Teeth and fat
Gosh, I seem to have had one of those weeks which didn't leave much time to blog, but a couple of news stories in the UK did catch my eye - the continuing lack of dentists who will work on the NHS and the obesity 'epidemic'. Other than being health-related they seemed unconnected to the mainstream media, but we at the Woolamaloo Gazette like to think more deeply than the hacks of the Street of Shame and realised that none of the traditional media had come to the conclusion that the projected obesity epidemic (apparently we will all be fat bastards in just a few years, except, one assumes, for supermodels) is quite clearly a fake story. In the lack of NHS dental services story it was revealed some desperate (or possibly just mad) people had resorted to removing their own teeth, with one man allegedly having pulled 14 of his own teeth. As the nation's dental state decays (sorry, pun intended) further in the next few years the supposed obesity wave will fade away as fewer and fewer Britons retain teeth with which to eat their high-salt, high-fat diet. One problem solving another.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Seachd - the Inaccessible Pinnacle
At the weekend I caught an absolutely beautiful Scottish film, the Gaelic-language Seachd: the Inaccessible Pinnacle. A man returns home from Glasgow to his dying grandfather back in the Western Isles, which leads to a series of tales - in many ways it is a story about stories. Rather fittingly, since Gaelic has an immensely rich oral tradition, a seam of folklore and tales told and retold by bards, singers and just ordinary folk generation after generation. In one scene the grandfather - who may have a much more personal link to the stories of centuries past he tells - talks to his wee grandson, angry and bitter after the death of his parents, rejecting his upbringing, calling it stupid and his grandad's stories false and tells him "no-one can tell the truth. We all tell stories."
(Angus Peter Campbell/Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul as the grandfather. A man well suited to play a storyteller since he was taught by Iain Crichton Smith and then later encouraged by Sorley MacLean at University. He is a published novelist and poet and it shows in his performance - like any good poet he has a feel for the fabric and rhythm of storytelling)
As a lifelong reader its hard for me to argue that point - narrative, story, is central to the human condition, it informs who we are in a personal day to day life (how was your day? You don't just say I did this, this and this, you tell it like a short story) and on the grander scale (the older stories which tell us on a deeper level who we are as a people, stories that repeat again and again - Arthur, the Iliad, Beowulf, Ramayana, the songs of the Dreamtime. We are story, we are words and images - we think in words and images, we talk in them, write and draw and sing in them. They're encoded into our DNA. And Seachd is stories within stories, stories defining and illustrating history, culture and the individuals too.
The film is beautiful to behold - much of it is shot on An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, better know to most of us as the Isle of Skye and the mighty Cuillins range. Even in scenes shot on gray, dull, overcast (very Scottish weather) days the imagery is stunning, clouds reaching down to the tops of the mountains, like angel's wings caressing the earth. The music (which is what is playing from the embedded player I got from the official site over on the left of the blog here) is also wonderful.
It makes my blood boil that the numpty heids at BAFTA have decided not to support this Scottish film and put it forward as their non-English language selection for Oscar consideration - not because they had something else they preferred to put forward either, they just didn't put Seachd or anything else forward, which totally undermines their supposed commitment to supporting British film-making (and nice to see London still haughtily mistreats Gaelic culture, some things never change it seems). BAFTA has attracted a raft of criticism, starting with the Scottish arts community, the Parliament and now worldwide condemnation for this shameful and inexcusable lack of support and rightly so. With the fine reception the film is receiving it makes BAFTA's ignorant decision look all the more foolish and ill-informed and I hope they are quite humiliated by their disgusting actions.
But enough negativity - the film itself is truly beautiful and moving; the seemingly simple idea of an elderly storyteller telling story after story doesn't convey the feel of the film. As with any story it isn't just the story, it is how the storytellers tell the story that often makes it and that's the case here. Its hauntingly beautiful, stories that you can feel on those deeper levels that the truly good stories can reach. Go and see it.
At the weekend I caught an absolutely beautiful Scottish film, the Gaelic-language Seachd: the Inaccessible Pinnacle. A man returns home from Glasgow to his dying grandfather back in the Western Isles, which leads to a series of tales - in many ways it is a story about stories. Rather fittingly, since Gaelic has an immensely rich oral tradition, a seam of folklore and tales told and retold by bards, singers and just ordinary folk generation after generation. In one scene the grandfather - who may have a much more personal link to the stories of centuries past he tells - talks to his wee grandson, angry and bitter after the death of his parents, rejecting his upbringing, calling it stupid and his grandad's stories false and tells him "no-one can tell the truth. We all tell stories."
(Angus Peter Campbell/Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul as the grandfather. A man well suited to play a storyteller since he was taught by Iain Crichton Smith and then later encouraged by Sorley MacLean at University. He is a published novelist and poet and it shows in his performance - like any good poet he has a feel for the fabric and rhythm of storytelling)
As a lifelong reader its hard for me to argue that point - narrative, story, is central to the human condition, it informs who we are in a personal day to day life (how was your day? You don't just say I did this, this and this, you tell it like a short story) and on the grander scale (the older stories which tell us on a deeper level who we are as a people, stories that repeat again and again - Arthur, the Iliad, Beowulf, Ramayana, the songs of the Dreamtime. We are story, we are words and images - we think in words and images, we talk in them, write and draw and sing in them. They're encoded into our DNA. And Seachd is stories within stories, stories defining and illustrating history, culture and the individuals too.
The film is beautiful to behold - much of it is shot on An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, better know to most of us as the Isle of Skye and the mighty Cuillins range. Even in scenes shot on gray, dull, overcast (very Scottish weather) days the imagery is stunning, clouds reaching down to the tops of the mountains, like angel's wings caressing the earth. The music (which is what is playing from the embedded player I got from the official site over on the left of the blog here) is also wonderful.
It makes my blood boil that the numpty heids at BAFTA have decided not to support this Scottish film and put it forward as their non-English language selection for Oscar consideration - not because they had something else they preferred to put forward either, they just didn't put Seachd or anything else forward, which totally undermines their supposed commitment to supporting British film-making (and nice to see London still haughtily mistreats Gaelic culture, some things never change it seems). BAFTA has attracted a raft of criticism, starting with the Scottish arts community, the Parliament and now worldwide condemnation for this shameful and inexcusable lack of support and rightly so. With the fine reception the film is receiving it makes BAFTA's ignorant decision look all the more foolish and ill-informed and I hope they are quite humiliated by their disgusting actions.
But enough negativity - the film itself is truly beautiful and moving; the seemingly simple idea of an elderly storyteller telling story after story doesn't convey the feel of the film. As with any story it isn't just the story, it is how the storytellers tell the story that often makes it and that's the case here. Its hauntingly beautiful, stories that you can feel on those deeper levels that the truly good stories can reach. Go and see it.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Anatomical
Last weekend was the annual Doors Open Day, when buildings not normally open to the public let people into visit. I'm still sorting a stack of photographs I shot as we tramped all round town, from designer make-overs by local architectural practises in old mews buildings to places like the observatory on Calton Hill and the Royal College of Physicians in the New Town. I'll post a few more when I get time to sort them out, but I thought I'd kick off with these few shots taken in their two libraries; these are rare 17th century medical volumes, which the College Fellow on duty in the library was kind enough to let me photograph as long as I obviously refrained from using the flash (in stark contrast to the folks at Scottish Heritage who didn't allow any photography even of the Georgian rooms, which seems extremely backward to me if you are inviting in visitors, especially if you are a public body - bad marks to SH, big thumbs up to the RCP who really made an effort to make visitors welcome and encouraged photo-taking).
(click the pics to see the larger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr stream)
Apologies for the reflections here, but as the books were under glass there wasn't really anyway round them - it was either reflections of the lights or stand right over it and get my camera in the reflections, but the quality of the draughtmanship here was far too good not to try taking a pic. These books pre-date the Act of Union between Scotland and England.
Just look at the detail in this anatomical study of the human skeleton and musculature; the cross hatching and shading is amazing. More so when you consider this is around three centuries old and an artist created this by hand and another artist would then have laboriously created a negative inscribed into a copper plate for printing. Books like this, being disseminated all over Europe by groups like the Royal College, are physical artefacts of the birth of the modern era, the move from superstition to reason and science, exploring the natural world and our own physiques to find new wonder even the greatest minds of Classical Antiquity could never have dreamed of. They are also gorgeous works of craftsmanship and art. A modern Gray's Anatomy (a standard text for most doing medical degrees) may be more informative and accurate, but it lacks the elegance and beauty of this work.
Last weekend was the annual Doors Open Day, when buildings not normally open to the public let people into visit. I'm still sorting a stack of photographs I shot as we tramped all round town, from designer make-overs by local architectural practises in old mews buildings to places like the observatory on Calton Hill and the Royal College of Physicians in the New Town. I'll post a few more when I get time to sort them out, but I thought I'd kick off with these few shots taken in their two libraries; these are rare 17th century medical volumes, which the College Fellow on duty in the library was kind enough to let me photograph as long as I obviously refrained from using the flash (in stark contrast to the folks at Scottish Heritage who didn't allow any photography even of the Georgian rooms, which seems extremely backward to me if you are inviting in visitors, especially if you are a public body - bad marks to SH, big thumbs up to the RCP who really made an effort to make visitors welcome and encouraged photo-taking).
(click the pics to see the larger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr stream)
Apologies for the reflections here, but as the books were under glass there wasn't really anyway round them - it was either reflections of the lights or stand right over it and get my camera in the reflections, but the quality of the draughtmanship here was far too good not to try taking a pic. These books pre-date the Act of Union between Scotland and England.
Just look at the detail in this anatomical study of the human skeleton and musculature; the cross hatching and shading is amazing. More so when you consider this is around three centuries old and an artist created this by hand and another artist would then have laboriously created a negative inscribed into a copper plate for printing. Books like this, being disseminated all over Europe by groups like the Royal College, are physical artefacts of the birth of the modern era, the move from superstition to reason and science, exploring the natural world and our own physiques to find new wonder even the greatest minds of Classical Antiquity could never have dreamed of. They are also gorgeous works of craftsmanship and art. A modern Gray's Anatomy (a standard text for most doing medical degrees) may be more informative and accurate, but it lacks the elegance and beauty of this work.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Welcome to the Space Age
As Russians mark the 50th anniversary of planet Earth's first satellite, Sputnik, taking flight IEEE Spectrum has an interview with the legendary grand old man of science fiction, Arthur C Clarke (link via Boing Boing). Clarke, of course, before becoming the hugely influential SF writer he would later become (we're talking about a man who talked to presidents and kings as well as scientists and writers - also one of the few who was so respected he was friends with both astronauts and cosmonauts during the Cold War) wrote a speculative paper in the 1940s in which he imagined using geostationary space stations to act as relays for beaming radio signals across the entire globe, pretty much what we now have with a legion of satellites linking us up in ways we don't even think about anymore - we use phones and watch TV largely without considering the world-changing technology which brings it to us so damned easily. All starting with a little silver ball called Sputnik going beepbeepbeepbeep around the world.
As Russians mark the 50th anniversary of planet Earth's first satellite, Sputnik, taking flight IEEE Spectrum has an interview with the legendary grand old man of science fiction, Arthur C Clarke (link via Boing Boing). Clarke, of course, before becoming the hugely influential SF writer he would later become (we're talking about a man who talked to presidents and kings as well as scientists and writers - also one of the few who was so respected he was friends with both astronauts and cosmonauts during the Cold War) wrote a speculative paper in the 1940s in which he imagined using geostationary space stations to act as relays for beaming radio signals across the entire globe, pretty much what we now have with a legion of satellites linking us up in ways we don't even think about anymore - we use phones and watch TV largely without considering the world-changing technology which brings it to us so damned easily. All starting with a little silver ball called Sputnik going beepbeepbeepbeep around the world.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
The moon and the sun
It's that time of year when you can look up on a bright, autumnal morning and see the sun in on direction, rising from the sea and look the other way and see the moon hanging in a clear, pale blue sky at the same time. Somehow seeing the moon in daylight always make me think on a scene from the old 70s show Space 1999...
It's that time of year when you can look up on a bright, autumnal morning and see the sun in on direction, rising from the sea and look the other way and see the moon hanging in a clear, pale blue sky at the same time. Somehow seeing the moon in daylight always make me think on a scene from the old 70s show Space 1999...
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