Level Heading

Last night I learnt that directors and actors and such like use the general psedonym Alan Smithee to avoid putting their own names to productions in situations where control has been lost or overthrown. I guess its an example of standardisation. If this is an Alan Smithee movie then there has been dissent among the ranks at the directorial level!

I Googled the name and got this nice little bio from IMDb - “Born in 1967, the same year he directed his first picture, Death of a Gunfighter (1969)” - that’s a child prodigy!

Wikipedia has a great entry and defines it very deftly as a contractual arrangement with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers. When you think about, that makes sense. You couldn’t pick just any name to use as a pseudonym - it would have to be registered for all sorts of legal reasons, income tax being one of them.

I just got to looking at a second-hand book that I had last seen some time in the 1960s. It is one of those popularly produced books for kids - very popular at Christmas. I glanced at the section on the moon and noticed the caption on this picture:

What I’d like to know is, what’s with the pistol? Even in the 50s what danger could possibly be expected that required the use of a pistol?

I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s History of Nearly Everything again. A thought popped into my head that the greatest creation is a thought or idea. It exists, but it is in no single place. Someday the human species will not exist. That may take a few more years, or (hopefully) many more years. Then the only thing that will be left of the species will be remnants on earth but also an expanding band of electromagnetic information only a few light years thick. centred on the sun. So, when the species is gone, all that will remain are the ideas and thoughts and of course the billions and billions of images from the countless years of broadcasting.

Last night I watched a documentary on the battle between the Darwinian theory of evolution and the new theory on the block - intelligent design. As I understand it Intelligent Design postulates that if you investigate something sufficiently deeply, and still can’t explain it, then the only solution is to call on an intelligent designer.
To me (science trained and a firm holder of Darwinism) intelligent design is nonsense. It had me picturing scientists working away slavishly in the lab for hours on end only to throw their hands up and say ‘We don’t know the answer, it must be intelligent design!’ Imagine if this had been the case centuries ago. Oh, that’s right, it was like that centuries ago!

We recognise that in the meantime we have discovered and clarified much. What was not understand then, at least is better understood now. So, if something now is not understood, it is totally illogical to claim the input of an intelligent designer. It is more logical to claim that there are some things we still do not understand, but we will continue to look into it using scientific methodology.

This is about the umpteenth resurrection of this site. This time it’s serious. we’re into the business of designing and hosting websites, and desktop publishing.

On the website side of things, the emphasis is going to be on websites for small businesses, individuals and families - basically those who could not afford, or would not consider the high prices charged by the larger design firms.

So, I can do everything with the website: design, upload, maintain, train and host. The basic package would cost $AUD150 per year. Personally I have found the big advantage of having your own website is the personal nature of your email address. Also it means that you don’t have to go through the tedious rigmarole of changing your address whenever you decide to change your service provider.

Of course the cost for anything other than the basic package would be negotiable.

I’ve just finished reading a great little volume by Gerald Durrell. It may be that it only appears to be good after reading so much drivel recently. Certainly Durrell writes good English (something that Dan Brown is unable to do).

This book is a set of short stories set in various times from the thirties to the fifties. Some tell of the farcical misadventures that have befallen the author. One longer one recounts the author’s reading of an occult manuscript.

Title: The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium, Gerald Durrell, Fontana Collins, 1981 (First published 1979)

Just for fun I put the search word ’search’ into Google. Google is listed third in the search results after Altavista and Lycos. Perhaps that proves beyond doubt the fairness with which the rankings are calculated and puts paid to the myth of ’search engine optimisation’.

Bern

Well, I’ve finally waded through all of Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. It took me about three weeks because I just couldn’t pick it up. My initial critique (”abysmal”) which I wrote after reading the first hundred pages or so, still stands. What I don’t understand is why is his work so popular?

I groaned a lot when reading this book. Just about every time I read the word ‘camerlengo’. Why couldn’t he vary it a bit. It means ‘chamberlain’. I groaned every time he made out that the sharpened tip of an obelisk had a pyramid shape (what else) and so had some mystical importance. I groaned whenever some minor or clever device was made out to be horrific, grotesque or absolutely amazing!

Let me chase that last item a little. There is much made about ‘ambigrammatic’ words - basically words that read the same upside down as right side up. (The English OXO beef cubes would be a trivial example). Now, to me, this is a clever device, no more. It does not signify anything more. Those who read the Omni magazine back in the 80s might remember the work of Scott Kim who devised clever logograms that could be read upside down etc. Scott Kim’s website. Scott Kim does it for the entertainment. He has his priorities right.

More about this soon.

Bern

Came across this little item in today’s paper. What I don’t understand is … why has it taken so long for us to find this out?

Well, I succumbed to temptation and started reading Dan Brown’s other books - ‘The DaVinci Code’ and ‘Angels and Demons’. I can dismiss A&D in one word - abysmal!

The DaVinci Code is another matter and shows that Dan Brown knows his readership too well. he has captured those countless numbers who have a little knowledge. And Dan Brown takes this little knowledge and expands it to sound still reasonable. If you have more than a little knowledge then the book is just his other’s - unreasonably simplistic. For crying out loud, DB seems to think that an anagram is the highest form of coding. And as for the other cryptic clues - ‘old wisdom’ - who doesn’t think Sophia? Especially when that’s the heroine’s name!

The best thing about the book is the design of the box that holds the clue - the cryptex. It’s a clever little device which is really a hollow combination lock. Pretty easy to make. And a few enterprising craft workers have started marketing them. Don’t get me wrong - the cryptex is a toy and is not to be considered a high form of secure transport. Not as good as some of the briefcases on the market.

Another positive for me was the interest it generated in me to have a look on the web at the different sites mentioned in the book: The Louvre Museum, Saint Sulpice Church, The Rose Line, Rosslyn Church in Scotland, Westminster Abbey.

The biggest lie though is the terrible way in which the Opus Dei organisation is described. While I do not agree with much that OD stands for, a poor debater will often resort to personal insult rather than fact. It would have been better if DB had resorted to fact.

Whichever way you look at it, DB has written a very clever book. Not a good book, in fact quite bad in places. But patched with lots of half truths and reasonable leaps ‘of faith’ it becomes an old fashioned matinee serial in which belief is suspended for the sake of following the heros to wherever they may go next.