Quotulatiousness

January 26, 2018

Ursula K. Le Guin, RIP

Filed under: Books — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’m sorry to say that I’ve never read any of her work, but this obituary by Jude Karabus (especially this section) makes me think I missed out:

A lot of her work – like that of all the literary greats – had to do with thought experiments: What if the relationship between power and gender were different; what if you didn’t – for good or for bad – have to think about whether you wanted to have sex with someone when you interacted with them? What of the profit motive and humankind’s uneasy relationship with war, the environment and its own nature. Her work was, of course, unflinchingly feminist, humanist also.

There is a yellowed, slightly dog-eared copy of 1974’s The Dispossessed, complete with art nouveau-style illustration, on the shelf of the William Morris Gallery in London. It has a placard beneath it that reads something like: “This is the type of thing Morris was banging on about”. (Morris was a 19th-century English textile designer and social activist who brought art to the ‘lower’ classes by mass-producing tiles, wallpaper and other fine furnishings.)

It seems an odd choice by the curator; it’s the only book in the display that wasn’t literally written by a Morris compatriot or a known influence on him, and she was born years after he died. They were certainly of similar political bent, wanted to make art affordable etc, but only if you squint a little. The book was also written before I was born. There’s probably a connection I didn’t understand; perhaps the cover art was “a Morris” (he also painted and wrote poetry) – the terse note propped up against it doesn’t make it clear. But I like to think the curator was grabbed by the throat by her prose, like I was, and was simply looking for any excuse to say: “Here. Sit down. Read this! No really. Read this.”

A quick overview of the life and work of William Morris here.

Day 11 Cuban Missile Crisis – Will President Kennedy invade Cuba after all?

TimeGhost
Published on 30 Nov 2017

On 26 October 1962, USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev is preparing to offer the US an olive branch. Meanwhile US President John F Kennedy continue to plan an invasion of Cuba. While the politicians make new plans, their previous military plans take on a life of their own

British sex workers create a “National Ugly Mugs” database to avoid sketchy customers

Filed under: Britain, Business, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At The Register, Iain Thomson reports on a study of professional sex workers in Britain:

A study into the effect of the internet on professional sex workers has shown the online world keeps them safer, happier in their job, and more able to weed out creepy customers.

Researchers at the universities of Leicester and Strathclyde in the UK interviewed 641 courtesans – with a roughly 80/20 per cent female to male split – and found [PDF] more than three quarters found using online channels to find and vet punters made them safer in their trade. Online forums also gave then a valuable tool in staying safe and countering loneliness or depression.

“Girls are very open because obviously we started talking about the safety from the very get-go,” Milena, 32, an independent escort providing BDSM services. “If you didn’t have that internet … everything would have been underground and everybody would be scared.”

[…]

“I’d say the worst bit of the job is constantly feeling like you’ve got to look over your shoulder,” said Jane, 40, a BDSM specialist. “Even though I’m working legally, I’m constantly worried.”

Sex workers in the UK have also set up a National Ugly Mugs database, whereby abusive punters are flagged up by their email addresses or social media handles, which 85 per cent of the respondents used. Sharing this information between themselves made is much less likely that the workers would come to harm.

Support groups for people in the business have been greatly enabled by the online world.

Prostitution is legal in the UK, but not in a brothel or via a pimp. Going online meant that 89 per cent of respondents used online communications to eliminate the need for a third party to manage their affairs, 82 per cent went online to make sure they weren’t breaking the law, and 78 per cent said it had improved the quality of their lives.

Tank Chats #21 Mark V

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology, WW1 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tank Museum
Published on 27 May 2016

Although similar in appearance to earlier models the Mark V was a much better tank, more powerful and easier to drive.

It was equipped with a new engine and steering system which meant that one man could handle all the controls, compared with four in the Mark IV.

Commanded by a young officer named Whittenbury the Museum’s Mark V tank, seen in this video, took part in the Battle of Amiens and its young commander was awarded the Military Cross.

QotD: Britain’s boozy parliamentarians

Filed under: Books, Britain, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It is Wright’s contention [in his book Order! Order!] that alcohol has as many benefits as it does drawbacks. Not only does it help loosen ties and tongues it also boosts confidence and dilutes stress. Most prime ministers drank, many to excess. Herbert Asquith went by the nickname “Squiffy Asquith” and regularly appeared in the Commons three sheets to the wind. Margaret Thatcher did her best to promote the whisky industry, the uncapping of a bottle of Bell’s marking the end of the working day. She believed that whisky rather than gin was good for you because “it will give you energy”, which I fear could be a hard fact to prove scientifically.

Tony Blair, whose reign ushered in an era of 24-hour drinking, thought his relatively modest drinking was getting out of control because he calculated it exceeded the government’s weekly recommended limit. This did not impress Dr John Reid, Bellshill’s finest, who once drank like a navvy. “Where I come from,” Reid told GMTV, “a gin and tonic, two glasses of wine, you wouldn’t give that to a budgie.” Blair, of course, did not have to look further than next door to find an explanation why his consumption increased over the years. Gordon Brown, his nemesis, was fond of Champagne – Möet & Chandon no less – which he did not nurse but washed down in a gulp. “He was like the cookie monster,” recalled one aide. “Down in one, whoosh!” Drinking is of course one of those areas in which we Scots have long punched above our weight and Wright’s pages are replete with examples of intoxicated Jocks carousing nights away and causing mayhem. Former Labour leader John Smith was one such. Occasionally I encountered him on the overnight train that carried Scottish MPs home from Westminster on a Thursday night. Known as “the sleeper of death”, it was a mobile pub that never closed until it reached Waverley, whereupon politicians were disgorged red-eyed and pie-eyed among bemused early morning commuters.

Alan Taylor, “Lush tales of our political classes’ drinking exploits”, The National, 2016-06-20.

January 25, 2018

Day 10 Cuban Missile Crisis – Showdown at the U.N. Corral

TimeGhost
Published on 27 Nov 2017

On October 25, 1962 while the US Navy are looking for something to do in the Caribbean, both USSR Chairman Khrushchev and US President Kennedy are questioning the success of their actions. Meanwhile US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson is about to face off with USSR Ambassador to the UN, Valerian Zorin in a historic showdown at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Looking deeper than just England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Filed under: Britain, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

H/T to @GarethSoye for posting this one (originally from Brilliant Maps):

[Click to see full-sized image]

The Canals of Mars – Eye of the Beholder – Extra Sci Fi – #10

Filed under: Books, History, Space — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 23 Jan 2018

The Canals of Mars ignited so many imaginations, especially in science fiction stories, but they never really existed. What made us believe in them? And why did so many writers keep dreaming about them even after the theory had been disproved?

The wisdom of Zim Tzu, post-NFC Championship edition

Filed under: Football, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer doesn’t like talking to the press even on a good day, and the day after his team lost the NFC title game is pretty much the definition of not-a-good-day. Despite that, league rules require head coaches to speak to the media, and coach Zimmer complies. Grimly, impatiently, unhappily. Among the reporting on the press conference, one always stands head-and-shoulders above the rest because while other outlets merely report on the actual words said, The Daily Norseman‘s Ted Glover deploys his unique skills to unveil the real intent behind Zim Tzu’s words.

(more…)

What Can You Do With a Miter Saw? Should You Get One? | WOODWORKING BASICS

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Steve Ramsey – Woodworking for Mere Mortals
Published on 28 Jul 2017

Learn what you need to know to get started using a miter saw for woodworking.

QotD: The New Deal

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Of such sorts are the wizards who now run the country. Here is the perfect pattern of a professional world-saver. His whole life has been devoted to the art and science of spending other people’s money. He has saved millions of the down-trodden from starvation, pestilence, cannibalism, and worse – always at someone else’s expense, and usually at the taxpayer’s. He has been going at it over and over again at Washington. And now, with $4,800,000,000 of your money and mine in his hands, he is preparing to save fresh multitudes, that they may be fat and optimistic on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, 1936, and so mark their ballots in the right box.

H.L Mencken, “The New Deal”, Baltimore Sun, 1935-05-27.

January 24, 2018

Charles Stross on Heinlein’s “Crazy Years” notion

Filed under: Books, Media, Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Heinlein called it, back in the 1940s, and Charles Stross provides a few more data points to prove he was quite right:

Many, many years ago, in the introduction to my first short story collection, I kvetched about how science fictional futures obsolesce, and the futures we expect look quaint and dated by the time the reality rolls round.

Around the time I published “Toast” (the title an ironic reference to the way near-future SF gets burned by reality) I was writing the stories that later became Accelerando. I hadn’t really mastered the full repertoire of fiction techniques at that point (arguably, I still haven’t: I’ll stop learning when I die), but I played to my strengths — and one technique that suited me well back then was to take a fire-hose of ideas and spray them at the reader until they drowned. Nothing gives you a sense of an immersive future like having the entire world dumped on your head simultaneously, after all.

Now we are living in 2018, round the time I envisaged “Lobsters” taking place when I was writing that novelette, and the joke’s on me: reality is outstripping my own ability to keep coming up with insane shit to provide texture to my fiction.

Just in the past 24 hours, the breaking news from Saudi Arabia is that twelve camels have been disqualified from a beauty pageant because their handlers used Botox to make them more handsome. (The street finds its uses for tech, including medicine, but come on, camel beauty pageant botox should not be a viable Google search term in any plausible time line.) Meanwhile, home in Edinburgh, eight vehicles have been discovered trapped in an abandoned robot car park during demolition work. This is pure J. G. Ballard/William Gibson mashup territory, and it’s about half a kilometre from my front door. The world’s top 1% earned 82% of all wealth generated in 2017 — I’m fairly sure this wasn’t what Adam Smith had in mind — and South Korea has such a high suicide rate that the government intends to make organising a suicide pact a criminal offence.

Go home, 2018, you’re drunk. (Or, as Robert Heinlein might have put it: these are the crazy years, and they’re not over yet.)

Day 9 Cuban Missile Crisis – Blockade starts and low altitude flybys over Cuba

TimeGhost
Published on 23 Nov 2017

On October 24, 1962 the US led blockade on Cuba goes into effect, but it’s not the be the showdown that it looks like! In the same time the US Navy starts flying RF8 Crusader reconnaissance jets 400 feet over the missile sites on Cuba, to see what’s really going on. As the jets roar over the heads of the Cuban and Soviet soldiers, the crisis deepens.

Peter Jackson to bring modern digital technology to bear on IWM film footage of the Great War

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, Military, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Elizabeth sent me a link to this Daily Mail article on Peter Jackson’s new project:

When you think of First World War footage, chances are you conjure up grainy images of soldiers and jumpy footage of the trenches.

But a new 3D film by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is set to bring the conflict to life in a way never seen before.

The Oscar-winner has restored and colourised 100-year-old footage from the Imperial War Museum’s vast archive, and early photos suggest the results will be remarkable.

One comparison shot shows the dramatic transformation from poor quality black-and-white scenes to clear colour images, while another shows the radically sharpened faces of our troops.

Jackson said he hoped the film, which will premiere at the BFI London Film Festival before airing on BBC1 later this year, will help audiences better connect ‘with the events on screen’.

Explaining the painstaking process of restoring the footage, he said: ‘We started to do some experiments and I was honestly stunned by the results we were getting. We all know what First World War footage looks like.

‘It’s sped up, it’s fast, like Charlie Chaplin, grainy, jumpy, scratchy, and it immediately blocks you from actually connecting with the events on screen.

Will the REAL Damascus Steel Please Stand Up?

Filed under: History, India, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Walter Sorrells
Published on 2 Oct 2015

There’s a lot of debate about what is really Damascus steel and what isn’t. Some say it’s ancient crucible steel from Central and South Asia. Some say it’s modern pattern welded steel. In this video, knife maker Walter Sorrells separates fact from fiction.

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