dwight towers

We've moved

2010-07-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

Blogger was lovely (well, free).

But we've moved to http//dwighttowers.wordpress.com

Cheers

The Generation Gap

2010-03-11T02:32:00.000-08:00

Went to the Bristol Old Vic last night and saw Tom Morris's "Juliet and her Romeo"

What's that line from Saint-Just, something about "Those who make revolution by halves only dig their own graves."

What the hell am I talking about?

I am talking about the production. The gimmick was that Romeo and Juliet - and Tybalt and Mercutio etc.- are all in old folk's homes. Instead of the inter-generational conflict being the middle-aged versus the young, it's the middle-aged versus the old.

But for that to work, surely R and J and T and M and t'others would have to be in their second childhood- you know, going all Lear-y. They'd have to be so soft in the head that their children would be seeking power of attorney etc etc. But then there would be the problem- how are they then supposed to do the long soliloquies and the word play and all the rest of it if they are gaga. And why would the Nurse and the Friar humour them?

I'm afraid "doing R and J as pensioners" is one of those ideas that you get- stunt casting and all- that seems great after a couple of beers, but when you wake up the following day realise should be left on the drawing board, UNLESS you are going to do a major revision and rewrite, which will offend the purists. Generally, you're not allowed to do mash-up on Shakespeare's words, Creative Commons 3.0 notwithstanding.

So, neither fish nor fowl, and not tragic in the least.

What's my learning? That I really really don't like Romeo and Juliet, mashed, minced or pureed. The Baz Luhrman movie is fine, but other than that, yecch..

Learning from Las Vagueness

2010-02-28T04:11:00.000-08:00

Have been reading and absorbing "The Evolving Self: Psychology for the Third Millennium"

Here's a couple of quotes-

Evolution has apparently provided us with an efficient mechanism to make us do what is good for us- the experience of pleasure. But to save effort (and evolution is always about saving effort, because entropy is so powerful and energy is so difficult to obtain), it did not provide a complementary mechanism for sensing a golden mean and avoiding excess. As Tiger (he Pursuit of Pleasure 1992) says, paraphrasing the historian Santayana, “Those who do not learn from prehistory are condemned to repeat its successes.” The brain wont' tell us when enough is enough.

This chimes with something someone put up on a powerpoint recently (who? where? when? it's all a blur. Possibly at the NWDA horrorshow), a George Bernard Shaw quote "The thing we learn from history is that noone learns from history"

So how do we get out of this mess?

The only way to avoid becoming dangerously dependent on pleasure is to use the mind. Only through conscious reflection can we determine how much of what seems good is actually good for us, and then adopt a discipline that makes it possible to stop at the threshold. This is precisely what religions have tried to do: provide cultural institutions for holding to the golden mean. For example, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, three of the oldest and most widespread faiths, all advocate very strongly the moderation of unchecked appetites. The seven deadly sins of Christianity warn against indulging in excessive pride, too many material possessions, inordinate sex, too much food and drink, anger, and laziness. Similarly, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism state that (1) suffering is an essential part of existence, (2) the cause of suffering is desire for sensory pleasure, (3) release from suffering involves the elimination of desire, and (4) elimination of desire is achieved by following the Noble Eightfold Path- which in turn is a system of self-discipline whereby one learns to control the boundless cravings of the body. Religions, however, may no longer be able to impose the necessary limitations, so until credible new cultural instructions are discovered, each of us is left to find the golden mean that will prevent pleasure from taking over our lives.

Page 44-5 of the Evolving Self

Dancing with the guy with the scythe

2010-01-25T22:30:00.000-08:00

Have a bit of an earworm at the mo'- a song by Frank Turner called "Long Live the Queen", which tells the tale of a dying friend who wants to rage against the dying of the light. It's got Turner's customary lyrical gusto, compassion and - dare I say - joie de vivre.

It makes a nice pair with a song by the Hoodoo Gurus called "It's time to go" (I can't find the song, so have mis-remembered the title. Will resolve this once I can get to my copy of the album in question, currently buried under a pile of books and folders...)
[27/1.2010: It's called "Night must Fall"]

Outside most of Leonard Cohen, who does good songs about checking out?

Oh, and look, Frank Turner is in Manchester on Weds March 17...

The Sony also rises, the House Always Wins

2009-12-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

OK, I like to rage against the machine as much as the next middle-class-warrior. And ain't it great to see Simon Cowell get a "bloody nose" (I bet he's too busy counting his money to give a monkey's). And there's the plucky facebook campaigners angle, which seems to make journos think they are Hip and Cutting Edge 2.0.

But clock this from the body of the BBC story

Rage Against The Machine are signed to Epic Records, which is part of Sony BMG, the same label as McElderry.

Also on this subject:
The FT's Ludovic Hunter-Tilney (yes, they have a double-barrelled pop correspondent. Go figure) reckons we're "raging against the wrong machine."

belated and tedious return. More to follow

2009-11-04T07:30:00.001-08:00

Bloody hell,

three months since I posted anything. Busy. Doing what? Couldn't tell you.

Anyhow, Viz 190 popped through my slot a week or three back. A 30th birthday blow-out with Fat Slags, letters

"This morning on the Jeremy Kyle show, after giving one of the guests the bad news that their boyfriend had cheated on them, he said "This is the worst part of this job." And he kept a straight face! Fair play to the man."
Followed on page 11 by "Kyle Honoured with Cunt Status"- very very funny piece, but Kyle, he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Please leave my arse along pretty good, as is BNPea

Meddlesome Ratbag is approaching high art- just beautiful

Read and Loearn and Wonder and Look and Learn has an hilarious piece "Incredible Flying Machines".

Look, I am going to stop now. Viz. Is. Funny. Sits well alongside my London Review of Books subscription.

My goodness, has it been three months?!

2009-08-16T00:34:00.001-07:00

Seems so. Well, anyway, here I am, now 39.
Woke at 6am- uggh. Pottered, slept again. Cleared off a chunk of accumulated paper on the desk, and then walked my sick bike to "Bicycle Boutique". At the cash point around the corner bumped into a Permaculture guy and had a chat about writing an Alternative Action Plan and what should go in it etc. Bought an MEN and a Financial Times, before having a veggie burger breakfast at a non-greasy spoon. Brief chat with a couple of other people (Manchester is like that) before schlepping to the Friends Meeting House. Managed to book the main hall and an additional room for Saturday 10th October- more climate change stuff- and also a room for January 20th (for a Copenhagen 'what happened' meeting). Spoke to a guy I see around more and more, who recommended I get hold of a copy of "City of revolution: Restructuring Manchester." So, detoured to Waterstone's, and they had a copy. I also ordered "Guilty and Proud of it."
Bought more ink cartridges, shoes (they look ridiculous because me feet's so big), before bussing it home, via a paneer tikka kebab and the last twenty minutes of the original Taking of Pelham 123 (saw the remake on Sunday with my best mate). Then the gym- on the stepper with the FT- one of my favourite places.
Back here, some desultory work. Read some more Tom Hayden ("Reunion"- very good stuff indeed). Watched an episode of 'Outnumbered' and then did some more work/thinking about Call to Real Action etc.
A long and not-enormously productive ay, but there you are...

Viz 185

2009-05-11T10:45:00.001-07:00

God I love Viz. It's one of my guilty pleasures. It will ALWAYS deliver at least one - usually many more - outright belly-laugh.

This issue has Baxter Basics MP fiddling his expenses, and getting his grandmother to save his bacon.

PC Hubble and PC Bubble "they're spoiling for trouble" (I do miss PC Hopper, bent copper!)

Drunken Bakers are as Beckettian as ever.

Jack Black and the Goodwin Manor Mystery is comedy genius "It's gettign a little chilly in here isn't it? Jack, put anotehr wodge of notes on the fire, would you, there's a chap... No, not the tens, the twenties give out more warmth?"

The Modern Parents delivers the sharpest and nastiest laughs, as usual. John Fardell skewers, as usual, eco-hypocrisies.

And Roger's Profanisaurus, well, What Can You Say?

"you can only fuck with the cock you've got"- exclam. Useful get-out clause for men defending themselves against accusations of inadequacy

"jizzabyte"- A unit of computer memory equivalent to approximately 1 million million gigabytes. 1 jizzabyte is defined as the approximate amount of hard drive space occupied by the pornography downloaded by an average teenage youth in a single calendar month.

"face like a rent boy's ringpiece" descriptive of someone who looks life has given them a regular, relentless and vigorous shafting.

A conspiracy against the public

2009-04-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."--George Bernard Shaw.

Here's two quotes from slightly different places, that are worth thinking about in connection with each other and the broader goal of helping our institutions respond with the necessary speed and agility to the unfolding catastrophe of human-induced climate change...

"Increasingly, government agencies and other organizations are seeking to apply more participatory approaches to environmental decision-making as part of a wider institutional change towards more inclusive decision-maing. For example, in the UK, policy consultations now often involve stakeholder workshops, and these increasingly take place in the regions rather than just in the capital city. However, there is a danger of growing disillusionment among policy-makers and practitioners who have been involved in such processes that participatory processes are used to reinforce decisions already made, and so fail to realize many of the benefits that have been claimed for particiption. Our study illustrates that there are benefits to genuine participatory processes, and informs the development of best practices for engaging stakeholders in effectively designed participatory processes. In this light, institutionalizing participatory governance takes some power away from central decision-makers and gives it back to stakeholders. Though this may be perceived as risky, it has the potential to give rise to more effective as well as more inclusive decision-making." (1)

[Translation: "at the moment 'consultation' is a rubber-stamp exercise, where you can tick a box that says "I agree" or "I agree even more", but it doesn't have to be like that."]

And the other quote:

"In the deskilling logic, equipment design is left to the technical experts. There is little to be gained by involving technically untrained users in the design process, and such involvement risks politicizing the process. This is the more traditional approach. Salzman (1992) reviewed over 100 U.S. books on equipment design and 100 textbooks used in U.S. engineering design courses and found not one discussion of the possible advantages of user involvement in designing systems. If, however, the rationale underlying design is usability, the design process will be managed very differently."
[emphasis added] (2)

[translation: just like above; "we're the experts and you'll take what you're given."]

This is the dilemma for those who would rage intelligently and effectively against the machine: just how DO you get past the defensiveness of bureaucrats, and teach the elephant to tap-dance?

See also
The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant T. Hammond

Footnotes
(1) Foxon, Reed and Singer "Governing Long-Term Social-Ecological Change: What Can the Adaptive Management and Transition Management Approaches Learn from Each Other?"
Environmental Policy and Governance 19 3-20

(2)Adler, Paul "Two types of bureaucracy: enabling and coercive"Administrative Science Quarterly March 1996

You've been framed

2009-03-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

You saw it in the later part of last week - the Met getting its ideological retaliation in first, trying to shape the 'information battlespace' by worrying publicly about violence at the Put People First March. (And here's the other Met worrying about climate change).

And then there was the ritualistic distancing by various trades unions types. The fringe benefit for our apolitical friends in blue is that time spent proclaiming your innocence is time you can't spend getting the (metaphorical) boot stuck into the Enemy (blue-eyed bankers, finance capital, the System, greed, Capitalism - choose your abstraction).

That's what they teach you on the first day of Perception Management 101, I assume.

But anyway, two other examples of 'framing' recently - an "obvious" one from the front page of the Financial Times for March 10, about Youtube pulling official music videos from its site:

“I don’t think anyone is going to be happy about this, but there’s general understanding that we all need to work under terms that are reasonable for our businesses and we’re hoping we’ll come to a quick resolution,” Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships in Europe, told the Financial Times.
In a blog note, Mr Walker said the costs would be prohibitive, with YouTube losing significant amounts of money on every playback under the proposed PRS terms.
He said there was also a lack of transparency – PRS was unwilling to tell YouTube what songs were included in the licence so it could identify works on the service.
PRS for Music is a collecting agency that issues “mechanical” and performing licences for music to be used online, or performed or broadcast.
Steve Porter, chief executive of PRS for Music, said the organisation was “shocked and disappointed” at the last-minute notice of YouTube’s “drastic action”. “We believe [this] only punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent.”

Both sides trying to make the other guy the bad guy, obviously enough.

But then, if you really want a master-class in this stuff, get your eyes around this from the latest Private Eye. If it stands up (and Private Eye stories often do), it's delicious...

Wanton Destruction

2009-03-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

Take the unhappy heroin addict: he gives himself an injection because he desires the drug, but he also has a desire to be rid of this desire. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt has given such "second-order" desires a central role in his analysis of free will: we act freely, he submits, when we act on a desire that we actually desire to have, one that we endorse as our own. Beings that do not reflect on the desirability of their desires- like animals and, perhaps, our short-run selves - are what Frankfurt calls "wantons."

Holt, Jim (2007) The nannyish state, Prospect March 07

Who will teach me what I must shun? Or must I go where the impulse drives? —Goethe

I can resist anything, but temptation - Lady Windermere's Fan Oscar Wilde.

A crazier notion than that we are more than the sum of our spasms is not allowed much airplay, unless cloaked in some variety of theistic mumbo-jumbo.

See also:
False Consciousness
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (no, not read it yet)

Local government, newspapers and all that

2009-03-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't bought (or read) a Saturday Grauniad for a very long time.

Did so today out of curiosity over its G20 coverage.

I won't buy (or read) a Saturday Grauniad for a very long time. Or a weak day one, either.

But the interview with David "The Wire" Simon is worth a look-see.

Arrogant? Moi?

The collapse of the US newspaper industry has left politicians free to pursue their unethical schemes unscrutinised. "The internet does froth and commentary very well, but you don't meet many internet reporters down at the courthouse," he says. "Oh to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model. To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city as a local politician! It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."

Reading on the Stepper- 26th March

2009-03-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

You can plough through a lot in 97 minutes!

Great piece by Diane L. Coutu in the Harvard Business Review entitled "How Resilience Works."
Makes me want to go and read Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" right now.

And this is good- a quote from Karl E. Weick, a prof of organisational behaviour at the University of Michigan Business School. in Ann Arbor "There is good evidence that when people are put under pressure, they regress to their most habituated ways of responding.... What we do not expect under life-threatening pressure is creativity."

Excellent piece by Eli Kintishc of Science Magazine
"Projections of Climate Change Go from Bad to Worse, Scientists Report"
Yup, we're toast.

Heartening, if you want to delude yourself, is
"Vision 2050: A Sustainable future for Cheshire West and Chester"

Personally, when I imagine the future of mankind (sic) I imagine a carbon footprint, stamping on a human face, forever...

I also read Crain's Manchester Business.
All good stuff, with an especially amusing piece on the massive impending bunfith between Peel and Manchester city Council "Saviour's Gateway or Trojan horse?"

And Monday's FT, of which the stand-out piece, amid stiff competition, is "MBA arrogance and the myth of leadership" by Philip Delves Broughton.

And I even worked up a proper sweat for a change....

snow-capping

2009-03-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

This is the rather clever term that gets used to describe organisations where there are few white people at the top, above a whole lotta "non-white" (sic) people who are, you know, doing the work.

I like it, personally (the term, not the phenomenon!).

"CW: I think it’s a real danger of taking a superficial approach to diversity. We’ve heard about – in diversity terms – the whole thing about ‘snow capping’ which is the way they describe having a very diverse workforce but a completely white management board. Now we just don’t want to be that way. That’s not getting the best out of the resources you have. What we’ve set ourselves as a target is that the total representation of minority groups be absolutely equal and equivalent across all of our grading structure. Only then can we say that all of our policies and processes are fair."

CIPD podcat

Ponzimonium!

2009-03-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

"Some thought his returns might have been based on front-running- using the information from his brokering business to benefit his asset management clients. Sophisticated confidence tricksters have used a similar tactic for thousands of years. The fraudster hints at impropriety, but implies that the target will be the beneficiary rather than the victim. The suggestion... has two advantages. It provides a possible explanation of the source of the promised gains. And it encourages the victims to keep quiet until- perhaps even after- the deception is exposed."

How the “Madoff twist” entices the financially astute John Kay, FT March 18th

The FT has, understandably, been considerably exercised by the Bernie Madoff thing. Many of their heavy hitters (I liked what Alex Callinicos's description of Martin Wolf as 'primary intellectual ornament')

And this weekend's FT has a lovely new neologism (that's a deliberate redundancy, btw)

"US watchdog warms markets of 'rampant Ponzimonium'.

"Ponzimonium." Priceless.

See also:
A rather good book called "Pandemonium: the rise of predatory locales in the Postwar world."

It makes my brain ache

2009-03-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

Reading my FT magazine on the stepper at t'gym, I finally looked at (having probably seen many times) a full page advert for "Neurozan" capsules." These wonderful products are sold by "Vitabiotics", "supporting the brain's neuro-chemistry through optimum micro-nutrition."

And of course, it's like motherhood and apple-pie- it's very hard to argue AGAINST eating a broad balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruit and veg. And why would you? But that's not quite what they're saying. They're saying these pills will "keep you at your razor sharp best." They're appealing to the classic middle-class/knowledge workers fear of losing their Edge.
The worried well is a nice market, especially in a credit crunch.

We get angry when states and corporations dress up their plans (GM, Nuclear) as value-free/hard "science", but we seem to give gentler/individual focussed 'solutions' a free pass.

So I googled, and sure enough, there's a de-bunking website "Holfordwatch" I advise you have a good read of before you go buying any of these capusles, which are available on the high street..

See also:
Ben Goldacre's astonishingly good Bad Science
a book by Kimberly Lau called New Age Capitalism
this about Matey Capitalism and the Appliance of Science

Rape and the Media

2009-03-15T03:24:00.000-07:00

This is difficult. Any criticism of the newspapers' reporting of the scumbag rapist cabbie runs the risk of seeming like a plea mitigation of him, or ignoring/minimising the horrific damage he has caused dozens/hundreds of women (and their friends and families). So just for the record: if the evil little prick ever sees the light of day, it'll be too soon.

And yet, and yet...

This hand-wringing in the papers, several of which use women's (semi-naked) bodies as a marketing device allows us to think that the Monster is Out There. It's a variation on the “rapist is the freak in the hockey mask” myth. The rapist is the friendly neighbour, the ex-boyfriend, the partner. But we don't like to admit this.

Again, to be clear- contra the 70s radical feminist slogan not all men are rapists, but all men “benefit” from the prevalance of rape, insofar as it has a chilling effect on women's hopes and independence. (Of course, the husbands, fathers, sons and friends of a victim are affected by a rape).

Alongside this, how much coverage did the papers give to the actual substance of the criticism of Jacqui Smith and her mooted register of violent partners. Now there was a real story, a real campaign to be had. But there's less projection, less catharsis, and more awkward questions about funding choices, causes of the problem. Easier to find a real monster and give it acres of (cheap) and presumably salacious coverage (I've not read it).

Sigh.

Postscript, 28th March: One paper actually chose to cover this story as its front page lead- "Women dismiss new 'gimmicks' to tackle abuse". The paper? The Morning Star, March 10th.

Myths about rape.
FACT In 60% of the rapes reported to the Orange County Rape Crisis Center in 1991, the rapist was known to the victim. 7% of the assailants were family members of the victim. These statistics reflect only reported rapes. Assaults by assailants the victim knows are often not reported so the statistics do not reflect the actual numbers of acquaintance rapes.

FACT Over 50% of reported rapes occur in the home. 80% of sexual assaults reported by college age women and adult women were perpetrated by close friends or family members. There is no common profile of a rapist. Rapes are committed by people from all economic levels, all races, all occupations. A rapist can be your doctor, your boss, your clergyman, your superintendent, your partner, your lover, your friend or your date.

Restaurant review: Kroma

2009-03-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

Last time I went to Kroma in central Manchester was at least a year ago. It was a Saturday night, and thus rammed, but we did get seated and fed in a reasonable time. I remember the experience positively enough that when wifey suggested a repeat visit, I wasn't averse.

And the verdict? The food was seriously delicious (the roast vegetable pizza that tother half had was slightly more fantastic than the cheesy thing I had). The decor's great, the price is right (a starter each, a main each, a beer and a glass of wine, a shared desert and a decent tip came to just under £40), the staff were friendly.

My only complaint- when an ordered glass of white wine didn't show up, the waiter apologised profusely for the oversight and made it complimentary, spoiling the chance to have something negative to write. Honestly, the gall of the place...

Film Review: The International

2009-03-15T03:07:00.000-07:00

Some muppet on Radio 4 called this “a Bourne movie without Matt Damon.” Yeah, right. It's a Bourne movie with out MD, without a director one tenth as good as Paul Greengrass, or writers like Tony Gilroy and George Nolfi, stunt directors like Dan Bradley.

This movie is an atrocity.

With the partial exception of a couple of good lines of dialogue e.g. “You should relax.”“I feel more comfortable when I'm tense”, this movie has NO redeeming qualities. Not even the much vaunted shoot-out at the Guggenheim is any good. It's trying to mimic the 'public place meets the brutal realities of international espionage' that Greengrass pulled off for Alexanderplatz in the Bourne Supremacy and Waterloo Station in Ultimatum. But it fails fails fails. It's too long, too comic book, just plain irritating.

It's not that Owen is bad, it's just that he's given nothing proper to work with. It's not that Watts is bad, it's just that her character wasn't needed in this film.

There are big fat didactic wodges of shoe-horned 'dialogue'- I thought Mike Meyers had killed this off with the Basil Exposition character in the Austin Powers films.

And that's the key. If you care about the characters you'll overlook violence to geography (e.g. Istanbul here) and you'll forgive some plot holes for the Bourne films, a short list would include; why didn't Landy figure Bourne was heading for Berlin after the Munich explosion, why didn't Noah Vosen disable Nicky Parsons computer after Madrid, what happened to the Tangier cops who were chasing Bourne, and how did he and Nicky so easily escape detection after killing Desh, what happened to Pam Landy's sidekick when he dropped her at 415/71).

But this, this... you DON'T CARE about the characters and also the plot holes are gargantuan; why does the Italian politician meet some low level flunkies and spill his guts? Where are the New York cops in the ten minutes or so once shots are fired at a major tourist attraction, why do other New York cops let Watts have Owen, how does Owen get to Italy, to Istanbul etc etc etc. I could go on. But neither you nor I want me to.

Do Not See This Film. Do not see any other film by the writer (Eric Singer) or the director (Tom Twyker)- they are on my Ron Howard list of film-makers to avoid.

More about the Law of Two Feet

2009-03-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone/both

[Ed: you've used this gag]

I found a good image of the flipchart explanation of the law of two feet.

And here's some text:
"The Law of Two Feet — a foot of passion and a foot of responsibility — expresses the core idea of taking responsibility for what you love. In practical terms, the law says that if you’re neither contributing nor getting value where you are, use your two feet (or available form of mobility) and go somewhere where you can. It is also a reminder to stand up for your passion."

And here's some more text:

We are all often in meetings or discussion groups where one member tries to dominate the discussion and effectively wrecks any possibility of an open conversation or the full participation by all the members of the group. Typically, some members sit in silence waiting for the session to end while others get into a heated argument with the protagonist. But there is a third way. Here is the law:

Sometimes it happens that overly zealous participants feel that their ideas are so important or powerful that everybody in a particular group (or even in the whole conference) should pay attention and listen. This one has to be nipped in the bud -- carefully. The way out is not to directly challenge the person, but rather to remind the assembled group of the Law of Two Feet. If everybody truly wants to listen, they should do that. But if that is not their desire, they have two feet which they should use. There is no need to argue and shout, just thank the group and leave. Egomaniacs quickly get the picture when everybody leaves.

The upside of patriarchy and war

2009-03-04T22:58:00.000-08:00

Needlessly and childishly provocative title aside, have a read of bits of these two letters that appeared in the FT earlier this year.

"When I joined the Australian Commonwealth Public Service in the 1970s, those in the senior positions (invariably male) had often started their working life during the Great Depression before serving in the second world war. Upon demobilisation they had patiently worked in a seniority-based promotion system for a modest salary in return for security of tenure and a superannuation scheme. By the time I left the service in the mid 1980s they were to be replaced by an increasingly university-educated mobile meritocracy on short and long-term contracts willing and able to transfer in and out of private enterprise. Since then many of the traditional areas of government service delivery (in Australia at least) appear to be constituted by web pages advertising mission statements and core values supported by call centres. Service is no longer a personal virtue but a commodity to be delivered."
Paul Stockley, Jan 31

"Pre-1974 there was an overall 17 percent quota limit on female medical students across the UK. The male-dominated profession was led by men who had been the backbone of military medicine during the second world war. We, their trainees accepted and enjoyed the challenge of long hours and the camaraderie of hospital mess life. Central to the "can do" philosophy was the continuity of care for every patient by a designated consultant team from admission to discharge. Society rewarded and respected this arduous work rate....
"What do we now face? The consequences are clear. Whereas my generation achieved consultant status after approximately 30,000 hours of broad and intensive training, the plan from April 2009 indicates that 6,000 hours is acceptable. imagine the outcry if airlines cut pilot training to 20 per cent of what was previously considered acceptable."
David Skidmore, Jan 5

There is of course the risk of rose-tinted spectacles. If things were that good, why did we need the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism etc. But in important ways, I think Stockley and Skidmore point to what has been lost (or stolen) along the way.

an ethic of social solidarity/noblesse oblige
an understanding that quality take time, diligence and patience and that the current "corporate culture"(sic) of karoshi and turbo-Taylorism has (steadily more visible) consequences

So, what is to be done?

The FT, the world soul and all that

2009-03-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

On the back of the Life and Arts section in the weekend FT, they have the same three columns. Presumably, when bored plutocrats get restless on a Sunday afternoon, have done screwing the mistresses after a week of screwing the proles/taxpayers, they can get a little aspirational consumerism and aspirational anti-consumerism. A bit of hormesis does you good..

Those three columns-
a) "The Fast Lane" by some guy called Tyler Brule, who spends most of his life in airport departure lounges or five star restaurants, and who spends ages comparing Singapore Airport to Swiss chalets etc. Every bit as edifying as it sounds. Reminds me of the John Hurt character in "Contact"- dying and eking it out by never touching down.

b) "How to Give It", where in a different worthy answers the same questions "which is the first charity you can remember supporting?" "is it more important to give time or money?" and so forth. It throws up the occasional interesting idea, and if gets the noblesse oblige juices of a junior alien overlord going, then well, that defers the revolution by a nanosecond more.

c) [the point of this post] "The Slow Lane" by Harry Eyres, where you'll get paens and threnodies and elegies for this or that. Eyres covers all sorts of 'dissidents'. Frexample, he did a good piece on Ivan Illich recently. Of course, you can dismiss all this as feelgood flannel, and say that Eyres is only published to make readers feel good about themselves and their paper, before returning to the real work of screwing the proletariat and sending a death threat to every insect the following day. That's as maybe, but the stuff is still worth reading.

Here is an example from the January 3/4 issue

"The writer I find most illuminating on all this is the maverick American psychologist James Hillman. Hillman draws attention not just to the individual human soul, the locus of salvation or damnation for Christians, but to the world soul, anima mundi. According to Hillman, psychotherapies will never work unless they "take into account the sickness of the world... you have to see that buildings are anorexic, that language is schizogenic, that normalcy is manic and medicine and business is manic".
John Keats said that the world was the vale of soul-making. Now we need to reverse that saying. To restore our own souls we need to stop destroying the world's soul, which includes the habitats, eco-systems and species under the kind of threat that neither Keats nor Freud ever envisaged."

Possibly related to:
Don Delillo's World Hum
Leonard Cohen's Blizzard

"It literally changed my life"- what changed yours?

2009-03-04T12:42:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

(or- given my viewing stats- "both"),

Two separate interviews, both in the only newspaper bar the Morning Star worth reading (yes, He's Banging On AGAIN about the Bloody Financial Times and how All Anti-capitalists Must Read It) have got me wanting to pose the question: what reading material has "literally" changed your life?

For me, I'd say Chomsky's World Orders, Old and New. I'd been softened up by a whole lot of other, liberal, stuff, but had only read a couple of short Chomsky pieces before.

What say all/both of you?

Those two quotes-

Rosie Blau writing in the Life and Arts supplement (which is a both bloody fantastic and a hot-bed of com-symps) on November 29th/30th last year entitled "Drawn from Memory"

"He was seven when he first encountered Mad, a monthly satirical magazine, and was immediately captivated by the drawings: "It literally changed my life." Unhappy at the thought of wasting money on comics, Vladek Spiegelman took to brinign home second-hand comic anthologies instead, inadvertaently introducing his son to titles banned from newsstands for their violent content."

and Ludovic Hunter-Tilney on Lou Reed "Why do I have to go through this?" June 21 2008

"Reed grew up in a middle-class Jewish household in suburban Long Island and attended Syracuse University. He identifies a short story by one of his tutors, the poet Delmore Schwartz, as a turning-point in his own development as a writeer. "'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities'", Reed says, "changed my life entirely and shaped the way I write, and everything along with it." It taught him the virtue of simplicity. "I don't think there's a single polysyllabic word there. The world shook for me when I read it."

Meetings is murder

2009-03-03T23:37:00.000-08:00

"But this new energy is being channelled by organisers into boring meetings which reproduce the hierarchy of mass society. After a while, critical thinking is eroded and people lose their curiosity. Meetings become a routine like everything else in life.

A lot of problems which collectives will have can be traced to the work habits acquired in the (mass) movement. People perpetuate the passive roles they have become accustomed to in large meetings. The emphasis on mass participation means that all you have to do is show up. Rarely, do people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to. Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of group achievement.

Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as subjects, political activity is defined as an event outside them and in the future. No one sees themselves making the revolution and, therefore, they don't understand how it will be accomplished."

From "Anti-Mass Methods of organisation for collectives"

Sigh. We will only ever "learn" when the ego-needs of the organisers, the prattlers they invite to speak and the half-in-love-with-spectating "participants" are no longer being met.

On the other side of the fucking apocalypse.

Training versus learning

2009-03-02T23:44:00.000-08:00

"So, how do knowledge workers learn? At best, they find things out for themselves, learn from each other and share acquired knowledge with their colleagues. All this underpins a major shift of the past decade: the emphasis has moved from training to learning. Training can be defined as "an instructor-led content-based intervention leading to desired changes in behaviour " and learning as "a self-directed work-based process, leading to increased adaptive capacity". Training and learning are related but conceptually different activities. Only learners can sit in the training room or in front of a screen but they cannot be made to learn. Therefore an effective strategy to promote learning must consider management, motivation and preparedness."

Martin Sloman, guest column in the FT 12 November 2008

This hits the nail on the head, IMHO.

And "training" is easy to deliver. Any numpty can (and all too often does) do it. Powerpoint, chalk and talk, collect your attendance certificates on the way out.

But creating the conditions for learning is a) more work b) much more likely to expose gaps in your knowledge.

So, you don't even go there. And everyone gets trained, but very few people learn.

It was ever thus?

See also: Paulo Freire and Ira Schor stuff, the whole hermeneutics thing, intelligence versus creativity etc etc.