Glaikit
Feartie
a blog about philosophy, politics, music ... and stuff
Thursday, August 5, 2004No Man's Land
I watched Danis Tanovic's excellent Bosnian war black-comedy No Man's Land last night. There's loads of things to recommend about this film but the thing that made me laugh out loud was that when the UNPROFOR guys in their white vehicle with blue hats arrived the two militiamen (one Bosnian, one Serb) shouted with one voice:
"Smurfa! Smurfa!"
Referring to the blue and white UNPROFOR troops as these ....
[On the plus side, even with my smattering of bad Czech I found I could understand some of the Serbo-Croat...)
posted @ 11:05 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more] Monday, August 2, 2004Mykeru
Mykeru is on a fiery rant ... entertaining stuff with no pretence at objectivity or civility. Top stuff.
Sweary though... so those of a nervous disposition might want to look away.
posted @ 12:15 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, August 1, 2004Diana Memorial Fountain
Michael Brooke offers an excellent solution to the on-going problems with the Diana Memorial Fountain....
posted @ 11:07 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Monday, July 26, 2004Snuffly
As it's summer we have the window open at night and last night, on going to bed, I was disturbed (understatement) by loud snuffling, grunting and moaning type noises right outside the window. This went on for a while so I picked up a torch and crept carefully across the bedroom to have a look.
Leaning tentatively out the window I discovered that this (or rather a pair of them in the process of making more) was the culprit.
It was as described in the first couple of lines there...
"If at night one wanders about under your bedroom window, you might get the impression that there is an adult man about to entering your bedroom through the window! It can be really scary when you are not used to...."
posted @ 12:07 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, July 25, 2004Lack of posts...
Sorry about the lack of posts. I'm having a very busy week. More tomorrow.
posted @ 11:29 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Wednesday, July 14, 2004Expertise
Professor Steven Dutch finally gets sick of ignorant people whining about the arrogance of 'so-called experts' so he delivers a reply... genius - one of the best things I've read in ages.
The Script
"I'm sick and tired of self-appointed so-called experts and their know-it-all, arrogant attitude. Why don't you people stay out of things you know nothing about? To hear you tell it, you know everything and the rest of us are stupid."
I've seen this script before. At this point I'm supposed to get all humble and apologetic and say "There, there. We didn't mean to make you feel bad. You're really a good person and a valuable human being and your opinions do count."
I'm tired of playing that game.
- We're not "self-appointed" or "so-called" experts. We are real experts. We're not "authority figures." We are real authorities.
- It's not arrogance to say what you know professionally. It is arrogance to reject expert opinion without having expertise of your own.
- If hearing the experts say you're wrong makes you feel bad or stupid, that is your problem, not ours. See a therapist and work on your self-esteem. If you think this is rough on the ego, try getting a paper or grant proposal you've worked on for months rejected, something real experts face all the time.
- We don't know everything, but we do know more on our subjects of expertise than other people, especially people with no training at all.
- Unless you have real evidence to back up your opinions, they don't count.
- If you hear something that conflicts with what you think you know, and you don't bother to check it out, you shouldn't feel stupid. You are stupid.
- If you want to take on the experts but won't spend the time, effort and money to become an expert yourself, you're not just stupid. You're lazy, too.
- If you think I'm disrespecting you, you're right. I have no respect for people who are uninformed, get angry when someone contradicts them, but are too lazy to get informed and too cowardly to face failure, criticism, and the possibility they might have to change their minds. You're not a good person. Nobody who is lazy and cowardly can be called "good."
- Where did you get the idea you're so valuable? There are six billion of us. You're not all that unique. How exactly did you get the notion that you stand so high in the cosmic scheme of things that you have the right to make real experts treat you as an equal without bothering to acquire any knowledge yourself?
|
There's a lot more on this page.
Link via the Leiter Report
posted @ 11:38 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more]
Sunday, July 11, 2004Land of the Free...
Welcome to the land of the free...
posted @ 02:42 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Friday, July 9, 2004Excellent 'new' blog... (i.e. new to me)
Recently I've been reading a lot of Diachronic Agency... which is, from what I've read, consistently interesting, well-argued and thought provoking...
posted @ 06:09 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Monday, July 5, 2004Battle of the Bogside
The BBC tonight had a documentary about the Battle of the Bogside when, in Derry in 1969, young people fought running battles in the streets with the RUC policemen.
The documentary itself was extremely interesting as it featured participants on both sides of the conflict speaking candidly about what happened. I'm not sure if such a documentary could have been made in the past but it's certainly possible now that many of the rioters on the Republican side are respected politicians or public figures and able to speak freely. The Republican view is that the Battle of the Bogisde was a resounding victory for the ordinary people of Derry who held out for 3 days against a paramilitary police force --- it's particularly ironic that the arrival of regular British Army troops in the Bogside was welcomed and seen as a positive step given the way that the Troubles would develop over the next couple of years.
The Unionist view seemed more muted and, on the part of some of the participants, slightly confused. Some of the participants on the Apprentice Boys march -- which was the initial trigger for the violence --- seemed sincerely confused as to why a march which they had held annually for such a long time should be viewed with such hostility by the mostly Catholic residents of the Bogside (even if others knew it was likely to provoke violence and welcomed the opportunity to stoke up trouble).
However, as someone who grew up in a small Scottish village in which Orange marches regularly paraded round my street on a Saturday morning with drums banging and flutes piping I can understand the hostility the Bogsiders felt towards such a march. Anyone regularly subjected to such a march swiftly becomes aware that they exist not only as celebrations of a particular form of Protestant identity but also serve, at least indirectly, to intimidate those who are not participants. Not just Catholics but anyone a bit wierd or different would also have felt that force of exclusion.
I was brought up an atheist and have never felt 'Catholic' despite the fact that my father's family are and were staunch Catholics. My father gave up Catholicism in the 1960s -- despite being an ex-altar boy -- initially for Marxism and atheism and then later for a fairly mellow anarchism combined with agnosticism so we were never brought up with any religious beliefs and my parents were quite happy that we attended the local Protestant church for school assemblies and went through the usual mildly Presbyterian religious education classes that exist in non-denomenational Scottish schools. However on days when the Orange march passed our house one definitely felt the hostility and the pompous over-bearing self-importance of the Orange marchers as a palpable force. Worse, on those days I -- a child of easy-going non-religious hippy parents -- felt pretty hostile straight back and that's a pretty sad state of affairs to bring about.
People in England, thankfully, are mostly ignorant of sectarianism of that nature and it's hard to explain it to English friends who watch the 'marching season' spark off trouble in Northern Ireland most years. Maybe tonight's documentary would have provided a little insight. Of course the Bogside Riots were a lot more complex than simply a reaction to a sectarian march and there were all kinds of political explanations for why what happened, happened. However, I don't think it's any coincidence that the violence started on the day of the Apprentice Boys parade...
posted @ 11:51 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Saturday, July 3, 2004Staying silent...
The Onion gets it right, again....
posted @ 09:40 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Tuesday, June 29, 2004Photoblogging again...
Still unhappy with the various photoblogging solutions I've tried so I may cobble something up using Movable Type...
In the meantime, please take a look here as I think this piece of graffiti I photographed the other week is amazing.
posted @ 09:10 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Monday, June 28, 2004It's just a sandwich
Philosophy as it really is... from the very great Fafblog
Link via Matt Weiner
P.S.
In the comments to Fafnir and Giblets' discussion there's a couple of entries from the cheese haiku contest... this was my favourite...
Some say the world will
end in fire; some say in cheese.
But most likely, fire.
-- from Steve Eley
posted @ 11:32 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, June 27, 2004Photoblog
I've added an entry on the right hand side for a new photoblog I'm planning to keep updated.
The link was added yesterday but I've changed the URL so if you clicked it then, you might want to look at the new version [took me a while to find a photoblogging host that wasn't horrendously ugly]...
So, try: http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/53570.html.
I'm still giving some thought to hosting the images myself so if I do change the URL I'll update the link on the right.
posted @ 04:05 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Saturday, June 26, 2004Czech Gulaš Recipe
Cooking this as I type, and in honour of tomorrow night's quarter final, here's a recipe for a basic but tasty Czech gulaš... [this is one of the easiest things you'll ever make]
1 x onion
1kg meat
[you can use beef (hovezi gulaš) or pork (veprovy gulaš) - diced turkey thigh works OK too... it doesn't need to be an expensive cut. Any kind of 'stewing' meat with a decent bit of flavour will do.]
1tsp caraway seeds
1tsp paprika
stock [I just crumble in a stock cube and top up with boiling water]
oil, or lard
salt and pepper to taste
a little flour for thickening
[spicing varies. The recipe above is more or less what you find in standard recipes for pork gulaš. My wife doesn't like paprika or caraway as much as I do so her gulaš uses more black pepper and mustard. Czech cookbooks have a lot of variations. Some with vegetables. There's even variations made from 'mozecek' - i.e. brains...]
While my wife might disagree :-), my gulaš tastes more like the sort of thing you'll get served up in a Czech pub than hers does...]
Fry the meat to brown it in the oil or lard. Make sure it's nicely browned so fry it at a high temperature. Add the onions. Fry a bit more. Add the paprika and keep frying for a few seconds.
Add the caraway seeds and pour over stock (or water) to cover the meat.
Simmer until the meat is tender -- I like to leave it a couple of hours until the meat is soft enough to pull apart with a spoon.
Dust over some flour (or pour in some cornflour and water) and stir until the sauce has the consistency of a thick gravy.
Serve with some shredded cabbage and onion and some rice or mashed potatoes. The brave might want to think about making 'knedliky' - the traditional boiled-bread type dumplings. Every attempt I've made at making them has been an unmitigated disaster.
Ideally accompanied by some Czech beer - Budvar, Staropramen, Pilsner Urquell, Gambrinus, etc.
(Serves 4 or 2 greedy people...)
posted @ 05:09 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack]
Vive Les Grecs
No doubt people will be talking of an upset after the Greeks beat France yesterday evening but to be honest France haven't really looked like much of a force at any time through the tournament and Greece have already showed in their group games that they are a hard-working, tactically astute and well-organised team.
I'm really pleased for the Greeks and also really pleased that the European Champoinship is throwing up some surprises. It's been abundantly clear that the smaller teams are closer to the 'big' teams (France, England, Germany, Italy and Spain) than they have been in previous years and that can only be a good thing for European football.*
Of course now the Greeks meet the winners of Czech Republic v. Denmark in their semi-final. Needless to say I am hoping they meet the Czechs [and then get subsequently stuffed 3-0]....
* Hopefully Scotland will produce a half-decent team for the next European Championship (and no doubt they will dispense with a team bus and arrive by flying pig...)
posted @ 07:38 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Wednesday, June 23, 2004Babies, assassins.. all life is here.
Daniel Taylor in this article on the feeding frenzy surrounding Wayne Rooney, writes, in one of my all-time favourite lines of football journalism, that:
| Owen, once the baby-faced assassin, has had to make way for Rooney, the assassin-faced baby. |
posted @ 04:36 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, June 20, 2004Češi do toho
Last night's game was by far the best of Euro 2004 to date.
Not only that, but my team won after a phenomenal come-back from 2-0 down. It's wierd supporting a decent team for a change -- with the Scots not being here I get to whole-heartedly support the Czech national side [my wife's Czech]...
The possibility is now open for a Czech/English semi-final if all goes well for both teams in the forthcoming matches.
Some of the people we watched the game with last night may end up 'divorced' over this one - mixed Czech/English couples.
I, on the other hand, would have been supporting the Czechs against the English even if I hadn't been married to a Czech - for the usual, anyone but the English Scottish reason.1
1 - I quite like the current English team and I'm happy to see them play well2, but we can't have them win a major championship as we'd never hear the end of it. I'd settle for them performing well throughout the tournament and then losing a hard-fought semi-final to the Czechs.
2 - even conceding this is sacreligious for most Scots and the rampant outbreak of St. George's flags - which makes Oxford look like it's in the middle of a BNP rally - would normally make me even less inclined to be pleased for England but the current English team sometimes plays some pretty nice football and it's not their fault that some of their fans are 'Eng-ger-lund Eng-ger-lund' flag-waving shaven-headed dobbers...
posted @ 10:31 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, June 13, 2004Aaaahhhh
Is it just me or are the sentiments1 expressed here annoying2 in the extreme?
1 - basically 'the poor are stupid and can't be trusted to spend what little welfare money we, the over-classes, give them on things that we, the smug and privileged youth of America, approve of'
2 - not really annoying, as such. More, utterly repulsive and symptomatic of blinkered stupidity.
posted @ 12:13 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Friday, June 11, 2004Grumpy...
Feeling very grumpy.
I had a student fail to turn up for a class this morning. That would be OK - these things happen - except that this student was told not to turn up by another tutor because the student was under stress and working too hard.* However, no-one bothered to tell me. I received a cursory explanation by email from the other tutor several hours after the tutorial was scheduled to take place and after I had slogged a few miles into town on my bike and then a few miles back all for no purpose.
I'm still angry about it. I'd like to say that this type of treatment of graduate tutors was unusual, but I really don't think it is.
Since I'm in a grumpy mood I can read http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002003.html article at Crooked Timber and wallow in grumpiness and righteous anger... Seriously, though. Read it. It's something worth being grumpy about.
* I'm not trivializing being under stress or feeling over-worked. Just annoyed at the total lack of respect shown by someone who is ostensibly a colleague...
Note: re-edited as Greymatter seems to have done something wierd to the link (and redirected it here)...
posted @ 04:20 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more]
Saturday, June 5, 2004Comment spam
Hmm... I also seem to have started getting comment spam.
At the moment it's only a few each day. However, if it gets worse I'll need to do something about it and have thought about using Captcha which asks users to type the contents of a graphic image into a text box in order to post their comment. Something similar is used by Yahoo.
However, this system does make it difficult for users using non-graphical browsers to post comments e.g. those using Lynx or a screen-reader (for the blind).
I have no idea if anyone reading this blog accesses it in that manner so if they do, please let me know. Traffic through this blog is relatively low (100 - 120 hits per day once I factor out search bots and spiders) and from the logs all the users seem to be using MSIE or Mozilla and so should be unaffected.
[I realize that some users may be using another browser that identifies itself as either MSIE or Mozilla...]
posted @ 11:57 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack]
Too true...
How to be a philosopher... from Sophists.org --- this is scarily true. Funny too. Excerpt:
Technique 10
Spend some time - one or two seconds - concocting the most outrageous ethical conundrum possible. It should involve Nazis in some way. For example: What should person B do if confronted by person A, disguised as a Nazi, but not really currently a Nazi, but who used to be a Nazi, and who is threatening to kill B, who does not know whether A is or ever was a Nazi, and who is known as having a penchant for torturing small children, though only Nazi children, just for fun, but who has a special relationship with A's child, who is not a Nazi, but who will enlist in the Nazi party if A harms B in any way or if B lies about his/her penchant for torturing Nazi children? Just when you think that the conundrum is complete, add in the possibility of saving one's wife from a dire predicament, just to throw off the reader's intuitions.
|
Original link found via Just another false alarm...
posted @ 11:40 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more]
Thursday, June 3, 2004The real villains....
We know who to blame...
posted @ 10:01 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more] Wednesday, May 26, 2004Photo
Photo taken with my Fed-4 Russian camera.
I really like this - even if I do so say myself.
posted @ 07:44 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [2 Comments] [TrackBack]
Awww
Just come back from the pub --- mildly drunk --- after a pleasant evening of philosophy and drinking with the Ockham Society.
Valerie Tiberius gave her talk and Uriah Kriegel (who was there tonight) is talking on Thursday. It's wierd them being billed as Professors: in the US pretty much anyone with a full time academic position is referred to as Professor whereas here you need to be a senior figure. Major cognitive dissonance since I know for certain that Uriah Kriegel is younger than me.
Anyway, this "Kenya's record-breaking OAP pupil" is a nice heart-warming story.
The picture is particularly cool.
posted @ 12:09 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more] Tuesday, May 25, 2004Troy in Fifteen Minutes
And this is, like, cool...
[Warning: Major plot spoilers for anyone who doesn't know how the Illiad turns out...]
posted @ 12:34 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack]
Abu Guh-rahb, er, Abooh grahib
Listening to Bush's big "speech".
You'd think he'd have learned how to read by now. Or maybe have some language coach give him a bit of help with pronouncing "Abu Ghraib". Each time he uses the word there's a pregnant pause as his brain clearly tries to work out what that word is. Then some random variation on the pronunciation of those letters comes out.
Truly, Groog Bu-hush, sorry, Gerog Buh-sha...Greeog Dubwa Bshhhah is a master of the world's languages.
It's a cheap shot, but it's sheer laziness or incompetence on the part of someone that he hasn't been coached for it.
posted @ 12:28 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [2 Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Saturday, May 22, 2004Mykeru
Marvellous incendiary blog entry from Mykeru...
And lets do the math here: some 40-45 people were killed. Of the dead 15 were children, 10 were women. That leaves 20 males killed. Is the distribution of 30 "military age" males, especially since that could be any males between mid-teens to middle age, at all significant given that distribution?
No information exists if the women were of "child bearing" age, which is, again, from teens to middle age. Younger if you're an MP at Abu Ghraib tired of buggering little boys.
|
{Bad language, for people who worry about that sort of thing.}
posted @ 05:51 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack]
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Carlo M. Cipolla, economist at UC Berkeley once wrote a wonderful and witty monologue on The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.
Link via A General Theory of Rubbish (a new blog I found via the Virtual Stoa) who summarizes Cipolla's theory as:
Cipolla says that... "a stupid person is one who causes damage to self or others without corresponding advantage". His other four laws are:
1. We always underestimate the number of stupid people.
2. The probability of someone being stupid is independent of other characteristics.
3. The 20 per cent of us who are not stupid tend, stupidly, to underestimate the threat posed by the stupid majority.
4. A stupid person is dangerous.
|
Go and read the full Cipolla article. It's profound (and not stupid).
posted @ 07:47 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [2 Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Friday, May 21, 2004Jobs
This post at Brian Leiter's well-known blog (which tracks philosophy hirings and firings among other things) is pretty odd as basically everyone mentioned is someone I know. Some of them did their B.Phil at the same time as me and I know all the others from seminars, department parties and things.
It's quite encouraging to see that some of my contemporaries are gettings jobs. There's hope for me yet.
Even better, there's more hope since so many of my contemporaries have just gotten jobs I won't be up competing against them when I start seriously pursuing the job market later this year.... :-)
[On the down side, maybe all the good jobs in Oxford have just been taken...]
Congratulations to Chris Timpson, btw, on landing a permanent non-junior-teaching-flunkey job.
posted @ 01:44 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, May 16, 2004Bumfights...
Today's Observer newspaper has a short article about the Bumfights videos.
Read the whole article for a sense of how disgusting this phenomena is.
For anyone not familiar with this particular form of 'entertainment' the producers of this stuff pay homeless alcoholics to fight each other, injure and degrade themselves, and at one point paid $200 dollars to be tattooed with the word "Bumfights" --- one of the victims has the word tattooed on his forehead.
I've seen a few short clips from this material on TV when it was first released in the US and at the time the only reaction I had was anger and disgust. Reading about this material a year or more later it still makes me viscerally angry.
The producers of this stuff have been served with community service orders for inciting people to commit assault --- however I can't understand how inducing someone clearly in a position of diminished responsibility to permanently disfigure their face (as in the case of the tattoos) is a civil offence. The producers of this video have demonstrated themselves to be amoral scum [sorry to get all 'Daily Mail' but sometimes that kind of self-righteous ire is justified] and I hope some extremely unpleasant fate awaits them --- ideally a lengthy prison sentence and/or financial ruin (at the very least).
posted @ 02:19 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Sunday, May 9, 2004Prisoner Abuse
The New York Times has a story about how the photos of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib being tortured (and I used this word intentionally) and abused got out.
Most interesting is the claim, by a relative of one of the soldiers under investigation:-
| The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth's Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for "60 Minutes II." |
It's pretty clear that this information has been circulating for a long time without anyone doing anything substantive about it. The claim that 17 different members of Congress were informed is pretty damning.
Information via Approximately Perfect....
posted @ 11:30 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [No Comments] [TrackBack]
Debian Linux ...
I've been considering rebuilding my broken beige G3 Macintosh and since I no longer have a handy licensed copy of OS X to install on it, I thought I'd slap on some PowerPC flavour of Linux...
Debian promises to work on PowerPC.
Ah-hah, I think. That's the very job for me. Now I'll just download an ISO image, burn a CD and away we go.
But noooooooo..... Debian prefers you to download your files using a command line tool which builds the ISO image from individual files that it downloads. A command line tool that's not the straightforwardest to run, and for which you need to know things like which mirror you will be downloading from, the name of the .jingo source file for the appropriate ISO image, etc. etc.
None of this is particularly hard - it's a matter of 5 or 10 minutes reading of the web-site, and a little searching.
But, for 's sake... why? The Debian site tells us that doing it this way is quicker and places less load on their servers. Well, my experience so far, has been that it's tremendously slow. Not because of the transfer speed.... I'm getting more or less full 50KB/s via ADSL. No, because it's downloading little chunks at a time and assembling them into an ISO. Many many many hours per individual ISO image.
It's alienating and not at all user friendly. This is a Windows app, but runs in a DOS command line window - there's no reason why a little user-friendly GUI couldn't be tacked on. The prompts in the jigdo window are unhelpful, etc.
No doubt a Debian evangelist can give me chapter and verse on why using jigdo makes sense and I have no doubt apparently pressing technical reasons exist --- or at least someone who has invested a significant part of their time and self-image in developing an intimate understanding of Debian install procedures could probably manufacture a reason that I couldn't be bothered to invest the time and effort to prove or disprove... But if your aim is to make the installation of your software user friendly and to attract ordinary users --- this is is an utter failure. It takes the best part of a day to download and assemble the necessary ISO files and the process is profoundly unfriendly.
I'm used to command lines. My professional experience with PCs predates the widespread use of Microsoft Windows, I've worked (for actual folding money) with various flavours of Unix including Solaris, Linux and OS X, I write my academic work in LaTeX and I prefer Emacs over Microsoft Word --- by any usual standard I'm at the upper end of technical knowledge for an ordinary PC user. However, I found the ISO download process unecessarily fiddly --- it's not difficult, it just ought to be easier. Some ordinary punter interested in switching would never get that far. They'd either stick to Windows or go download from some other flavour of Linux that makes the process easier.
posted @ 02:06 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [2 Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Thursday, May 6, 2004They told you so...
Timothy Burke has a fantastic, impassioned piece arguing that lots of people opposed to the war in Iraq were right --- not just right from some position of hindsight --- but right in advance and with foresight and should have been recognized as right and heeded at the time...
Take a look....
posted @ 09:45 AM GMT by Matthew [link] [2 Comments] [TrackBack] [more] Wednesday, May 5, 20049BeetStretch
Michael Brooke's excellent blog links to this interesting project.
Norwegian artisit Leif Inge has stretched Beethoven's 9th symphony from its usual running time of roughly 1 1/4 hours all the way up to 24.
The end result is surprisingly lovely, slightly edgy and vaguely ambient music reminiscent of a number of 20th century composers.
It's a huge download - http://www.notam02.no/9/ has streaming Real Audio and downloadable MP3 files for the whole thing.
You could fit all 19 or so parts on 2 CD-Rs and if your CD player can play MP3 discs (mine can) then you can slap a CD in in the morning and still be listening to it my mid evening.
posted @ 04:05 PM GMT by Matthew [link] [1 Comment] [TrackBack] [more] [more] [more]
|
here:
home
archives
my photolog
email
now reading:
Work
K.W.M. Fulford - Moral Theory and Medical Practice
Anthony O'Hear - Beyond Evolution...
Play
China Mieville - Perdido Street Station
there:
News
BBC News
The Guardian
The Onion
Blogs
Crooked Timber
Atrios
The Virtual Stoa
Billmon: Whiskey Bar
John & Belle have a Blog
Matthew Yglesias
Thoughts, Arguments and Rants
The Leiter Reports
The Early Days of a Better Nation
Charlie Stross
The Sideshow
The Volokh Conspiracy
Juan Cole
Busy, Busy, Busy.
Sappho's Breathing
Alas, a Blog
Chun, the Unavoidable
Sites Referring to this one
|
