11.29.02
Posted in Online memory at 4:11 pm by
I’m not particularly exercised by what “rereviewed” means. I think it’s fairly obvious. But I am slightly surprised that it’s not in the OED 2nd ed. There’s a semantic space on the page between “rereveal” (to reveal again) and “rerevise” (to revise again). It’s not as if nobody else has ever used the word.
The word “rereview” is of a limited semantic interest, but, finally, “re-” can always be used to mean “again” (as in the above two examples), so even a term such as “rereturn” has a simple meaning (”to return again”) rather than being puzzling (”to return back?”, “to return away?”). Hence, “rereview” parses just as “to review again” - depending on what you mean by “review”, of course.
What set me off on this? Just that I wanted to link to Andy L’s post on an old catalogue of Masonic practical jokes. Then I realised there’s a link back here in the post. That’s more than just incestuous blogging, surely. Won’t it break the Internet?
(Hmm. That train of thought made sense right up until the moment I tried to explain it. Thank goodness I didn’t try to include the bit about Phil K. Dick and real fakes.)
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Posted in Online memory at 11:17 am by
I never liked Charles Schultz’s Peanuts strip. Too sugary. Too twee. But then what more can you expect from a series that was originally called “Li’l People”?
Although the jazz soundtrack to the TV show was cool.
By contrast, the mere mention of Calvin & Hobbes makes me feel all fuzzy inside. So The Calvin and Hobbes Resurrection is great news.
(via ext|circ)
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Posted in Meeja at 9:15 am by
This is authentic, I swear. I know it looks like something from the pages of the fantastic Framley Examiner, but it comes from last week’s edition of my old local paper, The Maldon and Burnham Standard.
(via my mum, who believes in old-fashioned newspaper-clipping-in-an-envelope-style blogging)
Read the rest of this entry »
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11.28.02
Posted in Dreaming of England at 4:25 pm by
Another great organisation you’ve probably never heard of.
The Land is Ours “campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources, and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, gender or age”.
Amongst other things, it publishes The Squatter’s Handbook. If your interest in property infringement is more historical in nature, they have details of the Diggers Trail.
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Posted in Dreaming of England at 10:15 am by
You don’t have to vote for Candidate’s wonderful new album Nuada when you’re helping ‘Captain America’ choose his album of the year, but if you’ve heard it, you probably will want to.
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Posted in Film at 9:24 am by
Major obituaries of Karel Reisz this morning in the following papers:
The Times
Daily Telegraph (registration required)
The Guardian
The Independent
The New York Times (registration required)
(Now I feel like I’m turning into Andrew)
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11.27.02
Posted in Meeja at 8:43 pm by
Looking for the ultimate personalised Christmas gift? Try a necklace or glassware based on your own DNA.
Not much resale value on those, I would imagine.
(It’s 8.40pm. Why am I still at work? That’s it - I’m off).
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Posted in Film at 7:09 pm by
Karel Reisz, the Czech-born director who became one of the leading lights of the British New Wave, has died aged 76.
In later years he concentrated primarily on theatre work, so, unfortunately, his legacy will consist of only a few major films, of which the best known are ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ and ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’.
It’s now difficult to find much of Reisz’s early work, including his documentaries made under the banner of the Free Cinema movement, although the BFI seem to be slowly making such material available again. Reisz’s last completed film was ‘Act Without Words’ for Channel 4’s Beckett on Film season, a prestigious commission which the channel managed to botch (not for the first or last time). It was a sorry way to treat a great director at the end of his career.
I will post links to the main obituaries here tomorrow.
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Posted in Forteana at 4:42 pm by
First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on and about the internet, provides evidence of the beguiling - and dangerous - flatness of the web.
By ‘flatness’ I mean that you don’t have to grub down through much undergrowth to find things, particularly things that you really ought to leave well alone.
Maura Conway’s article Reality Bytes: Cyberterrorism and Terrorist ‘Use’ of the Internet contains a handy table listing the 33 groups deemed by the US Department of State as Foreign Terrorist Organisations. 19 of them are listed with their website addresses.
Unsurprisingly, First Monday has chosen not to display these as hotlinks. To do so would be effectively to mark the journal as a node of terrorist activity. For a similar reason, it would be a really bad idea to try any of the links yourself. Particularly if you’re at work.
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11.26.02
Posted in Dreaming of England at 9:37 am by
Everyone knows about the Angel of the North, particularly now that it has been unofficially adopted as an icon of non-London Britain. But there’s always more to learn.
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Posted in Film at 9:26 am by
I’m reminded to namecheck Movie Mail by the arrival just now of their Christmas flyer. If you’re in the UK and are at all interested in film, for heaven’s sake buy from Movie Mail rather than one of the mainstream shops or sites.
The only problem is…oh no, they’ve got Edge of Darkness on DVD, and Together on special offer…
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Posted in Forteana at 9:16 am by
The endlessly entertaining Fortean Times reports on the long-standing story of a bottomless hole outside Ellensberg, Washington State.
Brilliantly, one of the main sources alleges that he tried to find the bottom of the hole by lowering a weighted fishing line down it. He gave up after unspooling 80,000 feet of line. That’s a 15 mile-long line, fishing fans.
The madness continues at the minimalist discussion site Mel’s Hole.
Read the rest of this entry »
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11.25.02
Posted in Dreaming of England at 12:55 pm by
Every decade or so in Britain, a new political party turns up with the aim of capturing the votes of thousands of votors disaffected with the traditional parties. After the limited successes of the Referendum Party, the SDP and, erm, the Monster Raving Loony Party, the latest effort is being launched on the web.
The trailer will have got about as far as “Are you depressed by the state of our once great country?” before you decide (accurately) that it’s aiming for grumpy Daily Mail readers. To be fair, that’s quite a few votes.
I’m interested in the curious logo, a slanted map of the UK covered by the union flag. Isn’t that similar to the Referendum Party logo? More to the point, why is the union divided into seven?
Devolution for Cornwall, anyone?
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11.22.02
Posted in Meeja at 7:39 pm by
Strange old day today. I had it booked as holiday, but nevertheless ended up spending the morning working on a project proposal. Terrific.
What I noticed:
At home, I logged onto my work email, blog, work email, off.
I have NO IDEA what happened today after 9am. Usually I, like most web-workers, have a fairly constant stream of news updates from websites, email alerts and rss feeds. I forgot to put the radio on, so I missed the news entirely. I can’t bear the television news during the day, and logging onto news sites from home seemed…unseemly.
I wouldn’t make a good homeworker, I guess.
Oh, I was also reminded of how my local spaces (cafes, shops) fill up with mothers and children during the day, couples and harrassed shoppers at weekends.
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Posted in Meeja at 10:59 am by
Low farce this morning as the firefighters’ union declared at 6.30am that their 8-day strike was off, then at 7.30am declared it back on again, blaming the government’s “intervention” (i.e. not stumping up the cash) for the collapse of the agreement.
The firefighters, if nothing else, displayed a grand sense of drama.
At 7.30, union leader Andy Gilchrist’s statement to the press was interrupted by his mobile, ringing the theme from The Great Escape. Surely he couldn’t have chosen it to symbolise the struggle of the great British bloke against apparently insurmountable odds (hence its use as unofficial theme of the England football team)?
Then, at 7.45, with the negotiating parties having left the central London hotel where they’d talked through the night, a fleet of fire engines arrived “on call” just in time for the reporters to comment on them. The union’s deputy leader helpfully pointed out to one reporter that the army’s Green Goddess engines would not be able to deal with a fire in a tall building like the hotel.
Finally, the 9am walkout seemed to be staggered across the country depending on when the cameras turned to them. The Welsh firefighters shown on BBC news patiently waited for the reporter to start speaking before lurching into a purposeful stride out of the fire station.
La grève des pompiers n’existe pas.
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11.21.02
Posted in Semantic web at 1:23 pm by
This looks like a interesting gimmick in principle. It’s an application that suggests further reading based on a URL you supply.
As ever, though, the results seem heavily biased towards material about web publishing and blogs themselves. The medium is indeed the message.
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Posted in Meeja at 9:11 am by
Our Reasonable Media: #1 in an unlimited series
Today’s Metro headlines the cremation of child murderer Myra Hindley with the simple, if medieval, “END OF A DEMON”.
(Don’t try to find the headline on the paper’s website: it doesn’t ‘do’ news, appropriately enough.)
Still, it’s not as fatuous as Metro’s classic attempt at concerned outrage during the search for the missing Soham girls this summer. Its helpful front-page hint to the police: “FIND THEM”.
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Posted in Meeja at 8:45 am by
Further evidence that New Scientist is one of the best free lunches on the web.
This week the magazine reports that the treatment of short-sightedness in children may well be based on a fallacy. Optometrists routinely undercorrect myopia to encourage the eye not to lengthen. The new study suggests that this tactic not only fails to do this, it causes the eye to lengthen more than full correction would.
Most disturbing, the undercorrection theory is based on a single 1965 study involving just 33 children.
Mind the funding gap.
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11.20.02
Posted in Forteana at 6:39 pm by
The Guardian has a nice story about micro-states claiming independence from Australia, currently estimated to number 22.
Most of these seem to have been founded in the last few years, so I’m assuming that self-proclaimed legal experts are filling talkboards with helpful advice on setting up your own state.
Meanwhile, Sealand, the daddy of them all, seems to have been experiencing problems with someone issuing fake passports. Maybe now people will take them seriously.
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11.19.02
Posted in Film at 5:01 pm by
Well. British Pathe puts its entire archive of film news online, free*.
National Lottery funding well spent. A massive national resource made availalble to the public. And bleedin’ Tessa Jowell (my MP, incidentally) gets to announce it.
Plus:
“The fund will also take a travelling Internet suite it calls a “digi-van” to disadvantaged areas throughout south London.”
Nice one, Tessa. Now can we have free universities back?
* ‘Free’ to view in low-quality download, that is. You’ll have to pay for anything usable. What did you expect, miracles?
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