Whos up for the Screaming Banshee Aircrew gig in Southampton on Sunday?
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
No major casualties at saturday nights party, except for a little overenthusiasm with the packaging tape. Not enough food, and not organised enough to sort out what there was. The party bifurcated somewhat when someone found the source code for CP/M (admittedly a ROM based version, not disk based so the bootstrapping is somewhat different).
Depressing gender ratio, though, maybe I need to get out more, meet some charming young ladies who aren’t afraid of travelling to Surrey (do such creatures exist? Where would I find them?).
Book review: Failed states by Noam Chomsky
“Failed states” is another fairly typical Chomsky book. I find his writing style quite an easy read, he has a kind of clarity that you rarely get with political writing.
For this book he compares the actions of the United States government with their descriptions of countries they have attacked, and specifically the justifications for attacking them. His premise is very much that there are the words they say and the actions they perform, and that watching the actions would give you a very different impression to listening to the words.
There is a very clear political message in his books, people either love or hate his work because of the politics. Which is a shame because he presents a lot of interesting information which ought to be known by people who disagree with his political stance. (Personally I largely agree with what he has to say, but I do think he reads a *little* too much into things sometimes. I would like to find someone as easy to read and well informed on the other side of the debate, so that I could understand a bit more of their point of view)
In many ways this is just another Chomsky book – if you’ve already read him you probably don’t need to read this one, its more of the same. If you haven’t read his work then this is probably not a bad place to start.
Who should read this book: anyone who feels they are under-informed about the international political situation, especially the relationship between the US and the middle east.
I board the district line at Fulham Broadway for my journey home. Normally the train is quite busy, with people standing at Fulham but by the time it gets to Wimbledon theres often seats.
One day I got lucky, and got a seat at Putney Bridge – the train was still quite busy, with a number of people standing. Mostly I’m engrossed in reading my book, whatever it may be (I’m a bit behind on the reviews…expect a catchup soon). This day I looked down between chapters and saw a bulky, heavy looking bag left lying on the ground near my feet as people got off at Southfields.
Chances are that it belongs to somebody sat next to me and contains only their clothes for the week or schoolwork, or something. If thats not so, the next most likely thing is that someone has forgotten their bag, they will be upset, feel stupid, try calling the lost property department in the hope of finding it again.
Suddenly I feel conscious of people looking at me, like I’m the kind of person who would bring a suspicious bag onto the tube train. I can’t move away without making things worse.
Everywhere we go, in London at least, there are announcements reminding us that we shouldn’t trust anyone, that everyone has potential to do bad things. These announcements are fairly antisocial, they are very intrusive and start with the phrase “May I have your attention for an important security announcement”, they are pre-recorded announcements, repeated around every two minutes.
When did I turn into the enemy?
Linkblast:
Tank cosy (for those that missed it last time)
Total eclipse of the heart (warning: contains beards and abuse of white goods…actually I think theres only one beard, but its impressive enough to have gained a pluralisation)
Larvae – not for the faint hearted when it comes to insects
What are you going to do with those?…Fly…I like flying.
Lost in the blogosphere
In many ways I’m pleased that blogs have turned into what they are today. They are a technology that fills the same hole that ‘The Monthly Neil’ (or whatever I called it all those years ago) was intended to fill. They provide a passive way for readers to keep in touch with people. And an easy way to publish observations, thoughts, ideas and feelings in an undirected way.
“And in every bar there was a super star
With a seven year itch
There were fifteen million fingers
Learning how to play”
Voices. So many voices. But nothing to say. Everything has been said before. My writings here are not focused (or indeed original) enough to be of interest to anyone but the people who know me. And I don’t really have the kind of time it would take to make a single topic blog dynamic enough to be worthwhile. Besides, whatever the topic, there are already hundreds of people talking about it already.
So what? I don’t know. Its just that something feels wrong. Like theres something I’m missing.
Sexiest car in the world (worksafe)
aside from the list, the ship is stable and not sinking…with 4000 Mazdas on board…safe to assume that the conditions in the hold are, at best, a gigantic mess.
“Finlands post office has issued four commemorative Lordi stamps to celebrate the Finnish bands recent Eurovision Song Contest triumph.”
(no link for this at the moment)
Linkblast
Move your cursor over the pylon…wonder how you click?
new-republican makes me want to do more exploring (don’t be put off by the name, its an urbex photoblog).