Ken MacLeod's Blog, page 30

Red Plenty reminder

This afternoon at 5.30 I'll be introducing and chairing a free event at Word Power, where author Francis Spufford and computer scientist and economist Paul Cockshott will discuss Spufford's well-received new book Red Plenty. I've already enthused about this book, as has Paul Cockshott - who has himself worked for many years to bring to academic and political attention the significance of the historical and theoretical questions that lie behind the story. This promises to be a lively and engag...

Another reminiscence

An Audioboo of me at the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday.

Contrivances

I met Ian Rankin at the Book Festival and mentioned that I'd read Ian McEwan's Saturday on holiday.

'Gangster novel,' he said. 'Brain surgeon scrapes thug's car. Thug threatens him. Brain surgeon notices ...' He summarised the plot in a few brisk sentences.

'If guys like us came up with contrivances like that,' he concluded, 'the critics would throw stones at us.'

'From Dover Beach!'

'Or Chesil Beach.'

All that needs to be said about Saturday was said some time ago.

Blogging for beginners

On Wednesday David Shenk and I led a discussion on blogging as a tool for science communication. The session was organised by Edinburgh Beltane, which is not as you might think a group of young people recreating the antics of our illustrious blue-painted heathen ancestors but a 'beacon' (geddit?) for public engagement with science. Some notes from the discusssion are here. Probably my best line was: 'Remember that anything stupid, foolish or misguided you say will last as long as civilisation.'

Edwin Morgan, 1920 - 2010

Yesterday I heard the sad news that Edwin Morgan had died. Douglas Gifford's obituary in The Scotsman is perhaps the most comprehensive of many that have appeared today; the most poignant, surely, is that in The Independent, by Angus Calder, another giant who himself passed away two years ago.

When I first met Edwin Morgan I told him of how I'd sat watching a documentary about his life, and enthusing to my wife about his poems on love, and it only slowly dawning on me as I watched what his own...

Differentiated from a doormat

'I myself have never been able to find out precisely what Feminism is: I only know that people call me a Feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.'

This quotation from Rebecca West is quite familiar. I've seen it loads of times, often shortened by ommission of the opening phrases or the last three words. But until today I've never come across the context in which it was written: a socialist, trade unionist, internationalist polemic against an ...

Blatant Brotherly Bleg

My brother James, hard-working history professor and talented cartoonist, has an entry (No. 10) in the UCS cartoon contest.

If any readers should be kind enough to vote for his entry, he would be very grateful. And so would I.

Poetry competion: the new and improved human

The Genomics Forum and the Scottish Poetry Library have announced a poetry competition, open to all, deadline 10 October 2010, on the theme of 'improving the human'. Details here.

'A selection of the winning and shortlisted poems will be published in a special publication of the Forum in 2010.

The Scottish Poetry Library will host an evening of poetry readings based on the winning entries.

First prize is £500, second prize is £200, and third prize is £100.'

The Only Reality

Re-reading Frederick Engels's Ludwig Feurbach and the End of Classical Geman Philosophy (as one does) I was struck by the following much-quoted statement:

the material, sensuously perceptible world to which we ourselves belong is the only reality.

Engels describes this as a realization to which Feuerbach (a German philosopher who greatly influenced Marx and Engels while they were working out their own ideas) w...

'We don't agree with his extremism and starting the second world war'

At last the tiresome expression 'Somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan!!!' actually has a referent.

It is, by any standards, an extraordinary choice. Under Hitler, Soviet prisoners of war who appeared Mongolian were singled out for execution. More recently, far-right groups in Europe have attacked Mongolian migrants.

It's all about maintaining ethnic purity, apparently.