Discuss 5

'Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size, fame is a forced move.'

Clay Shirky

Goats Etc

I have nothing to say so I shall merely observe that the great Jim Lovelock has said expecting humans to save the planet is like expecting goats to do the gardening. Well, good news, apparently, goats can garden very effectively. Meanwhile, over in the Sunshine State, welcome to Arnie's Acrostic. Impossible man to dislike, Arnie.

Discuss 4

'Well, the computer changes epistemology, it changes the meaning of 'to understand'. To me, you understand something only if you can program it.... Otherwise you don't really understand it, you only think you understand it.'

Gregory Chaitin

Miliband's Generalissimo

I am intrigued by David Miliband's argument for Blair's presidency of the EU. He has a motorcade factor apparently. I won't be given the chance to vote for or against Blair any more than I was given the chance to vote against Brown. Now - call me anxiety-prone - I do find the idea of unelected presidents in motorcades somewhat alarming. It has - how shall I put it? - bad associations. Perhaps, pursuing the boy David's logic, Blair should also wear a white uniform covered in gold braid, medals and a sash. An enormous generalissimo's cap with a gigantic badge involving flames and eagles would be good. I'm sorry I'll miss that great spectacle. I shall, of course, have been 'disappeared', having been rounded up, kept in the wonderful new Olympic Stadium for three weeks and then dropped from a helicopter into the Channel. Good times.

Discuss 3

'We can never say 'merely' for metaphors, because that is what all descriptions are; we can never state just what something is, we can only describe what something is like - that is, to describe it in terms of other things that seem to us to have similar properties - and then to consider the differences.'

Marvin Minsky

Discuss 2

'Discontinuity is a manifestation of independent individuality and autonomy, Discontinuity intervenes in questions of final causes and ethical and aesthetic problems.' Nicolai Bugaev.

A Brush with Deaf

About four weeks ago I lost most of the hearing in my left ear. If I stuck my finger in my right ear, everything seemed to be coming down a bad telephone line. After ignoring this for about two weeks, as one does, I became aware that it was changing my life. I was avoiding crowded places and constantly shifting to get my right ear pointing in the direction of significant noise. I realised that I was becoming even more anti-social and was adjusting to a more locked in life, all on the basis of a loss of about a quarter of my hearing. Finally, I went to Bones. He gave me steroids which made me feel great but didn't work. Then, yesterday afternoon, came the consultant. In the morning I felt a strange movement accompanied by a kind of click in my left ear. I turned on Radio 4 and realised my hearing had returned. The consultant told me I was bloody lucky. What I had was Sudden Hearing Loss (I think I knew that). Nobody knows what causes it, though my man favoured a virus, and, in general, if it doesn't spontaneously remit within two weeks then you've got it for life. Mine remitted after almost four weeks. The good news was that it seldom returns. I'm telling you this for two reasons. First, I thought of that great headline. Secondly, the effect on my life of even such a minor handicap was so profound. Everything is so fragile - obvious I know but worth a reminder every now and then.

Discuss 1

I am, periodically, going to put various quotations on this blog. They will be taken from my current reading. I shall not comment. The idea is that you should. Each one will be headline 'Discuss'. It is possible this will help me with a book I am writing and equally possible that it will not. It is important you do not know the subject of this book. Here is the first.

'... regarding ourselves as complex machines need not diminish our feelings of self-respect and should enhance our sense of responsibility.' Marvin Minsky.

Damien Hirst

Jonathan Jones is angry about Damien Hirst. Well, yes, the paintings are, indeed, poor. Nobody, however, seems to have commented on the way Hirst chose to disguise this fact. He treated the Wallace Collection show as an installation. He decorated two galleries with his own wallpaper and arranged the paintings so that we seem to be looking at rooms full of pictures rather than the pictures themselves. It's as if he's implying that somebody else did these paintings or that he did them and he feels he must signal some ironic distance to make it clear they don't really matter in themselves, only as part of a single, more general statement. It's a weird effect, made weirder when I was there by some smart art walker explaining the significance of the pictures to an evidently rich but dumb bloke. I felt sorry for Hirst for the first time. As Jones notes, the conceptual, anti-craft mania of the nineties is now pretty much dead and he's flailing around for the next big thing. I also went to the Frieze Art Fair and most of the conceptual stuff was just a bore, something that got in the way of the paintings, many of which were, in fact, superb and startlingly cheap - it's still the conceptual stuff that seems to attract the high prices. But photography is the thing. Taryn Simon is a marvellous artist. A picture of a ski lift which I can't find online made me catch my breath. Poor Damien has never managed that.

Cheryl Cole

The Telegraph letters include some thoughts on the most inappropriate music to play for a funeral. Tony Hallam writes, 'Sir, My friend has requested 'Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus." Mr Hallam's friend is a genius. Nige, as I recall, has his funeral music thoroughly organised. This includes Bryn Terfel singing Schubert's Litany for the Feast of All Souls, which seems about right. He didn't mention Nellie, but I feel she will have been on his shortlist. For myself, I am undecided, torn between The Jayhawks' Smile, You'll Never Find a Nessie in the Zoo and Mahler's Das Lied for der Erde. But I think Nige suggested minimising the dynamic range for funereal purposes, so I suppose none of these quite qualify. Cheryl Cole unaccompanied would fit as she seems unacquainted with range, dynamic or otherwise. I have only just become aware of the lady and I gather she has issues. I can't imagine these would get in the way of her budding career as a funeral singer. Or at least I hope not.