Literature John Donne's steamiest poem 'On His Mistress Going To Bed' translated into Finnish. According to the re-writer: "In my opinion Donne translates into Finnish clumsily and poorly—all the subtlety is gone, and whereas the original is coy and veiledly risqué, the end result in Finnish is jarringly vulgar." Well at least you gave it a go.
News From this weblog, 27th September 2002:
"Looking at The Dossier in pdf format why do I discover someone's degree dissertation? I was actually waiting for compelling evidence, and whilst this makes sober reading, I'm still on the fence. The reason being that unlike a dissertation there isn't a section detailing sources (a good 30% of the final mark). Listening to commentators on the day was published we found plenty of supposition but nothing to pin point how all of this was gathered. Also, the word 'conclusion' occurs only once. There are plenty of statements like:From Channel 4 News website last night. This is almost the sound of history repeating, although the previous effort hasn't been outed as plagarism. Still made me shudder though."Subsequently, intelligence has become available from reliable sources which complements and adds to previous intelligence and confirms the JIC assessment that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons. The intelligence also shows that the Iraqi leadership has been discussing a number of issues related to these weapons. This intelligence covers:It would be nice to know who the reliable sources are and what makes them reliable. We are told what the intelligence covers, but we aren't given specific instances. Let me put it this way. In film going terms what we have here is the equivellent of a friend telling you that the new Vin Diesel movie is a classic and you should go and see it but not actually telling you why. That's OK because it's just a film. It's £3.50 (or £7.50 in Paris). Here we are talking about going into war. Lives and governments are at stake. For that kind of thing there has to be some accountability and trust that when given the full truth the general public will be able to make a constructive choice. If were going to de-stabalise a whole are of the world I want to really know we're doing the right. I want to know that whoever's telling us to do this knows what they're talking about ... [Abode pdf reader here]"
Confirmation that chemical and biological weapons play an important role in Iraqi military thinking: intelligence shows that Saddam attaches great importance to the possession of chemical and biological weapons which he regards as being the basis for Iraqi regional power. He believes that respect for Iraq rests on its possession of these weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them.
Photography Judging the PhotoBloggies was a heart breaking experience. With only three days to decide I suddenly felt myself being terribly harsh with my selections, especially in the catagories with many enrants. I rule of thimb was whether something made me jump slightly, or in a few seconds showed me something about the world which I hadn't noticed before. I would love to be able to introduce you to some of the lovely things I've seen but I'm sure there is some kind of secrecy clause, so perhaps another time. I'm haunted by the time the Booker prize came from a heavily controlled BBC studio and Selina Scott was going from table to table. She strolled up to one woman and asked her who she thought would win, only to be told "I'm one of the judges ...."
Music Just to prove that people do win these competitions, I was a reviewer of the week at The Collective and won a CD, The Faint's 'Danse Macabre'. I'll offer a review when I've listening to it, but in some ways it's worth buying just for the design on the cd itself, a matt black with glossy black writing on it. Or ...
"Zaphod's attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open.From: 'The Restaurant At The End Of The Universer" by Douglas Adams. This is the review of 'Lost Highway' which led to the shiny disc.
"That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..." Ford looked. He too stood astonished.
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"
Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.
The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.
"Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip."
Photography Absent again tonight. This time because I was tapped as a judge for the PhotoBloggies. Deeply amused and humbled. I mean what the hell do I know?
Music A bit of a treat because of my absence due to a wierd working week: Rolling Stone Magazine on the lost album by The Beatles.
Film Good, positive review of 'DareDevil':
"The action scenes in DD are right up there with the best of them, who knew the guy who wrote GRUMPY OLD MEN could direct such cool hard-core action. The stunts are very cool and the GCI digital-stunt-doubles work best when it's set in the dark, as almost all of DD's action takes place at night… there are many shots of DD leaping thru the night sky silhouetted by the moon that are very impressive!"This is going to be a busy year ...
Music SPIN Magazine asked the Foo Fighters and N.E.R.D. to review last years singles. As you know I've always been a fan of needs bad language and wrong headedness so this is a dream. Here's what Dave Grohl had to say of Shakira:
"(She) sounds like she's got a f*ckin' booger in her throat that she's got to cough out. She's like sex education in junior high where you see the cartoon diagrams of a penis entering a vagina; it's just caricatures of sex. That's how I see Shakira. Does that make any sense?"Interesting to see people with their own way in music trying to comprehend something so entirely other ...
Geography Rambling in London:
"London is a great city to go walking in. You can stroll by the river Thames along the popular Thames Path, or follow a network of lesser-known waterside walks. Or you can wander in a wealth of green space, from the famous Royal Parks to large semi-rural areas like Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, and an uncountable number of other parks, gardens, nature reserves and woodlands."[related]
Architecture You've seen the film, now live in the apartment:
""I want to do a modern look with an element of retro -- 'modern retro' I call it -- which is a modern clean look," says Mr. Kashin, who currently lives in a small, two-storey loft at Yonge and Eglinton. "The element of retro I want to bring into it is with rugs, with appliances, that whole '70s look done in a modern way. Like Austin Powers but scaled down ... It's in right now and it's a lot of fun."Unlike the films ...
News I don't think their is much I can say about yesterday that wasn't already said in the places I linked yesterday [Google News, Metafilter, Slashdot]. It's pretty incredible that our media seems less concerned with the train crash in Zimbabwe than whether our sportmen should play there...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)