Falling Sky

Speechless

This bizarre ongoing run of under-the-weatherness that's been bugging me for weeks has today manifested itself in superdense globules of thick green ectoplasm embedded in my throat, leaving me unable to speak beyond a whisper. Earlier this morning I coughed up a veritable mass of the stuff into my hand, where it lay quivering like an Ood brain. Nice. I binned it, but in retrospect maybe I should've tried to establish contact. Much to my frothing annoyance, this all means I'm in no shape to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in Glasgow tomorrow, so we've reluctantly popped them up for sale at face value. (ooh, they just sold.) Fuck's sake, this'll be the second Nick Cave gig we've bought tickets for then missed - ah well, third time's a charm. I'm counting on seven days of refreshing sea air in Orkney to slap my immune system into action, otherwise I'll just have to retire from the civil service on ill health with the sniffles.

In further news, London has clearly gone off its tits and elected the Snork Maiden as Mayor of the city. Boris Johnson... he's the sort of candidate that Nathan Barley would vote for, isn't he? All those berks who've wibbled on internet message boards about how he'll make politics "interesting" rather put me in mind of a certain curse. And the BNP getting a seat on the Assembly? What the hell is going on down there? With every week I get more and more depressed with the state of British politics - it's increasingly hopeless, cynical, bitter, fractious, mired in inactivity and doing us absolutely no good as a nation, yet there's nothing I can see happening to turn things around. I'd love to think Compass really could make a difference, but it's hard to believe it. On darker days I find myself thinking where both Scotland and the UK in general will be heading over the next couple of decades and really don't like the results. No wonder I keep looking at Svalbard with a weird longing, but I'd be happy to make do with Scandinavia.

For Once, A Happy Ending

Alan Johnston freed after 114 days kidnapped in solitary confinement - what a truly cracking piece of news to wake up to today.  It's been wonderful to watch footage of people at the BBC, really genuinely touching, cheering as that giant poster on Television Centre came down.  And seeing his parents & sister talking to him on the phone this evening (at the end of this clip) brought a wobbly old lump to the throat, especially the understated "have a word with your mum - chin up son."  When the rumours came through weeks back of his execution they were horrifying but depressingly believable, so easy to imagine grim digitised images of his killing leaking through the internet.  Instead, this superb journalist is out, free and on the way back to Scotland.  Any kind of happy ending seems so rare in reality, so savour the moment.

Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

UPDATE: Quick off the mark, Manic at Bloggerheads has produced this button to replace the old one. Diamond!

Hope Springs Viridian

A few months after the landmark (by UK standards) Stern Report, days into the annual DAVOS meeting, Bruce Sterling's superb Viridian Design Movement newsletter is wrapping up in a remarkably upbeat fashion, blazing with vision, awareness and hope, stuffed with extremely worthwhile links.  Essential reading for anyone who feels even the teensiest bit concerned about how our world is changing as those little thermometers gently rise.  Below are a few choice excerpts but, dude, come on, read the whole thing.  Though still a warning, it's stirring, inspiring stuff - more than you'd have any right to expect given the subject, but when you consider how far the environmental movement has travelled in the last decade, well deserved.  Now let's see that global momentum expand and accelerate - and try to imagine what shape your world will be in come 2017.

There is no need to wait for distant 2012 to declare victory in our war to make green trendy and to create "irresistible demand for a global atmosphere upgrade." Green will never get any trendier than it is this year.
[...] We are going to see a series of monstrous efforts by large enterprises: private, local, state and national, to save whatever can be saved of the previous natural order. The primary motivator of this effort will be fear. The climate is changing much more quickly and more severely than anyone suspected it would.
[...] When the Davos Economic Forum steals your clothes, there's no reason left to wear them any more. We are winning. The Great and the Good agree with us. They're more scared than we ever were.
[...] There is no resisting the political, economic, social, cultural effects of this. Everything will change.
[...] [T]he primrose path to sustainability, even it is construed as sexy, trendy and stylish, will be dark and thorny. Behind Corporate Green is its darker, bloodstained cousin, Khaki Green, and we'll be seeing a lot of that. Sustainability will be a comprehensive revolution in the tenor of daily life. There will be blood on the hands of the people who bring it about. Not because they are bloodthirsty. But because there is so much blood.
[...] Genuine climate mayhem is underway. It is intensifying fast. People are going to die: of heat, of disease, freezing, starving, drowning and dying of thirst. Not in mere tens of thousands as they did in the Paris heatwave, but in hecatombs. We have a global climate crisis. A real one, not a futurist speculation.  People are going to make agonizing sacrifices in increasingly frantic efforts to ameliorate that and redress that crisis. Then, next year, they will discover that the situation is vastly worse than then imagined, and the spillage of blood and treasure and sacred honor that they thought would surely help is a fraction of what was necessary.

What I've Been Reading Apart From Primary-Level Picture Books

Time for one of those stunningly intermittent posts where I hoot wildly about other blogs & such out there in the big wide digital yonder.  Onwards!

Starting with the bestest, albeit from last month, is the October wedding of Stacey and Steven.  Stacey's written a smashing post about the wedding, complete with snaps, though I've got a real soft spot for the just-married post containing the most utterly perfect clip from Sesame Street.  Go and watch, it'll charm your socks right off.

Croila's had her second birthday this year.  No, she's not 2.

Baby McMuffin has made his first bid for the coveted MP3 of the week post with this a cappella performance.  Clearly inspired by Mongolian throat-singing, Will Oldham and Thom Yorke, streamed gigs in the Sandi Thom style can only be weeks away.  Rock on wee man!

Bloggerheads is hanging up his blogging hat for the time being - accurately remarking that '[t]he British political blogosphere is in a downward spiral at the moment, freshly-'captained' as it is by a range of (mostly Tory) newcomers gleefully yelling "Dive!"' - but is clearly up to something.  Worth keeping an eye on.

Martin 'Moneysavingexpert' Lewis has written an excellent piece on why renting isn't such a dumb move after all, thank you very much.  If the Lass & I got a mortgage, we'd probably be living way out in the outskirts and getting dangerously obsessed with property ladders.  Since we're renting, we're in the middle of the city in a lovely big flat with a view better than god's.  I admire (and, to a certain extent, envy) anyone who does have a mortgage on where they live, but it's not the only way.

Onegoodmove continues to be an absolute blessing for us non-Yanqui fans of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Real Time with Bill Maher featuring Quicktime-embedded clips of the bestest bits.  Recent highlights are Maher's latest New Rules, Colbert left speechless and Stewart on the unifying power of homophobia.

Craig Murray has been watching the BBC's fascinating The State Within.  Now, if you a) know about Murray's history as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and b) have been watching said show, there's one character who may just as well be called Craig Murray.  He writes a great piece about this and how the BBC is publically denying there's any connection between Murray and Sinclair:

[...] They sounded about as nervous to speak with me as my FCO friends, but told me that The State Within had terrified the BBC top brass because of its attack on the special relationship and the war on terror. They dreaded the government reaction. An edict on the line to take had therefore gone out to all, including the actors. The State Within is purely entertainment, with no political meaning and has no relationship to any real people, places or incidents. [...] In fact the world of The State Within is more real than you might imagine.

Intriguing stuff, both on and off screen.

Charlie Brooker's weekly piece for the Guardian's Comment is Free thingy has thankfully given up on all that 'Supposedly...' stuff and become a general babble/rant/wibbling post for him, which is just the ticket really.  A particularly good wail last week on a teeth-whitening procedure, plus it's nice to see the creative spite of TV GoHome resurrected recently in these columns.

Further vicious TV-based funny can be had at Grace Dent's brill weekly column on the Radio Times website.  Famed for her brilliant Big Brother writings - about the only worthwhile thing to come out of those months of moronic nastiness - she covers both the good stuff, such as Planet Earth:

I wish that after Planet Earth, there was a light BBC3 extra-footage show called Planet Earth: Far Out, where Claudia Winkleman goes behind the scenes and interviews the animals and assures us that none really curled up on a rock and died of hunger during filming)

and the risible:

I suppose the brilliant thing about living where Phil from Location, Location, Location terms as "the best place to make a swift exit" is that at least he's put a certain type of person off investing here. I'm talking about the excruciating tosspots who appear every week on his show looking for a home. "Jemima and Guy have a cool £985,000 to play with!" purrs Phil. "How?!" I always shout, "How do they have £985,000 to play with?! They're about 30-years-old! How does that happen?"

Hear fucking hear!  Check it out every weekend.

And for a genuine, darkly-amusing, well-written blog that ultimately brings on slow crushing sense of despair for now & the future, Mr Chalk may actually beat Dr Crippen, Reynolds of Random Reality and David Copperfield.  It's the journal of a secondary school teacher and has already led to a book of collected writings.  I've seen the frustrating madness that many teachers are dragged through these days while trying to do their job but it's still startling to read just how fucked up things are.  Not only would his blog (and the many comments added by other teachers and parents) put most right-thinking people off going for teacher training, after a few months of reading this I'd be utterly determined to tutor my (non-existant) sprogs at home.  Granted, that's partly because I'm a terrible control freak, but still.

Cheerio Shithead!

Graphic nabbed from here, the below quotes from BBC News.

MAY 2001

Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think: 'What in the world am I doing here?' It's a big surprise.

FEBRUARY 2002

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.

OCTOBER 2002

[Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.

MARCH 2003

We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.

2004

It seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognise that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this.

How long?  About six years.

UPDATE: The Daily Show's splendid tribute to the oaf can be seen here. Marvellous stuff.

"There Is Still Time..."

As you'll no doubt have heard on the news over the last few days - nice bit of publicity-building there, Whitehall wonks - the Stern Review on the economics of climate change has finally been published.  At a chunky 570+ pages, I'm not likely to get through it any time soon, but thankfully there's an excellent 27-page summary (or, for the attention-starved, 9 pages).  Sober, pragmatic and utterly terrifying, it lacks the wide-eyed hysteria often found in global warming literature and is all the more effective and convincing for it.

The eye of an economist is clear, putting tangible economic figures to global catastrophe, where saving the world is an investment, albeit by a species rather than a company.  He writes of a realistic opportunity to be taken within the next 10 years to mitigate the predicted global disruption of increased pollution levels, emphasising the very real urgency this entails and the long-term consequences of letting things slide along BAU (business as usual).  There's hope to be found in those 27 pages, the tangible sense of a never-to-be-repeated chance to put things right, or at the very least lessen the oncoming blow.  I'm hoping so damn much that this makes it, that this report really is "the turning point" Cameron Hepburn speaks of.  Measured and specific, considered with regard to the complexities of global economics, if this doesn't result in genuine international action to reduce carbon emissions, brother, nothing will.

Will it?  I read Worldchanging and Viridian Design and feel optimistic and hopeful for the future.  I read the public comments on news sites like the BBC and Scotsman and despair that the masses are too shortsighted, too selfish, too fucking thick to let such measures take place.  Go ahead world, prove me wrong.  Please.

Orkney, Chums, Pastels and a Plug

A little bit of catching up on this curiously sunny afternoon in Edinburgh, leaves in nearby trees glistening in the light, a warm breeze brushing through the flat, sunshine shimmering off the Water of Leith...

The Lass has written a nice summarised post of our Orkney jaunt a few weeks back.  I'll get round to one meself sometime soon, though that could be 'soon' in geological terms.  All her photographs are online, as are all my drawings and most of the snaps.

It's been a tremendously social month-and-a-bit, starting off with Stu & Andrea popping over for a weekend before trundling over to lovely lovely Skye - Stu's  account starts here, continues here and we're now waiting to hear all about The Three Chimneys.  In the meantime there's a fine wodge of photographs from Our Favourite Isle.  We had a great weekend, with Saturday night seeing a selection of V-SCOT popping over to ours for all sorts of culinary delights and obscure nerdish chatter and Sunday night marked with a gorgeous meal at diddy right-on ethical eaterie Iglu.

Last weekend saw the visit of my old college chum Marilou, who I haven't seen since, crikey, 2003.  Unlike muggins here, she made good use of her animation skills from college and has gone on to make a living from animation in Brussels (you'll see her name pop up in the credits for Belleville Rendezvous) winning awards in the process.  A real pleasure to see her again, chatting away as though Bournemouth and Ballyfermot were only yesterday.  She came laden down with Belgian beer and chocolate (this may now become a statutory requirement for all visitors), including a genuine & utterly ludicrous Kwak glass - oh, there'll be photos of this bizarre piece of glass-blowing, you'll see.
For our part, we introduced her to the marvels of Peckhams, Chewin' the Fat, L'Aquila Bianca, the Farmers Market, £5 CDs at Fopp, the Water of Leith, Red Cuillin and The Wicker Man (the original, obviously).  It was also great to watch she and the Lass nattering about knitting throughout the weekend, Chazzer gently leading our guest through more ambitious patterns, bizarrely huge needles and chunky wool.

Despite a hellish bus journey and late arrival at the session, I had a pretty good time at life drawing on Saturday afternoon.  Being late, the only available view was a pretty dull profile of the body, so I focused on the head for the whole session.  Despite being narked during the first hour and on the cusp of leaving, I stuck around and ended up producing my best portrait yet using soft Conté pastels.  It's up for sale on Etsy now, as are three animal drawings from the last year - lion, tiger, camel.  I quite like 'em, but whether they can stand out from the massive heided multitudes remains to be seen.

Anyhoo, Mum's visiting this weekend (I've just got all the hoovering and toilet-scrubbing done) so it'll be a couple of days 'til the next post.  Until then, here's a highly recommended clip from The Daily Show at it's finest that'll make you laugh, gasp and calculate how many days 'til the next American presidential election, c/o One Good Move.

Disturbing Statistic Of The Week

From Editor & Publisher:

Gallup: Many Americans Harbor Strong Bias Against U.S. Muslims

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

[...] Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D.

[...] The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.

In-fucking-credible - I would hope the results would be very different in the UK, but without a similar poll I really can't be sure.  Special ID for your religious beliefs?  There's quite a history of that.

Steady On!

Knife amnesty nets 17,700 weapons

Over 17,700 weapons were handed in during the first week of the national knives amnesty, the Home Office said.

[...] As well as knives, Devon and Cornwall police also received an 8lb anti-tank rocket launcher, known as a "tankbuster", which has a range of up to 350 metres.

A force spokesman said: "The amnesty is for all weapons and if someone wants to get rid of a rocket launcher, that's fine by us."

For Fear Of Having My Eyes H4XX3D

Read this PDF to see why. I don't like ID cards. I don't like the concept of personal physical data (as opposed to identity data such as name, DOB, etc) taken from me and stored somewhere, open to abuse or error. I refuse to travel to any country that expects me to give them my fingerprints - so no more American vacations, sadly. As any reader of Private Eye knows, the ability of the UK Government - or, more likely, a PFI 'partnership' with the usual suspects - to reliably and securely create and maintain a huge database of information is akin to the ability of the common cow to gracefully jump over the moon. Name and addresses are one thing, but I can't trust these incompetent purveyors of white elephants with my 'biometric' details, fingerprints or iris scans. Clearly the next step would be DNA. It's not so much out of paranoia for the state - though there is an element of that, the 'state' seems more like a lumbering body actively competing against itself rather than working in any form of harmony (witness the recent Home Office farce, and that was just under one branch of government). It's more the likelihood of data being corrupted, lost, mixed-up, fucked-up, and the huge implications such errors would have. It's the possibility of that data being hacked, stolen, copied by others - already predicted by Mr Catch Me If You Can - making current identity theft or credit-card-cloning look like peanuts by comparison.

Fuck that. Fuck them. I didn't vote Labour back in 1997 so they could foist this bullshit on me. It's already begun with biometric facial measurement data being included on all new UK passports, but there's plenty more to come with interviews and fingerprinting as the UK Passport Service chief stated last year:

"The next stage will be putting fingerprints into passports... So we will be moving from 600,000 being interviewed at the end of 2006 to interviewing more than 4.5m a year from the end of 2008."

The best way to try and avoid all this, if only for a decade? Passport renewal now. I'd rather not - £51's a fair bit of money to spend on principles - but this shit matters. Maybe, hopefully, possibly, common sense will prevail over the next few years and the ID card plans will follow Mr Blair into the wilderness... but I doubt it. No matter that opposition ranges from left-leaning websites to major organisations and groups like Silicon.com (whose coverage on the issue has been excellent, intelligent and thorough). Despite the BBC's attempt to create involvement, I feel utterly powerless with regards to this. My passport renewal may not have any effect on the larger picture, but if it lets me travel for another decade unprinted and unscanned it'll be worthwhile. It's just hugely disappointing and, frankly, rather spirit-crushing that as a nation we've ended up in a position where that's something I feel I have to do.

UPDATE: Here's a couple of very recent posts from excellent political weblogs on the same subject, both with further details.
Liberal England - Identity cards: All your fears were justified and The Devil's Kitchen - I Really Did Tell You So (particularly recommended with regard to the security of personal data)