Film: Mrs. Henderson Presents. Great story, beautifully acted, wonderful songs. (I’m going to pick up the soundtrack CD tomorrow. I was going to download it, but for some reason iTMS only has a few of the songs available.)
Music: Absent Friends by The Divine Comedy (i.e. Neil Hannon). I have no idea how I managed to overlook this guy’s work for so many years. I finally heard an earlier song, “Lost Property”, on Orbital’s Back To Mine compilation, and promptly downloaded this, the latest album. Big gorgeous songs, a stunning voice…. A copy of the Secret History compilation is heading this way from Amazon.co.uk.
Author: geoff
Why evolutionary ideas thrive in Britain better than elsewhere
This is what I love about the blogosphere.
One of the blogs I read regularly is Shelley Powers’ Burningbird. This evening she posted a long piece which began with a plug for a blog she really likes, 3 Quarks Daily. Shelley is usually reliable, so I clicked over and browsed, and came across this item with an excerpt from a longer interview at ReadySteadyBook. I read the first two sentences, and I was hooked:
Marek Kohn is a writer who lives in Brighton. His most recent book, A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination, looks at the key thinkers behind the development of evolutionary theory in Britain, and why these ideas have thrived better in Britain than in other countries.
I read the whole thing, and it was one of those extraordinarily stimulating experiences, the kind that sends your mind running off in fifteen different and FASCINATING directions.
And a few minutes ago I didn’t know that 3 Quarks Daily, ReadySteadyBook, or Marek Kohn even existed. That’s why I love about the blogosphere – those gloriously serendipitous experiences.
"The age of certainty"? Let's talk….
We are excited to announce that on Wednesday, April 12th Harvard Book Store and Seed Magazine will cosponsor a discussion on Science in the Age of Certainty with John Brockman, Daniel C. Dennett, Daniel Gilbert, Marc D. Hauser, Elizabeth Spelke and Seth Lloyd. This event coincides with the publication of the new book What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, edited by Mr. Brockman.
Eminent cultural impresario, editor, and publisher of Edge (www.edge.org), John Brockman asked a group of leading scientists and thinkers to answer the question: What do you believe to be true even though you cannot prove it? This book brings together the very best answers from the most distinguished contributors.
It’s taking place on Wednesday, April 12th, at 6:30 PM, in the Askwith Lecture Hall at Longfellow Hall, in Cambridge, MA.
UPDATE: And speaking of Brockman, read his piece about “The Selfish Gene at 30” with a splendid rant about the dire consequences of ignorance about science.
He may be surprised… I'm not.
Andrew Sullivan sounds surprised that “if you are an American Christian, you are more likely to support torture than if you are an atheist or agnostic.” But I bet he won’t think through the implications of this…
UPDATE: At least he recognizes part of the problem. Somebody must have sent him the “most mistrusted minority” report. But I still don’t think he can join the dots….
Persistence of addressing
A few days ago I mentioned that “It’s going to be interesting to hunt down all of the places which have my Sun address”. Yesterday I came across one of them: PayPal. And changing it was quite a trip.
It’s easy to add a new email address to PayPal, so I did that. But then I wanted to make this address the primary one, and delete my sun.com address. To accomplish this, PayPal wanted to send a confirming email to the current primary address – but that address had been deactivated on the day of my RIF. The workaround was interesting. First, I had to log in. [“Something you know.”] Then PayPal showed me the last four digits of my credit card, and asked for the full number. [“Something you have, but could be stolen.”] Next, PayPal indicated that it had my phone number on file, and asked if it could call me. When I clicked Yes, a four digit code was displayed, my phone rang [“Something you have that can’t be stolen.”], and I was instructed to enter the code using my phone [“Something ephemeral that you know.”] . This satisfied PayPal that I was who I claimed to be, and the change was effected.
How does this stack up as an identity solution? It certainly exploits existing technology to the full….
A stranger in a REALLY strange land
When I read stories like this, I wonder what weird, alien country I’m living in.
“I just killed a kid,” Charles Martin told the emergency services operator. “I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice.” He had gunned down Larry Mugrage, his neighbours’ 15-year-old son. The teenager’s crime: walking across Mr Martin’s lawn on his way home. Mr Martin opened fire from his house and then, according to the police, walked up to the wounded boy and pulled the trigger again at close range, killing him.
[I’m turning off comments, because I don’t want the chore of moderating all the rants from the RKBA nuts who try to justify their culture of death.]
Exit interview
I had my “official” exit interview with Bob Sproull, the newly appointed director of SunLabs and a good friend for many years. It was a thoroughly civilized affair, conducted over lunch at Legal Sea Foods in Chestnut Hill. We must do this more often… 🙂
7-0
I’m not a typical sports fan: I don’t support one team exclusively. When it comes to football (English, of course), I tend to cheer on three clubs: Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool. (And I have a soft spot for Newcastle, too.) But I’m more interested in watching a good match than seeing “my” side win at any cost.
All of this is a roundabout way of explaining my distinctly mixed emotions at watching Liverpool’s 7-0 thrashing of Birmingham in tonight’s F.A. Cup quarter-finals. This was not a good match. By half time there were really only two open questions:
- Would Birmingham snatch a consolation goal, and
- Would Liverpool’s score get into double digits?
Ah well. Let’s hope that Birmingham is relegated from the Premiership: based on recent form, they’re less deserving than Portsmouth.
Old problem… new solution
For as long as I can remember, the music business has been in the habit of releasing different versions of albums in different countries. Back in the 1960s, British LPs were typically longer than those issued in the USA, so American customers got hacked and butchered versions of British albums, and British customers got US releases padded out with filler. Later on the practice was used to discourage import buying: the US distributor of a British artist would try to discourage American fans from ordering from the UK by making sure that the US version had a couple of extra tracks. This was frustrating to hard-core “completist” fans: do you wait, buy both versions, or what?
Last year Saint Etienne released an excellent CD in the UK, “Tales from Turnpike House”. 12 tracks, plus a bonus CD of children’s songs. Now their US label has released the album with 4 extra tracks, 1 deleted, different sequencing, and no bonus material. But today this presents no real problem. I’ve just downloaded the extra tracks from iTunes*, and assembled a playlist with all 15 tracks in the US sequencing.
Of course this scheme could have been foiled if one of the four new tracks had been tagged “Album only” (i.e. not available on its own). So who makes that call – Apple or the distributor?
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* The only gotcha was that I had to change the album title for the four new tracks, to prevent iTunes from merging them into the UK album – I want to be able to access the original version unchanged.
Upgrade successful
The upgrade to WP 2.0.2 seems to have been successful. I’ve disabled live preview for comment composition, because I want to try a slightly different approach in the future. Apart from that, everything should work the same. If you notice any problems, please add a comment to this posting.