Sadness

Today (and most of this week) was one of those times you wish never to have to see and experience in life.

Hugs again and long life to J & K and family.

New instrument scales musical heights

The Eigenharp


(apologies for link only; no embed option for BBC player outside the UK!)

Made of swiss cheese...

I so would have loved to be at this NASA pitch meeting:

"Come on guys, we need to prioritise this potential missions list."

"Hey.... we could always go with this one... it says they want to bomb the moon for science?"

"......."



And LCROSS? Come on, we all know the REAL covert top secret name of this mission is really R(ight)CROSS, as in the name of the swing we're taking at all those alien observation bases on the far side of the moon...

... what do you mean, those weren't real documentaries? Not even the Kubrick one?



Why no, I don't have anything better to do, why do you ask?



Ok... maybe I'll try hobbling around the house for a bit. BTW the back is getting better, slowly slowly. Though somehow I have also picked up a runny nose and sore throat, despite having not left the house in a week. I can only blame my mother. Or possibly the other patients in the doctor's waiting room. I suspected at the time they looked rather unwell.


And seriously, I do understand the point of the science behind this new moon mission. Infuriatingly, it doesn't sit right with me. Use fluffy friendly words like 'shooting', 'bombing', 'debris plume' and you don't usually get me onside. I guess it's a sentimentality thing with me that overrides my logic circuits. That feeling is possibly more connected to articles like this, latest in a long line of stories we get every year about the future potential of advertising on the moon.

If that ever actually happens, I think it would signal a good time for me to opt out of the human race. Just sayin. And I know some witches who would be pretty upset too... drawing down the moon and ending up with a can of coke? Not cool.


But I will be watching NASA TV tonight, if the site holds up. And if I hold up, for that matter.




* disclaimer: this article may have been brought to you by prescription medication.

Offence and defence...

Ok, since I’m up and not allowed to take any more painkillers (stupid daily limits, I hates you) I’ll give this whole “was the Hey Hey skit racist” question a go. I really don’t want to drag myself into this, but I can’t seem to get it out of my head, and we all know the only way is to get it down on paper.

As an aside, I wonder how long it will take that term to get antiquated. Getting something “down on paper” I mean.

If my thoughts are a bit disorganised, you will just have to deal =)



Here’s my abstract: I think it's the old intent vs. context argument. And I just don’t think it’s solvable.

It made me think of the annual sexual harassment training module I recently completed at work (I know what you are all thinking you smirking wise guys, but they make everyone do it, not just me). The main point that was made throughout the training was this: something can be ok to you, and by ok I mean acceptable, funny, sensible, whatever. You might share this comment/behaviour with other people who you know, and you know they will understand it in the same way, because you are aware of and comfortable with the boundaries you have with those people. They know your intent (for example, funny and not malicious). But if someone happens to see or hear who feels offended, then the offended person is in the right.

This has always struck me as kind of unfair truth be told, but after some consideration there’s really no other way to deal with it, because it’s simple not a black and white issue. That could be seen as a really unfortunate pun in this case but I’m going with it, because my intent is not mean offence or for my comment to to be taken in that context in any way; which is kind of the point of this response. Who gets to decide what’s offensive and what’s acceptable? Who gets to decide where those boundaries are, or should be?

I would want to have the right of appeal if suddenly people around me thought it was funny and acceptable to make fun of something that upset me. I would also be ashamed if someone called me on something I said or did and they told me that offended them, and I would immediately apologise for the offence. But if it was a friend I would also feel a little upset at the disconnect between us, between my intent and their impression, particularly if they felt I was being deliberately hurtful through deliberate offence.

In the court of public opinion however, you don’t have the ability to know your audience. Therefore caution is logically the rule of the day. I guess this is one aspect of law-making I have always found fascinating. At what point does consensus reach a quorum that makes it acceptable to pass the consensus view into law? Sometimes that question is really easy for 99.9% of humans to answer. Sometimes the percentage is far lower. What makes this even more difficult to quantify is context.

Comedy is a particular type of human rule set or context that really stands alone when it comes to taboo. For example; some of my favourite comics are really offensive. I know that their material comes from a place of irony and honest humour, but they aren’t to everyone’s taste. Humour is a weird and wonderful thing that is often defined by its pushing of or lack of boundaries. For that very reason, the social climate in which it occurs will provoke different reactions in different places at different times. This is normal.

Here’s an interesting question: can I make jokes about Jews because I’m Jewish (now), where I couldn’t before? In practice, I have found the ability to make and participate in Jewish self-humour has been as much of a right of passage in converting to Judaism as learning the holidays and reading the language. Would I be comfortable with a non-Jew making the same jokes? Why is it different? There’s been a tradition in comedy that only people of a particular race are allowed to make jokes regarding that race, but that has also been tested as per the controversy surrounding the comedian Chris Rock and a certain routine he used to do (see http://tinyurl.com/jeslb)

So: where does this leave us? All I can say is this: I know the show in question has (had?) a tradition of comedy that was always was based in humour that is often puerile, and often offensive. There aren't many boundaries to that humour, as they make fun of everyone and everything including themselves. I didn’t even see the skit in question (I only caught the end of the show where they referred to it in the last 5 minutes), and I refused to read any of the articles today regarding it, because it seemed to be handled on the night correctly, with the offended person able to say on air that they were offended and why, and the offendee (or their rep) able to acknowledge that and apologise for any offence caused.

All I can say is that in the context I probably wouldn’t have been offended. I probably would have laughed at a silly skit done on a comedy show, in a comedy segment. That is, I would have laughed if I had considered it good comedy based on factors beyond the basis of the humour, such as cleverness of idea, execution or timing (once again, didn't see it, can't say). But then, if someone in my team pulled that idea out as a skit at our annual Xmas party, regardless of how well performed, I would probably be horrified.

Is that purely context? I don’t know. Is either reaction right, on the communal moral scale? I don’t know. Would I have approved that skit to go on the air? I don't know. Would I have felt differently if they were making fun of a minority I'm a part of? I don't know. But I simply can’t speak for anyone else in those situations, and, at the end of the day, no-one can. So whether you were offended or not, you’re probably right.

One thing's for sure - the media loves it!



That’s about all the typing my poor brain and back can deal with. Back to (trying to) sleep.

Hang Drum therapy

Hopefully this will put me to sleep - this jetlag is killing me!

At home and thinking deep thoughts...

Just letting you all know that we are finally home! We are very happy to be here, if a little sad the last holiday for a while is over. Our very sooky cats seem quite happy too =P

I will make sure the last leg of our trip gets posted when we get up the energy to write it!


While I've been away I've been thinking a bit more about my blog. I don't often see all my friends on a regular basis, though I have many people out there that I care about and think about and am privileged to call my friends. I keep myself connected to them via their online presence mostly, through blogs, email or facebook.

Luckily, I by and large have a group of friends who are geeky enough to understand that this counts as real connection. They also are understanding enough of my preference for hermiting that when I do see them it's always a comfortable and happy occasion, regardless of the time that may have gone by since last being in the same room. That I can keep up with what is happening in their lives and their thoughts and feelings on a regular basis via online networking means that no matter how busy I am, I can be connected to them.

However when I was halfway across the globe, even with the lack of importance I place on physical presence, I felt the distance between myself and my friends more keenly. I often go for 5 weeks without seeing my friends. Often much longer. However being away from my regular environment and routine, and outside my comfort zone, triggered odd forms of homesickness. Missing my friends was a part of that, even though whenever the opportunity of free wifi presented itself I was as close to them as I normally am when at home.

So my instinct was to use my blog to connect, to post up the emails of our adventures that were being sent to a select few family and close friends. This made me realise that I really would like to use my blog to connect more often, and allow others to connect to me, as this is something I feel I fail at quite often.

There are however a few snags to this impulse to connect that I have previously encountered.

When I am in my normal routine, I am often too mentally tired at the end of a work day or week to construct a post. I love to write. In fact, if I could have chosen the way in which my creatively presents itself, my first career or hobby choice in life would have been writer. As things stand, my lack of skill with the sledgehammer that is my writing instrument places me squarely in the reader category instead. I love to read. I love to soak up information on a multitude of topics at what some consider an insanity inducing rate. I particularly love to read and think about topics that are most complex and difficult for me, whether content wise or intent wise, in the moral, psychological, religious, scientific, sociological and other fields.

But thinking is normally as far as I get.

To write about the myriad of topics I have an active interest in at any one time requires more time and effort than I usually have to devote. Additionally, I am both a fence sitter, a mirror and a devil's advocate by nature. I tend to enjoy the fluidity of the exploration of ideas and the connection to other people’s thinking space more than I enjoy the forming of opinions, and I so rarely have a black and white moment that when I do it is often the result of pure gut instinct rather than rational thought. And writing, creative writing notwithstanding, so often seems to involve the formation of an opinion. I often feel that my opinions, such as they are, are too fluid and connected to too many other ideas for me to be able to pin them down long enough to write about them in that way.

My unwillingness to commit, and the changeable nature of my opinions dependant on additional information, means that anything I write down tends to fall out of date as soon as I write it. Now, intellectually I realise this is normal and natural, but to me it’s emotionally unacceptable. It makes me uncomfortable in a piercing and obscurely painful way. As with many things in my life, this particular kind of pain often stops me connecting to people, in all sorts of ways. It affects my ability to converse with others as well.

I found when no one was reading my blog that writing was an easier thing to do. Writing when not done in a vacuum is for me too painful to do properly. That’s why I stopped writing on blogs mostly. Now, when I write, it is for me alone. I don’t need to worry about content, context, offence, interest, unless that is part of what I am finding interesting to explore.

So how do I resolve the urge to connect with the pain of the imperfect conveyance of ideas?

Mostly, I get around this problem by posting other people’s things on my blog. Other people’s writings, ideas, research, discoveries, jokes, creations, etc. Because I am again more interested in my and other peoples often complex and contradictory responses to things, and potentially sharing a feeling that something has invoked in me, rather than deconstructing something imperfectly by writing about it myself.

But then another problem presents itself. So much interests me fleetingly, what to post and what not to? Fill my friends facebook updates and blog readers with posts about things they have no interest in, just because those things have touched me in some way? Will posting things make me seem to support those ideas; connect me to them inappropriately when the reason I post them may be because I disagree rather than agree, or am shocked or disgusted rather than awed and amazed? Do I trust readers to know the difference, or know that it doesn’t matter?

As usual, the swelling bulk of contradictions and questions tends to paralyse any action I want to take.

However, in the spirit of being brave and taking action, I will try to put aside some time to go ahead and post things up simply because I want to, and try not to take any other reason or doubt into account. However, the thing that concerns me is that I may post things up that someone who reads my blog doesn’t like me posting, for one of a multitude of reasons. It may be something you disagree with. Something that is painful to you in a way that I cannot or perhaps should have but didn’t predict. That is completely uninteresting to you. That is too obscure without posting the explanation. That you and I feel strongly about in completely opposing ways. That then contradicts with and undermines my need to connect with people, that I began talking about when I started writing this post.

*sigh*

Part of this thinking was inspired by my current re-reading of my favourite series of books, the Gap Sequence by Steven Donaldson.

Now, this series is not a story for the kiddies. It is bleak, disturbing and violent. I think it’s magnificent, or at least did when I first read it as a teenager and my fondness persists.

Considering the content, I have always worried somewhat about why these are my favourite books. The author's other major series (the Thomas Covenant chronicles) I cannot stand with a passion. I have tried several times to get through the first book in that series and failed… loudly. This is the opposite to a number of my friends’ experiences with his writings.

Anyway, I recently suggested to Ben that he might like to try reading the series as he has previously only read the first book, which as its title implies is not “The Real Story”, rather is the point from which the story expands and turns itself.

As I seem to have lost my copy of the first book, Ben picked up a new edition with the first and second book printed together. Sandwiched in between is an author’s afterword to the first book, which I had not previously read. Besides the interesting connection to Wagnerian themes, the explanation of the difference between drama and melodrama as he understands it (an exploration of which is the basis of the series) and the interesting way the series developed, it made me feel better about the reasons why this book connected in me, knowing the author had gone through similar feelings.

This also connected intimately in me to how I felt about blogging, writing, communicating.

I hope quoting that afterword here doesn’t constitute law breaking, but here it is in a compressed form:

“…Unlike any other character I’d ever created, Angus made me feel exposed. It was as if in imagining him I’d tapped directly into the dark side of my own nature: as if I’d found him inside myself instead of inventing him. … And that in turn shamed me. I felt irrationally sure that anyone who read The Real Story would see the ‘real’ me, recognize the truth, and be disgusted. … Time and thought brought me to the realisation that I had no reason to feel ashamed. Suppose for a moment that my worst fears were realistic: that I am in fact Angus Thermopyle thinly disguised by niceness; that this is in fact transparent in The Real Story; and that all right-thinking readers will be disgusted by the results. So what? None of that impinges on the integrity of The Real Story itself. … In any case, the crucial question for any artist is not: What are people going to think of me? It is: Have I given my best to my work? Nothing else matters.”


In that vein, realising that “my work” in this case is sometimes writing but also the sharing of written ideas, here are two loosely connected pieces I happened to read this week that I would like to share; one prior to the above foreword and one this morning. For me they are about language, taboo, context and pain, part of which this blog post is about. They both evoked some complex feelings in me; some contradictory, some uncomfortable, and are the most interesting and touching things I have read this week. I hope you find them interesting too.

The first is called “Retarded” by Pah.

The second is called “The Holocaust – no laughing!” by The Sensible Jew.


Now that I have subjected you all to what I hope is not the distorted ramblings of a girl too old to have travelled for 25 hours without a proper sleep, I might go back to my bed for a while.

Ah, but it’s good to be home!

Paris

Ben & Mel's email - 29/08/09


Hi all,

This is our third and final night in Paris, and we've had a fantastic time here. Once again Mel has discovered her "new favorite place". Ben has also really enjoyed Paris which has exceeded his memories of traveling around this city last time he was here.

Our plane ride from Venice to Paris ended up being delayed 4.5 hours, which meant that we were effectively in the airport for 7 hours. This did not make us very happy or pleasant to be around as you can imagine. We were supposed to land at 5.15pm, but ended up landing about 10pm. By the time we had our luggage and had walked to the regional train network it was about 11pm.

We worked out how to get to our local train station, which required us to change trains half-way (there is a rural and a metro system here that intersects at various points). But by the time we had arrived at the first station, the trains heading towards our local station had finished for the night (it was about 11.35pm by this stage).

So, we were forced to take our first taxi ride for the entire trip (sigh)........it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, because the street containing our hotel is not on the map given to us by the airport information staff, so we had no chance of finding it... Plus, the taxi ride took us past the Eiffel tower and the Arc de Triumph in style.

The hotel is very nice (or cute as Mel puts it).

Yesterday we got up fairly early and headed off to the Palace of Versailles, which is outside Paris but easily accessible on the regional trains......it only took about 45 mins to get to from our hotel.

We wandered around the Palace with the audioguide for a couple of hours marveling at the ostentatiousness before looking out at the beautiful gardens that are there. Louis XIV who built Versailles may have been referred to as the Sun King, but there wasn't any sun at Versailles yesterday. It was spitting with rain and the temperature was in the low 20s, which was actually a welcome change from the sweltering heat in Italy and the rest of the places we have been.

Once we had finished at Versailles we went through Notre Dame, which was more beautiful than Ben had remembered, with amazing stain glass windows.

Ben then decided that we needed to see Sacre Coeur before it closed that day. His memory was that it was more beautiful than Notre Dame. He failed to remember that you need to climb 234 steep steps to reach the entrance, dodging merchants along the way. Mel had sore knees by this point and wasn't happy.

Still, we only had 15 minutes to reach the entrance before it closed, so we raced up in record time. Ben's memory of this place may have been affected by the fact that he discovered that his friend had died a few nights before when he was in Paris last time, and had lit a candle in his memory at Sacre Coeur. Mel and Ben spent some time talking about this, and then enjoying the setting sun and music on the steps outside the cathedral.

As a cathedral it was nice, but not as nice as Notre Dame, which we had seen only an hour before.

We had a late dinner at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel and had a drink French style - outside watching the people go by. The place was still kicking at 11pm on a Thursday night.....and we are by no means in the heart of the city.

Today we spend about 6 hours at the Louvre, concentrating mainly on their Egyptology Collection and the various types and periods of sculpture, but also visiting such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, before coming back to the hotel for a rest. The Louvre is amazingly huge, yet very well organised, with many ticket machines and multiple entrances and possible tours, we didn't wait in a line to get in and were only affected by crowds at the most popular pieces.

After munching on some croissants from our local bakery on the corner (we may have dropped in here a few more times than was strictly good for us) and a bit of a nap back at our hotel, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower which has amazing views of Paris by night, and had a very late dinner back near our local station.

The last two nights we have had the best food and drink we have had in Europe, and they were both ordered at 11pm and 12pm respectively around the corner from our hotel - we love this town!! The stereotype of the arrogant French person hasn't been borne out by our experience here - from strangers in the street to people working here, everyone has been super nice and very helpful, and this is a very relaxed kind of city.

Tomorrow morning we are going to visit the Museum dedicated to Rodin's work (Mel will be in sculpture heaven again) before flying to London in the afternoon where we are staying in an actual apartment, which has it's own washing machine and kitchen (Mel is delirious with expectation).

That's all for now. Hope you're all well :)

Ben and Mel

Florence & Venice (and Venice Airport)

Ben & Mel's email - 27/08/09


Hi all,

We're writing this from the airport in Venice where our flight has been delayed by 3 1/2 hours (so far), but more about that later.

In our last exciting episode we were about to leave for Florence from Rome. We got to Florence by train with no probs, and the bus dropped us right outside our hotel.

We went to Mel's favorite destination on the first day (the laundromat) and wandered around getting our bearings. The next day (Sunday) we got a late start, which we realised was going to cause us some problems, because it is not just restaurants that do not open on Mondays in Florence - it's almost every single tourist attraction too........

Consequently, once we'd got out the door and had something to eat and drink we needed to cane it around a couple of museums..........What we should have done was make a booking to see the Ufiizzi Museum one hour's hence, and gone to eat lunch while we waited.....what we actually did was race through lunch, walk up to the looong Uffizzi queue (which was not moving), realised we could book for a tour ahead an hour to skip the queue which we did, and then wandered aimlessly through the streets of Florence (which was quite pleasant) using our newly acquired Italian swear words.

Eventually, it was our turn to enter the Museum, and we were treated to probably the greatest collection of Renaissance Art in the world.......Mel was very much in her element and very happy (especially in the Botticcelli room). We were a few hours in this museum and by the time we got out it was 5.35 pm.

The other museum we really wanted to get to was the Gallery of Accademia, which houses Michaelangelo's David, and closes at 6.55pm. We got to the entry about 6pm, not really expecting to be allowed in so close to closing time, but we were admitted for a mere 20 Euros combined.

It's a very small building and we'd admired all of the artwork there in 20 minutes flat.....that's 1 Euro per minute for you mathematical types.....

Monday we were pretty buggered. We went to visit the Duomo, which is an amazing, very large cathedral and had a bit of a wander, laughing at the very tiny streets, and the tiny trucks that are built to go down those streets.

Ben really likes Florence, as it seems less spoilt than Rome in that there is less hustlel/bustle. The houses there do not seem to have been replaced by modern looking houses, giving it a very old-style appearance.

Yesterday we took the train to Venice, which is amazing. This is Mel's new favourite place so far. Venice is built on a series of canals. There are no cars, and the public transport system is a series of Ferries. Mel is in her element on the water (no pun intended).

Venice does not have many sites per se, it is just a matter of being there and experiencing it's unique canals and beauty.

However, Venice does have many, many stalls set up for tourists containing amazing Venetian masks and Ben spent much of his time following Mel from stall to stall (to stall) looking at masks, bags, jewellery, and many other interesting things (to females) and opening his wallet.

We also visited the San Marco Bascillica, which is a fantastic cathedral on the San Marco Piazza, which is pidgeon city. Mel had drunk a marguerita and 500 ml of beer at lunch just before we went in, and REALLY enjoyed her tour of the bascillica.

We wandered around Venice last night and had dinner. This morning we just had time to do some reconassaince for our plane ride today and to spend a bit more cash in tourist traps.

After a ferry and a bus ride(we haven't used a taxi yet on this trip, which makes Ben very happy) we got to the airport about 1 hour before checkin and about 3 hours before our flight was supposed to leave (at 3.40pm) only to discover that it had been delayed to 6.05pm.

It has subsequently been updated to 6.40pm and now 7.25pm. Therefore, we will probably get to our hotel at about 10pm......so much for living the Paris nightlife on our first night..........

On the upside they did give us a drink and a roll to compensate us for sitting in an airport for 7 hours..........(insert sarcasm here)

Anyhow, that brings you up to date with us........

We are both well, and enjoying the trip, but getting a little tired........

We're looking forward to Paris in London, but also looking forward to sleeping in our own beds in a about a week......

Look forward to seeing you all soon.

Love Ben and Mel