Both from Channel 4:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/arts_entertainment/
art/what+now+for+the+national+trust/2314772

A report by Nicholas Glass - informal but smooth - it rolls along (it felt self-shot to me… but it’s not). Web page just seems to repeat the film script though - a pity.

And the programme after:

19:50	The Truth About Street Weapons
	The Code of Silence This film explores the culture of silence that grips on the Mancunian community in which 15-year-old Jesse James was murdered two years ago.

Good access - the community spoke.
Also no cutaways over the interview edits - jarring and effective with such a powerful subject… can’t seem to watch again on the website… who is the film maker?

Today’s Sunday Times magazine was very strong - May 11 2008.

Follow up on disfigured soldier / photos from crushed Prague uprising - Josef Koudelka, photographer / and a piece about the subject of a forthcoming BBC documentary ‘Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go’ - on BBC4 on Thursday, May 22, at 9pm

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article3886308.ece

“The Mulberry Bush school in Oxfordshire – the subject of a film by Kim Longinotto to be shown later this month on BBC4 – looks after children who have been multiply excluded from mainstream primary schools. These are not yet the hooded teenagers of Camila Batmanghelidjh’s Kids Company: the youngest is just 6, the oldest 12. All of them are thought to have suffered significant neglect in the first two years of life, which has a ruinous effect on brain development. Fundamentally they are still babies. The building blocks of their personalities are not joined. They are chaotic, unpredictable and unable to function in a group without disrupting. That’s the theory. “

** Is there proof that neglect effects brain development? It sounds convincing - and it seems to be becoming a popular view.

Also: “Children with attachment disorders don’t just rage and spit and climb up on roofs: they connect inappropriately to total strangers, looking for warmth.”

======

Also in the newspaper: Spaced learning

Monkseaton, which is a comprehensive in a deprived area, consistently wins high grades and has sent pupils to top British universities and Ivy League colleges in America.

Kelley’s technique, known as “spaced learning”, is based on the research of Douglas Fields, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Baltimore. He has found that connections between developing brain cells form most effectively when they are allowed breaks from stimulation.

From Wikipedia: “Cameron Crowe suggests reaching out to the people around us is the key to professional as well as personal success. The famous “Show me the money!” scene, featuring Rod Tidwell demanding Jerry scream his “family motto” back to him over the phone, epitomizes the empty values of those around Jerry, yet somewhat paradoxically it is Rod who serves as a role-model for the family values and personal attention that Jerry seeks. Crowe’s point is that the pursuit of financial success need not be incompatible with family values or personal relationships, simply that it should take second place to them.”

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

It’s called The Primrose Path

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

“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

“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.

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

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”

Pablo Picasso

Everything is what it is when it stops.

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

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

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

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

A neuron can connect with 80,000 others. Human brain contains 20 billion neurons, capable of 100 trillion connections (does this include the brain gas-stuff used to make connections?).

So in 1999, Charles Jonscher in ‘Wired Life’ book said computers are nowhere near to brains.

And that knowledge is a state of being.

Information is transitive.

“We must not mistake gigabytes for wisdom”