They had a parade and a “burning” in
“The Guardian” newspaper published its final broadsheet edition today. It’s being published in a new format they call “the Berliner” from next Monday. I’ve been a fan of the paper for many years but recently find myself buying the “Independent” more often since it became a tabloid. Looking forward to seeing what the new format will look and feel like.
I installed an extension toolbar called “Stumbleupon” into Firefox this morning. It’s really good, gets you random pages on subjects you are interested in – it can be as wide or as narrow as you like. I’ve always liked the idea of randomness as there is always something in the back of my mind questioning the whole notion of randomness. And yet, for all its perfection, sometimes it seems that the whole of the cosmos is random. But then it can’t be, can it? Anyway, I just clicked on “stumbleupon” and up came this page : http://www.nokama.com/tao/index.cfm?fuseaction=chapter&ch=73
the home page came up and I randomly chose chapter 73 which was this :
Chapter 73
A brave and passionate man will kill or be killed.
A brave and calm man will always preserve life.
Of these two, which is good and which is harmful?
Some things are not favored by heaven.
Who knows why?
Even the sage is unsure of this.
The Tao of heaven does not strive, and yet it overcomes.
It does not speak, and yet is answered.
It does not ask, yet is supplied with all its needs.
It seems at ease, and yet it follows a plan.
Heaven's net casts wide.
Though its meshes are coarse, nothing slips through.
So it’s true. Apple have just announced that they are switching to Intel chips in their machines. I think its an interesting move for all sorts of reasons. They obviously learned many lessons from the popularity of the ipod which exploded when it became possible to run itunes on a PC. I’m in a strange position here, my soul has always been Apple , I love the design of the OS system and the look of the machines but at the time I began buying computers I couldn’t even think of affording to buy a mac. That was back in the mid 1980s when the only computer I could afford was an Amstrad 8512.
Design wise, and every other wise I guess, it’s a machine that was a long way from the Apple Mac. I thought about it a lot while watching Alan Sugar in “The Apprentice” on BBC television recently. On the one hand, it was a machine that delayed my introduction to what might be considered “real” computers, but on the other hand it allowed me and thousands of others to ditch the typewriter. It was a cheap(ish) beige bridge to the world of computers for many writers. The next computer I could afford was Dell 486. From there on in, my files became too “Intelised”to consider making the move to Apple, even when I got to the position where I could afford it. And also, perhaps I never felt entirely comfortable with Apple’s claims to exclusivity and all that “think different” stuff. I think I appreciate the finer things in life as much as the next man, and by nature, sex , native language i am in a minority. I don’t have to think different, I am different. Ah but maybe this is all about having a bit of a go at Apple because I couldn’t afford their machines all those years ago? And I have to admit that I’m one of those sad people who, from time to time. use Windows Blinds to make my windows XP look like the Mac OS. But then, maybe that’s not so sad anymore, maybe us intel users with our XP transformed screens were just a bit ahead of the pack all along. Anyway, I think a lot of interesting stuff will arise out of this move by Apple today. My favourite piece of computing equipment today is an ipod. I am fascinated by machines and the way we interact with them, the interfaces and the icons we create to talk in binary. If Apple released a version of Tiger that I could install on my machine would I do it? Yes, definitely. But I think I’m too long with Windows now to completely abandon it, I’d at least look for a dual boot function and see where that took me. I still have that old Amstrad in an attic, and last time I looked it still worked. All in all, what a great journey we’re on in this human/machine mating game!I had a strange dream last night. I was making a movie somewhere, I was involved in the writing of it, and Woody Allen was there. He was the younger Woody Allen not the way he is today. Anyway, I had my iPod with me and he took it in his hand and looked at it.It fell to the floor and broke. I was full of sadness as I picked it up and looked at the cracked white face. Woody said that he would replace it immediately and he called to a young woman who came over holding a notebook and asking what my iPod cost. Woody told her to go out and buy me a new one right this minute. So I ended up really happy as we were working in
03:02pm
The blog was very taken with Peter Watson's comment piece in the newspaper yesterday asserting that the late 20th Century and beginning of the 21st have been poor for good new ideas.
We flatter ourselves to think that we live in interesting times, Watson suggests. In fact, we just live in hectic times. Not the same thing at all. He concludes:
The sheer lack of fundamental innovation now may explain the tenacity of traditional religion and why contemporary art seems so flat, banal and repetitive.
Apparently our times compare poorly to, for example, 1050-1250AD or 1750-1950AD -periods of real upheaval and intellectual ferment. It is an interesting thesis and one that deserves to be explored on the blog.
It is, we have decided, time for a new movement. Something to fire the imagination. A new school, like Romanticism or Modernism, that can be applied across the spectrum of human endeavour. But since we are not clever enough to come up with something entirely independent, we thought we might be able to cobble one together with some sticky-backed plastic, a few prefixes and suffixes and a little something from the intellectual dressing up cupboard.
And because it's Monday, and Monday is unofficial list day on the Observer blog, we thing we ought to present our results in that hallowed form. So here are ...
The top 10 new movements not yet invented but sure to rock the world in the 21st Century.
1. Denaissance - The undoing of the Renaissance. People reject all aspirations to emulate the cultural achievements of antiquity, or for that matter 16th Century Europe, and take refuge in blinkered Mediaeval certainty.
2. Neo-Luddism - Combining hostility to technology in the workplace as embodied in the apocryphal figure of Ned Ludd, but retaining it and worshipping it in the sphere of private life. So, for example, it is OK to have a mobile phone, but it is illegal for work to call you on it.
3. Obscurism - The inevitable backlash to our current obsession with celebrity. Complete anonymity will come to be regarded as the supreme moral virtue. Obscurist artists and writers will produce great works, but no-one will know about it.
4. Post-Ageism - Because of demographic changes in society, combined with constant vilification of young people in the media, old age becomes incredibly fashionable. Youth is despised and comes to be seen as physically repulsive. New plastic surgery techniques to artifically wrinkle skin become very popular.
5. Post-Conservatism - Conservatives realise that so much has gradually changed and evolved since they started being conservative that to get back to where they started they will have to become radical revolutionaries.
6. Masculism - Like Feminism, except instead of formulating a coherent analysis of the power structure in society the proponents just make lists of things in society they like and dislike the most.
7. Groucho-Marxism - Class struggle with a sense of humour.
8. Post-itism - A theory proposing that all worthwhile human endeavour is most accurately expressed on little yellow bits of paper with an adhesive strip on the back.
9. Neo-nlightism - A theory proposing that all worthwhile human endeavour is most accurately expressed in lurid coloured bright lights on Broadway. A schismatic movement focuses on Piccadilly Circus.
10. Schmism - A theory proposing that all worthwhile human endeavour is most accurately expressed by repeating key words and inserting 'schm' as the first syllable. For example: 'Shakespeare? schmakespeare!' 'Capitalism? schmapitalism!'
Continuing my
Still, unplugging the video was a big moment. Like the unplugged fax machine it had a short interesting life. I bought my first video recorder in the 1980s, it was actually stolen from my house – videos were expensive machines back then. We bought tapes and collected programmes like we were going to have them forever, the wonder of being able to go out for the night and have the video recorder tape the programme was the pinnacle of technology. It didn’t matter that you might never watch that taped programme, it was there – that was the thing. It demystified TV in some way and was the beginning of “lean forward” viewing and interactivity with mass media.
The Pope is dead. Hard to think of his life without thinking about the past 26 years, the prime of my life and how his passing in some way signals the passing of those years. Despite the fact that he was never really a friend of me and my kind, I feel sadness at his passing. I also feel in some way that this is the real end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
John De Lorean died yesterday. I’m not a car driver yet I have always loved his De Loren car that was manufactured for a short time in
Went up on the roof tonight to take some pictures of the skyfest fireworks . I didn't think it was as good as it was other years, not as spectacular. This tradition really started in the boom years of the Celtic Tiger. It was an affirmation of our newly found self-confidence, it was as if we all stood there and said “ wow look at what we can do” Many of us did just that. And although that sort of thing had its detractors I was not one of them. I was fully behind this surge of desire to affirm ourselves and our place in the world. But I think we have moved on and need something else? That burst of fire in the same spot in the sky has become very predictable. Once you light up the sky in a spectacular fashion once, what can you do to better that? And although fireworks are beautiful they are very short lived. Then again, maybe that's the whole point.
Kate Kellaway interviewing novelist Alexander McCall Smith (author of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books), in the Observer today writes, “The books, like their author, have charm. You cannot overstate the power of this - it's the missing ingredient in contemporary fiction.”
I’ve had this bad cold for nearly a week now. In the head, the chest, the bones – all over. I often used to get colds this time of the year and part of me even looked forward to it. But I can’t seem to get much pleasure out of confinement any more. There’s always this feeling that life is moving on and that I need to keep up with it. There is so much stuff going on within us and without these days. And as one gets older the endless days are endless no more. Nevertheless, I tried my best to make my fluey down days memorable. I bought a collection of SEINFELD Dvds – Seasons 1 , 2 and 3, and focused my lethargic brain on them. Still good but I thought it was striking how dated they seem, wasn’t expecting that. The 1990s are fading fast. That stand up humour thing , while often very funny and perceptive, has a clear line that can be traced back to the 1950s. The ghost of Lenny Bruce hovers around all the time. and that's no bad thing but - Is it all a little bit too “straight” now or something? Anyway, the DVD collection is a credit to its producers, lots of extras and a very good one hour documentary that tells how the show began.
I’ve been a reader all my life. From the pulpy comfort of comic books to the addiction/ tyranny of the morning newspaper. Thousands of articles, hundreds of books have gone into my brain through the conventional route of words on the printed page. In the last ten years however, I have been reading more and more on screen. Although I would have always gone along with the notion that words on screen will never fully replace the ease and tactility of the printed page I have only recently woken up to the fact that I am now reading more words on screen than on paper. More importantly, I am only now starting to admit to myself that I think I get as much pleasure out of skimming a newspaper on line as looking through a hard copy. I still wouldn’t read a novel on screen but then again I think I listen to more books (via audible on my ipod) than I read. Most books, if read well, gain by being listened to. I’m listening to “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell at the moment. If I was reading it, I’m not sure I would have stayed the course but the different voices make the varying first person narrations very compelling.
My first blog. Snowy day. Listening to the song “Oxygen” by Willy Mason. My God only in his early 20s and sounding as if he’s been with us since, oh at least 1960.What did
