United Social States of America

Via Pete Warden, a lovely way of conceptualising the regional disparities of social networks. Does anyone know if something similar has/is being done for the UK?

(Hat tip: Broadstuff)

AuteurBowl

My favourite, as you might expect, is the Wes Anderson.

It does, once again, re-affirm the fact that US sports are somehow just more innately suited to be treated cinematically. Witness, not least, NFL Films. Somehow a Premier League Films, just doesn't have the same ring, does it?

)Hat tip: Marginal Revolution)

Some Sunday sermons

To thine own self be true
Originally uploaded by SgtRock333

So then, bleary eyed after one too many bottles on Sunday night, to Conway Hall, to hear the latest in The School of Life's Sunday Sermons, this time delivered by Charles Leadbeater.

Truth be told, his sermon - more a provocation - was mis-sold. 'On Perspective' the ticket said, but actually it was about aging, and designing systems to make good deaths more common and old age more productive and enjoyable. That he managed to discuss this without any reference to inter-generational wealth transfers was remarkable. (On that particular subject, you'll probably be wanting to read this.)

Still, there were some good lines, jokes and ideas worth recording:

- That to have an fulfilling working life you need to do something interesting, always be learning, and making new relationships so you can learn

- That, at current rates, every decade you life means an extra two years on your lifespan

- by 2070, there'll be over 1m people in the UK over 100 years old

- That we have doubled human lifespan in the space of 200 years

- Half of us will get some sort of dementia

- That after the post WWII economic eras of 'I need' and 'I want', we're now in the age of 'I can'

- Most objects matter only because they are an emblem of a relationship

Tell the credit card company that one next time you phone to query your bill.

Commercial: Liar Love

Liar's League. You know it. Most likely you've been to it. London's premier showcase of all things literary and dramatique.

Well, from tomorrow night, things are going to get a little bit more dramatique.

For the Liars are moving into lurrrve. You are promised, in addition to all the usual imbroligos, a night of book-based blind dating, basically.

All you have to do is email your vital statistics (name, age, sex, orientation, favourite novel) to liarsleague@yahoo.co.uk and you'll get matched them up with a fellow audience member and, hey presto!, a date for the night. (There is no word whether you can get one of the writers on hand to write chat up lines for you.)

The League has a new home, downstairs at The Phoenix off Oxford Circus, and the shenanigans start at 7pm. And all this for £5. Measly, I tell you.

Commercial: For the love of culture

Can I commend to you this article by Lawrence Lessig in The New Republic. He moves from a discussion of the recent Google Books settlement into a wider discussion as to why - as good an outcome as could be expected, if not better - is, nevertheless, still potentially damaging to our wider consumption and creation of culture.

Yes, I know it's all about copyright, and while that might be boring to you, if you create anything at all, or work in and around knowledge making and spreading, you owe it to yourself to familiarise yourself with these issues and debates. And no, it's not as simple as 'abolish copyright' or 'lock everything up'.

Start with the article, and then move on to his Code, which you can download for free.

Death at a distance

My grandmother died in Kolkata on Friday. 
 
She was 92.

She was the last of my grandparents.
 
I dashed back to my parents house, after getting the call mid-morning.

We watched TV. Drank tea and ate poppadoms. 

There wasn't as much hysteria as I thought there might be, as there was when the penultimate grandparent died.

Just the dull practical details. Like sorting visas to fly out in case the divvying of the inheritance turns into even more of a bunfight.

The phones were ringing, furthering the discussions as to who the representative might be, from this distance. 

Details filtered back across time zones.

That she stopped eating four days ago.

That her last words were, something like, “I won't be getting back up again." 

That it was enormous luck that my uncle, her eldest son, was visiting her and so able to take the reins of the situation. 

That everyone there agreed that it was a good death, whatever that is.

And anecdotes about her too.

Like how she'd ask for a receipt for any gift she was given. 

What I picked up on most were the incidental details around the religious rituals of death that I barely know anything about.

That my uncle had to hold some fire in his mouth before lighting the funeral pyre (the cremation had to happen within 24 hours of death. So she was ashes even before I was awake.) 

That the mourning period involves the family not eating meat – I haven't obeyed this injunction. (I felt some sort of odd consolation that this period will end with a family repast at Ping Pong next weekend.)

That Parsees hang bodies from a tower, for the vultures to pick at. (My grandmother wasn't a Parsee.)

Our family belies the cliché of extended Asian families – there's only the four of us here.

But outside of us, our clan is literally extended in space and time.

Which makes you feel even more like insignificant when things like this happen.

Death bridges distance, brings you closer, but it still doesn't answer those questions caused by those dislocations, voluntary or otherwise. 

I felt the oddness of my second generation upbringing.

I only knew my grandmother as a name. 

As a some photos in an album.

The object of some stories, occasionally told.

There was never any sense... impulse... pressure to get to know her.

(Or indeed, India, Bengal, Kolkata, my culture, my other language, my heritage.)

Is this is a bad thing?

I've never thought so. But then you re-consider, and ask the question.

And others.

How do you grieve for someone you didn't know? 
 
And only met once when you were two years old? 

Outside, snow was falling as the sun was shining. It was cold and beautiful. Like the day. 

Fantastic Mr Director

As Hattie over at Comment Central suggests, this could be the best acceptance speech of all time.



Surely all that remains is for all awards ceremonies to be done in stop-motion.

Shepherd's delight

Shepherd's delight
Originally uploaded by SgtRock333

But where do you find a shepherd when you need one...?

26 recommendations

for January are here.

Commercial: BRIC-a-brac

Sure you've probably all seen this Gillian Tett piece already, detailing the inside story on how the idea of the BRICs came to be. I wanted to draw you attention to it:

a) because it's a salient reminder of the power of naming, and how a phenomena can suddenly be made real by a catchy, handy, memorable moniker

b) because the glimpses of jargon that we see littering the prose. I spotted 'BRIC-dom' and 'domestification' on my re-glance, and I'm sure there's more in there.

And my contention is that it's this reliance on jargon by investment and other banks that in part has lead us to the economic situation that we're in at the moment.

Because jargon suggests woolly thinking, a lack of robustness - and transparency. Bluntly, it suggests people are trying to hide things. I'm not saying that every industry doesn't need its own shorthand. But relying on it as the main means of communication to the outside world suggests nothing more than a scared priesthood hiding from an enraged laity.

And that didn't stop the Reformation either.