It’s a while since I last did one of these, so the links have built up a bit. They’re quite an eclectic lot, too. Here goes:
- Science and Religion are Not Compatible. I disagree completely with the main point of this piece (the one hinted at in its title), but it's well-written and worth reading. It also makes a pleasant change to read a contribution in the tiring [atheist|naturalist] v. [theist|religious] debate that is written in a reasonable, sensible, even friendly tone, rather than, “You're stupid!” “You're damned!” — and that goes for both ‘sides’.
- Learn to Fly is a silly wee Flash game. Play it once, have a laugh, move on. Via Jason Kottke.
- I've made it to the cinema twice since Reuben was born. Once to see Star Trek, which was tremendous, and once to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which was... not tremendous. This FAQ on Topless Robot identifies everything I thought was wrong with the film. The original review is also an entertaining read. (They both contain some pretty salty language, if that bothers you.)
- Everyone was linking this last month: 78 Photography Rules For Complete Idiots.
- Since I posted a couple of weeks ago on Mercurial, here's a bit more: Five Features From Mercurial That Would Make git Suck Less.
- After yesterday's rant about the pig-death-'flu, there are still some things need thought about: The Pandemic & the Eucharist.
- I've had a couple of interesting conversations recently about the impact of social media (I had to stop myself putting scare-quotes around that horrid phrase) on and for worshipping communities. Andrew Jones has a thoughtful and interesting post entitled The Virtual Church: Keeping It Real.
- Mark Jaquith educates on Words you probably pronounce incorrectly. Interesting. In the UK, a gyro is something different. I have always said ‘zoo’ in ‘zoology’, but am frequently annoyed (pedantically) by mispronounciation of ‘bruschetta’, ‘espresso’ and ‘et cetera’.
- Dan Benjamin explains Why isn't that Buddha statue fat?
Okay. Back to it.
Yesterday morning I tweeted that I was “A bit disappointed at BBC Radio Ulster breathlessly cranking the #swineflu paranoia this morning.”
I love the BBC, but there seems to be more and more tabloid creeping into their news reporting.
Yesterday morning, as I was driving into Belfast for an early meeting, I caught a report on Good Morning Ulster. Marie-Louise Connolly was reporting on preparations for the expected swine ‘flu outbreak.
The piece didn’t do much more than play with maybes and ignorance to whip up fear and doubt.
The main point of the report was that while the Department of Health, the BMA and Unison all say that we are well-prepared — and as well-prepared as we can be — for what might happen when a third of the workforce goes down with the pig-death-‘flu, we can’t know for sure because their contingency plans ‘only exist on paper’ and have never been proved for real.
I don’t know much about disaster planning, but I do know that the only way you can really, with certainty, tell if your planning and preparation is good enough is to see what happens when they’re really needed. Before then, the best option you have is to run simulations and exercises — which the report said have been run. What more can be done?
It does get better: the report ended with Ms Conolly talking about some more of the “unknowns” that we should be worried about. “Will the virus mutate into something more serious once winter-time comes?” It might. It also might mutate into something that has no ill effects on humans. “Why younger people and middle-aged people are coming down with the virus?” Because that’s what happens in a ‘flu outbreak, and we know it. Younger people and middle-aged people tend to mix more and with larger groups, so they catch more bugs.
I’m not sure what this report was trying to achieve. There was no flaw in the planning that was being brought to light. Instead, without saying as much, it showed that as much planning as can be done is being done. All that we’re left with from this piece is a bit more paranoia.
Face mask, anyone?
(If you get there before next Wednesday, you can hear the report on iPlayer. It starts at 1:05.37.)
Blame an exchange on Twitter last night. Richard Burton, with extra menace:
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes and slowly, surely, they drew their plans against us.
When I was a kid, one of the records I found among my dad’s small collection of vinyl was the comprehensively named Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of “The War of the Worlds”. I listened to it enough that the eery cry of “Ulla!” gave me some pretty vivid nightmares.
The War of the Worlds has had some very high-profile adaptations: Orson Welles’s famous 1938 radio play, the brilliant 1952 film, the not-so-brilliant 2005 Spielberg/Cruise blockbuster. Jeff Wayne’s is my favourite (maybe because it was my first).
“Thunder Child” is the tiny moment of hope — maybe we can beat the Martians — that’s quickly dashed. Tom Cruise isn’t around to thrust explosives into the belly of the machine, unfortunately.
Stirring.
“Thunder Child” [YouTube]
“Thunder Child” [Spotify]
Still with the country-ish music, I’m afraid.
My wife and my parents got together and bought me a mandolin for my birthday some years ago. It’s a fantastic wee instrument, and there’s nothing that sounds quite like it. The thing about the mandolin is that you expect the music to be either something Mediterranean-sounding, or bluegrass. (If you don’t know bluegrass, think country with more energy but even less credibility. I’m pretty sure we’ll come back to it on a future Tuesday.)
When I first picked up the mandolin, one of the names I came across was a young guy (of an age with me, roughly, which at the time made him much younger than the average well-known mandolin player) called Chris Thile. He’s kind of like a guitar hero of the mandolin world, but with as much melody as shredding — more Satriani than Vai, if that means anything to you.
Where Thile isn’t quite your typical mandolin player, the band he played with at the time weren’t your typical bluegrass/folk/country band. Nickel Creek did things a little differently, showing off their bluegrass roots but combining them with much more indie, rock influences.
It sounds good, doesn’t it? It does to me.
The title track of their 2002 album is “This Side”, which I first noticed for the great mandolin solo in the middle (once a guitar nut, always a guitar nut — even with eight strings instead of six), but it drew me in to a great track on a really excellent album.
There are songs, many of them, that make me stop whatever I’m doing and listen. Then there are the ones that I can feel, that do something in me. Sometimes it’s in the lyric, sometimes something in the music. “This Side” is a tune that makes me stop, close my eyes, and aspire to making music that sounds like that.
“This Side” [YouTube]
