Last 20 Blog Entries as of Jul 04 2008 14:42:11 GMT
| What is it luckier to find... | Jun 19 2008 20:40 |
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| A four-leafed clover, or a New Scientist magazine on the seat of a District Line train? I am so chuffed. | |
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| Funding authors... | Apr 05 2008 18:02 |
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| This article discusses ways in which authors will be able to carry on making money once the internet has given everyone access to infinite free copies of their work. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3648813.ece There are some interesting ideas (for example, state sponsored writing - does that seem almost communist, or not?) but I suppose, if all else fails, there is always product placement. How different would our famous books from the past have been if the author was forced to make money in creative ways? Perhaps.... (cue mysterious music) "Ebeneezer Scrooge worked in a small, cold, dimly lit, office in Chancery Lane, which he rented from Seeley's Estate Agency (Spittalfields) for the paltry sum of 5 Shillings and tuppence - an attractive rent, which was, he was earnestly assured, not unusual for places under their management (and it was through choice, rather than necessity, that Scrooge kept it in such an unpleasant state)..." "... Bob Cratchett's infant son, Tiny Tim, who had only one leg. Mr Cratchett had tried every available avenue to help him grow the other back, but had unfortunately met with no success. Not even the private surgery on Dean Street was able to help - and they have otherwise never been known to fail a patient under their care..." "... I am the 'Carlsberg Lager' Ghost of Christmas Present..." etc | |
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| Sinister | Mar 30 2008 14:05 |
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| http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2008_03_17/mi5-wants-access-to-your-oyster-card-records/ Read the first comment... | |
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| Charlotte Green cracks up | Mar 29 2008 15:01 |
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| This made me smile somewhat. http://videos.icnetwork.co.uk/m3/Charlotte%20Green%20Today%20Show%20March%2028%202008.mp3 | |
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| Brixton greengrocers | Mar 26 2008 23:56 |
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| On the way back from the tube yesterday, I stopped off at a greengrocers (which I've never previously patronised) on Atlantic Road, Brixton, to buy an onion. The man behind the till greeted me with the following decidedly enigmatic expression: "Hey, big man. What are you looking for?" Now then. Either Brixton has a homoerotic subdialect of which I was previously unaware, or I'm pleased to discover my local greengrocer is a front for a well disguised gay brothel. I'm not quite sure which. | |
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| Further irony | Mar 16 2008 21:42 |
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| 'Affluenza' is a theoretical disease that is supposed to be making everyone in the English-speaking world miserable. The idea, by my understanding, is that we're preoccupied with wealth, posessions, fame, and status, to the detriment of healthy relationships with our friends, family, and community. And this has given rise to record levels of clinical depression and a widespread feeling of general misery. This makes sense to me - and I agree with those who say it's exacerbated by the advertising industry. Consider an example of a TV advert in which a woman takes a sip of a hot drink and instantly smiles, and looks comforted, like she was hugged by a good friend. The message is, of course, 'drink our product and you will feel more loved', and given the frequency with which we are bombarded with this sort of image, it just has to affect us slightly. The result is, I think without underestimating people, that we will end up spending too much time trying to find happiness in mugs of hot chocolate, and not enough looking for it in the correct place, which is to find or consolidate an actual friendship, or romance, through which we might find the comforting hug or loving feeling that the advertiser has deceitfully attributed to drinking a mug of cocoa. Anyhow, I just took the online Affluenza quiz on the Random House website and received the following result. I just hope it's intended as a joke :) What your score means: You're body is racked with the virus! It is vital that you read Affluenza today! *link to the Random House Affluenza page, on which there is a large button marked 'buy now'* | |
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| Irony | Jan 21 2008 21:54 |
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| http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/politics/Des-Browne-aide-Scotland-is.3691744.jp Surely you have to be quite a confident person to pull off calling an entire country racist. | |
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| Hmmm | Dec 03 2007 23:36 |
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| Advert | Nov 04 2007 14:14 |
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| There is a poster ad for Volkswagen up at Oxford Circus tube station at the moment, which confuses me. It reads, "why do you think so many volkswagen owners pass their volkswagen car on to friends and family?" ... what are you supposed to infer from this? As far as I can see, the answer is probably "because they don't want it, and can't sell it!" | |
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| What Stephen Pinker thinks about thinking... and what I think about his thoughts. | Oct 30 2007 19:49 |
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| Here is a decent article on consciousness, written by Stephen Pinker: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html I think it's an interesting summary of the debate, and current scientific situation (not that I actually know much about either). Personally I'm much more interested in the 'hard' problem than the 'easy' problem. To my mind, it's not particularly shocking that every aspect of our personality can be traced back to the brain. But the inherent subjectivity of the hard problem tends to render it outside the scope of empirical science. How can you determine the nature of something that you can only *experience* by looking / feeling / and otherwise sensing things that you *cannot* directly experience (in the sense of 'what it is like to be a worm')? It seems impossible, and not only that. It suggests the assumption, often made, that science somehow 'reduces' life to a meaningless swirl of mindless atoms, and that this is somehow depressing, is actually mistaken. Given that I am 100% convinced of my own consciousness, I see only three possibilities as regards its origin: 1) All matter is conscious 2) All matter is conscious to varying degrees depending on its configuration (e.g. a brain is more conscious than a pencil). 3) Humans have a special soul, which makes us different from matter. I tend towards the second option, but none of these involve life being reduced to a meaningless swirl of mindless atoms. Number 3 clearly doesn't - all manner of religious folk will tell you how a belief in an everlasting soul has enriched their perception of life. Numbers 1 and 2 may seem to make life seem more pointless - again they reduce humans to mere matter. But if all matter is conscious, what is so 'mere' about it? As Pinker says, consciousness is at the root of our senses of both empathy and morality, and if all matter is conscious, then life almost seems MORE mystical and exciting than in the case of number 3. Furthermore, the ability we have to manipulate consciousness in the easy-problem way described by Pinker in the article, rather than being depressing as you might think, puts us at a position of surprising power. Depending on the progress of science, we could soon be able to manipulate consciousness like a race of powerful wizards - like many things this reminds me of the "Dark Materials" trilogy, in which a mysterious "Dust" is the source of all wisdom and awareness, and any being with control over it should take utmost care to preserve the wellbeing of the universe. I'm starting to waffle but I hope you see my point - life is really mysterious and exciting, and no amount of prodding brains with electrodes can really take away from that. Are people scared now? What do you think? | |
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| Whirrrrr.... | Oct 13 2007 12:51 |
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| OK so I was going for a jog round the local park this morning. No sooner had I given up running (about 2/3 of the way round) than did a HELICOPTER pass about 10 metres above my head and land in the grass next to me! No way! I know! A HELICOPTER! Anyhow, it picked up two guys dressed entirely in orange, and carrying helmets under their arms, exactly as if the helicopter trip was actually a secret mission to save the earth from a giant asteroid, hung around for 5 minutes, and then flew off. But there was something weird about this helicopter. It was a Virgin Helicopter (as owned by Richard Branson), and not only that, but it was technically a Virgin "Air Ambulance". Now, I personally thought we had yet to privatise the NHS - are they starting in the air and working their way downwards? In five years' time, where could this lead... <mysterious music, fade to...> Caller: Hello, I've got an emergency. Operator: OK... do you need Police, Fire, or Ambulance? Caller: Ambulance - my husband's stopped breathing. Operator: OK, no problem. Were you after Virgin, GNER or Mercury Telecom? Caller: What? I dunno. Operator: It depends on what tarrif you want madam. In your husbands condition you may want to consider the first-class immediate deluxe service, but that will set you back 80 quid. We also offer the value advance saver Apex service for a fiver, but it does require you to predict major accidents 3 months in advance and so you could be looking at a false economy in the long run... Caller: <hangs up> Operator: Hello? HELLO? | |
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| The value of proof-reading | Oct 09 2007 17:25 |
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| From "Appetite" by Nigel Slater: "All cooks screw up... when disaster happens, never let it become any more than it is." | |
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| Yesterday Evening | Sep 24 2007 08:10 |
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| I am writing this on the 1830 from York to London. It is currently five-to-eight and so far I'm pretty sure we've yet to reach Doncaster. This is an absurd delay and, apparently, its due to structural damage to a rail bridge near Doncaster. Oh dear. We've literally just stopped again. At this rate we are not going to reach London until two in the morning and by that time I will have successfully completed my first novel. Well, I suppose any form of inspiration is better than nothing! This morning, I went to church. The service was very good but I one point I couldn't help being tickled. Of course, this was not a novel take on "The Peace" - it was during the second reading, which was fron Revelations. One of the lines was a masterclass in patronising your readership; whoever wrote it needs a prize. The problem was compounded by the woman who read it, who inserted mammoth pauses where I have put full stops: "And all around me were harpers. Harping. With their harps." I pissed my self - inwardly, of course, it was a church. Perhaps my bladder burst. Yep, we are now pulling into Domaster. ETA London KX now apparently 2140. Only 70 minutes late, I suppose that's not too bad. Sods law says another bridge will collapse just north of Peterborough, possibly Cambridge. Behind me there is a table full of drunken football fans. Their volume is in direct, negative, proportion to the speed of the train. They become immensely loud whenever we stop, even if we are *supposed* to have stopped, e.g. at Doncaster station. If I had a noise-o-meter I would do a proper study into the precise speed-volume relationship. I think the available categories are 'strained' and 'illicit'. So, this morning, my father told me a shocking story he heard the protagonist recounting on radio4. It was a guy who worked for the Foreign Office, and had been posted to a middle eastern country (perhaps Kyrgyzstan?) which was on our side against Iraq. Whilst there, he witnessed terrible human rights abuses and wrote home saying, "he have to do something about this!" Unfortunately the Foreign Office wrote back with "I'm afraid we can't do that - they're our allies against Iraq and we don't want to piss them off" (or words to that effect). The guy kept on insisting, and eventually another letter arrived: "Thank you for the wonderful work you have done in Kyrgyzstan. However, we feel your talents would be put to better use in Canada." He says he wants to stay in Kyrgyzstan, and the reply is "unfortunately in that case, we'll have to publish this list of misdeeds we have found you committing". He refuses to move to Canada, they publish the list, he has a nervous breakdown over the betrayal, then gets a lawyer and sues the Foreign Office. They drop all charges as they have absolutely no evidence to support them. Just appalling, really (the guy now works as an author). | |
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| Outing | Sep 22 2007 21:29 |
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| Last week work sent me on an errand to a private sixth form college in Chelsea. It was very nice but 'exclusive'. I wonder how many other schools in the country have graffiti on the walls reading "Vote Tory!" ? | |
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| Two token comments | Sep 18 2007 20:36 |
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| 1) I watched Hot Fuzz again on Saturday. It's very good. What is particularly impressive is how closely they managed to parody several scenes from Die Hard 4.0, given that Hot Fuzz came out 4 months *before* Die Hard (I refer, of course, to the scenes where the hacker fellow is sitting in a car with Bruce Willis, pestering him with questions like 'have you ever shot someone?' etc). Hmmm... On second thoughts, maybe DH has just got every cliche in the book... 2) People who complain about immigrants tend to do so on two grounds, of which they never mention both in the same encounter. Either it's that the immigrants are taking our jobs, or that they're *not* taking our jobs, and scrounging off the benefits system. COME ON, RACISTS! MAKE YOUR MINDS UP! | |
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| Proms in the Park | Sep 09 2007 21:36 |
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| Was at the Proms in the Park (Hyde Park) yesterday. I have therefrom gleaned three items of knowledge: 1) Lesley Garrett is like a highbrow Cheryl Baker. 2) Mark Simpson, young musician of the year, looks like a cross between / the lovechild of Elton John and Harry Hill:  3) A 30 minute (at least) Will Young set is not best positioned between one set of really enjoyable orchestral music and another set of really enjoyable orchestral music. What were they thinking? I had a great time, though. Well worth going if you ever get the chance. | |
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| CNN news | Sep 03 2007 22:14 |
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| http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2007/09/02/oakley.iraq.basra.looklive.cnn How surreal is this? Robin Oakley, having retired from the BBC seven years ago, is now's CNN's European editor. Discovering this is like a voice returned from the past - although no doubt his reporting for CNN has a different bias than it did for the BBC, and he doesn't look entirely comfortable delivering it. Looks slightly like Des Lynam did when he moved from the Beeb to a commercial channel, actually. Perhaps its because things are more rushed on commercial channels - the quicker you deliver the news, the more ads you can fin in between them/it... | |
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| Nintend'oh | Aug 24 2007 08:07 |
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| On the tube recently there has appeared an advert for the Nintendo-DS. It features the following text: "On average, you will waste a total of 3 years of your life commuting. That's 3 years wasted. But now, with new NintenDogs, you can spend your commuting time raising, training, and competing with virtual puppies" Next to a picture of a woman gazing lovingly at her DS. I think this advert is best left to ridicule itself. | |
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| This image... | Jul 19 2007 22:22 |
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| Was in the metro yesterday. It's a picture of some women waving a rather nasty anti-UK placard at a rally. I couldn't help but be reminded of a certain film. :) * Original Image * Improved version | |
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| The previous post... | Jun 29 2007 22:04 |
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| ... seems to blithely fail to make any attempt at putting the verbs in a consistent tense. Oops - that'll be something to watch out for next time I write one first thing in the morning... | |
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