James Lovelock goes to space

The Gaia Theory independent climate scientist is now past his ninetieth birthday (must be surely 91 at this point?) and he's as interesting as ever. In this video interview, he talks about his forthcoming trip into space. This was recorded back in April, so I wonder if he's gone yet?

UPDATE

I watched A Ma Soeur last night

Have any of you seen it? God I would love to discuss this movie with someone. Maybe we could have a skype-in or something. Thoughts?

Latest pics from the Hut Insulation Project

are now posted to my Flickr.

Drawmo!

November is Drawmo (Draw month, Draw More)! A bunch of internetistes will be drawing and posting every day for the month of November, and you're welcome to join us. There is also a flickr.

30 Days, 30 Days of Drawing.

You can come. We are friendly.

Detritus of the week

Nabokov
F Scott Fitzgerald
Dead Flies Art
The NYT looks at the Donmar
On ne parle que d'eux
Alan's show at IMMA
Brioche buns not yet made
A tab I have had up on my browser for about 2 months, task unfulfilled
The U2 concert
The black panthers
UPDATE: A really good, plain speaking article from the murky realities of juvenile rape (thanks, Stan)

Mad World

Usually when a pop or rock song is remade as an acoustic piece of melancholia, especially if it involves strings, it bores the crap out of me. But I have been mesmerised by this song, and go through bouts of listening to it over and over. It's gorgeous. It is like Gary Jules excavated the original Tears For Fears song and made it vibrant again. The piano riff is a very lovely thing, it really makes the song. There's not much to the song, really. But I love it. If you haven't heard this version before, you are in for a treat. But you probably have. It was the song over the credits of Donny Darko, and it elicits the mood of the movie so beautifully.

Oops! Looking a little orange there...

This is my favourite picture of the week. Ladybirds at the seaside, and worlds side by side.
More ladybirds at the Guardian, including the really really evil ones who eat the really really good ones.

Joe Stiglitz talking sense

From the New Yorker.

Nellie sings!

This is Nellie, who stayed with us for a while a couple of weeks ago. She is a very smart and talented and silly dog, and her favourite song is the Coronation Street theme tune. Every time we played it, this was how she responded. In this video, Nellie is singing along to the old version of the tune, and as it turns out, she didn't like the bridge. Maybe it is just that she didn't know the bridge, and it wasn't very interesting.

The Stanley

fig 1


fig 2

I am rejuvenating my work hut in the field with some cool silver covered fibreglass insulation. When it is done, my work hut (see fig 1) will look like a wooden cabin from the outside and Warhol's Silver Factory on the inside. I do so love contrasts. This work involves a lot of 'space blankets' (see what I mean?) and a staplegun. A fancy staplegun. A Stanley staplegun (see fig 2). So.

I would like you to get up now. I would like you to get up and walk around your house. Get up, walk around your house, and look for home improvement and creative projects that require the use of a staplegun, a fancy, eternally reliable staplegun. A staplegun you don't have. And call me. Because I have such a staplegun. I am now the Staplegun Lady. I am Cool Hand Luce.

I think we all need this today

Marlene Dietrich playing the saw. Short and sweet. If you want to skip the repartee, start about 1:15.

How to make limoncello!

I'm quite taken with the old guy in this video recipe for a good basic limoncello. It sounds very good. But where the hell does a person get 'pure alcohol' that isn't Poitin, in Ireland? Or this 'Everclear', for that matter?

So, humans make horror films and think they're really scary

Well, have a look at this.



via Radiolab.

Fantasy of a Jimmy Carter past future

I just spotted this on a comment thread following a Michael Tomasky article about Carter's comments about the Joe Wilson fandango, and I thought there would be a few people who read this blog who would enjoy it. It comes in the context of a number of people on the thread talking about how Carter's presidency was a failure and how great Ronald Reagan was that he came in and saved the Americans from themselves and the Soviets from Sovietism. The commenter's nom de plume is 'Sheepishly':

i sometimes speculate about an alternate reality where jimmy carter won re-election and kept reagan out of the white house. imagine:

the usa still has the smallest gap between the rich and the poor, the cost of living never quadrupled relative to wages, the majority of americans do not live in debt. we have transitioned at least partly to alternative energy sources, and are not wholly committed to foreign wars for oil. we never armed or trained osama bin laden and his cronies, never gave saddam hussein weapons to gas his people, nor had to waste lives in two iraq wars--there was no 9/11. also, the arms race with the soviets never happened, and the ussr crumbled anyway--but when it did fewer people starved. we never raked up unprecedented debt on useless weapons, and loose nuclear material is not spread across eurasia waiting to be used by enemies of america. money was used to stop the spread of aids before it became an epidemic, to revitalize our cities, and build the best public transit system in the world.

if it weren't for ronald reagan, my generation would have the same opportunities our parents had under FDR. instead we are born in debt, and are coerced to go to college so we can be debt slaves for the rest of our lives, the economy is crumbling around us, we are quagmired in two wars, and our taxes are going to shore up corporate waste. we have no affordable health care, no social safety net, no job security, no vacation time, no funds for retirement, no clean air, no clean water, no decent food, no future.

thank you, thank you ronald reagan.

So I haven't written in a couple of weeks

Loving earwigs

Gosh, this blog has been full of dead old guys lately, I've just noticed. Phew. Here, read this article about the sensual, passionate, feminine natures of earwigs instead.

The passion of his life

via cosmic variance

Been off

cycling in the rain through the countryside of Cork. I had no idea that getting soaked for hours on end, monsoon soaked, tropically soaked, can be having the time of your life. I am very happy to have made this discovery.

Please touch

Frank McCourt is unwell

I was born and reared in Limerick city. We have some good writers here, amongst them: Kate O'Brien, Michael Hartnett, and of course the one who travelled the furthest, Frank McCourt.

Frank McCourt had mixed experiences when he returned to Limerick after the book was published and had become such a runaway hit all over the world: a small but vocal number of people didn't like what he had been writing about and made it difficult for him to live in Limerick, but by far the majority of people in Limerick did what people do everywhere in small cities that suddenly find a hugely successful home grown writer in their midst: welcome and celebrate him. I have heard that whenever he came back to Limerick he could sometimes be found joining in the 'Angela's Ashes walking tour' here. Just wandered by, like another tourist. Signed books and chatted away, unassumingly.

I have heard that Frank McCourt is very unwell. I am sorry to hear that, and wish him well, really. There's something of the sheer eejitry about the way that some people in Limerick responded to that book, a very peculiar Limerick combination of snobbery and shame, and you know, it's not particularly my cup of tea either but it really touched a lot of people who read it, including people from Limerick who remembered that time in its history, who lived alongside him. That book succeeded mostly from word of mouth. And that's a real kind of success.

God bless you, sir.