tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88513526998256566002024-02-19T08:30:30.213+00:00Nicholas Dysonstuart richardshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15953970902602035016noreply@blogger.comBlogger570125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-20423961463662211182014-09-15T08:07:00.001+01:002016-10-02T07:37:36.592+01:00In praise of the clunk<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The future's bright; the future's Apple. And it's all about the interface.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To judge from the <i>obiter dicta</i> of Tim Cook (born 1960, reputed 'net worth' 400 million dollars - net of what, one wonders in such cases*) the mission of Apple is to drag us out of the 1970s. Some of us are still stuck in the 1960s and have but a dim awareness of just what it was that gave the following decade, in which Mr Cook must have spent his formative years, any claim to distinctiveness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But Tim Cook knows and has just pronounced that the problem with television, in which Apple still maintains a keen interest though it has yet to make its carefully planned takeover, is that it has 'not changed since the 1970s'. The thing is it is 'too clunky for the modern world'.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3lsVVWZaWVxBPyATh1wiu-0xd_9AcPiTpkuopP_Vj9KmcA3nnoRPAxryfpc_RZGmG71f8wUnN0gleh3Odors9HjkxbwYk8nlcOUWb597QTnYa5t8R0YPlpO70UC-wqPXfgk9HzQoA-j2X/s1600/IMG_5495.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3lsVVWZaWVxBPyATh1wiu-0xd_9AcPiTpkuopP_Vj9KmcA3nnoRPAxryfpc_RZGmG71f8wUnN0gleh3Odors9HjkxbwYk8nlcOUWb597QTnYa5t8R0YPlpO70UC-wqPXfgk9HzQoA-j2X/s1600/IMG_5495.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The 'modern world', the world of Apple, is the 'seamless' interface. Some of us think that is the problem, and that the 'clunk', as a quality of experience - the perceived otherness of things - is a something to be valued and even striven for. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is the epiphany a clunk or a seamlessness?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">*It would of course have been a pertinent question in many other cases: Bernie Madoff perhaps, or, in an earlier decade Robert Maxwell, who was hitting the headlines in the 1970s and knew how to clunk, or his nineteenth-century precursor, in death as in life, Augustus Melmotte. The nature of finance has moved on since the nineteenth century and even since the 1970s: those who now wish to become seriously rich quick need not suffer the worries and aspersions that drove Mr Melmotte to his death. Ask any number of modern CEOs. Inebriation in the House of Commons may still be with us but it is seldom followed by recourse to the prussic acid bottle.The rich, it seems, as well as the poor, are always with us; it is just those in between who seem to be going away.</span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-29337416089635580672014-09-15T07:11:00.002+01:002014-09-15T07:11:52.241+01:00No contact<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Apple Inc., it seems, is moving into sweeping up the way we, or at least the smart and affluent we, pay for our goods and services.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apple HQ</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Soon the mobile phone - the 'device' - will become not just the all-pervading tool for communicating, for gathering factual information, for publishing our doings to the world, for finding out where we are and where we are going, but for buying everything from coffee to cars. We need take nothing else with us, but we need to have our mobile with us wherever our mobile lives take us, from Iceland's frozen mountains to Afrique's sunny shores.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No more cards: just the phone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Which sets me wondering - what about those other cards, so far repelled in this country (whatever that means after 18th September) but still lurking in the background? The identity card.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitklu1XJlFguGj5QpI2Pr_I-S8a8XTGScv3nMxabdrBNcZ00yECs6PBy02L0l8gsa-rb1mm9nsQjBkVvJN9h702_sPPHqRxh70q-2oVEg5Ee02WnGnurIr_zACwz3EgsdjleLGAH3iTvkF/s1600/gchq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitklu1XJlFguGj5QpI2Pr_I-S8a8XTGScv3nMxabdrBNcZ00yECs6PBy02L0l8gsa-rb1mm9nsQjBkVvJN9h702_sPPHqRxh70q-2oVEg5Ee02WnGnurIr_zACwz3EgsdjleLGAH3iTvkF/s1600/gchq.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GCHQ</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Are not our mobile phones making an an increasingly fair bid to becoming our <i>de facto</i> identity cards? Increasingly they contain a vast bulk of our personal information, our personal history and our communications. Our governments already have pretty comprehensive access to them. In their Apple apotheosis they are linked to our persona by our fingerprints and now they are set to become, perhaps, essential to our acquiring our daily bread. What more could our governments ask for?</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Galactic HQ</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-87323804128858583562014-09-14T07:48:00.000+01:002016-10-02T07:50:34.163+01:00Anatomy of intervention<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whatever happened to hearts and minds, which used to seem to be the major item in our military arsenals?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">These days it is all 'no boots on the ground'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-42183083040190933442014-02-27T20:35:00.001+00:002014-02-27T20:35:26.322+00:00Swingbridge on the Ouze<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swingbridge on the River Ouze at Southease, below Lewes, East Sussex</td></tr>
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<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-72245086080578347302014-02-26T08:03:00.001+00:002014-02-26T08:03:54.272+00:00Sheep in England<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwh_YRoh49ylnWZQcDvXO3-a2UKQP-4IbBR-rbw4bhGML-ac-0npvOJoDm2NqmeHZ1DZD7CA-m5fUtKSsBUXJgVzpphGQM03xrB1OGDWSVS_SSh7KCUtdhXvc1ZKVL8M9cKkULr8QkWb4U/s1600/PC082045.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwh_YRoh49ylnWZQcDvXO3-a2UKQP-4IbBR-rbw4bhGML-ac-0npvOJoDm2NqmeHZ1DZD7CA-m5fUtKSsBUXJgVzpphGQM03xrB1OGDWSVS_SSh7KCUtdhXvc1ZKVL8M9cKkULr8QkWb4U/s1600/PC082045.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sheep on the Ouse embankment at Southease, East Sussex</td></tr>
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<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-56298537374433097472014-02-26T07:24:00.002+00:002014-02-26T07:24:24.210+00:00South Downs<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Downs above Alfriston, East Sussex</td></tr>
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<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-25344315754266564962014-02-25T21:18:00.000+00:002014-02-26T06:37:09.038+00:00Mulberry at Rodmell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-32998231464432474032014-02-25T07:10:00.002+00:002014-02-25T07:10:41.658+00:00Hastings shore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgg2Q_buE3nfcsLn3ryKUobcZz3Pgz4HWGYVsNpFsjE9CSv0nyFr4QvOGXohdWyjjwNIqeBA14UOwoky4HbksO17ZuS0N73Np7PvfBYlsnZw7OMsGuaASbHNiQUg_r2Yz1rQak_ycdjtr/s1600/Hastings.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgg2Q_buE3nfcsLn3ryKUobcZz3Pgz4HWGYVsNpFsjE9CSv0nyFr4QvOGXohdWyjjwNIqeBA14UOwoky4HbksO17ZuS0N73Np7PvfBYlsnZw7OMsGuaASbHNiQUg_r2Yz1rQak_ycdjtr/s1600/Hastings.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-78427542613237961502014-02-25T07:06:00.001+00:002014-02-25T07:06:53.571+00:00Weep for England<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'He came upon pale and graceful stone gates leading to some lost great estate with the National Trust's acorn on a road sign. He turned in and drove two miles down an avenue of limes. Families shrieked about him. He found a Gents and then returned stiffly to the Mercedes in the car park. People ran about taking plants from a garden shop to their cars to plant on their patios. If I had ever loved England, he thought, I would</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">now</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> weep for her. Sherwood forest watch him from every side, dense and black.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">from Jane Gardam's <i>Old Filth (2004)</i></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-38558471500327812152014-01-30T09:11:00.003+00:002014-01-30T09:11:55.464+00:00Deaths and derivatives<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2014/01/on-death-and-derivatives/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-death-and-derivatives" target="_blank">Here</a></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-22152429423586776402014-01-28T07:15:00.000+00:002014-01-28T07:15:27.719+00:00England made me<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'I'll walk to Bantry Street, thought Betty; his taxi might overtake me. And she struck out into the crowds. In her Agatha Christie country clothes and pearls and polished shoes, she strode among an elbowing, slovenly riff-raff who looked at her as if she were someone out of a play. Pain and dislike, bewilderment and fear, she thought in every face. Nobody at peace except the corpses in the doorways, the bundles with rags and bottles, and you can't call that peace. She dropped money into hats and boxes as she would never have done in Dacca or Shanghai, and would have been prosecuted for doing in Singapore. Beggars again in the streets of London, she thought. My world is over.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">from Jane Gardam's <i>Old Filth</i> (2004)</span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-86406071700580424462014-01-27T08:01:00.000+00:002014-01-27T08:01:14.804+00:00Quantum of solace?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?_r=1" target="_blank">Solace</a></td></tr>
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<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-81849644440420837152014-01-26T10:22:00.001+00:002014-01-26T10:22:44.687+00:00Stiffen IMF sinews?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the past the International Monetary Fund was consistently criticised by some for always imposing impoverishing austerity on the economies it supported for the sake of preserving the interests of foreign (mostly developed world) investors. More recently, under Christine Lagarde, it has sometimes called for a moderation of austerity to avoid driving 'rescued' or recovering economies deeper into recession. There was a famous little muted spat between the IMF and the UK Chancellor George Osborne on this subject. However, with the improving economic data from the UK, Osborne has been able to announce that his government has 'fixed the economy' - his phrase.Well, it's obvious, isn't it? The Labour government 'wrecked' the economies; the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition (but you can forget the secondary partners now) 'fixed' it. These things don't happen unless the people in control will them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But now, as the federal reserve in the US, flirts nervously with the famous and long looming 'tapering' to withdraw the massive financial stimulus to the economy, rippling signs of dependency and withdrawal symptoms begin to appear. Christine Lagarde is on the case and has warned the World Economic Forum at Davos.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'This is <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;">clearly a new risk on the horizon and it needs to be closely watched ... How tapering takes place, at what speed, how it is communicated and what spillover effects it has, particularly in emerging markets.'</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Larry Fink, chairman of fund manager BlackRock, saw it rather differently. He told the WEF that one of his concerns was the large positions held by investors in various emerging markets. However, he claimed that tapering was not the main problem. 'It's going to require much better domestic policy in these emerging markets.'</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In other words the IMF needs to get a grip = like it used to have.</span></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-48119405542726046442014-01-26T09:11:00.001+00:002014-01-26T10:24:16.989+00:00Oracles of our time<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;">'But sources close to Blair insist that he is not in any way indulging in a </span><em style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">mea </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"></span><em style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">culpa</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"> over past interventions by the west, including in Iraq. In the future, he writes, "the purpose should be to change the policy of governments; to start to treat this issue of religious extremism as an issue that is about religion as well as politics, to go to the roots of where a false view of religion is being promulgated and to make it a major item on the agenda of world leaders to combine effectively to combat it. This is a struggle that is only just beginning.'</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;">The Gods have always used oracles and prophets. madmen and women hearing voices, to communicate their message to earth. The Greek Gods got a lot of fun about it; the God of the Jews, for all the famous Jewish sense of humour, was usually more serious and direct. His message was often Blair's: forsake a 'false sense of religion'.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;">Our Gods on earth, inhabiting their modern versions of Olympus - often located in the more expensive residential areas of London, can be recognised by their need, or privilege, to have their more gnomic utterances clarified, not by their own direct statements, but by hints and nuances by 'sources close to' or 'members of their inner circle'. (Rupert Murdoch famously has a 'representative on earth'. Of course we poor worshippers cannot be sure that the modern priesthood have always got things quite right or clear.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;">Tony Blair, like his erstwhile co-deity, George W Bush, clearly knows a thing or two about religion - and truth and falsehood.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><br /></span></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-81253411823363088962014-01-25T17:35:00.001+00:002014-01-25T17:38:07.549+00:00Return of the Circassians<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1UuIcrV6w_LCTQgDqbMG3xubWobSMdroK4-MjMJLlDhqCdL8ldqu6E2yJvsm57V_QouEcXH2TG2dnHPqM28OI_A0mXeXEbbSUGaX2LzmwJc1-UuwEtHAloDvycP5EMsHRmiXGUat63R8H/s1600/Circassians+return.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1UuIcrV6w_LCTQgDqbMG3xubWobSMdroK4-MjMJLlDhqCdL8ldqu6E2yJvsm57V_QouEcXH2TG2dnHPqM28OI_A0mXeXEbbSUGaX2LzmwJc1-UuwEtHAloDvycP5EMsHRmiXGUat63R8H/s1600/Circassians+return.jpeg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The capital of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassia" target="_blank">Circassia</a> is Sochi.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u><br /></u></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-63709146953021871792014-01-25T08:53:00.001+00:002014-01-25T08:54:24.123+00:00Data is fear, fear data<div style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/jan/25/secret-teacher-admin-lessons-assessment-feedback" target="_blank">'It was all going well until</a> about 18 months ago. That, to me, was when everything changed in education. It went crazy. Free periods were no longer about spending time on my classes and the future of our department. After school time stopped being about giving children extra help and running extra-curricular clubs that would nourish their passion for my subject.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'Suddenly, those things were no longer important. What was important now was data. Six times a year we were required to fill out little boxes about every single child we taught. Not meaningful comments designed to help children progress, just grades and numbers in boxes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'The columns swam in front of my tired, admin-hating eyes. Instead of being trusted to manage our departments' assessment programme, we had to do "work sampling" every half term, as though our colleagues were not trusted professionals. It felt like sneaking. And worst of all, we were expected to produce formal exams for every single year group at the end of every term. Every term! That's seven meaningful exam papers every term in a practical subject that gets one period per week of teaching.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned Gove yet. Well, that's mainly because I actually think that it's not just about him. It's about the way that schools have reacted to his changes. From what I can see, the main way is with knee-jerk panic. No pedagogical thought and intelligent debate went into the decisions at my school. It was fear. Education has become a horror film in which senior leadership teams are just trying to keep the wolves from the door by any means possible, and it's happening everywhere.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Footnote: I know if it should be 'data are...' but the is data the glomerate beast, not intelligible bits of information.</span></div>
Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-80820568618244185442014-01-23T08:06:00.001+00:002014-01-25T08:54:11.641+00:00Reality - it depends how we look at it<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/23/photographer-dumped-altering-syria-image" target="_blank">reported</a> that the Associated Press news agency has severed all ties with a freelance photographer and removed all his images from their archive because it has transpired he digitally manipulated one recent picture of a Syrian rebel fighter to remove from the corner of the image his colleague's video camera.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Cca-K6yt10WDD3_EBgl-6-NvRT_CwoyO4R-iS3h9hhKpsIv0F2mNIoVzBArMtp-2-iZ33CFguqSfZ4uA9-BXAIfSho76rg-S3cnJfDiNNAaOkgF2hdc60DISoXqatAJTGj2PYi86P5Hp/s1600/Syria.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Cca-K6yt10WDD3_EBgl-6-NvRT_CwoyO4R-iS3h9hhKpsIv0F2mNIoVzBArMtp-2-iZ33CFguqSfZ4uA9-BXAIfSho76rg-S3cnJfDiNNAaOkgF2hdc60DISoXqatAJTGj2PYi86P5Hp/s1600/Syria.jpeg" height="240" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo Narciso Contreras</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is something the Pulitzer prize winning photographer claims never to have done before. It is accepted that the removal had 'little news importance'. The photographer thought it might 'distract viewers', but he 'now regretted' his decision. The alteration breached AP's requirements for truth and accuracy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">According to a spokesman, "AP's reputation is paramount and we react decisively and vigorously when it is tarnished by actions in violation of our ethics code ... Deliberately removing elements from our photographs is completely unacceptable."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"He said while the AP and other news organisations approve photographers' use of software to lighten or darken photos to replicate scenes as they witnessed them, the news service could not countenance Contreras's manipulation of a scene that was not true to reality."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Would it have been acceptable for the photographer to have cropped the photograph to remove the camera, had that been possible? Or to have simply framed it to exclude the camera? What lies beyond the frame of 'truth and accuracy'?</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"That revelation led editors to examine all the 494 photos by Contreras that AP had transmitted during his tenure and, when possible, to compare them to the original data file held by the photographer."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.261037826538086px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reality is data; data reality. That is all you know on earth and all you need to know.</span></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-30828256906188613602013-12-11T22:47:00.000+00:002013-12-11T22:47:15.282+00:00England is full of apples<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcmVQb1Qt6JOMrmS5-ejmfReGvYJQSUor5USQc2VzgMv6Fa0Gy8jlRw_q50OxVqwBJolR7rGcrxbHsdzmXTs5G2xKu1vj0-916JPHNisr6ORasLiuZeSyZf0xKRUiQPCHKgmCRhMBGHmA/s1600/apples.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcmVQb1Qt6JOMrmS5-ejmfReGvYJQSUor5USQc2VzgMv6Fa0Gy8jlRw_q50OxVqwBJolR7rGcrxbHsdzmXTs5G2xKu1vj0-916JPHNisr6ORasLiuZeSyZf0xKRUiQPCHKgmCRhMBGHmA/s400/apples.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orchard at Monk's House, Rodmell, east Sussex</td></tr>
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<br />Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-34384080449097358722013-11-23T08:24:00.001+00:002013-11-23T08:24:23.685+00:00People power<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">When a senior manager at Ford was showing off an automated production line to </span>Walter Reuther,<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"> leader of the United Automobile Workers union, in the early 1950s, he asked: "Walter, how will you get these machines to pay their union dues?" To which Reuther replied: "How will you get them to buy your cars?"</span></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.359375px;">From article <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/22/tube-tickets-rage-closing-ticket-offices" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span></div>
Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-32309997737500913872013-11-22T10:01:00.000+00:002013-11-22T10:01:15.404+00:002027<div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 22px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Speaking in the months after her husband's assassination, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Jacqueline_Kennedy/" style="color: #2e538f; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="external">Jacqueline Kenned</a>y was so upset with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that she told a friend and interviewer that she could barely look at images of him.</span></div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 22px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"I just can't see a picture of <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/martin-luter-king-jr-memorial-opens-public-14357765" style="color: #2e538f; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="external">Martin Luther King</a> without thinking, you know, that man's terrible," Mrs. Kennedy said, as part of an <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/jacqueline-kennedy-words-14460800" style="color: #2e538f; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="external">oral history series of interviews</a> released this month.</span></div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 22px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The widowed first lady soured on King as a result of secret wiretaps arranged by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had told President Kennedy that King tried to arrange a sex party while in town for the March on Washington, and told Robert Kennedy that King had made derogatory comments during the president's funeral, Mrs. Kennedy recalled.</span></div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 22px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But as for what was actually said by King and his circle, history remains uncertain. The original surveillance tapes involving King have never been released publicly, and are under seal by court order until 2027.</span></div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 22px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rep. John Lewis, legendary civil rights leader and friend of King, told ABC News that he believes Hoover concocted damaging material about King to give to the Kennedys because "he wanted to destroy the man."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>From the abcnews 2011 report <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Jacqueline_Kennedy/jacqueline-kennedys-feelings-martin-luther-king-jr-revealed/story?id=14478321" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></span></div>
Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-27441175429571054152013-11-18T11:24:00.000+00:002013-11-18T11:30:24.190+00:00You wait all day for a sustainable superstore and then two of them turn up at once<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1YXVOqBIz2e6OLSoloM10o9jqPfGoadlgq1eNVH-ey00Nsro-or1c4F3tnuVI2GBwI6h7Dp9Yk1oo_0XmLWH7jL1XMeT4AwVgQJ9_Dx_0P3IBS2gTNEUxfiuhKozuSIFWmO-SwCrHavSh/s1600/Sainsburys-Greenwich.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1YXVOqBIz2e6OLSoloM10o9jqPfGoadlgq1eNVH-ey00Nsro-or1c4F3tnuVI2GBwI6h7Dp9Yk1oo_0XmLWH7jL1XMeT4AwVgQJ9_Dx_0P3IBS2gTNEUxfiuhKozuSIFWmO-SwCrHavSh/s400/Sainsburys-Greenwich.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A 'super green' 'eco store' designed by Chetwood Architects for Sainsbury's and built in Greenwich in 1999, with a design life of fifty years and expected actually to be able to last one hundred (Will we still be buying anything in 2113?), and nominated for the Stirling Prize is to be demolished to enable IKEA to build a larger store on the site, whilst Sainsbury's relocates to a new store three times as big.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">IKEA says:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘We are planning to demolish the Sainsbury’s store, as the current building is
not fit for purpose to be turned into an IKEA store. We need a larger space, and
therefore inevitably we need to demolish the existing building to provide
this. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, we have made a commitment to reuse and recycle all of the
salavagable materials from the existing Sainsbury’s store.</span>’<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(How many bookshelves will it make?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sainsbury's says:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘We are relocating our Greenwich store to a bigger site so that we can offer our
customers the full Sainsbury’s range. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our new store, which has already successfully gained planning permission,
will be fully fitted with modern sustainable technologies.’</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(What would it be like, I wonder, to gain planning permission unsuccessfully?)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The architect (Paul Hinkin, now of Black Architecture) says:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘It is an absolute outrage. A building with a useful and productive life is
going to be demolished. It is an act of vandalism.'</span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-11667854229916348332013-11-18T10:19:00.002+00:002013-11-18T10:50:57.798+00:00"bombs and architects"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkQze704D3Bu5jvfVVGtFTyL27nP93JRuVloVy8hNdAB2UWdpLjoJ9Jg3x54yjInQ6g1wqqdTAqWF9KZ4b8zBmm-wxU9Y48ujA_1ZypffuPvcSoFYBT0QR26el2-ohRjCV6pi37IcHLp4U/s1600/De-Rotterdam-009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkQze704D3Bu5jvfVVGtFTyL27nP93JRuVloVy8hNdAB2UWdpLjoJ9Jg3x54yjInQ6g1wqqdTAqWF9KZ4b8zBmm-wxU9Y48ujA_1ZypffuPvcSoFYBT0QR26el2-ohRjCV6pi37IcHLp4U/s400/De-Rotterdam-009.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/18/rem-koolhaas-de-rotterdam-building" target="_blank">Rem Koolhaas's De Rotterdam</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">"This is our longest-running project. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">It began in 1997, but it only became possible to build it during the financial crisis – when the contractors were cheap enough to do it."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But is it anything more than an optical trick, a game of dancing facades best viewed from a distance? "That's all you need to see. The rest is just a cheap office building," he says, before leaving me to explore the interior for myself.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is a sense of nostalgia in his voice as he drops me on the street corner, before driving off to his next appointment. "The weird thing is that this building might look cold or harsh, but we get grandmothers now writing to us saying they like it. Which has never happened before."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I much recommend Oliver Wainwright's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/18/rem-koolhaas-de-rotterdam-building" target="_blank">article</a> - all human life is there (well, some of it).</span></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-70574132973524233812013-11-15T16:07:00.002+00:002013-11-18T10:20:23.755+00:00Fifty shades of white<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHaKR0KQqC9DsCFjlIJiV7_R1YCwYf2-DFFILm3A2mUJqwYw-BR8Mr0LGBHzmd6xyswUddxjV0hbzEtnIaCGABDFKpVTLjMufZGHj1utglwERWHdAVNfEFOWXxkVC_00k1cplzW5-g-yUv/s1600/app.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHaKR0KQqC9DsCFjlIJiV7_R1YCwYf2-DFFILm3A2mUJqwYw-BR8Mr0LGBHzmd6xyswUddxjV0hbzEtnIaCGABDFKpVTLjMufZGHj1utglwERWHdAVNfEFOWXxkVC_00k1cplzW5-g-yUv/s400/app.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the proposed new Apple 'campus' by Foster Associates. City of Cupertino</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">“There was a very surreal moment during the development of those glass fins,” recalls a former Foster employee. “There was a $30m mock-up made of a whole section of the facade, with five versions of the fin in different shades of white. The Apple guys were looking at them for ages, saying one's a bit too blue, the other's a bit more cream – but they all looked identical to the naked eye.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/15/norman-foster-apple-hq-mothership-spaceship-architecture" target="_blank">Oliver Wainwright</a>, it would seem, I have my reservations about both Apple and Lord Norman Foster, but, as for the whites, I have been there before them. Some years ago I did a job for a London architect, a little less stellar than the good lord, who was fitting out his own stairway and kitchen with shelving and cupboards. Unlike Apple, his intention was not to get the 'right' white (how can it be right when each is different from itself in different lights?), but to use the subtle differentiation of several different shades of white in the same job. The picture does not really do it justice. It is true of course that the one white will look different in different parts of the room, but a single range of, for example, cupboard fronts will all look the same, thus giving the justification for differentiating them with different shades to echo the effect of varying light.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl66j-4XDG4AtZ_icWfjEjCrQjl3itJfjkDSwr2HxcKVE8j36X7tK9pBZ5ahNMnai0K_dhV1wCDaAu8vHViWoGkZYmtZ2efGvquUGCCMZh1vAh2ZblGDCGtuukNYLtshq-asNcgDWSAf-j/s1600/pic1+jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl66j-4XDG4AtZ_icWfjEjCrQjl3itJfjkDSwr2HxcKVE8j36X7tK9pBZ5ahNMnai0K_dhV1wCDaAu8vHViWoGkZYmtZ2efGvquUGCCMZh1vAh2ZblGDCGtuukNYLtshq-asNcgDWSAf-j/s400/pic1+jpg.jpg" width="318" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-23123368141154445902013-11-15T15:44:00.001+00:002013-11-15T15:44:49.712+00:00Unencumbered upscale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiTwKvsc-tvFEM5ONVoCsiSNNH78FsywlNemH26NrvhsJ1Wckqc8tYZPbLd5rxIJ4yk59WrqMF-XUYUkRO-okdL7Dw9lmfSNOFaMlV6l_2nk446vY9hqId1kKOWyMIF460Bwzc6ZieRujW/s1600/Canary-Wharf-financial-di-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiTwKvsc-tvFEM5ONVoCsiSNNH78FsywlNemH26NrvhsJ1Wckqc8tYZPbLd5rxIJ4yk59WrqMF-XUYUkRO-okdL7Dw9lmfSNOFaMlV6l_2nk446vY9hqId1kKOWyMIF460Bwzc6ZieRujW/s400/Canary-Wharf-financial-di-006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The pendulum [for residential development] has swung in favour of east London, Canary Wharf is becoming the truly 21st century part of London because it's unencumbered by the small period properties prevalent in the rest of the capital; developers can create larger, more international-style buildings."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dominic Grace of estate agents Savils commenting on the news that a £1 billion residential skyscraper is to be built at Canary Wharf. Look for it in the 'Business' rather than the 'Culture' section of <i>the Guardian.</i></span></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8851352699825656600.post-21780444322633405862013-11-14T09:09:00.000+00:002013-11-14T19:23:30.665+00:00Eats shoots - and leaves<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prone as I am to indulge myself in over-punctuation, I have never felt able to become a signed-up member of the tribe of Lynne Truss, perhaps feeling that if written language is to be purged of inexactitude it requires, not just the application of punctuation marks in a far stricter fashion than ever bothered 'correct' writers in the eighteenth century, but the wilful re-spelling of many common words to ensure that the same one cannot mean both 'departs' and those green things hanging on plants.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So whilst I agree 'Eats shoots and leaves' means something quite different from 'Eats, shoots and leaves', I do not think the latter totally unambiguous and the dash in my title attempts, not entirely securely, to establish 'leaves' as a verb and not as a noun in an after-thought.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But, to get to the point, yesterday saw the announcement in one day of two pieces of momentous economic news.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first was that a new record for the sale price of a work of art at auction had been established when Christie's sold Francis Bacon's triptych of Lucien Freud for £83 million - it hardly matters what the exact figure was. That was a lesser price than the recent private sale of Cezanne's Card Players, but, hey, it's a big number and a record, so what does it matter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is a further tribute to the power of language to introduce unintended interpretations that I have never been able to believe entirely in the achievements of anyone called Bacon. Perhaps it is the unfortunate meaning of a type of pig meat that does it, but I think actually it is the fact that some people persist in telling us, against all sense, that a Bacon wrote all the plays of William Shakespeare.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francis Bacon</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nor have I ever been able to rid myself of the idea that the numerous </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">modern </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">members of the tribe of Freud (including that rather dubious banker who inhabits some ill-defined circle of the British government) have been called into existence solely to provide case studies of the ideas of their illustrious Viennese progenitor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However that may, or, more likely, may not, be, (see how the commas breed like rabbits - someone should cull them before they infect serious writing) we have a new record and an 'art market expert' (the art market, like Formula One, seems to have a gravitational attraction for confident women) was on hand to tell us that the sale demonstrated that art had become 'recession proof', by which she presumably meant just that there were now sufficient people with sufficient personal fortunes chasing a sufficiently limited supply of assets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The other piece of news came from the graver source of the Governor of the Bank of England, who told us that the UK economic recovery had now, officially, 'taken hold' and that one no longer needed to be a certified optimist to regard the metaphorical economic glass as 'half-full'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Time was, not so long ago, when such announcements were made by elected politicians rather than out-sourced to a foreign head-hunted head of a quasi-independent agency. Time past - or passed, but still these metaphors have to be chosen with care before being offered ceremonially to the attending multitudes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Not so long ago one politician was consigned to life-time ridicule for affecting to identify the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9546338/Sir-John-Major-green-shoots-of-economic-recovery-are-on-the-way-as-darkest-moment-passed.html" target="_blank">'green shoots'</a> of economic recovery prematurely. As if he were a country parson writing to The Times in February claiming to have heard the First Cuckoo of Spring when all he had actually heard was a wood pigeon. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Back then the multitude were true believers in the rite (and right) of recovery and it was a grave offence for the high priest to offer a false augury to the people. Now few care, and the fate of a pair of modern artists whose work the populace actually finds rebarbative (never mind the art, think of the money) flutters more brain cells.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is not so much that Dawkins has made atheists of us all as that, whilst the rich, with their yachts and bacon, have become 'recession-proof', most other people have become 'recovery-proof' in the sure and certain knowledge that, even if more people are making money again (or perhaps just the same people are making more money), it's not going to include them.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcSiilO2lO7rInmjnpEoiUuJOswbT7Z8JQheT8CkRxvXQv1Tqq4VmPDb83Fk3fKooC2PAn_8rf45A0vO-Ab3nEsy7EtpHn_nsoSpKF7FeU9cdnR4aP6vZ6Z5SkwKLJTt6aLJ-JAczdQMz/s1600/Zaha-Hadid-009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcSiilO2lO7rInmjnpEoiUuJOswbT7Z8JQheT8CkRxvXQv1Tqq4VmPDb83Fk3fKooC2PAn_8rf45A0vO-Ab3nEsy7EtpHn_nsoSpKF7FeU9cdnR4aP6vZ6Z5SkwKLJTt6aLJ-JAczdQMz/s320/Zaha-Hadid-009.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A yacht made of bacon - designed by Zaha Hadid</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Nicholas Dysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16989786824467833882noreply@blogger.com