This one’s certain to be bereft of real inspiration (well I did say I’d post every day, not write something interesting every day). I’ve got a cold. Yes, on what might be one of the last hot and sunny weekends of the year, I’m stricken with a nose like Niagra, a tickly throat, and a general malaise.
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I just bought a bike. One without an engine that you have to move your legs up and down on. Finding it slightly stupid at best to own a car unless you live in the countryside, I’ve always managed happily with public transport, hitching and walking. But the bicycle has always beckoned—it’s just such an pragmatically elegant form of transport. I got a good bargain, a nearly-new mountain bike from a nice little shop called Everything Cycling up on Forest Road.
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After reading a draft copy of a book by Bob Trubshaw, which touched upon some recent developments in cognitive science that I’ve completely missed out on, I fancied I should make an effort and catch up. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is my rather daunting starting point. Without a good understanding of the tradition they’re taking apart, I’m not sure I’m fully engaged with their ideas, but the cognitive science discoveries they’re building on, and their various takes on these discoveries, are definitely deepening my penchant for toying with a kind of "psychedelic materialism".
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I thought I should make my first post to my new-look blog soon. I thought it would probably be some sort of reflection on closing norlonto.net down and all that. But I’ve been down enough recently to feel compelled to look forward without glancing back over my shoulder—to give it a go at least.
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Considering I’ve actually got a mobile phone, unlike quite a few friends, I’m quite a fuddy-duddy with it. I only really have it on for any length of time when it’s "office hours"—and even then I easily forget about it. I rarely take it out with me unless I know I’ll need to make a call while I’m out, or if I’m expecting one. I treat it more like an inbox than a walkie-talkie. And I’ve had this one, the first one I bought, for over four years now, eschewing our social compulsion to "upgrade" all the time out of feelings of inadequacy. There’s also the little issue of the mining of the relatively rare ore used for components essential to mobiles, coltan, contributing to ongoing warfare and ecological devastation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’m not sure our minor social prestige neuroses should be relieved at the expense of human life and environmental havoc—call me old-fashioned.
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The Long Now Foundation is a fascinating project trying, as a counter to the ongoing atrophy of the human attention span, to foster long-term thinking and responsibility. I hugely recommend Stewart Brand’s book The Clock of the Long Now, as a good read in itself as well as an introduction to the Foundation’s ideas.
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Norlonto.net is soon to be laid to rest. I’ve grabbed a domain for myself, and I’ll be putting all my stuff online there, plus anything else from here that can’t be accessed elsewhere that seems worth keeping.
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Recently returned from a couple of weeks’ holiday from the amorphous stress of freelance work. I spent most of the first week over in Avebury, where I was saddened to find out that the little campsite in Winterbourne Monkton, just north of the henge, is now gone. Seems like a prime area for a campsite… but now it’s all down to pitching in vaguely illicit locations if you want to get close to the landscape here.
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After his recent upbeat talk at the South by Southwest Conference, Bruce Sterling pipes up with some more Things To Worry About on Wired.com.
This came via the ever-interesting Worldchanging.com, who remark:
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Well, this one I can’t review, properly speaking. I edited and designed the bugger.
This morning I got a package from the irrepressible Paul Bennett, oop North in Calderdale, Yorkshire. It contained his much-delayed opus, The Old Stones of Elmet, the subtitle of which sums it up well: "A total guide to the archaeology, folklore & geomancy of the ritual stone sites in an old Yorkshire kingdom". It was my final major publishing project before leaving Leeds five years ago.
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