Category: Culture
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‘There Can Be No Retreat’: On Simplicity, and the Fixed Vector of the Examined Life
A good friend Jonny spent a week or so in silence in the hills of Wales recently, and has been blogging really beautifully about the experience. The term I don’t like that’s often used for these periods is ‘retreat’ – it’s too military for me, and carries with it a sense of moving backwards. Though…
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Copyrights Expiring on The Beatles | Mutiny and Music
Interesting piece here exploring the fact that today ‘Please Please Me’ – the hit that really made the band famous – has gone into the public domain, as its 50 year copyright period has expired. The article takes the view that this is a tragedy, one that leaves The Beatles’ music open to exploitation. Anything…
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Thoughts on The Dark Knight: Weaponised Violence, and Hand-to-Hand Fighting
If you follow my Twitter at all you may have picked up that I went to see the latest (and last) Christopher Nolan installment of the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. You may also have picked up that I found the film problematic, partly in terms of the plot – which seemed over-convoluted and lacking true…
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On Pirates and Parrots
Had a question come in via Twitter the other day, asking why pirates have traditionally been depicted as having parrots on their shoulders, so thought I’d post some quick thoughts… Truth be told, there is little evidence that lots of pirates did have parrots perched on them – the image appears to have begun with…
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In the Beginning… Wasn’t the Word | Kind of Blue
Driving back from Suffolk yesterday I had on a podcast from Radiolab, which took the subject of ‘colour’ as a launchpad into various pieces. One of them was the fascinating idea of tetra-chromatics, women (and can only be women) who are born with 4 different receptor cones in their eyes – Red, Blue, Green…and Yellow.…
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Thoughts On Music Piracy… Gift, Copyright and Technology
One of the issues that people have immediately jumped on when I have told them I’m writing about piracy is the thorny issue of pirated music. I know quite a few people who make a living from recording music, and clearly this is a big issue for them because it gets to the heart of…