a negative capability scrapbook
The monthly journal, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (MCP), has made an article published by Nobel Laureate Dr. Andrew Z. Fire available free to the public. The article, which appears in the November issue of the journal, is entitled “A Differential Cytolocalization Assay for Analysis of Macromolecular Assemblies in the Eukaryotic Cytoplasm.”
Anyone desiring to take advantage of this unmissable offer should rush to the MCP and banish all thoughts of 60s insults.
I have pulled a muscle somewhere behind my right shoulder blade. Or it feels as though it’s behind… but really it’s difficult to tell because the sharp stabs of pain shoot forth with the undirected vigour of an exploding firework.
Throwing Maizy’s ball over-enthusiastically yesterday afternoon is probably the cause. It’s no doubt an utterly trivial sprain but the effect is highly annoying. Sleep last night proved very difficult. There are few positions I can put my right arm in which don’t cause at least some discomfort. The normal activities of living cause me to gasp with pain at entirely unpredictable moments in a manner I find both pathetic and irritating.
Canted to one side in a vain attempt to immobilise the offending area I’m no doubt making everything worse as the entire musculoskeletal system goes off balance. Damn damn damn.
But at least, thanks to ab, I’ve got to the bottom of kilter/kelter etymology – nothing to do with either kilts or helter-skelters, as can be seen below the fold should you be interested.
What a night. It was about the time that it became what a morning that P, legs stretched out long across the thick carpet as he lay nearly horizontal in the embrace of the pale oxblood leather sofa, imparted this choice piece of information.
“Elvis ate squirrel.”
M, the internationally renowned artist, writer and something to do with a seminal British band, still huddled in a large black coat and wooly scarf with his couture sub-bondage-trousered legs curled beneath his hunched form, nodded in agreement.
The waiter, for whom the word “sashay” had been invented, shimmied across the room, tray balanced on the flattened hand of one elegantly up-curved arm, his tall, handsome dancer’s grace slightly marred by excessive diameter of the circles described by his hips. Another round of drinks was placed carefully on napkins on the low table.
Those familiar with the calibre of my mind will realise that I immediately assumed this remark referred to a sexual practice popular among popstars of the 60s with which I was not yet acquainted. Either personally or by repute.
“He, uh, ate squirrel? Elvis? The Elvis?”
P nodded silently, his electric blue eyes conveying not a hint of the salacious.
I was at a loss. J, for whom these surroundings were equally unexpected and unfamiliar, studiously avoided my gaze and seemed preoccupied with her dry white wine. I took refuge in my capybara*, sucked vigourously on the straw and managed to produce the revolting rattling noise so beloved by small children with fizzy drinks.
We were in London’s legendary haunt of artists, glitterati, media daaahlings and other variants of the uncommon or hothouse luvvie, the Groucho Club, but the evening had started much earlier at an equally unlikely venue – The Fly, for the album launch party of Akira the Don.
J and I hadn’t been entirely optimistic about the quality of the entertainment, but it’s not every day that one can say “I’m on the guest list” so we went along. And although the support acts were less than brilliant Akira the Don was really very good and the evening was described by the Don himself on his blog as “so, yeah, dope“.
That’s him in the middle there. The long blonde hair is clearly visible but you can’t see the Dali moustache and generic beard. The presence in the audience of a white-haired vicar in a suit wearing a poppy in his buttonhole and a woman older than I was accounted for by the woman on the right being their daughter. They pulled up the average age of the crowd closer to our own, but it still hovered around 19 years.
How did two staid middle-aged matrons without offspring in the band end up at such an event? If you visit Akira the Don’s music page you’ll see a small boy dressed as a pirate with big blue eyes. He is my son A’s best friend as well as being the son of my friend F and P, manager of the Don.
It was they who wafted us off to the Groucho after the gig for “a quick drink”. I in my dog-walking jeans and bull-dyke-arse-kicking-boots, J in the clothes appropriate for a work-related course on the oncology of the head and neck. I was worried we wouldn’t be let in, but entirely groundlessly so.
Even when F and P left us there because they had to rescue the baby-sitter nobody stared or pointed us out as obvious interlopers. The drinks are possibly the most expensive in London but fortunately I’d found a £10 note on the pavement so that about covered one capybara, which helped. Even habitué M left to drive back to the home counties and listen to the new Dylan album. We eventually staggered out at nearly 2am feeling thoroughly decadent and more than somewhat smug.
And what about “eating squirrel” I hear you ask. Well, it was no more than the literal truth. His family was poor so to supplement their diet they shot and ate the local arboreal residents. Yes, I know. Slightly disappointing. But it might have been some really gross rodent abuse which you’d much rather forget about but be unable to put out of your mind having once heard the details, so be grateful.
* More generally known as a caipirinha but I can neither pronounce nor spell it, unlike the rodent referred to above.
These trees are disappearing into the gloom of an autumn sunset and not even the rainbow can engolden them.
But there are trees great (some very great) and small waving in the wings. Leaves of many colours (and sizes) coating land and water. Pot-scourers, pining pines, pricey purple, poetry, prose, even some very sibilant sound.
If you want to join in the Festival of the Trees send a link to your arborial entry by the close of day, October 30th, to festival [dot] trees [at] gmail [dot] com.
I posted these pictures late last night, very tired, and this morning think they probably need some explanation.
They were taken on the coach from Fredrikstad to Oslo airport.
The first is of the young woman sitting across the aisle from me. She and two friends were heading off, somewhere, full of excitement and laughter, energy and optimism.
The second is me.
Yes, I am neither young nor full of energy (old and knackered!); I am not launching on new adventures. But although I might appear melancholy “thoughtful” would be more accurate – I’m listening to the divine Joan As Police Woman in concert in Amsterdam. Superb, despite the heavy cold she picked up in England.
And I’m optimistic and excited having, I think, succeeded in enthusing a new group of people about the current wonders of the Global Voices project and its future potential.
I’ve spent a lot of time mourning the young, glossy, happy and excited, energetic and optimistic self I never had/was. It changes and achieves nothing. Grasping and inhabiting the present is full of wonder.
Well there are no doubt many, many reasons. But what I’m thinking of here is my colleague Ethan who went to the Pop!Tech 2006 conference and appeared to manage to blog the entire event verbatim, in real time, with witty observations and links to and discussions of others’ coverage. How does he do that?
I, on the other hand, at a small and intimate conference in Norway, find myself far more inclined to blog about the picture in the main space at the Norwegian Institute of Journalism. Here it is, all four panels.
Now I find this rather ominous. Crows are considered birds of ill omen in many cultures across the globe and the bringer of the news of death.
Anyway, let’s get a little closer to the bird on the right of the picture…
… still can’t see it? let’s go right close up to that wing…
Yes. The harbinger of doom, the portent of death is composed of…. news(papers).
UPDATE Had I actually read through the above Wikipedia link to the end I might have worked out what I have now been told, which is that these birds are actually Hugin and Munin, raven servants to the chief god of Scandinavian mythology:
Hugin and Munin travel the world bearing news and information to Odin. Hugin is “thought” and Munin is “memory”. They are sent out at dawn to gather information and return in the evening. They perch on the god’s shoulders and whisper the news into his ears.
This sounds too much like the secret police for comfort so despite the greater relevance to journalism I still think the artist is subverting the profession. /update
So that distraction explains why I haven’t written up my notes to the (very interesting) afternoon sessions about journalism in Africa. The unvarnished outline appears, for the record, below the fold.
Well I am now, prompted by the question from one of the organisers.
I’m in Fredrikstad in Norway at the Norwegian Institute of Journalism conference on Free Media. (The conference will be blogged, apparently, but starting only on the second of the two days.)
The morning sessions were fascinating – veteran Nepali journalist and media activist Kanak Dixit talked about the role of journalists in the so-called Rhododendron Revolution and Babita Basnet talked about women’s participation in media.
Kanak Dixit talked about the egalitarian nature of Nepali print journalism – how everyone from a minister to a rickshaw driver might read the same paper and it would be in Nepali, not English; that the class split in journalism seen over most of South Asia (English for the aspiring middle and upper-middle classes, other languages for the rest) is not the case in Nepal where, he says, journalists are very close to the people. He asked whether journalists were leading the people in their thirst for democracy and peace or whether the people were leading the journalists.
Babita Basnet talked about the extreme under-representation of women in the media environment in Nepal but said there were more women entering the radio field which was a positive development.
Nepal has fallen off the mainstream media agenda since the events of April/May this year but Global Voices is still passing on what the bloggers are saying.
Now there is a debate entitled “Media Support, a viable path towards democracy?”. I am finding this less interesting, to be perfectly honest. A panel of three men standing up one after the other and reading prepared talks. Empower the people, say I. Citizen media. But then I would.
In an institute of journalists it wouldn’t be entirely surprising for a citizen media activist to be seen as something of an enemy. I’m here to talk about Global Voices and Blogging and Democratic Values but I’ve been told journalists here are particularly interested in the “gatekeeper” role between blogs and the mainstream media. Which in some circles can be code for “will you bloggers be putting us out of a job?”
Such a contrast to last week’s conference in Hungary which I still haven’t really written about. Here there is a small lecture theatre with eight rows of seats. In Tihany we were in a converted squash hall, 1000 delegates, two large auditoriums, parallel sessions. I’m such a nooob on the conference circuit it’s all fascinating to me.
This afternoon – sessions about Africa. Off now to lunch, if there’s any left.
Well I am now, prompted by the question from one of the organisers.
I’m in Fredrikstad in Norway at the Norwegian Institute of Journalism conference on Free Media. (The conference will be blogged, apparently, but starting only on the second of the two days.)
The morning sessions were fascinating – veteran Nepali journalist and media activist Kanak Dixit talked about the role of journalists in the so-called Rhododendron Revolution and Babita Basnet talked about women’s participation in media.
Kanak Dixit talked about the egalitarian nature of Nepali print journalism – how everyone from a minister to a rickshaw driver might read the same paper and it would be in Nepali, not English; that the class split in journalism seen over most of South Asia (English for the aspiring middle and upper-middle classes, other languages for the rest) is not the case in Nepal where, he says, journalists are very close to the people. He asked whether journalists were leading the people in their thirst for democracy and peace or whether the people were leading the journalists.
Babita Basnet talked about the extreme under-representation of women in the media environment in Nepal but said there were more women entering the radio field which was a positive development.
Nepal has fallen off the mainstream media agenda since the events of April/May this year but Global Voices is still passing on what the bloggers are saying.
Now there is a debate entitled “Media Support, a viable path towards democracy?”. I am finding this less interesting, to be perfectly honest. A panel of three men standing up one after the other and reading prepared talks. Empower the people, say I. Citizen media. But then I would.
In an institute of journalists it wouldn’t be entirely surprising for a citizen media activist to be seen as something of an enemy. I’m here to talk about Global Voices and Blogging and Democratic Values but I’ve been told journalists here are particularly interested in the “gatekeeper” role between blogs and the mainstream media. Which in some circles can be code for “will you bloggers be putting us out of a job?”
Such a contrast to last week’s conference in Hungary which I still haven’t really written about. Here there is a small lecture theatre with eight rows of seats. In Tihany we were in a converted squash hall, 1000 delegates, two large auditoriums, parallel sessions. I’m such a nooob on the conference circuit it’s all fascinating to me.
This afternoon – sessions about Africa. Off now to lunch, if there’s any left.
Yesterday we had a reunion of the meditation course taught by Alistair on Holy Island in August.
London rather than Scotland was the venue this time, the highlight of the day being meditating in the beautiful shrine room at the Kagyu Samye Dzong Tibetan Buddhist Centre.
People came from Dallas, New York, Germany, Scotland, north London. Childcare duties meant I was late, very very late, joining the proceedings but I made it to the shrine room just as the meditation ended. And everyone there was wearing a mala! I noticed this particularly. The reason soon became clear as Jonathan uncurled from his cushion like a cat, holding out the string of beads pictured above. He had brought one for everyone, each different, each with individually designated recipients.
Alistair talked about the importance of individual practice and not relying on the group, which makes a lot of sense both in practical as well as spiritual terms. But there is something very special about the gestalt of this group of people which came together around the course.
Just as each of the beads on this mala is individually exquisite – the graining luminous as tigers eye, the perfume of sandalwood, the smooth sheen of the surface almost soft to the touch in its lustre – so with everyone in the group.
But before I get too carried away with extravagant similes I have to confess that the real world soon took its toll on my beautiful mala. Originally the cords at the end were much, much longer. Unfortunately that night the cat got into my room, found the beads on my bedside table and chewed the cords. I had to cut them off short.
A feline lesson in the dangers of attachment I suppose.
Ok, this fairtytale-sounding adventure is another not-entirely-work-related post from the Internet Hungary conference.
Below you will see one of the contributors, the humungously talented and charismatic Zephyr Teachout, (best known for being the Director of Internet Organizing for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, now National Director of the Sunlight Foundation) and our charming host, conference president Ákos Csermely. Press play for the full story. Almost.
As a conscientious former journalist I have to issue a disclaimer – the dialogue may not be exactly verbatim since I had already had a shot of the unicum myself – Say Yes to Life! Unicum. The Positive Answer.
Er, yes. Possibly. I wouldn’t know. Unlike the others, who had already given their presentations, I had to attempt to make sense the following day and staggered went to bed at a reasonable time. Reports from reliable sources who wish to remain nameless suggest that the party continued until the small hours.
frizzyLogic 