Music, Books, Beverages (3rd Edition)

I haven’t done one of these lists for a while (since March 8th apparently), so here’s a new, slightly longer one.

What I’ve Been Listening To:

Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
REM – Accelerate
U2 – Zooropa
Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light
Jeff Buckley – Grace

What I’ve Been Reading:

Kierkegaard – Repetition & Either/Or
Ivan Illich – The Right To Useful Unemployment
George MacDonald – Fairy Stories
Michel Henry – I Am The Truth
David Held – Introduction To Critical Theory

What I’ve Been Drinking:

An unusual amount of tea, often with a few ginger biscuits
Bodegas Salado Fina Blanca Paloma – a dry white sherry (well, technically a fortified wine ‘cos of the region, but that’s being fussy), which my sister & brother-in-law brought back for me from Spain
Dry ginger ale, again in unusual quantity
Rock Mild – the best mild I’ve ever had, brewed locally in Nottingham
Courvoisier VS – a standard, but very nice, cognac

Of Second-Hand Bookstores

I wandered into the Oxfam bookshop in Nottingham city centre the other day and made two excellent finds:

First, Rousseau’s Social Contract and Discourses, all together in one 350 page volume for just £2.49!! I’ve been reading up on my history of modern political philosophy over the summer, and so I’m quietly on the look out for cheap primary material from the likes of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, John Stuart Mill etc. and so this was a particularly good find given Rousseau’s importance in the field.

To add to that, just as I was congratulating myself on this particular find, I looked down and noticed a decent-sized book called Mapping Ideology, edited by Slavoj Žižek, for sale for a mere £3.49!! On closer inspection I noticed the volume had a bunch of really interesting (and some classic) essays on ideology from figures including Adorno, Althusser, Lacan, Terry Eagleton, Seyla Benhabib, Rorty and Jameson, as well as two pieces by Žižek himself. I also found it funny that there was a picture of a bald eagle on the front. Needless to say I snapped that up too.

Not bad at all.

Pigeon Faster Than Broadband

So it seems a carrier pigeon is still the fastest way of sending data in South Africa. Apparently a company in Durban decided to pit an 11-month old homing pigeon – called Winston – armed with a 4GB memory stick, against the ADSL service of the country’s biggest broadband provider, Telkom. Winston the pigeon carried the memory stick the 60 miles to his destination in just two hours, whereas in the same amount of time the ADSL had managed to send just 4% of the data. That’s a pretty resounding victory for Winston and the rest of pigeon-kind. So congratulations to him.

You can read the rest of the story HERE.

Summertime Reading

By Choice • For Pleasure

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By Request • For Review

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Some Weber

“The Puritan wanted to work in a calling: we are forced to do so [...] In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ’saint like a cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage [...] Today the spirit of religious asceticism – whether finally, who knows? – has escaped from the the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer [...] In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually gives it the character of sport. Of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilisation never before achieved’”

(The Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism, p.123-4).

SOME COMMENTARY: Max Weber is obviously most well known for the connection he drew between the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ (notions of vocation, calling etc.; privileging of the active life over the contemplative life; rejection of monasticism) and the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ (utility; profit as an end in itself). I’ve been reading for review a book by a guy called John Hughes, and he points out that Weber’s account of the connection between these two was not as simplistic or (apparently) reductionist as it is sometimes portrayed. It seems that Weber was at least partially aware of the effect of secularization on the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’. Protestantism may have played a crucial role in the birth of the capitalist spirit, but modern capitalism has ruthlessly thrown off its religious heritage. Even in the worst, most Puritan context, the Protestant work ethic was tempered by a concern for the spiritual. Unhooked from this spiritual dimension via secularization, however, we have slowly emerged into the vulgar, suffocating ‘iron cage’ of the modern capitalist society.

On a related note, the ongoing collusion of the Religious Right with today’s vulgar (stultifying, dehumanizing, profiteering, exploitative) mode of free-market, secular capitalism remains a complete and utter mystery to me, and ridiculously (insanely, absurdly, farcically, disturbingly) hypocritical given all their high-handed and somewhat obsessive moral rhetoric in other areas. I’m of course aware that this is not a new insight.

Ladies Football

From the International Design Festival, Berlin

“Made in Scotland, From Girders”

…is a famous advertising slogan used in the 70s for Irn Bru, the Scottish soft drink that tastes a bit like, well, iron girders. I read a fascinating article today though which tickled my nostalgia for a romantic past before digitalisation and automation. It turns out the recipe for Irn Bru is only known by 2 people in the entire world (and for that reason they never fly together on the same plane). One of those people is company chairman Robin Barr whose great grandfather came up with the Irn Bru recipe in 1901. It has not changed in 108 years, and Robin Barr still every month enters a sealed room at the company’s HQ in Scotland where he combines the 32 different ingredients making up the drink, mixing them in a huge vat containing enough mixture for 8000 litres of the stuff. Robin Barr is soon to stand down as chairman of A.G. Barr, the company which makes Irn Bru, but he will continue for the time being to come in monthly to mix the drink. Eventually, he admits, he will pass the recipe on to his daughter, who will then take over mixing duties. What a brilliant, romantic way of running a business.

It’s made me thirsty… thirsty for a drink made from girders!

P.S. For anyone worried that both people who know the Irn Bru recipe might die from swine flu, taking the recipe with them, they needn’t fear, as it is also stored on paper in a secret, secure bank vault somewhere in Scotland.

Who’d be a Politician?

Take a long hard look at this picture:

These are four MPs instigated in the latest ‘expenses’ scandal, having supposedly exploited the system for their own benefit (read HERE). Now, I’m pretty sceptical about the moral integrity of our politicians, mostly because their lives are so rigourously divided between what’s ‘public’ and what’s ‘private’ – the point being that when acting publicly they are supposed to uphold strong moral standards, but what they do in private is ‘their own business’. This is obviously absolute stupidity, as moral character, like religious faith, is either all or nothing – it is who you are, not what you do. The idea that you can turn ‘on’ moral standards when acting publicly, if you don’t have them privately, is so ridiculous as to border on lunacy.

Nonetheless, I want to open up another front of attack on our beloved politicians. Looking at the picture above, who the heck would want to become an MP if you end up looking like one of them? You can positively see the slime dripping off them. The word ’smarmy’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

John Ruskin – ‘A Biting Retort’

I recently checked out a volume entitled A Book of Ruskin from the University Library. It is a small pocket-size compendium of excerpts from John Ruskin’s writings, published in 1927. It has a heavily worn, navy blue, hardback cover which seems to be falling off at the binding. The pages are aged, a little crumpled and rather yellow. It smells very, very musty. It is the kind of book I like.

In it, are a selection of Ruskin’s letters, both private and public, and I came across one which I particularly enjoyed, entitled ‘A Biting Retort’. By way of background, Ruskin was a staunch critic of the laissez-faire economics of his day. Part of his argument was that modern capitalism turned the lower-class factory worker into little more than a human machine – simply a means of production for the national economy. The working class were given simple, repetitive, menial jobs, with long hours and low pay, in terrible conditions, and this was said to be their fair lot in life. In addition to the obvious social injustice issues here, Ruskin argued that this robbed working class ‘work’ of any pleasure or beauty, because it destroyed its creative element (see his essay ‘The Nature of The Gothic’ in The Stones of Venice). Ruskin saw this as a deep injustice at the heart of modern, Victorian society, that was dehumanizing and anti-life. The following exchange comes in this context, and concerns a misunderstanding of Ruskin’s critique as concerned simply with an attack on machinery. I will quote in full from the book:

“A somewhat impertinent critic once wrote to Ruskin:

Since you disparage so much iron and its manufacture, may it be asked how your books are printed, and how is their paper made? Probably you are aware that both printing and paper-making machines are made with that material.

To this Ruskin replied as follows:

Sir,

I am indeed aware that printing and paper-making machines are made of iron.  I am aware also, which you perhaps are not, that ploughshares and knives and forks are.  And I am aware, which you certainly are not, that I am writing with an iron pen. And you will find in ‘Fors Clavigera’, and in all my other writings which you may have done me the honour to read, that my statement is that things which have to do the work of iron should be made of iron and things which have to do the work of wood should be made of wood ;  but that (for instance) hearts should not be made of iron, nor heads of wood – and this last statement you may wisely consider when next it enters yours to ask questions.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

J.Ruskin

(Corpus Christi College, Oxford. February 10, 1872)”.

Superb!

An Existential Reflection on Evensong

I did something a little unusual last Sunday, for me at least, by going to the Choral Evensong service at St. Mary’s Church in Nottingham. It was by far the most traditional Christian service I’ve been to in some time, but I seem to have been tending that way recently. I arrived about two minutes before start time and was met by a greeter: a tall man, probably in his 60s, with thick grey hair and a friendly face. He looked a little puzzled to see me, and asked quizzically whether I was there for the service. I replied that I was. He looked even more puzzled and passed me a parish newsletter, asking whether I’d been before. I replied that I hadn’t and he directed me to the ‘choir’ (yes, where the choir usually sits, at the front of the church, near the altar) where the service was held, explaining where I should seat myself.

I wandered up the central aisle towards the ‘choir’, and was struck by how huge the church building was. I had been here two weeks before, out of curiosity, to watch the new minister-in-charge of the Nottingham diocese get set in by the local Bishop, in front of a packed house and some media. The scene was somewhat different this time, most of the church was dim lit, and completely empty. It was cavernous. There were around 15 people (at a generous estimate) sat up in the choir (seats) amidst the candle light, waiting for the minister and choir (singers) to arrive. 

Stiff Upper Lip

This wonderful poster was designed in 1939 by the British Government amid the onset of war, to be used in the event of a national catastrophe. It was never used, but has become increasingly popular of late in the face of continuing public anxiety over the ongoing global recession. Read about it here.

Victory celebrations, Munich style

Blogging

 

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(Thanks Chachi)