vendredi 31 octobre 2003

Artful meditations, ancient and modern It's a joy to get unexpected feedback from somebody, out of the blue. In a delightful note, Tim Girvin tells me that his work with the Wachowsky brothers was "surely one of the more interesting exposures in my creative litany". Good timing too, with cinema magazines everywhere gearing up for 'The Matrix Revolutions', due for Bonfire Night release. The multi-talented Tim and his team "branded the Matrix", as logged here in March. A "flight of the fantastic", Tim says today. Before 'Reloaded' was released, disappointing many moviegoers and critics alike, producer Joel Silver was promising the moon. He's at it again. "A gigantic film, as enormous as it's possible to be," Silver's quoted as saying in November's issue of the admirable 'CinéLive' (Fr). "'Matrix Reloaded' was only an hors d'oeuvre," claims fellow producer Dan Cracchiolo. "The real film is 'Matrix Revolutions'." We'll find out soon enough. The stolen moment comes from Tim's thoughtful personal site, a work of art in its own right where I occasionally stop by for refreshment. Interesting exposure it may have been, but that movie was only an episode... His journals make me think of 'Myst' (& 'Riven/D'ni') and of renaissance and mediaeval sketchpads. A further feast for the eyes has recently been put on line by multimedia publishing house Nouveau Monde éditions (Fr.) That link too is but an "appetiser". The full meal, served up in three languages, is to be savoured at 'The Illuminated Middle Ages.' This flagship Flash site is a rich companion to a masterly DVD-ROM, 'Le Moyen Age en lumière' (Mac/PC), which draws on the treasures of French libraries to offer 10 different pathways through Mediaeval art and illumination. The colours, content and form of the hundreds of images on display, many of them hitherto unpublished, are quite stunningly beautiful. Nouveau Monde and their partners set out to surprise us as well, putting paid to many received ideas about the Middle Ages. Some mediaeval scholars, we learn for instance, knew perfectly well that the Earth couldn't be flat long before one Nicolaus Koppernigk (St Andrew's University page on Copernicus) distributed a pamphlet of his revolutionary notions in about 1514. The detail from a Metz manuscript reproduced here, the rabbit playing the bagpipes, is "a clear evocation of homosexual relations", the historians say. Hmm. That interpretation doesn't exactly leap out off the page, but then visual acuity was never my strong point. I'm considerably more inclined to take their word for it than sign up as a member of my offbeat place of the week, the Flat Earth Society. At first glance, the DVD-ROM isn't cheap -- even at Amazon France, where they've beaten the local shops to Christmas talk. Going by the companion site and some glowing reviews, however, it looks priceless. 7:02:14 PM  link   your views? [] 'Houston, we have a problem...' Halloween hitch? Ghost posts? This year I'd thought to escape Halloween hoo-ha, which won't stop me checking out fellow Blogcritics fun with it. The phantoms were at my end of the Userland network: the pair of pieces I wrote for this log yesterday. Since they refused to show up anwhere but in my "home folder", despite increasingly perplexed bids to publish them, I've launched them again. All now seems to be in order, unless the post count goes a bit wonky because of deletions. 1:18:24 PM  link   your views? [] 'My Dad heard the Big Bang!' Reposting... What a University of Washington physicist believes the Big Bang "sounded" like stopped me dozing through [yesterday's] traditional Tory pig-sticking. A proud Kathryn Cramer now sees her 'blog entry on her father's imaginative sonic rendering of the birth of the universe topping the Google charts. Without further ado, here's the Big Bang (.wav file, 784KB) I heard on the 'Today' programme. The rumbling roar represents the "sound" of cosmic background radiation during what John G. Cramer describes as "the first 760,000 years" of the universe. Cramer explained a couple of years ago that somebody asked him if anyone has "recorded" the Big Bang. "The short answer is 'no'," he wrote in an Alternate View column, where the © statement may get my wrist wrapped for even reprinting that much. The longer reply, it appears, is that by using data he and colleagues worldwide gathered from a balloon-borne telescope over the Antarctic, which rejoiced in the acronym BOOMERanG, and a symbolic algebra programme, Mathematica, Cramer has been able to render a racket a mere 14 billion years old! Not that the fellow said this to James Naughtie [yesterday] morning. Our Jim thought their might be a flood of e-mails from "creationists" (Listen Again, RealAudio file, 2'25"). Cramer's article of September 2001, decidedly back in the news, also informs us that the space of our universe is, err, "maximally flat". And that it won't collapse back in a "Big Crunch". The mathematics in his column is far beyond me, but he explains the science clearly enough! I like the noise. I hope neither Kathryn nor John Cramer and the National Physics Laboratory will mind my making a mirror on my .Mac iDisk, which is scarcely likely to get even a tiny fraction of the "hits" at the NPL. If they do, I'll "take it down". With a little more grace than the Conservative Party removed IDS. 12:50:05 PM  link   your views? [] Alternative worlds, alternate reads "About 1922 or so, the line-up might have looked like this: The British Empire and a weakened, fractious Russia against a more powerful Imperial Germany allied with Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans. But there's something wrong with this picture..." I love this kind of thing! With that quote, an 'Armed and Dangerous' Eric Raymond picks up an alternative history ball and runs with it. Update: ESR is in plentiful company. Rarely have I seen a 'blog debate so assiduously pursued over days. The commentary on Donald Sensing's provocative initial essay at 'One Hand Clapping' is still going strong, with more at Stephen Green's 'VodkaPundit'... The poor French are coming out of it badly. It all began with Parisian taxicabs wrecking the world (Sensing). For Raymond, by "Great War II, the France that joins the allies is Fascist." To my mind, that's a rewrite too far, though this country manages to scare itself occasionally. Nobody but the Ottomans (and probably not even them) could exist in that Kim Stanley Robinson book I'm reading. I'm taking 'The Years of Rice and Salt' at such a leisurely bedtime pace that a review will be long in the coming. I'm glad, though, to have turned at least a couple of people on to Jon Courtenay Grimwood's terrific writing in the alternative vein... The entertaining Eric ("sex, software, science fiction ... simple pleasures") Raymond is the renowned fellow who wrote 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', which is as yet unfinished on my Safari bookshelf. Now that I've been subscribing to O'Reilly's online library for several months, I unreservedly recommend this alternative way of reading to anybody interested in the range of subject matter. I've never had a hitch with it, and the page "bookmarking" and cross-referencing systems are admirable. Great value for my euros. 12:42:22 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 29 octobre 2003

I wonder if she's changed her mind I've still not forgotten Lee's outburst. Ah, woe was she on August 5th! "You can't stand it, I know you can't stand it. You can't stand it, you know you can't stand it. You can't stand it. You know you can't stand THE HEAT." The poor creature, trapped under the eaves in the Street... Today, she's writing nicely about an intimate something we men can't talk about because ... well, because... ('Cry me a Rivah': Odessa sidewalk floods...) Hmm... Stuck under my own roof in Losserand Road, I want that heatwave back. Now. It is 6°C outside, not over 36° and rising, and I hate it. This is but the end of October and six degrees Celsius is already a dozen below the temperature where the hibernation instinct grips hold of me. Where the Wildcat is, it's worse! Snow already and about zero including windchill under a yuk sky if the reliable Wunderground is to be believed. She may have got the heavy fisherman's jersey I posted by now, but whether she likes it is another question. Great clothes are to her what software is to me: the lure of a hugely therapeutic shopping spree. I really don't much care how I dress as long as it's relatively decently and the garments don't clash. Almost all my nicest clothes were chosen for me by other people, though occasionally I'm courageous. But I'm a sucker for software as well as music. The magic 26th is behind us, the date on which I dare use my Visa card again, starting the cycle of bills that will be payable at the end of next month. And I got lucky, after the bad run. Apple is replacing a dodgy iPod remote command for free. The whole of the exploding halogen lamp was taken back by the shop where I bought it two months ago. The man gave me a new one without a quibble. Then, after a battle to track down somebody responsible at my ISP whom I could protest to about a spate of recent outages, the commercial director promised to slash my bill next month by half. So this morning I ordered Panther from Apple, after all. A "family pack" for me and the Kid. That means there will be no more major music purchases any time soon, but there are hints that Apple's iTunes music store online service may be extended to France by early next year. I've wondered how Windows users have been getting on with iTunes and its like, and found somebody's answers in the "Diary of a legal music downloader" at TDavid's 'Things that ... make you go hmm' (blogrolled). While I moan about the chill that seizes the flat even if I leave a little heating on overnight, TDavid's been concerned with California's fires and what bloggers have been saying. Yesterday, somebody else sneaked into my blogroll. I came across Michelle when she commented on my latest review at Blogcritics. Born in Mainz, she's been around a bit since, according to a lifestory at her place I found most interesting. Today she was attacked by the postman (at Vacuity) when he hurled a packet at her. It's an odd way of staying warm. 1:53:09 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 28 octobre 2003

The Condition: from diagnosis to deadline? Here's hoping... It's hard to write a proper update on the Condition without doing some more tedious "thinking out loud", but there's progress. I expected to be back at work within the next few days, but this idea was squashed during a very long -- and even longer awaited -- meeting which lasted late into the evening. Dr T., who's an extremely busy psychiatrist, largely agreed with the gut specialist, Dr de P, in his surprisingly holistic four-strand assessment of the Condition, giving me the clearest explanation of its psychosomatic aspect I've had. She thought that it would be preferable to stay off work for another month until the treatments now in hand kick in, then agreed that three weeks may be enough provided I rapidly get an appointment with somebody else she reckons I need to see, who specialises in psychosomatic medicine. This I've since done, for next week. Until tonight, Dr T had no idea what happened to me over the past five months, but knows me well: I've seen her on and off since a spell in hospital in mid-1997, but ceased to be one of her priority patients about four years ago. The further insights she gave me (in an appointment I'd been preparing for a couple of days, notes on paper) built on a suggestion the generalist, Dr Yang, came up with in September -- one I've hitherto dismissed because it didn't make any sense to me. Followers of this clinical saga will know I found it hard to accept the idea that the Condition, with its several undeniable, measurable physical symptoms surrounding the collapse of my digestive apparatus, could be a case of mind over matter. The complete test results forced me to do so, acknowledging the role stress and other mental factors had played in triggering it all. While earlier this month, Dr de P blew my premature (and bitter-tasting) "it's all in your head" conclusion out of the water, he helped me begin to understand the brain-body interaction (viz. my Oct 17 entry on 'treatment in mind' and notes on neuro-transmitters). The surprising hypothesis from blog-hero Yang -- the one that made no sense to me -- was that the Condition could have struck in reflection of a serious depression. Well! When my insides turned into leaky pipes in May, I didn't feel depressed. I was in excellent, often relaxed spirits throughout much of the summer, even when the trouble was at its worst, the diarrhoea appalling, the headaches frequent and the white blood cell count three times what it should be. There was no point in worrying ahead of time that the examinations would come up with something serious. I was peeved only during the periods the diagnostic process seemed to be bogged down or going in circles. Manic-depression (in the proper, clinical sense of that term) is a genetic inheritance of mine. I've described how it afflicts my mother in four-monthly cycles, with no relation to the seasons, and has proved hard to treat. And expressed my hope that I haven't passed it on to the Kid. Dr T knows that I've been spared this. But she long ago diagnosed my cyclothymia -- whose monthly cycles are quite apparent even in this 'blog, the gaps coinciding with the period around the new moon. She also regards me as one of those people who is hyper-sensitive to light (the more we get, the better). There, I'm far more affected by the seasons than my Mum. I told Dr T what Yang had said after she volunteered her own twin hypothesis. If I followed correctly, the cyclothymia is to some extent a defensive deviation I've developed to avoid the kind of more serious illness that my mother and others have to endure. And in May, she suggested, rather than "undo all that has been achieved" since I came out of hospital in '97 by going into a real and deep depression, I unconsciously transferred the battle on to by far the most vulnerable part of my body, the ever-dodgy guts... These notions shed light on what Yang suggested. Dr T's line of argument led me to ask questions like "You mean somebody can be really depressed without knowing it?" and so on, to which the answers were "yes and no". More to the point, it dropped another big chunk of puzzle into place and made the strongest intuitive sense. Her hypothesis felt right, just as Rainer's out-of-the-blue alert from Brazil on serotonin levels (Oct 15 entry) rang a loud bell, to be swiftly echoed by Dr de P. It suffices properly to consider my motives even for starting this log, before the "experiment" took all the shapes it has since February, to realise that I needed a creative outlet for things too long repressed in my Factory career. Incidentally, I've also been given confirmation of a statement made by someone who'd better be nameless. This was another doctor, who should have known a damned sight better than to start to reel off names of journalists I'm acquainted with who were badly affected, one way or another, by the problems inherent in trying to provide good and honest coverage of the military campaign in Iraq and its aftermath. (I told the person to shut up with the list and came out of that meeting dumbfounded by the breach of medical ethics...) Those of the Loyal 4 ¾ who were reading this in the early days may recall the anti-"coalition" views I vented well before the first attack was launched -- opinions that had no place in my work at AFP. While avoiding details here which could identify people I was far angrier with early this year than I'd been ready to admit, let's just say that Dr T has helped me understand my unconscious reaction to things happening then. The outcome? It's simply a development of the "recovery strategy" I've been thinking about since the physical diagnosis. Changes of lifestyle and diet, and an anti-stress programme, to which Dr T has added a couple of alterations in brain chemistry treatment. I won't say what quite simply because prescriptions vary too much from one person to another, even for similar conditions, but she went along completely with my refusal to take the "sledgehammer drugs", as I described Xanax, Prozac & Co. She also agrees that, to start with at least, I'm better off turning down proposals to resume work on a part-time basis, which I'd rather not do. That has yet to be fully discussed with AFP, but I suspect it would suit neither me nor the Factory and the leeway the place gives the Desk chief in replacing me. So, all being well with the treatment, particularly measures to alleviate the fatigue (Dr T also told me why she thinks I've still been getting so tired so fast, which nobody else could), I'll be back working with other people's stories from around November 18, three weeks from today. Tony's right, though he retired quite a while back. Once you've been a journalist for long enough, life without any real deadlines is no fun! [Entry revised for an update and clarity, 29/10/2003.] 11:51:15 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 26 octobre 2003

Panther (w)rap? Purring a-plenty, plus insecticide We've had neither the cash nor the courage yet to acquire and install the hottest cat on our Macs, but I've been keeping an eye on those outside the developer community who headed the line. With characteristic optimism, the first thing I wanted to know about was potential itches under the skin of the Panther. At MacSlash (whence I purloined the little picture), they're already into 'Revenge of the Panther Bugs', following a very informative first thread. Few of the irritations noted would seem of a scale to discourage would-be upgraders, though I'll be doing a very thorough back-up first when the time comes. The same bright bunch are also into "Part Deux" of 'Panther Tips and Tricks'. At Mac OSX Hints (blogrolled), Rob Griffiths has helpfully launched a master-thread to group "all Panther hints" posted chez lui, with a promise to update it regularly. For developers and people who enjoy messing with the works, like me, the blogrolled O'Reilly MacDev Center is, almost needless to say, staying on top. At TidBITS, even eBooks (electronic books in .pdf format) are on offer, in a "Take Control" twosome. Catch for the cautious: both 'Upgrading to Panther' and 'Customizing Panther' are payable downloads (five dollars apiece). The early birds at 'Techsurvivors' (blogrolled) have to date posted enough first impressions to suggest that the "archive & install" option is the best bet short of a diskwipe and a "clean install". If I understood one thread correctly, like using "combo" updates from Apple (rather than the smaller one-OS-version-to-the-next option), this method fixes some things left where they shouldn't be with a straight Jaguar-to-Panther upgrade. 11:39:40 PM  link   your views? [] 'The League...': an extraordinary idea largely wasted (Also on 'Blogcritics':) Given a choice between 'The League' and a warm recommendation I wouldn't have expected from the Wildcat's corner, 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' (Sony; just out in French cinemas), the Kid preferred to see 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. She was engrossed pretty much from start to finish, though this fell well short of her movies of the year. Again, her dad was more disappointed. If it weren't for Sean Connery, who must find it hard to be bad whatever he appears in, and some of the more adventurous special effects, this film would be right down at the "bof" end of my scale for making so little of a darned good idea. Perhaps it lost something by no longer being on the really big screens when we caught up with it, but that shouldn't make too much of a difference. For a movie whose whole point is a remarkable cast uniting some enduring characters of outstanding 19th-century literature, the plot -- such as it is -- could scarcely be more banal, the subtlety virtually non-existent, and several fictional models idiotically betrayed in gross errors of detail. Should you have been on a desert island, Sean Connery plays Henry Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain, a name the moviemakers managed to misspell at one point if my eyes didn't deceive me, in an example of petty sloppiness. He's the archetypal reluctant hero called on in 1899 by Her Majesty's government to serve queen and empire one more time, drawing five other Brits and a token American, Tom Sawyer, into a team to -- one guess -- save the world from a maniac inventor. This villain is determined to trigger an arms race and a world war, raking in the profits by selling his advanced weaponry to all sides. Since, at 5 ½/10, the outcome rates for me in the "Diverting if you've nothing better to see" category, I won't head on into spoilers. But if you've more than a passing acquaintance with the (relative) ambiguity of such fictional creations as Dorian Gray and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, you're likely to feel let down by their one-dimensional incarnations here. Some of the visuals are splendid as ideas -- a gigantic Nautilus improbably piloted by Captain Nemo through the narrow canals of Venice, a finale where you half expect some legendary Scott of the Arctic meets the Yeti encounter. However, the papier-mâché quality to a few of the effects has you wondering how quickly the money ran out or whether it's deliberate. Even the Kid, slightly more willing than me to suspend judgement as well as a large dose of disbelief, drew the line at Jules Verne's super-sub in one shot racing across the high seas, to be shown a moment later from another angle with not a hint of a wake behind it. And how the heck does sharpshooter Sawyer know how to drive a unique and elegant automobile the instant he's thrust behind the wheel? Pushed even for an instant, I think she'd find a lot more quite unnecessary holes, but why spoil her remembrance of fun? At least she's read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and one or two of the other "sources" and much enjoyed them. It's not such a bad film, but a regrettable waste of resources! I don't see British director Steve Norrington's (IMDb) uninspired league making other teenagers eager to lap up the literature, so flat are most of the characters, but it drops sufficient hint of a sequel to leave hope for considerably more effort and depth if there is one. A side-benefit was discovering the original of the film itself, in the work of Alan Moore, whose own 'League', with Kevin O'Neill, is duly credited as a "graphic novel" rather than a comic strip. On further exploration, I found I'd stumbled belatedly on a shaggy-headed Northampton school dropout whose considerable oeuvre (Moore fansite) is that of a renowned and original talent. People familiar with this eccentric and insightful Englishman tell me I'd do best to start with his take on Jack the Ripper, 'From Hell.' Hmm. I remember a better film there... 7:44:47 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 25 octobre 2003

'Not oneself', but then who else? "I'm not myself at the moment." Variations on this expression are common currency in the languages I speak or more or less follow, but there are times I think we feel what it is to say that without being able to understand, let alone express, what it means. Occasionally too, I can identify so closely with people in the novels I read (and then distance myself from to review) that the border between my sense of self and the one a really good writer gives characters and the ambience of their world becomes porous. The latest on the list -- so long and so rich that a critical write-up will be a while in the coming -- is Kim Stanley Robinson's already very well-received 'The Years of Rice and Salt' (Bantam, 2002). Already, 100 or so pages in, the author has caught me up in a spell with the wealth of his ideas and some of the protagonists. Not being myself, yet seeing long-abandoned former selves awakened and imperiously demanding recognition in whatever it is I'm becoming (for I can only perceive that we are all multiple entities, an impression confirmed with the passage of the years), has had strange effects. I love the Wildcat dearly, for instance, would like to see her -- and help make her -- much happier than she can be in her arduous daily existence, compelled to make the best she can of circumstances and some people I certainly could not have tolerated for month after month after month. Yet I have been every bit as irrationally mean to her this week on the 'phone as I have gifted her with flowers in this journal -- ever more the "experiment" of its sub-title than it was even when I launched it. The Wildcat has become, I know, one of the "characters" in a multi-threaded tale I seem to be unfolding here nowadays in a way that has a couple of the Loyal 4 ¾ asking for more! It's a challenge to write about her -- and me -- in a fashion which is honest and as upfront as I dare without a single concession to those who want her identity blown. So I scarcely felt myself when a rather odd tale she told me -- about how a "gorgeous man" did something strikingly unusual in the cold, unfriendly town where she's currently compelled to be -- made me suddenly angry and, I knew soon enough, quite alarmingly jealous. Where the Wildcat is, most people are these days stodgy, uncommunicative and inclined to cliques and, no doubt, élites. A city renowned for its culture and artistic achievements, its bourgeoisie prices most of that fare for the mind and the soul far beyond the reach of the average wallet, certainly hers. In Paris, the Wildcat would and does turn appreciative heads when she busies her way along the avenues and through the older quartiers dear to her heart. But where the Wildcat is, the dull citizens ignore good looks and feline grace. Foreigners and immigrants as vital to its economy as they are in many sizeable western towns find themselves perpetual outsiders, objects of a racism which will sometimes even dare to speak its name in some of the politics of the place. B., who is a vivacious, affectionate semi-academic and writer from Cameroon, survived several years of being black and being different in this place of the Wildcat's only because she has a more remarkable ability than most of us to shut out reality's brutalities and make thinly but richly populated worlds of her own. At least, this is how the venerable Tony and I think she managed. I should have been happy to hear of the elegant fellow -- no native of the place -- who exchanged eye-language with the Wildcat on a journey home, very politely accosted her when they got off at the same stop, and asked, for some reason in English, whether she was "lost". Such attention is rare in that town, a town in a country which did not leave a favourable impression on me when I made swift passage across it many years ago. A place where even the most convivial of people have a tough time making any friends at all. The "odd" ships-in-the-night encounter, the Wildcat said, left her regretting that she hadn't found the presence of mind to reply: "Yes, I am lost. Take me for a drink somewhere warm." Instead of being happy for her about a few moments of pleasure, sad about one of life's little lost chances as she saw it, I felt the anger of a jealous adolescent broil up, was nasty to her then and remained so for a day, enough to say a few more unmerited things. This mean-mindedness made me feel bizarre as well as unpleasant. Not myself. Remote from the self that enjoys writing about her, among others, and hopes little gifts strewn on her path, should ever she read them, lift the Wildcat for a while out of that place where she is, take her mind to places where she'd be happier. Well, there is a part of me which has reached far forward across the years to remind me that my teenage rebellion went quite unfinished, partly suppressed, partly socialized and sublimated. Some 'bloggers call their journals things like "identity crisis" and other, often funny, terms to express insecurities and instabilities. One I enjoy, for instance, is All Out of Angst, whose considerably younger writer sometimes echoes my own sense of the absurd, irreverent and ridiculous. With the music and other things resuming their rightful priorities in my life, come an armada of long-buried memories, sailing up from somewhere in my unconscious I scarcely knew existed. The strangest things! And with them, feelings and whole moods, even, I've not known for a very long time. Adolescent jealousy is just one of them. All this, in someone who thought he'd been psychologically analysed and shrunk to fit society, in ways which had wrenched about every skeleton and the other bone fragments out of the dusty wardrobe to be inspected, discarded or re-clothed. Somebody who'd learned, more or less, no longer to project on to others. Not so, it would seem. I have, albeit initially grudgingly, apologised to the Wildcat for being cruel, but find it somewhat easier to write about, even publicly, than to discuss on the 'phone one of the subjects which interests her: me. "The simultaneous shutting down of all your electrical/electronic stuff is interesting. Some will say this is nonsense, but there is a theory that moods can affect machinery, and some people have a stronger magnetic field than others. A friend of mine could make TVs flicker and light bulbs go out by just walking past. And a psychologist friend who was going through deep depression had constant mechanical problems with his car, which he felt were connected to his state of mind. Don't know what I'm trying to say with this!" This part of Natalie's further comment under my Verdi item doesn't strike me as "nonsense", any more than Karl's remarks elsewhere about acupuncture and the parasympathetic nervous system. You are simply trying to say, Natalie, that I'm weird, which I knew... I've known many people pass through such phases, occasionally prolonged, where they find that what's happening in their heads triggers improbable events in their "material" environment, but I've never had anybody tell me that these episodes have lasted much more than a few months. Though unexplained, one or two friends prefer to acknowledge that these things happened, shrugging shoulders, rather than worry that they went "slightly crazy". In a perceptive letter, my father reminds me that he's long thought of me as "a poet, rather than a journalist." Hmmm. I'm not torturing myself with any notion, Wildcat, that my career took the wrong turn in 1976. But behind that paternal conclusion lies very much more. As I prepare to return to the Factory sometime next month, I know that life there can and will never be the same again. While there's a purely physical aspect to my Condition -- the curious way in which my digestive system works -- I can't help starting to believe that it all began in May at least partly because my body launched an open rebellion against what I then was, did and thought I could tolerate. Since then, I've been through a mind-shift. The journalist in me must make room for the other bits that refuse to be stuck in a cupboard any more. My introduction to Robinson was his near-future 'Antarctica' (Bantam, 1998). I went on to devour the Mars trilogy. Never one to shy away from issues of identity and the sense of self among the many themes of an immense body of work (the latter, in the Mars books, tied in with some very probing thoughts on the nature of memory), Robinson confronts them directly in 'The Years of Rice and Salt'. This weighty alternative history looks back, for once, to recount some seven centuries of a world in which Europe, let alone the United States, are nowhere significant on the map. The predominant cultures are eastern and those of the Islamic world. As they very likely would have been had European civilisation been totally extinguished by the Black Death in the 14th century. Reincarnation is the literary device Robinson adopts to lead us and his characters on from one great chapter in this alternative world to the next. In so doing, he astutely questions our received notions of identity as oriental philosophers have done for centuries. It's just the ticket, right now, for this midlife reshuffling of my-selves. 3:54:27 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 23 octobre 2003

Bramble ramble, black through to purple variations It's an odd thing. Finding the flower for the Wildcat took me to the World Iris Foundation, no less, where the lilas mauve that I sought goes by the name of Katinka. But while it bears little resemblance to what I thought I was after, this will do me and today's "hidden" message nicely. By Monday night, my 'phone was behaving more strangely than ever. And soon the line was no more. On Tuesday morning, my mobile 'phone packed in. At about the same time, my internet connection became so sluggish that it wasn't worth using at all. That evening the lamp I bought in the summer to brighten these damp cold autumn days switched itself off with an explosive fizz and pop. A bulb can be replaced, but not a deep-fried halogen socket. Yesterday, the adored iPod made a nasty noise, then refused even to "mount" -- or show up on the computer desktop -- for repair. The police left a note stuck in my door seeking any kind of assistance regarding a "serious incident" in the district. I learned at the Canteen that while we were enjoying Verdi on Monday, a man was shot dead in a bar just across the road from my flat. Seven bullets in the back, according to perhaps exaggerated accounts. Contact with the rest of the world was restored by last night, both telephones fixed. That way, I was able to listen to 20 messages. The earliest had been sitting on the France Telecom end of the answering machine since September 2nd. And a shaken Wildcat was able to tell me that RFI journalist Jean Hélène had been summarily executed by a policeman in Abidjan. I knew him only by name and a very strong reputation. She'd had occasion to work alongside Jean for a week when her own career called for it. All told, once the wonder of Monday's music was over, life took a very dismal turn. Once the Kid was able to contact me, she asked whether she could come over until early next week. Mid-term hols. I said that Dad would be absolutely delighted to see her, but had been plunged into isolation and an increasingly foul and miserable mood. But my latest série noire of events, uncomfortably echoed in the lives of people dear to me, was nothing compared to the most recent murder of a journalist for doing a good job... The iPod story was one of those pains where a shop sent me to Apple Centre, the far side of town, where an offhand shit sent me back to another branch of the retailer in central Paris. They, more helpfully, gave me 'phone numbers. Eventually, an Apple techie actually called me from Ireland. He talked me through a successful repair of the damaged hard disk, and told me how I could fix a faulty contact until a free replacement of the defective part arrives. An internet technician arrived this morning and I'm back on line. I hope that friends with the same ISP and similar difficulties are also able to work and play again. When I asked a girl at Noos to give me at least a 'phone number for a superior I could berate, she said no such contact was allowed. "So the directors of Noos refuse to answer or give their contact details to the clients to whom they are responsible," I said. "Is that company policy?" "Yes," she said. "That's company policy. Precisely." I hope for her sake that the conversation wasn't being recorded the way Apple records theirs. The Kid has improved my mood. And so has the Wildcat. I'm delighted she had a lovely long weekend. But I had to confess that I missed her voice quite appallingly badly, though it had been just a few days. This may be a bad sign. She really is a heart-thief! She's talented at changing the subject as soon as I tell her such things. Indeed, she's excellent at changing subjects full stop. In about 90 seconds this evening she managed a seamless transition through four subjects from how to translate a technical industrial term to the relative cost of hairpins in three major European cities. My 'phone told me how long it took her. For such butterfly gifts I love her. But were I to give some of the other reasons, I'd be in even more serious trouble. So we'll have to settle for the flower. I'd still like to know why she didn't like 'An Equal Music', however. London. Vienna. Venice. Michael Holme, second fiddle in a string quartet, has fonder memories of Vienna than a friend who found the city an absurdly expensive, heavily charmless heap of stones, any remnants of imperial majesty faded into a dull provincialism. But for Michael, the Austrian capital saw the birth of an enduring, unforgettable love he walked out on. To be regained in London, many years later, then lost again in Italy. Most reviews of Vikram Seth's book (Phoenix, 1999) give away Julia's secret. Some rave about it, saying that the author achieves more than one of the best novels about music and musicianship, by producing music itself. I wouldn't go that far. And I found some of Seth's prose too purple to achieve poetry, too obscure. But I enjoyed my mum's birthday present to me, found it very moving. The main characters, disliked by some readers commenting at the linked Amazon page (without spoilers), reminded me of people I once knew and parts of a life I virtually abandoned altogether in coming to France, things that I let slide away like a cliff-face tumbling into the waves. To thank Seth for helping give me back such essentials, I couldn't resist doing a long supermarket shop tonight engrossed in one of one of the two versions of Bach's 'The Art of Fugue' on the iPod. And this, heart-stealer, all arises in a strange letter. When I've told you about that, you can help me decide if it's safe to make another change in the lifetide more widely known.... 9:34:15 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 21 octobre 2003

Mehta's Verdi: a wonderful late birthday gift Verdi's Messa da Requiem was a magnificent present! All the better for having forgotten it was coming (despite a reminder on the day itself). It's been a very long time since I've been to the Théâtre des Champs Elysées for a concert. This most theatrical of requiems got an appropriately dramatic performance from Zubin Mehta and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, with Barbara Frittoli, Luciana D'Intino, Vincenzo La Scola and Carlo Colombara as the soloists. Beforehand, a gloomy youth appeared to make a bad news announcement, but in fact simply informed a packed house that somebody was "indisposed because of the first rigours of the winter, but had decided to perform nevertheless," so pompously that neither Catherine nor I caught the name. One or two moments of faltering had us agreeing afterwards that it was a very red-faced tenor, La Scola, before I realised that it was Colombara the bass, who was splendid, ailing or not. In their ensemble parts, aside from a slightly ragged start, the four were a well-matched team, but Barbara Frittoli was radiant, especially in her demanding and beautiful solos in the closing Libera me, Domine. The only one to appear tonight without a score, she sailed through the hushed passages without a hitch, a voice new to me and one I shall remember. I've not seen a live performance of this work before and hadn't realised what exposed roles Verdi also gives to one or two orchestral players, including a singularly lovely first flute. The Florence theatre orchestra and choir were very good, making the utmost of the extreme dynamic contrasts Verdi and Zubin Mehta allowed them. Once you're familiar with Verdi's Requiem, the mighty storm he unleashes in the Dies Irae can never stun you quite like the first time, but Mehta did it brilliantly, pausing a little longer than most conductors I've heard after the Kyrie Eleison before letting rip. I can't remember a rendition at once as measured and as spectacularly alarming since the recording made by Giulini (re-issued in 2001) with a dream team of soloists in 1964. Mehta and his own crew breathed real magic into the long sequence of operatic sections that follow, before the powerful choral double fugue of the Sanctus announces the more heftily orchestrated closing sections of the work. Immensely enjoyable. Thanks, Catherine! 12:37:28 AM  link   your views? []

lundi 20 octobre 2003

One of those days Today's just one long waking siesta, since I'm still very tired. And it shows, doesn't it? I'm conserving my appreciative energies for tonight when Catherine, my former wife, gives me my birthday present. We're going to a performance of Verdi's 'Requiem', conducted by Zubin Mehta. I'd forgotten all about it until she 'phoned last night. Since Paris has turned grey, nasty and cold, I'm catching up on warmer places. This "been there, done that" one comes from Cape Town, where 'extrange' forgets to credit it. 5:27:43 PM  link   your views? [] Rainy day brain page So I'm a literary thinker, with a slightly more female than male brain. Surprise, surprise...! But I should consider a career change to become a Formula One driver or champion chess player. Huh? That's how much self-control I'm supposed to possess, according to another of the BBC's Mind tests, which are fun (via the musically minded Trish at 'In a {bloggy} Mood'). 4:43:29 PM  link   your views? [] Evelyne who? to be stamped on our coins For the past few days, we've had a new Marianne. I speak not of the Kid, but of the Republic. I've never heard of Evelyne Thomas, since as the Loyal 4 ¾ know, I won't let a telly and its 90% mindless crap under this roof. Chosen by a panel of 400 mayors, was she? Had it been up to me, Carla Bruni would have won, hands down, especially since the Wildcat alerted me to her considerable musical talents (via 'bookofjoe'. His trans-Atlantic tip-off triggered a non sequitur from Anon in French, whose import escapes me utterly. Postprandial update: the pix. From ET fansites, no less, and just for F.M., to make up for my "unpardonable ignorance"). 1:33:03 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 19 octobre 2003

Pygmy polyphony, Ligeti ... and a rave about my new toy Mark Coles, who gets to do some choice arts stories, came up with a real gem about Pygmy musicians from the Central African Republic taking part in Ligeti anniversary concerts in Britain. They brought with them a musical tradition reckoned to be among the oldest known in the world, which is not to say the most primitive. Far from it. As Coles explains, György Ligeti is among the great composers of our own day -- well, it's me who adds the "great" -- to have been influenced by the complex polyrhythms of these people. The musicians featured in yesterday's report (a 6'14" Real audio clip from 'Today' on BBC Radio 4) flew to London for a concert among the many marking Ligeti's 80th birthday year. The music of the Aka pygmies is rich, entrancing, and sophisticated. If you're old and irreverent enough, you might think that the whistles in the Coles sound-clip also inspired that wonderful late '60s TV series 'The Clangers'. But I didn't hear my first recordings of Pygmy polyphony until a decade later, when I was writing mainly about many different musics in my last years at the Beeb. The man who gave us those recordings was Israeli ethnomusicologist Simha Arom. Two of them, originally released by UNESCO on LP, are now on CD as part of the superb Radio France-Ocora collection. Familiar to many who may think they've never heard of him since the orchestral piece 'Atmosphères' is among the Ligeti works Kubrick used for the music in '2001' soundtrack, the composer also wrote an introduction to Arom's learned tome, 'Polyphonies et polyrhythmies instrumentales d'Afrique centrale'. There he described how Arom's pioneering and original approach got him thinking about the meter, or pulse, of music in new ways. Ways I'd very much rather listen to than tedious techno. Anybody really interested can find a translation of Arom's book at Amazon -- for 180 dollars! Ligeti's String Quartets and a lot of African music are among the many things on my iPod, which already goes almost everywhere with me. Wow, have I fallen in love with it! Some people recommend buying alternative headphones for Apple's elegant music player, but I'm far more impressed than I anticipated by the sheer quality of the "earbuds" that come with it. They'll do me nicely for now. Apple, which released new software for the iPod along with updates to iTunes and QuickTime on Friday, claims you can put up to 10,000 songs on the 40GB iPod, but mine, at half that size, wouldn't run to 5,000 the way I'm going. The most widely used "default format" for MP3s or the MPEG-4 (AAC) codec I use myself is 128kbps, but I've chosen to lose a bit of hard disk space to get the higher quality that comes with 192kbps. You'd have to be a very demanding music-lover indeed to push the compression format right up to the 320kpbs mentioned in a comparison at the end of an excellent iPod review in 'Stereophile'. Since I've "ripped" more than 170 of my CDs on to the iPod and it's far from full yet, the answer to a frequently asked question in the past two or three weeks would be exceedingly boring. It took me days, probably literally, to get all the details in the playlists right, even with the help of the fabulous Gracenote CD data base (CDDB). I've uploaded more than a dozen contributions to the CDDB myself, mainly of complete operas and other large works, as well as in the "world music" category. All this kept me occupied during my recent "downer", a routine task to get on with when I lacked the inspiration to do anything else. The CDDB is almost too useful to gripe about. Anything that can automatically give you so many details when you stick a CD into your computer is amazing! But I do strongly object to one of its features: the idiotic limitations of categorizing music by "genre". The database gives you a reasonably wide range of choices for the kinds of popular music you submit to it. But when it comes to "classical" music, the selection is exceedingly limited. There isn't even a separate category -- or sub-category -- for "Opera", let alone "Renaissance" or "Mediaeval". Or if there is, the iTunes interface won't let me submit items under such "genres". Which means that Monteverdi ends up in the same category as, say, Japanese contemporary composer Toru Takemitsu. Most annoying is the use of "World" as a classification for anything that isn't the product of so-called Western musical culture. This may keep things simple, but on my iPod, the Indian ragas are definitely not listed under the same genre as Balinese gamelan music or Malian singer and musician Rokia Traoré. 11:44:49 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 18 octobre 2003

Saying it with flowers It was wise counsel she gave last night, the Wildcat, suggesting that I get "at least 14 hours' sleep". But I couldn't. It was more like six. My brain was buzzing for hours after I went to bed and I woke early, even though young Ms Techno doesn't do her pre-work fix on a Saturday. I'm mildly curious to know which of the lasses who've moved in next door waits for the other to leave for work or class or whatever it is, then puts her music on and turns the thumping up loud. This ritual lasts for a quarter of an hour before she too clomps off down the stairs. I wouldn't dream of objecting. It's clearly an important part of her day. All that comes through the wall is the beat, as dully monotonous as a metronome. It was only this morning that the relief and the significance of Thursday's talk with the specialist sank in, leaving me brain-drained today. It's wonderful to know, after so long, what the causes of the Condition are, that I'm not seriously ill and that it isn't all in my head. I celebrated at the Canteen by eating my first fruit salad since April, sorry only to have missed the season of peaches and strawberries, a very trivial regret as my mind takes in all the things that the doctors thought I might have. While some of these flowers, Wildcat, are for you, they don't include the pink "thank you" roses, since I know different ways of saying that when we meet again. One's for Lee, whose comment here on yesterday's post has taken me totally by surprise. I had no idea she was dropping by these days! Especially after the things I've written about her and the Street behind her back... The others are for Augustine and her alter ego to fight over. I haven't yet directly replied to their latest comments at this place, but I appreciate them very much. It must be said, however, that those two spend so much time squabbling that it's a wonder they found the time for the Bloggers' Parliament... Throughout the summer, many good souls were far more alarmed about me than I was, though I did my best to reassure them except in the really bad times, when it was easier simply to shut up. It's now that I realise that I must have been much more worried about the Condition than I was ready to let on, especially to myself. My priority today is to thank all the people who lent me support and showed understanding and patience during my "downers". And if I hear anybody slagging off the French medical profession or national health service again anytime soon, it'll be a pleasure to set them straight. My favourite remark came from Patxi, the venerable Basque who was running the Factory's Desk Afrique yesterday when I dropped in with what I hope will be my penultimate arrêt de travail. "Five months for a diagnosis?" he asked. "It took them five whole months to discover that you're a complete lunatic?" The Wildcat won't see her bunch of nigella until she returns from a well-deserved rest. I chose those because of their more common name. Finding the frangipani took me on a world tour, from the Caribbean to parts of Africa to Asia, but I found these almost "next door", in München. Munich, to some of us. Gifted "dabbler" in photography Manfred Leitner, who shares my taste for a trusty old Nikon camera, caught them against a dream-blue sky on Bali, an island I would still love to visit (Lonely Planet) despite the tragic bomb attack commemorated this week. Also in his "spare time" -- a notion I find increasing absurd as each year passes -- Leitner is an inveterate voyageur. He has put hundreds of photos and very readable personal commentary on his ever-growing site, Manfred's Travel Pictures (workplace warning: music by default on the home page). They include quite a bunch, darling, of one of the places close to your heart. More than that, I dare not say... 10:33:12 PM  link   your views? [] The wages of sin It was Francis the newsvendor who warned me that the tobacconists go on strike on Monday, "in case you haven't stocked up on your filthy drug for the weekend." They object to a 20 percent rise in the cost of cigarettes, in the wake of those notices that appeared in late summer. One of the dromedaries which adorned a packet of Camels has gone, replaced by "Smoking can cause a long and painful death" and similar cheery reminders. I have no sympathy for these petty traders, I informed Francis, regarding them as "collabos and social parasites" who buy snug country cottages on the strength of weak-minded fools like me. While this is probably untrue, as a species they strike me as the most mercenary and unfriendly of Parisians. This afternoon, I saw that one local tobacconist and lottery ticket vendor has put up a huge sign underneath a couple of outsize cigarette packet advertisements (which also bear the blunter new health warnings). It read: "TOBACCO MOPS UP THE DEBT IN THE SOCIAL SECURITY BUDGET AND FINANCES THE 35-HOUR WORKING WEEK." 8:11:03 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 17 octobre 2003

Treatment in mind (and for the body) We have a breakthrough! The Condition has finally been diagnosed -- more than five months after it laid me off work -- and I can begin treatment. With indeed the probability that I will be back at the Factory some time in November. During my rendez-vous with the specialist, Dr Vincent de P., yesterday evening, I expressed guilt about the thousands of euros it has cost the French state to reach this point and determine what I've got, but he told me to stop being an idiot. He was also reassuring, since it's now clear that while my state of mind played a part in what happened to me back in May, it's "most certainly not all in your head". I won't post the considerable detail of his diagnosis, since the causes of my serious gut disorder are both physical and psychological and it took Dr de P. a long time to explain it all to me. But in short: there is something physically wrong with my digestive system (and always will be): it operates bizarrely. Accumulated stress was one of the triggers for my variation of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but there were others De P. showed me as we waded through the findings in many tests. I went to the appointment armed with a batch of items I'd found on the Net by following several leads, including Rainer's serotonin tip reported here on Wednesday. Bless you, Mr B., because the specialist knew about this research already and your link was right on the mark, as part of the diagnosis. The trouble with IBS, however, is that my particular kind of it won't be the same as those afflicting far more people than I'd ever imagined. IBS Research Update points to three main variants, but even these classifications are broad definitions of symptoms that vary considerably from one person to another, it seems. "Modern IBS research has focused on the importance of the relationship between events that affect the function of the central nervous system (brain) and the influence these factors ultimately have on the function of the intestines via the specialised enteric nervous system of the intestine (The Brain Gut Axis)," the same site reports. The treatment, where I'm concerned, will involve three things: - changes in diet for IBS, which will include the opposite of things I'd been told to do during the months of clinical exams. For instance, where I had to avoid fibres for a long while as part of the testing process, now I should eat more of them...; - taking appropriate -- and conceivably "alternative" -- medicines to suit me. These vary so much from one case to another that there's no point in detailing which ones; - stress management strategies. That last link is a bit dangerous. "The prescription of newer antidepressants (SSRIs) such as fluxetine (Prozac®) and paroxetine (Paxil®) is becoming increasingly commonplace in the treatment of IBS," it reports. This is correct. But there's no way I'm going anywhere near Prozac®, Xanax, or any of the other sledgehammers increasingly often prescribed to crack nuts. My reading in the past few days has confirmed my "gut feeling", partly based on past experience, that such drugs can make nutcases -- and a great deal of money for some pharmaceutical companies -- with even greater ease than they get to the kernel of the problem. 1:38:12 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 15 octobre 2003

Beyond software: how the open source model could change lives "Collaboration replaces the corporation"? Now there's music to my ears! 'Open Source Everywhere' is the title of a new article in Wired 11.11 (Nov 2003), where Thomas Goetz takes the battle against cholera in developing countries as his starting point for a discussion of "open source" cooperation. We're not merely thinking computer software any more, Goetz declares in his long, detailed survey. That was just the beginning. Take frogs. "...Michael Eisen slogged through swamps in Costa Rica studying the mating behavior of frogs. That's what biologists did, he figured - and if he had to fight off a few leeches along the way, so be it. Now he's all about coding, crafting blocks of genetic data and churning them through his computer. 'It's a great time to be a biologist,' says Eisen, a computational scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 'Origin of Species is the best thing ever written in biology. But you just wish Darwin knew about genomics.' "Yet if biology is in a renaissance, there are still relics of a medieval age," Goetz suggests. "Most aggravating to Eisen is the state of scientific publishing. It affronts him. And he wants to destroy it. "His weapon is open source. Unlike Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, who didn't set out to take down Britannica, Eisen has the publishing community squarely in his sights. Open source, says Eisen, who dabbles in Perl programming, can give rise to a new distribution model for scientific research." That's just a juicy extract from a wide-ranging review of the impact of open source in several domains of our lives. "It forces industry to reckon with openness rather than hide behind intellectual property. In driving down the cost of software or encyclopedias or biotechnology, open source is unleashing billions in capital otherwise put to woefully inefficient ends," Goetz writes. I hope he's right to be so optimistic! 11:00:25 PM  link   your views? [] Sorting, chucking, classifying: trash and OS X news I just bought a new pedal-bin on special offer at the local hardware store: get a biggish one and a small one for the bathroom is free. Blue was what I wanted to go with some of the furnishings, but then I changed my mind. Letterbox red, UK-style, would do very nicely! Why hide the trash can when it's a good-looking model and the very last thing you want to do is keep it discreet? Certain people have no excuse left to imagine that almost inaccessible spaces behind the beds, kicked deep under the washing machine or even simply dropped on the floor are fine places for litter. When it comes to my hard disk, which had also become an almighty mess, I'm just beginning to master the finer arts of using DEVONthink, first praised here in mid-August. The screenshot shows that I haven't been making the most of a tool whose potential and power for classifying and correlating all kinds of data has taken time to sink in: But the chaos does give an idea of the sheer range of things you can file away in it. As I sort that out, the brains at DEVONtechnologies have today hauled their stunning internet search, filter and classify tool, DEVONagent, out of beta. If you're a news and research fiend using Mac OS X, this application has steadily got better and is now unbeatable. Like the bin manufacturers, the German firm are currently offering two tools at a reduced price (provoking polite moans in the user forum from early purchasers asking "What about us?" My guess is that we first birds paid an extra fistful of dollars for the privilege of making suggestions that have seen the help manuals considerably improved). Meantime, NetNewsWire, which I use virtually all the time now for 'blogging as well as newsfeed gathering, seems to be going through the birth pangs of better betas on an almost daily basis. The latest, version 1.0.6fc2, is niftier than ever -- best picked up at VersionTracker, along with its still-free partner, NetNewsWire Lite. The man behind Pixture Studio, Hide Itoh, last month made such radical improvements to his image adjustment tool, QuickImage, that it's become my "default application" for some of the the pix I 'blog (just as the DEVON people are making the best use they can dream up of the hidden strengths in OS X's Services menu). The genius of QuickImage is that it's not in fact an application at all. Instead, a contextual menu allows you to do a lot of things to pictures without having to open a special programme. The screenshots available via the developer's OS X page show in an instant what I find complicated to explain in words. I see that Hide has this month done something similarly clever for rapidly checking out those ubiquitous .PDF files. Note: in that screenshot above, that's NNW tucked away behind DEVONagent. Inspired by a recent article and some posts at the O'Reilly Mac development site, I've of late cut down on irrational use of an overloaded dock. It's trimmed now (right-hand side) almost exclusively to a launchpad for internet apps, while it took a couple of hours to sort the rest of what I use into time-saving categories in DragThing drawers. It's an opportune moment to mention the very cool DT, by the way. Its developer, James Thomson, is as Panther-minded as everybody else. James is promising to release DragThing Five tomorrow, at 12 dollars for an upgrade by current users and a slightly cut rate for newcomers. Old friend DT 4 is mainly bottom left in the screenshot. The tiny blue bar at top right is a DT drop-down where my mounted disk partitions are now tidily tucked away. And the white, grey, yellow and blue thing at bottom right isn't a new flag design for my anarchist island. MemoryStick, a cunning little freebie by Matt Neuberg, keeps an eye on what my Mac's doing with its own brainpower as I work. 8:51:36 PM  link   your views? [] The Condition: Rainer's remarkable reference The state of my guts became a "no-no" subject here after recent outbursts, in which I feel that: a) I wrote more than anybody could possibly want to read, b) even if you did, it was probably as embarrassing to digest it as it was for me to post it. Today's mail changed that. Along with an apology from my ISP for recent poor service occasioned by a massive spam attack, there was a note Rainer sent on Monday with a potentially extremely helpful link. "Novel research shows that alterations in serotonin signaling in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract are present in patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). These data shed light on the alterations in gut motility, secretion, sensation, as well as the clinical manifestations of IBS, which include abdominal discomfort, pain, bloating, constipation and/or diarrhea." This report from an expert gastroenterology gathering (EurekAlert!) in Baltimore just might be, for me, a case of "eureka"! It fits nicely with ideas put to me by an X-ray specialist, who last month spent part of the several hours devoted to monitoring the passage of a revolting concoction through my small intestine by engaging me in talk of alternative lines of investigation. For years, finding the right drugs to regulate my serotonin levels has been important (all to do with the cyclothymia I've referred to before). The X-ray man had a lot to say about that, proving well-informed in this field different from his own ... and laying the groundwork for my final acceptance that what's happened to me since May could indeed be, in good part, an instance of mind over matter. Months ago, someone important in the Factory told me that if I really was off work for "purely psychosomatic reasons", the unpleasant manifestations of the Condition bore remarkable testimony to the workings of my mind and its power! I was sceptical then. Rainer's find will be submitted to all three of my key medics in the next couple of weeks. Working from the assumption that bloghero Yang's "hypothesis" is correct -- that what's happened to my guts with no evident physical cause apart from a few oddities has much to do with my head -- I've become actively engaged in tracking down treatment for stress management. In a long, long discussion Monday with AFP's workplace doctor, I was told that during the week before I had to quit work, I was singularly and most unusually rude to the medical staff. I have absolutely no recollection of this! I do remember rushing upstairs to get just anything to "stop the fucking diarrhoea!" so I could get back to the Desk to deal with a breaking news story, but certainly not swearing about anything apart from my bowels. It would seem, however, that this forgotten episode left quite a mark and I learned that my stress rate was clearly right "off the thermometer". Since a lot of journalists were in a similar state at that stage in the so-called "War on Terror", I really can't have thought anything special about it. The tension was just part of the job... And that's why -- the understanding that high stress is just a regular feature of the agency journalist's life -- I took it so very badly a couple of weeks ago when Dr Yang finally put it to me that I could just have cracked up, in what has literally been a gut reaction to year after year of accumulated stress. Now I've begun to get over the acute embarrassment of this hypothesis, I'm starting to feel grateful, first that it isn't anything more physically serious, and then to the many friends and colleagues who don't seem to think the worse of me for it. Today's tip from the man in Brazil is like another big piece of jigsaw suddenly falling into place. Rainer spotted it on EurekAlert!'s public news list pages, part of his regular diet. The whole, wide-ranging EurekAlert! science news site today becomes another must for the blogroll. Thanks, RB! 1:46:28 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 14 octobre 2003

'Missed Youth': a missed opportunity So what would it be like if medical science could shave a good half-century off your life, allowing you to turn the whole bodyclock back? Peter Hamilton takes on the intriguing idea in his black comedy of errors, 'Misspent Youth' (Macmillan, 2002; Tor, 2003). But to say that he gives it stellar treatment would be misleading, especially if you identify this writer with grand space opera. Very much down to earth in the year 2040, the Brits have been dragged into a federal Europe. Jeff Baker becomes the first beneficiary of a fantastically expensive rejuvenation process, paid for by Brussels, keen to prove that the "old continent" is right up front on the world stage. Youth is Jeff's reward for inventing the datasphere, based on solid-state memory crystals, replacing the Internet. The 78-year-old scientist is seen as a worthy choice, since instead of amassing a fortune from his work, like some near-future Bill Gates, he magnanimously refused to patent his achievement and turned it over to the public domain. Trouble starts almost as soon as Jeff quits a German clinic to rejoin his young wife, a high-flying former model turned bitchy by boredom, and their 18-year-old son, Tim. The lad, who's trying to make sense of his failures and unexpected successes with the opposite sex, soon finds that having an adored father turned back into a man in his early 20s is more of a challenge than ever he expected. Especially when Dad's uncontrollably randy and can't be trusted around the girls Tim manages to bring home. As for Mum, life was fine when she and Jeff had an "arrangement" regarding her lovers, but now he's young enough -- in body, at least -- to question that deal, things get complicated. Even his old drinking buddies down at the pub are suddenly just that: old! Enter the media hordes, of course, along with the police. Before Jeff's even back home, a Europol squad moves into house and village, a measure which doesn't go down at all well with the family. The politicians impose tight security. It's not in a mere four decades that all Britons are going to shrug off mistrust and take kindly to being integrated into an enlarged Europe or to people presented as symbols of its "success". Underground Separatist movements use tactics which make the IRA's kneecapping technique look like school playground high jinks. The dark side to this book lies partly in Jeff's rake's progress with his new-found lust, and partly in Hamilton's bleak political undercurrents, swelling to a climax at a huge anti-Brussels protest in London. The downside is that altogether too much of 'Misspent Youth' is about sex. We're treated at length to Jeff's pursuit of his fantasies along with his teenage son's tribulations. Hamilton makes a go of exploring the father-son relationship, but too many of his women get scant attention beyond their names and the size of their boobs. The author, nevertheless, pulls off some richly comic turns while driving a few points home about the potential impact of scientific "advances". In a far cry from the sweeping social and technological changes some writers envisage within a mere 50 years, Hamilton gives us insidiously plausible progress, with winks back to the transient pop culture heroes of the past half-century. Some characters are even likeable. Tim's gin-swilling Aunt Alison and her disreputable chum Graham are writers deprived of their former living by the datasphere. This invention has also turned today's bids to outwit technology by the record company majors into a desperate last stand. Bits of this could conceivably happen, along with the political shifts, high satire or not, but Hamilton falls far short of his best on the ideas front. If you were swept up by the massive 'Night's Dawn' trilogy and some of the vast cast of characters of that inter-galactic epic have lingered long in your mind, don't expect the same here. It's really only the semi-explored rejuvenation premise that marginally qualifies 'Misspent Youth' as science fiction, rather than readable mainstream entertainment. Because Hamilton knows to spin a yarn, most readers will keep turning the pages. But because it's Hamilton, many who've admired his previous work may be in for a disappointment. Next time round, Hamilton looks set to return to a very different vein. 'Pandora's Star' is announced for next February. 11:50:28 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 13 octobre 2003

More than a touch of Tibet After seeing The Kid on to her train at the end of our weekend, I needed music to ease the ache of goodbye and switched on the iPod. I chose the soundtrack from Eric Valli's drama-documentary 'Himalaya' (1999; iMDB), a marvellous movie. The award-winning score by Bruno Coulais (Amazon UK) includes some fine Tibetan chant and traditional songs. Last night, oddly, Tibet then kept cropping up on the blogroll as I took a look to see who was where. Rainer's put a digital prayer wheel on 'Solipsism Gradient', bearing the famous mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum" and telling us why, with some good links. In the US section at Open Source Politics, Barbara O'Brien has declared herself 'Cassandra Americana': "Every day a few more people look into the future of America and see the Mother of All Train Wrecks. And, alarmed, these good citizens flap about and try to warn the others. And the others say, jeez, what's with you? You hate our President. You must be a Saddam lover. Or a traitor. Or (gasp) a liberal! And we're supposed to believe you? Bwahahahaha! I confess; I'm infected. I'm a Cassandra. And I say to my fellow citizen who believes George W. Bush is doing a good job, one of us must be crazy. And I don't think it's me. Why am I worried? Let me count the ways." So she does (OSPolitics). This incited me to follow Barbara to her own place, 'The Mahablog', which is unrelentingly political but a commendable, well-informed read. And who did she choose to include in a links round-up? The Dalai Lama's recent trip to the United States is the subject of a piece by Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of 'The Nation'. The Tibetan leader is "a very good listener. He also seemed very human, yet spiritual; political, yet apolitical; humorous, yet full of a sadness that comes from being the leader of an occupied country; but also joyful, with a mischievous laugh," Katrina wrote in her 'Editor's Cut'. I would have liked to read more of what he had to say than of what Katrina told him, in a bid to "make sense of the theme of media and ethics while also addressing the Dalai Lama's call for compassion and nonviolence." Nevertheless, it's an editorial comment worth reading. The Dalai Lama's country came up yet again at MetaFilter, in a tip-off by Taz to a splendid collection of movies available for download at the Open Video Project. These include 23 remarkable reels of film shot mainly in Tibet in the 1930s by a British political officer stationed in the Himalayas, Frederick Williamson (OVP: Special Collections). They are fascinating, but some are big downloads (around 80 MB in MPEG-1 format for the first, 10 minutes long). In all, the Open Video Project (index) currently stocks almost 2,000 movies on a host of themes. It's an invaluable archive. 1:05:06 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 11 octobre 2003

'Eater': small cast, vast imagination Gamma-ray bursters are "the dyspeptic belch of a spectacularly large astrophysical meal". When a black hole swallows something like a giant star, it's not an event astronomers would expect to see twice in the same part of the sky. Especially within a few hours. So when Amy Major drops some unusual observations on to her boss's desk at the High Energy Astrophysics Center in Hawaii, a sceptical Dr Benjamin Knowlton sees a chance to break with routine. Within days Amy, Knowlton, his astrophysicist wife Channing and his old friend and rival Kingsley Dart have formed a core working group to investigate a phenomenon which draws the attention of professional sky-probing scientists worldwide. From the opening chapters of 'Eater' (Eos/HarperCollins, paperback 2001), Gregory Benford had me totally engrossed in the painstaking process of scientific investigation, writing about it as only an insider can. While I occasionally had a hard time keeping abreast of the astrophysics, he has a way of getting the ideas across that filled me with a rare sentiment: genuine wonder. A theoretical and experimental physicist with his own corner of the Web, Benford is an acute observer of human nature. He makes rounded and interesting people of all the main characters in a novel bringing many a new twist to the well-worn theme of "first contact". Much of the book's originality lies in the very strangeness of the object first taken for that distant, "dyspeptic belch." It's Channing, a woman only too glad to plunge back into science instead of staying home to fight a losing battle against cancer, who comes up with the name for it: "The Eater of All Things." Hooked by the gradual unveiling of the nature of the beast, I found myself wondering how well Benford would cope with the politics once it was clear that the Eater could pose a deadly threat to humankind, with the United States determined to take the lead in tackling it. When Washington opts for nukes, the political establishment thinks it would be clever to pin the blame on China. The response is as swift as the wrath of Jehovah. The effect of such unfortunate decisions apart, Benford astutely leaves most of the dealings in the corridors of power to Kingsley Dart, Britain's Astronomer Royal. Kingsley has what it takes to move the narrative on while allowing Benford to concentrate on the confrontation between his scientists and the alien intelligence, rather than writing yet another disaster novel. The sense of astronomical scale and the fascination of the Eater itself are such that to clog up the story with too much politics -- or a large cast -- would detract from the depth of the writing and the demands Benford's remarkable imagination makes on our own. Glancing at other reviews, I find that 'Eater' met with a mixed reception. Some got bored, while many of the warmest comments came from fellow scientists who praise Benford for presenting their work as they live, breathe and think it. I thoroughly enjoyed my first encounter with this prolific and often witty writer. In an interview for SciFi.com, Benford describes humankind as "mean, stupid, ugly, and the terror of all other species." Maybe so. But he comes across as an unrepentant humanist with sharp insight. 'Eater' is the most elegant and thoughtful novel by a practising scientist to have kept me reading into the early hours since the late Carl Sagan's 'Contact' (Orbit, 1997). 10:28:06 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 10 octobre 2003

Gripes from the blogroll "The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk." Thus reported the Guardian, announcing a BBC TV documentary coming up on Sunday. Via Antipixel, which concludes it's time to abolish the Roman Catholic church. zzz "People are might start paying for songs on the iTunes Music StoreNapster because they think it's a good way to support musicians. But by giving musicians just a few cents from each sale, iTunesNapster destroys a huge opportunity. Instead of creating a system that gets virtually all of fans' money directly to artists--finally possible with the internet--iTunesNapster takes a big step backwards." A very clever "guess who?" spoof page at Downhill Battle shows why Roxio's resurrection of Napster looks like an extremely bad idea (via the J-Walk Blog). zzz "I always tell people my birthday is easy to remember: October 8. Like an octagon. Or an octapus. Very simple. Most people then say to themselves: 'Oh, yeah, very easy. 10/10. October 10th.' How they seem to make this logic jump, I'm not sure, but it still happens. So maybe he'll wake up tomorrow, give me a big hug, and say, 'Happy birthday baby!' If I'm really lucky, maybe I'll get another duck paperweight." In Odessa Street, a generous Lee has given The Boy till tomorrow to remember that yesterday was her birthday. There's no mention of what will happen if he doesn't. My own, a few days back, went almost universally unremarked, which was how I wanted it this year... zzz "When I read an 'erotic' story about a cheetah being pregnant it doesn't just churn my stomach it actually freezes my blood in my veins," says Zack, rather breathlessly. "Give me a sturdy axe and a direction and I would gladly cut a swath of destruction through all of the furries on the planet, reserving special chopping for those who weren't satisfied with simply sexualizing anthropomorphic animals. No, for the pregfurs no quick death, no quarter." And who can blame the 'Geist Editor' at Something Awful (no permalink to today's posts yet)? 'Pregfur' is indeed an absolutely revolting site of the day. Unless you're into that kind of thing... 9:34:29 PM  link   your views? [] Hopeless. And hopeful Two birds with one stone. The risible if predictable turn of political events in California has preoccupied many 'bloggers so much that I should not let it pass unmentioned here. In so doing, I can cater for those who might consider some of my past pix sexist. So here he is (or was): the Hulk. If that's not enough for you, the bigger original, with more, is to be found on the man's entertaining bio page at Rotten dot com, a site which largely keeps to its pledge "to present the viewer with a truly unpleasant experience". Rotten is good reading for those wanting more than slices of the Onion. Here's an extract from an item in the 'Today in Rotten History' column, for Oct. 10, 1780: "Over 48 hours, a slow-moving hurricane decimates Barbados, killing 4,326 (however according to the island's governor, 'fortunately few people of consequence were among the number')." Places like Rotten and, in a milder way, Disinformation would meet the second part of the Francis Formula for instant stress reduction, dispensed freely with the papers by the local newsvendor. "Breathing exercises," Francis suggests for Part I. "Yes, like in the days you used to practice yoga..." And for Part II, suggests our latter-day Thomas Hobbes: "Simply get used to the idea that the world is, always was and always will be a bloody mess, where things can only get worse and there's absolutely bugger all you can do about it. "You'll start feeling better straight away." Francis refuses to take up residence under my pillow and repeat this over and over as I sleep. I don't believe him anyway. Undoing residual faith in the finer aspects of human nature is not an overnight task. The message in today's flower for the Wildcat is far more in tune with my thinking. This one I unexpectedly found at a Japanese technology college for people with hearing or visual disabilities. The Cape Jasmine (or gardenia), which can bloom right through from May until October, comes from southern China. With glad tidings. No wonder it's one of the fair feline's favourites. And, like her, so much prettier than Mr Heavy Mettle. 6:05:16 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 9 octobre 2003

Involuntary beta-testing for Apple "Last Monday, as Geoff Duncan was preparing the TidBITS issue for distribution, Software Update notified me that I could install Mac OS X 10.2.8. It was late, I was tired, and I let it download and install without really thinking about the consequences," Adam Engst told us on TidBITS late in September. "There but for the grace of God...!" thought I. But it was past horrors, not divine intervention, which had me check the web to read what others were finding before updating with Apple's latest wonder. The mishaps of many who did the same as Adam (and as I invariably used to do myself), before Apple pulled 10.2.8 to re-release it several days later, have been too widely and sadly documented to recall. Yesterday I decided it was safe, but I've noticed precious little by way of real improvements. Only 15 days ahead of the release of Panther (Apple's countdown began yesterday too), I was half-inclined not to bother. Upgrading has become a long, tedious business if you're wise and run back-up and maintenance routines either side of the job. For all the major improvements I saw in Panther at Apple Expo last month, I doubt I'll be rushing to install it. As ever, Apple's supposedly complete list of info about the 10.2.8 update simply isn't. Just for instance, it gives you a new build of the Safari browser, but the knowledge base article refers simply to "several enhancements for Safari". Yes. Such as...? The Kid has been instructed never to run a system update programme until Daddy's given her the nod. It's a pity it has to be that way. Some people at MacFixit are reporting problems even with the re-released build. Using the terminal application to fix them isn't exactly child's play. I fail to understand why Apple now seems to consider the Mac-using community at large to be its beta testers. But now I've got an iPod, Cupertino is mainly back in my good books. The little beauty is an absolute joy of first-class engineering. 8:44:10 PM  link   your views? [] Winning styles My own vote goes to Gilles Lescure's entry to a graphics competition organised by the ever interesting design review, 'Création Graphique': But it's one heck of a difficult choice! Almost 500 artists submitted their work to the magazine and its panel of judges for this year's competition, which entailed using as a starting point one or more of six photos from Getty Images and coming up with a design on the theme of Freedom. Lescure was among 25 finalists but not among those the jury selected for the three award-winners. The first prize went to Mathieu Pallet, who came up with the puzzle, published with several of the other entries in this month's issue of the review. The team of Création Graphique' have put the designs of all 25 finalists ('galérie') on the web and given anybody who cares to take a look a chance to vote, until October 15, on whether they agree with the jury. It's once you've voted ('pixelcréation' homepage) that you find out which design almost a quarter of more than 700 visitors, so far, appreciated the most (an opinion different both from the jury's and mine). As I said, it's a tough choice. 'pixelcréation' has meanwhile taken commendable steps to render its site partly international and put up a graphic "encyclopaedia" of links to the work of 500 designers worldwide, a good move I don't remember from my last visit. 7:14:07 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 7 octobre 2003

Changing minds Tony has pulled through a tough operation with admirable courage. Now in possession of a shunt (there's a better picture on another site, but it's too detailed for the Wildcat and others concerned) and "a bloody turban round my head", he's also bored already, but has retained his considerable sense of humour. Even with regard to the very first boudin noir (black pudding) he felt compelled to eat rather than contemplate with mild distaste on the plate of barbarians like me. zzz To finish with my own woes, this afternoon's session with Yang was far better than the last, which is another way of saying that I hope I took what the doctor had to say far more constructively than last week. Before laying off, I'd merely add that it led to several hours' serious inspection of medical websites, mainly in a successful hunt for the many things they don't tell you in the leaflets that come with the drugs in many a bathroom cabinet. This led to a close look at the key role played by the neurotransmitter serotonin in brain chemistry and moods. The clearest explanation I found outside the scientific papers came from Philadelphia biomedical writer Carol Hart. She's written a whole book about it, 'The Secrets of Serotonin' (St Martin's Press, 1996), with a chapter from it on her own website, describing "how one little molecule can do so much". As an incidental sidenote, my eye was briefly caught by an abstract on "romantic love, the serotonin transporter and OCD" (obsessive-compulsive disorder) at what turned out to be a most interesting place: 'The Good Drug Guide' (biopsychiatry.com). The most frightening thing I learned was how freely available mind-altering drugs, a number of which have been prescribed to me in the past, have become for purchase on the internet, no questions asked. In my case, those most liberally handed out by doctors in France and in the United States were a bad idea. Today's browsing has told me why. Since the focus of treatment for the Condition looks increasingly like moving from the guts up into my head, I want to know exactly what's going into that chemistry and how it works. And finally on the subject, "alternative" medicine is on the cards too, to answer a question I've frequently been asked. It was ruled out during the tests but no longer, now they're done. 11:25:52 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 6 octobre 2003

Back into the swimming pool I've yet to reply to the kind souls who have e-mailed me after that last entry, since I still scarcely know what to say. The responses were varied, to put it mildly, though best summed up by the subject-line in one word from Florida friend Jennie: "YOU?" Yes. Me. But while my past few days have been ... tricky, what of others? Tony 'phoned at the end of last week to say he'd been issued with an imperious summons to turn up in hospital on Sunday, with major surgery planned for today. Thirty-six hours' notice was all he got. Last thing he knew, his memory troubles and his "wobbles" when out on the streets were to be discussed at a "staff meeting" (they used the English term) -- without the slightest explanation directed his way. With his habitual and remarkable fortitude, and such scant details as we were able to extract from medical people, my old friend temporarily cancelled the rest of his life and has had the operation. I called tonight to learn that he's come through it fine and I can talk to him tomorrow. The Wildcat specifically requested a tulip. Tonight. Sweetheart, do you know what this one "means"? Welcome to the deep end. 11:58:58 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 1 octobre 2003

The Condition. Or 'Confession d'un malade imaginaire...'? I've been waiting long enough for a diagnosis to the Condition, but now there is one, of sorts, it doesn't make it any the more palatable. Nor does the fact that it's pretty much what I'd begun to fear it was even before last Thursday's morning on and off the X-ray slab in the most modern hospital I've ever seen in my life. Much of Monday I spent going from one lab to another in different places, collecting all the outstanding results of September's tests. Yesterday, I dumped the lot on bloghero Yang's desk. Then I had to go into AFP and tell the Desk Chief that it looks pretty much as if I've been off work since early May with nothing worse than a psychosomatic case of burnout and no apparent physical explanation for the symptoms. This is "intellectually highly unsatisfactory", the doctor told me, before adding that "Were it up to me on purely clinical grounds, I'd give you a week to assimilate it. As it is, I suppose we'd better wait on (the specialist)." Jo was much nicer than many a boss might be in a situation I found very humiliating; more so than I deserved, since given my expression, she remarked, "I thought you were going to say you've got cancer or something." She even volunteered the information that she wouldn't tell anybody, which I much appreciated and certainly believe. It seems rather pointless, however, given that the Factory is the nearest thing to a sieve I've ever worked in apart from the BBC. So there you have it, o loyal Four ¾: the Condition has been diagnosed, fairly definitively, as that nebulous thing known as Stress, which is no more or less than a daily part of any decent journalist's life. (And with a new question mark in the title, it's time to consign the rest of this post, union resignations and all, to a moan story page. Update: Oct 6, 2003) 8:58:32 PM  link   your views? []