Furthermore: October 2004

October 18, 2004

Links

• via Crooked Timber - John Crowley on Pogo



• Juggling Lab - cool Java app to perform juggles based on the standard notation.


• via Slashdot - Techworld on the hardware behind the Echelon surveillance system.


• Juan Cole - interesting piece of analysis of the Pentagon spying scandal. No, not the Plame thing, the other one.

October 16, 2004

A few local items

Just a quick plug for the local Tumbletots which my daughter has been going to for a few weeks now. It’s very professionally run and she has a great time. It’s really helped her develop her co-ordination too. Bit pricey, but I recommend it if you want something physical for your 2-3 year old.

For grown-ups, I just saw Cambridge pubs guide - they have a kind of tube map of the city, with the pubs along different routes. Quite up to date, and amazingly comprehensive - I’m sure I wouldn’t dare go in some of the places at all. Naming no names.

Oh, totally unrelated, but I got a big nostalgia hit from Ultimate Wurlde and which led me to Sabre Wulf PC - ah, many hours I spent, mapping that damn thing as a kid.

October 8, 2004

Links

• Crooked Timber - Zen Judaism (well, it made me laugh anyway)


• via CT - interview with Michael Marmot. He did some very interesting studies on the effects of status on health.


• Gilmore vs Ashcroft Homepage - the US seems to have a secret law that requires you to produce ID to fly internally. This guy wants to fly without showing id, but the Govt doesn’t want to show him the law that says he can’t.


• New York Review of Books - Terrific piece on Abu Ghraib reports.



• The Reg - Andrew Orlowski on the music industry and DRM. Most of it seems pretty sensible.


• via BoingBoing - cool app that overlays a virtual train onto real track. You can see and control the train via a PDA.


• Scoble - thoughts on how to keep up with the information flow that is enabled by RSS and similar technologies.


• Gothamist - text is about the anniversary of September 11. What I thought was interesting was the visualisation of the proposed Freedom Tower.


• CT on the US budget deficit - I liked the quote from CBS Marketwatch, “Get out now while there’s still an ample supply of fools.” I’m long gone.



• The New Yorker - on Kirkuk.


• The New Yorker - on Russia’s declining population and impending AIDS crisis.

October 4, 2004

New York 97

Not sure why I feel moved to write about this. A lot of the details just kind of popped back into my head. Perhaps it’s because I seem to have something of a continuing obsession with the place, even though I haven’t been there for 4 years, and I’m not likely to go back for a few more years yet.

Anyway, I was single, and needed a holiday - i’d always wanted to go to New York and it seemed like a good opportunity. I grabbed the Rough Guide and found a cheapish hotel in Manhattan - the Westpark (308 W 58th Street, 246-6440) just off Columbus Circle (I partly picked it because it was near Central Park, and I thought I’d like to do a run round there).

Since it was late September and quite chilly in Blackheath where I was living, I dressed for autumn, so I got a bit of a shock when I got off the plane and walked into what seemed like a heatwave. The sultry weather only let up the day I was due to leave.

Anway, I did the usual tourist stuff - the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and the ferry. I did some sketching of the skyline from Liberty Island - I’ll see if I can scan that in.

[Update: pretty bad scan, but I did it with my webcam just to see how it would come out]

What else? I got a Big Apple Greeter tour from a guy called Larry - he walked me half way down the City from the Flatiron Building down to the World Trade Centre - and he was in his 70s. He showed me the big Barnes and Noble on Union Square - this was before every bookstore had a coffee bar - I was impressed. We also stopped by the Gourmet Garage and got sandwiches. I recommend Big Apple Greeter highly - it’s free, and the people really know what they’re talking about.

The main dilemma of the week came on Wednesday - I could either see Morrissey play in Central Park, or I could go to an SF reading downtown (Dixon Place, somewhere off the Bowery I think) where as luck would have it, Michael Swanwick was reading from Jack Faust which I’d just read on the plane over in proof form after my friend Tony gave me a copy. I chose downtown, and I met some interesting folks.

Then later in the week I went out to Long Island and met up with some people at the University of Stony Brook who I’d been talking to on the internet as they had a science fiction group out there. We had dinner and they put me up for the night. They had their own newsgroup, where I make a brief appearance.

I also had an interesting evening out with a guy from Japan - Keiji san, who I met by accident. I’d gone up to the Rainbow Room to have a drink and watch the sun go down (I know, very touristy but also quite spectacular) and I just met him at the bar. He was having a holiday in New York much like I was, so we had a few beers and it was a good evening.

The last day the weather cooled and I took in the annual Bookfair which closes off 5th Avenue (uh, I think it was 5th). I found a Japanese shop and got a terrific book on modular origami.

Anyway, it was a great holiday. I’ve been once again since then, which was even better (it was my honeymoon) but I’ll write about that another time maybe.

A History of God - Karen Armstrong

(Mandarin 0-7493-0692-0)

This is a fantastic book. I’ve been meaning to read it for quite a while, but I just had a course in London so I’ve been reading it on the trains in and out.

Armstrong considers the responses of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to the concept of God by looking at their beliefs through the ages. Personally, I found the first chapters looking at early Jewish belief the most fascinating. Abraham’s encounters with his God are almost those of peers, and Armstrong notes that when Moses meets God, He is at pains to point out that he is the god of Abraham, though He now seems much more angry and unapproachable.

The book traces this history forward through to the theology of the present day, giving a clear guide to the ideas that shaped belief in different ages. Along the way, Armstrong brings out the tensions inherent in the idea of god: the philosophical god who is so remote that he cannot be considered personal or perform actions in time. The mystical god who can only be apprehended by our own acts of creativity - an interesting parallel to the atheists view of god as purely an imaginary friend, or projection of our qualities. The personal god who at his best can be a source of inspiration and a link from humans to the transcendant, but who too easily becomes a idol, lacking mystery.

My personal beliefs are mainly atheist/Buddhist, but I found this book very useful in locating my non-belief in its historical context. I’m sure the same would be true for any thoughtful person whether believer or not.