Well, The King's Speech was the winner, but it was not a sweeping victory, wasn't it? Best movie, best actor, best screenplay, ok, but that's it. Inception, True Grit and The Social Network are the truly losers. The Fighter is excellent, I said it before, but I am just sorry that Geoffrey Rush could not win a second Oscar after Shine; I think he deserves it. Christian Bale is amazing in the role and his flexibility is unique. I can't believe that the fucked brother in The Fighter is led by the same actor as that in Terminator Salvation. And, then, Melissa Leo. Never heard of her, but judging for her amazing resume, she must be an extraordinarily hard-working woman. She looks like that. And she is a terrible and genuinely disgusting character in her role! The way good actresses are supposed to be when they have to.
I know nothing about nothing, less about cinema and gossip and crap, you know, but I have to write something and am tired today. "You are always tired", you might say. Well, yes, yes, what can I do?
**
I did not finally attend the William Ramsay's reception and dinner last Friday at UCL, although I said I was going to do it. I even got my ticket... My ticket for a horrible dinner, terrible wine and free drinks to get mad and drunk. I don't know what to think about it, you can get drunk, that's fine (or not), but to take it for granted, support it or find pride or normality in it is a different matter... A nice occasion to make a perfect fool of yourself in a custome (I mean, tie and suit, what a falacy!) or acknowledge that capacity in others.
So I did not attend the dinner, but I have found out about Ramsay, Rayleigh, Crooks and Morris William Travers. Two books I should take a look at: "William Ramsay and the University College London" (1952); "A Life of Sir William Ramsay" (1956). I am brewing an idea in mind... .
So Travers and Ramsay, about twenty years his senior, learned of a new gas being discovered in America from heating uranium ores; however, it turned out to be helium. This element had been observed in a solar eclipse thirty years back. But the finding meant that the element was naturally on Earth. Between argon (recently found by the leading research of Rayleigh at the time) and helium, it should be something else, Travers and Ramsay, Ramsay and Travers said, in accordance to the pattern of the Periodic Table. And they went for them and got them and named them: neon, krypton and xenon; that is, in plain English, "the new", "the hidden" and "the strange". How about that?
Where is it today this nice sense of humanism in scientific research and discovery?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Monday, February 28, 2011
The hat of Eleonore
At 9.35 pm on Sunday I was climbing the unpleasant uphill leading to the main road of Muswell Hill and was thinking of what to tell you tonight. I had been sat in my desk, at my room, from 3 pm till that time working and wanted so badly a beer… .
So I was thinking of telling you that I had nothing to tell you. I spend the Sunday morning playing soccer or football, football, people say football again here, and that I am growing old. Still, I have tremendous resistance, but the grass was muddy and I slide, more than run. It was a beautiful morning over London, only apt for those who did not do terrible things last night and could get up. Sunny, sunny London. You know, sun in London is like winning the lottery. About 1pm it started to rain.
I had my lunch in a place that tasted nice, across Highgate tube station. And the rain continued. I had to finish my 3-month report and that was a pain in the back, plus an actual pain from the soccer, I mean, the football. The afternoon was made to sit next to the fire, you know, that place where the fox hunters get drunk themselves, and keep reading Vargas Llosa: Conversacion en la Catedral; it is a fantastic novel, I am enjoying it, magnificent, tremendous. But I had to write, I mean, finish writing the fucking report.
And I was about to tell you that I have nothing to tell you. But an Irish band was playing in the pub and had supper and was nice. And then, a very strange and all fucked-up woman came to me, sat down next to me and sparked a conversation. So fucked-up. It turned out to be a prostitute… A prostitute, what do you think? Sunday night, the whole day by myself, the whole weekend by myself, working on the fucking report (what for?) and a lonely prostitute, an all-fucked up one, came to me. Eleonore was his name, she told me. Right, right, Eleonore Rigby, perhaps… And that’s it. I am home now. She was expelled from the place. She is having a busy day tomorrow, she is in charity, Eleonore told me, can you believe it?...
H. is leaving tomorrow to Australia… I am on my own. Bertie, the cat, and I.
That’s all I have to tell you. Going to sleep. Need to wake up earlier tomorrow, about 5.45 am I think should be enough. God bless you, my friend… Yep, had three pints, yep… .
Still, who is going to take care of Eleonore?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Sunday, February 27, 2011
110 km/h - 70 miles/h
To my list of "things" we Spaniards have and that we loved and that Franco (yes, Franco)... invented, I have to add today the traffic speed limits. Oh, yes, did not know about it. We already have the Civil Guard, the Social Security, the seaside tourism, the National Identity Document, the extra payment in July and Christmas. And now, this.
Until 1974 there was not speed limits in Spain. The 73' oil crisis drove the set of limits aimed to "save money". I heard that the measure did not help saving money (whatever way you measure this) and also, unfortunately, increase the fatalities. Have not thought why. Some people say that restricting the speed limit because of "saving" is Soviet and totalitarian; to me, that would be too smart for Spain government. It sounds stupid to me, mainly (a stupid imposition perfectly suitable for the greenish stupidity of the city of London); but since the Spanish government is more evil than stupid, there must be something hidden to fuck the common citizen at the end. Who is going to control this?... Oh, yes, and again wasting money, and the attention drawn away from the real important matters.
But, listen to this. The first limit in the 1974 was 130 km/h. The first limit to "save money" was 130 km/h! How fast did people use to drive then with those cars, models from 40 to 50 years ago? Along those roads? On those tires?
***
A bunch of girls were in the bus as I came home tonight. They ware making such a fuss, that was scary, sad and unbelievable. All I can say is that they were all fucked up, so sad, so sad. But nobody cared, not me. Made me think. Who's going to take care of it?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Until 1974 there was not speed limits in Spain. The 73' oil crisis drove the set of limits aimed to "save money". I heard that the measure did not help saving money (whatever way you measure this) and also, unfortunately, increase the fatalities. Have not thought why. Some people say that restricting the speed limit because of "saving" is Soviet and totalitarian; to me, that would be too smart for Spain government. It sounds stupid to me, mainly (a stupid imposition perfectly suitable for the greenish stupidity of the city of London); but since the Spanish government is more evil than stupid, there must be something hidden to fuck the common citizen at the end. Who is going to control this?... Oh, yes, and again wasting money, and the attention drawn away from the real important matters.
But, listen to this. The first limit in the 1974 was 130 km/h. The first limit to "save money" was 130 km/h! How fast did people use to drive then with those cars, models from 40 to 50 years ago? Along those roads? On those tires?
***
A bunch of girls were in the bus as I came home tonight. They ware making such a fuss, that was scary, sad and unbelievable. All I can say is that they were all fucked up, so sad, so sad. But nobody cared, not me. Made me think. Who's going to take care of it?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Moments like this
With all the mind-thrillers going on in Hollywood, there is one new movie about time travelling to be made: that of people going back in time but to the past of their memories, which most likely will be different from the actual past. It shall exist then as many temporal lines as people and shall be extreme: the best and the worst. Only two colors exist in our memories, black and white, doesn't it?
I recalled today while having dinner Ramiro Pinilla's novel Las ciegas hormigas. It was the first novel of the non-writer Basque in the 60s. Set in Getxo, Bilbao. The terrible story of miserable and envious people, the resilience and determination of a family man, the lost of a child, the blinding hunger, the little girl feeding the kittens from her titties. Pinilla tells in the prologue that one night, when his wife was preparing the dinner and the children play around the house, he finished the novel. He then calls up his little girl and asked her to press the final dot on the typewriter. Oh!
I wish my life where full of sweet, tender moments like this.... And shoot my own movie.
Oh, those lovely afternoons, class-skipped, of two infatuated lovers, loving each other free of the disease of sex-love, platonic, expanding all through the evening. "Oh, darling, play with my hair". The dim light, the warm and fluffy bed, the confident and cozy blanket and the whole of a girl for a boy, the entire boy for a girl. A pair of unboiled kids, unaware and unwarned of themselves, day-dreaming immatures. And the night comes upon, and the songs of Silvio Rodriguez, and the poems of Cortazar or Benedetti, or perhaps Nazim Hikmet or the fearful Mayakovsky, and the sad verses and love letters of Neruda. "I need to buy groceries, will you come with me?". And, sometimes, the drumming of the rain on the window panes and the rumor of his constant company; the smell of burning incense, the faithful shirts of youth, the humming of the washing machine in the kitchen, the sudden screech of the hang-out ropes, echoing away the courtyard, the food crackling in someone else's kitchen... A step aside the worldly, painful days; the heart well into the magical nights, the endless happy nights.
Plenty of moments like this for my movie and my Paradise.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
I recalled today while having dinner Ramiro Pinilla's novel Las ciegas hormigas. It was the first novel of the non-writer Basque in the 60s. Set in Getxo, Bilbao. The terrible story of miserable and envious people, the resilience and determination of a family man, the lost of a child, the blinding hunger, the little girl feeding the kittens from her titties. Pinilla tells in the prologue that one night, when his wife was preparing the dinner and the children play around the house, he finished the novel. He then calls up his little girl and asked her to press the final dot on the typewriter. Oh!
I wish my life where full of sweet, tender moments like this.... And shoot my own movie.
Oh, those lovely afternoons, class-skipped, of two infatuated lovers, loving each other free of the disease of sex-love, platonic, expanding all through the evening. "Oh, darling, play with my hair". The dim light, the warm and fluffy bed, the confident and cozy blanket and the whole of a girl for a boy, the entire boy for a girl. A pair of unboiled kids, unaware and unwarned of themselves, day-dreaming immatures. And the night comes upon, and the songs of Silvio Rodriguez, and the poems of Cortazar or Benedetti, or perhaps Nazim Hikmet or the fearful Mayakovsky, and the sad verses and love letters of Neruda. "I need to buy groceries, will you come with me?". And, sometimes, the drumming of the rain on the window panes and the rumor of his constant company; the smell of burning incense, the faithful shirts of youth, the humming of the washing machine in the kitchen, the sudden screech of the hang-out ropes, echoing away the courtyard, the food crackling in someone else's kitchen... A step aside the worldly, painful days; the heart well into the magical nights, the endless happy nights.
Plenty of moments like this for my movie and my Paradise.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Battle of Cable Street
Am so, so tired today, waaaaant to sleep. H. has just bought a few very thick and fearsome-looking books for her trip to Australia. In one of them, it must be, I find the Battle of Cable Street, October 4th, 1936. Have no idea what it is about. H's grandma lived there. I leave this video here for future reference. See you tomorrow.
30 years
On Feb 23, today, it has been remembered the 30th anniversary of the failed attempt of coup d'Etat in Spain. I can hardly remember anything from 1981. In fact, I don't remember anything. And now that I think of it I realized that never asked my parents what they were doing that day. Tejero's careless kidnapping of the Parliament was at 6.23 pm, so most likely, my father was working and my mother preparing my supper. Federico J. Losantos was watching a movie of Laura Antonelli, for example. It is something interesting: important matters for collectivities are not important for individuals (at the moment of occurrence).
Photo: Laura Antonelli (iofer.com)
The coup lasted 17 hours and 34 gun shots. The failed attempt has been showed to us, at least as I can recall it now, as a fortunately quenched re-birth of franquism; however, it does not seem to be that. It generated itself within politics and the circumstances of the moment (ETA killed 100 troops and soldiers every year at the time, the State of Autonimical Regions (and nationalism) just re-born, the King was actually the Head of the State, Franco's succesor, and the Army must obey him). Lots of agents were aware and afraid and expecting the coup, rumors everywhere, publications in newspapers.
After all, I don't have the lest doubt that not everything is known. And I agree strongly with those claiming that major episodes of our last democratic history are confused and partially manipulated: 23-F, Gal, bombings 11-M.
It is shameful how a black box has been built around the episode and a mystified, untruly label has been hung upon it: Franco resurrected, but the Left drove Democracy once again into the rails. It is shameful that many names and situations of the 23-F coup are completely unknown for the young today, me included. Not even the basic things: Operacion Galaxia, Milans del Bosch, Division Acorazada, Alfonso Armada, "Ni esta ni se le espera", Juste, el pacto del capo, etc.
What a shame, what a pity!
(PLEASE, LEAVE A COMMENT).
The coup lasted 17 hours and 34 gun shots. The failed attempt has been showed to us, at least as I can recall it now, as a fortunately quenched re-birth of franquism; however, it does not seem to be that. It generated itself within politics and the circumstances of the moment (ETA killed 100 troops and soldiers every year at the time, the State of Autonimical Regions (and nationalism) just re-born, the King was actually the Head of the State, Franco's succesor, and the Army must obey him). Lots of agents were aware and afraid and expecting the coup, rumors everywhere, publications in newspapers.
After all, I don't have the lest doubt that not everything is known. And I agree strongly with those claiming that major episodes of our last democratic history are confused and partially manipulated: 23-F, Gal, bombings 11-M.
It is shameful how a black box has been built around the episode and a mystified, untruly label has been hung upon it: Franco resurrected, but the Left drove Democracy once again into the rails. It is shameful that many names and situations of the 23-F coup are completely unknown for the young today, me included. Not even the basic things: Operacion Galaxia, Milans del Bosch, Division Acorazada, Alfonso Armada, "Ni esta ni se le espera", Juste, el pacto del capo, etc.
What a shame, what a pity!
(PLEASE, LEAVE A COMMENT).
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Guttenberg's plagiarism
We are having a pint and my German friend T. suddenly asked me if I follow international, German politics. Well, no, have no idea, supine ignorance. The topic is too well fitted, as I am doing my PhD now. She takes a today exemplar of the Suddeutsche Zeitung and talks about it while fingering the pages and looking in vain for a picture of Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Only a curious photograph of just one half of his face is showed.
Guttenberg (CDU) belongs to the aristocracy and is preceded by his nobility title. He is only 39 and I read that "very charismatic" as well. He completed his PhD in 2006 on something related to constitutional developments in the US and EU, which sounds kind of strange to me, since US and EU are beings of different constitutionality, if I can say so. Anyhow, after the turmoil he had because of Afghanistan in the previous months, now he has to face accusations of gross plagiarism, of flagrant and carelessly copying literal paragraphs from different sources, from day-today journal articles to Embassy writings.
The remarkable thing to me is that, although Guttenberg has claimed the accusations totally false, he has acknowledged part of the charges by giving that "undoubtedly, there are serious mistakes, which makes me quite unhappy". I don't understand this, you see? Why does he have to say so? I mean, what can people, public and journalists, know about mistakes a dissertation? I am more than sure that only a reduce percentage of the PhD dissertations and papers being published every year contains relevant, original pieces of work. In fact, most of PhD students just spend too much time writing what they have in a non-writen-before way, when it would be more productive to copy and paste from others and dedicate themselves to read and think more.
Undoubtedly, it is worse to confess that your work is a piece of shit, because you confess your inmorality: you knew about it, you did not work harder, you went and published an unreliable piece of obscure knowledge, so you are dishonest.
I can read between lines that 7 years is too much time to complete a PhD and that it should be a reason for it. I can see that Guttenberg was not full dedicated at all (not even part-time dedication, as he was a member of the Parliament in the meantime and became a father, as he said) and that the task must be almost impossible in those circumstances, as research is not just the summation of very scattered moments, no matter if the overall time accounts a whole lot. I can read all that in between lines, I can see that sometime you have to finish... Was it funded? Regardless of this, I think it is foolish to say what Guttenberg said, because nobody will understand it the right way.
It stinks, though, to political operation against the Minister to me. Could it be?
Even more, why does he relinquish his doctor title? Does not that mean that he is taking the accusations? Besides, it is the university who confers the title to the doctorate, so all he could do is to make a request to the School Administration asking to revoke his title.
Anyhow, is not School partly responsible for that? Who was Mr. Guttenberg's advisor? Is he not as well partly responsible? In my point of view, the accusations contains venom, are double-bladed knives hanging upon the University.
Why is such a fuss for a dissertation?... In Spain we have politicians who did not even finish the High School, nor their BS degrees, if you can believe that. In a sense it leads to mirth and merryment that someone named Guttenberg (notice, with an extra "t") is accused of "copying" and named such things are "Zu Copyberg" (ZDF Television) or "Baron-Cut-and-Paste" (Financial Times Deutschland). Isn't it?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Guttenberg (CDU) belongs to the aristocracy and is preceded by his nobility title. He is only 39 and I read that "very charismatic" as well. He completed his PhD in 2006 on something related to constitutional developments in the US and EU, which sounds kind of strange to me, since US and EU are beings of different constitutionality, if I can say so. Anyhow, after the turmoil he had because of Afghanistan in the previous months, now he has to face accusations of gross plagiarism, of flagrant and carelessly copying literal paragraphs from different sources, from day-today journal articles to Embassy writings.
The remarkable thing to me is that, although Guttenberg has claimed the accusations totally false, he has acknowledged part of the charges by giving that "undoubtedly, there are serious mistakes, which makes me quite unhappy". I don't understand this, you see? Why does he have to say so? I mean, what can people, public and journalists, know about mistakes a dissertation? I am more than sure that only a reduce percentage of the PhD dissertations and papers being published every year contains relevant, original pieces of work. In fact, most of PhD students just spend too much time writing what they have in a non-writen-before way, when it would be more productive to copy and paste from others and dedicate themselves to read and think more.
Undoubtedly, it is worse to confess that your work is a piece of shit, because you confess your inmorality: you knew about it, you did not work harder, you went and published an unreliable piece of obscure knowledge, so you are dishonest.
I can read between lines that 7 years is too much time to complete a PhD and that it should be a reason for it. I can see that Guttenberg was not full dedicated at all (not even part-time dedication, as he was a member of the Parliament in the meantime and became a father, as he said) and that the task must be almost impossible in those circumstances, as research is not just the summation of very scattered moments, no matter if the overall time accounts a whole lot. I can read all that in between lines, I can see that sometime you have to finish... Was it funded? Regardless of this, I think it is foolish to say what Guttenberg said, because nobody will understand it the right way.
It stinks, though, to political operation against the Minister to me. Could it be?
Even more, why does he relinquish his doctor title? Does not that mean that he is taking the accusations? Besides, it is the university who confers the title to the doctorate, so all he could do is to make a request to the School Administration asking to revoke his title.
Anyhow, is not School partly responsible for that? Who was Mr. Guttenberg's advisor? Is he not as well partly responsible? In my point of view, the accusations contains venom, are double-bladed knives hanging upon the University.
Why is such a fuss for a dissertation?... In Spain we have politicians who did not even finish the High School, nor their BS degrees, if you can believe that. In a sense it leads to mirth and merryment that someone named Guttenberg (notice, with an extra "t") is accused of "copying" and named such things are "Zu Copyberg" (ZDF Television) or "Baron-Cut-and-Paste" (Financial Times Deutschland). Isn't it?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Monday, February 21, 2011
My friend A.M. made me a political animal. Before him, I was a child. German Yanke, a liberal at the time, made a good impression on me, on us; liked his manner of telling jokes on air. I remember the sweet moment, one Friday night, driving back from Madrid to Salamanca. I have dropped C. in her sister's house so she could go to the course on Saturday. I just drove all the way, a couple of long hours, dropped her, and come back. "I wish I had friends like this", her sister's boyfriend said. C. had a boyfriend and I was in the middle, but in reality C. is the only women I have truly loved. In a sense, I still do. Kind of a problem, though, to be so stupid. But I have never feel so happy, so alive. C. was my truly killer.
Anyhow, German Yanke tells the story of this young journalist writing for a local newspaper who gets mistaken about the fate of an important, ill local figure and writes: "X passed away on the night of Saturday". Immediately, he gets a phone call: "You silly, stupid bastard, he is sick but still alive". After a couple of days, X passes effectively away and the young journalist writes: "Finally, X passes away".
Something happened later to German. From a liberal (in the European sense), he came later to work for El Pais' network. You must know, this group is not what is used to be. It is pure shit now, pure irresponsible, socialist crap, as it has been for the last 25 years. In German's good times, I remember this demonstration in Madrid's Puerta del Sol against Castro's regime. German was supporting then the Cuban exiles. Perhaps it was there or around the date when he blurred: "you have to study much to become a liberal".
But, oh, holly mackarony! I am enjoying these days Vargas Llosa's Conversacion en la Catedral, and I came across this statement one of the characters make: "to become a communist, you have to study much".
So it was a cliche!
**
Nice novel, that Conversacion en la Catedral, you know? It is set in Peru, written by a Peruvian, but so close to that lost time in Spain so, so close. The stories, the hopes. "Le dieron guantes de jebe, un guardapolvo, le dijeron eres envasadora. (...) A las que colocaban las tapas les decian tapaderas, etiqueteras a las que pegaban las etiquetas, y al final de la mesa cuatro mujeres recogian los frascos y los ordenaban en cajas de carton: les decian embaladoras"... Oh, what a familar world!
I came home today and I could not open the door. I promise I was not drunk... So I went to the pub, the one with the fox hunters. Had a couple of pints and read the novel. So peaceful, so quite, I could hear the tic-tac of the clock, the strikes of the time and the damped conversations around. Loved it.
Our lives are full of orgiastic moments that lasted only a fraction... But in our memories they are expanded a whole eternity.
(LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Anyhow, German Yanke tells the story of this young journalist writing for a local newspaper who gets mistaken about the fate of an important, ill local figure and writes: "X passed away on the night of Saturday". Immediately, he gets a phone call: "You silly, stupid bastard, he is sick but still alive". After a couple of days, X passes effectively away and the young journalist writes: "Finally, X passes away".
Something happened later to German. From a liberal (in the European sense), he came later to work for El Pais' network. You must know, this group is not what is used to be. It is pure shit now, pure irresponsible, socialist crap, as it has been for the last 25 years. In German's good times, I remember this demonstration in Madrid's Puerta del Sol against Castro's regime. German was supporting then the Cuban exiles. Perhaps it was there or around the date when he blurred: "you have to study much to become a liberal".
But, oh, holly mackarony! I am enjoying these days Vargas Llosa's Conversacion en la Catedral, and I came across this statement one of the characters make: "to become a communist, you have to study much".
So it was a cliche!
**
Nice novel, that Conversacion en la Catedral, you know? It is set in Peru, written by a Peruvian, but so close to that lost time in Spain so, so close. The stories, the hopes. "Le dieron guantes de jebe, un guardapolvo, le dijeron eres envasadora. (...) A las que colocaban las tapas les decian tapaderas, etiqueteras a las que pegaban las etiquetas, y al final de la mesa cuatro mujeres recogian los frascos y los ordenaban en cajas de carton: les decian embaladoras"... Oh, what a familar world!
I came home today and I could not open the door. I promise I was not drunk... So I went to the pub, the one with the fox hunters. Had a couple of pints and read the novel. So peaceful, so quite, I could hear the tic-tac of the clock, the strikes of the time and the damped conversations around. Loved it.
Our lives are full of orgiastic moments that lasted only a fraction... But in our memories they are expanded a whole eternity.
(LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Sunday, February 20, 2011
True grit _the dreadful path of the righteous
The heater has been stopped functioning in the screen 2 room, movie theater, up in Muswell Hill, but people did not care much and came to see True Grit. My English dictionary says that "grit" is coarse sand or small rough pebbles. In colloquial sense, it refers to "endurance, courage". Based on a novel by Charles Portis (1968), the first film adaptation is with John Wayne in 1969.
The ending is kind of rushy, the "bad guy" too irrelevant and there is too much talking, I would say. The religious driver of the movie is a single verse in the Book of Proverbs (28:1), "the wicked flee when none pursueth", and the religious chant is in essence all surrounding the story. The whole soundtrack sounds to me like variations of the first parts of Deep River. And I like that at the beginning: we must pay for everything in this life; only the amazing grace of God is free.
If you continue reading the first four verses of the Book of Proverbs, you find something more interesting, more suitable to the story:
"The wicked flee when no one is pursuing,
But the righteous are bold as a lion.
By the transgression of a land many are its princes,
But by a man of understanding and knowledge, so it endures".
The movie is about the terrible, burdensome life of the righteous pushing through death. Everything around the young girl is death and its marks and scars. Her hand turned black after the snake bite and after all she has to live through with that mark, as the Marshall did accordingly with one gone-off eye. Black is the color of a lady in fight with death and devastation of the heart. Alcohol is the man's companion through this valley of tears. Pain and suffering and wrong awaits for him who is right (blood and dragging to the second Marshall, for instance).
Again, death is around the little girl: his father's killing, the identification of his body, all the coffins, the hung men in public execution, the Indian boys killing the donkey, the dead body hung from a tall tree and the black bird feeding out of his eyes, the killings in the cottage, the fighting outside the cottage, the three bodies abandoned leaning against the cottage while the Marshall is drunk as hell. Death dances around the girl when left alone with her father's killers, and then when she falls in the den and from the skeleton and bones of a dead man, deadly snakes come out. Marshall saves his life and during the rest of the day and all through the night, riding on top of a black horse, they both struggle to beat death and bring her into life. Death took the horse and her hand. Death made her an eternal miss, fated to be despised and mistreated. All worn in black, she stands alone next to only few graves... In one of them the Marshall lies, just a little piece of light in the dark, devastated desert. She was not taken across the river once and only the Marshall took her into his arms and body and across the country.
And so is the path of the righteous.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
The ending is kind of rushy, the "bad guy" too irrelevant and there is too much talking, I would say. The religious driver of the movie is a single verse in the Book of Proverbs (28:1), "the wicked flee when none pursueth", and the religious chant is in essence all surrounding the story. The whole soundtrack sounds to me like variations of the first parts of Deep River. And I like that at the beginning: we must pay for everything in this life; only the amazing grace of God is free.
If you continue reading the first four verses of the Book of Proverbs, you find something more interesting, more suitable to the story:
"The wicked flee when no one is pursuing,
But the righteous are bold as a lion.
By the transgression of a land many are its princes,
But by a man of understanding and knowledge, so it endures".
The movie is about the terrible, burdensome life of the righteous pushing through death. Everything around the young girl is death and its marks and scars. Her hand turned black after the snake bite and after all she has to live through with that mark, as the Marshall did accordingly with one gone-off eye. Black is the color of a lady in fight with death and devastation of the heart. Alcohol is the man's companion through this valley of tears. Pain and suffering and wrong awaits for him who is right (blood and dragging to the second Marshall, for instance).
Again, death is around the little girl: his father's killing, the identification of his body, all the coffins, the hung men in public execution, the Indian boys killing the donkey, the dead body hung from a tall tree and the black bird feeding out of his eyes, the killings in the cottage, the fighting outside the cottage, the three bodies abandoned leaning against the cottage while the Marshall is drunk as hell. Death dances around the girl when left alone with her father's killers, and then when she falls in the den and from the skeleton and bones of a dead man, deadly snakes come out. Marshall saves his life and during the rest of the day and all through the night, riding on top of a black horse, they both struggle to beat death and bring her into life. Death took the horse and her hand. Death made her an eternal miss, fated to be despised and mistreated. All worn in black, she stands alone next to only few graves... In one of them the Marshall lies, just a little piece of light in the dark, devastated desert. She was not taken across the river once and only the Marshall took her into his arms and body and across the country.
And so is the path of the righteous.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Proud of being a Spaniard
Am tired, tired again. Look forward to going to sleep. A new feeling is coming into, so noticeable: the proud of being a Spaniard.
I feel proud of being a Spaniard.
Proud of being a Spaniard.
A new generation, a new conscience should emerge from the current situation.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing owned to anyone. Still, too much to retaliate for. Or better, let's remember, let's forgive and let's make a new beginning.
Like that captain in Flandes who, trapped and bound to die, is asked to surrender: "go and say your Lord that we truly appreciate his gesture, but we, sir, are Spaniards. We don't surrender".
Again, proud of being a Spaniard.
Proud of belonging to SPAIN.
I feel proud of being a Spaniard.
Proud of being a Spaniard.
A new generation, a new conscience should emerge from the current situation.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing owned to anyone. Still, too much to retaliate for. Or better, let's remember, let's forgive and let's make a new beginning.
Like that captain in Flandes who, trapped and bound to die, is asked to surrender: "go and say your Lord that we truly appreciate his gesture, but we, sir, are Spaniards. We don't surrender".
Again, proud of being a Spaniard.
Proud of belonging to SPAIN.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Tiptoeing on the surface of a new topic while nearly falling asleep
Just heard of it, I repeat: just heard of it, but I am not surprise that someone like Alan Sokal was related to UCL and New York University. The Sokal affair contains plenty of suggestive titles and stories, but I am affraid that I don't have time nor real interest to learn just a bit about it. I am tired today, so I can leave this note here for you... Or for me, for some other time in the future, ok?
Now, go to sleep.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Now, go to sleep.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Look back in anger... Or don't
With too much difficulty I skip over the last pages of Look Back in Anger and said to myself: ok, that's finished. I did not enjoy _it feels like a paste, thick and dense, too much controversial a hundred years ago, perhaps, but too much pretentiously bothersome and old-fashioned today. Doesn't seem to be a classic. I don't know if there is or isn't any originality. I guess I am missing things. However, I only truly enjoy the part where Alison leaves Jimmy (and Cliff) and Helena takes over, all Jimmy's speech and Helene reaction. But that's all.
I suspect the "anger young men" cliche is just a myth, as many of the sort made up by intellectuals, writers, thinkers or "wizards" _in this case, Kenneth Tynan's own bet.
**
Nevertheless, it is remarkable that whenever the young (or not necessarily too young) feels uneasy and sour with the world, a feeling of anger and hatred prevails. That's a common feature of main characters at all or some point in the story, in The Cather in the Rye, Siddharta and Osborne's Look Back in Anger. For example, sweet Phoebe says to his brother: "Why do you hate everybody? You hate everybody".
... A little piece of myself then I understood ...
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
I suspect the "anger young men" cliche is just a myth, as many of the sort made up by intellectuals, writers, thinkers or "wizards" _in this case, Kenneth Tynan's own bet.
**
Nevertheless, it is remarkable that whenever the young (or not necessarily too young) feels uneasy and sour with the world, a feeling of anger and hatred prevails. That's a common feature of main characters at all or some point in the story, in The Cather in the Rye, Siddharta and Osborne's Look Back in Anger. For example, sweet Phoebe says to his brother: "Why do you hate everybody? You hate everybody".
... A little piece of myself then I understood ...
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Warning
God knows what is happening in the Islamic world these months. I don't. However, I said it before and I am saying now: has nothing to do with democracy. Democracy of what? We tend to believe that democracy is like the natural way of human performance that, if let it, will overflow into surface readily and by the law of necessity. But reality could not be further away from that. I am afraid that corruption in those countries will only have a tightening effect on freeless societies and individuals, a reassuring argument for choking Islam. Apart from Egypt, other countries are at stake: in Libia, the chants of demonstrators is "no God but Allah, Muammar [Gaddafi] is the enemy of Allah". This is a warning for all Western, free countries: democracy will not come by itself. Terrorism will do.
The turmoil in the Islamic countries ("Islam" means submission, don't forget it) has nothing to do with democracy, and it is stupid to think so or to defend thesis like facebook or twiter has a thing for democracy. An example to support my statement is a piece of news about what happened today or yesterday to Lara Logan.
It is told in the London Evening Standard. For the last two days, I have been taking the tube to come back home, rather early, about 5 or 5.30 pm. The feeling is good. I feel like a real Londoner, a worker earning twice or thrice what I make. (Perhaps I grew too old for going back to school here, I wonder).
So Lara Logan, 39, finished reporting from Tahrir Square for CBS and right at the spot was brutally beating and sexually attacked by a mass of men. She was dragged away and done terrible things for 20 to 30 minutes! Until a group of women (!!!) and 20 soldiers rescued her.
This I read in the tube, such a sickening story. It fills me with revulsion, it is so horrific. Can you believe in democracy, still? You are crazy! I don't know the length of the sexual attacks, but I foresee many years of painful and bitter recovery, if she can. The life as she knows it just finished... A woman being rescued from men by other women?? What a strange thing! I don't know what the hell is going on there.
But it is not democracy. It is a warning for all.
My sympathies for you, Lara. All the best.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
The turmoil in the Islamic countries ("Islam" means submission, don't forget it) has nothing to do with democracy, and it is stupid to think so or to defend thesis like facebook or twiter has a thing for democracy. An example to support my statement is a piece of news about what happened today or yesterday to Lara Logan.
It is told in the London Evening Standard. For the last two days, I have been taking the tube to come back home, rather early, about 5 or 5.30 pm. The feeling is good. I feel like a real Londoner, a worker earning twice or thrice what I make. (Perhaps I grew too old for going back to school here, I wonder).
So Lara Logan, 39, finished reporting from Tahrir Square for CBS and right at the spot was brutally beating and sexually attacked by a mass of men. She was dragged away and done terrible things for 20 to 30 minutes! Until a group of women (!!!) and 20 soldiers rescued her.
This I read in the tube, such a sickening story. It fills me with revulsion, it is so horrific. Can you believe in democracy, still? You are crazy! I don't know the length of the sexual attacks, but I foresee many years of painful and bitter recovery, if she can. The life as she knows it just finished... A woman being rescued from men by other women?? What a strange thing! I don't know what the hell is going on there.
But it is not democracy. It is a warning for all.
My sympathies for you, Lara. All the best.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Women in Persia: a face like a moon
"Behind the curtain there was a face like a moon
Like the shining sun, full of color and scent"
(Firdausi, The Book of Kings, AD 1010).
**
I've heard about Persian love poetry before. This is below, for example, the forbidden love of two lovers as told by Gurgani (s. XI), Vis and Ramin (The British Museum Press):
"Around Vis Ramin put his arm
Like a golden necklace around a tall fair cypress.
If they were seen from Paradise
No one would have been more beautiful
The bed full of flowers and precious stones
The pillows full of musk and ambers
Lips upon lips, and face turned to face
Playful like a ball in a field
The closeness, holding the beloved,
Turned their two bodies into one -
If rain had fallen on these two fair bodies
A raindrop would not have moistened their chest".
Of course, it is a pity that I can't read Farsi. (Well, I can only read Spanish and English, with certain limitations in both languages). And even if I could, I doubt I could read poems like this. What a pity! It is nice, though, to know that certain languages are not to be learned to be spoken, but just to be read. That makes the whole thing much simpler. If you are shy or unsocial, that will help. I am targeting at learning French and German at least, in this way. Also, Arabic, just to read... When? That's a different story.
"Modern Persian poetry has abandoned the traditional modes and moved to free verse". Among the newcomers are some women to be found, I read. Particularly, two of them, Parvin Etesami (1906 - 41) and Forough Farrokhad (1935 - 67). It is striking how young both of them died. Etsemani, from Typhus or some fevers related to it; Farrokhad, in a car wreck. Also, now, Simin Behbahani (b. 1927), the lioness of Iran, a master of ghazals (but I have not find anything after two or three times in the net... Am so ignorant). I now recall this girl from Iran in Huntsville, AL, whose name was Ghazal. I now see... Her name is the name of a form of poem... Like Carmen, right?
Photo: Forough Farrokhaz, from The Poor Mouth blog, jams o donnel.
I will leave this to-day poem here, a true hymn, effective, provocative, full of hope (Parvin Jahanbani):
"I am a woman
Who has not buried love alive in her body
The desert that screams: Rain on me.
My heart is heavy
I am a woman
Banished from the abode of the gods.
Let the green-tongued ones of unknown love
Reproach Raba'a and Forugh.
Women who
Love the raw passion of love
Women who, with their pains, cannot be confined
Women who do not hide
Their feelings in the corners of their scarves or behind their veils
Or under the carpet".
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Like the shining sun, full of color and scent"
(Firdausi, The Book of Kings, AD 1010).
**
I've heard about Persian love poetry before. This is below, for example, the forbidden love of two lovers as told by Gurgani (s. XI), Vis and Ramin (The British Museum Press):
"Around Vis Ramin put his arm
Like a golden necklace around a tall fair cypress.
If they were seen from Paradise
No one would have been more beautiful
The bed full of flowers and precious stones
The pillows full of musk and ambers
Lips upon lips, and face turned to face
Playful like a ball in a field
The closeness, holding the beloved,
Turned their two bodies into one -
If rain had fallen on these two fair bodies
A raindrop would not have moistened their chest".
Of course, it is a pity that I can't read Farsi. (Well, I can only read Spanish and English, with certain limitations in both languages). And even if I could, I doubt I could read poems like this. What a pity! It is nice, though, to know that certain languages are not to be learned to be spoken, but just to be read. That makes the whole thing much simpler. If you are shy or unsocial, that will help. I am targeting at learning French and German at least, in this way. Also, Arabic, just to read... When? That's a different story.
"Modern Persian poetry has abandoned the traditional modes and moved to free verse". Among the newcomers are some women to be found, I read. Particularly, two of them, Parvin Etesami (1906 - 41) and Forough Farrokhad (1935 - 67). It is striking how young both of them died. Etsemani, from Typhus or some fevers related to it; Farrokhad, in a car wreck. Also, now, Simin Behbahani (b. 1927), the lioness of Iran, a master of ghazals (but I have not find anything after two or three times in the net... Am so ignorant). I now recall this girl from Iran in Huntsville, AL, whose name was Ghazal. I now see... Her name is the name of a form of poem... Like Carmen, right?
I will leave this to-day poem here, a true hymn, effective, provocative, full of hope (Parvin Jahanbani):
"I am a woman
Who has not buried love alive in her body
The desert that screams: Rain on me.
My heart is heavy
I am a woman
Banished from the abode of the gods.
Let the green-tongued ones of unknown love
Reproach Raba'a and Forugh.
Women who
Love the raw passion of love
Women who, with their pains, cannot be confined
Women who do not hide
Their feelings in the corners of their scarves or behind their veils
Or under the carpet".
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Isabeles Imperiales, maravedies and coffee for only 80 reales
Since I am here in London, one noticeable thing I have been warned about, like a dark, urban legend spread through the air, is people's tendency to steal from others. "Be aware, gents, thieves visit this pub. Keep your belongings close to you", you frequently read. School is terrible, UCL, I mean. So much security, badges, bar-code and e-password doors. But, still, people steal. I don't like a bit the manner in which this problem is address. Victims tend to conceal and lock their properties in cabinets, "keep it in your pocket", you are said. Well, of course, I will; however, everybody seems to miss the fact that he who commits the crime is the thief: an act, the stealing, againts the law, an offense against the wellfare of people. He who commints the ofense against someone else's property should be prosecuted. However, this does not seem to be the case. What would you expect from a school who will do nothing against students who occupy a public building?
It is shocking and terribly aggravating to me.
The respect for other's property or, better, the lack of respect for other's properties is a majestatic problem, the open door to all sorts of disgraces. Not in vain, I venture to say, universal religions, cultures and phisolophical schemes set the "do not steal" at the same level and next to the "do not kill". A crime against life is of the same "order of magnitude" as a crime against human life.
**
So, as I was unable to find the number-5 Allen key that I needed this morning to continue my work, I had to step outside and bought a complete set of Hex keys. "Metric or imperial", the man said. I bought a set of each... So, the British refer to their units as "imperial". How nice!
It came to me then that, in case of the euro thing finally falling apart sooner or later, Spain should come back to its imperial currencies. La peseta is already gone and is set in a time where Imperial Spain was crumbled down. So I suggest to use La Isabel Imperial. One of these would account for 1000 maravedies. And one maravedi is made of 100 reales. Don't you think it would be nice? Los reales, the lower in value, could be of copper and have the face of Julio Fandino on it, so the English will go and fuck themselves anytime they have a cup of coffee in Tarifa, Marbella o Mayorca. I would love to see them pay in the hotel: "It will be 1 isabel and 5 maravedies with 13 reales".
**
Ok, now, time to sleep, little boy, no need to feel sour... Sweet dreams in the valley of the Shenandoah... "O, Shenandoah, I love your daughter"... Hope you will find your Beatrice.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
It is shocking and terribly aggravating to me.
The respect for other's property or, better, the lack of respect for other's properties is a majestatic problem, the open door to all sorts of disgraces. Not in vain, I venture to say, universal religions, cultures and phisolophical schemes set the "do not steal" at the same level and next to the "do not kill". A crime against life is of the same "order of magnitude" as a crime against human life.
**
So, as I was unable to find the number-5 Allen key that I needed this morning to continue my work, I had to step outside and bought a complete set of Hex keys. "Metric or imperial", the man said. I bought a set of each... So, the British refer to their units as "imperial". How nice!
It came to me then that, in case of the euro thing finally falling apart sooner or later, Spain should come back to its imperial currencies. La peseta is already gone and is set in a time where Imperial Spain was crumbled down. So I suggest to use La Isabel Imperial. One of these would account for 1000 maravedies. And one maravedi is made of 100 reales. Don't you think it would be nice? Los reales, the lower in value, could be of copper and have the face of Julio Fandino on it, so the English will go and fuck themselves anytime they have a cup of coffee in Tarifa, Marbella o Mayorca. I would love to see them pay in the hotel: "It will be 1 isabel and 5 maravedies with 13 reales".
**
Ok, now, time to sleep, little boy, no need to feel sour... Sweet dreams in the valley of the Shenandoah... "O, Shenandoah, I love your daughter"... Hope you will find your Beatrice.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Sunday, February 13, 2011
A-weeping on a bright summer's day
I have read today in Steve Roud's London Lore an interesting statement about some children's games going on in Camden Town in the early 20th century: "But there are girls playing there too, and it is they who 'bring a spice of poetry into the games of street'". The following extract is from Edwin Pugh's The City of the World (c. 1912). It is sooo sweet:
"Poor Jenny is a-weeping, a-weeping, a-weeping
Poor Jenny is a-weeping, on a bright summer's day
On the carpet you shall kneel
While the grass grows in the field
Stand up, stand up upon your feet
Choose the one you love so sweet
Choose once, choose twice, choose three times over!
There is a pause. Now a little boy and a big girl stand demurely, with linked hands, in the middle of the ring of dancing children. They circle round, singing
Now you're married I wish you joy
First a girl and then a boy
Seven years after son and daughter
Pray and cuddle and kiss together!
Kiss her once, kiss her twice, kiss her three times over!
The boy and girl embrace shyly. The girl kisses the boy on the cheek".
**
If you know similar children's plays and lyrics on love and marriage, whatever they are from, please, post them. I love this kind of stuff.
"Poor Jenny is a-weeping, a-weeping, a-weeping
Poor Jenny is a-weeping, on a bright summer's day
On the carpet you shall kneel
While the grass grows in the field
Stand up, stand up upon your feet
Choose the one you love so sweet
Choose once, choose twice, choose three times over!
There is a pause. Now a little boy and a big girl stand demurely, with linked hands, in the middle of the ring of dancing children. They circle round, singing
Now you're married I wish you joy
First a girl and then a boy
Seven years after son and daughter
Pray and cuddle and kiss together!
Kiss her once, kiss her twice, kiss her three times over!
The boy and girl embrace shyly. The girl kisses the boy on the cheek".
**
If you know similar children's plays and lyrics on love and marriage, whatever they are from, please, post them. I love this kind of stuff.
The missed occasion of Stephen Whitaker
Last Thursday, the 10th of February, Stephen Whitaker was declared Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Salamanca. His name was familiar even for me, who got my Bs.D. skipping as much as I could on the whole thing. His curriculum is impressive. He is not very, very old, not as much as I thought. Got his Bs.D. in Ch.E. in 1954, University of California in Berkeley. He is one of the pioneers of the concept and development of Unit Operations in academia, as he tells. Then, after completing his Ms.D. and Ph.D. in the University of Delaware, made an outstanding career from the University of California in Davis into the world, literally. Professors M. A. Galan Serrano and R. L. Cerro, about 15 years younger (one generation), met in Davis and took courses with Whitaker. I owe both of them my going into the US. I owe much to Cerro.
I've read Dr. Whitaker's speech prior to receive the award. One would expect a powerful and moving piece of testimony after more than 50 years of excellence of work and life in several countries. Instead, one read four pages full of weak arguments, half-developed ideas and inconsistencies, plus incomplete lines of thought stuffed with ecological misjudgements. Any freshman student, 18 years-old could have written it. I really don't understand. Had me cold feet.
Whitaker says (I translate):
"While Rachel Carson awaken the conscience of the world about the small, continuous impact of manufactured products, Union Carbide showed the not-at-all silence industrial impact of Bhopal, India, 1984. (...) Security technicians, considered second-class citizens (sic) in the chemical plants, were considered in a much different way after Bhopal".
It is ok to talk about Carson. I guess it is of good memory for Whitaker. In 1962 I guess he was about 30 and in an ascending point in his career, the place where the sun starts to show some light, and you feel that you are the builder who will make the world stand out of its ruins again. However, Mr. Whitaker, Bhopal was an accident. No one wanted it. It was not on purpose. It was not even the results of repeated bad practices.
The terrible disaster of Bhopal was due to negligence and, thus, individual responsibilities could be found. Indeed, although less severe in terms of human casualties, the accidental escape of TCDD in Seveso years before, in 1976, really turn the hinges of political conscience. Individual responsibilities were found as well.
I tend to think in an overall sense that humans have always try their best until they found and could practice a better way of doing things. It is a nice way of putting it _I learnt that while working for Pall Corp. And therefore, I don't believe very much that security engineers were considered a "second-class" individuals in chemical plants in the early times. Probably they had responsibilities in accordance to what it was understood at the time. To imply that the quest for economical benefits in detriment of safety requirements was what really was happening by then, as Whitaker implies, is hard to believe, and moral and intellectually dishonest.
Evil is human, as human as tears, love or languages are, and has a tremendous capacity to expand and corrupt and take over human spirits. Men of all civilization have found a way to fight it, cast it, keep it at bay, conquer and control it, overall. Individual men are day by day hunted and devoured and burn by evil. It is present in all parcels of life, all professions, all activities to which a human man endeavour himself and, still, the overall man can progress as much as he manage to keep it under his feet, under constant supervision. But the individual man is condemned to fight it with no guarantee every minute of the hour for an entire life.
Therefore, to imply, as Whitaker does, that evil is inherent to chemical plants or chemical production is misleading and only partially true, and sounds ill-intended. It is shocking that someone like him says so. I wonder why... I wonder if I am mistaken in this analysis... .
I give you another example:
"As the world population increases and oil reserves are depleted, chemical engineers have expanded their areas of influence from chemical plants in 1952 to biochemistry and biomedical engineering, industrial hygiene, food and environmental engineering and activities related to vineyard harvest and production".
The line of argumentation is so weak, so careless... What got to the head of this man?
This one is particularly childish, as he did not specify what Universities can offer:
"Our students need certain things and the University can provide them better than any other institution".
He also says:
"On another hand, the Chemical Engineer must deal with and solve the conflict between benefit, security and environmental responsibility. Here, the University must provide a solid, moral basis".
Of course, although vague and subliminally (dishonestly), Whitaker is referring to economical benefit; even more, to the economical benefit of some people, namely the rich and clever and wicked chemical plants administrators. But, I say, what about the benefits of the customers, all benefits that, from chemical plants, people obtain? Isn't it of capital importance to them their economical benefit? What shall prevail: the benefit of humans or the benefits of the "environment"? Is it possible to give a categorical answer to this question? Evil will get to every side of the road, like pressure reaches all blobs of fluid in a pipe, and it is no nice either to impose a tremendous burden on people to obtain petty, doubtful or unmeasurable benefits for the environment. This can happen. This is happen. Who is going to prevent us from it?
The majority of people tend to do things when they expect something in return. In other words, they are willing to provide a service and exchange it by something else they cannot provide or prefer not to. I like this approach rather than claiming to moral responsibilities. It seems to me that moral concepts are not very rational, strictly speaking. They might damp the individual creativity and freedom of thinking. Who is going to set the moral standards? Politicians? Philosophers? Law men? International United Councils? Against what reference those standards shall be tested? What guarantees do we have of their fairness?
Too complicated questions. Too complex. It is so why I am surprised that a clever mind as Whitaker's has dispatched them in a unreasonable, biased and simple manner.
Chemical Engineers do a beautiful job, as engineers generally do, regardless their focus or activities. The work in industries, plants, production areas and as in any other areas where dozens of agents work is fascinating and, unfortunately, students in Universities of Spain do not have a chance to guess it, to take a glance at it. Neither do they have a clear idea of what to do expect from their lives, or the whys and whens and hows.
You, Mr. Whitaker, has seen the inners of the beautiful and miraculous structure of human production; has been faithful and eminently successful to a profession for half a century; has loved Sue since before I was born; luckily you have weathered the storms of life. Please, show this! Talk about this! Jerk torrents of tears from our eyes and move our hearts!... That is exactly what we need: a little of humanity.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
I've read Dr. Whitaker's speech prior to receive the award. One would expect a powerful and moving piece of testimony after more than 50 years of excellence of work and life in several countries. Instead, one read four pages full of weak arguments, half-developed ideas and inconsistencies, plus incomplete lines of thought stuffed with ecological misjudgements. Any freshman student, 18 years-old could have written it. I really don't understand. Had me cold feet.
Whitaker says (I translate):
"While Rachel Carson awaken the conscience of the world about the small, continuous impact of manufactured products, Union Carbide showed the not-at-all silence industrial impact of Bhopal, India, 1984. (...) Security technicians, considered second-class citizens (sic) in the chemical plants, were considered in a much different way after Bhopal".
It is ok to talk about Carson. I guess it is of good memory for Whitaker. In 1962 I guess he was about 30 and in an ascending point in his career, the place where the sun starts to show some light, and you feel that you are the builder who will make the world stand out of its ruins again. However, Mr. Whitaker, Bhopal was an accident. No one wanted it. It was not on purpose. It was not even the results of repeated bad practices.
The terrible disaster of Bhopal was due to negligence and, thus, individual responsibilities could be found. Indeed, although less severe in terms of human casualties, the accidental escape of TCDD in Seveso years before, in 1976, really turn the hinges of political conscience. Individual responsibilities were found as well.
I tend to think in an overall sense that humans have always try their best until they found and could practice a better way of doing things. It is a nice way of putting it _I learnt that while working for Pall Corp. And therefore, I don't believe very much that security engineers were considered a "second-class" individuals in chemical plants in the early times. Probably they had responsibilities in accordance to what it was understood at the time. To imply that the quest for economical benefits in detriment of safety requirements was what really was happening by then, as Whitaker implies, is hard to believe, and moral and intellectually dishonest.
Evil is human, as human as tears, love or languages are, and has a tremendous capacity to expand and corrupt and take over human spirits. Men of all civilization have found a way to fight it, cast it, keep it at bay, conquer and control it, overall. Individual men are day by day hunted and devoured and burn by evil. It is present in all parcels of life, all professions, all activities to which a human man endeavour himself and, still, the overall man can progress as much as he manage to keep it under his feet, under constant supervision. But the individual man is condemned to fight it with no guarantee every minute of the hour for an entire life.
Therefore, to imply, as Whitaker does, that evil is inherent to chemical plants or chemical production is misleading and only partially true, and sounds ill-intended. It is shocking that someone like him says so. I wonder why... I wonder if I am mistaken in this analysis... .
I give you another example:
"As the world population increases and oil reserves are depleted, chemical engineers have expanded their areas of influence from chemical plants in 1952 to biochemistry and biomedical engineering, industrial hygiene, food and environmental engineering and activities related to vineyard harvest and production".
The line of argumentation is so weak, so careless... What got to the head of this man?
This one is particularly childish, as he did not specify what Universities can offer:
"Our students need certain things and the University can provide them better than any other institution".
He also says:
"On another hand, the Chemical Engineer must deal with and solve the conflict between benefit, security and environmental responsibility. Here, the University must provide a solid, moral basis".
Of course, although vague and subliminally (dishonestly), Whitaker is referring to economical benefit; even more, to the economical benefit of some people, namely the rich and clever and wicked chemical plants administrators. But, I say, what about the benefits of the customers, all benefits that, from chemical plants, people obtain? Isn't it of capital importance to them their economical benefit? What shall prevail: the benefit of humans or the benefits of the "environment"? Is it possible to give a categorical answer to this question? Evil will get to every side of the road, like pressure reaches all blobs of fluid in a pipe, and it is no nice either to impose a tremendous burden on people to obtain petty, doubtful or unmeasurable benefits for the environment. This can happen. This is happen. Who is going to prevent us from it?
The majority of people tend to do things when they expect something in return. In other words, they are willing to provide a service and exchange it by something else they cannot provide or prefer not to. I like this approach rather than claiming to moral responsibilities. It seems to me that moral concepts are not very rational, strictly speaking. They might damp the individual creativity and freedom of thinking. Who is going to set the moral standards? Politicians? Philosophers? Law men? International United Councils? Against what reference those standards shall be tested? What guarantees do we have of their fairness?
Too complicated questions. Too complex. It is so why I am surprised that a clever mind as Whitaker's has dispatched them in a unreasonable, biased and simple manner.
Chemical Engineers do a beautiful job, as engineers generally do, regardless their focus or activities. The work in industries, plants, production areas and as in any other areas where dozens of agents work is fascinating and, unfortunately, students in Universities of Spain do not have a chance to guess it, to take a glance at it. Neither do they have a clear idea of what to do expect from their lives, or the whys and whens and hows.
You, Mr. Whitaker, has seen the inners of the beautiful and miraculous structure of human production; has been faithful and eminently successful to a profession for half a century; has loved Sue since before I was born; luckily you have weathered the storms of life. Please, show this! Talk about this! Jerk torrents of tears from our eyes and move our hearts!... That is exactly what we need: a little of humanity.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Saturday, February 12, 2011
A 150-character hole beneath your feet
In 1998 The 48 Laws of Power came to light. There is a curious interview with Robert Green in you tube. Look for it. The 4th law, "Always Say Less Than Necessary", starts with a Leonardo Da Vinci's tale as a preface:
"A crab saw from his observation post that the oyster was completely open at the full moon, and decided to eat him.
The following night, when the oyster opened, the crab put a pebble inside.
The oyster immediately tried to close again, but was prevented by the stone.
Moral: This happens to anyone who opens his mouth to tell his secrets. There is always an ear ready to receive them". (lairweb.org.nz)
The art of talking too much is said "to babble" in English. In Spain we say: "Por la boca muere el pez" o "En boca cerrada no entran moscas". In this country, a couple of public characters have been in controversial circumstances as they failed to hold their tongues in twitter. In fact, one of them, tied to El Pais, dare to deny the Holocaust, stupid thing!, he paid that with his job. The other, a well-known reality host on TV blurted out to a lady who labeled his show as bullshit-crap-TV (telebasura): "Bullshit-crap would be your fucking, slut mother". If this out-of-control, blunt remark is of any consequence to this man, we will see.
I have no idea what the benefits of twitter might be, never though about it. M. told me today that you can say things via message of no more than 150 characters. Wow! That's an amazing thing: 150-characters are enough to make your world crumble. How fast the whole castle of yours is torn down! 150 characters are as pincers of a huge crab getting to your silly, foolish oyster body.
The sorrow can still be aggravated. You never know what might happen to twitter. Will it be out of fashion in 2 years? One? Five, perhaps? And even if it continues, what would be its form and use and aims? There is nothing worse than becoming victim of a temporary circumstance. I always recall the image of driving in a highway and that, suddenly, it starts pouring cats and dogs, like oceans and skies swapping places. Front window-pane wipers at full speed and, still, the rear lights of the preceding car are hardly visible. 20 or 30 miles and hour. It is so easy to smash the hell out of you, then! And all at once, as sudden as before, everything becomes clear, sunny and all, and that's it. Oh, boy, if something happens to you in those ten minutes, what pity, what a shame, what a pain.
It is (sort of) the same feeling of getting drunk as mad in the time of a tender night and deceitful sweetness, a realm of weakness and vulnerability, sin and sadness, when conscience is casted out. And you do things that you will later regret. After a while, perhaps just a few hours later, the whole place is deserted, wiped out, and instead of a smile, the world and its inhabitants show you its darkest and most severe countenance. And the wrong prevails, irreversibly. And you get depressed and crossed... Well, I do.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Friday, February 11, 2011
Too many need a prayer
In 1982 I was a happy child.
S
o
m
e
w
e
r
e
n
o
t
Not children, some felt as I might feel now sometimes. I am not better than them, they are not better than me.
Let me get back to Whitesnake. In 1982, David Coverdale sang this:
I don't know where I am going
But I sure know where I've been
Hanging on the promises
In songs of yesterday.
**
Tho' I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I'm looking for
Oh, Lord, I pray
You give me strength to carry on.
Photo: thanmoreseries.wordpress.com
Not many would admit it.
But too many need a prayer.
To forgive the outcasts of life
To sublimate all chances departured
To bear the barren soil of desponding dreams
To make up with our selves
To become radical
To polished the pieces of our mirrored image and become one
To love our self
To respect our self.
It has always being so and it will always be.
Indeed, too many do pray.
(LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
S
o
m
e
w
e
r
e
n
o
t
Not children, some felt as I might feel now sometimes. I am not better than them, they are not better than me.
Let me get back to Whitesnake. In 1982, David Coverdale sang this:
I don't know where I am going
But I sure know where I've been
Hanging on the promises
In songs of yesterday.
**
Tho' I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I'm looking for
Oh, Lord, I pray
You give me strength to carry on.
Not many would admit it.
But too many need a prayer.
To forgive the outcasts of life
To sublimate all chances departured
To bear the barren soil of desponding dreams
To make up with our selves
To become radical
To polished the pieces of our mirrored image and become one
To love our self
To respect our self.
It has always being so and it will always be.
Indeed, too many do pray.
(LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
So hard to bear, the ugly road
It is so hard to go against the established. In a double sense. It is not only that you need to have the strength to defend your position every day on and on but also, first, you must find evidence of your claim and prove it to you as to be satisfied. And that is to me real hard. Any traces of a different way of thinking are normally obliterated and if not, the path is so hard to walk. Too much lonely and hesitating.
It is thus impressive to find characters who did follow the ugly road.
The account of Rousseau that Paul Johnson offers in Intellectuals is devastating, just so hard to bear. Why is it possible that such a clear portrait has not been showed before? Why is it ignored now?
The opening epigraph of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is as much impressive:
PERICLES OF ATHENS (about 430 B.C.): "Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it".
PLATO OF ATHENS (about 80 years later): "The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither our zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and and in the midst of peace -to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smaller matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals... Only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.
Here there are two clear, modern-fashion statements. Why was I showed both authors as old fools, with no connection whatsoever with the real life? Pure moldy philosophic crap? Dark and dead, motionless and rotten knowledge?
It has to be one to walk the ugly road and to blow the fairy dust upon the corpse of official knowledge, so something came to life and start making some sense.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
It is thus impressive to find characters who did follow the ugly road.
The account of Rousseau that Paul Johnson offers in Intellectuals is devastating, just so hard to bear. Why is it possible that such a clear portrait has not been showed before? Why is it ignored now?
The opening epigraph of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is as much impressive:
PERICLES OF ATHENS (about 430 B.C.): "Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it".
PLATO OF ATHENS (about 80 years later): "The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither our zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and and in the midst of peace -to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smaller matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals... Only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.
Here there are two clear, modern-fashion statements. Why was I showed both authors as old fools, with no connection whatsoever with the real life? Pure moldy philosophic crap? Dark and dead, motionless and rotten knowledge?
It has to be one to walk the ugly road and to blow the fairy dust upon the corpse of official knowledge, so something came to life and start making some sense.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
"The Fighter", I'd say
"The Fighter" is a nice movie. I keep thinking why there is such a fuss about "The King's Speech". I watched both movies at the Odeon Theatre in Muswell Hill and I did not feel with "The King" a tenth of what I did with "The Fighter".
Perhaps, it is because "The Fighter" tells a story, and you know that movies are not stories anymore. "The Fighter" is a tough story and very well told. The work of the actors is wonderful. They throw into the screen characters absolutely real, humans suffering out from their weaknesses and striving to show that dim light of heroism that all of us have. They are no more than anyone of us. None of us is more than them. The set-up is great, make-up and costumes, light and photos. Even the script and Whitesnake. I can't stop recalling images in my mind of all that white trash, brother and sisters and the terrible mother; their sins, violence, miseries and petty satisfactions; their cowardice and lack of self-respect, the crack as usurper of the pretended heavenly bliss, the jail and the arguments... . The tatoo on the College, lucky girl's back, who works too much in bars, but has the power to restore other's dreams. I love the way characters freely get mad and sick and crazy, and the way others just take it as freely. I like the sad sense of humor travelling through an invisible line, parallel to that of the story, always leaving a fading, bitter-sweet smile in your face. Each character's live is a fighting, but despite all dead-ends, you can see always a delicate stream of light at the end of the corridor, an opportunity for redemption. Everything is possible, that's the American heritage I praise a lot. I don't know what else to say and am tired. Today, I will go to bed as to sleep at least 7 hours.
Go and see it.
A movie for all with flesh-made hearts, able to get damaged and ruined... Touched and recovered.
That's my bet for the Oscar's. I'm all in!
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Perhaps, it is because "The Fighter" tells a story, and you know that movies are not stories anymore. "The Fighter" is a tough story and very well told. The work of the actors is wonderful. They throw into the screen characters absolutely real, humans suffering out from their weaknesses and striving to show that dim light of heroism that all of us have. They are no more than anyone of us. None of us is more than them. The set-up is great, make-up and costumes, light and photos. Even the script and Whitesnake. I can't stop recalling images in my mind of all that white trash, brother and sisters and the terrible mother; their sins, violence, miseries and petty satisfactions; their cowardice and lack of self-respect, the crack as usurper of the pretended heavenly bliss, the jail and the arguments... . The tatoo on the College, lucky girl's back, who works too much in bars, but has the power to restore other's dreams. I love the way characters freely get mad and sick and crazy, and the way others just take it as freely. I like the sad sense of humor travelling through an invisible line, parallel to that of the story, always leaving a fading, bitter-sweet smile in your face. Each character's live is a fighting, but despite all dead-ends, you can see always a delicate stream of light at the end of the corridor, an opportunity for redemption. Everything is possible, that's the American heritage I praise a lot. I don't know what else to say and am tired. Today, I will go to bed as to sleep at least 7 hours.
Go and see it.
A movie for all with flesh-made hearts, able to get damaged and ruined... Touched and recovered.
That's my bet for the Oscar's. I'm all in!
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
A Sunday afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery (2)
In entering room 28, I was struck in awe as I saw Giovanni Boldini's Lady Colin Campbell portrait. She looks fresh, sexy, young. According to her husband, the youngest son of the Duke of Argyll, the lady was a slut. I must say, however, that it is a pity not to be a slut looking so gorgeous. Oh, woman, do as you please. Your grace is your ransom. I loved the portrait and even now as I have in front of me, I can see how easy must have been to fell in love with this woman.
"Lady Colin Campbell", Giovanni Boldini (1897).
National Portrait Gallery, oil on canvas.
**
I felt curious about the The kit-cat club. No idea about it. I climbed again the stairs in to the second floor, room 9. There is in display the 42 portraits by Godfrey Kneller of such many members of the club. During the period 1702 - 1714, these gentlemen formed a clear opposition to Queen Anne. Whig politicians, and Protestant supporters, they used to meet at Christopher Cat's tavern, near the Temple Bar, famous for its mutton pies, known as kit-cats.
**
Later, somewhere, I gazed at Ethel Gabain's canvas portrait of Alexander Fleming (1944). The sons of the Great Britain shall try to forgive me for being an skeptical or, rather, a clear opponent to the vast popular recognition that has draw this man. Fleming did observe, did recognize, did convert accident in science, did had the daring occurrence of thinking, but he did not help to bring penicillin to the common man, absolutely not. In fact, that was his failure. He attempted to purify the Penicilium for a while as to make it parenteral and failed. But, indeed, the success of such endeavor was needed in order to develop a powerful and effective antibiotic for masses.
I read one Fleming's biography one or two years ago, out of an old book of my grandmother _Don't remember the author nor the publisher. Have it in a box, in a dark corner of a long-term storage in Salamanca. Fleming worked with several students in attempting the aforementioned purification, but it did not work out. The students moved later to different posts and positions related only by chance with the subject they covered with Sir Alexander. Perhaps, as it happens today all the time, those young fellows did not have very clear minds upon what to do with their lives: day-dreaming, the nowadays disease of the young. I suffer from it at periods!
My impression is that Fleming was a shy, not very eloquent scientist, unable to convince her colleagues that investing time and money in searching the parenteral penicillin was worthwide. I guess he lost interest and from that time on he start spending more time playing golf, swimming and falling in love with a young student of his. The marvellous case is that the mold swifted in Fleming's medium culture in 1927 and the first experiments were done in the UK with a policeman early in the 40s by Oxford scholars, Howard Flo and Ernst Chain. They actually found the way through liofilization and set the American machine and business mind into motion. I have always argued that 10 years could have been spared, if only Fleming would have showed braveness and social skills.
Gabain's portrait shows a true feature of Sir Alexander: you can see a man bent over a overcrowded table with test tubes, Petri dishes, probettes, and just a small space, no more than one squared inch, to write or repose his elbows. That was Fleming: a chronic untidy and careless man. He himself acknowledges it! During the 40s, Fleming was invited to visit the brand-new labs of Pfizer in US (Pfizer was the first company to produce penicillin at an industrial scale). All was clean and shiny, tidy and polished, not a 40-micron dust particle. Upon his entrance, Fleming commented: "If my lab had been so tidy and clean, I would have never discovered penicillin".
The early years of Fleming are much more interesting, especially his hard-working days as a student, counting microbes at the dim light of a microscope until late in the night, day after day, and his contributions as a field doctor during The Great War. I was impressed at his very simple and cheap experiments (but immensely elegant) with hand-made pieces of glass to show the inadequacy of current antiseptics to cure war injuries.
**
Regarding writers in the turn of the century, I shall remember here the portrait of Henry James (1843 - 1916) in room 29 and his A Portrait of a Lady, a book that might interest me for the opposition it settles between the UK and US. (James said that "he could come back to US... To die").
The portrait of Lytton Strachey (1880 - 1932) by Dora Carrington, reading on his bed is nice. I shall read his Eminent Victorians (1918).
**
I came to think that if you combine in a cocktail vase Augustus John and the tetric Mervyn Peake, in the way they look in their portraits, and shake it, you get Johnny Depp. The self-portrait and Churchill's portrait (1927) by Walter Sickert (1860 - 1942) are nice. Sickert was founder of the Camden Town group, a club of 11 members working in rented rooms in Candem. There are a group of large, large paintings with generals and high-leveled officials during The Great War in which the Maharaja Bikaner appears... It looks so exotic!
**
Let me mention as well the paintings on the photograph negatives by Alexander Bassano of the dancing girls in the Alhambra and Empire Theatres in Leicester Square around 1910 - 1913. Dame Adeline, Tamara, Maud, Topsey, Lydia, Unity, Carlotta, Elise, Gina, etc., etc. I liked the names... The name of a dancing girl named Topsey... I think it is nice and fully evocative of a thousand sins and pleasures and human stories.
I saw more things, but I will save you the nuisance of hearing more... Just a little prize for bearing with me until the end.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
National Portrait Gallery, oil on canvas.
**
I felt curious about the The kit-cat club. No idea about it. I climbed again the stairs in to the second floor, room 9. There is in display the 42 portraits by Godfrey Kneller of such many members of the club. During the period 1702 - 1714, these gentlemen formed a clear opposition to Queen Anne. Whig politicians, and Protestant supporters, they used to meet at Christopher Cat's tavern, near the Temple Bar, famous for its mutton pies, known as kit-cats.
**
Later, somewhere, I gazed at Ethel Gabain's canvas portrait of Alexander Fleming (1944). The sons of the Great Britain shall try to forgive me for being an skeptical or, rather, a clear opponent to the vast popular recognition that has draw this man. Fleming did observe, did recognize, did convert accident in science, did had the daring occurrence of thinking, but he did not help to bring penicillin to the common man, absolutely not. In fact, that was his failure. He attempted to purify the Penicilium for a while as to make it parenteral and failed. But, indeed, the success of such endeavor was needed in order to develop a powerful and effective antibiotic for masses.
I read one Fleming's biography one or two years ago, out of an old book of my grandmother _Don't remember the author nor the publisher. Have it in a box, in a dark corner of a long-term storage in Salamanca. Fleming worked with several students in attempting the aforementioned purification, but it did not work out. The students moved later to different posts and positions related only by chance with the subject they covered with Sir Alexander. Perhaps, as it happens today all the time, those young fellows did not have very clear minds upon what to do with their lives: day-dreaming, the nowadays disease of the young. I suffer from it at periods!
My impression is that Fleming was a shy, not very eloquent scientist, unable to convince her colleagues that investing time and money in searching the parenteral penicillin was worthwide. I guess he lost interest and from that time on he start spending more time playing golf, swimming and falling in love with a young student of his. The marvellous case is that the mold swifted in Fleming's medium culture in 1927 and the first experiments were done in the UK with a policeman early in the 40s by Oxford scholars, Howard Flo and Ernst Chain. They actually found the way through liofilization and set the American machine and business mind into motion. I have always argued that 10 years could have been spared, if only Fleming would have showed braveness and social skills.
Gabain's portrait shows a true feature of Sir Alexander: you can see a man bent over a overcrowded table with test tubes, Petri dishes, probettes, and just a small space, no more than one squared inch, to write or repose his elbows. That was Fleming: a chronic untidy and careless man. He himself acknowledges it! During the 40s, Fleming was invited to visit the brand-new labs of Pfizer in US (Pfizer was the first company to produce penicillin at an industrial scale). All was clean and shiny, tidy and polished, not a 40-micron dust particle. Upon his entrance, Fleming commented: "If my lab had been so tidy and clean, I would have never discovered penicillin".
The early years of Fleming are much more interesting, especially his hard-working days as a student, counting microbes at the dim light of a microscope until late in the night, day after day, and his contributions as a field doctor during The Great War. I was impressed at his very simple and cheap experiments (but immensely elegant) with hand-made pieces of glass to show the inadequacy of current antiseptics to cure war injuries.
**
Regarding writers in the turn of the century, I shall remember here the portrait of Henry James (1843 - 1916) in room 29 and his A Portrait of a Lady, a book that might interest me for the opposition it settles between the UK and US. (James said that "he could come back to US... To die").
The portrait of Lytton Strachey (1880 - 1932) by Dora Carrington, reading on his bed is nice. I shall read his Eminent Victorians (1918).
**
I came to think that if you combine in a cocktail vase Augustus John and the tetric Mervyn Peake, in the way they look in their portraits, and shake it, you get Johnny Depp. The self-portrait and Churchill's portrait (1927) by Walter Sickert (1860 - 1942) are nice. Sickert was founder of the Camden Town group, a club of 11 members working in rented rooms in Candem. There are a group of large, large paintings with generals and high-leveled officials during The Great War in which the Maharaja Bikaner appears... It looks so exotic!
**
Let me mention as well the paintings on the photograph negatives by Alexander Bassano of the dancing girls in the Alhambra and Empire Theatres in Leicester Square around 1910 - 1913. Dame Adeline, Tamara, Maud, Topsey, Lydia, Unity, Carlotta, Elise, Gina, etc., etc. I liked the names... The name of a dancing girl named Topsey... I think it is nice and fully evocative of a thousand sins and pleasures and human stories.
I saw more things, but I will save you the nuisance of hearing more... Just a little prize for bearing with me until the end.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Monday, February 7, 2011
A Sunday afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery (1)
In the first floor of the National Portrait Gallery Building, room 26 (one out of the 9 dedicated to The Victorian era) you can find several portraits by the Londoner George F. Watts: the portraits of great figures as reflections of a great nation. That's the link in Watts' intention. It really draw my attention this extract from a letter he wrote and sent to The Times in 1887: "The character of a nation as people of great deeds is one, it appears to me, that should never be lost sight of it".
That is why we, Spaniards, shall never forget ours, nor let anyone have it distorted or mistreated. Check this out: http://blogs.libertaddigital.com/almanaque-de-la-historia-de-espana/
***
I started out my walking in the National Portrait Gallery by running away from the first crowded rooms in the second floor dedicated to the early Tudors, Elizabethan age and The Stuarts, and went down the stairs to take a look at whatever I might find in the Victorian "Science and Technology" section:
- Robert Stevenson (1803 - 59), builder of the first railway between Birmingham and London, among other deeds, and Daniel Gooch, who laid the first telegraph cable between UK and America.
- The famous portrait of Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) by John Collier and that of his "bulldog", Thomas Huxley (1825 - 1895). Apparently Huxley was very interested in matters of education of science and defined Darwin as "the ideal man of Science". Darwin was a shy man who, apparently, intend to set himself aside from later-on controversies. Also, the portrait of Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903).
It as nice to see Faraday's portrait, who is presented as a natural finding of Sir Humphrey Davy. Faraday is referred to as an experimentalist scientist, a man of great insightful thinking who manage to obtain impressive conclusions out of cheap and simple experiments.
I perhaps should study this matter in some detail. One is tempted to think that modern discoveries are bound to the handling of costly pieces of machinery and sophisticated technology as the only way to occur but, however, all-time breakthrough discoveries were in occasions rather simple, and were achieved with quite small sums of money. Although of different levels of significance, I can recall here the aforementioned case of Faraday, and those of Leidenfrost with a hot spoon and Osborne Reynolds on the stability of a stream of ink in a bath of water.
***
I came back to the second floor afterwards and took a glance at the "Science and Industry in the 18th Century" section. An opposed comparison with Faraday's experiments can be set against those of Joseph Priestley. His experiments were funded by the members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, the lunatics. Some portraits of several of its members are displayed in room 13, that of James Watt (1736 - 1819), among them. His condensing steam engine appeared in 1765.
Further on, in room 19, I found interesting the contribution of John London McAdam in devising an effective design to improve significantly the surface of pavements and roads. It would be interesting to learn how this gentleman was able to sell his idea to the Parliament members and put it into practice.
***
The introduction to the Romantics left the thought in me that all generations (from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake or Mary Wollstonecraft to Byron, Keats and Shelley) were a pack of cowards. Perhaps, they search for freedom, but after the sight of Napoleon menace, the horror of war and the emptiness of the after war, sought refuge in landscapes, esoteric places and the inners of mind and soul after .
The life of Ayuba Soleiman Diallo (1701 - 73), a well-unknown figure for me till today, well deserves a check-out. He wrote his slavery adventures in Memoirs (1734), when he was my age.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
That is why we, Spaniards, shall never forget ours, nor let anyone have it distorted or mistreated. Check this out: http://blogs.libertaddigital.com/almanaque-de-la-historia-de-espana/
***
I started out my walking in the National Portrait Gallery by running away from the first crowded rooms in the second floor dedicated to the early Tudors, Elizabethan age and The Stuarts, and went down the stairs to take a look at whatever I might find in the Victorian "Science and Technology" section:
- Robert Stevenson (1803 - 59), builder of the first railway between Birmingham and London, among other deeds, and Daniel Gooch, who laid the first telegraph cable between UK and America.
- The famous portrait of Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) by John Collier and that of his "bulldog", Thomas Huxley (1825 - 1895). Apparently Huxley was very interested in matters of education of science and defined Darwin as "the ideal man of Science". Darwin was a shy man who, apparently, intend to set himself aside from later-on controversies. Also, the portrait of Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903).
It as nice to see Faraday's portrait, who is presented as a natural finding of Sir Humphrey Davy. Faraday is referred to as an experimentalist scientist, a man of great insightful thinking who manage to obtain impressive conclusions out of cheap and simple experiments.
I perhaps should study this matter in some detail. One is tempted to think that modern discoveries are bound to the handling of costly pieces of machinery and sophisticated technology as the only way to occur but, however, all-time breakthrough discoveries were in occasions rather simple, and were achieved with quite small sums of money. Although of different levels of significance, I can recall here the aforementioned case of Faraday, and those of Leidenfrost with a hot spoon and Osborne Reynolds on the stability of a stream of ink in a bath of water.
***
I came back to the second floor afterwards and took a glance at the "Science and Industry in the 18th Century" section. An opposed comparison with Faraday's experiments can be set against those of Joseph Priestley. His experiments were funded by the members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, the lunatics. Some portraits of several of its members are displayed in room 13, that of James Watt (1736 - 1819), among them. His condensing steam engine appeared in 1765.
Further on, in room 19, I found interesting the contribution of John London McAdam in devising an effective design to improve significantly the surface of pavements and roads. It would be interesting to learn how this gentleman was able to sell his idea to the Parliament members and put it into practice.
***
The introduction to the Romantics left the thought in me that all generations (from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake or Mary Wollstonecraft to Byron, Keats and Shelley) were a pack of cowards. Perhaps, they search for freedom, but after the sight of Napoleon menace, the horror of war and the emptiness of the after war, sought refuge in landscapes, esoteric places and the inners of mind and soul after .
The life of Ayuba Soleiman Diallo (1701 - 73), a well-unknown figure for me till today, well deserves a check-out. He wrote his slavery adventures in Memoirs (1734), when he was my age.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Tonight's gonna be a good night
I read in The Kansas City Star that the 45th edition of the Superbowl in the Cowvoys Stadium in Arlington, TX will take place today: Pittsburg Steelers vs Green Bay Packers. Christina Aguilera will be singing the National Anthem and The Black Eyed Peas will be in charged of the half-time performance: "I gotta a feeling _Tonight is gonna be a good night". No doubt!
Ernest Hemingway wrote for The Kansas City Star between 1917 and 1918. He said that the warnings and admnitions of The Kansas sheet style was a major learning for him in the business writing. Take a look at it:
http://www.kansascity.com/static/pdfs/Hemingway_style_sheet.pdf
Ernest Hemingway wrote for The Kansas City Star between 1917 and 1918. He said that the warnings and admnitions of The Kansas sheet style was a major learning for him in the business writing. Take a look at it:
http://www.kansascity.com/static/pdfs/Hemingway_style_sheet.pdf
Friday, February 4, 2011
Watch out the hot spoon!
In 1946 George Orwell published his 11 golden rules to make a perfect cup of tea.
Needless to say, I am usually careless about them when I make my own "tea". Back in Madrid I had one electrical kitchen heater and three gas ones. I always used the electrical, a dry plate which got very, very hot for cooking. I normally let the whole thing boil as it pleased and in many occasions, liquid spurred out of the tea pot neck in splashes, clang to the side and slid down the pot on to the hot plate. The liquid accumulated there; so when I removed the tea from the heat to pour it into the cup (tea-pot effect happened here), the remaining liquid on the plate formed neat, perfect spheres. The spheres moved like crazy in tiny, random movements (like the motion of a plastic ball suspended at a short height from the ground by an air stream), and their sizes were diminishing until they vanished.
I always thought it was kind of cute but really did not put a lot of thought about that.
Today I learned that somebody actually did it _wrong, but did it.. I was in the lab while waiting for any student that might come to ask me questions about the experiment (office hours). I had just checked out this book from the library, brought out by Hemisphere Publishing Company (1981) and was looking over the last chapter: a nice review of the history of gas - liquid flow and heat transfer, by Professor Arthur Bergler. The guy got his PhD from the MIT in 1962.
Johann G. Leidenfrost (1715 - 1794) was a Prusian doctor who, despite his first travels and his work as a field doctor during the first Silesian War, was appointed as a medical professor at the University of Duisburg, a city today to the very west of Germany, north Dusseldorf and close to the Neatherlands border. His work De Acquae Communis Nonnulis Qualitatibus Tractatus, published in 1754 is regarded as the first serious attempt to approach the boiling phenomena.
I wish to draw attention on to this wonderful translation, by Carolyn Wares (1966), University of Oklahoma, I heard:
"On the Fixation of Water in Diverse Fire:
An iron spoon (...) is heated over glowing coals (...) To this glowing spoon (...) send (...) one drop of very pure distilled water (...). This water globule (...) delights in a very swift motion of turning (...). Moreover, this drop only evaporates very slowly (...). When at last exceedingly diminished so that it can hardly any more be seen, with an audible crack, which with the ears one easily hears, it finishes its existence (...) These observations suggest that water is changed into earth by a large fire, because always after the complete evaporation of the drop, some terrestrial matter remains in the heated vessel(...)".
(...) Which with ears one easily hears... . I love it! How much arid is scientific language now! Science must have been just born. It is noticeable, also, that the discovery beyond any doubt of water as a compound was not done until the decade of 1780s, and that gives a nice context for the "fixation" and the alchemical conclusion: water is changed into earth by a large fire. How nice!
It was suggested at the time, as well, for those opposing to the Fixation that dust swinging around the lab might enter the drop and that would be the "terrestrial matter" remaining in the vessel. However, this is hard to believe. Leidenfrost mentions that the drop is prepared from "very pure distilled water". The spoon is polish and free from rust and dirt. What a horrible lab it must have been to convey that appreciable amount of dust in only about 30 seconds (time for the drop to vanish).
Today, it is known that the "terrestrial matter" pertains to crud deposition: corrosion residual unindentified deposit.The Leidenfrost effect is explained by a layer of vapor that forms from rapid contact with a hot surface and that surrounds the liquid in a drop, retarding its boiling time. That steam actually corrodes the metal of the plate in that short time.
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Needless to say, I am usually careless about them when I make my own "tea". Back in Madrid I had one electrical kitchen heater and three gas ones. I always used the electrical, a dry plate which got very, very hot for cooking. I normally let the whole thing boil as it pleased and in many occasions, liquid spurred out of the tea pot neck in splashes, clang to the side and slid down the pot on to the hot plate. The liquid accumulated there; so when I removed the tea from the heat to pour it into the cup (tea-pot effect happened here), the remaining liquid on the plate formed neat, perfect spheres. The spheres moved like crazy in tiny, random movements (like the motion of a plastic ball suspended at a short height from the ground by an air stream), and their sizes were diminishing until they vanished.
I always thought it was kind of cute but really did not put a lot of thought about that.
Today I learned that somebody actually did it _wrong, but did it.. I was in the lab while waiting for any student that might come to ask me questions about the experiment (office hours). I had just checked out this book from the library, brought out by Hemisphere Publishing Company (1981) and was looking over the last chapter: a nice review of the history of gas - liquid flow and heat transfer, by Professor Arthur Bergler. The guy got his PhD from the MIT in 1962.
Johann G. Leidenfrost (1715 - 1794) was a Prusian doctor who, despite his first travels and his work as a field doctor during the first Silesian War, was appointed as a medical professor at the University of Duisburg, a city today to the very west of Germany, north Dusseldorf and close to the Neatherlands border. His work De Acquae Communis Nonnulis Qualitatibus Tractatus, published in 1754 is regarded as the first serious attempt to approach the boiling phenomena.
I wish to draw attention on to this wonderful translation, by Carolyn Wares (1966), University of Oklahoma, I heard:
"On the Fixation of Water in Diverse Fire:
An iron spoon (...) is heated over glowing coals (...) To this glowing spoon (...) send (...) one drop of very pure distilled water (...). This water globule (...) delights in a very swift motion of turning (...). Moreover, this drop only evaporates very slowly (...). When at last exceedingly diminished so that it can hardly any more be seen, with an audible crack, which with the ears one easily hears, it finishes its existence (...) These observations suggest that water is changed into earth by a large fire, because always after the complete evaporation of the drop, some terrestrial matter remains in the heated vessel(...)".
(...) Which with ears one easily hears... . I love it! How much arid is scientific language now! Science must have been just born. It is noticeable, also, that the discovery beyond any doubt of water as a compound was not done until the decade of 1780s, and that gives a nice context for the "fixation" and the alchemical conclusion: water is changed into earth by a large fire. How nice!
It was suggested at the time, as well, for those opposing to the Fixation that dust swinging around the lab might enter the drop and that would be the "terrestrial matter" remaining in the vessel. However, this is hard to believe. Leidenfrost mentions that the drop is prepared from "very pure distilled water". The spoon is polish and free from rust and dirt. What a horrible lab it must have been to convey that appreciable amount of dust in only about 30 seconds (time for the drop to vanish).
Today, it is known that the "terrestrial matter" pertains to crud deposition: corrosion residual unindentified deposit.The Leidenfrost effect is explained by a layer of vapor that forms from rapid contact with a hot surface and that surrounds the liquid in a drop, retarding its boiling time. That steam actually corrodes the metal of the plate in that short time.
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Thursday, February 3, 2011
A nasty thing to talk about
I came to think again today of what the educated is capable of doing. The world would be better if more people had access to high education, it is said. However, the evidence available is, at least, contradictory and confusing: in many occasions are precisely guys leading remarkable lives of achievement, education and social caressing who commit the most unacceptable and atrocious crimes.
The last example I learned today: Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab. He must be 23 or 24 years old now. Studied engineering with business finance at UCL, graduated in 2008, started some studies in Dubai and a course on Arabic language in Yemen. And yet he is awaiting trial in the States for his attempt to blow a plain in Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.
The suggestions that to the UCL Council by an independent panel can be found here (I shall read it sometime):
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/caldicott-enquiry/caldicottreport.pdf
***
The review of London Bombings yesterday made me sad, and sadly remember the bombings in Spain in 2004. The dimensions of the terror were far larger than those in London (192 dead, over 1500 injured and mutilated, 12 different blast locations) but, still, we don't know who did it, with what purpose, on the grounds of what. Yea, of course, Al-Qaeda, the war on Iraq, that's the official version, bullshit. The truth is we don't know, that the case is filled with irregularities and that during the trials, well-known people with high responsibilities lied and committed perjury. Still, many would not believe that, in fact, don't believe that. And time goes on and on and on. And Lady Justice is still to come. What a shame!
The names of the assassins in London are known very, very well, and so are the details of their private lives (Khan's wife miscarry, for instance, what a story!). None is known about the killers in Madrid. Out of the dozens of arrests that promptly followed the bombings, only 3 remain now in prison and, condemned to many thousands of years, the evidence against them is very weak. It really was a coup-d'Etat. Aznar's Administration was wiped out. The Spanish troops removed from Irak at once. Today, PSOE's government is likely to be the worst in history, and has brought Spanish society to crisis, uncertain future and discouragement. The troops are kept in Afghanistan. Not a single Spanish soldier was killed in Irak; the number of casualties in Afghanistan is about 100 (over several years, that's true).
***
The moral key point of the war on terror is the recognition and respect towards its victims. If I had to tell only one human story from the bombings in Madrid, I would not know. Yes, it is written somewhere, I know, but the truth is nobody remembers already. Nobody! That makes me tremendously sad and upset. Anytime I drove Carlos V Square, next to Atocha Station, I got mad with anger. If you go there, find, I repeat, find the ridiculous monument to the victims: a stupid cylindrical piece of plastic or something.
Last thing: Spain has been suffering from ETA terrorism for more than 40 years (the first killing was in 1968). Do not get twisted: the problem is simple and the simpler it gets, the more terrible. ETA is just a gang of coward murderers. Their claims are misleading and untrue. Their actions, atrocious. There is almost no similarity between its case and that of IRA, despite common talking in European media.
A great demonstration is expected this Saturday at 5 pm in Madrid. Try to follow it and I will try to comment a little more sometime next week, if I feel like to.
I gotta go now.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
The last example I learned today: Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab. He must be 23 or 24 years old now. Studied engineering with business finance at UCL, graduated in 2008, started some studies in Dubai and a course on Arabic language in Yemen. And yet he is awaiting trial in the States for his attempt to blow a plain in Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.
The suggestions that to the UCL Council by an independent panel can be found here (I shall read it sometime):
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/caldicott-enquiry/caldicottreport.pdf
***
The review of London Bombings yesterday made me sad, and sadly remember the bombings in Spain in 2004. The dimensions of the terror were far larger than those in London (192 dead, over 1500 injured and mutilated, 12 different blast locations) but, still, we don't know who did it, with what purpose, on the grounds of what. Yea, of course, Al-Qaeda, the war on Iraq, that's the official version, bullshit. The truth is we don't know, that the case is filled with irregularities and that during the trials, well-known people with high responsibilities lied and committed perjury. Still, many would not believe that, in fact, don't believe that. And time goes on and on and on. And Lady Justice is still to come. What a shame!
The names of the assassins in London are known very, very well, and so are the details of their private lives (Khan's wife miscarry, for instance, what a story!). None is known about the killers in Madrid. Out of the dozens of arrests that promptly followed the bombings, only 3 remain now in prison and, condemned to many thousands of years, the evidence against them is very weak. It really was a coup-d'Etat. Aznar's Administration was wiped out. The Spanish troops removed from Irak at once. Today, PSOE's government is likely to be the worst in history, and has brought Spanish society to crisis, uncertain future and discouragement. The troops are kept in Afghanistan. Not a single Spanish soldier was killed in Irak; the number of casualties in Afghanistan is about 100 (over several years, that's true).
***
The moral key point of the war on terror is the recognition and respect towards its victims. If I had to tell only one human story from the bombings in Madrid, I would not know. Yes, it is written somewhere, I know, but the truth is nobody remembers already. Nobody! That makes me tremendously sad and upset. Anytime I drove Carlos V Square, next to Atocha Station, I got mad with anger. If you go there, find, I repeat, find the ridiculous monument to the victims: a stupid cylindrical piece of plastic or something.
Last thing: Spain has been suffering from ETA terrorism for more than 40 years (the first killing was in 1968). Do not get twisted: the problem is simple and the simpler it gets, the more terrible. ETA is just a gang of coward murderers. Their claims are misleading and untrue. Their actions, atrocious. There is almost no similarity between its case and that of IRA, despite common talking in European media.
A great demonstration is expected this Saturday at 5 pm in Madrid. Try to follow it and I will try to comment a little more sometime next week, if I feel like to.
I gotta go now.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Around UCL on 7/7
I believe it was in 2001 when a friend of mine, M.A., defended his PhD thesis on the celular cycle of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. His advisor was a collaborator of Paul Nurse, awarded that year, along with two other gentleman, the Nobel Prize. This week I found Mr. Nurse has shot a documental on Climate Change for BBC2. I was not patient enough to finish watching it (want to go to sleep and I have to write here), but I find nothing original. After 30 minutes, I have not noticed his "stiletto-style intellectual demolition of a well-known journalist cum climate change sceptic", as presented by UCL Provost Newsletter (31 Jan). Sir Paul Nurse is Director of the UKCMRI (UK Center for Medical Research and Innovation) at Saint Pancras, being UCL the founding university partner (whatever that means).
Watch it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql
***
The inquest on the London bombings on July 7, 2005 concluded last week.
Two out of the four blast locations are around UCL: the bus no. 30 at Tavistock Square, and the train at Russell Square in Picaddilly Line. Two women related to UCL died that day, among the 52 deads and more than 700 injured: Gladys Wundowa, cleaning lady, and a former student, Miriam Hyman. The case of Miriam is shocking. She was 31 at the time and was on her way to Canary Wharf, where she worked as a picture editor for a publishing company. She had been evacuated from the train in Russell Square and, after having talked to her father through the cell, just to say she was ok, she got on to bus no. 30. A few minutes later, Death came back for her.
Gladys was ooriginally from Ghana. She lived with her husband and two young offspring in Essex at the time of the bombing and used to get up by 4 am to go to UCL. She was 50. After 3 days, she was confirmed among the deceased.
A tree is in the Quad conmemorating their lives.
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Watch it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql
***
The inquest on the London bombings on July 7, 2005 concluded last week.
Two out of the four blast locations are around UCL: the bus no. 30 at Tavistock Square, and the train at Russell Square in Picaddilly Line. Two women related to UCL died that day, among the 52 deads and more than 700 injured: Gladys Wundowa, cleaning lady, and a former student, Miriam Hyman. The case of Miriam is shocking. She was 31 at the time and was on her way to Canary Wharf, where she worked as a picture editor for a publishing company. She had been evacuated from the train in Russell Square and, after having talked to her father through the cell, just to say she was ok, she got on to bus no. 30. A few minutes later, Death came back for her.
Gladys was ooriginally from Ghana. She lived with her husband and two young offspring in Essex at the time of the bombing and used to get up by 4 am to go to UCL. She was 50. After 3 days, she was confirmed among the deceased.
A tree is in the Quad conmemorating their lives.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
From Bronte to Cranmer, from Griffith to Painleve
Paraphrasing Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights, the night "set in mist and cold" upon Muswell Hill tonight. Started its reading. Interesting way of saying things in a very ritualistic manner, too cumbersome at first sight. Meaning that a young person is dressed in a shabby upper garment, Bronte describes: "the young man had slung on to his person a decidedly shabby upper garment". And to say that someone is the husband of someone else, the character comments: "Ah, certainly_ I see now: you are the favored possessor of the beneficent fairy". And the recipient of such comment got upset. Of course.
Tough reading in the morning, I enjoyed much in my way back though. This whirling manner of narration seems to hypnotize and attract to the main discourse, as a sort of gravitational force, to the core of the circumstance and the events. It has a pleasant appeal. Let's sense more of it and will let you know.
***
I found peaceful relish and reassuring content in the Evensong service on Sunday afternoon in the Southbank Cathedral. Church of England. Evensong. Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was a prominent figure of English Reformation, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 and married himself, before, to the niece of a Lutheran Reformer. He declared the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon void and married him to Anne Boleyn, months later. He was burn to the bone in Oxford (1556) in time of Bloody Mary, accused of treason.
Two Sundays only I attended it _The psalms are nice; the choral songs, beautiful; the meditation, full of insightful lessons; the Book of the Common Prayer, juicy. I guess, Evensong: an unpretentious and profound form of community prayer composed by an ambitious and powerful man.
Only one question. During the confession of faith, we say: "I believe in the Roman Catholic Church". Can you explain to me why?
***
Speaking of Catholic Church, I came across today with a large poster who, in showing some figures on world revenues out of drug consumption, considers the teachings and faith of the Catholic Church among psychological drugs, and places it in the same cathegory as that of porn industry. It is a free exhibition in the Welcome Exhibition building across Euston Station entitled "High Society" about "mind-altering drugs in history and culture".
The $34 billion of yearly revenue of Catholic Church is, thus, the outcome of selling a psycological, consciousness-altering drug-product, as much as half of that of world porn industry ($60 billion, if I remember correct), another drug-product best-seller of psychological type. No statement is made about other religions or any sects. In the legal cathegory, coffee and tobacco revenues, but only UK taxes from alcohol. In the realm of pharmaceutical products (i.e. medical use), the larger percentage showed is made by "Painkillers". To prevent erectil disfunction only, $6 billion yearly, if I remember correct.
The panel is divided actually in two. The right poster is dedicated to enhace the expenses derived from the war on drugs. A huge space, larger than any other highlightens the $2500 billion that US has spent in the last 40 years plus, in another significat space, $450 billion since 1970 spent in keeping drug-related criminals in federal prisons. Those are the only figures not showed in a yearly basis.
Taken those expenses as constant for the last 40, the war against drugs costs Americans (i.e. taxes) $62 billion a year and the maintenance of inmates, less than $12billion a year. These numbers are quite different, and allow comparison to, for instance, the $33 billion of yearly revenues that hundreds of crooks and wicked, evil gangsters collect, free of taxes, from the selling of drugs in the "youth market", at the expend of the youth.
This art-work is entitled "Painkillers", by David McCandless, 2010. I am glad this gentleman became an artist: he has not showed half an inch of intellectual depth and honesty.
***
In 1993, my Latin teacher in the High School tells us the story of an incipient communication tool, a tool for the future, called Internet, which has allowed him to actually see pictures kept in the Louvre. The old man (not too old, as I see it now) was excited.
I kind of sense a similar feeling as I find "Internet" to be a magnificient opened gate to the past. I guess I am not old enough to get anxious about the future and I can just sit and wait for it to come to me. However, I have never seen the past and I am moving in opposite direction, away from it. Or, perhaps, I am stuck and it is the past the one moving away, leaving me before.
So, I am interested in the past, not actively, though, but sloppy and randomly. And so, I get excited when I discover something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJaToCF0tIU
"For His Son", D.W. Griffith (1912) _ The film is showed in "High Society" exhibition.
Or this:
http://vodpod.com/watch/5317119-jean-painleve-les-cristaux-liquides-liquid-crystals
"Les Cristaux Liquides", J. Painleve ("Science is Fiction" collection, 1978) _ Tate Modern Museum: Jean Painleve, (1902 - 1989), the Science - Surrealism merger, the communist rebel, the biologist anti-mathematician... All I guess, despite his father's disapoinment and sorrow.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT
Tough reading in the morning, I enjoyed much in my way back though. This whirling manner of narration seems to hypnotize and attract to the main discourse, as a sort of gravitational force, to the core of the circumstance and the events. It has a pleasant appeal. Let's sense more of it and will let you know.
***
I found peaceful relish and reassuring content in the Evensong service on Sunday afternoon in the Southbank Cathedral. Church of England. Evensong. Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was a prominent figure of English Reformation, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 and married himself, before, to the niece of a Lutheran Reformer. He declared the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon void and married him to Anne Boleyn, months later. He was burn to the bone in Oxford (1556) in time of Bloody Mary, accused of treason.
Two Sundays only I attended it _The psalms are nice; the choral songs, beautiful; the meditation, full of insightful lessons; the Book of the Common Prayer, juicy. I guess, Evensong: an unpretentious and profound form of community prayer composed by an ambitious and powerful man.
Only one question. During the confession of faith, we say: "I believe in the Roman Catholic Church". Can you explain to me why?
***
Speaking of Catholic Church, I came across today with a large poster who, in showing some figures on world revenues out of drug consumption, considers the teachings and faith of the Catholic Church among psychological drugs, and places it in the same cathegory as that of porn industry. It is a free exhibition in the Welcome Exhibition building across Euston Station entitled "High Society" about "mind-altering drugs in history and culture".
The $34 billion of yearly revenue of Catholic Church is, thus, the outcome of selling a psycological, consciousness-altering drug-product, as much as half of that of world porn industry ($60 billion, if I remember correct), another drug-product best-seller of psychological type. No statement is made about other religions or any sects. In the legal cathegory, coffee and tobacco revenues, but only UK taxes from alcohol. In the realm of pharmaceutical products (i.e. medical use), the larger percentage showed is made by "Painkillers". To prevent erectil disfunction only, $6 billion yearly, if I remember correct.
The panel is divided actually in two. The right poster is dedicated to enhace the expenses derived from the war on drugs. A huge space, larger than any other highlightens the $2500 billion that US has spent in the last 40 years plus, in another significat space, $450 billion since 1970 spent in keeping drug-related criminals in federal prisons. Those are the only figures not showed in a yearly basis.
Taken those expenses as constant for the last 40, the war against drugs costs Americans (i.e. taxes) $62 billion a year and the maintenance of inmates, less than $12billion a year. These numbers are quite different, and allow comparison to, for instance, the $33 billion of yearly revenues that hundreds of crooks and wicked, evil gangsters collect, free of taxes, from the selling of drugs in the "youth market", at the expend of the youth.
This art-work is entitled "Painkillers", by David McCandless, 2010. I am glad this gentleman became an artist: he has not showed half an inch of intellectual depth and honesty.
***
In 1993, my Latin teacher in the High School tells us the story of an incipient communication tool, a tool for the future, called Internet, which has allowed him to actually see pictures kept in the Louvre. The old man (not too old, as I see it now) was excited.
I kind of sense a similar feeling as I find "Internet" to be a magnificient opened gate to the past. I guess I am not old enough to get anxious about the future and I can just sit and wait for it to come to me. However, I have never seen the past and I am moving in opposite direction, away from it. Or, perhaps, I am stuck and it is the past the one moving away, leaving me before.
So, I am interested in the past, not actively, though, but sloppy and randomly. And so, I get excited when I discover something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJaToCF0tIU
"For His Son", D.W. Griffith (1912) _ The film is showed in "High Society" exhibition.
Or this:
http://vodpod.com/watch/5317119-jean-painleve-les-cristaux-liquides-liquid-crystals
"Les Cristaux Liquides", J. Painleve ("Science is Fiction" collection, 1978) _ Tate Modern Museum: Jean Painleve, (1902 - 1989), the Science - Surrealism merger, the communist rebel, the biologist anti-mathematician... All I guess, despite his father's disapoinment and sorrow.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT
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