Tag Archives: non-fiction

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Domain Tunnel

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DOMAIN TUNNEL
mrblo

When the Domain Tunnel opened in 2000, the state government set a temporary sixty kilometre an hour speed limit. Their caution seems prudent. Who knows how much the construction firm might’ve abridged basic safety to cut costs. But the explanation they proffered insulted all of us. They explained that Victorian motorists needed time to get used to driving through a tunnel. As if they thought that, finding no sky above our heads, we might flip out and slam on the brakes in traffic.

For weeks, they had run an advertising campaign instructing us just to drive like normal in the tunnel. Don’t get out of your car or try to turn around. Continue reading

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You Won’t Have to Follow Me

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The Origins of Political Order
Francis Fukuyama
Politics
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
2011

the_origins_of_political_orderWhen contemplating books on politics to read which I knew I would disagree with, international studies heavyweight Francis Fukuyama was someone I considered but briefly.  Somewhere along the way I’d received the impression that Fukuyama had softened in his views and become somewhat more leftist later in life.  Having read the first of this recently completed mammoth duology, I’m left wondering if perhaps the centre has just gravitated right and left him behind.

The Origins of Political Order is an ambitious attempt at understanding how and why human societies have developed such diverse political structures.  The question Fukuyama seeks to answer over all is, why do some societies form state-bound structures, particularly democratic ones, and why do others remain tribal?  It’s a question that many historians, philosophers and various other theorists have attempted to tackle in the past and there is a proliferation of theory on the matter; Fukuyama’s take combines a number of those approaches with his own views.

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Broken toe

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BROKEN TOE
mrblo

Nature breaks even on the feet. The real money comes from the replacement toes.

Who hasn’t sauntered barefoot past a chair and bent his or her little toe sideways against its leg? Dividing my age by the number of breaks, I discover that I’ve broken one toe, on average, every eight years of my life. By the time I get to forty, it’ll have proved cheaper to replace the whole foot.

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Constant

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CONSTANTconstantjog

This shows the trails of some specks of colour as they emerge from two moving bodies. The bodies start with a relative velocity not parallel to their displacement and fall towards each other with constant magnitude of acceleration. Meanwhile, each body emits specks of colour in the direction opposite to its acceleration. All the specks of colour move at the same speed and fade as they move. Continue reading

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We’d like to present you to the Alonzo Church

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ALONZO CHURCH RED HOUSE
mrblo

I wrote this for piano, panpipes, cor anglais and a contrabass balalaika. I also put in a whole lot of clanging, jangling things, which Sibelius calls bongos, congas, castanets, timpani, a tam-tam and a drum kit.

Throughout, the primary accent falls on the twentieth demisemiquaver of each measure. Continue reading

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Revolutions

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REVOLUTIONSrevolutions

This shows flecks of colour left behind by several projectiles as they move.

A planet with four moons revolves around a point near the centre of the picture. As they move, the planet and moons shed projectiles in the direction of their acceleration. Before vanishing, each projectile flies a short distance, leaving behind darker and darker flecks of colour as it goes. Continue reading

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He Makes Milton Friedman Look Middle-of-the-Road.

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23Things23 THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM
Ha-Joon Chang
First published 2010

Ah, capitalism.  Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.  Whether you’re a free marketeer or dreaming of a communist future, at least capitalism’s ubiquity is something we can all agree on.  And whatever your stance on market control, there are probably things you don’t know about capitalism and its various orthodoxies.  Even I, who expected to receive little more than confirmation of things I knew or at least suspected*, was surprised by some of the content of Ha-Joon Chang’s popular economics book.

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Writing

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SAY THIS, NOT THAT: A FOOLPROOF GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATIONsaythis

Alasko, Carl (Tarcher, January 2014, ISBN 9781585429325)

The usual advice on what they call ‘effective communication’ says that you should think of yourself as a guide. Working through ideas he or she already understands, you hope to guide the other party to where he or she can see your meaning for him or herself.

No doubt it works when you go to buy vegetables from your grocer. There, you and the grocer have the same goal. Continue reading

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Reassessment

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CARVING WOODEN SANTAS, ELVES & GNOMESgnomes

Oar, Ross (Woodcarving Illustrated Books; Fox Chapel Publishing, September 2008, ISBN 9781565233836)

Several Christmases ago, I caught Karen home from work watching a home improvement programme that showed you how to build a procession of plywood reindeer for your lawn. You sawed the antlers and the reindeer out as separate pieces and then nailed the former on to the latter.

Imagine yourself sawing out plywood reindeer in your garage on a Sunday afternoon. What a sense of purposelessness must assail you. You had dreams once. How did it come to this?

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Satellites

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PATTERN GENERATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL ARTcomart

Holos, Stefan (Abrazol Publishing, November 2013, ISBN 9781887187183)

This shows the trails of some motes of colour as they emerge from satellites orbiting the members of a binary star.

Each star has sixty satellites. The colour of the motes that a satellite discharges depends on the distance separating that satellite from the star it orbits. Satellites nearest the first star discharge red motes, those further out orange ones, and so on outwards, varying through the spectrum in smooth stages to yellow at the outermost satellites. Satellites nearest the second star discharge azure motes, those further out green ones, and again so on outwards, varying through the spectrum in smooth stages to yellow at the outermost satellites. Continue reading

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Baby Mugging

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MUGGING AS A SOCIAL PROBLEMmug

Pratt, Michael (Routledge, November 1980, ISBN 9780710005649)

While waiting in a queue last year, I saw a baby mug another baby for a foam football.

The mark clung to the football for comfort as it wandered around the floor. The mugger rushed up, pushed it over and scooped the football off the ground before running away in that wobbling stagger that looks like the baby has tumbled over with each step and just caught itself each time.

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