February 2009
22 posts
When women stop reading, the novel will be dead →
I was reading an article about Ian McEwan last night that mentioned this experiment he carried out in 2005, where he went to his local park and offered free books to passers-by. Of the people they approached, every single woman took a book while only one man did, the rest could not be persuaded. It could be that the guys asked all have piles of unread books, and that they’d feel bad taking...
Fifty Two Stories →
Harper Perennial are publishing a short story on this site every week. Eight weeks into 2009 and they give us Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style by Peter Wild:
It takes five seconds, brothers and sisters. One … Alfie Vedder became untethered shortly after stepping out of the Highland-green Ford Mustang parked askance, motor running, on Warren and Forest. Two … He looked up once at the...
David Peace →
I mentioned finishing Tokyo Year Zero a while ago, and found it interesting to read this interview with the author. A TV series, Red Riding, based on a quartet of his books is on Channel 4 next month and a film has been made of his account of Brian Clough’s time at Nottingham Forest, The Damned United.
Innovative Album Promotion →
The idea of making available special versions of albums that come with extra, non-copyable, material (artwork, t-shirts etc.) is nothing new, but the Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese is taking things to extremes offering 11 different packages (nearly as many as there are Windows variants) ranging from $7 for just the downloads right up to $75,000 that gets you, amongst other things, the...
le Café - Oldelaf (english subtitles) Uploaded by Boebis
The start could almost be my average morning, but coffee doesn’t make my days quite this eventful. Yet.
A lovely, extremely surreal look at what happens to someone who drinks too much coffee. Possibly NSFW if you work in France, the subtitles indicate swearing.
Diagramming the Obama Sentence →
A look at Obama’s sentence structures that relates nicely to the Zadie Smith article I linked to earlier this week (the writer mentions it). It’s following on from a piece in Slate that looks at Sarah Palin’s sentence structures, an idea that I really like and hadn’t seen before. Both make reference to Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog, a book that claims to explain the...
Like dying, everyone reads alone →
The best readers are obstinate. They possess a nearly inexhaustible persistence that drives them to read, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in. I’ve seen a reader absorbed in Don Quixote while seated at a noisy bar; I’ve witnessed the quintessential New York reader walk the streets with a book in hand; of late I’ve seen many a reader devour books on their iPhone (including one...
Carry Your Heart →
I enjoy getting home in the evening and finding things have been delivered for me whilst I was out. Today, I got home to find Catherine A.D.’s EP Carry Your Heart wrapped in a black ribbon, and decorated with instructions for making an origami swan. Instructions for re-tying the ribbon would have been handy, and I haven’t yet attempted to fold any paper.
The music itself is lovely;...
Losing your voice →
Recently my double voice has deserted me for a single one, reflecting the smaller world into which my work has led me. Willesden was a big, colorful, working-class sea; Cambridge was a smaller, posher pond, and almost univocal; the literary world is a puddle. This voice I picked up along the way is no longer an exotic garment I put on like a college gown whenever I choose—now it is my only...
Visual Thinking →
I sneer also at the two-dimensionality of maps. The missing third dimension of depth is less debilitating than the missing fourth of time. I grew up and continue to live in Birmingham, a city where a marked lack of sentimentality for the past and a relentless programme of redevelopment mean that landmarks can disappear overnight, road systems mutate daily. This is not a city that can be...
Analogue Twitter →
Michael wrote on DesignNotes about how he sees the flow of his Twitter comments going into Facebook and how the conversation changes once it gets there:
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think that the conversation is semi private makes things a lot more relaxed. If that conversation was available to anyone to read I wonder how those responses would change or happen at all.
In the...
Star Wars and the Productions of Time →
I have written about Star Wars as if it deserves our serious attention as well as our uncritical rapture. Its intentions may be more unconscious than I seem to suggest; the associations it calls up are for me nevertheless unforced. Its prerogative to intellectual scrutiny will no doubt be debated. But it makes a practical claim on us which we cannot easily ignore. The fact that Star Wars does...
One Free Interaction →
“One free interaction” is a prospective design pattern that gives software and hardware a more humane feel. It exists outside of task flows and the concept of users as task-doers. Instead it sits in the “in between” spaces, suiting users as fidgeters, communicators, and people who play with things.
I do the selecting-text-while-reading thing, but I’d never really...
My New Favourite Band - Feb 2009 →
Fight Like Apes and and The Mystery of the Golden Medallion was released in the UK last week. Despite Amazon not shipping it for another two weeks, via the wonder of Spotify I’ve been able to listen and it’s wonderful, so you should too.
overclockblocked →
“Gonna do sleep,” voke Amrolite. Fucken AIbrid think he so fucking cool with he retrofleshy stylen. Like you don’t already know he dealin double-helix, not just some two-bit qubit. No, he gots to do the keepen it real with the vital sign and the bio stylen.
Just came across a link to this short story and, well, it’s weird. It’s not the easiest thing to read, and it looks a lot like...
Ships As an Indicator of the Economy
Jason Kottke posted a link (“America’s quiet ports”) to this video and this photo showing how much cargo and how many ships are taking up space doing nothing.
There was an article in Saturday’s Guardian telling the story of four Filipino sailors who have found themselves with a lot of time on their hands, with very little to do while laid-up in the river Fal (in Cornwall)...
Interesting Data Projects →
Matt McAlister writes about three different visualisation projects that have emerged from The Guardian this weekend:
An Interactive look at “Where did all the money go?”
“Chalkboards” that let you analyse football matches, in quite a lot of detail
A look at how big companies’ tax bills compare to what they “notionally” owe
In all, a really good...