MaW’s Blog

This caught my eye on Boing Boing and something in the explanation was definitely missing. Yes there’s an argument for being able to take pictures of things in museums, but there’s another argument against it that’s very important to a lot of people: if you let people take pictures, they’re inevitably going to use the flash because they’re indoors. Flash photography emits a lot of light, and light, as any conservator will tell you, is very bad for exhibits.

The conservator’s ideal museum would keep all objects in climate-controlled enclosures, sealed off from each other and the outside world, without any lights or visitors.

Such a museum wouldn’t be very useful, but it would keep the objects in good condition!

Perhaps a compromise would involve the museum providing free downloads of images they’ve taken themselves to help reduce the number of photos being taken.

In a remarkable example of World Cup tie-ins actually being used for a good purpose, there’s a new poster up on my way to campus. It’s backed by a huge England flag (a proper one, not a silly one with ENGLAND written across the middle), and fronted with a nice pile of litter. Big text across the middle says “40 Years of Dirt. Have some pride” and then there’s the little picture of the man putting litter in the bin.

Clearly this refers to the 40 years since England last won the World Cup, in that famous and horribly over-quoted final at Wembley, which is no more. It’s a good effort I think.

Unfortunately, looking at the path I was walking on at the time, with the bottles and cans and boxes and bits of magazine strewn all over it, I think something a little more drastic is going to be needed before people stop leaving crap everywhere. In the mean time, walking down some streets round here is nearly enough to make you cry — or at least nauseous.

What a contradiction, but it’s true. I like going places, I like to see things and meet people. I also like to stay at home, stay in my comfortable surrounds, and be geeky with my computers. At the moment I’m in travelling mode, and some of it’s good. Yesterday I went to Cardiff to see Luke and Jenny, two friends of mine from the old Netland White Tower site, get married. Luke’s nearly as tall as I am, and having just passed his PhD subject to minor corrections he’s clearly having a good week. It got even better when Jen arrived in the back of the hall, adorned with a stunning wedding dress that showed off her perfect figure and flawless shoulders to perfection.

Jealous? You bet! But I wish them every happiness, and intend to go over to Boston, MA and see them some time next year, for they will be making their new lives in the States.

Tomorrow the real stress starts: an 0638 train from Nottingham takes me to Bristol for the Automated Reasoning Workshop. At least I should get a good dinner in the middle of it — the restaurant where we’re having the meal looks gorgeous. I return to Nottingham on Tuesday, and have a few days of relative peace before turning out again to the Midlands Graduate School in Leicester, another four days causing me to have to miss the April meeting of the Society of Recorder Players, something I’m displeased about as due to the holidays I’m currently deprived of the opportunity to play with other people. I can’t wait for life to return to some semblance of normality.

Around all this I also need to finish off some other things, and somehow find some time to sleep and not go mad.

I cannot wait until May.

Well it is according to this BBC News article. I can see where it’s coming from, as I certainly don’t feel like I had any say in the election of the current government. I voted, sure, and I voted for someone else, but what good did it do me? Nothing at all, as they continue to come up with and pass ridiculous laws and stupid policies (alongside the occasional good ones, I must give them that).

According to the article, the report on which it is reporting suggests that power needs to shift away from ministers to MPs, and from central to local government. Sounds good to me. We’re supposed to be a parliamentary system, so the continual emphasis on the Prime Minister and what the Prime Minister wants and the surprise evident in the reporting when he doesn’t get it mystifies me. The Prime Minister is not a dictator, not an emperor, most certainly not the King. I’m leaning quite heavily toward the notion that banning political parties might be a good move. Or at least banning party policies that force MPs to vote with the party line. Let each MP vote according to the best interests of his or her constituents, the people who in some way voted for him or her. Let each MP be more involved in his or her local constituency. Let it be felt that writing to my MP will actually get me some attention, that he or she will take notice of my opinion.

It also recommends a 70% elected House of Lords. That scares me in a way. If not done right, it could just be a puppet rubber-stamping chamber that approves everything the Commons vomit up to them. An elected House of Lords would have to be carefully separate from the Commons, their priorities different, their campaigning and affiliation nothing to do with the government. Perhaps we could supplement it with a randomly-selected sample of voters (well almost random, in some sense representative of the country as a whole, so drawn from the entire country and from a variety of backgrounds and communities), who are picked for say a year, and during that time are required to (and compensated for) weigh in on Acts which are about to be passed, giving extra opinion to be heard in the Lords’ debate on the subject. That would offer a direct line between the people and the upper chamber, but perhaps it wouldn’t work in practice.

Pipe dreams? Bit like true democracy itself, but if we’re going to be a representative democracy, can we at least feel like the people in charge represent us?

Another rambling random idea comes to me. Continue to have MPs for constituencies, but also have MPs for groups. They’d draw their support from votes nationwide, and sit in the Commons or maybe the Lords, or possibly both, representing issues or groups or causes which are particularly important to the voters at the time. Might be tricky to set it up right, but it could cause an interesting shift in the power structure.

Anything to stop the impression that Tony Blair can do whatever he wants and Parliament will automatically approve it. That idea is dangerous and needs to be stopped immediately.

A lot has been going on which I needed to think about, and I’m not sure I can coherently say anything on here about some of it. The big thing of course is Hurricane Katrina, and its effects on the USA. I don’t know how to write about what I feel when I see the footage from New Orleans. Despair, hope, worry, joy, fear, relief… this and more, varying as reports have come in, both during the storm and after it. Mostly now I’m feeling relief, because it doesn’t look like it’s necessarily going to be as bad as was initially feared. It’s still bad of course, but the city’s probably not going to end up a stinking wasteland.

Although that really does remain to be seen. They’re still talking about a forced total evacuation, so we’ll see. Some are kicking up a fuss about the police confiscating guns from the citizens so they can’t resist the evacuation — personally, I don’t think they should have them in the first place so I’m really not bothered about that. I am not particularly pleased with the way the whole affair has been handled, but there’s really nothing for me to do — other than rant about it occasionally from an uninformed perspective, and give frequent thanks that I don’t have to move to America. Britain has its flaws — plenty of them — but on the whole it works out pretty well at the moment.

I have of course been preparing to go back to Nottingham to start my PhD. Sort of scary really — I’ve done this all before, to the same University, but it’s been two years and I’m really completely unprepared for the necessary organisation to get this all sorted. Oh well, it’ll come together at some point — no doubt not to Mum’s satisfaction, but I’m not very good at that lately. We do need to get out of each other’s hair, and this should sort it quite nicely. Were I not going to Uni, I’d be looking to move out I think. That’s no secret — I’ve told Mum that myself.

Just life, really. Things will get more interesting once I get back to Nottingham — although I’ve been doing some things which could turn out rather interesting. I’m just not going to talk about them right now.

Doesn’t that add a nice aura of mystery to the whole affair?