mod of, and can’t remember what I’ve done. If I’ve done it once, I can do it again, but it all makes Dean Allen’s new Textpattern seem very appealing indeed.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 6:17 pm GMT
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
And so to bed «
Jumbled thoughts. Watching David Attenborough’s continuing Life of Mammals, I was reminded of Robert Lowell’s great poem Skunk Hour. I can’t think of any British poets who have celebrated the urban fox. Ted Hughes’s The Thought Fox is a metaphor, and his animals are mostly rural and mythic. Yet he must have lived in London; Plath killed herself in Chalk Farm. Maybe Norman MacCaig or someone. There’s a great line in James Fenton about ’tiny forms of life … uncurling’.
I’m always struck by the beauty of bears, though I am a very un-bearlike person. Even if intelligent life had to evolve (a position I very much doubt), I see no reason why it had to be us. Yet another article on the evolution of language. I’m attracted by the spandrel theory (Stephen Jay Gould realised that it was a lovely word), though I think a better analogy is something which you have, like a table knife, which was ’designed’ for one purpose (cutting food) and can be used for another (as an impromptu screwdriver); it’s a sort of latent talent. And there’s a lot of it about, when you consider musical prodigies. Never mind your mute inglorious Miltons, what about the Mozarts of the stone age?
And this is another reason for my on/off fascination with Star Trek, not only for a science fiction series does it seem to subscribe to some biblical chronology straight out of Bishop Ussher—all the races seem to have been around for the same time—but all the aliens are people (and ugly ones at that; what’s that all about?) when there are so many candidates for near intelligence among mammalian species: bears, cats, pigs. And they have beauty and grace.
There’s more but I’m tired.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 11:27 pm GMT
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Help! I’m a Guardian reader trapped inside the body of a Telegraph man «
There’s an article by Neil Clark in today’s Torygraph countering (intellectual for ’slagging off’) David Marquand’s obit of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead in the Guardian. I never much cared for Jenkins, but the vitriol he attracts now he’s hardly cold has caused me to revise my opinion. I’m extremely sceptical of Jenkins’ role in the ‘permissive society’, which I always understood began sometime between "the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first LP." You’ve have to have a far stronger belief in social engineering than I do to think that mere politicians directed the 60s. Think if Supermac had survived into the middle of the decade.
Paul: you can’t light that cigarette, John. It’s got drugs in it. Mr Macmillan would never approve.
John: Yer quite right mate. We’ll tell the Maharishi to stuff it as well. It’s back to suits for us. And we’ll get neat haircuts in the mornning too.
Clark says "Jenkins was never a socialist, but in my view he was not much of a liberal either." There follows a strange definition of liberal, which seeks to demonstrate that proper liberals aren’t liberal at all.The next two paragraphs lay into abortion, penal reform, and what are now called gay rights. I confess that I’m aware that one can be in the Labour party and hate all three, but while I consider that we’re a broad church, I don’t recognise the place of such beliefs in our credo.
It’s the end of Clark’s piece which is the clincher. ‘If David Marquand believes the Britain of 2003 to be a "civilised country", it would be interesting to hear his definition of an uncivilised one.’ I can name one: Iraq. I don’t want the return of capital punishment, or laws on homosexuality.
The owner of my local shop (well he seems like the main man) has offered to start keeping a Torygraph back for me. I’ve reluctantly accepted. There’s nothing wrong with the Telegraph. Joe Strummer read the Telegraph. As Anthony Howard once observed reading the opposition throws one’s beliefs into relief.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:17 pm GMT
Friday, January 10, 2003
The case of the brass monkey «
What would the great detective Sherlock Holmes have said?
Hurriedly scribbled @ 3:33 pm GMT
I never meant to be Mr Angry, but I’ve just written today’s email of complaint. Active Europe do… well I don’t know what they do, as I can’t get into their site. Their error message tells me that they support Opera 5+ which I’ve always understood means Opera version 5 and subsequent versions. I use Opera 7. 7 comes after 5. I don’t know what support means. I never knew sites were supposed to support anything. They usually serve. I think there’s a difference. I sent them a link to Morons in wwwebbbbbbbb ssspaaaaaaaaaaace! Made me feel better.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 3:26 pm GMT
I was so upset by that article yesterday, I even raised it in the pub with my friend DL. He was even more sceptical than I am that there was ever a time when Labour MPs were workers by hand on the day before the election, and by brain the day after. The core of the party were skilled workers, and they recognised that parliamentarianism required certain skills and training, viz a university education. But I don’t even recognise the split between ‘educated’ Labour and the ‘conservative working class.’ Tony Benn proposed to amend Clause 4 so that it read ‘workers by hand and by brain’ on the grounds that even Tony Blair uses his hands to write, and he hadn’t met a worker yet who didn’t need to think. Shamefully, New Labour solved the problem Alexander the Great style: they abolished it.
And while we’re at it, Auden’s line should read ‘We must love one another and die.’ There’s no or about it.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 9:38 am GMT
Sunday, January 12, 2003
The clvilised society and its discontents «
I hate to harp on about subjects which should have passed away and be pushing up the daisies by now, but this is my final final final word on old Woy.
Thing 1 (which I forgot on Friday): DL reminded me of the graffitto on Roy Jenkins Hall on Crwys Road: someone had crossed out the ‘R’ and written a ‘W’ above it. DL thought RJ would have smiled at that. I do too.
Thing 2: where did the myth start that we would have less gun crime and so forth if we’d kept the death penalty? Get thee hence to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film about Killing and read Arthur Koestler’s Reflections on Hanging.
I’m not sure what these people mean by civilised: bear baiting and gladiators probably.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:27 pm GMT
Monday, January 13, 2003
Peter, can you hear me? «
Pete Townshend was a hero of mine when I was in my teens. Hard to believe that he would have been younger then than I am now.
I wasn’t going to buy a Sunday paper yesterday, but the review of the papers mentioned his statement that he’s paid for child porn and the tabloids’ reaction to it. I’m in the head-shaking ‘poor misguided guy’ camp. If he was researching a book on the subject, he ought to have made that clearer in advance and even discussed his proposed actions with some charity, or preferably, the police. I’ve always regarded Townshend as articulate and capable of writing an interesting book. But his vigilante approach seems so wrong-headed. For one thing he seems to want a world-wide ban on child pornography, despite this requiring a world-wide definition of childhood. Mere nudity should not be sufficient to define pornography. These matters should be left up to courts drawing from each nations developed understanding on freedoms and responsibilities.
Townshend has given concerts for heroin-related charities, and apparently is still on drug treatment programmes. That heroin and acid were and are illegal didn’t seem to stop him. The one thing that makes me believe in the law is that the alternatives, like rule by tabloid-crazed mob, and rule by celebrity whim seem so much worse. That the police have 7000 names does make me wonder how long they were prepared to wait before acting, but I’m willing to concede that they know better than I do.
’tommy’ does feature an abused hero, long before it became the cause du jour it is today. This both strengthens and weakens Townshend’s case. It does show that he had a campaigning interest in the subject and backs up his claims. But it also weakens it in two ways: one that his abuser can’t have been an internet porn user, so Townshend has no direct evidence of the evil of internet porn. (I’m more of a believer in the Scandanavian approach: pornography is a valve for letting out sexual energy, rather than an incitement, but I admit that the issue is very complex. I’m also not particularly convinced by the suppressed memory theory. It makes everything too convenient.) Second, it seems to be a truism that many abusers were abused themselves. There’s no court will take having been abused as a defence in itself. I hope for his sake that Pete Townshend can produce a manuscript, preferably on a hard disk with some kind of dates.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:58 pm GMT
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
My share of happiness «
Not much to say today.
I’m just glad to be able to report that the new series of Paul Whitehouse’s Happiness is as good as the last. So far. Doesn’t beat being in the pub though.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 10:39 pm GMT
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Reasons to watch your language «
At last I have a worthy entry for Disturbing Search Requests. I reproduce it below.
Why would you want to when ‘Voulez vous couchez avec moi?’ always produces better results? And I find that ’merde’ usually serves to express disappointment. But then I am not a dictionary.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 11:15 am GMT
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Vile jelly «
Anyone silly enough to donate $10 to charity for a picture of my eyes deserves some support. It costs nothing.
Link courtesy of Sue.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:51 pm GMT
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Provoke the silent dust «
I spent most of yesterday at the funeral of my cousin’s husband, Tim. He was only 56. (As I’m 41 this year, that ‘only’ has a sinister ring.) He played hockey and was captain of his club’s senior team until three years ago. A heart attack now seems unjust.
The programme for the service (I can think of no other word) was the most impressive I’ve seen. It included the full text of Gray’s Elegy on a separate sheet as well as his paintings.
Actually, I hardly knew him. We went for a few pints together when my grandmother died, and we talked a little when my father died. He was one of the most sensible and steady people I’ve known, and not as humourless as that sounds.
I was hoping to make some poignant observations, but all I’ve managed was the usual clutch of clichés. So I’ll leave it.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 7:25 pm GMT
Monday, January 20, 2003
Roll your own «
If Sue Bailey can make her site entirely out of her own head, I should have a pop too. Especially as I’ve spent weeks thinking up a wish list of all the things I want different in Greymatter: valid code, a different method of assigning urls (so these too are valid), archived months’ entries to be ordered forwards, I’d like a flexible approach to commenting—one which works with and without javascript, better security, RSS feeds (something I have read up on, although I still doubt their usefulness), a recent entries list, a calendar (I coded one in my sleep after I had one pint too many last night, not sure if it will work), and, ah, other stuff…
I’ve been sorting through php books on Amazon and lurking in the bookshops in town trying to find which ones cover all the points I want. So far, none.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 8:02 pm GMT
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Tricks «
The United States has gone mad by John le Carré (courtesy of Rebecca Blood). I’ve been meaning to write about Tony Blair’s drfit away from logic, sense, decency, and any interest in the good of the British public as he negotiates his status in history. He thinks that he’ll be the great elder statesman, to rank alongside Thatcher (friend to the United States) and Churchill (friend to the United States), but he’s moving closer to King George III. He no longer knows or cares what the public or his party think. They — we — have ceased to be his party by now: I can’t see any ideological water between him and the Tories. I see an ocean between him and the left I joined.
If there’s any substance to the Saddam-terrorism link, it’s yet to be made public. North Korea is more frightening; Zimabwe is closer to our influence. And Tony denies it’s about oil.
There’s a world leader who’s planning the deaths of his own servicemen and innocent civilians in the cause of popularity and oil. Right now, that person is not Saddam.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:36 pm GMT
Boasting drug dealer united with law. (Via Metafilter.) The thing about Friends Reunited is — if you’ve lost contact, there’s usually a good reason. Boasting sounds like one.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:41 pm GMT
Thursday, January 23, 2003
An oldie but goodie «
It’s been said before, but it can be said again. Something seems to have got Anil Dash’s back up.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:34 pm GMT
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
I sit at my table «
OK, OK. I’ll post a link to Peter Turnley’s photographs of the first Gulf War. They’re not as scary as Am I a Terrorist or a Member of Al-Qaeda or a Taliban Fighter or Not? was. In fact, the worst thing about them isn’t the pictures, but the description "This attack left most of the Iraqi soldiers in the convoy carbonized…" Carbonized, I suppose like toast…
(Via Sue Bailey.)
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:14 pm GMT
Friday, January 31, 2003
Freedom of thought? «
How much thinking does democracy require? Quite a lot according to the Greeks and the American founders. However, as Groucho Marx said about sincerity, ‘when you can fake it, you’ve got it made.’
Therefore we present similar stories on boilerplate letters to editors, first up Tom Tomorrow, and then Slashdot discussion of this New York Times (requires free registration) article Editors and Lobbyists Wage High-Tech War Over Letters.
Is this a case of the internet for good? I don’t think it would make any difference if all letters pages were exposed as complete fakes. At least this shows that if you write in, they print it.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:55 pm GMT
There’s this rather witty missive a knowing parody the popular (well, they keep sending ‘em) Nigerian email.
And there’s this ‘game’. Not that I feel political or anything, or have a hope in hell of changing a single mind.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:16 pm GMT
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