Destroy All Onions!

Or to be more precise, I suppose, the times have already changed.

I heard a piece on the Today programme about publishing and buying books, focussing on a row that’s brewing with Amazon.

It started me thinking on how things used to be, not that very long ago. Because I work near the city centre, I usually go out for lunch with my friends, and we get some food and have a bit of a wander round the town. We’ve been doing it for years, but I realised with some surprise that it has changed over time, and I hadn’t noticed.

We used to regularly go round all the bookshops (Easons, Dillons, Waterstones, and some of the second-hand ones too), and the music shops (Our Price, Virgin, HMV), probably at least once a fortnight. And now we hardly ever go to a bookshop or music shop. Now why should that be? Partly it’s because none of us tend to buy as many things from those shops (the ones that are still open of course).  I don’t think I’ve bought anything from one of those shops since Christmas, and maybe not since the Christmas before. But we never used to buy books every week, so that’s not the whole story. Part of the pleasure of a bookshop or CD shop is the browsing to see what’s there, but now that we have a whole world of books and music at our fingertips all the time, it doesn’t seem necessary any more. Especially since we now get emails all the time advertising all the new books and CDs, so we don’t even have to go and see what’s new.

That kind of disappoints me. I like bookshops, and music shops, and it kind of shocks me to think I’m not visiting them. So next week’s resolution is to go and make friends with some bookshops again.

I happened to read the start of Galatians chapter 5 the other night. In my bible (the Good News Version) it read as:

“Freedom is what we have – Christ has set up free! Stand, then, as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.”

This year, there has been a lot of celebration of the end of slavery,  and yet when I read this, I realised that slavery is still going strong. Yes, Christ has set us free from the slavery of sin, and also from slavery to the law. But now that we have this freedom, what do we do with it? We manage to enslave ourselves once again. It’s so easy to be enslaved by career, by money, by the tv schedules, by fashion, by our bad habits, by public opinion, by fear – the list goes on and on. We seem to have a built in tendency to make new chains for ourselves, as we slide into patterns of thought and behaviour, and then get stuck in them.

I think I need to break a few chains again. Here’s to freedom!

• Following up on an earlier post, this week’s Doctor Who was “The Forest of the Dead”, the second part of a two parter written by Stephen Moffat, who will be the new guvnor at Doctor Who. I thought it was very good. He writes scary stories, but rather beautiful endings.
• And this week’s Heroes (Chapter 7) was the point at which the series got its mojo back – it shifted up a gear, and things started to get a bit more interesting again. Suddenly I can’t wait for the next episode, like I was last year.

This article in Wired caught my eye this morning, and made me think about one of my favourite things – gadgets. Their theory is that the iPhone won’t catch on much in Japan because they’re already got supercool phones that do a million things, and won’t be interested in a phone that only does a hundred things, even if it does those things in very nice way.

It’s an interesting question, and one that boils down to one of the age-old dilemmas – do we want quality, or quantity? Some restaurants thrive because their portions are very big, but others because their portions are small, but completely delicious.

So what kind of shopper am I? Well, I think anyone who knows me who agree that I am a bit of a gadget fiend. I like complicated things. While I am shocked and appalled at some of the things that are sold in Japan, that’s generally because of the horror of the marketting (go away Hello Kitty! I am not interested!), rather than not liking the over-engineering of some of their ideas.

As some of you may know, I am no lover of Apple. I suppose some of that was the dumbed down simplicity of some of their products, like the old one-button mouse, which I particularly hated. But that’s old Apple. New Apple computers now run on top of Linux, practically the most complicated way to run a computer on the planet (beaten only by MVS on IBM mainframes I’ll wager). And the new Apple mouse is so over-engineered it’s astonishing. But the result of this is something that at first glance looks simple and uncomplicated, but underneath has enough complexity to make a hacker weep with joy. It’s a killer combination, and has gained them a lot of friends. It’s quality in top, with unexpected quantity underneath.

And so although the iPhone may not go down well in Japan, in the computer world, they’re winning over the gadget lovers. Oh, I hates them. Nasty hobbitses…

Today’s points of interest:

• Congratulations to Spider-Cheryl (can she swing from a web? Yes she can, and she can preach), who survived her plummet from the roof of the Europa yesterday.
• This week’s running song is Nutbush City Limits. It’s another song that was just the right speed for me to run to this afternoon, and it’s got a really crazy instrument in it. I secretly hope that it’s a theremin (because the sound slides up and down a lot), but I haven’t been able to find any evidence to support my pet theory. It might just be some kind of synthesizer.
• And in other running news, assisted by the mighty Tina and the rest of my running playlist, I ran just over 3 miles this afternoon, in 30 minutes. I have a feeling that this might not be very impressive, but I’m quite pleased that I can now do that kind of run and still be able to go up and down stairs afterwards without making faces.
• If anyone else read this excellent and timely warning from Wired magazine, I can set your concerns at ease by confirming that the photo of me in my hat on the introductions page predates the latest Indiana Jones movie.

I happened to catch an interview this morning on the Today programme on Radio 4 with the Dalai Lama (which may still be available here). What an interesting chap he is!

He was asked about all the things you might expect – Tibet, China, the Olympics, Buddhism. Pretty serious subjects – he wasn’t given a particularly easy ride. And yet throughout he remained positive, and you could hear the smile in his voice throughout. He said that his aim is for an autonomous Tibet within China, to benefit both sides as a compromise solution, and continues to re-iterate that they must only use non-violent means.

What a guy!! He is surely the Mohatma Gandhi of our generation, unhappy about the treatment of his people, but absolutely refusing violence and negativity, and wanting to make progress through compromise and negotiation. And let’s face it, he has not been very successful thus far, but he is passionate that he will not support any other way.

And what a great spokesperson for a religion, and for a country. As I said, you can hear him smile when he speaks. Even when he is talking about things that are very serious and important to him, he comes back to that gentle, smiling tone. He is very human, and a real contrast to the other religious leaders of his stature (who I guess are the archbishop of Canterbury, and the pope). When you hear them speaking, it is in sermons and press releases – formal, complex communications. When the Dalai Lama speaks, he is not looking thoughtful and serious – he wants to connect with people on a human level. I’ve even been told that he’s been known to sneak sweets to people when he shakes hands. Can you see the Archbishop of Canterbury doing that?

I have no intention of becoming a Buddhist, but I can’t help feeling that if we all were a little more like him the world would be a better place. And that goes double for politicians, church leaders, and managers!

PS. But now that I think about it, there is one other church leader who exudes that feeling of inner peace and joy, despite coming through difficult times – Desmond Tutu, another man who I have the most profound respect for. Now I definitely won’t have to become a buddhist. Only be a bit less white…

Well, according to the news (Radio 4, as well as the BBC News web site), the time has finally come, and Russell T Davies is hanging up his sonic screwdriver and leaving Doctor Who.

This was always inevitable for someone who has such a high profile television career (for example listed here), who is bound to have turned down a lot of other jobs over the past 5 years.

So lets have a ponder about his contribution:

• Let’s face it, he got Doctor Who back onto television when it had been basically written off after the failed revival of 1996. And not only did he get it back on tv, but he made it successful. That’s a phenomenal achievement for something which had some fairly low expectations. The fact that he was a respected figure in the tv industry meant that the BBC trusted him with a decent slide of cash to make the first series. And the fact that he loved with the show with the passion of a fan meant that he was really excited about, and wanted it to succeed not for the good of his career, but because he just loved it. For that I’d buy him a drink any day.

• But I have to be honest, I don’t think that the episodes that he himself has written have been the best. I get the feeling that he works best as a creative visionary, but that other people are better at the actual nuts and bolts of writing stories. If you have an honest look at an episode list (such as this one), I think the best episodes in each season were those written by other people. And he has written some of the worst ones (notably Love and Monsters in series two).

• I think we can admit that he is a bit obsessed with sex. This has obviously come out (pun intended) more fully in Torchwood, but it has also become a feature of Doctore Who during his reign. To be honest, I can live without that.

• He has tended to ground Doctor Who much more than in the past, in both ways. There have been more earth-based episodes then before, which is aimed at making it a bit more accessible, and real for people. I can understand that. But he also created characters with much more baggage than usual, with families to worry about and come back to. That’s probably a bit more realistic, but at times there was a danger of drifting out of sci fi into soap.

He’ll be a hard act to follow, having produced some great Saturday evening television, and having set high expectations for the series going forward.

But the good news is that Stephen Moffat has written some of the best episodes of the new series, and he has been a fan since childhood as well, so I guess he’s as safe a pair of hands as we good hope for.

I went out on my bike today to unravel one of the great mysteries of the M1 motorway. Near the Lurgan exit, somewhere in the distance, an odd golf-ball-like construction can sometimes be seen. Today I sought it out, And this is what I found, a mere 3/4 of a mile from the M1.

This place claims to be the Castor Bay Waste Water Treatment Works, but clearly that’s just a front. Let’s take a look at this construction on the roof. What does it remind you of? Well, clearly it’s a shield generator from an Imperial Star Destroyer. Take a look!!

So why do we find an artifact of alien technology from a galaxy far, far away on the roof of a building on the shore of Lough Neagh? What are they really up to?? I have no idea. But I would imagine there’s a good conspiracy story in it.

I’ve had some thoughts on music over the last few weeks.

• I was at the cinema early for Iron Man, and they had left a teenager in charge of the music before the trailers started. Bad move. Dance music is not my thing, but I think my friend said it best when he (loudly) commented
  “If you were listening to this music, how the f*** would you know if your CD player was broken”.
  It was a fair comment. We concluded that what we were listening to was unworthy of the label “music”, and decided that it needed a different description. I humbly present for your consideration the term “structured noise”. Try it out a few times, and see how it works for you. Especially if you find yourself listening to Radio 1.
• At the other end of the scale, I spent part of a Sunday afternoon listening to the most elite Salvation Army band in the UK, at a bandstand in the village of Scarva, on a really nice sunny afternoon. There was a massive crowd, and I enjoyed the band. I know I’m old fashioned, but I think there’s something special about music that comes from people breathing, or banging, or whatever, without all the technology and amplification.
• My good headphones are banjaxed. Major trauma! I spent most of my time in the gym tonight either caressing or tickling the headphone cable to get it back into the precise spot where I could get sound in both ears. It was of course a complete waste of time, since the whole point of going to the gym is to move around, so the sound cut out again constantly.
• This was just typical. I somehow never get to fully immerse myself in Pink Floyd’s Us And Them as much as it deserves. It’s a truly great song, with a wonderful haunting tune, fabulous saxophone, and words that are pretty powerful, especially for someone like myself, who grew up in a very “them and us” culture in Northern Ireland. But it’s a very long song, so it nearly always get interrupted in some way. Frustration!!

Went out for another run today, determined not to overdo it this time. Ran just over 3 miles, to the office and back. After 5 minutes, discovered that my legs still aren’t quite right from last week, as my calves got sore.

But this week’s lessons are:

• My old headphones stay in my ears better. Even more so if I put the cable under my T-shirt to stop it flapping about.
• The second best song was Walls come tumbling down by the Style Council. Yes, I know it’s all a bit eighties, and yes I know that the line about “dangling jobs like a donkey’s carrot” works rally badly, but the song was just the right speed for running, and has a nice positive message about people power.
• I managed to run just over 3 miles in just over 30 minutes (though I did have a break when I called in at a friend’s house), which is just kind of speed I was hoping for.

So it remains to be seen how sore my legs are tomorrow.