Recently in Culture Category

Thanks to Kevin from Travolution for posting that.

I've been called away from the urban delights of London Town to the rural idyll of Suffolk on family business, so my account of the Lewisham Bloggers Drinks last Friday will have to wait until tomorrow. My fine photographs of the event are on my iMac in the flat.

However, it it with heavy heart that I report that it was only the second most important bloggy gathering in London over the weekend.

Those satirical slanderers of stagecraft, the West End Whingers, held a party for assorted thesps, writers and bloggers, and had a fine time of it all.

Bet they didn't have any Adnams, though.

(We really should have a blogging journalists' drinks at some point)

So, it's Easter Sunday, and I'm going to do something I rarely do here: talk a (very) little about faith.

First up, there's an interesting piece on CNN about the head of the Human Genome Project and why he has Christian faith. It's not the most compelling argument ever (and it's not meant to be), but it makes a pleasant change from the false "Science is in opposition to Faith" dichotomy that so many of the dogmatic on both sides trot out.

Second (and last) is a piece by Ruth Gledhill of The Times on Somerfield identifying Easter with the birth of Christ. The piece neatly demolishes the idea that some of the more passionate atheists put around that in some, mysterious way, Christianity has a power lock on this country. Uh, no, we're not America. We're largely secular and, as show here, often truly clueless about even the basics of a faith.

For those of you with faith, God Bless. For those who don't, Happy Pagan Chocolate Day.

Sign of the times: I discover, via Alice Bachini-Smith that Topshop not only allows you to subscribe to fashion update by RSS, it also has a fashion blog on the homepage.

Topshop is renowned for being on the pulse of today's teenagers...

Overhead on TV this morning:

I've left the onions sweating off in the pan.

Somehow the word "off" makes a perfectly innocent statement sound, well, dirty.

And so, off to the Dana Centre in Kensington for a performance of Randomness & Certainty, an audio visual artwork where hundreds of scientists were interviewed about the impact science has on their lives. Why? Because Lorna was one of those scientists. And what an interesting evening it was.

To be honest, it didn't start well. The café space in the venue was hardly ideal for concentrating on this sort of non-narrative work. And, when the panel discussion started, it rapidly disappeared up its own behind into a discussion of true randomness versus computer-generated pseudo randomness. Oh what fun. Luckily, Lorna had got us some red wine, which helped that part of the evening pass painlessly. Oh, and “science TV presenter” Dr Shini Somarathne (warning, frightening website) proved to have nothing to add to the discussion.

But from there on it was all upwards. The host for the evening, journalist Viv Parry was excellent, and the other two panellists, neuroscientists Mark Lythgoe and R. Beau Lotto (left and right above, either side of Shini) both made some interesting points about stereotypes of scientist, artists and the complicated nature of perception. But really, this was the audience's evening, with real back and forth between the artists, the panellists (well, two of them) and the audience, all ably handled by Viv. I even got shanghaied into participating, after Viv spotted me nodding vigourously in agreement to someone else's point. I ended up arguing against the false division people set up between the two areas of study.

It was a genuinely thought-provoking discussion on where the boundaries of art and science truly lie, and what the different personality types draw to each field really have to contribute to each other's work. But most of all, I just enjoyed the chance to really debate issues with intelligent, thoughtful and open-minded people of very diverse backgrounds (the audience was split 50/50 between artists and scientists, with a huge age range).

I really must do more of this sort of thing.

Technorati Tags: art, creativity, dana centre, perception, randomness and certainty, science

Lorna, my wife, has a theory that we're in a very tight window of opportunity where computer and web familiarity is an advantage to you in the workplace. From there we'll rapidly move to a situation where lack of it is a crippling disadvantage (if we're not there already) and finally to a phase when it's just the norm.

After that, we swing back to real world social skills being a major competitive advantage.

This is all interesting in the context of the campaign launched by The Daily Telegraph this week— Hold on to Childhood — calling on us to protect our offspring's time as children, which is being eroded by the way we're structuring society. Daniel Finkelstein of The Times had a fairly predictable pop at the idea on Comment Central, and The Telegraph's Ben Fenton mounted a decent defence of the paper's forward-looking approach to technology on his blog.

I can't help feeling that the ideas expressed here are backing up Dr Tinworth's theory rather nicely. Certainly, as Finkelstein argues, electronic toys are, on balance, good for children. But, unless kids get a more rounded experience of childhood, and the social education that comes with it, they're destined to a second-class position in the workplace and, quite possibly, in life.

Technorati Tags: children, education, hold on to childhood, learning, technology

Well, now I'm annoyed.

Ever since I heard about the casting of Daniel Craig as the brand new James Bond I've been preparing to hate the new movie, Casino Royale. I've already been composing the blog post in my head, bemoaning the fact that the move away from gadgets and to a “grittier” Bond was a mistake, a fundamental misunderstanding of the audience and an adolescent desire to apply seriousness to something that doesn't need it.

And then I saw the new trailer for the movie.

And it's really good. The cinematography looks interesting, the feel more “real” than old Bond, while still being true to the character, and, surprisingly, evoked immediately the original book Bond I spent many long weekend afternoons reading as a kid. As long as it's possible to view this as a new start for the Bond series, and not a continuation of a series, this could be a very enjoyable movie.

So, I've gone from prejudging a movie based on some casting news, a few quotes and lots of speculation, to prejudging it based on a short trailer and my love of visual style. And turned my opinion around 180° in the process

Blast. I hate it when that happens.

Technorati Tags: casino royale, daniel craig, films, james bond, movies