There's a wider aspect to this
Supermarkets in my area increasingly have an area that is automated, with
a grunt standing there in case we let the machines down
I like to buy my goods - whatever they are - from a human being - who may
say "Oh that's cheap isn't it" or have a nice day etc... Sometimes it
pleases me, sometimes it annoys me; but it's a live presence
and the trains are driven by people who press a button to get a recording
to tell you where they are, why they've stopped etc
I much prefer the annoyed voice saying "Well they haven't told me anything
so I don't know any better than you why we're standing here"
and so on
It all saves time training (unquote) people and that's money
Yesterday I found myself looking at tinned fish in the supermarket and
noticed that the price for 100 gms derived from the tin price for 120 gms
was higher.... I checked other items and found the same thing, randomly
spread among rational labellings
That's quite serious. I often rely on those summaries, in between working
out how much salt there in something from the figures for 1/3 of it
(honestly they're just trying to be helpful); so I thought I'd tell
someone...
And then there came into my head that Kafka story of trying to get out of
a big city; and no matter how hard you work, there's always another
street, you're never there
and I couldn't imagine finding anyone who was likely to be able to grasp
and hold the concept
Resistance is useless
L
On Sat, November 6, 2010 16:43, Mark Weiss wrote:
> Mary Beard, professor of Classics at Newnham
> College, Cambridge, argued in defence of
> libraries, which she said were "infinitely more pleasurable in every
> possible way" than digital resources.
>
> "Real libraries have librarians. Librarians beat
> a virtual help desk hands down every time," she said.
>
> Libraries were also social places where she had
> been known not only to eat, but also to have sex and get drunk. A virtual
> library "just isn't sexy", she said.
>
>
> My kind of woman.
>
>
> At 07:26 AM 11/6/2010, you wrote:
>
>> Drat. It works in Facebook and I tried it out in the mail before
>> posting - try this:
>>
>> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycod
>> e=414052&c=1
>>
>> or if not go to http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/ click 'more
>> news' and look for a story dated 4th November called 'Time to shelve the
>> book habit'
>>
>> On 6 November 2010 11:12, Roger Collett <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Yeah, but it's been imprisoned. I can't open the link anyway.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Roger Collett
>>> Arrowhead Press
>>> http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --------
>>
>>> "Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."
>>> Jules de Gaultier
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bircumshaw" <
>>> [log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 11:09 AM
>>> Subject: Re: It's Henery the Eighth Agen Agen
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hmmm ...
>>>
>>>>
>>>> historically inapt.
>>>>
>>>> On 6 November 2010 10:35, Roger Collett
>>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm....
>>>>
>>>>> I think this could do with a dose of The Spanish Inquisition.
>>>>> "You never expect The Spanish Inquisition!!!"
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Roger Collett
>>>>> Arrowhead Press
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --------
>>
>>>>> "Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."
>>>>> Jules de Gaultier
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bircumshaw" <
>>>>> [log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 8:36 AM
>>>>> Subject: It's Henery the Eighth Agen Agen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Scene: A Monty Python launderette which is also a domestic living
>>>>> room. On
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> a sofa sit Terry Jones and Eric Idle in drag as hair-piled-high
>>>>>> housewives with aprons, egg-stained cardigans and rolling pins.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Housewife One (con falsetto) : 'I'm sick of all this Jean-Paul
>>>>>> Sartre,
>>>>>> what's on the box?' (looking at a washing machine) Housewife Two
>>>>>> (tweaking moustache, basso profundo) : ' Just Bloody
>>>>>> Repeats.
>>>>>> As Joyce said ' (voice changing to falsetto) 'History is the
>>>>>> nightmare from which I am trying to awake. Or ...' (both in
>>>>>> unison): 'It's - Yet Again - The Dissolution of The Monasteries
>>>>>> Show' :
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=41
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> (David Joseph) The Brothers Bircumshaw
>>>>>> "Every old house was scaffolding once/And workmen whistling"
>>>>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>>>>>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>>>>>> The Animal Subsides
>>>>>> http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>>>>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
>>>>>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
>>>>>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> (David Joseph) The Brothers Bircumshaw
>>>> "Every old house was scaffolding once/And workmen whistling"
>>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>>>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>>>> The Animal Subsides
>>>> http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
>>>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
>>>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> (David Joseph) The Brothers Bircumshaw
>> "Every old house was scaffolding once/And workmen whistling"
>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>>
>
>
>
> New from Chax Press: Mark Weiss, As Landscape.
> $16. Order from http://www.chax.org/poets/weiss.htm
>
>
>
> "What a beautiful set of circumstances! What a
> lovely concatenation of particulars. Here is the poet alive in every sense
> of the word, and through every one of his senses. Instead of missing a beat
> or a part, Weiss’ fragments are like Chekhov’s short storiesthe more that
> gets left out, the more they seem to contain… One can hear echoes from all
> the various ancestors...[but] the voice, at its center, its core, is pure
> Mark Weiss. His use of the fragment
> is both elegant and bafflingly clear, a pure musical threnody…[it] opens a
> window, not only into a mind, but a person, a personality, this human
> figure at the emotional center of the poem."
>
> M.G. Stephens, in Jacket.
> http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-weiss-rb-stephens.shtml
>
>
--
Three poems in Volume 4 Issue 1 'Peripatetica: The Poetics of Walking':
http://www.landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com/current_journal.html
*
http://www.cordite.org.au/poetry/creativecommons/poems-for-ivor-cutler-3
http://www.cordite.org.au/poetry/cc-the-remixes/the-man-who-finds-himself-amusing
"This is not a time for foolery, or compliments. It may be that both of us
are within a few minutes of death... And I, at any rate, don't propose to
die with polite insincerities in my mouth. "
C S Lewis - That Hideous Strength
---
Lawrence Upton
AHRC Creative Research Fellow
Dept of Music
Goldsmiths, University of London
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