February 2009
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Six Free Exhibitions
I decided to pop into the West End today to see a couple of exhibitions. As is sometimes the way, I only made it to one of the two I was intending to see, but instead I made it to four others. All are free, so it seemed worth reviewing them.
Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009
The current exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery, this was by far the most crowded of all the exhibitions I...
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Some Guardian Clippings
Marina Hyde: Give to the rich to help the poor? An idea worthy of Bono
Subheaded “Satire? No - a genius really has concocted a tax proposal to put our aid budget in the hands of the super-rich”, this is a great read which can’t be quoted from in chunks. Just go and read it.
Saturday interview: Franny Armstrong’s new film aims to create 250 million climate change activists...
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Microplaza: a micro-review
While idly surfing Twitter search trends, I noticed a Techchrunch article on MicroPlaza was a trending topic. I was intrigued, as I’d been considering ways of getting links out of Twitter for months, and I managed to get an invite code and have a quick look around.
MicroPlaza shows all the links that have been posted by people I follow, with any URL shortening expanded out. The main page of...
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Children: Social Networking Sites: | House of... →
Via Dan Hon, the source of the quotes that the Daily Mail picked up on today (see my previous entry): a House of Lords debate on the 12th of February. Her remarks conclude:
Of course we cannot turn back the clock, nor would that be any solution to maximising the individual’s potential in this new century. However, surely the Government could consider investing in some kind of initiative, the...
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Facebook vs The Book
Another day, another screaming Daily Mail front page:
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing...
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Is Gail Trimble the cleverest contestant ever? |... →
Gail Trimble is the team captain for Corpus Christi, Oxford:
“In the quarter-finals, Trimble racked up a record 15 starters-for-10 as Corpus Christi raced to 350 points.”
Watching the semi-final, it struck me that allowing postgrads onto the teams is probably about as unfair as allowing each Oxbridge college its own slot on the show. A university focussed on teaching, as opposed to...
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The Economist on Readers and News
Editorial: An iTunes Moment for Readers?
Book publishers are in better shape than record labels. Far from harming sales, the Kindle and the iPhone seem to offer incremental revenue, by making it easier for avid readers to buy more titles.
Consumers treat phones (and Kindles) differently from PCs. People pay for text messages, even though e-mail is free. Apple has sold millions of iPhone...
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The Concentration Anomaly
A couple of days ago, I posted a few links, the last of which was about attention and how we’re losing the ability to concentrate:
When you’re scattered and diffuse, you’re less creative. When your times of reflection are always punctured, it’s hard to go deeply into problem-solving, into relating, into thinking.
Today, Vaughan at Mind Hacks posts a pretty good rebuttal to the post:
If you...
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“…it is an activity which in itself is a waste of time, a pointless and...”
– Peter Saville, on design for music.
Quoted by Michael Johnson in a 1998 interview for Design Week.
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Four Links, Vaguely Connected
How The City Hurts Your Brain, The Boston Globe
“We’ve constructed a world that’s always drawing down from the same mental account,” Kuo says. “And then we’re surprised when [after spending time in the city] we can’t focus at home.”
The End Of Alone, The Boston Globe:
At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap away....
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“It’s a record so improbable that even to describe it sounds fantastical....”
– Owen Hatherley, on Sheffield: Sex City, Pulp’s masterpiece, in Pulp: Urbanism, Sexuality, Class.
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“Bad things: People complaining about the collapse of the infrastructure. What do...”
– russell davies: snowday
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