R4 Afternoon Play

Philip Larkin and soft porn.

Ali Hassan al-Majid

So Chemical Ali has been hanged for the gas attack at Halabja and other crimes. While I have no sympathy for him, it is ironic that one of the powers behind this is Britain, as it was the Brits who first gassed Iraqis, in the 1920s.

Law & Order UK - 'Hidden'

Da Bomb did another very fine job with this episode.

There's the military-industrial complex...

...and then there is this and this.

Painting a landscape of language and longing...

I only discovered this Siegfried Sassoon poem after hearing it put to music (the track being 'The Valleys') by Electrelane in their album 'The Power Out' back in 2004.


'A Letter Home'
(To Robert Graves)

I

Here I'm sitting in the gloom
Of my quiet attic room.
France goes rolling all around,
Fledged with forest May has crowned.
And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
Thinking how the fighting started,
Wondering when we'll ever end it,
Back to hell with Kaiser sent it,
Gag the noise, pack up and go,
Clockwork soldiers in a row.
I've got better things to do
Than to waste my time on you.

II

Robert, when I drowse to-night,
Skirting lawns of sleep to chase
Shifting dreams in mazy light,
Somewhere then I'll see your face
Turning back to bid me follow
Where I wag my arms and hollo,
Over hedges hasting after
Crooked smile and baffling laughter,
Running tireless, floating, leaping,
Down your web-hung woods and valleys,
Where the glowworm stars are peeping,
Till I find you, quiet as stone
On a hill-top all alone,
Staring outward, gravely pondering
Jumbled leagues of hillock-wandering.

III

You and I have walked together
In the starving winter weather.
We've been glad because we knew
Time's too short and friends are few.
We've been sad because we missed
One whose yellow head was kissed
By the gods, who thought about him
Till they couldn't do without him.
Now he's here again; I've been
Soldier David dressed in green,
Standing in a wood that swings
To the madrigal he sings.
He's come back, all mirth and glory,
Like the prince in a fairy tory.
Winter called him far away;
Blossoms bring him home with May.

IV

Well, I know you'll swear it's true
That you found him decked in blue
Striding up through morning-land
With a cloud on either hand.
Out in Wales, you'll say, he marches
Arm-in-arm with aoks and larches;
Hides all night in hilly nooks,
Laughs at dawn in tumbling brooks.
Yet, it's certain, here he teaches
Outpost-schemes to groups of beeches.
And I'm sure, as here I stand,
That he shines through every land,
That he sings in every place
Where we're thinking of his face.

V

Robert, there's a war in France;
Everywhere men bang and blunder,
Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
Rifles crack and bullets flick,
Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
Bones are smashed and buried quick.
Yet, through stunning battle storms,
All the while I watch the spark
Lit to guide me; for I know
Dreams will triumph, though the dark
Scowls above me where I go.
You can hear me; you can mingle
Radiant folly with my jingle.
War's a joke for me and you
While we know such dreams are true!

Sinking by inches

Anne Enright on the recession in Ireland. Coming soon to a UK county near you.

DW tells me that he has read a book that reads as if it had been authored by me. It's 'F*ck It' by John C. Parkin.

I certainly do use the phrase a lot.

Vampiros Wonkitis

The University of Kentucky's Patterson School runs an annual policy simulation. This year it was vampires.

Drinking buddies

If you ask some people who they would most like to meet, they would say Gandhi, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

For my money, it would be Cardinal Jaime Sin and Gus Dur. Here's why:

'Archbishop Sin—by 1976, cardinal—was too irrepressible to keep quiet for long. First came a pastoral letter denouncing a raid on a seminary by Marcos's troops, looking for communists. Then came advice to Imelda to curb her lifestyle. (The cardinal openly portrayed her as “the mining industry”, pointing to anything she fancied and shouting “That's mine!”) On one stony, bumpy ride with the couple in their limousine, he told them he was “being crucified between two thieves”.'

The Economist on Cardinal Jaime Sin


'“Sukarno was mad about sex, Suharto was mad about money, Habibie was mad about technology, but me? I’m just mad!” About his removal from the presidency in 2001, when he was almost blind: “I need help to step up, let alone step down.” About losing power: “It’s nothing. I regret more that I lost 27 recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”

Visiting Tokyo, he was delighted when the prime minister congratulated him on his “erection”. For a Muslim ulama, or priest-scholar, his appetite for smut was remarkable. He had naughty jokes on his website, and was once reported to the police by conservative clerics for emphasising the raunchier bits of the Koran.'

The Economist on Gus Dur

Eric Rohmer (1920-2010)

Oh my God...

As part of my job, I scan the various news feeds coming out of the Valley. Here's one (from Good Morning Silicon Valley) that caught my eye this evening:

Among all the legacies of 9/11, the strangest may be Roxxxy, the interactive sexbot.

Engineer and inventor Douglas Hines once worked on artificial intelligence for Bell Labs, but in the early '90s decided that his true calling was designing life-size sex dolls. His company, TrueCompanion, introduced "Trudy" in 1993, and while she was functional in a utilitarian sense, customer feedback indicated that her personality, somewhere between "catatonic" and "deceased," left something to be desired. Then, in 2001, one of Hines' friends was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, leaving the inventor thinking about ways to preserve elements of a personality in an artificially intelligent, interactive robot. Hines started his work on artificial personalities thinking there might be a market in creating home health care aides for the elderly. "But there was tremendous regulatory and bureaucratic paperwork to get through. We were stuck," Hines said. "So I looked at other markets."

Thus was born Roxxxy, who made her debut this weekend in Las Vegas at the Adult Entertainment Expo, just one of several new innovations showing up at the intersection of sex and technology. Roxxxy still can't move without assistance, but she offers what Trudy lacked and customers apparently wanted — conversational skills. "Sex only goes so far — then you want to be able to talk to the person," Hines said. Equipped with sensors and an attached laptop, "she's a companion," he said. "She has a personality. She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch. She goes to sleep. We are trying to replicate a personality of a person." Or several people, to be precise. Roxxxy comes equipped with five personalities that determine the tone and content of her responses, from the outgoing "Wild Wendy" to the shy "Frigid Farrah." Roxxxy's interests are customized based on the buyer's answers to something like an online dating questionnaire. "If you like Porsches, she likes Porsches. If you like soccer, she likes soccer," Hines said. What's more, users will be able to create and exchange custom personalities for their dolls. "Just think about wife or girlfriend swapping without actually giving the person to someone else," Hines said. "You can share the personality online." (I know — the "ick" factor just keeps getting higher.) Roxxxy will retail for between $7,000 and $9,000, plus a subscription fee for online updates and enhancements. Those who prefer a male companion will have to wait for work to be finished on her cyber sibling, Rocky.

There's more here.

Feck, feck, feck

No siree Bob, no commutin' today. The electrics on my car are suspect, so I trudged 2.5 miles in the snow to collect a rental. On the way I spied two lorries stuck at the bottom of the hill, waiting for rescue. Few cars, no buses. I could see grit under bits of ice (a timing issue?) Got to the rental depot to be told that they consider me insane, so after agreeing with them, I trudged back 2.5 miles, sans car. The hill was slow going, and on reaching the top I discovered fallen telephone cables. In my road alone there seems to be 8-10 inches (as a bloke I should exaggerate and say 16 inches) in the centre of the road itself, although the edges are a little lower.

All being said, I did get a decent workout.

Links of the day

The vintage ad browser, the cover browser and the Jazz Loft Project.

Never try this in your car

If you are leaving work at 17:30 and plan on going on the M25 & M40 for a spell, followed by some x-country slaloming to Henley, then some more twisty-windy hustling to Reading, you should ensure that your wipers work. Mind didn't, and I knew it. OK, things went fine, but they could have gone wrong for me or someone else. What a twat.

So the car can't get seen to until next Tuesday, my meeting in Leeds tomorrow is cancelled due to bad weather (although I was itching to try my luck on the railways today, and check out the Raymond Blanc Brasserie up there) and I am sitting here working from home...wondering what hire car i'll be picking up tomorrow. I wonder if it will smell of stale cigarettes and soggy trim? Will the tracking be ok? Will it come with a full complement of pedals?