Trevor Beattie on what’s missing from focus groups

Trevor Beattie on what focus groups lack: “it’s called conviction, passion, creativity, innovation, disrespect for the mundane”

1999

Not everything that can be counted counts

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. Albert Einstein

Heinrich Heine on the English

“Heine identified the precise origin of the British-oligarchical way of thinking in Lockean empiricism, and utilitarianism. In the Englischen Fragmenten, he warns: “But don’t send any poets to London. This naked [mere?] seriousness about everything, this colossal monotony, this machine-like movement, this sadness of joy itself, this exaggerated London, oppresses the imagination and tears the heart. And you must certainly not send a German poet there, a dreamer, who must pause for everything he sees, even for a ragged beggar woman, or a shiny plate made by a goldsmith — Oh! He’ll have a rough time soon enough, and he will be pushed around from all sides, or with a mild “God damn” be pushed down onto the ground.”

http://members.tripod.com/american_almanac/heine.htm

Britain’s oldest human-made artefact? Mike Chambers may have rewritten the history of Europe

Mike Chambers was walking his dog on a Norfolk beach. He found a flint axe that could be 700,000 years old.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/loan_in/h/handaxe.aspx

Given the choice, the bottom of a cliff with the tide coming in fast is not a place you’d work. For Paul Durbidge and Bob Mutch, however, the foreshore at Pakefield, south of Lowestoft, Suffolk, is precisely where they want to be. Especially in winter, and even more so when the storms are up. Because it’s then that the fossils are exposed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jan/06/g2.archaeology

A life changing afternoon

“There were actually other reasons in addition to “insufficient progress” that caused the wash-out. One was a loss of interest on my part in flying only level and in very gentle turns. But I had also developed a fear of the airplane. One evening an inspector had somehow dropped a lighted flare down through the flare chute, and it caught the fabric-covered plane on fire. In just over two minutes by the clock, the AT-17 was reduced almost to ashes. That wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear about. So those are the reasons my stay at Roswell lasted only about five weeks.”

http://www.stelzriede.com/ms/html/mshwp32.htm

Marshall Stelzriede, March 4, 1919 - January 1, 2005.

Berners-Lee talking about the semantic web in 1999

Tim Berners Lee talked about the semantic web to Tamsin Toddin - The Independent 17 May 1999.

Berners-Lee: “If the Web turns all the documents in the world into one big book, then the semantic web will turn all the databases in the world into one big database”

This allows inter-operability

Seven years on,  the BBC collaborated with Microsoft Live Labs. Photosynth  creates three- dimensional representations of some of the most dramatic buildings in Britain by combining hundreds of different photographs.

Using metadata.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/bbc/

How to heckle Eric Douglas

The story’s told that when Kirk Douglas’ son - Eric - was ‘dying’ on stage, he started to shout angrily at the audience “I’m  Kirk Douglas’  son!”.

Of course, members of the audience then started to shout back:

“No. I’m Kirk Douglas’ son!”

“No. I’m Kirk Douglas’ son!” etc

How many hairdressers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Yesterday I walked past a Tony & Guy salon. Inside, the hairdressers were having a meeting - seated together and taking notes.

This got me thinking…

Q: How many hairdressers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: One (if the bulb just wants a Wayne Rooney shaved head style).
Or two or more - if it wants a more elaborate style, like what Tina Turner has.  

===

For all you hairdresser joke fans out there, I’ve just done a quick google search and it seems that my joke is less hairdresser labour intensive than other hairdresser jokes. The usual response is:

A: Five. One to change the bulb and four to say “Marvellous Gary.”

Everything you can imagine is real

“Everything you can imagine is real”

Pablo Picasso

Does Paul Daniels have negative buoyancy?

Does British magician Paul Daniels have negative buoyancy? Apparently he can’t use his swimming pool, because he sinks rather than floats.

Everything is what it is

Everything is what it is when it stops.

A neat sentence, but is it true? I don’t think so.

Árd Rí na hÉireann - the High King of Ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Tara

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_Tara

The Flight of the Earls, which in Irish is Imeacht na nIarlaí, describes the day of September 14, 1607 when Aodh Uî Neill (Hugh O’Neill) and Rudhraighe Ó Domhnaill (Rory O’Donnell) left Ireland in exile for Spain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Earls

According to Irish tradition, the ancient kings of Ireland were the descendants of King Milesius of Spain. Milesius was the grandson of Breoghan, conqueror of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal, who was also called Brigus or Brian. Milesius achieved outstanding military success in Egypt, and was given Scota, the Pharoah’s daughter, in marriage. When Spain underwent a twenty-six year famine, Milesius sent his uncle Ithe to seek a new homeland, in accordance with an ancient prophecy. After Ithe discovered Ireland, only to be murdered by the resident Tuatha de Danan, his son Lughaide brought his body home to Spain.

http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.c/qx/durack-coat-arms.htm

Michael Bywater

I kept Michael’s article about the death of his mother for ten years - in a box that I’ve taken around the country with me - like some talisman of good writing. I’m attempting to throw away all this paper - but not before I record it here. Mr Bywater still works for the Independent, as far as I know. If you’re reading this MIchael, get in touch - I’d like to interview you.

An old and common story
Independent, The (London), Jan 31, 1999 by Michael Bywater

“THEY SAY the dreams will start in a week or two. We’ll be chatting on the telephone, she’ll drop in for a cup of tea, I’ll bump into her in the street. This is how it goes, they tell me, and one day she’ll go too far - criticise my waistline, or start making plans to go to Vienna (she always wanted to go to Vienna but never made it) - and I will have to break the news. “Look,” I shall have to say, “you can’t keep just dropping by like this. You’re dead.”

“And so she is. Audrey Jean Bywater, nee Price, born Newport, Monmouthshire, 1st October 1927; died 5.30am, Saturday 16th January 1999…”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990131/ai_n9656597

Also:

Last laugh of Alan Coren, comedy king of Cricklewood

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2701378.ece

“I am nature”

Dripping with significance
Independent, The (London), Mar 9, 1999 by Tom Lubbock

The pros saw the pure, unmediated expressions of body or soul; a painting made in a trance state, with Pollock’s unconscious or impulses marked down on the canvas. Obviously, this was partly what Pollock wanted. He wanted a spontaneous painting that by-passed the turgid symbolism of his earlier psycho-dramas and came straight from the deep psyche. He wanted pictures that - like some decoration - looked unmade and unauthored, as if they had just developed of themselves. But the paradox of his achievement is that these things could only be done with a lot of artistry. Pollock’s act was a careful balancing act; a matter of holding things in tension, fine-tuning so as to keep all possibilities open. The classic paintings have multiple intimations, none of which is quite suppressed, none of which definitely arrives. There are - despite the “over all” talk - hints of an underlying structure, perhaps something quasi-figurative and deeply buried in all the business. There are hints, too, of infinitely complex patterning. There are hints of complete chaos and randomness. There’s finally a strong entropic tendency towards an absolutely inert homogeneity. And all these aspects shift one into another. The result is work that’s untraceable and ungraspable. It offers inexhaustible interest to the eye. It can be contemplated endlessly.

Pollock’s most memorable saying was his reply to being asked, why he didn’t work more from nature: “I am nature.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990309/ai_n14210492/pg_2