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February 28, 2007
ohna falby
Ohna Falby is one of several ex-linkees whose links I broke recently. Let me know if happened to you and I’ll get you back.
Meanwhile, she’s uploaded another lovely image from the shoot she worked on last weekend.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:03 PM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2007
'Ahem..!'
‘Billy
Peter says, “Get off the blog and hurry up and write the intro to the chapter for our book!”
Marina’
Posted by Billy at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
would you lecture blog?
We don’t get as many people commenting on The Lecture List as we’d hoped for and have wondered whether we should have a Lecture List blog (we did have one before the actual site was launched). Maybe it’s time to start it up again. I’m sure people have interesting things to talk about. Two experiences I’d have reported involve Noam Chomsky One was the slightly surreal experience of sitting in a room in Oxford with a crowd of people listening to a large Wharfedale speaker as Chomsky spoke in the lecture theatre next door. The hall was full so we were in the ‘overspill room’. The other was the time at UCL when there were too many people in the room. Chomsky had been formally, and elegantly, introduced by Neil Smith and had got around two sentences out when a security man walked up to him and asked him to stop. There followed a stand-off as Neil explained that either some of us had to leave or the talk would be cancelled. Interesting though the Tarantinoesque standoff was, I decided I could think of more fun things to do and left. Enough people did leave in the end for the talk to carry on and I read the written up version later.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:04 PM | Comments (0)
The Lecture List
I’m very chuffed with how The Lecture List has been getting on. We just had a contact from an organiser who has found that, since he started listing the site with us (as well as a few other places), they have been getting 170 people showing up to their 136-seater lecture theatre. He’d accidentally indicated that the next talk was at his home and was a little bit worried about having that number of people showing up at his place.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2007
acceptance speeches
A while ago I wondered whether I could find a corpus of oscar acceptance speeches and was disappointed how few have been uploaded. The numbers are increasing now although there are still some classics I can’t find, like Sally Field (‘you like me!’) or Sasheen Littlefeather/Marlon Brando and tragically the Academy have realised the value of Billy Crystal’s introduction in 2002 so that’s been taken down.
But for a real contrast, have a look at Halle Berry’s acceptance in 2002 (I don’t know what exactly this says about me but it makes me cry every time and I get a bit upset whenever people make fun of her):
and then compare it to Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky at Cannes in 1983:
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:21 PM | Comments (0)
keep the british library free
Dear All
With apologies for cross posting.
I am sure most of you are aware of the budget cuts the government is proposing to impose on the British Library. According to a press release on the BL website, these cuts may force the library to start charging for users to access the collections (see:
http://www.bl.uk/spendingreview.html )
If you think, as I do, that this is a really bad idea - please sign the online petition:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/library/
And do tell your friends to sign it too!
According to their website, the BL is actively campaigning against the proposed cuts and Lynne Brindley has asked those who feel strongly about this issue to contact the library and explain “why the British Library is important to you and give us permission to use your letter in our campaign.
Please e-mail chief-executive@bl.uk with your name, contact number and message, or write to Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.”
So if you have five minutes to spare, do send an e-mail or letter too.
Posted by Billy at 12:43 PM | Comments (1)
February 9, 2007
'the murderer of Marx and Freud'
I love Melvyn Bragg. Four days before I introduce the students to the philosophy of science, and three before Bhavana does it in Dubai, he’s just broadcast, and podcast, a discussion of Karl Popper.
What a guy B-))
Posted by Billy at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
recycling
A while ago, we started a battery box at the kids’ primary school (now their ex-school, sadly). The council had no battery recycling at the time. The idea was that a parent would take them to the nearest recycling point (in Barnet) when the box was full. The kids got quite motivated, writing to the council. the queen, parents, tony blair and others about it. I just had this update (the dots indicate bowdlerisation). I love the idea of sending the crisp bags back to Walker’s
B-))
Hi Billy,How is it going?
Guess what, not only the battery box … is still going, the children are still involved in the aftermath. The kids are now in Year 6, and last month, as a result of a letter they wrote to the Environmental Minister, they were invited to meet Ben Bradshaw and ask him some questions. The Minister was a bit of a disappointment for the children - one of them said to me “How come he is the Environmental Minister and we children know more about batteries than he does?”, but I assume in time they might realize that this was their first taster of what government is sadly often all aboutThe positive side - … the teacher who accompanied the children on
the trip and who taught them in Year 5, was telling me how this whole class as a result of the battery project has turned out to be very environmentally aware, not just the kids from potentially “green backgrounds”, but all of them, also the ones you wouldn’t expect to be.Also - as a result of the trip some of the kids had a new idea - they are collecting Walkers crisps bags, which apparently are not recyclable, and want to send them back to the company.
And I unintentionally came home with some new ideas and inspiration. In the current Year 4 I am going to run a plastic bag project, and …
… building upon our original idea for the battery project to expand we want to try to run the battery project at other primary schools. Some of my friend have long been interested for their kids’ schools. So my friend Judith and I, whose kids are at …, want to hopefully run it at …her… Primary School in a few weeks (Judith has started negotiating with the Head there), and hopefully later on through another friend we might be able to run it at …another school… in Islington.
I have written a summary of the battery project … to have something on paper for the … Head to start out with. … Any ideas warmly welcome, please feel free to criticise and improve!
Thanks a lot, and all the best
Cathrin
Posted by Billy at 9:51 AM | Comments (0)
February 7, 2007
midwinter night's dream
dug just pointed out that I reached the magic 1111 posts on this blog. Here’s number 1112.
Apoa is very thespian this week. Tonight she’s in Alice in Wonderland. On Monday she was a commanding stage presence as Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her Bottom (sorry - couldn’t resist it) was very funny and reminded me of the incredibly hilarious never-ending death sequence I saw Timothy Spall do in Robert LePage’s version a long time ago. One of the best performances I ever saw. I also thought she might enjoy seeing Paul McCartney’s Bottom (sorry - I really couldn’t resist that) and John Lennon as Thisbe. Funny how Ringo’s lion looks a bit like parkakid from East is East.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:06 AM | Comments (0)
February 3, 2007
'oh, it's a lovely war'
I love 78man Surely this is ‘what’s the internet’s for’ (Ohna says this is my catchphrase)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:02 PM | Comments (0)