Anyway I took advantage of the Itunes offers and download some classical sympathizers of some kind. At the same time I decided to listen to "the sonics". The sonics were a garage band in the 60s, who many people feel were really one of the first punck bands. Fuck you Mozart!
For my first introductoion to classical Greece
I went in the remains of Hadrians library.
There was not much left, but the pillars are
so impressive.
I am never a great fan of Cathedrals or big churches, because they seem to me to be monuments of worker exploitation by those pesky Christians. The classical buildings did imprress me, although they were built with slave labour no doubt. The Athenian Acropolis dominates the view from Athens.
On the first day, I only managed to view Hadrian's library, partly because everything shut early and I was reading too much.
Did I mention I once owned an Android tablet. Well no more!
I was drinking a coffee in a small cafe close to my hotel. There are a lot of ownerless dogs in Athens. They mostly see to lie down and sleep. There was a dog sleeping near me. This guy asked me if the dog was mine. He then started talking to me. He told me he was Italian, and he had lived in America and had visited the UK, when he finally understood I was English. He told me he was just visiting Athens for the first time. He wanted to meet up at 18:00. The trouble is he sounded like a street hassler getting me ready for a con. Somehow he just talked too much.
o I was wandering around Athens trying to avoid the coffee bar the guy was going to wait for me in. I started to get lost. It was past 18:00 and I needed a piss, so I stopped in a bar. I was the only customer in the bar. The landlord was takking on the phone with someone in Greek, but I think he was trying to set skype up. I noticed that my ruxksack was open. "Idiot", I thought and closed the bag, after I had checked that nothing had fallen out.
After the bar, I got more lost in Athens. I found a metro station, but it was closed up. I think the metro was closed that day. It was not a great area to walk around, because there were a lot of "sex shops", although it wasn't a red light district. I was on a main road and was trying to figure out whether to go right or left on the road to get back to my hotel. There was a small corridor on one of the pavements, because of some building work. I felt someone behind me a bit and I speeded up. I am not a fast walker, so people busy trying to get home needed to get pass me. As I was trying to figure out how to get home, I noticed that my bag was open again. I checked the contents -- my android tablet was missing. Bastards!
I am not completely sure how they could sell a cheap Android tablet made in China. Also they missed the charger. What would Socrates have done I asked myself? So I went for a beer in a quiet bar amd then got a taxi back to the hotel.
When I got back to my hotel. The guy at the desk told me that someone had phoned for me, but he didn't have any details, because he wasn't on duty. This was a bit weird, because no one knew I was here. Paranoia costs nothing.
My hotel was near Monastiraki square. I walked around the general area. Unfortunately, I was in a reading mood. Rather than buy a guide book, I got a copy of a crime thriller set in Athens. The book was "Assassins of Athens" (Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery) by Jeffrey Siger. I had purchased that book via Kindle, and was reading it on my Android tablet (but more of that later). The book was a crime novel set in the high society of Athens. A son is killed and the police's investigation reaches the top of Greece's society.
On Wednesday I flew from Dusseldorf to Athens via Paris.
Bitter experience has taught me not to trust taxi drivers. The information from the hotel suggested I took the metro, so that was what I did. Normally after I get off a flight, I normally wonder around the airport lost for a couple of hours. But this time, I found the trains quickly and got my ticket. The metro was very clean and modern.
In the carriage I acidently dropped a 5 Euro on he ground. An old couple, who couldn't speak English, told me it was there. Shit I thought, it was like I was testing Greece, now that I am living in Germany.
The hotel was meant to be near the metro station. The city seemed to be full of energy, with people walking around, even though it was close to midnight. I passed a little kiosk, it was still open, and I could buy beer. This is not Germany where everything closes around 8:00 pm. I found the hotel quickly. My room is a bit sparten, but what did I expect for the price. (There is very good wireless though)
I was at some friend's last night. We were discussing
politics. I do try to make an attempt to remain calm
and rational about the terrible things the Conservatives
are doing with their liberal buddies to the UK.
They seem to be asset stripping
the UK. No doubt we will long for the time,
when an MP just used to take money
from the state illegally to clean his moat, rathefr thn give money to the
banks. No doubt manry of the conservative MPs will endup working
in thefinancial sector when they leave parliment.
There has to be a better way! The final years of the labour goverment were spent trying Keynsiam economics. As s result the ression didn't seem as badas one the during the 80s. Now that the conservatives are back in power things are getting worse again. I kept thinking I should know more about this John Maynard Keynes, so I purchased "Keynes: The Return of the Master" on Kindle
Part of the conservatives plans never made nay sense to me. Their idea that any jobs lost from the state sector would be immediately taken over by the private sector, never made any sense to me what so ever. After reading this book I realized that this is an assumption of classical economic models. As far as I can tell the assumption of the jobs going from the state into the private sector is just to make the equations easier to solve.
All you hear in the mainstream press is the idea of the efficient market theory, but after this last crash -- it doesn't look so efficient to me. It stunned me to see that a goal of Keynes economics was "full employment".
Keynes was also a part philosopher, as well as a speculator in the money markets. So the author recommends that the practitioners of the dismal science also learn about history and philosophy, rather than just concentrate on mathematical models. .
I have just finished reading the tipping point
by Malcom Glasdwell. The book discusses how
things like street fashion can be very small at
one time, but then can grow very big and become
major national trends. I think many people read this book and
think how can I use this to my advantage?
The cartoon is from a series that I semi-regularly read. I was looking up the author "Malcom Glasdwell" on Amazon when I realized that I knew who it was. I felt so busted....
I have also started to listen to the audio-books from the project Gutenberg. In the last couple of days, I have listened to Allan Quatermain by Henry Rider Haggard. I had heard of of "Quatermain" from the graphic novel (and the crappy film) the league of extraordinary gentlemen.
Quatermain is a fictional African explorer and the novel is about one of his adventures. Some of it is a bit bleak, because he is writing when he is close to death.
Anyway, think that he in some weird sense is a good representative of the aristocracy. I look at Prince Charles and I look at Cameron and I wander how the UK was an Empire was built around the ancestors of these useless public school educated idiots. Perhaps, Quatermain is the missing link, or more likely he is a fictional character to amuse blog posters over a long weekend.
When I was a young student I used to have to go for
a walk as a break from studying. when I was a student at
Imperial College I used to walk a circuit along Cromwell road
to relax from studying Physics. As I got older I stoped walking,
so much, and the walks tended to be to the supermarket for
food and beer.
In Germany most of the shops are shut on Sunday, so there is very little to do (OK, there are many things to do, but not in tandem with work). So over the winter I sometimes don't go out of the house over the weekend -- particularly when there is snow on the ground.
There is a big wood behind the block of flat where I live. Today I decided for a quest for the mythical Kneipe. I wanderd around the wood for a bit in the bitter cold. I found nothing, but dead leaves. My body felt tingely after my walk in a way that never happens after I after I walk to work. I never found a close by Kneipe, but perhaps I will explore more of the forest.
I am trying to live a more European lifestyle.
For example, in my German class at a night school
in Glasgow, when the teacher said that many German
kitchens did not have kettles, the students
gasped in amazement.
Obviously the first thing I did was to buy myself a kettle when I moved in my rented flat. Recently I thought after over a year, I should try to use the coffee maker as well. So on Sunday or Saturday I move to coffee after two or three cups of tea.
I mostly drink tea, but I do drink coffee as well, but only maybe one or two cups a day. However, after drinking half a jug of filter coffee, my entire system starts to speed up. I feel slightly high. Ideas rush through my mind, but it is too unfocused to do anything useful. My body shakes more than normal. So this is what it is like to be European? I will get a coffee maker for my office as well.
Fucking Kindle. Yeah, Ok I can download a book
in 1 minute, but I still have to read the bally
thing.
I spend way too much time reading the online newspapers over the weekend. Last weekend I read an article by Will Hutton. It was a review of a book about the problems with the American economy. Like many people I am reading books about the general crapness of Western economies, particularly as our Tory government seems determined to destroy the British economy.
The title of the book was: The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better.
The basic idea was that the American economy had grown in the twentieth century because America had exploited lots of empty land, immigration of smart people. The author claimed that this was "like picking low lying fruit", because very little effort was required. Now things have stagnated, more effort will be required for economic growth. I think the central metaphor of the book was interesting, but I wasn't convinced by the facts in the book. In fact I probably just needed to read Hutton's summary of the book. (He did make the point that google and twitter, the great hopes for the twentieth century economy, don't employ that many people.)
I was excited to get in the post on Friday my copy of
the book: Everyday drinking by Kingsley Amis.
The book is a collection articles about booze
in all its forms. Amis clearly liked to drink.
There are many recipes for different cocktails.
He was also fighting a losing battle against
the overuse of wine at meals. As he points
out, it is better to drink beer with fish and
chips say, and most other traditional British
food.
He quit drinking for a couple of weeks. He restarted with the second drink being a can of Carlsberg special Brew. He was excited by the intense taste of beer, after his little break. Special brew is a very strong beer at 9%. Many people in the UK, think that only tramps drink special brew. I sometimes used to drink one can a session when I lived in Glasgow. It seemed too dangerous to try more. Amis suggested mixing Special Brew with standard Carlsberg to make a cocktail. Wikipedia tells me that Carlsberg brewed Special Brew especially for Sir Winston Churchill in the 50s -- you see it really is the beer of choice for alcoholics.
One of the great quotes in the book is: "Food is the curse of the drinking classes" Here he is complaining about the decline of pubs, with music, children, and the smell of food getting in the way of conversation and drinking.
Some readers of this blog may worry that I, of all people, should not be reading books about drinking. When I was around 18, I was explaining to someone's parent, that I was drinking some type of home brew wine, because its was the favorite drink of Dylan Thomas. The parent retorted that "look what happened to him." I took another small sip of wine as a reply.
After reading the book, I am going to make a point of only drinking red wine with fish. Why? This will make a statement that I am not part of the establishment -- this is particularly important now that the public school educated have disgraced themselves in their greed in (mis-)running the country.
After helping in a soup kitchen. I helped out cleaning the streets of the center of Wuppertal. yesterday. What if Kate Middleton visited Wuppertal and she saw rubbish on the ground, such as "burger wrappings." She will be not used to such corruption. I could never live with my self that a future queen of England would know that people throw rubbish on the ground, but not everyone has servants to pick it up again.
Of course some of you reading this post will think is this same Craig who bursts into tears, whenever British politics is discussed, and starts screaming "why didn't I vote in the last election?" and "How did these evil toff fuckers end up in charge", before jumping on a nearby table and ranting "that Etonians should be first horse whipped and the deported in poverty."
Well I worry that a future employer will look at my online presence and say what we want is a more true blue person. This is not just an issue for me, but other people who write intemperate remarks in facebook. What we really need is some kind of "App" that will write "worthy blog posts". In principle I could just write a bunch of fake blog posts, as the above. However, even writing a fake post on the "big society" takes time and effort. It would be much better to just let the computer do all the work.
What brought this rant on? There is a long piece in the Guardian newspaper about Michael Moorcock this weekend. When I was in my late teens and early 20s I did read a lot of Michael Moorcock novels. However at some stage, I stopped, partly because many of the books started to be the same, and partly so that I could explore other writers. Moorcock has recently written a Dr Who novel. I am so excited. I WANT IT NOW! Thanks to kindle I could actually buy it now, but I will wait for the second hand book to arrive.
On the recommendation of the bad science Blog,
I got a copy of "Fads and Fallacies"
by Martin Gardner. This is a great book that
"debunks" a large number of pseudoscience fads.
The book was first published in the early 50s,
but many of the fads are still with us
(mostly because people can still make money
from them).
Some of the topics covered are: ESP, Dianetics, dowsing, Atlantis, and various food fads. Some things I have met, such as training the eyes so that you can see without glasses. Gardner is actualy fairly sympathetic to the attempts to test for ESP.
I really wish Prince Charles would read this book, but he is a lost cause to rationality. In the past I have taken a relaxed attitude to strange beliefs. People can believe what they want. However people are making a lot of money out of selling pills and potions.
I do "admire" some of the stranger beleifs, such as the Earth is flat or hollow.
Wiseman's book is a self help book based on scientific studies. For example he reports on studies where they compare the number of telephone numbers of potential partners a person can get depending on whether there is a small amount of contact. The slight problem I have is that he reports a 10% increase in something, but then he doesn't give an error-bar -- but I suppose I should read the original papers.
Note that I don't want to give the impression that the book is just about getting laid, some of the chapter titles are: happiness, creativity, parenting.
One of the writers was John Horgan. He wrote a famous book called "The end of Science", the main thesis of which was that the study of new particle physics had ended because we have reached a scale in energy where it is too difficult to do experiments. (This pissed a lot of HEP people off).
What I liked about the video blog was that they had the same problems in remembering the names of ideas and people that I have. I worry about explaining science ideas to the public, particularly if I forget some basic piece of physics, or the name of some theory.
I assume they would be more polished if they had prepared more