bibliophile

November 19, 2009 — Si

For the first time in my life I did some early xmas shopping this week and I’m here to tell you that now is absolutely the bestest time to stuff stockings.  All the xmas stock is out yet there’s little of the rabid gift grubbing that jingles your soul in the Last Week.

Put me in the proverbial sweet shop and I’d probably settle for a modest bag of fizzy cola bottles yet a decently stocked book shop has me bouncing around and stacking them high.  Much more dangerous than Amazon, pricier but so friendly for impulse purchases.

This is probably a good place to inject a meme I’ve just been exposed to (from Chris Unitt).  It’s the page 56 meme and it goes thus:

  1. Grab the nearest book;
  2. Open it to page 56;
  3. Find the fifth sentence;
  4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions; and
  5. Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

By my honest reckoning, that line is:

After birth and during infant growth, enormous selectional changes will occur in the synaptic population of the central nervous system.

It’s from Second Nature by Gerald M. Edelmann and those are the only words I’ve read from it so far though I’m now itching to read more.  This was one of the books that just seemed to stick to me as I went about stacking potential presents.  I’d slowly sipped (some books cannot be quaffed) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire by the same guy some years ago and his theory of ‘neuronal group selection’ made a long-lasting impression on my own young, fizzing synapses.

If I’m going to rediscover books then I should probably update my LibraryThing info too.  Somehow it feels like walking back into the old pub where I’ve had the most intense conversations and the threads are still hanging.

I love books.

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searching for cardboard

August 27, 2009 — Si

IMG_4060Moving house is always a good excuse for a decluttering and one thing I’ve been dragging around with me the last decade is my ergonomic kneeling stool.  Loved but never used, up on eBay it went and fetched the princely sum of £15 plus P&P.  The P&P requires corrugated cardboard, folded (and possibly joined) to certain dimensions.

Feels like I’m working too hard already as I rummage in Aldi, ask in Delta Pi and surf Access Self-Storage.  It doesn’t fit in an off-the-shelf box and I’m starting to develop the hungry look of a (90% recycled) junkie.

If there were a small god of packaging, he smiled on me as I left work.   An abundance of the brown pulped planes appeared – far more than I could transport on my bike – and I was able to select an ideal piece.

So what’s the kicker here?

IMG_0002.jpg.scaled1000I’d not noticed the cardboard before although I’ve no reason to think it just appeared.  However, having been primed to see cardboard, it jumped right out at me.  It got me thinking.

Far more passes in front of my eyes than I can possibly be aware of.  My conscious attention is just a surfer on an ocean of mental activity.  Yet what I notice is very much set by what I’m tuned to – even if I’m not aware of what that is.

If I’m expecting sleights, I see them.  When I feel lucky, I am.  Accidents come in threes and successful roll has its own momentum.

You can call it serendipity, cosmic alignment or whatever.  The point is that consciously maintaining a positive, opportunistic outlook does not just cast a rosy tint on your view of the world but actually puts the spotlight on things within it.

I imagine many belief systems get a lot of mileage out of this simple principle.  I expect it has a name if only I could google for concepts.

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krolacks

July 26, 2009 — Si

It’s generally held that early traumatic experiences can be pivotal to the shaping of an individual.  Something about my childhood might be inferred from the fact that one of my most vivid comes from ‘The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang‘, an 80’s animated spin-off from the popular ‘Happy Days’ TV series.

Most of it was whimsical Hanna-Barbera fun but one episode (probably ‘Science Friction‘) freaked me right out.   I was too young to realise it was a rip-off of the classic The Time Machine but it featured a race of red-eyed, lycanthropic creatures who captured humans and brought them underground to toil.

One of the ‘gang’ was told by a fellow prisoner that after three days human prisoners would spontaneously turn into one of the ‘Krolacks’ (IIRC – the Morlocks, basically).  The gang member relayed this news before turning to ask his informant how long he’d been there but he’d mutated in the interim.

This scared the living shit out of me as a kid and, somewhere in my shallow subconscious, probably still does.

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a cycle commute

July 10, 2009 — Si

Cycled into work along the old railway line this morning.  Always feels like a lovely, leafy wormhole to Harborne.

This morning I got a rosy ‘hello’ from a gent sipping an early export on joining the trail at Hagley road and a smallish dog made an embarrassing but enthusiastic attempt at killing my shoe.

It would have been better this evening when I was wired up with GPS, heart-monitor and mic to record my commute.  All part of a crazy research project.

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Txt from Tabriz

June 15, 2009 — Si

Normal relationship stuff is being unpleasantly spiked with international news this evening.

N flew out to visit her family for a couple of weeks this afternoon.  Unfortunately, they happen to live in Tabriz, in Iran.   This was supposed to be a sure win for the presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, it being his home town and an Azeri stronghold.  The results didn’t come out that way and now there are kinda alarming clips on YouTube and Twitter echoing ominous retweets.

I’m sure the use of social media to circumvent political suppression in this instance is fascinating but I’d be happy with a simple text message right now.

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I am not an economist…

April 23, 2009 — Si

…but I can’t help noticing that it’s a big deal at the moment.  There’s this credit-crunch, global recession, economic crisis going on and we are all Having to Deal With It.  Whether this means roughing it with supermarket beans, camping in the UK or whatever.

There’s the Economic Climate story where everything just happened.  We couldn’t do anything about it.  Best to just ride it out and not try to understand it.

My issue is this:  hubris.  We pretend we understand what is going on, we know how to fix it and have the power to do so.  By ‘we’ I mean, of course, the people charged with sorting it out.

There’s this thing called The Market which by recent consensus is a very good way of generating wealth.  It seems to work without anyone being in charge.  Competition tosses out the inefficient and irrelevant (and maybe immoral in ethically-aware times) to leave the best players, provisionally.  It’s an evolutionary system where much loved brands can go to wall without appeal.  It’s ruthless, continuous and it scales.

And now it’s gone all wrong.

This cues the Reckless Bankers story.  A whole bunch of bankers started making risky gambles on a bunch of clever stuff we don’t fully understand and, what do you know — it all went a bit tits-up.  Banks, unlike hardware stores, can’t be allowed to go under.  They are immunised from market forces.  The bosses walk away with big, swinging bonuses.  They also take the blame whilst the goverments come to save us and bring the good times back.

I don’t buy it.  Here’s my story.

Artificial wealth was created and compounded by layers of unaccountability.  Indeed, it was in no-one’s interest to break the loop.  The initial borrowers wanted the stuff they saw in the media.  The media wanted to advertise the stuff.  The banks wanted to max out their bonuses using lucrative credit.  The government wanted to stay in power by making people feel rich.  The longer it went on, the bigger the hangover.  The bill is now on the mat and it’s too big to hide any longer.  The system can correct itself even at this painfully late stage.

I’d just like to see a little more accountability and comprehension.  I’d also like to know who it is that all this money owed to…

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