Sightlines

 

Lines of Sight

Book of the Week from Monday 23 April is an abridged reading of Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie. Very enjoyable. Views of 'nature taking its course'

The Pathologist with empathy   "Ooh what a shame" a one woman Greek Chorus.

Killer whales going around in family groups - young males with their mums!

We have sailed

In the beginning we were without sail
then :-

And so to bed.

Sailing By

Shy and retiring

Never mind about the open necked shirt;  20 years without a proper job came to an end  yesterday with a suitably small celebration. My eye was taken by a card bearing the caption "Stuff Work" showing 3 individuals suitably dressed for the beach circa 1920, jumping in the air for joy or whatever. It was in our local Oxfam secondhand bookshop. As the Catholics would say: - a dangerous occasion of sin. Luckily we escaped with the family coffers reduced by less than £10. I bought Absolution by Olaf Olafsson as a treat because he appears in an interview used for teaching by herself. I could see it was desired along with the 2 Scandithrillers that she purchased for serious cash money!

Shadow work.
An idea used by Ivan Illich, in his 1981 book.

I shall continue as a shadow worker!
(Ah get on with you. Any excuse to sit on your fat backside philosophising, with the parsnips unbuttered, the dishes in
the sink and more maunderings per square foot than that man McGonagall...Ed)

A Fortune Made in Haven

Let me make it clear, Buddhist Pizza does not snigger, neither does he indulge in any of the childish, mean minded, low spirited, delights of schadenfreude. However, the muesli was spread explosively around the breakfast table this morning at the Grauniad's headline Cameron family fortune made in tax havens.

To be caught with one's trousers down is one thing, to be caught displaying so little is another.  A fortune of £2.74 million is hardly worth getting out of bed for these days,  and a bequest of £300,000? Well really, what would Gideon say?

It could be of course that the Old Pater, Ian of that ilk, had a very shrewd tax wallah, heaven forfend.
I wonder if we could find out who he works for.

I did enjoy the reference to the ancestral pile, Blairmore (I kid you not) sadly  believed to be in the family no more.

(Stop sniggering man! It's very unbecoming... Ed)

A Little Light Music

John Naughton has had a few posts recently concerning light, you can view one such here, and you can see  his photography in this link.

I was really sparked by a video on his blog. A demonstration that we see so little and there is so much! 

Questions, Questions

And now the question you have all been waiting for!
Is there a black hole at the centre of every galaxy?
Possibly...

Meanwhile back on planet earth a tale of the "black-collar class" known in the  Buddhist Pizza Pagoda of Heavenly Peace 22b Baker St. as

"The case of the candidate member, his wife, her son, the lover (who's lover...Ed?) and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, probably the cook, the crook and the CIA as well" 

rumbles on. Any similarity with the suspension of Bo Xilai  from the party over the alleged murder of Neil Heywood is by chance and chance alone.

How fortunate, how very fortunate that I am reading The Shanghai Gang a chapter in The Party by Richard McGregor.
I would, otherwise, have my head filled with wrong thoughts, lies and corruptions from the capitalist running dogs.

(Final question, why are capitalist dogs always running...Ed?
Because they are like noses!)

Wealth of Nations?

John Naughton has a link to a very clear description,a 'cartoon assisted' video, of how to make money in America.
By turns it is amusing, informing, enraging and dispiriting. The little people at the end have such sad confused looks on their faces. Arise ye starvelings.

Grown up cartoonary seems to be a very powerful instructional and polemical device. I've seen it used to great effect recently.

Drouthy, Very Drouthy

It's been hell out here Gideon, you have no idea what life is like for the little people.
First there was the hosepipe ban.
Then there was the petrol shortage.
And now, sob, even the bloody Belgians are lamenting the desertification of Mid Suffolk.

Finally the worst; this sign seen in the, empty, car park of our local.

The Party's Not Over

It being a cold, wet, miserable, Easter I settled down,  reading The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor.

Fascinating stuff. Not just for all the old chestnuts about 99% of the human race being Chinese and how the GDP of China  will be twice that of the world in 2013, and that they use more 'water', 'energy', 'resources', per capita in a second than a drunken sailor in a cheap hotel over a bank holiday weekend.

The power of the party, the way it penetrates society, the way it has hung onto control in a period of very rapid political, cultural and economic change is remarkable. Things definitely got wobbly in the cultural revolution and again around the  Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 but, as always, the Party came up smelling of burnt almonds.

Two things struck me by page 21:

- most of the politburo are engineers by background and many of them have real jobs as well,
- the Party does not seem to have a website ( must check that).

I love the idea of "leading small groups". I certainly went off on one when that appeared on the page. It's a pity they didn't name them small leading groups (watch it...Ed!)

No sign yet, in any detail, of the The People's Liberation Army (PLA) for which much thanks. You would not want those guys parking their tanks on your lawn, or town square perhaps.

Must go and check the interweb site thingy for the CP of the PRC.
What's that noise? Sounds like a number of very large, badly tuned diesel engines!

Headhunting

O Lord what a violent world we live in, even in our fiction. Scandicrime has had a hold on our family reading and viewing for some time so that it was inevitable that we would head for the 'Pea Flit' for a screening of the Headhunter based on a Jo Nesbo 'thriller' at some point. I don't want to give too much away but was struck by the filmic cracker of the 'hero' caught with his gun in his kecks and a crazed, spurned, woman of murderous intent wielding the biggest, sharpest, kitchen knife it is legal to posses. She is clearly set on performing butchery on his carcass without the benefit of death, initially.  Of course, he sticks his hand down his pants produces what looks like a pretty deadly erection and just manages to kill his assailant before she plunges the samurai Sabatier into his heart. Needless to say, she ends up dead sprawled on top of him in a somewhat suggestive position.
There was a clear teeing up of the line:-

There's a gun in my pants and I'm not pleased to see you!

The moment passed.

How pleasant after this to return home, the fire out, the kettle boiling and a good prawn curry cooked to perfection by Lady BP.
We also had the joy, later, of watching death in much warmer climes with Inspector Montepulciano - based on the Andrea Camilleri series.

All good stuff!

A Gallamite

A certain Mr Galloway has been in the news recently. A  self proclaimed tidal wave of democracy about to break over our benighted shores? Up to a point George Copper, up to a point!

I saw, in the many comments about the event, said Gorgeous George described as a Saddamite. A tad unfair?  I would describe him as a Gallamite:- the friend of a Sadammite -  as you could say.

Apologies  to the Inky Fool who does this sort of thing much better with real words.

Affirmative Authentication

We do tend to assert  that which confirms our views, philosophy, judgements, eternal verities. We are less interested in the counter argument and evidence. Twas ever thus and will be so.

An interesting take on the volume of information now deployed and able to be deployed to support a particular position in a review by Brain Pickins of The information Diet by Clay Johnson.

I particularly like

"the industrialization of information, arguing that blaming the abundance of information itself is as absurd as blaming the abundance of food for obesity."

and

Force-feeding the public Hollywood’s entertainment lard.

Who wants to hear the truth when you can hear that you are right?
Although it cuts both ways. If we have the tools and the ability we can use the data to build strong cases. Otherwise we can just hose  the unbeliever with facts, lashings of facts, until they sink in the data mire!

A Happy Hand Ha Blessed Heaster to you Hall!

Philosophy and Drink!

John Naughton in The Observer (1/4/2012) complains, a little, about a certain Mr Heidegger.
His not unreasonable grumble reminded me of Freddie Jevons, who had the privilege to teach me at postgraduate level in the (19) seventies. Yes I am that old. Freddie used to complain in his highly polished mittle european accent that " Philosophers are only paid to argue vith each osser!" 

Amen to that Freddie old son!

That reminded me of Monty Python's  Philosopher's Song. Not a yearning lieder for truth or beauty, nor yet a cantata for clarity in language or even a lament for logic, more about booze. It is alleged that Mr Heidegger was a boozy  beggar who could think you under the table and as for Mr Kant, a real puisant,  it is claimed that he was very rarely stable!
A whiff of M. Descartes position, philosophically speaking, can be judged from the claim attributed to him, without prejudice of course, that  "I drink therefore I am."
This may be relevant for April the 1st or not; you may judge for yourself at the link here.

So if you value your brain and your liver, give up the philosophy as well as the booze!

Many thanks to our Correspondent from Oz who pointed out the ditty to me originally