London Orbital

It's taken a couple of months, but I've finally finished "London Orbital" (which is more than I've managed with anything else by Iain Sinclair). Must admit, felt more relieved than satisfied to have finished it. I liked the idea of the book (an off-beat attempt to walk the M25) and where he's coming from, and found many of the digressions illuminating but find his writing style to be too dense and heavy going to really enjoy it, and his propensity to conceptualize everything into some kind of grand inter-connected metaphor just ends up being a bit tiresome.

Goodbye to Widdecombe

I don't know if it's a sign that I'm getting old, she's got better or the world has got an awful lot worse, but the news that Ann Widdecombe is retiring from the House of Commons left me feeling (ever so slightly) regretful. Ten years ago she was a figure of utter hatred and I would have been thrilled to see the back of her, but now she seems more like an eccentric old aunt.

Garden in Jamaica Mews

Palm trees in the New Town!

We're monitized!

Cheque arrived from Google this afternoon.

Longniddry

Taken with my new Nokia E72 yesterday afternoon.

MadMen yourself

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

CHOON

A Life Elsewhere. First 3 minutes especially.

The Dunning Kruger effect

I came across this reference to the Dunning Kruger effect. "The paper compares people's skill levels to their own assessment of their abilities. In hindsight, the result seems self-evident. Unskilled people lack the skill to rate their own level of competence. This leads to the unfortunate result that unskilled people rate themselves higher than more competent people." This poses the question - am I so competent that I downgrade my abilities, or am I just incompetent?!

BitNami: Open Source. Simplified

This is good!

1963 as seen from 2010

Just watched Episodes 1 & 2 of Madmen series 3. Total genius. Urgently need to move to upstate New York and start commuting to Madison Avenue.

Are environmentalists bad for the planet?

Just caught the end of quite an interesting Analysis on Radio 4, in which Newsnight's 'Ethical Man' asked whether environmentalists were bad for the planet ? His point being that the green movement's hard line approach makes other people hostile and resistant to environmental issues. It's a debate worth having, I think. Personally, I like the sound of most of what they have to say, but agree that most of the population are so offended by the implications of a lot of it that it makes them resent and reject the whole issue, often angrily. Think I'll Listen Again and get the beginning.

2010 as forseen in 1972

Somebody's unearthed a child's book from 1972 which predicts how we will all live in 2010.

Ah takes me back

The Buckfast Code

The Secret Life of Chaos

Did anyone see The Secret Life of Chaos on BBC4 last night? Excellent documentary on chaos theory. You'll have heard some of it before (Turing, Mandelbrot etc.), but it was a very watchable and well put together overview, nicely directed, and not much actual maths! They get into the relationship between chaos and evolution, and there's a fascinating bit where some maths geniuses develop a programme that enables a computer to learn how to make a little virtual avatar guy walk around without falling over. What they actually do is produce 100 different avatar-controlling programmes, then let the computer evolve a better programme through natural selection. It ends up with a far more sophisticated ability to control the avatar than a human would have been able to programme from scratch. It's repeated a few times (see the link), including next Saturday (17th) at 8.30pm, or is on iPlayer.

Will Self on catastrophe books

"Just because we've been crying wolf for decades now it doesn't mean that there isn't a whole pack of them, it just means they haven't come to blow your house down yet."


(I just read elsewhere that 'catastrophe' literally means a 'down stroke' in fortunes.)

mathematical constants

If I was going to make two sure-fire predictions for the future, they would be that the world is going to get warmer, and that some weirdo will calculate an even higher number for pi.

Best of the Fitz 2009

Google Analytics may possibly say otherwise, but Fitzrovian Tuesdays has been a vibrant and important part of the cultural landscape for much of the last decade, and 2009 was no exception. As ever, and in no particular order, below is my traditional list of highlights from the last year:

1) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/01/when-central-bankers-rescued-then.html

2) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/02/diana-and-acteaon-to-stay-in-scotland.html

3) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/05/edna-unveiled.html

4) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/09/well-bit-of-good-news.html

5) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/10/barmy-nutters-party.html

Another Ice Age?

Climate change sceptics often protest that in the 1970s, scientists claimed we were heading for another ice age. Those who believe in the threat of global warming generally counter that there were only a very small number of such claims, which the sceptics deliberately keep bringing up in order to muddy the waters. The famous piece that is meant to have inspired the sceptical line of argument was a cover story in Time magazine in 1974. I just Googled it, and was surprised to find that it's on the Time website here. They must have digitized their archives. Interesting to actually read the original.

Here's someone's blog post showing that there were far more papers predicting warming, even in the 60s and 70s.

In Order to Edit

Yowsa.

Morrissey on Desert Island Discs: suicide is 'honourable' - Telegraph

Morrissey on Desert Island Discs: suicide is 'honourable' - Telegraph