• Phage

    March 16, 2023

    Lovely picture.

     

    FrS7qgrWAAEKjaa(credit: Sebastian M. Markert – @sci_bastian)

  • January 21, 2023

    Yoon Jung Hee (윤정희), the actress, has died. She was in Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry” (시), an unrelenting movie that tears your heart to pieces.

  • January 20, 2023

    Complete clusterf**k at US Soccer. God save us from soccer moms and dads.

  • Leigh at the BBC

    January 20, 2023

    Watching Mike Leigh’s BBC movies (God bless Criterion). So far, I’ve watched four – Hard Labour, Nuts in May, Abigail’s Party and Kiss of Death. All very good. Leigh’s humor is front and center here, and one is reminded how funny his films are. He’s not just a “purveyor of miserablism.” I still have four more to see (Who’s Who, Grown-Ups, Home Sweet Home and Four Days in July). 

  • Annus Horribilis

    January 13, 2023 
    Human intercourse ended
Late twenty-nineteen
With me (on Zoom) sipping ovaltine –
Masked, gloved, all plans amended
And fourteen days in quarantine.

Up to then there'd only been
An awkward sort of hug,
A caress met with a shrug,
Faire la bise? (she wasn't keen)
Not on this ugly mug.

Then all at once, that virus bit:
The whole world turned to stone,
She found herself alone
Coughing, gagging, sweat and spit,
Then, chilled nastily to the bone.

So life was never better than
Early twenty-nineteen
Together, in-person, somewhat keen
Before conversation was completely banned
And I spent two weeks in quarantine.

h. k. c. (june, 2021)

  • A bit more of this, a bit more of that

    November 11, 2022

    A little bit of art…

    Alan Moore is done with comic books.

    There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’. I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way.

    A little bit of science…

    1. Benthamiana

    Nicotiana benthamiana is a model plant from northern Australia. It is an excellent plant to study gene silencing and functional genomics. In biotechnology, it is used to produce heterologous proteins for use in medicine.

    1. Dromius

    Dromius is a genus of ground beetle native to the Palearctic (including Europe), the Nearctic, the Near East, and North Africa.

    A little bit of poetry…

    John Betjeman on the Monitor arts program (BBC, 1959).

    Something very moving about watching Betjeman walking around the post-War ruins of London, nine years on, while reciting his own poems.

    A little bit of technology…

    Relevance of floppy disks in the age of cloud computing.

    Who buys floppy disks in an age when more sophisticated storage devices like CD-ROMS, DVDs and USB flash drives have been made increasingly obsolete by internet and cloud storage? Those in the embroidery, tool and die, and airline industry, especially those involved in aircraft maintenance, says Persky.

    A little bit of TV…

    I am watching Magpie Murders (no “The”), and I am enjoying it.

    New York Times review here.
    Telegraph review here.

    It is a whodunit about whodunits within a whodunit.

    This is the second show this year where Lesley Manville and Claire Rushbrook appear as sisters (the laudable Sherwood being the other).

  • notes for a possible piece about 심은하

    October 27, 2022

    From namu.wiki

    8월의 크리스마스 (Christmas in August) (1998)
    미술관 옆 동물원 (Art Museum by the Zoo) (1998)
    A very nice review (in English) by Anthony Leong.
    청춘의 덫 (Trap of Youth) (1999)
    텔 미 섬딩 (Tell Me Something) (1999)
    인터뷰 (Interview) (2000)

    심은하 married 지상욱, a conservative politician.
    지상욱 lost his seat in 2020 in a closely-fought election, losing to 박성준 by 5,771 votes.

    심은하 campaigning for her husband.

    Question: how much of an effect did 지상욱’s marriage to 심은하 have on his standing as a politician? Conventional wisdom seems to think that it was considerable.