Graph here, courtesy of Andrew Godwin’s Lastgraph software. Doesn’t feel 100% representative to me since many artist labels are left out and some of those that are left in I hardly recognise …
Somebody called Jonathan Coulton has found a delightful message from Robert Redford in the Sundance Christmas catalogue:
“Holidays again. Forgive me while I dodge the rumble of the million footed throngs that have succumbed to the marketing ether for Christmas and its days.
Holiday. Can we, without disappointing the children and others who long for the surprise of gift giving, just look to a different value to digest, wherever you are? Those details that are natural and sometimes hidden? That have a satisfying and long lasting lifespan? Things that you miss when you’re away? That when someone might remind you, you say, oh yes, how wonderful. And of course the most vivid of details: loved ones who are there in body and spirit.
Happy holidays from all of us at Sundance.”
While you can sort of understand what he’s saying, as one commenter astutely notes, “there is the possibility that his cheese has slid off the cracker”.
No schwellenangst from Boris Johnson:
I don’t want to see metopes with centaurs and amazons on every entablature.
But why is it that mass housing once regularly incorporated human, animal or vegetable images - art of one kind or another - and yet we offer the buyer nothing of the kind today?
It doesn’t need to be much - just some visible point of pride - to satisfy what the Germans call the Schmuckbedurfnis - the lust for ornament.
Schmuckbedurfnis! That’s pretty good. Shame about the rest of the speech. FWIW, I think there are two main reasons new housing is generally pretty low-quality. Firstly, everyone’s so desperate to buy they’re grateful just to get on the ‘ladder’ and as a result aren’t as picky as they should be. Second, the highly skilled manual labour that produced the beautifully made Georgian and Victorian terraces Boris loves just isn’t available anymore in the plentiful quantities and / or at the relatively low cost it was back then. Most manufacturing or artisan jobs have disappeared save for some top-end niche producers, but even if somebody in China could churn out masses of attractive stucco cornicing nobody’s going to bother shipping it over here. The same goes for any number of internal or external markers of design or quality of finished product, and your averagely-priced new modern home suffers as a result. Increases in building costs already outpace general inflation, God knows what it would look like if it was actually adjusted for quality.
This argument is a bit too convenient for the many developers out there who are fundamentally imaginative and not punished for it, however, and I suspect standard designs would improve pretty fast if people started being a lot more picky about what they buy / rent.
* We need a long German word for Fellowship Of Long German Word Aficionados …
I thought this was fairly striking - an animated propaganda film made by Winsor McCay about the sinking of the Lusitania. The animation is very stylish and very powerful, quite reminiscent of Miyazaki I thought …
More about Winsor McCay from John Holbo here, and here’s the obligatory Wikipedia page, complete with a fantastic page from ‘Little Nemo’. I like the sound of ‘Dream of a Rarebit Fiend’.
The great thing about the UK Climate Change Bill is that everyone has their part to play in taking the PM down a peg or two.
Section 4(4) provides as follows:
If, in any one year, United Kingdom carbon dioxide emissions exceed the national annual target figure for that year by more than ten per cent then, in addition to the measures provided for in subsections (1), (2) and (3), the select committee referred to in subsection (2) shall consider whether the salary of the Prime Minister for the financial year in which the report laid under section 3(5) was laid should be reduced by up to 10 per cent, and shall make a recommendation concerning the Prime Minister’s salary.
Gordon Brown better buck up fast, or there’ll be a hell of a lot of televisions being left on standby down Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath way.
Italians can be rattled - McLeish
It’s true! Just grab one and give it a go.
This is pretty fucking chilling. “A series of catastrophic failures” seems about right. Jean Charles De Menezes was a victim of top-to-bottom incompetence (and the sad but predictable fact that some guys get way too excited when they’re allowed, encouraged even, to run about waving guns at people), but just because no one person can take all the blame doesn’t mean that nobody has to take responsibility. If being a manager means anything it should mean being held accountable for the failings of your team, and if Blair doesn’t possess the basic decency to realise this and step down he doesn’t merit the job in the first place. Resign.
