Books bought (0)
Books read (10)
BOTM: B. Bryson, A Walk in the woods
I. Asimov, The Caves of Steel
I. Asimov, The Naked Sun
I. Asimov, Robots of Dawn
B. Chatwin, What am I doing here?
T. Heald, Village Cricket
S. Leys, The wreck of the Batavia
L. MacNiece, The Strings are false
Malammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel
Virgil, The Aeneid
Some real rubbish this month - Malammed's study tedious, Heald's cricket memoir facile and devoid of charm. And I spent a long day rereading whole string of SF that while nostalgic and imaginative, cannot claim literary merit.
However, MacNiece's unfinished autobiography was a flawed masterpiece. Reading it, one is constantly drawn back to that world which has gone. It's beautifully written, but suffers from its lack of editing and finishing, as well some mid century absurd intellectual pretension. The contrast with Bryson, who takes BOTM this time, is striking. Here, we have a writer who really has polished every seemingly throwaway sentence. And it's a better book for it.
Saturday 14 November 2009
Brief technical excursus
One of the fun things about my job is that - just occasionally - I can do pointless things and pretend they are 'interesting' findings. This archive site is great example. I was looking for old versions of the BBC site yesterday - just type that into the Wayback box - and it's fascinating. We're so used to the current versions of things that we forget how recent it all is. I pulled up the BBC site from 1997, when I went to university - and it's mind boggling how bad it is (here's the news site from 1998). The first site at all I can find is from 1996, though I've since seen the 1994 version
Yet I don't remember this being the case at college, and if pressed would have said it was only a bit worse and clunkier than now.
On a second note, and one that I find amusing, the Internet also proves splendidly corruptible. This blog, wonderful though it is, is not an original phrase, but named for the injunction in Paul and in later councils that he who acts / believes otherwise be accursed. Here's Paul in Galatians 1.9: If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. So, it's a good biblical phrase with history, it's then picked up by the early church.
And if you search using Microsoft's Bing, this is what you find. Actually you find
1. Wikipedia's artcicle on the subject
2. Something about a band
3. An article about the Latin term and Greek origins
Tellingly, if you - like everyone else - search on Google, you get:
1. A blog, about how using human embryos is bad
2. Brilliantly, this blog
3. Amazingly, this blog again, highlighting the May 2009 bibliography (BOTM: Phineus Redux)
Yet I don't remember this being the case at college, and if pressed would have said it was only a bit worse and clunkier than now.
On a second note, and one that I find amusing, the Internet also proves splendidly corruptible. This blog, wonderful though it is, is not an original phrase, but named for the injunction in Paul and in later councils that he who acts / believes otherwise be accursed. Here's Paul in Galatians 1.9: If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. So, it's a good biblical phrase with history, it's then picked up by the early church.
And if you search using Microsoft's Bing, this is what you find. Actually you find
1. Wikipedia's artcicle on the subject
2. Something about a band
3. An article about the Latin term and Greek origins
Tellingly, if you - like everyone else - search on Google, you get:
1. A blog, about how using human embryos is bad
2. Brilliantly, this blog
3. Amazingly, this blog again, highlighting the May 2009 bibliography (BOTM: Phineus Redux)
Google own blogger.com
Friday 13 November 2009
Saying sorry
For the limited (i.e., no) people who miss this blog, for the long silence, I apologise. But, brilliantly, not as much as the Sun has had to apologise for misspelling the name of Jacqui Janes on their website.
On this affair, they've behaved disgracefully, manipulatively and unfairly on the whole issue. While I share their general scepticism of the dregs of the Labour regime, picking up the outrage of a grieving mother to attack the Prime Minister on this is wrong. He had written a letter personally; he did make time to speak in person to the Ms Janes. There (and even before) it should have rested, given it is over a simple spelling mistake - unfortunate yes, but not a scandal.
This should teach them to refrain in future, but sadly, of course, it will almost certainly affect them only trivially. But we can hope.
On this affair, they've behaved disgracefully, manipulatively and unfairly on the whole issue. While I share their general scepticism of the dregs of the Labour regime, picking up the outrage of a grieving mother to attack the Prime Minister on this is wrong. He had written a letter personally; he did make time to speak in person to the Ms Janes. There (and even before) it should have rested, given it is over a simple spelling mistake - unfortunate yes, but not a scandal.
This should teach them to refrain in future, but sadly, of course, it will almost certainly affect them only trivially. But we can hope.
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