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dimanche 29 février 2004
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Noting my tastes, my friend Stuart recently returned from England and thrust his copy of 'We' into my hand to fill one of the holes in my reading.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's short novel, written in the immediate aftermath of Russia's Bolshevik revolution, is the grandfather of all 20th-century science fiction dystopias and remains immensely readable almost 83 years after he penned it.
"A dystopia is any society considered to be undesirable, for any of a number of reasons. The term was coined as a converse to a Utopia, and is most usually used to refer to a fictional (often near-future) society where current social trends are taken to nightmarish extremes," the superb Wikipedia informs us.
The ordinary narrator of 'We' is D-503, a contented Number in the perfect OneState, whose citizens live and work their mathematically ordered 26th-century existences under the benevolent rule of the 'Benefactor', watched over by the Guardians.
Nobody has or needs names in OneState, a monumental and proud social collective living in glass and steel buildings protected from the chaos of an inhuman, natural world which lies beyond the Green Wall, constructed in the aftermath of a devastating 200 Years War.
D-503, like Zamyatin himself, is a mathematician and engineer, the builder of "the glass, the electric, the fire-breathing INTEGRAL," a spaceship due for imminent lift-off "to place the beneficial yoke of reason round the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets -- still living, it may be, in the primitive state known as freedom."
This tightly written tale -- not much more than 200 pages long in Clarence Brown's 1993 translation published in Penguin Twentieth Century Classics -- is hard to read with a fresh eye when you come to it after digesting the dystopian novels and films it directly inspired or has influenced, from George Orwell's '1984' to Kurt Wimmer's 'Equilibrium' (2002; IMDb, reviewed last July).
While 'We' retains all its relevance when it comes to humanity's pursuit of happiness and as a satirical critique of planning for a perfect society, it is also, as Brown points out in an admirable and witty introduction, very much a work of its time.
"I suddenly recalled," D-503 notes in his 'Record Two', "a picture in the museum: one of the avenues they had back then, after twenty centuries -- a stunningly garish, mixed-up crush of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colours, birds . . . And they say it was really like that. It could have been like that. It all struck me as so unlikely, so idiotic, that I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing.
And suddenly there was an echo, laughter, from the right. I turned. Before my eyes were teeth -- white, uncommonly white, sharp teeth -- and a woman's face that I didn't know.
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but the way you were looking at everything, it was inspired, as if you were some god out of myth on the seventh day of creation. I think you believe you created me, too -- you and nobody else. I'm very flattered.'
All this with a straight face."
D-503 gets confused from this very first encounter with I-330. D-503 is destined to become totally infatuated with I-330. D-503 is soon even going to need sick notes so he can see I-330 outside his allocated Personal Hours and her part in his Table of Sex Days.
His own brief notes for unknown readers are already becoming sick, disjointed.
And I-330 is dangerous, she teases D-503's previously dormant imagination, erupts into his dreams. I-330 is a rebel. Worse, she is not alone and she has designs on D-503 and the INTEGRAL.
While Zamyatin's Numbers are thinly developed as characters, serving mainly as vehicles for ideas, I-330 is a striking creation from a Russian naval engineer who served in Britain for two years during World War I. He must have assimilated notions of the women's liberation movement taking off in England's rigid post-Victorian society before returning to a homeland where he was supportive of the Marxist revolution.
I-330 is a courageous, free-thinking, sexually adventurous leader and breaker of barriers. She is viscerally opposed to the workings of the Benefactor, in whom it is much easier to see Lenin and notions of perfectibility through scientific socialism than the Big Brother of '1984'.
Orwell, and Aldous Huxley in 'Brave New World', were respectively writing just after (1948) and before (1931) the terrifying manifestations of a new totalitarianism and a global confrontation of ideologies in the last century's total war.
From this perspective, I found 'We' far less of a political novel than those it has inspired. Unlike some of those offspring, OneState is not evidently derived from any one nation of Zamyatin's day, but the parallels with the regulated lives many of us live in the big cities of today's "developed world" become more pertinent with each passing decade as nature is driven out of the metropolis.
Zamyatin wrote the book as no enemy of the Soviet State, though it was swiftly perceived that way and went unpublished in any faithful rendition of his original text in Russia itself until 1988, 57 years after Stalin allowed him in exile in Paris, disabused by the absence of creative outlets and the conformity of Soviet thought.
'We' is instead an entertaining, sometimes funny and seminal work of science fiction, where the core of social satire lies in a simple arithmetical challenge I-330 puts to D-503 as the tale nears its climax.
Zamyatin's biographers tell us he much admired another of the first great "sci-fi writers", H.G. Wells, whose influence is evident, and the naïf D-503 also has a little in common with Voltaire's wide-eyed Candide until he finds himself increasingly distanced from a society founded on a scientific ideal.
In our 21st-century societies, scientific thinking has to many minds dethroned traditional religious notions. Developments in medicine and nanotechnology have given a new twist to the concept of human perfectibility as a taming of the genetic "freedom" exercised in the evolution of the species to its current point.
I found 'We' a particularly stimulating read in the immediate wake of some catching up on current thinking in genetics and biology, most especially the conclusion that any further evolution of Homo sapiens -- if we avoid rendering our world uninhabitable first -- will be determined primarily by our technologies, medical science and socio-cultural achievements.
Beyond the Marxist model Zamyatin adopted, beyond the manic consumer capitalism of our day, the concepts of utopia and dystopia have assumed a new relevance, drawing on developments scarcely conceivable until they began happening in the latter half of the 20th century.
According to the cover of the British edition, one of my blogheroines, the wide-ranging writer Ursula K. Le Guin (her site), described 'We' as "the best single work of science fiction yet written". Ever wary of superlatives, I'd simply rate it among the best SF books I've yet read. If this were to be an essay of the order of Patrick Parrinder's 'Imagining the Future: Zamyatin and Wells' (Science Fiction Studies, 1973), I would digress into a similar piece contrasting 'We' with the book I lent Stuart in exchange, Le Guin's own 'The Dispossessed' (1974).
In that profoundly influential novel of ideas, much richer in character, the physicist hero Shevek declares:
"Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go and unbuild walls."
With that, he could be Zamyatin speaking.
Brown, in explaining the chequered history of 'We', its various renditions, and the need for his new translation, says that Zamyatin regarded the book -- which some might describe as a mere "novella" alongside the hefty, often multi-volume tomes of contemporary science fiction -- as his most light-hearted and most serious work.
It's a light and swift read, that's for sure. But it delivers a subtle and serious message of the kind you could be thinking about for months.
7:05:51 PM link 
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samedi 28 février 2004
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Though this log didn't take part in Grey Tuesday, the blogosphere's "defiance of the music industry's copyright control" (Wired) this week had my wholehearted support.
There's no doubt that small record stores and many people who work in the music business are seeing the raw end of ongoing mega-deals and the slow slaughter of the single by technology.
"There's never been a better time to be in the music industry? Try telling that to the thousands of music workers who have been laid off over the past couple of years. Universal slashed its workforce by 11% last year. Tower Records filed for bankruptcy in the US two weeks ago."
"But," the same 'Second Sight' (Guardian) story by Sean Dodson reports, "with album sales rising and the phenomenal growth of ringtones and legal downloads, plus record-breaking years for merchandising and publishing rights, it seems the death of the music industry has been greatly exaggerated (...)
"It also looks as if digital downloads are the saviour of the industry rather than their destroyer."
I spotted that at Casper's 'Chromatic Musings': the blog of a broad-minded bass player who doesn't worry any more than I do that "talking about music is like dancing about architecture". (Alan Scott had a lively time trying to track down who said that first.)
10:30:32 PM link
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Matroshka, "a mock-human of natural bone, simulated organs and synthetic skin, was installed on the outside of the [International Space] Station's Russian Zvezda module during a spacewalk today by Expedition 8 crewmembers Michael Foale and Alexander Kaleri. Today's spacewalk [was] the first time the ISS will be left unattended during an EVA.
Rigged with numerous radiation detectors both inside and out, the dummy will spend a year on the space station's surface before being returned to Earth," Tariq Malik writes for 'Space.com'.
That comes via "the open-the-pod-bay-doors-hal dept." at Slashdot.
What with tests like this, the priority restored to the Mars mission and the latest dismal reports on climate change, you might sense a distinct "Stop the world, I want to get off" chill in the air.
Is there anything we need to be told?
9:01:01 PM link
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I gave up reading newspapers years ago. Monthly magazines, books and the Web are more than enough to keep me informed.
On that basis, the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) strikes me as an excellent initiative.
It's a pleasingly international offshoot of Rotten Tomatoes, which has long been an indispensable meta-resource for movie reviews. Both get a great deal on to one well-edited page.
The OFCS has stringent membership conditions to ensure that you don't waste your time reading badly written, ill-informed opinions of the kind a simple Google search inevitably turns up.
"Writers who wish to apply must maintain an annual online publication quota of at least 50 professional-level reviews, no less than 400 words per review, in order to be eligible for consideration," for starters (About the OFCS).
If you're a film buff, this is a site to bookmark, along with those tomatoes and the invaluable Internet Movie Database.
"Though their readership is growing, online film critics remain at the bottom of the movie-publicity food chain -- far below daily newspaper critics, magazine writers and broadcast reporters. They are the last to be invited for preview screenings, are seldom quoted in movie ads and remain largely off the radar for Hollywood studios."
But in today's article at Wired, Jason Silverman goes on to explain that 'The Invasion of the Web Film Critics' has begun to change all that.
8:36:03 PM link
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The screenshot isn't great, but it gives you an idea of how the Kid's blog comes out if you search for belcatja at Kartoo (.com).
This French invention, both fun and practical,
"provides a graphical look at meta search results, eschewing the traditional list format to instead map your matches via colorful balls and visual word links. It's definitely not for a mass audience and drew only 3 percent of the winner vote. Most will probably be confused by it, but a few may love the interface. We felt it deserved an honorable mention this year."
That's what Search Engine Watch thought of it in their awards for 2002, though I don't see why they reckon it could confuse most people.
It makes for a great change from Google and you can count me among those who love its interface and the way it works, using Flash technology.
I discovered it via 'A vos Mac!' (Fr).
The founders, Laurent and Nicolas Baleydier (Kartoo.net), work out of Clermont-Ferrand. Their invention is, so far, especially friendly to Microsoft, Linux and Unix; there's no indication that you'll be able to grab the full works, including a Kartoo toolbar, for Mac.
Never mind.
Without Kartoo, I'd not have found some commendable thoughts from web designer D. Keith Robinson:
"Lately I’ve been posting about the bad things I see every day on the Web. I do this to help raise awareness and hopefully effect positive changes. The Web is perhaps the greatest invention (if you could call it that) during my lifetime. It has so much potential and brings boundless opportunity to make the world a better place in so many ways, but it’s got problems. Big ones. Problems that need to be addressed.
Many people don’t respect the Web’s potential." (Read more on 'The Web and the Good Things' at Asterisk).
Keith's ideas about the use and abuse of the Web came to my attention via InfoDesign, which merits immediate addition to my blogroll and looks like a place of guaranteed interest to anybody with a site of their own.
1:13:56 PM link
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vendredi 27 février 2004
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Now I see why so few blogs I know are bothering with politics outside the United States.
An awful lot of people are scribbling about that film.
The one I don't currently plan to see.
There's talk of another one:
"We here at the Museum Of Stupidity are hard at work on our pitch for Sodom and Gomorrah. No context. No explanation as to why this is happening. Just an hour of raw, graphic, demented sex in the streets, followed by God's bloody wrath, as the city collapses around them, crushing them, impaling them, causing their eyeballs to explode from their heads, and more arterial spray than the last five Takashi Miike movies." (Museum of Stupidity)
10:18:51 PM link
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My head was under the shower nozzle when Clare Short again turned her flame-thrower on her "boss" about bugging Kofi Annan, so I misheard the gist until I got to the Factory, where we learned this afternoon how "Blair resists calls to come clean on UN spying allegations" (AFP/Yahoo).
Am I surprised? Of course not. Were you?
There was a pretty good piece today on 'How Britain and the US listen to the rest of the world' (The Guardian).
The only serious remark I have to make about this "revelation" is that I'm struck by how fast this kind of story comes to light in today's democracies, such as they are, compared with just two or three years ago. At this rate, investigative journalists, already an endangered species, may face total extinction.
The blogosphere was unusually silent, as far as I can see, apart from the dependable Scott Ort:
"Spy Tapes of Annan Show No Evidence of 'United' Nations
(2004-02-26) -- Secretly-taped conversations involving U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reveal no evidence of the so-called 'united' nations that Mr. Annan 'hyped' in the run up to the Iraq war, according to a former British cabinet secretary who has read the transcripts" (more at Scrappleface).
And this:
"Blair: Bugging UN 'essential' for safety of Britain
(...) Mr Blair went on to say that some members of the UN were 'dangerous', as had been shown by Iraq. 'These people invade sovereign countries – start wars, which cost thousands of lives and devastate nations – at their whim,' he said. 'They are very dangerous, and we have to know what they are doing.' When asked to confirm if he meant the United States, he declined to comment on 'specific cases' (...)" (from Deadbrain).
9:43:36 PM link
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jeudi 26 février 2004
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"The last index of your web site (...) completed two seconds ago. It took four minutes to crawl 285 pages and index 285 pages containing 637,804 words for a total of 13,457,492 bytes. 32,459 word endings, 0 synonyms, 21,185 sound-alike words, and 15 excluded words were included in the index."
So, the Atomz machinery told me this morning after I logged in and updated this place's search engine, 'taliesin's log' now runs to 285 pages and 637,804 words, with astonishingly few "dead links" (just a small handful).
The first word written here was "Solaris".
Why do I bore the Faithful 5 ¾ with such facts and statistics?
Because, two days late -- which is just what I did with my poor Mum last week, after leaving myself a reminder of the wrong date -- I've remembered a birthday.
This experiment began, with a very different format, on February 24, 2003, has since been through three radical overhauls of the layout and has seen its subject matter take many unplanned directions.
Heartfelt thanks to everybody who has helped me along with ideas and insults, protests and plaudits, contributions and corrections, blog art and brickbats. There have been so many of you, on every continent except Antarctica.
I shan't be taking a crate of champagne into the Factory. Not after what Sam did to my head at the Canteen, when instead of the drop or three just for taste I expect with my occasional Coupe Pernety, he almost drowned yesterday's variant on this delicious dessert in vodka.
Except in cough mixture, virtually no alcohol has passed my lips since August 1997, so the effect of Sam's stunt was swift and a shock to my system.
But there'll be fine chocolate on the house for all comers if I make it quickly to Monoprix before diving into the Métro.
11:02:26 AM link
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mercredi 25 février 2004
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"Aaron, understandably reticent to be in the same room while I used the world's most luxurious masturbatory device, returned to take a few posed shots. 'Um . . . what's it feel like?' he said, using his camera primarily to avoid making eye contact. I gave Karen a few hard pumps to illustrate. 'Y'know what?' he said, taking shots as he backed toward the door. 'You can tell me later.'"
This is truly appalling, outrageously expensive and ... well, I was going to say "exclusively adult".
Except that 'I Did It for Science: Sex Doll', has a creepy fascination decidedly not for the children (via Cruel Site of the Day) and stretches even my definition of adult behaviour.
It's rare that I lose the nerve to beg, borrow or steal pictures.
7:58:55 PM link
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"The highly anticipated version 2.0 of the GIMP, due out next month, will run under Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, and preview versions are now available for all three platforms."
GraphicConverter usually does it for me.
But the GIMP is free, open source and on my machine.
NewsForge previews what's in the pipeline.
7:31:58 PM link
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It's good to see the weekend Pentagon weather report from the 'Observer' doing the rounds of the media and the blogosphere.
The story of potential catastrophe by climate change gave the usually tedious France Soir the wherewithal for a front-page splash yesterday, with a double-spread inside. 'Tomorrow ... the Apocalypse' read the headline.
"Quand ce ne sont pas les terroristes, c'est la météo qui s'y met" ("When it's not terrorists, it's the weather that sets about it"), comments Padawan at 'Brain Not Found' (Fr), briefly giving the gist of the story.
Padawan also links, however, to a different account of the report at the 'Oakland Tribune'. While Ian Hoffman goes straight to source to debunk the "dire look at a hypothetical hothouse world" in that paper, he concludes:
"At the same time, it might be a mistake to think the Bush administration will embrace predictions of climate change from the Pentagon more than it has from the EPA, the United Nations, the National Academy of Sciences and the world's major scientific societies."
Some took a similar line with the second global disaster warning of the week, since "many astronomers did not agree that waking up President Bush would have been wise", the Beeb notes in a tale about a "potential asteroid strike last month" ('Earth almost put on impact alert' at BBC science).
At this rate, 2004 is looking set to become the year when even mega-budget Hollywood productions outflank the headlines.
This, on reflection, is scarcely surprising, since every four years, US politics is more than ever about theatre than policy, which is something the rest of us have to endure.
When it comes to scientific policy, though, I've been digging around to find out where the expert apologists for not bothering to wake up the White House hang out.
The Marshall Institute seems like a good place to start.
Or an alarmingly disconcerting one, depending on your viewpoint.
The Pentagon report by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall dates back to October 2003 and began with the following caveat:
"The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable – to push the boundaries of current research on climate change so we may better understand the potential implications on United States national security.
We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental ways. First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few regions, rather than globally. Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be considerably smaller.
We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately."
For those with the curiosity, time and patience to assess the whole thing for themselves, Greenpeace (another write-up) has put it online.
The 22-page .pdf document can be downloaded here (916 KB). Thanks, Gina, for the link to the link.
6:43:27 PM link
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"Ma boulangerie a gagné le titre de la meilleure baguette de Paris 2004, et c'est vrai elle est délicieuse ce matin..."
 If Jean-Michel is going to do his 09h09 pictures just three or four doors down the street, he'll have to put up with my pinching one.
I'll now be keeping my eyes open for this guy and his sneaky camera on the rare occasions I'm out of my pyjamas and out of doors by nine-oh-nine in the morning.
But most of J-M's daily snaps at that hour are of him, with a brief comment also translated into English.
I'll be dropping by our bakery after lunch for the daily special I last night asked the lasses to set aside for me. Like the owners of an increasing number of eateries in the quartier Sam now gets "the best baguettes in Paris" from this recent arrival on Losserand Street for his clients at the Canteen.
I found J-M, who probably knows me on sight too, during further forays into this country's blogosphere, which led last night to several of the promised additions to the blogroll for the French-speaking readers who get bored with me.
A noteworthy feature of some of the French places I visit is an emphasis on visuals rather than text, along with some excellent blog design.
People into photography may also still have Buzznet to discover. This place offers photobloggers and admirers entry into a wide range of communities, including a Paris one.
1:01:43 PM link
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mardi 24 février 2004
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"How are you?" we politely say to each other, and heaven help those who give a long and straight answer.
The truth is not always what we want to hear.
But so many people have now asked me, with unfeigned interest, what happened to the Wildcat that I maybe I really should tell.
The Wildcat herself has been among those curious to know what's been going on during all the "intensive sessions" with Dr F., the psychotherapist expert in psychosomatic medicine.
Suddenly I find myself shy on both fronts!
The Faithful 5 ¾ will have already have read that the Wildcat has prowled back into my life, but you'll also have noticed an absence of flowers since the turn of the year.
After all, it was "just friends" the woman proved really to want in the end, and that's how it became. I shall, however, make no such arrangements with the next thief of my heart -- that's for sure.
So we've had some long chats, but instead of 'phoning me every night as she did for months -- and having me call her back -- the Wildcat's taken to writing, not to me, but really writing: brave and creative work which she finds hard going, but which I strongly encourage, since she's good at it.
She's read long extracts to me, taken my "constructive criticism" with resilience, and mailed me none of it yet. Partly, perhaps, because she still doesn't quite trust me not to publish it. She might have a point.
Something I learned on settling this side of the Channel, fuelled by a typically "British" blend of Mediterranean, Celtic and Saxon but apparently predominantly Norman -- or Viking -- blood (that's as much as my tribe has been able to trace of its origins), was that one old French "meaning" of my paternal name meant somebody who's deceitful.
Dr F., however, left little room for evasion or self-deception in our journey to the core of the Condition that took up so much blogspace last year.
It's difficult to write what happened during our frequent 45-minute encounters. The digging has led to the dissection and inspection of many unexpected parts, the better to put them all together again in an equally surprising way.
Why the past tense?
Well, we reckon something is over, finished.
We've agreed to another meeting in a few weeks, but the last left me in a very different place from the one I'd expected when we started.
This is where the psychology might be of some interest to others.
Cutting short the long tale already told -- and simplifying a little at the expense of the purely physical causes of the Condition -- we worked on the hypothesis that my guts fell apart roughly nine months as a bodily manifestation of a disintegrated mind on the edge of the breakdown I never had.
The explored causes were manifold, but included severe stress, massive information overload, the repression of whole and essential facets of my personality since adolescence, and a capacity for empathy with other people which was both a useful quality and a serious setback.
"Your barriers," the Wildcat once said, "aren't in the same place as mine."
Once Dr F. had got the preliminaries out of the way, she began talking about barriers and how it was conceivable that I didn't have enough of them.
So we started out from the notion that I was only too well socially integrated, rather than cut off from other people, but needed to develop "affective", or emotional, defence mechanisms in place of the "gut reaction" to events, colleagues and friends, and to ideas and demands I refuse to accept -- or swallow.
There was no end to analogies between food, tastes, congestion, digestion, expulsion and our mental processes.
The task of analysing all this was often funny as well as hard work.
During our most recent session, it came to me that where I'd thought we were going to work on sorting out new barriers and limits, we'd instead taken a host of them down.
I hope I'm being clear, because writing rationally about the often unconscious and non-intellectual things that came to light seems semi-contradictory.
Sex, for instance, is nothing like words about sex.
Music is a language quite different from writing abut music.
And so on.
When I said that I felt as if I had, in a process of integrating bits and pieces of my identity (whatever that is), found I had barriers, but completely natural ones, and had no desire to make any artificial ones, Dr F. simply smiled and told me she didn't think we needed to see each other again any time soon.
She didn't say "You're cured" or anything absurd like that.
She's far too bright to suggest that I've got anywhere but the end of one phase and the beginning of another in a lifelong process.
But the rest, right now, is I believe up to me.
That's it, really. That's how I am and where I'm at now.
Since that last meeting with the psychotherapist, which I've "digested" as slowly as ever but thoroughly, I've noticed three things. I've become more curious about other people and their "workings" than ever. For the first time in years, I've just lived through a new moon time of the month without going into a downer or temporarily losing my sense of humour.
And women seem to have started looking at me -- and teasing me sometimes -- in ways I've never been accustomed to (or at least noticed) before.
That last is, of course, a particularly interesting development...
I even know exactly what it feels like to be "mentally undressed" by somebody else. And, as a frequent practioner of that art, I'm relieved to find that it doesn't always feel so bad. On the contrary! No empathy required.
8:56:32 PM link
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lundi 23 février 2004
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"Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer [its story], warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world."
Says who?
Says the Pentagon, says The Observer (via a discussion in a forum at Ars Technica).
Don't you love 'em?
There's more from the Factory (via Yahoo AFP).
This isn't far from 'The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare' (Fortune).
Oh well.
Between now and that November election I can't wait for, at least we get 'The Day after Tomorrow'.
12:06:56 AM link
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dimanche 22 février 2004
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The Kid has done me a very good turn.
The latest issue of 'Trax' (via Info-Presse (Fr.; no site of its own) disturbingly points out that the only too venerable 'Rolling Stone' got buried under a thick carpet of moss with its list of the '500 Greatest Albums Ever Made' (Rhino Records).
There's not one record in the US magazine's top 20 which won't be at least 13 years old in 2004! Reading on, I see that much of the rest of the list is no better.
So what happened? Did good music suddenly stop? Or did the "array of musicians, critics, and influential industry figures" polled by Rolling Stone simply exclude anybody under the age of, say, 25?
I'm surprised to find that of all 500 albums listed, I still own precisely three, with five near-misses by the same artists and about a dozen others long since sold or given away.
Yet I've bought hundreds of "non-classical" records in my time.
It's nice to learn how marginal you are!
 The Kid, along with friend François, a few other amateur or pro musicians (and magazines like 'Trax', 'musiques WORLD destinations...' and 'les Inrocks') have been unwittingly filling in much of a decade-long gap in my musical "culture", an ongoing process often pursued online on the strength of leads they've given me.
So I've discovered that much more of what the Kid listens to is very good music, by my own eclectic standards, than I reckoned a few months' back when my inconsiderate ears were filtering it all down to a diet of tediously repetitive heavy metal without really listening. Mea culpa.
With luck, this is a favour I'll be able to return, opening the Kid's ears to a few of the things that are going down today outside her orbit.
She claims, for instance, that she doesn't like contemporary jazz or a lot of world music, only to say that she really likes some of the stuff I'm listening to ... so long as I don't warn her what it "is" by sticking a genre label up front.
It's precisely such labels, trends, and above all the pseudo-cultured "sacredness" of the classical concert hall that Christopher Small opposed so strongly, along with a Marxist-influenced critique of three or four centuries of "Western classical music", comparing it with Oriental and African music-making, when I interviewed him about 'Music, Society, Education' in 1977.
The people at Amazon UK dug out a copy to replace the one I long ago had (though it took them a month longer than the "1 to 2 weeks" mentioned on their site). Since it's not on my immediate list for re-reading, I've lent it to a musician friend, who reassures me that Small's then seminal ideas haven't dated a jot.
I've already said (on December 16) that I have hopes of meeting the man again and finding out what he's thinking today. It's one of many good reasons to go to Barcelona.
Maybe he rejoices to hear the proliferation of easily available musics since he wrote that book and the way modern technology, computer programmes and the total overhaul under way in the record industry are making creativity that much easier.
This is not to say that I like everything going on nowadays. Far from it. In the past couple of weeks, I've been using the iPod to sample dozens of tracks that have made various people's "best of" lists in the past year.
Then I trashed what I found unoriginal and boring, to make space for more, and am down to a shortlist of around 30.
But don't be surprised in weeks and months to come to find a greying old wolf like me cheerfully writing about music probably more familiar to the ears of our offspring than most of us in our 40s and upwards.
Any notion that the music we liked in our youth was so much better than today's has long since been banished from my brain.
A baker's half-dozen from that (growing) shortlist might include:
10:05:34 PM link
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It's impossible, much as I'd like to oblige.
Since summer I've tried to make time for long reviews of each book and film that's seized my imagination (and one or two which didn't, though much praised elsewhere), but doing this any more will become a full-time job.
So I'll return to much briefer write-ups on occasion. If reviewing becomes a chore for me, it'll certainly be a bore for you!
The first "casualty" is 'Zodiac' (Arrow paperback, 2001) -- since I've been reading Neal Stephenson's work backwards.
The alarming tale of Sangamon Taylor, an environmental warrior who takes on an industrial giant polluting Boston harbour, is again too broad in its scope simply to be labelled SF.
With his customary verve, fast-paced action and considerable wit -- very few books make me laugh out loud as this could -- Stephenson works lessons in biology, chemistry and the art of navigating a high-powered Zodiac in pitch darkness, storms and the blinding glare of floodlights into a first-rate ecological thriller.
The cast includes some dangerous nutters and likeable eccentrics as well as the FBI, one or two friends Taylor is pretty lucky to have, and plenty of people out to silence him permanently, including young Satanist angel-dust heads.
This was the first Stephenson novel I've read where he managed to write a perfectly satisfactory end as well as a beginning and a middle.
He finishes his opening acknowledgements with thanks to a woman who "read the manuscript and told me that the main character was an asshole -- confirming that I was on the right track."
If Stephenson's anywhere close to the mark with his speculative look at what nasty industrialists could do to the seas with the things they dump in them -- and I'm sure he is -- then the world direly needs clever assholes like Sangamon Taylor.
Reading 'Zodiac' coincided, usefully, with my completion on my online Safari bookshelf of all I wanted from 'Nanotechnology: a Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea' (Prentice Hall PTR, 2002) by Mark and Daniel Ratner.
This book kept the promise of its title perfectly, notably providing a highly readable and clear non-scientist's guide to the science underlying nano before getting down to a grand tour of the technology in action and potential, in domains ranging from medicine to electronics.
I didn't read it all -- that's partly the point of the Safari bookshelf, plus the ability to download particularly interesting chapters as .pdf files to keep for future reference -- but would strongly recommend it.
At Amazon, this book alone would cost me the equivalent of my monthly subscription to the bookshelf, where I can have up to 10 titles on the go under the option I've selected.
Studying on-screen can be tough on the eyes, but I'm learning to pace myself. The O'Reilly way of doing it is astonishing value for money.
8:16:46 PM link
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samedi 21 février 2004
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"Dent du Midi (what a beautiful name!) is an application that allows you to convert MIDI files into GarageBand loops or tracks. Enjoy,"
Heli recommends (at 'Heaven and Hell').
While I've not yet tried GarageBand, touted by Apple (iLife) as "the easiest way to create, perform and record your own music whether you’re an accomplished player or just wish you were a rock star," everybody else with a Mac, a log and an ear to music has been raving about it.
All that has stopped me getting my own hands on GarageBand was the lack of the required DVD player and time, and the first obstacle has been overcome.
Scarcely was it released last month before "NeutrixX" was reproaching others in a MacMusic forum entry:
"I don't think you guys really understand how big of a deal GarageBand is (and I mean to paid musicians whom already own pro audio software). I produce downtempo electro-acoustic psychedelic (bassy breaks stuff) tracks for a local label with [expensive programmes] Reason, Ableton Live and Logic, but none are as sweet (or should I say organic?) looking as GarageBand for recording and editing tracks (Reason actually looks quite good for a synth/sampler/effects rack: yet visually lacks when one is editing within the track mode).
Why should I even mention to you how good looking GarageBand is? Why you say? Simple. If it excites me to work with a good looking piece of software - which I admit - it does very much (appealing to my eye - with incredible ease of use and superior workflow), it will inevitably inspire my work. And if it inspires my work, in any sort of creative way, I would gladly pay far more than the small price of $49 for it!"
That's telling 'em.
Apart from MacMusic, where there are now GarageBand reports and discussions aplenty for pros and amateurs alike, Apple's evidently astounding offering has got a host of newer sites going.
GarageBand, which is out "to redefine how music is discovered and promoted", is not one of them, but likes the technology:
"'We have tremendous respect for Apple's vision and leadership in the digital music space,' said Ali Partovi, CEO of GarageBand.com [Jan 7 press release]. 'We've always shared their goal of empowering musicians, and today we're excited to share with them our name. Now, any musician can create music on Apple's state-of-the-art GarageBand software and promote their recordings on GarageBand.com's award-winning web services.'"
Getting inside Apple's new device, Andy Dietrich provided the magnificently comprehensive review at Ars Technica I've learned to appreciate from that site.
MacBand is, among other things, an online way of sharing music made with GarageBand, where songs and loops are made available under a non-commercial, share-alike Creative Commons licence.
MacJams, another user community, offers plenty of listening -- with, say, iTunes or QuickTime -- and seeks contributions, as well as being generous with tutorials, such as yesterday's 'Using Native Instruments' software synths with Apple GarageBand' (MacJams).
Jean Burgess's blog points to other such sites. In his entry on 'GarageBand: Usability vs. Hackability' at 'creativity/machine', this Australian cultural studies and new media student and non-Mac owner triggered one of those comments:
"GarageBand will be the litmus test for the long proclaimed creative superiority of the Apple client base: Will drag and drop music made by the musically unskilled with a Mac be any different than drag and drop music made by the musically unskilled with a PC?"
That came from Kaden, who lives at 'eccentric genius' (skippable Flash intro).
10:10:22 PM link
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Africa was busy enough for an otherwise quiet Saturday to give me no fewer than six good stories to signal to the Factory's clients on the 1600 GMT news advisory (these are kind of "best of" and big story round-ups news agencies put out every few hours as daylight works its way through the world's time zones).
For those who persist in telling me I should write another novel as well, pay heed to the 'Nobbly' view at 'Words with Wings':
"You'll be pleased to know that yesterday I came up with an excellent first sentence for my novel. This is very pleasing, and it has only taken eighteen months."
"Yes," said Barry, when I regaled colleagues with that little gem. "And then some copy editor got his hands on it."
"Some copy editor ruined one of my best intros," he added. "I had to write a piece about the farm outside the Vatican. I started it: 'Yes, there is a papal bull.' But this fellow told me that might offend Catholics.
'How would you know?' I asked him. 'You're a Jew.'"
Some stories I have to set on one side for BJ. Nothing inspires him more than the kind of news that today leaked out of one of Africa's most squalid tropical dictatorships, the rarely reported and suddenly oil-rich former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea. This hot spot has since 1979 been in the hands of a thug named Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his squabbling family. Obiang Nguema overthrew and then executed his uncle to get his clutches on the place.
All is now less well than ever.
Few papers tomorrow will probably bother to report that it's emerged that dozens of people, including senior army officers, have been on trial behind closed doors since Tuesday.
BJ, like most journalists, writes especially well when he can get his teeth into copy which fires his imagination, like that story which arrived at the Factory in French. The latest episode of this sorry tale is not on the Net yet, but the last one is, at of all places, a site called 'SpaceWar - Your Portal to Military Space'.
What BJ did, as published there, with 'Mysterious army movements in Equatorial Guinea' is a lesson in how committed journalists can write a story which tells all in its revolting detail while remaining "objective".
Anybody with half a brain will find it hard to read, in context, "The general was reported to have twice attempted to commit suicide recently. Now in Spain for medical treatment, Ndong Ona reportedly drove his automobile into the sea after 'strong words' with the president's eldest son," without thinking along the lines the French use for life's ironies in conversation: "He was suicided."
Another delightful little tale from the same part of the world showed us why journalists are still paid to edit things computers can't. An online translation programme could, after all, have done a pretty lousy job of the story from the Atlantic archipelago of Sao Tome & Principe in the Gulf of Guinea.
Washington has just kindly granted the government of these volcanic chunks of rock -- which mainly exported some cocoa and good music until they too were recently found to be sitting on top of lots of oil -- 800,000 dollars to finance airport expansion and a feasibility study into building a deep-water port.
The US Trade and Development Agency explained that the aim was to promote "trade and travel".
Nowhere did the USTDA press release, the US ambassador to the place or even the Reuters version of the story bother to mention a point which has long been doing the diplomatic rounds in the region, particularly in Nigeria, after the Bush administration tried to buy west Africa's oil giant out of OPEC.
Increasingly interested in African oil since "9/11", Washington has long been suspected of having a scheme to turn a chunk of Sao Tome & Principe into a most conveniently located military base.
Now that indeed would be good for "trade and travel"!
Nobody needs a novel from me when the "real world" is so entertaining?
You'll have to make to do with this place.
8:05:10 PM link
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vendredi 20 février 2004
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Well, I don't know.
I've had to chastise a Desk chief at the Factory. What with other absences for having babies or spraining ankles in the Alps, when the man let Claire off to write a book and Anne-Laure disappear for her first spell in an office almost on the Equator, he's turned the Desk afrique into an all-male enclave at times. And the same dreadful thing has happened on the Desk anglais even, on occasion.
This should not be! Such a hormonal imbalance is very bad for the news.
Worse, it reminds me of being at a single-sex school and mistakes you can nearly waste too much life recovering from after an upbringing like that.
I reflected during this afternoon's few spare moments on this accumulation of imbalanced vibes and other things I would outlaw immediately were I the boss of AFP. Until I remembered that I'd loathe such a job, wouldn't want any more "authority" and in any case have only one daughter, not four, which seems to have become a characteristic of the Factory's recent great leaders.
What got me thinking of single-sex education and my relief that the Kid is not going through it was a recent link -- from I forget where -- to a South African "social commentary" on the matter.
In a piece on running workshops for 17-18 year olds in Cape Town, Tashi Tagg found last year that:
"there is a marked difference between [young adults] who come from single sex schools and those who don't. The single sex school kids are always affected by the once-off presence of the opposite sex. There's an underlying awareness. Also a sense of embarassment/shyness/self-consciousness etc.
Self-consciousness most. Interestingly enough this is one of the main feelings I pick up with each and every group. Obviously some kids are really 'out there' -- very relaxed and comfortable with who they are -- but, I'd say 70% of those I've met aren't. In fact loads of them have Insecurity of Note - so much so they are literally forced to physically cling to each other. I shit you not" ('School Gossip', TashiTagg).
The academic quality of my own school was excellent and I thank my parents for that, but from the late 70s, after I'd finished, single-sex education became a "no-no" in Britain for all but a dwindling elite, while in France it's a very marginal and mainly Roman Catholic church-related trend.
At 'About', experienced teacher Robert Kennedy, who unlike me but like a good number of my workmates, favours private schools (on About's education pages), briefly notes a feminist trend in the United States in the 1990s towards single-sex education, which he says was "recanted" in 1999 by the American Association of University Women.
I'd thought that now we're in the 21st century, single-sex education had become something of an anomaly worldwide, certainly a great rarity, but further inspection leads to me to some reported evidence in favour of it -- drawing on recent studies in England, Australia and Jamaica -- gathered by the US National Association for Single Sex Public Education.
If the statistics and summaries the NASSPE has published are correct, those who think like me are in for a surprise or two. At the very least, they are intriguing.
These people argue that "the best evidence now suggests that coeducational settings actually reinforce gender stereotypes, whereas single-sex classrooms break down gender stereotypes. Girls in single-sex educational settings are more likely to take classes in math, science, and information technology. Boys in single-sex schools are more likely to pursue interests in art, music, drama, and foreign languages. Both girls and boys have more freedom to explore their own interests and abilities in single-gender classrooms" (the emphasis is theirs).
Hmmmm.
8:55:05 PM link
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Days when nothing happens are rare enough to be worthy of note, I thought early last night -- while I had an Internet connection.
OK, Swaziland declared a national disaster (BBC/AFP), but that's been regrettably predictable. Otherwise, my regular stint scouring the Web turned up zilch, even on all the "alternative" news sites (a few of which are in the blogroll).
One or two more like this and journalists might start reporting good news.
The workaholics -- there are always so many of them that it surprises me: hacks who hate having no events to report -- might start even writing those "features I've always wanted to do, but never had time."
Things change this morning: the "conservatives are poised to rout the reformists" in Iran's election (Yahoo AFP). "Politics sucks!"
My connection went down twice yesterday.
"There's no breakdown in your sector," my ISP's hotline people informed me after the first stopped my searching.
"Well, I'm reporting one."
"It's your computer. Unplug the modem--"
"I've played all those games, twice. It's your service!"
After seven minutes of ding-dong for which I was being charged 34 cents a minute, they made me hold again, "to fix up a rendez-vous with a technician."
I hung up on the hotline then, dug out my "secret numbers" for the big bosses at Noos.
"As ever," I informed one, "your hotline people are blissfully ignorant of a technical fault in my sector, blaming it on me. They want to send a techie. And every time they do that, the techie confirms the breakdown."
As ever, the big boss was polite, said he'd check it out and get back to me. At their expense, not mine.
Twenty minutes later, he 'phoned back to confirm the breakdown and told me what the technicians were doing, asked me what was happening at my end.
Now that was an answer, so when the connection went down again for the rest of the evening, I wasn't bothered.
When this happened several times late last year, Noos gave me a 70 euro (89 dollar) rebate. That was nice. Until I got my 'phone bill: calls to Noos had totalled 72 euros!
They have made efforts. I commended them on sometimes now sending SMS warnings to my mobile phone informing me of technical work in advance.
But if they do not swiftly establish a system where the technicians tell the hotline people what's going on, I'm not only going to publish those "secret numbers" for the ISP's HQ here, but send them to Noos's consumer watchdog organisation, Luccas.
They have been warned.
In science, there was a story:
"President Bush's administration has been accused of suppressing and distorting scientific findings that run counter to its own political beliefs.
The charge comes from an American body, the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement with more than 60 supporters.
The signatories, who include 12 Nobel Prize winners, say scientific integrity must be restored to policy-making."
That BBC Science article will have picked up the story on something most of us suspected but should be glad to see exposed from Wired ('Bush Distorts Science').
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views."
That's a quote from Doctor Who. I'm happy to see it at the top of another take on this damnable deception at Morons in the News.
10:59:55 AM link
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jeudi 19 février 2004
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A recent letter fails to explain why Béa has been travelling so much.
But there's a hint.
At last: "I have furniture in my rooms!"
It arrived in Nairobi weeks after Béatrice did. If you have to camp, you sometimes might as well be outdoors as in. So she was.
This is her latest selection of pictures.
 She found the old fellow, who is blind, at the end of January on Chad's border with Sudan, a region two and a half days' drive from the Chadian capital Ndjamena and full of scattered groups of refugees.
One of Africa's several "forgotten wars" has been taking place for the past year on the other side of the frontier, where Khartoum's military and allied local Arab militias are fighting rebels and bombing people.
The embattled area, where a small UN humanitarian team has just arrived (AFP), is called Darfur and has long been the "wild west" of the biggest country in Africa.
Béa had a word for the nurses and doctors of Medécins sans Frontières (MSF in English): "E-POU-STOU-FLANTS" ("A-ma-zing").
Those people, she says, are working miracles with very little among refugees who have absolutely nothing.
The Comoro Islands are right over the far side of Kenya, out in the Indian Ocean, where my Factory friend found they looked lovely from the air but had little of much interest to show on the ground.
Apart from the dubious privilege of holding a world record for the number of successful or foiled coup bids in a little more than a quarter-century of independence -- it was another round of "unrest" that led her there -- Béa found only the capital Moroni worthy of note.
Here's the mosque by the sea.
Women wouldn't normally dream of setting foot in the shady main square whence Béa took that picture, but she was allowed to, being foreign.
A little tidbit. The Comoros apparently have the distinction of being one of the few Muslim nations where women are allowed to own property. The men don't have houses.
Instead, they have to choose which of their wives they plan to spend the night with.
 As for the last picture, my friend says it was taken close to home, where now she sets foot from time to time.
The way she tells it, you'd think this was her back garden.
I liked the date stamp.
There are worse ways to spend Christmas Eve.
6:49:07 PM link
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mercredi 18 février 2004
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For a book called 'Permanence' (paperback, April 2003), it's all change in Karl Schroeder's first venture into space opera, crammed with very bright ideas, races against time and another go at one of science fiction's big questions: if we're not alone, how come space isn't teeming with civilisations?
Most of them got wiped out.
Scientist Laurent Herat has spent much of his life studying the ruins of alien cultures, with his assistant Michael Besquith, who also happens to be an undercover Neo-Shinto monk.
Humanity has populated vast tracts of what's out there, but the only surviving alien species encountered are totally uninterested in contact, let alone cooperation.
Rue Cassels, daring her valiant getaway from an abusive brother and an appalling aunt on a backward mining station, strikes lucky with a major discovery on her way to the nearest planet around the dwarf star that is all she has known for a sun. She stakes a salvage claim to an abandoned, silent "cycler", one of the vast and slow vessels that link the "halo" worlds.
Schroeder's threads begin to draw together, the military is swiftly involved, and Rue and an unexpected benefactor in her family circle are caught in a battle to gain and keep control of her starship and a struggle between the Cycler Compact and the Rights Economy of the "lit" worlds, who have faster-than-light travel.
The Rights Economy has driven religion underground, including the non-theistic kind, and masters nanotechnology, one of the key ideas in Schroeder's equally rich and dense debut novel, 'Ventus' (reviewed last June). In 'Permanence', however, nano is largely about labelling, price, payment and enforcement.
The Cycler Compact, by contrast, relies on trade in goods, ideas and information.
At the cost of a more Manichean development of his characters -- pretty clear-cut heros and villains -- than in the first book, Karl develops a deft political subtext as fitting for our own times as it is for his far future. Mostly he keeps it under the surface.
A different kind of writing needs deciphering on Jentry's Envy, the name Rue takes from her brother for the ship that could propel her into the elite ranks of the Cycler Captains.
The scientists come into their own with this challenge, not just the experts in xenobiology and linguistics, but a bunch of brains, set to be roped, sometimes kicking and rebelling, into Schroeder's imaginative variations on the tug of war between fascinating theory and fearsome technological application.
Jentry's Envy is alien.
It will take Rue's quick wits and tough guts, Herat's experience and Mike's grasp of alien psychology -- which has plunged him deep into a kind of "dark night of the soul" as a result of his efforts to capture the "kami" (or recorded essences) of otherness -- to unravel the cycler's secrets.
It could also take something even harder to obtain: alien help. In a vast void of indifference.
For all that's spelled out in too much black and white, Schroeder's characters are mostly convincing and real people, including the kind of resourceful, clever, sometimes funny and brave people you'd like to be able to count on as friends in times of crisis.
Herat's a great one for explaining things; perhaps there's an excess of explanation and exploration of the wildest ideas to please readers who don't like the arias overly digressive in their space operas.
Some of the ensemble "set pieces" are fantastic writing: a celebratory party in a monastery which turns into a high-stakes power game, the final and furious showdown...
The many changes of scenery are generally smooth and sometimes surprising, the big cast includes murderers, rebels, adventurers, the monastic community that upholds the Cycler Compact's concepts of "permanence", marines and even not-so-little green men.
There are hidden treasures, high tech and underhand behaviour, cunning twists on some more recent astronomical discoveries -- including brown dwarfs -- and a new look at the old idea of doomsday weaponry. Oh, and there's a love story.
'Permanence' is a very different novel from 'Ventus', and that, for all its minor flaws, is one of its strongest merits.
Not one to let go of good ideas, the Canadian writer also likes to develop them at his own place, as shown in his pursuit of "inscape" (Works of Karl Schroeder). With luck, he'll find time for a new novel.
11:41:52 PM link
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As Westerns go, apart from two or three classics which are "ancient" already, I enjoy what's offbeat, original and shot with a really attentive eye to the wild, so 'Blueberry' was just my kind of film.
Where the "cinéma fantastique" goes, Jan Kounen's movie went a long way, far more interesting than many, but sometimes much too dependent on the special effects to get near the heart of shamanism and journeys of initiation.
The big French film to start the year brings a generally excellent international cast to a tale borrowed from a comic strip hero, with Vincent Kassel in his strongest starring role to date as the small town marshal from Louisiana who has to confront a savage killer at the same time as his own past, his fears and a mind scar left by the violent death of a prostitute.
The sense of new frontiers on the edge of what passes for "civilisation", both physical and spiritual, pervades the whole film, which has a good number of strong scenes in town (Palamito, with entertaining nods in the direction of Western clichés, the tense saloon, a noisy defenestration, booze and shootouts), and among the Indians and in the desert and the sacred mountains where the climax of Blueberry's journeys takes place.
Before making 'Blueberry', which strays a long way from the character created by Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Kounen spent months with the Tarahumara people in Mexico and pursued his interest in shamanism into the Amazonian forest.
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