dimanche 30 novembre 2003

Yin-yang shift? An open letter to all who've encouraged this 'experiment' BF - 1. Tomorrow sees me back in the Factory a pretty astounding 208 days since the Condition knocked me into a far longer sick leave than ever I'd anticipated. 208 days! That really sinks in now: the reckoning. And whatever people might tell me, I feel as if it's all taken so much longer than getting on for seven months, a whole summer and autumn, and yet flashed by so very fast, the score and more of medical probes and tests, getting to know the inside of almost a dozen hospitals and clinics, let alone my own insides. Four specialists and one first-rate GP. A marvellous national health system for which my admiration has grown with the weeks. Physically, these past few days, I've been back more or less where I started, the weekend marred by so many visits to toilets that I've lost count (which made yesterday's film a bit tricky). Still, the major changes in medication are working, slowly; and I know what I've got. It may seem astonishing that it took no fewer than three of those specialists, many diet experiments, plus some sensible guidance from the "generalist" doctor, bloghero Yang, week after long week, examination after shifting examination, to come up with all the puzzle pieces of the diagnosis that makes the return to AFP -- if never a total recovery -- possible. And yet when one of those eminent doctors, the "gut expert" Vincent de P., had all the results in and moved on to the holistic assessment of the Condition, he told me that it could have taken a good year or more to determine its complex causes and their interaction. So I'm nowhere even remotely near the same places in mind and in body as I was back in May, and I've learned infinitely more about "hands-on" psychology, the workings of people's digestive systems, the immensely delicate chemical balances in our brains, and some realities of psychosomatic medicine than ever I could have imagined six months ago. There are so many things I'll never take for granted again in this unfinished process. The intelligent, perceptive feedback I've had during these months -- sometimes sympathetic, sometimes far from it -- from many friends, AFP colleagues, one or two family members, and some of the Loyal 4 ¾ who've followed my adventures in this experiment of a 'blog has been immensely important to me. My true love, the Wildcat, is among the particularly special people who have turned out to be quite remarkably acute in their insights and help. Really I should name them all, from Rainer way over there to the southwest in Brazil, to Jo the English desk chief at the Factory, my father in York, my wise old friend Tony in Odessa Street, Natalie in London, Jean-Paul and three or four others who have become close friends in the local community with the Canteen for its centre, Béa now in Nairobi ... people from all kinds of places, living quite different lives; but it would take me all night just to do this and to say an individual "thank you" to each and every one. Of myself, I've learned so very much that I realise it's not nearly enough, that I'll go to my grave one day, as we all do, not so very much wiser than when I was born. All the different bits of me, the several lives that have made up these past 48 years, are coming together now, nevertheless, in a way I can sort of understand and ... accept. Enough. I'm not sure that I'm making the slightest sense in this monumentally self-indulgent entry to anybody but myself. Some people have told me that getting back to work at AFP will reintegrate me socially, as a functioning and contributing member of the society they call the "real world", but not one of the mind and body physicians or a majority of the very few friends who really seem to understand me has ever said anything so utterly absurd, idiotic and misconceived. The Real World, indeed! As if there's only one, our shared, sick illusion. The physicians have helped me to see that these past months have been the most extraordinary period in my life, a time where I've been phenomenally fortunate, reintegrating the bits and pieces of myself, recovering parts I should never have sacrificed on the altar of my "career", re-focussing all my deepest interests, priorities and abilities in ways my regular readers must have noticed in the strange pilgrim's progress of this weblog. When I declare that during these "months off", I've learned to be more socially integrated as an animal than ever before, that makes sense to such people as these, they say. I was a very angry -- and fragmented -- person when the Condition took me off the job. Not that I realised it then; that took several months. As did an understanding that my gut functions had fallen apart partly for purely physical, chemical reasons (their strange constitution shown by the tests), but -- far more importantly perhaps -- because some unconscious genius in the workings of my mind had made the most vulnerable part of my body the battleground for a fight that would otherwise have plunged me deep into mental anguish, strife and depression. The realisation that this was not unusual, that I wasn't crazy, that this was simply my way of dealing with things that are conflicts in every one of us, a part of our shared human condition, pushed over the decades to the point of unmanageable self-contradiction, came even later. My friend François was most wise in saying, quite a while back, that I was simply working through, as best I could, the profoundly insane, unbalanced, deeply inhuman follies of the high-speed, information-overloaded, stressed-out, artificial urban clockwork existence we've given ourselves. The inner conflict was exacerbated in my case by a genetic, inherited predisposition to certain ways of reacting, combined with an avoidance of most of the common safety valves, such as alcohol and some social activities others enjoy but I don't. Anyway, that's really enough. I'm as ready as I can be to return to the Factory, my whole centre of gravity changed, probably for good, prepared to be more patient in some things -- but far less so about several others I had tolerated for years against every crying decent gut instinct in my being, so much bullshit nobody will ever make me swallow again! Oh yes, because anger, resentment, a hatred of injustice and hypocrisy are still there, but to be channelled, made positive in new ways. I still get the morning panic attacks, knowing them now for what they are -- and even the start of how to deal with them, dispose of them for the shadows they are. And somehow, I'm going to have to go on learning how to stay as profoundly empathetic with other people as the "shrinks" have shown me I am, without allowing this sensitivity, which many rightly see as a gift and a blessing I have, to tear at my system through over-identification with the hardships of others, the taking of appalling news stories into myself. This I can learn to do, with the humility now to know when to ask for help. Make of this entry what you will. Perhaps best ignored!! Even ridiculed. But tonight is a turning point, the end of a strange time, a new start. All of the rest of my life begins here. While my Africanist career remains important, the music, literature, other arts and scientific interests where I started my quarter-century in journalism are back now at the very centre of this life and shall never be discarded again. I like to think that the path I've travelled since this journal began has sometimes been, and still is, of assistance and of use to others, wherever my readers may be. For maybe what happened to me, and the luck I've had in being allowed to make the time to confront it, may find a resonance of comprehension in others. As well as fulfilling my other goals for the "experiment", to serve as a meeting point for people and ideas, share as many interests as possible, maintain my communications skills, and above all, I hope, to entertain. Even occasionally enlighten. As so many others in the blogosphere and elsewhere on the Internet have done for me, their worlds really no more "virtual" or less "real" than the ones we all fabricate for ourselves. I guess I'll be writing less here once I'm back in the Factory. But this experiment is most certainly not going to stop. 9:32:23 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 29 novembre 2003

'Kill Bill, Vol. 1': appallingly good fun The Kid and I have just immensely enjoyed 'Kill Bill, vol. 1', released in France this week. If enjoyed is the word for the Kid, who half-buried her face in my shoulder for bloody chunks of the film, systematically turned back to the screen at the "wrong" moments -- "wah, yuk!" -- and wanted to walk out slightly less than she was exquisitely scared enough to stay. This was our first Tarantino and I had little idea what to expect, apart from being told it was very violent, gory and remarkably well shot. So it was: quite appallingly funny and brilliantly derivative, a flamboyant exercise in spaghetti Kung Fu. We hear but scarcely see Bill (David Carradine) in "vol. 1", though he's the ultimate "Death List" target for exterminating angel Uma Thurman, perfect in the role. Four years after fellow members of Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad gave her carnage for a wedding present, Thurman as The Bride and sole survivor snaps out of a coma bent on vengeance. That's enough for the storyline of a movie which benefits from fragmented, surrealist plot-twisting -- shock start through to the closing samurai showdown between Thurman and Lucy Liu in a wintry Japanese tea-garden. Reading one or two other reviews afterwards, I liked and learned from a knowledgeable one at Blogcritics by Alan Dale, who generally lives at 'The Kitchen Cabinet'. Going by the queues, this Tarantino fellow I've previously missed out on (even 'Pulp Fiction') is name enough to pull the French crowds away from the shops even on a Saturday afternoon. Somewhere I read that he excels in what Molière recommended and did, summed up as "Don't copy -- steal!" This proved true, to the director's credit, in some stunning camera work, a clever DJ's soundtrack, and a handful of the best bad script lines I've relished in a good while. Italy is the only country where the Kid would be "allowed" to see it at 14 (says the IMDb); she had to pass for 16 even in tolerant France and doesn't regret it, describing it as "petrifying and excellent. "But I'm not sure I want to see 'Vol. 2'." 11:30:39 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 28 novembre 2003

Bejan on design: a friendly follow-up from a brilliant mind I scarcely expected somebody as stratospherically clever as Professor Adrian Bejan to find time to reply to a slightly nervous e-mail where I expressed the hope that I'd made some sense of his "constructal theory of shape and structure". So when the fellow swooped down yesterday not only to thank me for writing about it but to add that I'd done a "wonderful" job in so doing in 'Nature's "intelligence" & design revolutions,' (Nov 18) I was as flabbergasted as I was flattered. The professor has indeed been busy, picking up a honorary doctorate last weekend during a large international gathering of minds at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich -- more details here, but only for people who can read German (ETH Life: Tagesberichte). That came less than a month after Bejan gave an international symposium on his remarkable theory at Portugal's University of Evora (Eng.; fetching another honorary doctorate while he was there...) Enough of the accolades, though. The prof's letter, which he's confirmed I can publish, swiftly shows that while the honours may be nice, he's far more concerned with developing his ideas and breaching artificial barriers. Remember C.P. Snow, the novelist, physicist and thinker who told us back in 1959 what a bad idea it was to make of science and the humanities separate worlds in 'The Two Cultures'? Bejan gives us a contemporary echo of this false divide in education and outlook when he says that his "only correction to what you wrote is that my book was reviewed, extensively and very positively (about 10 reviews, I think [...]), but, unfortunately, only in the engineering literature. This is why what 'Science & Vie' and you did is extraordinary: to tear down the fence between 'science' and engineering is a most worthwhile and timely activity." What my closer friends know is that my own hatred of such barriers dates back to a youthful realisation that some people who considered themselves intelligent and cultivated were fools who appropriated things like "classical" music and poetry as part of the odious class system that marked my English upbringing. It soon become one of my missions in life to try to demystify such supposedly arcane arts and help, as best I could, to make them accessible and "user-friendly" to everybody, including those on whom the con trick worked, believing that such matters were "over their heads". Bejan thinks on similar lines, going by his comment on the debate my article triggered at 'Blogcritics', which while interesting, strayed a long way from the theory I was writing about. "Regarding the discussion that your article has generated, I just hope that they read what I wrote," he says, rather than taking off from "their own preconceived ideas and fights. And I am very sorry to see that some believe that 'engineer' means 'not qualified' to speculate, to theorize. Such people should remember Sadi Carnot [MacTutor History of Mathematics]. In the book "Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature", I stated a 'constructal' principle of flow access maximization (pages xvii and 62), and then I used it to construct flow architecture in many domains. The coincidences between what I deduced and what all of us observe in nature, justifies the speculation that the principle can be used to account for (to reason) the occurence of macroscopic flow structure everywhere, anumate, inanimate, engineered (the latter are us, 'man + machine' animals, not machines alone). Darwin observed that the fittest survive. This is a circular statement, not a theory, not a mental viewing that predicts reality. The survivor is the most fit, and the most fit is the one that survives. The question that should have been addressed is "the most fit to do what?" What do we mean by fit? Without an answer, there is no physics in Darwin. The constructal principle provides the missing physics, and, among other things, it accounts for why 'darwinian' selection/optimization works now everywhere, in inanimate and engineered domains as well. In my book, I also noted that the same physics principle was missing from fractal geometry. Now, based on principle, one can deduce the algorithm, not postulate it. And so we have a theory of why trees are everywhere (animate, inanimate, engineered), and why they are euclidian not fractal." Adrian loses me in those very last lines, since geometry and mathematics have never been my strong points, but I don't worry too much about that. What intrigues me the most is the sheer range of practical applications furnished by his theory. In essence, the man invites us to reconsider our thinking about the design of our world, while the way his theory provides a "missing link", of sorts, to complement Darwin was a point I'd not touched on in the previous piece. Anyone seriously interested in hearing more of what the remarkable Bejan has to say might want to take a look at the distinguished lecturers programme currently on offer from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, covering the next three years. Adrian is one of 16 people who have made their keen minds available on subjects ranging from the "thermal treatment of cancer" to the "Flight Mechanics of a Spinning Dimpled Spheroid" -- more generally known as ... a golf ball. 8:03:24 PM  link   your views? [] Mindblown by hi-tech: Sam, clever Swedes, Bluetooth and X My leap into 21st-century communications began with radical measures to slash what has become an intolerable 'phone bill. After 35 minutes, I'd had almost enough of queuing at the local France Télécom agency, but once I had the attention of an agent, there was no looking back. A big bad bill did have a surprisingly good side. I'd acquired so many loyalty bonus points that I could change my mobile 'phone at no great cost for a T160, which would otherwise have been well beyond my means. Bluetooth? I've been reading about Sony Ericsson's new wireless invention for months. Now that it's being promoted on Macs, it occurred to me that a Bluetooth technology (explained by Apple) might be the answer to the cable outages that have plagued people in the weeks since my ISP began renewing its whole network. This was just the beginning. It was only a 'phone I wanted, but the new toy caused total chaos in the Canteen once Sam got his uninvited hands on it. You'd think he was the one on the Royal Jelly! "It's a camera," he squealed. "Your 'phone's got a camera in it." "I know, but I haven't got the remotest idea how it works. I haven't quite finished the manual. It's 95 pages long." Well, the patron of the Pizzeria soon found out how it worked. The T160 probably takes better pictures than his first batch shown here, starting with a ghastly ghostly self-portrait of Sam, principal purveyor of my lunches for the past six months. Baudier, grumpier than ever, did his best to ignore Sam, who meanwhile had become all but oblivious to customers clamouring for dessert and coffee. The literary lion was so disgusted by the day's French news that he was asking me whether I thought he would be allowed to renounce his nationality. I suggested that this would mean taking on another one, which he'd probably find just as bad. Even in France, I doubt that "citizens of nowhere" are allowed. "Then I want to renounce my right to vote," he said. "Abstaining isn't a strong enough gesture to express how it feels to be an internal exile!" With Baudier droning to the left of me and Jacques the sage (in the corner to my right) deeply engaged in a different conversation with a couple of newcomers I was also trying to follow, I didn't stand a chance of getting my 'phone back. Taking not the slighest notice of my insults and entreaties, Sam was behaving like an overexcited kid and had by this time drawn the whole restaurant into his antics. It was a good job I'd arrived even later than usual, so there weren't too many victims around. I'd spent a long morning on my first Christmas shopping spree of the year. A couple more forays today and I can do the rest online. He got me too, sitting at "taliesin's table" struggling to concentrate on my tagliatelle campagnola. "You should be grateful, not peeved!" Sam said when he was finally done. "Now you know how your camera works." Well, the pictures may not be very good, but I suppose Sam's timing was, since this, as Jacques will hasten to remind me soon, is BF-day -3, to be marked shortly by the last of my lunatic weekday lunches with this bunch and the other denizens of the Canteen. Once back at the Factory, I'll do better than the sandwiches that had been my daily fare there for years, but I shall miss the inventiveness of Sam's puddings. As for the madder side of these meals, returning to AFP strikes me as walking back through the door to a different kind of frenzy. Such is life. Once I'd recovered the camera, this little device, a Mitsumi Bluetooth adaptor, plugged into Panther, took me into a whole new world last night. Apple has made Bluetooth so easy in Mac OS 10.3 that I'd managed to get the cutting edge of communications up and running within about half an hour. France Télécom asked me to call them back this afternoon to sort out the last technical tweaks, if they're able to keep yesterday's promise about getting the eMac linked up their end by then. Meanwhile, I swiftly discovered Sailing Clicker, an astounding Swedish piece of software. It's so remarkably clever that I paid for it within 10 minutes of trying it out. With its help, the T610 is no longer simply a camera. It also runs several programmes on the Mac by remote control, including the iTunes music player. This got automatically put on pause by the telephone when the Wildcat called, reminding me why I'd swapped mobiles in the first place. 12:55:09 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 26 novembre 2003

Reporting in from the hot spots "I've seen my first giraffes, at the roadside, yes right beside it. Zebra too, a whole herd, and monkeys on the road. It's MAGIC!" Béa's e-mailed a host of people a latest round-up of "niouses" from her first Africa posting for AFP, where she revels in being "paid to play the tourist". She's had her breath snatched away by the magnificent Ngong Hills beloved of Karen Blixen, "green mountains spilling down into the near desert of the immense Rift Valley, broken up by volcanoes." She's met the proud Masai people, who gave her little eggs and fresh milk from their cattle. The pic is not yet one of Béa's; I stole it from the online gallery of Brian D. Kohl, an American with much travel under his belt and a fine eye for photos that break with routine. Hers is a letter full of fresh delight, but Béatrice hasn't just been getting to know Kenya. "I spent 10 days in the Democratic Republic of Congo (ex-Zaïre and Tintin's Congo (...) Went in haste after a massacre by machete of 65 people in Ituri, the north-eastern province rich in gold and prized timbers. Since 1999, 50,000 people have been killed in inter-ethnic violence in this region. And since September 2003, UN peacekeepers have been deployed to re-establish security. Met those who survived the slaughter, with the 10-year-old children wielding Kalashnikovs who maintain a reign of terror, to loot -- just to live. Talked to other kids who spend their day down at a stream and in the mud, trying to pan a little gold to get food, held to ransom by other child-soldiers. Then there were the kids who fought each other to grab my small, unfinished bottle of water, to empty it and just have a container. Because they've got nothing left (...) Yeah, 50,000 deaths in five years in this region lost in the heart of Africa, say 20 times as many as in the Near East, and nobody gives a damn, the media media first and foremost." Béa won't be including the Iraq war and its aftermath in that count of hers. The BBC this morning broadcast the first international interview given by General Jay Garner, the man the Americans put in charge there for the first weeks after taking Baghdad. In Garner's talk with Gordon Corera (a 7'38" RealAudio clip), the general discloses where he thinks reconstruction went awry and tells us how he had to remove one expert he'd asked to join his team because of ever-present rivalries in Washington. Well, Iraq won't be any of my direct concern, but Africa will, as ever, and no doubt I'll be reading Béa's latest on the incoming so-called "wire" from Nairobi long before she has time to e-mail us all another update. This is BF-day -5 -- "Back to the Factory". None too soon now, I was told yesterday when I dropped into AFP at the end of a busy afternoon's preparations. "They're clamouring for you across the continent," a kind-hearted desk chief said. "Ah, they want their court jester back!" "No, that's not it..." Hmm. That came straight after the second meeting with the psycho-somatic shrink. In episode three, she promises, we'll finally get on to stress management and how I can learn to identify just a little less with the people I talk to out on the "front lines". zzz Natalie, as yet I've little more of significance to say on the "food of queens". It might be worth noting that now we've clearly established that I'm as influenced by the waxing and waning of Gaia's satellite as the tides, this is the first new moon time in months I didn't spend several days in a deep low. That change, however, might be related more to the chemical shift in serotonin-level adjustment (more at, ahem, 'Depression Depot') of the past few weeks than the mystery three percent in the make-up of Royal Jelly. It could also be that I feel more alert for longer stretches of the day, and there's no doubt that my dreams have become more vivid with each night since the weekend. 1:38:55 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 24 novembre 2003

Resonant voices, rich volumes Ahh. Enfin! A fortuitous technological development in another part of the world means that the Loyal 4 1/2 will be spared tonight's planned entry about the usefulness and importance of being paranoid. (Augustine pretends that I have at least 1/2 a more faithful reader than my reckoning, but she forgets that the PC pair leave every time I put up a picture of a naked woman.) Instead of the virtues of paranoia, then, consider this: 'To a Sad Daughter' "All night long the hockey pictures gaze down at you sleeping in your tracksuit. Belligerent goalies are your ideal. Threats of being traded cuts and wounds --all this pleases you. O my god! you say at breakfast reading the sports page over the Alpen as another player breaks his ankle or assaults the coach. When I thought of daughters I wasn't expecting this but I like this more. I like all your faults even your purple moods when you retreat from everyone to sit in bed under a quilt. And when I say 'like' I mean of course 'love ' but that embarrasses you. You who feel superior to black and white movies (coaxed for hours to see Casablanca) though you were moved by Creature from the Black Lagoon. One day I'll come swimming beside your ship or someone will and if you hear the siren listen to it. For if you close your ears only nothing happens. You will never change. I don't care if you risk your life to angry goalies creatures with webbed feet. You can enter their caves and castles their glass laboratories. Just don't be fooled by anyone but yourself. This is the first lecture I've given you. You're 'sweet sixteen' you said. I'd rather be your closest friend than your father. I'm not good at advice you know that, but ride the ceremonies until they grow dark. Sometimes you are so busy discovering your friends I ache with loss --but that is greed. And sometimes I've gone into my purple world and lost you. One afternoon I stepped into your room. You were sitting at the desk where I now write this. Forsythia outside the window and sun spilled over you like a thick yellow miracle as if another planet was coaxing you out of the house --all those possible worlds!-- and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics. I cannot look at forsythia now without loss, or joy for you. You step delicately into the wild world and your real prize will be the frantic search. Want everything. If you break break going out not in. How you live your life I don't care but I'll sell my arms for you, hold your secrets forever. If I speak of death which you fear now, greatly, it is without answers. except that each one we know is in our blood. Don't recall graves. Memory is permanent. Remember the afternoon's yellow suburban annunciation. Your goalie in his frightening mask dreams perhaps of gentleness." If you don't think that's marvellous, truth-telling writing, you too can go and say something silly and dismissive at the Plagiarist, whence I stole it. Until this weekend, I knew virtually nothing of Michael Ondaatje (Thomas Friedman's fine fan site, be warned, triggers a QuickTime movie on launch), who wrote that poem as well as 'The English Patient'. Somehow, I have also managed to remain ignorant of the existence of 'Village Voice', an excellent Anglo-American bookshop tucked away in the pretty little rue Princesse in the Saint-Germain district, though it's been here for two decades, almost as long as me. A friendly place, where they say they're more Anglo than American, the Village Voice specialises in modern fiction and other literature, poetry and the social sciences. It's far closer to me than W.H. Smith's, Brentano's or the increasingly grubby Shakespeare & Co. I am indebted to She who can Only be Adored for an intro both to Ondaatje and to the shop, which lies in a part of the district I'd thought entirely given over to high French fashion rather than prose and poetry. I went there only for Ondaatje. Or so I thought, but as ever in such spots, I was wrong... In gratitude, here's another priceless place, a work in progress where anybody can contribute. The Open Poetry Project is a "wiki database". If you don't know what a "wiki" is, don't worry, it's easy and it's well explained on the site. Today's floral gift for the Wildcat, chosen by Michael Ondaatje, comes from Leaf Peeper's Dream (All Creatures Org). Any connection there between one God's sixth day and how many days now remain twixt me and my long-awaited return to the Factory is, again, purely fortuitous. 6:59:56 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 23 novembre 2003

Tips and boobs (OS X + nude) Since the O'Reilly people have published an updated set of upkeep items for Mac OS 10.3 which might change a few entrenched habits, this is a day to target two birds... What's new in the Panther maintenance tips (MacDevCenter) by François Joseph de Kermadec are most notably this: "Defragmenting a hard drive is a way to make a computer go a bit faster by rearranging the information that is written on it. Some Mac OS 9 users and PC switchers remember that defragmenting was an essential step in their maintenance processes. (...) The news gets better with Panther. It defrags files (those less than 20 MB, which should be most of yours) on the fly" and this: "Here's a Panther-specific tip: at the bottom of the Disk Utility window, you will see a line called "S.M.A.R.T" status. No, this doesn't check your disk's IQ! "S.M.A.R.T" technology is a monitoring system that allows your hard drive to perform self-checks and to warn you when it is about to fail. If you see "verified," your disk is doing well. (...) If you see "About to fail," your disk will fail, and will do so sooner than later. Immediately backup your files and replace the hard drive [~] or contact your nearest Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider." I once learned something else that De Kermadec warns about the hard way: that a popular third-party disk "repair" tool, supposedly OS X-specific, can do far more harm than good. The new operating system has already dropped me a few hints that the Panther largely looks after itself when it comes to defragging, which was a regular part of my routine. No longer. These tips from an Apple forums "helper" provide welcome confirmation of that and also make for a swift refresher course. On being informed of how search engines work, A. Non (who goes nowhere near the Internet and thought we submitted our work to Google and the like), set me a little linguistic and pictorial challenge. Had he specifically asked for Panther, I would have been lost. But... ...I said he could use up to six of the terms I'd employed during the previous 35 minutes of cross-lingual wordplay. His list: "boo-boo" (as in "mistake"), "cage" (as in "John"), "cyber", "feline", "playboy" and "tweak". "And 'boot-up'," he added. "That's my joker, like in the Loto." Ok, I admit, this kind of tweaking is stretching it a bit, but do I win? Thank you, GraphicConverter ... and Kristin Novak, who is a Playboy "cybergirl". 9:39:05 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 22 novembre 2003

XRay. Creativity. In Style. (OS X Panther) Rainer's not only decidedly got past that developer's block. With XRay, v. 1.0.8, he's done so with class! Fighting off the Xcode gremlins (Solipsism Gradient) (b'rolled). Giving us a "batch mode" change option, to boot. If you're not already hooked, your Panther might well need XRay. Nice one, Mr. B. Again! 11:06:56 PM  link   your views? [] Jelly Report 1 - Blogosphere Wrap 6 Still battling the blues. Wildcat again trying to persuade me to write novel! Me refusing. Wildcat, however, unaware until now that I have already penned two (obviously hasn't ever read "sketch" page somebody wrote about me, where only one of these got a mention. I now recall that it was 'Womb of Fire'. "To lose one novel is carelessness, to lo--" "Yes! I know.") Twice asked this morning whether I've given up smoking. Also notice over lunch that I haven't even thought about a fag until the second coffee arrived. "That's because you're relaxed," Jean-Paul says. "Have you already taken some of the royal jelly?" "Two tiny spoonfuls this morning, while still fasting, as prescribed. Two last night. I couldn't wait." "Well then!" J-P notes, before accompanying me back to fetch his own fix. "Aah!" he observes. "Now that's the real thing!" I also explain over our pizzas that I had very vivid nightmares this morning. "What about?" "The sums of all my fears! Plus a bit about the Wildcat." "Did I not tell you that you should not take gelée royale before going to bed, in the evening?!" "You didn't tell me it tasted really revolting either." "I didn't think I needed to. After all, you were brought up on English cooking. The multi-processor is beginning to work. It's hardly surprising that your unconscious put in overtime! Let me count the days... Saturday, Sunday, Monday. It's probably on Tuesday that you'll find yourself suddenly cruising. Your brain will be wondering what happened to it." "Oh, that's just great. It's on Tuesday I've got my next rendez-vous with the psychosomatic shrink." "So much the better!" cuts in François, his first words for a while. zzz Random pickings from a catch up on the Net news, mainly via Netnewswire RSS feeds (all of these I planned to say a bit about, but probably it's best just to bung them up): "Language is a virus." A famous phrase. In the wake of my Robinson book review: 'Sliced Bardo'. A very good memorial to William S. Burroughs, compiled by Levi Asher (1997) of 'Literary Kicks'. (I'll add LitKicks to the roll, but Blogrolling is currently down again); "Note to Self: Never -- Ever -- Piss Drezner Off (or Lileks, for That Matter)" (via Priorities and Frivolities). Salam Pax stirs it up, no end. No end in sight at all... Note to self: there's nothing quite like angry Americans; Real-life potty 999 calls. The Avon & Somerset Constabulary have put some of the barmiest "emergency" calls they have to put up with on to their website; Frederic Latour's Panther weblog. An enterprising and accessible chap in Montréal launches the first bilingual 'blog I've seen on and about Mac OS X 10.3; "Autistic savants are born with miswired neurons - and extraordinary gifts. The breakthrough science behind our new understanding of the brain." Another splendid piece of Wired reporting: 'The Key to Genius' by contributing editor Steve Silberman; It's a good idea to have an online Safari tech bookshelf at O'Reilly. It's even better once you know how to do 'Effective Searching in Safari' (by Allen Noren); 'Concentration en vue dans le cable français' (NetEconomie, Fr. only, technical) says a lot about what's been happening behind my recent ISP glitches. I have François (Demeyer.net) to thank for this one; Mandolux is a very neat place to go for more computer desktop pix. Attention: quality and class; "(2003-11-21) -- Insiders at the Democrat National Committee (DNC) have reportedly urged Michael Jackson, the composer, choreographer and international statesman, to consider a White House bid." Scrappleface (blogrolled) in savage shape (see also 'London Freed from Tyranny, Bush Statue Toppled'); "Two years after the United States dispatched the Taliban and set Afghanistan on a path toward freedom and democracy, that country risks reverting to a 'failed state'." In 'The Other War', MotherJones inconveniently writes about things many would prefer to forget (via J.D. Lasica, b'rolled, along with his own 'How not to get fired because of your blog'. I'm gonna need that soon); Sunday is Doctor Who's 40th Birthday (an obsessive Spatula at Morons.org); "Tonight I discovered that I’m currently the number one hit in Google for 'hoppy toad' and the number two hit for 'happy dance.' Great juxtaposition!" Liz at mamamusings gets self-reflexive. Are you listening, Wildcat?...; 'Inspired by the terrorist attacks in Istanbul'. At Vacuity, Michelle (b'rolled) gets "focused on other stuff than my own world" ad writes a particularly moving piece; in 'Buying Used Underwear' the J-Walk Blog (b'rolled) offers us Shock-Horror. The Wildcat will next week get the Galeries Lafayette catalogue, plus the other things she had me search Paris for today tonight. We cannot, darling, afford all those pages in Vogue. Yet. Even for you! 10:07:49 PM  link   your views? [] The French comic touch Why write 1,000 words more when one picture says it all? Paris in winter: mood portrait - The variation on a theme by ©Bicol Fru is from 'Minimal' inside 'Fluide Glaciale'. I'm happy to see that one of the Kid's staples, awaiting her arrival, devotes a little of its December issue to variations on another theme: the official fear pack campaign. One I liked was "Rire donne les pieds plats et provoque des fuites urinaires". If you can't understand, run it through Babelfish. Or "Se suicider peut provoquer des graves troubles des fonctions vitales". By request, a baker's half-dozen sites relating to that high French art form, the cartoon strip: Bande Dessinée (major portal) La BD & Angoulême International Festival BD Paradisio (includes good link page) Bande dessinée.info Univers BD des Bulles Bizarres Alkemya (la 9ème art). That should save somebody 10 minutes' googling. (In Maëster's Emmanuelle cartoon, the excited editor is, yes, Serge July of 'Libé' (a Foreign Affairs ministry interview in English... of the system, by the system, for the system. Minus cigar.) "Smoking kills!" "'specially if you burn first..." 7:38:59 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 21 novembre 2003

Royal sustenance & warm music for chilly times It's hard to stay gloomy forever with an iPod. Mine is now full, so it will take me a long while to listen to all those CDs I bought during a frenzied period in preparation for my old age. I was going to send a flower to the Wildcat just as she called and asked me whether I was ready to "stop that nonsense about..." I am not ready to stop it, no. And have no intention of being ready at any time in the foreseeable future, since I really can't think of anybody else with whom I'd rather share that old age. We're not there yet either. This she now knows, but I don't know why she considered the way I made it clear worth tape recording, except that she couldn't. I forgot to add that if she thinks I'd make a rotten father and all that she had better say so forthwith, but you can't fit everything into one rant. Anyway, that's by the by and she gets her flower, which I culled in Buckinghamshire -- as far as I can make out. The Coreopsis, I learn, is the "official wildflower" of Florida. Somebody may know whether this particular kind is a 'calypso' or a 'tinctoria', or both... Darkness has fallen and even if I've been afflicted by days of light deprivation, rather the dark than the damp grey. Even where the Wildcat is, nasty as well as cold weather is coming and she was sitting on a train because her boss had informed her that she was welcome to spend another night somewhere nice, "at your own expense." He, of course, can afford to be mean... "This isn't what it was meant to be about," she moaned, meaning the job, life in general and intolerable parts of the world in particular. "It's meant to be about edible food, sunshine and remotely friendly people!" Dream on, darling, and take me with you! I should have taken you with me on a trip to the rue de Rocher, which now has three distinctions. It's the only street I know in Paris with buildings making each end of a bridge crossing another road. Life must be fun for the postman since the ground floor in one building is on one road while the second storey is on another. It is where wise visitors can find a little restaurant called 'Capriccio', where Enrico greeted me with the warmest 'Ciao!!' I've had in many a month and made me regret already having eaten my dessert. This generally cheery fellow is the best Italian cook in Paris. How do I know? Because he has never ceased to tell me so ever since the Kid and I first made acquaintance with him, his wife and their daughter in Morocco many years ago. And because it tastes true. And Rocher Street is where I found the honey shop at the crest of the hill. What a honey shop, too, every conceivable variety of the substance, I had no idea there was such a range! "I've come in quest of royal jelly," I told the elderly lady in charge, who was a robust advertisement for her fare. This was the search my friend Jean-Paul launched me on several weeks back. I found the honey shop by way of the French beekeepers' society. The woman and her husband looked appalled when I said that I'd already tried royal jelly in powder capsules from a chemist (at considerable expense), confirming that such products were confidence tricks in which all active ingredients were long since deceased, including the mystery three percent. The real thing, in small bottles from the fridge with even tinier dosage spoons, was also horrendously expensive, but I bought three. One for J.-P. himself, since if what he said was right and I shall be flying after three days of it I'd rather he came with me. And one for the Wildcat, if it works. I'll let you know what the food of queens does (or doesn't) in a few days. She also needs a miracle. "Royal jelly consumption has recently been linked with acute asthma, anaphylaxis and death," warns PubMed from Hong Kong, while Britain's Food Standards Agency advises against consumption of such produce from China. One health site at Columbia University says it's probably a scam. But I don't care. J.-P. swears by it and he's a very sensible, down-to-earth kind of chap. Even when flying... The iPod took me up with Curved Air ... 'On Air'. Not till '97 were the BBC sessions of this fine band released on the Strange Fruit label, but they were recorded between 1971 and 1976, which meant I was there for the last of these live performances. "Progressive, Marianne, that's what we used to call this kind of music when I was a kid and John Peel was the late-night DJ to listen to," I've told the Kid, who shakes her head in pity. All she knows of John Peel is the mellow fellow who presents 'Home Truths' and is married to Sheila, "known affectionately as the Pig." Largely passed over by critics, 'On Air' is a bit dodgy for the first two tracks including their famous 'Vivaldi' (in recording quality too), but takes off with the third number, 'It Happened Today,' and then simply soars, like Darryl Way's electric plexiglass violin and Sonja Kristina's wonderful voice, which sometimes flies and sometimes gets too raunchy and gutsy for the tender, impressionable youth I was then. Another gem off the iPod comes from Terry Riley, who gave that band their name with his Rainbow in Curved Air. I treasure a recording of the first piece of minimalist music I ever heard, In C, which is only a few years younger than me. Riley's trend-setting piece gets a performance as striking as it is original from the Shanghai Film Orchestra, no less, on traditional Chinese instruments (Celestial Harmonies label). The third of four (re)discoveries to mention comes from Africa, because I have one thing in common with Lee in Picadilly Circus, who was "completely shocked when I think that I had once lived without knowing Fela's music" (Odessa Street). Me too. When she typed that, most of her collection of the late great Nigerian was on vinyl, she says, but one of my favourite Fela CDs lives up to its name, the 'Best of the Black President'. My own copy of this superb double album has a nicer cover than the one at Amazon, but of course it's scarcely the packaging that counts. Today's final choice to set me flying comes from the chill north. I don't think guitarist and composer Terje Rypdal has cut a bad album yet on the ECM label, and Jon Christensen is one of the most brilliant but subtle drummers around. When these two get together with trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg the results are very special. If you're lucky enough to catch them live, they and their friends are priceless modern jazzmen, but the studio album Skywards is already, like one of the tracks on it, 'Out of this World.' 8:30:54 PM  link   your views? [] I want to hibernate This morning's mail delivered a surprising batch of comments on the Natural "intelligence" story on Bejan I also submitted to Blogcritics. A good debate took off there on what the clerics used to call "the argument for design". As to the rest of the mail, apologies to the handful of people I've yet to answer. Now that my ISP seems, touch wood, to have sorted out most of its technical glitches, I was inundated yesterday by a big backlog. The Wildcat didn't sound best pleased last night when I for a while gave answering most of these priority over the need for us to talk. But she's a lucky lass, has gone off on a brief mission to one of her favourite capitals well to the east of here, where it's apparently even sunny! I'm not at my best; it's that horrible time of the month again, a new moon imminent. I felt like it was for tomorrow, but it seems it's not until Monday. And the weather is grey gloom, has been for days now... Beurk! Oh well. The Kid won't be coming this weekend. The grippe has arrived. I've not seen much sign of it in Paris, but both the Kid and her mum have been confined to their abode near Versailles since the start of the week by a bad bout of 'flu. Best that the Kid's not around when the plumbers are, anyway. Yesterday they punched a nice little hole through my bathroom wall from the stairwell outside. When they're working on some new sewage tubing on the stairs, this hole gives them a good view inside the bathroom. It will be there for at least a week. At the canteen (update), Sam is disgusting. He needed the hole truth. All right. The role of the hole is to receive a pipe which will in due course evacuate... you know. It's thus just by where you ... you know ... sit for a read. Which means, yes, that when I just can't wait any longer and the plumber won't go away, I have to put a warning note through the hole. "Bombs away!" Ca suffit, non? 1:07:31 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 20 novembre 2003

O cunning cartoon! There's wit even in the "secret name" of this delightful recommendation proposed by my fave cartoon at Blaugustine: Just as I write cheeky picture titles for those of you lucky enough to see them with a mouse-over and a Web browser which can cope with them, Augustine called this shamelessly stolen thought "jacuzz.jpg". Think different. Think French. As to what she's on about, it was her November 14 notion about putting 419 fraud to good use you need to check out. Ah, the astute lass! 7:46:33 PM  link   your views? [] Two quick OS X tips, one especially sound Before I forget, I shall soon be letting the clever Octiv people know what I think of their Volume Logic plug-in for iTunes. As a rule, I prefer to trust recording engineers to get the sound right in the first place, without resorting to such gadgets as equalizers, boosters and the like. Good hi-fi should not need them if it's to be worthy of the name on a decent sound system. Volume Logic is, however, an excellent bonus, beta or not. To my ears, its options are a striking improvement on the equalizer that comes with Apple's iTunes. If such tweaks are necessary at all, and they can help with some recordings or in some listening conditions, such as late and with regard for the neighbours, this is technology well worth trying. Octiv, based in Berkeley, California, are looking for beta testers' comments and comparisons through to the end of this year. zzz To "enable journaling" for the new cat or not -- a question I've twice been asked now, but in fact installing Panther on your computer does so by default. With Jaguar, I wouldn't enable journaling because of a marked hit to the overall speed of the operating system, but the arrival of Mac OS X 10.3 has persuaded me to keep a slimline Panther installed on my external firewire disk journaled. The revised disk utility in Panther gives you the option. I'd say "Go for it". In a nutshell, what this means is that if you enable journaling on a hard drive, the operating system logs every change made to the disk as you work and play. Thus, if your Mac should crash or be struck by a power cut, the cat knows what state your machine was in before trouble struck and it will use this data for a swift fresh start-up. Since Apple released the first, 10.3.1 update, I've seen no hint of the kind of trouble mentioned in the 'VirtMem' 'blog late last month when Bob declared that his "Panther honeymoon is over". I even experimented for a couple of days, using my newish LaCie Pocket Drive -- such sweet luxury, those extra 40 GB! -- as a boot disk before settling on the configuration set to keep me happy in coming months. If there was any slowdown by enabling journaling, I sure didn't notice it. 7:13:11 PM  link   your views? [] 'Rice & Salt': Robinson's rich antidote to blind supremacy Democracy as a religion? In Dubya's eyes, anyway: that, in short, was an analysis by Dr Youssef Choueiri of the University of Exeter's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, heard on the Beeb. I never thought to see it quite that way myself, the fundamentalist fervour of the Washington administration. Choueiri is good at dissecting fundamentalism and its strength in today's Arab world. Some of his writing came my way a few years back, and I'd suggest that 'Islamic Fundamentalism' (Continuum International Publishing, 2002) remains a good read for anybody trying to see beyond current conflict and the so-called war on terror. George Mitchell, who for six years took the vote of bipartisan peers as "most respected member" of the US Senate and founded an academic institute on retirement in 1995, said "Vietnam" this morning, when he meant Iraq. That woke me up, coming from a politician and scholar of his renown! Picked up by Jim in 'Today' -- the uncharacteristic lapsus is now on the 'Today' website (RealPlayer clip, 9'22") -- the Senator was swift to apologise and stress the differences. It was the kind of slip the lugubrious local philosopher Baudier would leap on with zeal, along with Choueiri's view of the American "crusade" in Iraq, which is what the war currently is, despite all bids to keep that dangerous word out of it. The other George, spouting on about the export of democracy as if this "religion" was some commodity made in the USA to be bestowed on cultures worldwide like Coca Cola, divided this morning's British papers (BBC news) more than ever. Kim Stanley Robinson's history of a world without Europe and the United States couldn't have been more apposite bedtime reading for the past few weeks, with its insights into Islamic and eastern cultures, other deeply varying ways of living and seeing in our world. So many rave reviews greeted 'The Years of Rice and Salt' (HarperCollins, in paperback this year) when Robinson published it in 2002 that I almost hesitate. Like the Mars trilogy and 'Antarctica', it's a monumental achievement, but one I found uneven. Some stretches bored me, but Robinson regularly revived any flagging interest with the next episode in his saga of events since the Black Death wiped out European civilisation 700 years ago. Discussing the book with a couple of friends who beat me to it, I find that the passages that I raced through as tedious were those that most fascinated one or other of them, just as we have different "favourite" periods in the "real history" of the world. This can only be a tribute to Robinson's imagination and the scope of his gifts as an artist, thinker and narrator. Some like the way he interweaves his character threads down the centuries by means of reincarnation, sending his disparate group of souls into the Bardo, the in-between (bar) landing stage, island (do) of Tibetan Buddhism, with its panoply of gods, demons, judges ... all ultimately illusion. Others find this artifice an irrelevance. For me, it worked best when an inevitable clash for power and dominance between Muslim and Chinese civilisations plunges the whole planet into the 'long war', so long, so hellish that soldiers whose eyes we see it through finish by not knowing whether they are alive or dead, which worlds they are in. Such sections hold images and ideas of striking brilliance. Having a mind strongly influenced by decades of amateur but still profound study of Asian and African religions, philosophy and cultures -- far less so by Islam and the other monotheistic faiths -- I admire Robinson's grasp and deep insight into these civilisations, extending to what we called the Americas and some splendid passages in India. There are so many layers to 'The Years of Rice and Salt' that it's undoubtedly become one of the handful of books I shall return to, finding new connections and more discoveries in an evolving reader's interchange with an involving and immensely compassionate writer. Why so many reviewers have labelled Robinson and reckon the novel is set to become one of the great classics of 21st-century science fiction escapes me. Such an enterprise simply cannot be pigeon-holed to the SF or even "alternative history" shelves of any library. It is great and -- relatively -- mainstream modern literature in any class. 'The Years of Rice and Salt' is a challenge to anybody who imagines that, say, a George Bush's simplistic, sublimely ignorant faith in US-style democracy and free market capitalism as models to be exported all around the planet, often enough through the barrel of a gun, is much more than a wretched, neo-imperialist insult to societies the remaining superpower would like to mould to its own convenience and interests. If this book reminds me of any other, it's the magnificent 'Creation' (republished by Vintage Books), by an often far more openly political animal, Gore Vidal. He in the early 1980s crawled right inside the skin, not without humour, of a Persian who manages to meet and confront the views of the likes of Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha. Some critics see weakness in the way Robinson's alternative vision of where humanity might be without Western civilisation sometimes closely parallels the history of our own. I consider these temporal bridges across from his world to the one we live in a strength of his writing, one manifestation of his skill in asking the reader to reconsider the all too familiar markers of our "progress" as a species from novel perspectives. Bereft of such parallels, links and twists, Robinson's world would be "just" another piece of original fantasy writing, not what it is: a superbly polished and multi-faceted mirror casting back different lights on our contemporary cultures. Well, I hope I've managed to say one or two things others haven't yet. Often have I seen Robinson accused of being too didactic in his life's work, but it's precisely as a gentle and subtle teacher that he shines apart from other stars in modern writing. I found patience with 'The Years of Rice and Salt' well rewarded by the fresh thought it stimulates on who constitutes the real terrorists and where the true horror stories are in these troubled times. 4:17:32 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 19 novembre 2003

'Better safe than sorry,' is that it? Security people must be hopping. It's not good, is it really, when some hack from the Daily Mirror claims he could have given the Queen and that Bush fellow a few slugs for breakfast? A brave chap, Ryan Perry, to give this us world-exclusive-shock-horror scandal (Mirror). He had to spend two months as a palace lackey, which isn't something I'd fancy doing in the name of our bizarre profession. The Beeb says protecting the president is costing five million quid. The Mirror, of course, doubles that, giving the equivalent of 14.34m euros, which here would be 17.2 million if you added French VAT. And all that expense and waste for nothing! The Brits shouldn't have invited Bush on a State visit in the first place; I can't see that they've got anything to be grateful to him for, can you? Really? But it's now even more pointless since we've been informed he isn't going to do or say anything interesting, and what he will say we've been told in advance on the radio news! I don't approve of killing heads of state, however little respect I have for them. Such radical methods almost invariably leave a worst mess in their wake than we've got already. Since he's in London, though, one man and his wife who can wreak as much disruptive havoc as an all-out Tube strike, Bush might have the courtesy and decency to drop in and say a word or two to all those MPs and Lords. After all, some of them must have kids out there in Iraq like other families. But it would seem he's scared of Dennis Skinner, who's "unique, part parliamentary court jester, and part leftwing crusader," the Grauniad claims. Tucked away in the bowels of my Mac, at the end of a file "path" so long it's almost a blog entry, I found this icon called "angry" (blown up here to three times its real size). What the Apple people stuck it in the system for I've not the foggiest, but no doubt it has its uses. I also nearly fell into a huge "BlackPit" image and stumbled across this piece of virtual paper, equally bizarre and unexplained: Not in all the years with OS X has that thing flashed up to remind me that I can put my faith in Steve Jobs & Co., in spite of all the unkind things I say about them sometimes. I damned well hope I can trust Apple, since last night, rendered twitchy by a whole afternoon of French bureaucracy not worth recounting, I took my mood out on the Mac and crossed the Rubicon with the Panther. No looking back. Now I want oodles of spare hard disk room and storage places for the years to come, I definitively wiped all traces of Jaguar and its OS X predecessors into re-usable space. Beyond recovery. And I even finished tweaking operating system X 10.3.1 into something I'm happy to look and work with. Those wizards at Unsanity have made tweaking some things less fun but also far less dangerous than total DYI. Yesterday, they released ShapeShifter, another of their brilliant "haxies". ShapeShifter does "themes". We're not talking about just desktop backgrounds and icons here, we're talking about everything - the look of windows, menus, buttons, absolutely everything. You don't wear the same clothes everyday, your house doesn't look exactly like your neighbor's - why should the computing interface you use everyday be any different. You personalize your physical workspace to suit your tastes and whims, so why not your Mac? Since you've got 15 days to see whether you like it before paying for it, I started playing with the couple of themes so far on offer. The GUiPod one from Swizcore is quite fetching, partly because it's more Mac than Apple's own default Panther look, which has too much in common with Windows XP for me. I've mentioned this at TS (blogrolled), while at the forums the Unsanity page links to, the safety issues are pretty well covered already. What I've not started playing with yet is Panther's new FireVault encryption feature, since I read some slightly alarming first reports on it. Before hiding any of my top secret stuff, I'll look again and make sure it is "safe, secure and speedy". Some might think a few journalists ought to be locked up, the key thrown into a black pit. But I don't plan on doing that with my data. 1:49:40 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 18 novembre 2003

Nature's 'intelligence' & design revolutions: Bejan's 'constructal theory' From the door frames to the computer game boxes, the shelves and tables to biscuit packets, the heaps of magazines to CD cases, my flat is full of straight lines, squares, ovals and rectangles. Just like your home. These shapes have never troubled my eye. I find them generally pleasing, part of the way objects fit together into the rooms, a harmonious contrast to the irregular curves of other furnishings, machines and containers, the rounded corners of a mirror and the mathematically complex forms of the ink-jet printer, lamps and the beds. Never has it occurred to me since the measuring, often down to the nearest millimeter, that preceded the refurbishing of my small home, that the use of the space available is anything short of optimal. Manmade rectangles and hard lines dominate the increasingly dire warnings the government has imposed on cigarettes, reminding us what fools we smokers are as it rakes in the constantly rising taxes on the cancer sticks. 'Fumer tue' was direct enough, but the fear offensive now targets our sex and family lives too, as the latest messages show. Of course the form, the stark heavy font and the thick black border, recall death notices. In essence, that's what these messages are. They work. Where restaurants allow smoking, as most still do, fewer people thoughtlessly leave the packet in sight, not when eating, not when 'Smoking kills' reminds you that you're about to follow good healthy food with a complex blend of poisons to accompany the coffee, and not with a child's eyes moving from the message back to your faces with the 'Why?' question as evident as it can go unsaid. I'm not the only one, I've observed, often to hide the packet in my pocket now, think a bit each time I light up. The shape of these warnings we take totally for granted, their funereal symbolism scarcely subliminal, just a part of the cultural baggage making up our 'Ways of Seeing' (in "Notes on 'The Gaze'", Daniel Chandler makes interesting comment on John Berger's influential 1972 book). Now, what of nature? What of the shapes, form and design of what's left of the natural world through our oblong city windows? The trees, the dogs, the bees and the birds. At the level of most objects we can see without a microscope, nature abhors a straight line as much as it does a vacuum. Our rectangles, right angles, cubes and Roman roads may strike us as harmonious, part of a natural order established by humankind, but just how natural are they really? And is our way of optimizing the use of space -- the fitting together of the bits in my flat -- of necessity the best, the most rational, the path of least resistance, the most aesthetic? Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University in North Carolina, published 'Shape and Structure from Engineering to Nature' (Cambridge University Press) in 2000. Nobody has reviewed it at Amazon UK yet, and there's only one comment on the US webstore site. Five stars from Satish, who speaks of a "revolutionary book", "a must read for every engineer or scientist or any creative artist." The Romanian-born Bejan has given us 'constructal theory'. Who cares? So what? So, we have a new way of seeing, a new way of understanding, and most importantly in its far-reaching implications, a new theory of design already in the process of changing the shapes, efficiency and optimization of the myriad artefacts that are part of our daily lives, from a huge jumbo jet to the refrigeration system in your local store. This month's 'Science et Vie' (Fr. website) devotes its cover, editorial and a riveting, worldview-changing 20-page dossier to Bejan's theory and the impact it has already had in the scientific and engineering communities, particularly in the United States, France and, it would seem, Romania. Bejan's "equations prove it: nature creates forms that are ... perfect. And mankind can henceforth strive for such perfection. Devised by an American thermodynamics specialist of worldwide renown, a completely novel theory gives us the key to the conception of ideal objects, machines, habitations, networks... Until now known only to a few initiates, 'constructal theory' promises to revolutionize the career of engineering. And also to alter our outlook on the world," the magazine reports. From the very shape and functioning of our lungs or those of the tube serving as "stem" of a bird's feather, to the complex patterns of the weather, the natural world we live in has never been anything other than the optimization of form, process and engineering efficiency. Nature distributes imperfection to the most perfect possible end. Modestly, Bejan tells 'Science et Vie' that he finds it a "mystery" why nobody came up with his ideas earlier. "This theory uses equations more than 150 years old and generally doesn't call for heavy-duty calculations," I translate as best I can from the French. "It's particularly astonishing since the 19th century was still under the influence of the intuitions of Leibniz, Maupertuis, Euler and Lagrange, for whom of all possible processes, the only one that really occurred was that requiring the least cost. This was a grand vision, integrating optimized process in a way very close to the constructal approach. But instead of that, modern physics embarked on a study of the microscopic, leaving the macroscopic world we live in to one side." The dossier includes interviews with and comments from a range of scientists and engineers in different countries, but notably France. They are pursuing the study and applications of Bejan's reportedly "simple" but comprehensive theory with enthusiasm. While mathematicians are among those to describe his equations as simple, even evident once grasped, they're quite beyond my reach. But not, apparently, that of lay readers with greater mathematical skills turned on to his work and writing. Scientists tell the magazine that the domains where Bejan's discoveries will have a direct impact on our world and the objects we make are almost beyond count. The theory "promises to rethink the structure of aircraft, the distribution of energy flows, to envisage new architectural structures making optimal use of the mechanical forces involved, to conceive of new buildings facilitating the movements of people, to structure the Internet and its information flows, to optimize money circulation networks and those for consumer goods, to study the form of genes, even to refine military strategies." Initially sceptical, geophysicist Heitor Reis of Portugal's Evora University, explains that he was "very surprised by the results" of bringing Bejan's theory to bear on the study of heat transfer and other patterns in the atmosphere, and by its potential contribution to an understanding of meteorological processes. Jocelyn Bonjour, an engineer at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in the French capital, describes constructal theory as "a new state of mind, which has already changed my whole outlook on my job." Practically, he adds, he used structural theory for the optimal design of a device which absorbs polluting gases in the environment which contribute to the greenhouse effect and global warming. In revealing a key to the "intelligence of nature" itself, Bejan's work also has implications for biology and nanotechnology, the magazine reports. And next time I set fire to a cigarette, I'll know that Adrian Bejan's sets of equations shed light on why the smoke so often inconveniently threatens to drift in the direction most calculated to annoy others in the vicinity. For English-speakers interested in pursuing this, Bejan has 'Constructal Theory' pages on Duke University's webwork. At the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, where the man studied through to his Ph. D, a brief Adrian Bejan lecture page sums up his findings: "Optimal distribution of imperfection is the principle that generates form. The system is destined to remain imperfect. The system works best when its imperfection (its internal flow resistances) is spread around, so that more and more of the internal points are stressed as much as the hardest working points. One good form leads to the next, as the constructal principle demands: objective served better while under the grip of global and local constrains. There is a time arrow to all these forms, and it points toward the better." ______ Also submitted to 'Blogcritics' (blogrolled). 1:07:42 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 17 novembre 2003

Liszt, the madeleine, the Raj and the Tuckers It's staggering how long something heard just the once, perhaps twice, can remain stuck in your head. Months, years, even decades... When I was a kid, at the age when we were first granted freedom of the day and the town with our bikes, there was a small group of us who frequently pedalled round to take tea with Mr and Mrs Tucker. This gentle couple lived through the twilight of British India* and its hasty, brutal partition, then retired to the old country for their own last long years in a cottage set into a steep rise, like next-door neighbours to Bilbo Baggins in 'The Hobbit'. They carefully rationed the biscuits, she made wonderful tea of several sorts and cakes as exceedingly good as in the old advertisements for Mr Kipling's, and I can't remember it being anything but sunny during the many hours I spent with them both. Mr and Mrs Ernest Tucker -- they described themselves this way -- had a penchant for the company of young teenage boys which in our sadder, supposedly more prudent times would be widely and wrongly frowned on as unhealthy, even dangerous. They had no children of their own and when asked about this explained that God had in his wisdom made it impossible, not for the lack of praying and devotion, but because He had decided that their many Blessings would be granted elsewhere. Such matters were little discussed and even more rarely understood during those afternoons spent over puzzles or playing card games of endless variety, occasionally talking of the news in their paper, The Daily Telegraph, without any deep debate. In the front parlour, overlooking a riotously orderly rockery of flowers, stood two baby grand pianos, facing in opposite directions, keyboard to tail, so that they could watch each other as they played. Duets were a rare treat, for special occasions only, but Mr Tucker almost invariably saw in the evening with a little concert. And exceptionally, they let us stay for a light supper of scrambled eggs and toast. Rushing from one rendez-vous to another this afternoon, the space between my iPodded ears was filled with Liszt's B minor Sonata, which I listened to twice and a half. Now there's only one really "big tune" in this extensive, challenging work, though that tune and fragments of it return many times in many forms, including "upside-down". But the instant I heard the first of its annunciatory chords ring majestic under the fingers of Claudio Arrau, in a (1969?) performance recorded with the paradoxically less well-known pieces I recently bought the CD for, I knew that the work was an old friend. And it all surged back. A remarkably gifted amateur, Mr Tucker thought it time to introduce me to Liszt more than 30 years ago, telling me that I had enjoyed more than enough Chopin for a month and it was time to move on. Though I don't recall ever hearing it since, "one of the pinnacles of Romantic piano music" (Kenneth Hamilton, Cambridge UP) bound me in spell from beginning to hushed closing notes more than half an hour later. When clock time was restored. How Mr Tucker could contemplate scaling such tumultuous heights or tackling even the more restful moments of a work I tonight see described as "some kind of Faustian struggle" (Max Harrison) beggars my imagination. But he did. Twice, in the same summer. God, I must have pleaded for the second performance. And this really makes me marvel! Banal reality or worn cliché it may be, but it's almost inconceivable that our brains can store away such music -- this among many thousands, perhaps even scores of thousands, of pieces heard in a lifetime, from something as short and astonishing as Webern's miniature experiments with sound and with silence (the Six Bagatelles, op. 9, -- Arditti Quartet, Montaigne, Amazon Fr.) to vast monuments like Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony (NYPO, Bernstein in 1963). Oh, my father used to tell me about performances he still remembered ten or 15 years' later, but still it's strange and quite wonderful that just a couple of chords can open such a floodgate of memories. Uncalled to mind for a quarter of a century, I now remember the scent of polish and steaming Earl Grey in porcelain in the Tuckers' piano room, the faded flowers on the worn settee and the live ones from the back garden, freshly cut every few days. Each vase stood on a delicate doily and had to be moved when the couple opened the gleaming lids of their pianos. I'm not sure that such people exist any more, but maybe they do. After all, I was often astonished in India, never more so than when I was on a borrowed bike and ventured up into some verdant hills, to find myself summoned by a wizened elderly white woman from over her wicker gate near the churchyard in a little village which could easily have grown in the Home Counties. There was no time in that place. Indian independence might never have been. And I had cycled carelessly, right across the lady's lawn. Probably gaping. I could never manage him, never will. But there's evidently a very great deal to Proust and that madeleine after all. All this, from a fragment of a bar of Franz Liszt. Today, I might wonder about their politics. If they had any. The "Torygraph" was simply an institution ... and the crossword. My grandfather preferred 'The Guardian', then still often known as the 'Manchester Guardian' (John Simkin's Spartacus site -- a remarkable home for history). Nothing remotely controversial ever clouded time at the Tuckers, though the kid was well aware of an occasional melancholy, the many things unsaid. Maybe I imagine it now. But I think they largely communicated with one another and the rest of us via the music they shared. And that was a gift for life. ... Dash it! That was her name -- I did know it! Madeleine Tucker. No kidding. Like it was yesterday. ________ If ever you haven't and want to read one novel about India in those stormy years, make it four, each approaching the same events from different facets and viewpoints. I can't recommend 'The Jewel in the Crown' and the rest of Paul Scott's 'Raj Quartet' more highly than describing these books, brilliantly dramatized by the BBC in the 1970s, as an enterprise of genius. 9:45:28 PM  link   your views? [] Why I'm very cautious with women ... and less deceitful software I've begun to make a most interesting new acquaintance this morning, in the blogosphere. Which means this entry will prove more discursive than planned. First, two unrelated things: Now that I'm writing a lot again, on and off 'blog, and reading much, a neat little programme from the Unsanity (Panther compatibility) people is worth mentioning to other Mac users, especially since it doesn't seem to be at VersionTracker. I'd thought Silk unnecessary until now. However, when you're often working with the Mac, a "haxie" preference pane bringing smooth text rendering to Carbon applications (i.e. the remaining programmes still not "built for OS X" from the bottom up, but vital) and a host of choices regarding other font tweaks is just great. At $10, or 9.04 euros before VAT, Silk is worth every cent. And then there was this, just one of many good finds during a recent catch-up on the blogosphere: "Ah, science! Ennobling. Fascinating. Deeply challenging. Also, dangerous, gross and mind-bogglingly boring. We at Popular Science are sometimes brought up short by the realization that there are aspects of science—entire jobs, even—that, when you strip away the imposing titles and advanced degrees, sound at best distasteful and at worst unbearable. Having chosen last month our second annual Brilliant 10—a group of dynamic researchers making remarkable discoveries—we turned to this pressing question: For the rest out there, just how bad can a science job get? The answer: Really, really bad" (popsci article by William Speed Weed). I was planning to write about naval matters, not just soap and sailors' mouths, and more about the Wildcat, but she's dashed all of my aspirations with one swift strike of a claw, just as I was rubbing her tummy. It was 19th-century rule over the high seas that interested me after yesterday's lunchtime chit-chat touched on maritime nations. And psychology. The someone who has the two on the same page is Sydney Smith, a family physician who "uses a pseudonym to avoid offending the sensibilites of any of her patients who may accidently find the website". First off, Sydney on Saturday took "the kids to see Master and Commander (official 'Far Side of the World' site; Flash) this afternoon. They loved it. So did I." (The Wildcat might as well be on the far side of the world this morning. After what she said.) Sydney reviews this leader on my can-scarcely-wait-for list at Blogcritics. For me, any film that brings together Russell Crowe, director Peter Weir and a good British naval yarn is an absolute must, even before the critics get anywhere near it. But in France, we can't see it until December 31. Then Sydney gave us 'The Prayer of the Cat' (Medpundit's her 'blog, and has been added to the roll. Update 22:22: will be added. The means are down for maintenance following a "malicious hack", 'Blogrolling' news. Bon courage, Jason!). Sailing ships, cats and poetry. Too much, already! Where I met the doctor was at BC. Anybody who submits an article with the front-page teaser, "How one psychiatrist got caught up in the dance of crazy love," is bound with such a juicy invite to attract my instant and total attention. Sydney wrote a gripping tale called 'Amour Fou' (Blogcritics), in the guise of a review of an intriguing read, 'The Siren's Dance: my Marriage to a Borderline' (Roedale Press, September 2003). On the strength of this wide-ranging and well-linked review, which I'd strongly urge anyone with the remotest interest in such things, I have put Anthony Walker's book -- another medical pseudonym, by the way -- on my Amazon wishlist. One day, I'll tell you where that list is, particularly since most people expecting Chrissie pressies from me this year will have to start one of their own, if they haven't already. I'm not saying for a moment that the Wildcat is either a Siren or Scarlett O'Hara. She's certainly not Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction'. But it's remotely conceivable that she might be as "borderline" as I am, which is one of the innumerable points in her favour. Her existence on the edge was never clearer than last night, just for instance, when she read me a fine piece she had written about ... well, the trouble with what the Wildcat writes is that she won't let me publish any of it, even to prove that I'm not making it up about her being clever, perceptive and original as well as beautiful. This isn't fair. Nevertheless, it is abundantly obvious that the only possible flower of the day has to be a tulip. Again. Like the one on my desktop, a veritable icon for her. And preferably variegated, like this one I stole from an Albany festival of tulips. That's what she deserves: a floral fiesta, fireworks and all. Well, what she would have deserved if she'd not been so perfectly savage and horrible. Even if she has put a temporary halt to my collecting of pictures of the kind of wild cat she may be for submission to her judgement, by informing me that she's no more or less than a "domestic cat, grey and white." This I find both laughable and unbelievable. 'Cos I got this letter yesterday. And what S. said was that she wished my "fiancée" and me "great serenity full of love". This made the Wildcat laugh. That was grossly unfair and unkind. She said that S., who has suddenly taken to addressing me as "Nickie Mouse" (which I can only put down to my phenomenal computer skills), and who described the Wildcat as "heroic" for letting me into her life, was making mock of me! She's just taking the Mickey, the Wildcat opined. How dare she? How could she? I simply hate it when people make fun of my deepest and most serious endeavours. Thus, I'm going to take myself off for an early lunch, if I can eat anything. I have ordered it, but I bet it won't stay down. Like something else won't stay down when the Wildcat murmurs unmentionables into my ear... Then I keep a medical appointment. Then I have to go to the Factory. And I shall find other ways to occupy my time. I won't even whisper to the Wildcat for a week. At least!! I didn't sleep a wink all night, so deflated was the thing she wrote about, which I'm not permitted to share with you. 1:18:46 PM  link   your views? [] What HRH never did: the unmentionable* Tony thinks I'm cleverer than I am. Particularly with search engines: "Subject: Malarkey From: Tony To: Nick Barrett Simply becos somebody's decided I can't know what Prince Charles is accused of, I MUST know - I spent time & money getting hold of 'Spycatcher' & 'The Satanic Verses' & rotten reads they both were; this should be easier. Do U know or know where to look? (...) Cheers, Tony" The man later told me he thinks it's all something banal, like buggering a valet, "which was a tradition among the Hanovers..." (that the chap isn't a Hanover is beside the point). I understand that bonnie Charlie Boy has stolen the Crown Jewels, had them replaced with perfect fakes, and stashed them away in Switzerland as insurance against settling on the French Riviera when the Royal Family finally ex- or implodes. All attempts to discover which of us is right or whether the Prince of Wales did something more striking were initially in vain. A story supposedly in the Hindustan Times is now a 404 no-longer-exists page. 'Le Monde' had to destroy heaven knows how many hundred copies of an edition meant for distribution to exiled readers in England. I did not see the issue here. Even the 'News Quiz' on Radio 4 couldn't enlighten me. But Tony, David Marsden knows. His place, Asticles, informs us: "This is the first and only English-language website willing to risk the wrath of House of Windsor 100% Cashmere Sweaters and Shiny Leather & Accessories PLC, by publishing ALL the salacious, bawdy, erotic, smutty, pornographic, raunchy, shameless bedroom, bathroom, shower-head, maidenhead and bidet allegations about Prince Charles and his 'squeezed toothpaste tube' servant slave that U.K. and U.S. papers are too wimpish to print! There is one slight catch however. There always is..." (read more on David's Fresh Asticles Full Details page). Malcolm Drury knows. And he informs us: "In an attempt to deflect further attention from himself following recent allegations that are totally false in an unspecified way, Prince Charles has changed his name to * and copyrighted the term "Prince Charles©", DeadBrain has learned (read on). Both these admirable gentlemen have since publication been taken out by Military Intelligence agents and replaced with Corgies which have been taught to maintain websites. And I am going to the Canteen for lunch, because Sam is promising another [Sunday] special. Having now disclosed this to MI too, I'll have my mobile 'phone with me at all times and will keep you alerted of my every movement, including those of the bowels. My iPod has meanwhile been fitted with a powerful transmission device which can emit very high-frequency discords in a range beyond human hearing but capable of killing any small dogs instantly on sight at the press of a button. ____________ *Why, oh why, this item refused point-blank to appear yesterday, when published with a perfectly good number -- entry #347 (now deleted) -- and visible via the archives is utterly beyond me. MI evidently work in mysterious ways and lack any sense of humour. Disclaimer: honest 'guv, I adore the heir to the throne and wouldn't hear a bad word said about him. Even if I could ... and especially his nose. 11:36:38 AM  link   your views? []

dimanche 16 novembre 2003

Torture, hooligans, barbarism and, oh, bon appetit! The quartier's literary lion, André B., has begun to wonder, repeatedly, if ever I'll mention him again. If it's to describe how his conversation-dominating subject matter over Sunday lunch ranged unerringly -- and unperturbed by the presence of Jean-Paul's lovely Emma (14) -- from forms of torture to violence in society, barbarism, disturbing Manga films, football mobs and a certain perspective on the Japanese, he makes that hard. Sam's Sunday miracle now digested, however -- the man made a sublime soufflé au chocolat for me alone, bless him, and that during Ramadan still -- I can go some of the way towards answering Baudier's pressing requirements for information. These are they: Q. In France, when was torture abolished as a means of punishment? A. In the latter part of the 18th century. Before then, nobles were beheaded, highway robbers executed publicly on the wheel, state criminals and would-be assassins of royalty torn limb from limb, forgers boiled alive, heretics burned at the stake, and domestic thieves hanged. (Quid online; Fr). In 1789, Doctors Joseph Guillotin of Saintes and Antoine Louis of Metz proposed swift execution by machine. The guillotine was first tested on three human corpses and live sheep on April 17, 1792, the month after Louis XVI signed a law introducing beheading by this machine. Nicholas Pelletier, condemned for violent rape, was the first person to be executed by "the widow" in Paris on April 25, 1792 (various sources). Many a French-language website attributes the introduction of "humane" capital punishment to pressure notably from Voltaire (viz. his life at 'Philosophie', inter-copropriétés and some writing in 'Fragment sur le procès criminel de Montbailli', 1773, the tale of a singularly revolting execution). In May 1791, Robespierre had proposed the abolition of the death penalty, but the following October, the King instead decreed that decapitation would do, while any torture during trial was banned. Q. When was France's last execution on the wheel? A. The last reference I can find to such a death dates to 1786. A very slow-loading page at Reims-Web, source of the postcard snap, declares that a woman named Jeanne Delozanne, or "La Grande Jeanette", had her legs broken in public in this fashion, apparently on the charming Place d'Erlon in Reims. This convicted accomplice to murder did not, however, die of that torture. Taken to another square, she was hanged. Q. Who was the last person to be burned at the stake? A. Possibly Benjamin Deschauffours, in 1726. Under Louis XV, this fellow was held to be guilty of stealing crown property, but executed, for diplomatic reasons, on conviction of "the sin of sodomy" (from a history of gay culture, Gaibeur's site Fr.). However, a sodomy trial page by Claude Courouve and Jacques Girard reports subsequent, similar deaths. The last, according to them, was that of Jacques François Paschal, in 1783. Law Professor Jean-Paul Doucet would have us know that luckier victims of the flames were "secretly strangled" beforehand (Dictionnaire de Droit Criminel, R for "Retentum"). Trials for sorcery were outlawed in 1670, again under "Sun King" Louis XIV (several sources). The wolf in me is interested to learn that lycanthropy was, under the Inquisition, considered a sin punishable at the stake. Q. When was the Chevalier de la Barre executed? A. François-Jean Lefebvre, known as the Chevalier de la Barre, was put to death on July 1, 1766, aged 19, for failing to bow before a royal procession and singing bawdy ditties. Christian Adnin, at the Chambre Noire, relates that he was accused, without proof, of mutilating a crucifix. The fortunate fellow (also written up by Voltaire) was tortured during trial and sentenced to have his right hand cut off and his tongue pulled out. Then he was to be burned alive. In a gesture of "clemency", Adnin recounts, he was decapitated before his bits were put to the flames. And that's it. It should, however, be recalled, cher Monsieur, that I was a reference librarian in a previous incarnation, not this one, at the age of 17. It was but an apprenticeship... Though you at last get another write-up, could we perhaps, next time, lighten up? Even brighten up? Especially in front of the children. As for Emma and her dad, they went to see 'Matrix Revolutions'. Our Christmas plans duly laid. While I left Sam and two of his favourite ladies playing dominoes by low lamplight, to cheery music, awaiting the sunset and food. 7:38:47 PM  link   your views? [] More on the fearless champion of the free Verily, I tell you, the outrageous State visit to London gives the media plenty of meat when it comes to the gutsiness of the Great Leader and his entourage. "US President George W Bush has said protests planned during his visit to the UK this week do not worry him. He told BBC One's Breakfast with Frost programme that protesters were 'lucky' to live in a country 'where people are free to say anything'." (Beeb news) But then "The Americans had also wanted to travel with a piece of military hardware called a 'mini-gun', which usually forms part of the mobile armoury in the presidential cavalcade. It is fired from a tank and can kill dozens of people. One manufacturer's description reads: 'Due to the small calibre of the round, the mini-gun can be used practically anywhere. This is especially helpful during peacekeeping deployments.' Ministers have made clear to Washington that the firepower of the mini-gun will not be available during the state visit to Britain." At 'Rant of the Week', Sedgwick the wicked dismally fails to source his story, but claims that Australia beat Britain to "brown-nosing Bush" and thus, by virtue of some delightful non sequitur, has "first dibs on being the 51st state". Faced with the paroxysm of paranoia and talk of sterile zones, I ask myself 'Was it also down under that they invented bushwhacking?' 4:34:20 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 15 novembre 2003

Taking the cat for a walk (OS X), with brickbat A Noos techie came round this afternoon to check things my end after yet further hassle with the ISP I've doggedly decided to remain loyal to, now that I know exactly why recent service has been so bad. It'll just take two more weeks' patience before they've completed the network engineering that saw me again cut off three times yesterday alone. "Your sector is done! Your installation is fine now." I damned well hope so, because last time they were being premature. Thus it's only today, since I was also out and about a lot, that everything's been in place for me to give Panther a proper tour of inspection. The report I've submitted to an initial 'impressions' thread at TS (blogrolled) is the first I've written in a while without saying anything nasty about Apple. Because I'm exceedingly impressed by Mac OS X 10.3. However, since I find it difficult to write about Apple without laying into them for something, I shouldn't pass over the pompous crap that accompanied the first update, 10.3.1. It was scarcely comprehensible to anybody but initiates: "Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive," it began. The same message is still on their "special" Firewire 800 page. "Apple has identified an issue?" This mealy-mouthed nonsense should have read: "Apple finally marketed a new operating system which forever hosed or otherwise totally screwed up many people's crucial backup data if they had the misfortune to leave vulnerable external disks plugged in. But we've forgotten how to say sorry." The circumlocution was worthy of the worst of Micro$oft's infamous security notices. Being without the Net for much of the week deprived me of all but a glimpse of the outraged desperation Cupertino's latest little mistake sparked in the Mac-risking community. The latest 'A Vos Mac! (Fr.)' hurls it deliciously straight in a brief note on the news page, which, being translated, reads: "There's no stopping progress. After inventing the update that wipes your hard disk, Apple continues to innovate with Mac OS 10.2.8. This new version of the system stops you connecting to the Internet..." That went to press even before the Panther joined the Club of Unpredictable Cats. To be fair (but why? "Life isn't," my mother perhaps still loves to say), the lively French mag noted that Apple withdrew the offensive update as soon as they decided it had done enough damage. But it can't be shouted enough: NEVER install an OS X update without checking out the wounds of those first over the wire, unless you've got a reliable backup or more than one Mac on which your life may partly depend. Attacking the backup drives themselves was an original new tactic. The next thing we know, Jobs & Co. will be informing us: "Apple has identified the issue in the first release of Mac X OS 10.3.4 that saw some computers running Windows XP instead. This update corrects your operating system. It fixes the Blank Screen of Death and adds improvements to the Inner Outer Mongolian, Ancient Egyptian and Venusian language fonts, Network Security, the size of the Panther's tail, and the mistyping errors identified in the Terminal application." 9:34:50 PM  link   your views? [] It's so easy to slag off 'The Matrix' ... once it's done A pal, Yaco, asks where my write-up of 'Matrix Revolutions' is. There won't be one, though the Kid and I were indeed near the front of the long, packed line a week ago at the Gaumont in "Picadilly Circus". "Just go and see it," I suggested to Yaco. "Make up your own mind." The nearest I got to a write-up was a cop-out at 'Blogcritics', where the last part of the trilogy has mostly been under fire. Chad Orzel, for instance, a physicist who's been in my blogroll for some time, had just one title word for it: "Revolting" (Uncertain Principles). "I was going to venture to review this one myself, but given that I actually enjoyed most of it, with disbelief firmly suspended, I've got better things to do with my weekend than fight off the flak even a moderately nice review might bring!" was my own response to that. "One thing I do think, though (and I suppose I could argue a case for it): part three for me redeemed some of the worst failings of part two, managing to make a little more structural sense, despite all the quibbles about a long list of improbabilities. I wish the mysterious brothers and Joel Silver had had the courage of their initial convictions and made one coherent film out of 'Reloaded' and 'Revolutions'. It could have been a lot tighter, with a good half-hour or more on the cutting room floor instead of on screen (I already got bored during the first battle between Neo and all those Smiths) and re-edited into a movie which would have been less of an overall disappointment after the deserved success of Matrix the ... emm, 'original'. The fights, especially most of the business about the salvation of Zion, did leave much to be desired, I agree. But the hackneyed old themes of the exercise of free choice and -- wait for it -- even the redeeming power of love are not so shop-worn after all. Unlike some of you, I did care what happened to Neo and Trinity -- and would also be generous enough not to begin a review here with a sodding spoiler." There are no spoilers chez Chad (except in his links). The same day, Ken Edwards was much kinder. To say anything much yet of what happens in 'Matrix Revolutions' would be nasty to anybody still planning to see it, while I can't imagine the queue filling with people who haven't already been hooked by earlier episodes. A lot of the harshest criticism I've read about plot flaws and technical failings seems to my prejudiced eye -- and ear -- to miss several of the points about the 'Matrix' saga as a whole and the already too easily forgotten originality of an enterprise on this scale. 'The Matrix' ends as it begins, open to almost as many interpretations as it has original thinkers among its audience, an uneven venture with hosts of levels of meaning. That's a hallmark of successful myth, ancient or modern. I suspect that it's in part because it took the Wachowski brothers (Ambidextrous Pictures), a committed cast and a determined producer four long years to get the whole project on to the screen -- and because we've already seen so many clones since the first movie -- that attack comes far more easily than defence. Ken Edwards, latterly concerned with 'The Meatrix' (Breaking Windows), also does us a favour in his BC piece by taking good note of the development throughout 'The Matrix' of Don Davis's musical score, which is in itself a remarkable accomplishment. Some -- me among them -- moaned at the outset when the soundtrack was released on two separate CDs, one (called simply 'Matrix') featuring Marilyn Manson, Deftones and plenty of metal, while the other ('The Matrix') gave us Davis's orchestral score, "only" half an hour's worth. But I listened to those 30 minutes while waiting to get into 'Revolutions', further struck by the skilled coherence and the "avant-garde" nature of the work, which is only really avant-garde if you still find Janacek and Ligeti daringly modern. The risk that Davis took, which he refines in the newly released score to 'Matrix Revolutions', was to venture something novel after serving mainly as music orchestrator for such banalities, by comparison, as 'Toy Story', 'A Bug's Life' and 'Titanic'. Again, the originality of the achievement has been overshadowed by the flattery of more or less shabby imitations. 4:59:28 PM  link   your views? [] When primitive Bush worship turns mere spin into pure slime Security choppers all over London! Bah! "Save your tomatoes for Tony Blair," somebody said in the morning's news magazine, suggesting that while the current gang in the White House may be unpopular among many Britons, we still like Americans as a species and should indicate this by being nice to George Bush. I didn't catch the man's name. While he was Britain's Foreign Secretary, I used unkindly to refer to Robin Cook as the "bearded gnome", reflecting irritation at what I found an often arrogant outlook and patronising approach in interviews. Either Cook has much changed in the past year or I have, or a bit of both, because I regret such lack of charity. This morning he told us that he was "baffled" why the illiberal Bush should be given the honour of the first state visit to Britain by a US President since Woodrow Wilson. That was in 1918. "I never dreamt when I was living in Midland, Texas, that I would be staying in Buckingham Palace," the grotesque George reportedly said, according to a Beeb tale of "unprecedented security" for the hero of the Free World. Well. The hypocritical Bush and the worst of Britain's beleaguered royal family seem made for each other right now! Blair, leader of a nation I suppose I still consider my first homeland, has blown it -- again -- with the state visit invite. "Bush, who arrives in London on Tuesday and will stay at Buckingham Palace, plans to meet relatives of British soldiers killed in Iraq during the three-day visit. "'There's two messages. One, the prayers of the American people and the prayers of the President are with them, as they suffer,' Bush told reporters from Press Association, The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times. "'Secondly, that I will tell them that their loved ones did not die in vain. The actions we have taken will make the world more secure and the world more peaceful in the long run.'" The only problem being that a lot of such bereaved people are already saying they don't believe him. The mild anger this nonsense, the damned lie in the tail of that Bush quote in an AP news story (on Yahoo!), bestirs in me may be a sign that I'll soon be ready enough to return to the Factory and resume editorial tackling of the idiocies of the planet's politics. As long as I've really learned to manage to prevent such a gut reaction from consuming me in the struggle strictly to keep it out of my own "objective" news-editing, since that was one of the factors that triggered the Condition. Some people are so much hardier about digesting and regurgitating slime on a daily basis than I proved after 20 years of it. I scarcely know how they manage it any more. Cook has steadily risen in my esteem since he quit Blair's band over Iraq (Guardian) in March, making a memorable speech (BBC) to tell us why. Brushing aside the ill-feeling and potential mass protests in Britain against next week's state visit as "fashionable anti-Americanism," in the words of Jack Straw, is another marker on the steps the Blair government has taken down the risky road from sheer, mere -- and equally "fashionable" -- spin politicking to slime-trail diplomacy. The current Foreign Secretary wanted to know why more of his compatriots are likely to object to the Bush visit on the streets than "ever they demonstrated against the brutal, vicious, horrible regime of Saddam Hussein." In the wake of the war and in view of the current state of Iraq and the failure of western governments to get anywhere in contributing to any possible settlement of the conflict that has long been the running sore of the Middle East, over Palestine, such a question is not only outrageously disingenuous but profoundly stupid. On 'Today' this morning, Cook said: "What I can't understand is why we believe that President Bush has done more for Britain or has been a closer friend of Britain -- or a better supporter of Britain's foreign interests -- than any previous American President. "Indeed, my anxiety about the relationship at the present time is that it has become very much a one-way street, in which it's perfectly plain what we have delivered to the Bush administration; it's not at all clear what the Bush administration has delivered for Britain." Right on, Robin! The Anglo-American "special relationship" has become such a matter of arse-licking (not to speak of the reconstruction contracts that will be at issue next week) under Blair that you're far better out of it than still close to those perilously thin-aired heights. This is becoming the first time that I'm glad to see the extraordinary mess that is the British Tory Party showing signs of unity and possibly even intelligent life. While almost unchallenged and seemingly unstoppable, the Blair team has set Britain into a downhill political spin nearly as dangerous as the Thatcher era. Frankly, what a dire choice there's been of late. The Conservatives had almost nothing to offer but a return to those 1979-90 days of "every swine for himself", while New Labour became the party of "we know what's best for you, children, which is why we decide what you can do and what you can't." Just as Britain's governance looked at risk of becoming every bit as tediously predictable and mind-numbingly boring as most recent political activity this side of the Channel, Blair's up against something interesting. It's called an Opposition. I thought it might be worth pointing out because too many people up there in cloud-cuckoo land seem to have forgotten the meaning of the word. 12:48:06 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 13 novembre 2003

Back on the Beat ... and the other Dylan Edited 20.07.04, Murphy Horner being a woman. Sorry, Murphy. "Richard Burton stars in a brand new production of 'Under Milk Wood,' to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Dylan Thomas. Possibly the most famous radio play ever written is given a fresh lease of life in the first new production for BBC Radio in 25 years. "The inimitable performance of Richard Burton as First Voice has been digitally remastered and mixed with new performances of all the other parts to create a magical, fresh visit to the unique but universal world of Llareggub." This happens on Saturday from 14:30 to 16:00 GMT, as the Radio 4 Saturday Theatre page linked to above promises. I shan't miss it and may even "hijack" the event for later listening now that a fast Net connection, the RealOne player and the wonders worked by the 'rogue amoeba' people allow this with a Mac. What provokes this cheery advertisement is recalling the four wonderful years I worked often with the BBC radio drama department in the 1970s, helping to promote a then still much underrated form of art. But more particularly, it is the impeccable timing of a recent post at Blogcritics. Murphy Horner of WonderBlog says that 'Under Milk Wood' reminds her of Edgar Lee Master's 'Spoon River Anthology' (Dover Thrift -- sic -- Editions, 1992), which is new to me. There's plenty of good timing today. Despite the late hour I went to bed, I was up with the dawn and had a heap of shopping done by 9:45. In what we're warned could be the calm before the first of the real autumn storms, the sun's blazing in a clear sky and it's warm enough to have the windows wide open both sides of the flat, which needs the air. Yet at the Monoprix supermarket the Christmas decorations are going up this morning, including one of the ugliest fake trees I've ever seen with yellow blobs for balls the colour of nausea. Even this and an alarming test run of muzak had not the slightest effect on my magical mood. Heavens! I even feel almost as good as after waking up into the lazy early-morning making of love with someone as beautiful as her. Yup. There can be no doubt of it. I suppose it can't have escaped the notice of the Loyal 4 ¾ that your rejuvenated Nicholas has changed these past few days. It's no longer just that I love her. I'm in love with the Wildcat now, with feelings I really didn't expect to know once more ... and she has sheathed her claws for a while and tells me she loves me too! Not for me to ask the ways she loves me; let's not court broken hearts again. "In only a moment when we both will be old We won't even notice the world turning cold. And so in this moment with light from above, My cup runneth over with love." ('1345 Songs for the Harmonica,' a spine-chilling prospect!) The Google link to that Ames Brothers '60s hit included the eye-catching phrase "Pre-Marital Sex Re-examined", which shows that advertising works. Can there be any better remedy for the Condition than the love of a true Wildcat? By the way, when it comes to PMS -- re-examined or otherwise -- the Kid overheard a fragment of one conversation and expressed alarm, afterwards, that I could share pain and laughter regarding her distant majesty's brief adventures with other men's bodies without jealousy. I had to inform the youngster that I've learned, in hard ways, that love and trust are infinitely more important than the occasional straying of the flesh, should the Wildcat be so lucky where she is. "Then you trust her?" the Kid said. "Absolutely. She'll always come back. I know now that this is in our stars." Looking highly unconvinced, the 14-year-old shrugged her shoulders, said no more and moments later told me to go away while she wrote a poem I haven't been allowed to see. The final word came hours later as the Kid eyed up a nice-looking girl on the Métro platform while we waited for her first train back to her other home, her envy of the extra ear-piercings this leathered lass had been permitted quite patent. "(The Wildcat) is very, very pretty," the Kid said weightily, out of the blue, as if she had been reflecting on the matter for some time. She even let me take her hand, something she's baulked at since the onset of adolescence. Thus my cup is refilled before it gets time to stop overflowing, because if that, love, wasn't a seal of approval, then I don't know what is... But perhaps the Kid was simply content because her mother has agreed that she may have one more little hole needled through her ear when she takes a friend to stay with her Gran in York during the winter school holidays. But that's enough of the sickly moonstruck soup! I can't let the whole of this front page become a hymn to the wild ways of she who must be adored (obeisance is not one of her strong points, any more than it is mine. Freedom and space in love is what she needs to come out of her cage). At 'Electric Venom', Kate's spotted an excellent "cure for 'pussification'." In her own 'Fresh Hell', another leading lady, Kim, has wondered "where are all the real leading men?" -- and links us on to an MSNBC opinion piece which is good news for we foreigners but unkind to some of her fellow Americans. And still on the front page at 'identitytheory | revolution #6', we're drawn to an interview where we learn that Susannah Breslin, while no longer regaling the blogosphere with those famous extracts from her vast porn collection, is working full time on her novel, 'If Only These Hands Could Talk.' As ever, Susannah takes issue with plenty of people and notions, including Andy Warhol's "joykill" view of sex. I'm not sure that the Wildcat would see anything erotic about much of what Susannah has produced, but she would certainly agree about the hands. Darling, I don't want to steal any thunder you may need soon, but should he prove tiresome, you can send him here for those opening lines of a Brian Patten poem: "Into my mirror has walked A woman who will not talk Of love or its subsidiaries, But who stands there, Pleased by her own silence." At the BBC, you can even listen to the onetime Liverpool Poet reading 'Into my mirror has walked' himself (he doesn't sound at all like me...) If I could find one for sale on the Net, I'd despatch you forthwith a copy of one of my favourite books, though Patten's poem is not in 'Poetry of the "Underground" in Britain,' which is the subtitle of the "nearest thing to an anthology of British Beat so far (...) Michael Horovitz's Children of Albion," as we're reminded at 'Ragged Edge' (How Beat Can You Get?). "That Penguin bulged with the works of the spaced-out and marginalised. An effective dose of syrup for those who'd helped themselves a few times to the finicking work of some of the costive Movement bards in Al Alvarez's anthology The New Poetry." And so it was. Syrup, but sometimes bitter-sweet. Horovitz's stream of consciousness "afterwords" are dated now, but, like his readings I recall, infinitely more enjoyable than the ponderous Alvarez. I've lost the latter, but never mind -- most of it gave me even more constipation than one of my newly prescribed medicines. There's a wonderfully written, amusing account by Andrew Darlington, published in Gargoyle, of a Horovitz reading. "The next few poems he proceeded to punctuate in appropriate places with ripe farts on this roughly hewn but effective instrument. Both punctuation and words balanced precariously -- hanging together admirably," was a bit I especially liked, since I'd forgotten about Michael's farting machine... I won't risk my own copy of the 1969 'Children' in the post. It's almost broken-backed, dog-eared, yellowed and exceedingly precious. So if you want it, these months apart will have to end soon. Even if only for a while. Love, your -- mmm -- leading man! 2:09:57 PM  link   your views? [] Night words and sublime sounds Tonight she talks of the rage of desire. And of a man pursued, for his body: "But he finds it so very hard to keep it superficial." "Ah -- so he finds it very superficial to keep it hard?" "You should 'blog that, darling," she says. "Really?" "Do you know the one about the sadist and the masochist?" she asks. "No...?" "'Hurt me!' begs the masochist. "'No,' replies the sadist." Another 'phone bill came. This one more than the air fare! And tonight, I really don't give a damn. For now, it's the only way we can fly. She could teach a sailor how to swear. She has a laugh filthy as fertile dirt. God! I love this woman so hard. Worse, she is writing. When I say that I mean really writing, daily, nightly. No longer just for the newswires. She has unleashed a talent I must have prayed to see disinterred. Life, then, can surprise with a near surfeit of joy. If she lets me, I may publish some. Someday... After all, "keeping a diary just for myself makes me vomit." It was you who said it, Wildcat. "For friends." But when I wake up in the morning, I've got other people to write about. Incredible, love, but true. zzz Creamed off my collection on to the iPod: Shirley Horn - May the Music Never End. I've not even listened to all of this jazz miracle singer's latest, released in August, but I'm hooked. That anyone could bring anything new to 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' or 'Yesterday' is surprising; what Shirley Horn does with such standards raises them even higher; Rachmaninov's 'Isle of the Dead', in a 1957 recording. 'The (Fritz) Reiner Sound' is one of the most priceless in the RCA Victor Living Stereo collection. This is a magnificent performance of the Russian tone poem, with some notable Liszt and Ravel. The sound (Vintage Audio) can still teach too many a modern engineer to stop fiddling and just damned well listen! The Who - Quadrophenia. Only as timeless as the BBC Home Service news bulletin that breaks in at one point and had me looking round a shop to see where the heck the radio was until I realised that it was all in my head. Do you remember Mods and Rockers too? That was a time when once I swam off Brighton's pebble beach on New Year's Day, after a night under the arches with friends. I wouldn't do that now. The very idea of it freezes my blood like Keith Moon's drumming still sets it racing... 1:49:10 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 12 novembre 2003

On being a pain in the butt "Did you win?" she asks. Oh yes, dark bandit of my heart, I surely did. Should French cable Net and TV provider Noos soon fall into the clutches of US giant Liberty Media -- and if the Factory failed to act today on a tip from a knowing little birdie -- then you read it here first. Until this afternoon, my favoured ISP wrenched me and doubtless others off line from late Monday night, because of a cable router breakdown nobody at Noos spotted and no-one could report before this morning (yesterday being a public holiday). In less than an hour this afternoon, after making of myself a major nuisance to people at the Noos HQ, right up to the managing director's assistant, three top executives 'phoned me back separately! I was unable to extract confirmation of the rumoured Liberty Media takeover from any of them, but they didn't deny it either and were alarmed to find how well-informed I've become about the mixed fortunes of their company, since it was Paris Cybercable and I was one of their first clients. "You've already been granted half a month's subscription for free?" one asked. After my previous bout of complaining about sudden denials of service, yes, I was. By the time I'd got myself back on line with a little technical tweaking, somebody else had told me I'd be getting another month's fees waived! "It's not the money," I pointed out, "though I'm grateful for the commercial gesture -- thanks. What really bugs me is never knowing when the plug's going to be pulled and the lack of communications skills." I think they took due note, particularly when I added that not only was I suffering serious Web withdrawal symptoms but had also been unable for almost two whole days to pursue the completion of my porn collection! It must also be said that everybody I spoke to at Noos once I'd dug deep enough to get a few key 'phone numbers proved open about their technical difficulties, ready to explain the problems in language I could understand as a relative layman, and competent in dealing with them. The top people did firmly deny reports from one of my sources (who claims anonymity at peril of "being scorched alive" should I reveal a name) that anybody was "packing their bags" in view of an apparently imminent change of management. While off line, however, I've managed to get a very great deal done in sorting out some of my mess and generally interfering in the affairs of my friends and beloved! The snail mail across all the distance to where the Wildcat is was meanwhile almost unbelievably swift, delivering a packet posted on Monday a mere two days later. She attributes this to the power of "the current of love," bless her! Her flower for today is on my desktop, which as you'll observe, I have wasted no time in starting to tweak to my satisfaction. My very gradual discovery of Panther has brought several highly agreeable surprises. It is a darned fast Mac operating system, the new "Finder" and its window arrangements are a major improvement, I appreciate immediate access to my Apple "iDisk", and have already discovered how to turn on the "floating Exposé blob" (XHints, blogrolled). There've been clever cats everywhere this week. Oh, and those pix conceal secrets, out of Africa... The moodswing blues, by the way, are the work of one of my favourite artists, Vicki Messinger (Vickimess 2003). 9:15:16 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 9 novembre 2003

Back, interrupted... Updated entry, in the light of a 'phone call which came at an hour when the culprit would normally go to the top of my hit list: A shot of the new cat is needed, since this is pure, pristine Panther, though this Monday morning I'm changing the picture. She will know why, while the message won't be so very cryptic to other attentive friends. Mac OS X 10.3 became the motor of the machine on Friday and I haven't "opened the box" yet to find out what I like -- or don't -- about the new operating system. James Duncan Davidson gave us his "ten things I dig" a month ago. JDD has since moved on to give us his impression of one of those things I most look forward to exploring myself, in another article for O'Reilly on Xcode. I did wipe the hard disk clean, repartitioned it into two (rather than four) and reinstalled Mac OS X and 9.2.2 from scratch, as well as all the programmes I've decided to keep -- a majority of what I used on Jaguar. The upgrade can be done in just a few hours, but mine took three days because I "reinvented" my machine in the light of the past few years' experience with OS X, my renewed passion for music and other arts as central to my life, and the consequent need for plenty of free space. The fun and games bit, all the exploring and the hacking, begins now. It wasn't until Panther went in that I saw to what extent the people who have remarked on similarities between Apple's new OS and Windows XP were right. In aspects of the appearance at least. That ... must change! Then, "proper" blogging resumes. The Wildcat has been getting up to more than enough this weekend for both of us, but much as I'm keen to recount her latest adventure, I'd be in very hot water if I did. Instead, she has asked for more jasmine. When I found illustrator Diana Lambourne's picture, the request made excellent sense the day after the night of the full moon, eclipse, adventure and all. "Emotionally warming. Relaxes, soothes, uplifts and helps self confidence. Good for stress and general anxiety. Perfect skincare oil, excellent for hot, dry skin. Sensual properties and reputedly an Aphrodisiac! Only needs to be used in very small quantities. Exquisite perfume. A vast quantity of blossoms, which must be gathered at night when their scent is at their highest, are required to produce only a few drops of oil, so it is a very expensive oil." From what they say of jasmine at a Guide to Aromatherapy, it has more secrets than even the Wildcat suspected. The same, I'm surprised to learn, goes for the daffodil. This being an exceptionally challenging day for her, I'm happy to overcome my hesitation about giving the Wildcat one of these favourites as well. Though out of season in these northern climes, it emerges this morning that the daffodil is more than the flower of "unrequited love". Several websites inform me that it has another significance well suited to the occasion, and that's one way of holding her hand in spirit, if not in the flesh, sharing the sunshine we're blessed with again after a dismally grey weekend. This other meaning is given at 'Did you know?', a Canadian compendium of a kind to delight Trivial Pursuit addicts. Just one example I'm bound swiftly to forget is that: "The world is divided into six floral kingdoms 1. Holarctic kingdom: (North American west coast and Central Asia) 2. Paleotropical kingdom (Central Africa) 3. Neotropical kingdom (South America) 4. Australian kingdom 5. Holantarctic kingdom (Tip of South America) 6. Capensis kingdom (Western Cape, South Africa)" The picture itself is the work of Ashley, who has many more computer desktop wallpapers on offer at 'girlmecha', some of them very attractive indeed. That's 'girlmecha.net', not .com, which is yet another porn site. Since the Wildcat was far more taken aback than I'd have expected last night, when the occasion arose to tell her of teenage times when I had a devastating crush on a classmate and thought I was gay, she may be entertained by the "About Ashley" on what regrettably seems to be a deceased 'blog. There's nothing quite like such upfront honesty, tongue slightly in cheek or not. The girl has got considerable talent too. But if you're as inclined as I am to pinch some more of her wallpaper, do drop her a line to say "Thanks"... "Em, did you, er, ...?" The answer was "yes". We'll draw a veil over the rest of that talk of an episode which served to remind her of the extent to which I was a product of a single-sex public school. If a singularly rebellious one... 11:39:37 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 6 novembre 2003

A bouquet before I wipe everything... Panther. I've got it and will install it tomorrow. After I've completely wiped my hard disk and repartitioned it. So this is the moment for the Wildcat's bouquet. It will need a little deciphering, darling, but does come direct from Losserand St. 11:14:16 PM  link   your views? [] Back to the Factory on December 1 The past few days have been hectic. Hence so few posts. Not because it's my quiet time of month, on the contrary. Since Monday, I've been taken up with medical matters and meetings, important but mainly dull. The outcome is that I've told people at the Factory that I'll be back at work on Monday, December 1. A week ahead of the full moon after next. 10:53:02 PM  link   your views? [] Real quack remedy or just quackery? She's ailing, the Wildcat. The joys of the season, aches, pains and horrible headaches. In France, this is the time when the chemists put Oscillococcinum -- a homeopathic product from Boiron -- very prominently on display. Many pharmacists and some doctors I know swear by this expensive remedy, which comes in tubes of six. I find that it works, especially if you take it at the onset of flu-like or heavy cold symptoms. Few other homeopathic remedies I've tried for a range of minor complaints have had much effect. The Wildcat has asked me to post her some, since it's hard to come by where she is. But could I be wrong? Could this be yet another case of "it's all in the head", a big swindle extracted from the heart and liver tissues of ducks? In this instance, Anas Barbariae. The Boiron labs in August claimed, probably correctly in my limited experience, that "12 percent of general practitioners use homeopathic remedies regularly". Ducks, for their part, could play an even more important role in transmitting the flu virus (Nature, June 2003) itself than hitherto suspected. Also in summer, Dutch retired mathematician and scholar Jan Willem Nienhuys published an article at Homeowatch, dismissing Oscillococcinum as an "energetically advertised nonsense product". Homeowatch is a subsidiary of Quackwatch run by US retired Pennsylvania psychiatrist Stephen Barrett. I've had occasion to visit Quackwatch before and find it a useful cautionary read. But in this instance? The Oscillococcinum conundrum is one I know too little about to make up my mind. 2:07:35 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 3 novembre 2003

Of the Canteen, sex, cats, sex, computers, ... words in an appallingly absent ear "Sexy". That was the one she forgot. It's appalling. They all do! "Malicious, considerate, manipulative, perceptive, very kind, adorable..." I forget the other word she used, but that's what she called me tonight, the Wildcat. Killing time while she waited for the start of a film about cancer, 'My Life without Me', of which I knew nothing. My life without her is hard. Sometimes... I still wish she hadn't left out the "sexy". Sam made up for it earlier, though, serving up yet another Sunday special. The meal at the Canteen was especially good today, in excellent company. The usual gang was there, Baudier the mournful lion, the elderly lady who likes to listen a lot but says little, Sam working miracles in the kitchen, Lynda serving up the food, even Jacques came down from his flat above the restaurant, another retired fellow I must write more about one day, bringing his own wry curiosity to our talk of everything and of nothing... There was also a surprise star appearance in the shape of a child I took to in an instant. It's a pity the Kid didn't come this weekend after all, because she missed a first chance to meet Jean-Paul's daughter Emma, who has been talked about to her often. As it would seem the delightful Emma has been told of me and the Kid. Not only did Sam do something novel and very spicy with my "Menu Marianne", the main course named after the Kid (Sundays see interesting variations in the vegetables with the escalope Milanaise+ French fries). For dessert, he served up a tarte tatin warm out of the oven, another item not on the menu and so good that even Jean-Paul succumbed and had pudding for the first time I've seen. Lynda said that Sam is at his best in the kitchen when he can't eat anything himself because he observes Ramadan. Walking home, I suddenly remembered where I first found the Kid's second name particularly attractive. It goes back a long way. I can't have been more than 15 when I read John Fowles' 'The Magus' (1966), whose anti-hero bears my own name. One of the women in the singularly original novel has this second name I gave the Kid when she was born many years later. I've no idea why this recollection soared up into my consciousness just as a jet black cat crossed my path in the drizzle and then came out from under a parked car to rub its nuzzle and ears against my leg. But I plan to read 'The Magus' again. I wonder if I'll still think Fowles shouldn't have revised it 11 years later, robbing this enigmatic and seductive masterpiece of some of its mystery. There's more explicit sex in the revised version, but I found the original as erotic as it was intriguing. If and where a cat came into it, I don't recall. But one thing's for sure. The Panther is slinking my way. And when her day comes, I face a choice. Apple's new version of the OS X operating system will mean saying goodbye to some hard disk space as well as Jaguar. Just as I feel really familiar with the whims and most of the mysteries of the big cat that has been the heart of my Mac for the past year. Old habits die as hard for a grey wolf as some of a human spirit's deepest fantasies and fancies, particularly the ones that usually lie deep, deep beneath the surface. Desert island dreams. How I wish the Wildcat were here! The Wildcat and her shared love of so many things Mediterranean ... it's time to follow our instincts and the birds and head south, south for the Sun and places where music isn't just a vital part of life, but the very breath of life. Today, I turned up later than planned at the Canteen because I was entranced by an elderly woman on the Food Programme (catch this incarnation of the page before it disappears). The Orsi family, a restaurant in Pontypridd, 75 years of Italian cooking in Wales, two nations where song is so much. The mama in this week's broadcast had a voice which sang in two accents, her Italian one and the Welsh one that took me straight back to my university days in Swansea. To hear her made me hungry! Sam did outstandingly well to satisfy the tastebuds that set a-quiver, and his cooking gave me time to speed home again to collect a couple of African CDs Jean-Paul wanted to borrow. Why wait when the occasion presents itself unexpectedly? Indeed, our lazy afternoon chit-chat was accompanied by David Fanshawe's 'African Sanctus', which everybody seemed happy to discover. It was in Sam's music machine before I realised he'd even snitched it. The 1970s, when first I heard this, "was the decade of 'fusion'. But when David Fanshawe presented his eclectic mix of tape recordings from travels in Africa and his own compositions, he still caused quite a stir. No one had heard anything like it..." (from Amazon UK's five-star review). In tune with my mind's current workings, the subterranean temple is one of my favourite desktop pictures. I know where I'm going to have to shed some space on my Mac, in the interest of a pleasure principle too long denied, buried, suppressed... No more choosing between women and the world's musics. They go far too well together, except, with reluctance, in the bowels of the machine. Hard disk space is still expensive, to buy one as Jean-Paul suggested would be at the unacceptable cost of air and train fares to come... It's been mostly the women, of late, who have told me that I know how to talk about music without being boring or incomprehensible. That's a gift I renounced in the early '80s. Other priorities. No longer. Some people say I can even talk about computers without being geekish or dull, perhaps because I'm sharing a passion. And something we all have to know a little about if we're to make sense of our children's world... So, if you click on the temple, you'll open a gallery. A tribute to Jaguar. And perhaps, a hint of why for the majority of Windows users, computers are a tool, a means to an end, machines that inexplicably crash and confound. I know enough people who are productively original with Micro$oft, or perhaps despite it, not to generalise or wage boring "platform wars". Yet still Macs, Apple and the 'Think different' sales slogan are for many a complex love-hate relationship, the machine and the software perhaps best suited to the creative imagination. And, yes -- admettons -- some of us are insufferably elitist... This Monday afternoon, I have an important appointment. Until a few days ago, I didn't know there were doctors specialised in "psychosomatic medicine". When I meet one, said to be very pragmatic and bright, it'll be a key step in the changes still to come in my life after such a strange six months. My father was very intrigued at what I was able to tell him tonight. "Such a year you've had!" And he plans to explain to me, in writing, exactly why he has "long, thought [I'm] a journalist by default rather than by design." My real nature, he said (and whatever that may be), is elsewhere. But it's taken me a quarter of a century to find that out. Along with a nine-month "experiment" in putting myself on the line. Online ... for anybody who may care to pass by. The Wildcat repeatedly reassures me that whatever I really am isn't incompatible with my "career" at the Factory. I hope you're right, Wildcat, but I can't help being apprehensive. You wanted me there to hold your hand. These months of exile from the city of your heart and from yourself can't last forever, my friend. 2:33:42 AM  link   your views? []

samedi 1 novembre 2003

Because she asked for it "Tell me what it means!" "Tell me what's in the post!" Far too curious, our Wildcat, for her own good. Which is why she should really keep her nose out of some things. Such as the dating pages in India Times. 11:37:30 PM  link   your views? [] Parliamentary adventures of an alter ego "We do not speak with a collective voice. There is room for more than one answer to every problem under the sun and we hope some of them will appear here." Some people are calling it a "meme". Since I'd mostly forgotten what a meme* was until last year I'll settle for calling the Blogger's Parliament a very good idea, though I've declined to join it as yet. After all, it's solutions they're after, not problems. By October 26, Augustine Nada was ready to tell Open Source Politics, the "Blogger's Parliament up and running". Our good friends in London present the notion there. And at Blogcritics a day later. That was when the flak began and Augustine rolled up her sleeves. Good on ya, gal! The alter ego had more to say at Blaugustine (Oct 30; no permalink): "The mocking commentators were helpful too, even if they didn't intend to be, as they caused me to redefine exactly what this project is and isn't about. Now, anyone for needles in haystacks?" You can meet those who are at the parliament itself. The parliament seeks to solve: 1 Ongoing conflicts, wars and post-war chaos 2 Threats or dangers to individuals, countries or the planet 3 Local issues specific to one country or area 4 Race or religious conflicts 5 Poverty, hunger, illiteracy 6 Health & environment problems, local or global 7 Economic imbalances / Money / Unemployment 8 Lack of communication and/or reliable information 9 Corruption and crime: on small or vast scale 10 Individual and collective morality & responsibility 11 Technology: problems it causes or that it could solve 12 Psychological blocks and blind spots 13 Spiritual issues 14 Problems in education, arts or culture Devise another solution, I'll find you the problem... *For those who still toil in the darkness that was mine before the blogosphere, a meme is: NOUN: "a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another." (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed., 2000); NOUN: "a self-replicating element of culture, passed on by imitation." (Oxford English Dictionary); NOUN: a "virus of the mind". (Meme Central, R. Brodie, author, writer of Microsoft Word, "very expensive" consultant, guest speaker); EXAMPLES: "tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches." (R. Dawkins, in 'The Selfish Gene', 1976 rev. 1989, Oxford University Press); CREDITED TO: Professor Richard (unofficial World of) Dawkins; DATE: 1976; ETYMOLOGY: alteration of mimeme (Greek, something imitated), from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme, from mimeisthai (to imitate). (Merriam-Webster Online + American Heritage Dictionary). In which case: what is a neme? __________ Best off the iPod today: Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia - Lady Saxophone. Dream sax Barbara and her band (hubby Jon Hiseman of Colosseum on drums). Happy memories of the 100 Club on Oxford Street... Lambarena - Back to Africa. Bach the Father meets Gabonese and other African musics in an outstandingly original composition. Orchestra/Choirs cond. Tomas Gubitsch, Nana Vasconcelos, Sani Ateba; many African musicians... Marillion - Brave. "Not the best. Tch, tch," said François. Buddy, if Brave is bad, tell me just where you think these progressive people peaked... Oh yes. At the Canteen this lunchtime, the very same François lifted an eyebrow at the concept of Boulez meets Zappa: 'The Perfect Stranger'. He might raise the other at 'Tales from the Engine Room'. Marillion ... and the Positive Light. 10:37:53 PM  link   your views? [] Kiss candidates The dangerous 1st comes round again. This means a diversion on the way to the Canteen, perhaps via the "second best baguette baker" in Paris, in search of the victim for the month's good-luck kiss. One of the Saturday special at the award-winning shop is the wholemeal pain aux abricots et pistaches. This and other miracles hot out of their oven is worth a peck on the cheek for whichever of the girls who work there greets me first. Let no member of the opposite sex address a word to me before I get there, thus becoming the candidate! Somebody I could almost have kissed this morning was British Labour MP Stephen Pound. I mustn't make too much of a habit of linking to soundbites from 'Today', but anybody who's keen to outlaw Xmas muzak (4'38", RealAudio clip) before December in an "early day motion" put to parliament wins my approval. "You may think that by playing 'Rocking Around the Christmas Tree' we're going to empty our wallets all over your counter," Pound wants people to tell the supermarket barons, "but a lot of us are actually fed up with it." "We're going to start playing it today," Nicole Lander of Woolworths warned presenter Sarah Montague, leading to interruptions from "Harrumph" Humphrys, self-declared "patron of pipe-down". November 1 is the date I annually become a scrooge. Officially. Ask the Kid, who as the stolen pic suggests, is otherwise engaged. It was on her 'blog (Oct 26). Her old 'blog. The Kid and her friend Sév have moved: belcatja2. Not without protest. SkyBlog apparently tried to kill them off. I'm surprised that the Kid hasn't pleaded with me to come back already. She must be suffering appalling withdrawal symptoms, since her Mum's been offline for more than a week after her second PC disaster. I have suggested that the Kid be allowed to connect her PowerBook to their modem, since the problem's not with the line, but some reluctance on her mother's part is understandable. Marianne has become almost as much of a Net-head as her Dad and probably needs reminding just how much more you can do with a computer than chat and blog. Music is just a part of it. Not muzak. Wearing my iPod on every supermarket shopping trip between today and Twelfth Night will be a sanity-saving requirement as well as a pleasure. 1:41:25 PM  link   your views? [] Friday Night is Music Night As are they all, or so they should be... "Every time we see a 'Sunrise' over 'Igoli', we shall salute you." Buying CDs blind is rare, but I almost never regret it. David Hewitt died in his native South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province late in 2001, aged only 54, his passing marked by many tributes including this one at 3rd Ear Music. Hewitt's 'African Awakening' (2000), came without even a hint of a liner note when I picked it up in Johannesburg a few months after his death. (There's more of a very varied repertory at Gresham Records). The "best of" Hewitt album proves to be a remarkably successful blend of classical guitar, jazz, Zulu chant and storytelling, with an orchestration that can tend to the sweet while avoiding the sugary. The styles are varied, but three .mp3s on offer at Web Concert Hall, where Hewitt works formed part of prize-winning guitarist Michal George's performance give you an idea of the late teacher-composer's sound. A generous page for classical guitar fans. zzz "In 1969 Columbia/CBS launched a big advertisement campai[g]n entitled 'That's Underground' which immediately defined the end of the mid/late 1960s underground movement. (...) For the first time a whole complex ideology/attitude was raped/killed/sold within no time to raise profit for a few selected artists and companies." "The Independent, Alternative Music Scene As The World Knows It Today Is Fake!" raged Lord Litter at WorldBeatPlanet during the summer. Our summer, anyway ... ah, to be back in SA! Whether or not you buy this "idealistic ... 'hard-core'" boot up the backside of the mainstream record industry all the way, the east German musician makes a compelling case. So where does he go for his underground pickings? The Indie Bible is the kind of site and store that takes me right back to my teenage years. zzz Current listening as I write? Ella Fitzgerald, recorded in the late 1930s, long before her Verve days. As timeless as tomorrow. zzz Global Sound. Take note. "Musical Treasures of the World," proclaims the Smithsonian Institute, and so they are at this splendid "beta site". This lead for the bookmarks comes from Ralph Brandi's weblog, There Is No Cat. I hope Ralph's fears that the baby has been knifed prove unfounded, with more life breathed into the beta. "Most of the music has never been easily accessible to the public, having been published mainly on records that were made available only to libraries," Ralph writes of Global Sound's previous incarnation. What still rankles me most about the theft of precious cassettes soon after I arrived in Paris is that many of them were similar, my illicit gleanings of gold from the BBC's vast music library... They probably ended up in a trash bin within minutes. 10:16:38 AM  link   your views? []