Encyclowars
There's been a war of words going on for some time about the value, or lack of it, of Wikipedia. Tim Bray's writings on the subject do a great job of summing up the arguments, and I'm with Tim all the way. Wikipedia has become my first port of call when I'm looking for data, and only if what's there isn't satisfactory, I look elsewhere. Of course, as with any summarising secondary source, I'm well aware that when it really matters I need to go further in my research.
One huge benefit of Wikipedia that I haven't really seen mentioned is the availability of metaknowledge. What I mean by that is that every page has 'discussion' and 'history' buttons so that beyond the 'finished' article I can see how the article has evolved over time, and what discussions have led to that evolution. In fact I've now taken to looking at the discussion page for most articles I read allowing me to instantly take the temperature of the intellectual environment around a topic.
Take for example the article on male circumcision. As you'll see at the top, the wars over what to write have become so heated that the page has been locked down. Reading the discussion section, and getting a sense of how extremely held the various positions are, and how loaded most of the research is, is far more valuable to me than a blandly 'neutral' article that attempts to avoid controversy.
Today someone used the term 'collectivist' as a criticism of the work of Paulo Freire. I had no clear sense of why 'collectivist' would be used as a pejorative term. The article on collectivism gives me a hint, but the talk page makes it crystal clear right at the top. (Incidentally the talk page on Paulo Freire has some material not deemed good enough yet for the main article, an example of emergent quality control in action).
Duplicity
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece that began "I was brought up by a Feminist and a Marxist". That's actually a very crude simplification of the complex drama that was my childhood. Inevitably one of the key players was upset: my stepfather Mick felt that he'd been edited out of the script of my life. After writing that sentence it did cross my mind that Mick might appear to be omitted but I decided, as he had also at times identified himself as a Marxist, that he was covered. He of course doesn't feel that way. In actual fact I was brought up by a whole gamut of people, including my mother Hilary above all others, my father Martin for a few years at the beginning and intermittently thereon, my grandfather Arthur until his death when I was fifteen, my stepfather Mick from the age of nine or so onwards, my grandmother Inez and all the other myriad adults who impacted upon the person I have become.
At first I justified my simplified account as deliberately archetypal; to be read as a personal fiction rather than literal fact-telling. For example, there's also much more subtlety and complexity to my mother than just 'Feminist' and my feminist influences came from several sources besides her. Whilst talking this through with Mick I realised there was something else at work: a deliberate duplicity that I have learned to adopt in conversation to avoid getting bogged down, or even embarassed, by my quagmire of parental relationships. In many ways I do this to fit in. 'Normal' people have mothers and fathers, and like almost everyone, in my mid-teens I wanted to be 'normal'. Mick has been such an important man in my life that I often refer to him as my father, whilst in other conversations I will refer to Martin as my father. Some friends have learnt this and developed a routine of asking which father I am referring to.
One particular story comes to mind, and may mark the genesis of my tendency towards narrative duplicity. It was before my mother and Mick were married, so at the time he wasn't technically my stepfather although he was certainly fulfilling the role in practice. As a teenager I disliked Physical Exercise (P.E.) and P.E. teachers with a vengeance, and often got my parents to write notes excusing me. On this one occasion (I was perhaps twelve or thirteen) Mick had written the note, and the P.E. teacher in question - a particularly unpleasant Mr Pearce - questioned the note's authority. "Who's this?" he asked "How do I know this isn't just some friend of yours?". I was embarassed and stammered something about "my mum's friend". After hearing me recount the experience my parents were horrified and complained to the school. They advised me to in future describe Mick as my stepfather, regardless of whether that was technically true or not.
Now I do this almost without thinking. I describe Margie, my father's long-term partner, as being his "wife" even though they aren't technically married. I frequently refer to Mick as "my father", although biologically speaking he isn't. Rachael, Mick's daughter, is rarely anything more qualified than "sister". So when Theodora or Vuyiswa, close family friends here in Guguletu, describe me as their "big brother" I run with it - why not?
Ami, one of the best journalistic writers I know, has a saying "never let the facts get in the way of a good story". As long as particular attention is paid to all the various meanings of the word 'good' in that phrase, I think there's a lot of value in that. I want to tell powerful and compelling stories that move people. By refusing to get lost in the minutae of 'the facts' I believe that I enhance the universality of my narrative descriptions of 'the truth'. I also believe that I must draw a line in the sand over which I shall not step: I certainly don't wish to disseminate harmful lies, but I believe that there is some flexibility in where exactly that line gets drawn.
The Gap
Anyone who has kept an eye on my blog for a while will know that I took a long break from posting this year. In fact a quick look at the archives list on the right allows even the new visitor to discern this. Well I guess I should say something about that.
I had a tough year, no doubt about that. I split up with a woman that I truly believed was the love of my life in April. I spent much of the year processing that, dealing with the fact that the next decade is going to look a whole lot different from how I thought it might. Cape Town can be a tough place to feel depressed - the beauty is awe-inspiring, but I feel surrounded by a pressure to be living my perfect life. How can I not when the sea is so blue, the mountains are so beautiful, life is so good.
Performance Networking
Probably not quite what you're thinking - I'm talking about networking up PCs as performance art. Sounds pretentious, but it was somewhat inadvertent, at least the performance element was. I spent today helping Wooloo's Thankyou project in Khayelitsha (Cape Town's biggest township). You can check their site for the full story, but basically it's a multimedia art exhibition occuring simultaneously in a New York gallery and a Khayelitsha shopping mall with webcam links between the two.
It pretty much came down to me to get the Khayalitsha side of things running. Which meant networking up 6 PCs, configuring some caching to speed things up and setting up the webcam and an upload facility. All on a bandstand in front of several hundred people with a DJ and some dancing mixed in to add to the performance experience. Quite an experience, lots of fun, but now I'm too tired to write any more. Anyway visit the site and release the rands!
Galacticastic
I'm not big into television - in fact these days I never watch it. Except that is for certain specific shows - almost always on DVD or via BitTorrent - that get recommended to me as a notch above average. Recently one such show has been 24 (yup I caught on rather late). The recommendation came, rather insistently, from my friend Callan, as did the first couple of seasons worth of shows. If you haven't seen 24 - and you have any kind of appreciation for visual entertainment - watch it. It is superb, and that's all I'm saying on that.
More recently the rather unlikely candidate of the "re-imagining" of cheesy 70s space opera Battlestar Galactica has hit my radar. I hardly watched the original, but I had some toys and a book and loved the concept. This makes me the perfect viewer of what is seen as a travesty by the dyed-in-the-wool deep-nerd fans of "the original series" (TOSsers in online lingo). The new series takes the basic premise of the original, keeps the characters with the odd gender and ethnicity alteration to add spice, and basically retells the story as though it really happened rather than throwing out yet another piece of hammy space theatrics (*cough* any of the Star Treks *cough*)
The new Battlestar Galactica is to TV sci-fi what 24 is to TV crime thrillers. It has a gimmick (remake of a cult show, rather than the real-time of 24), it has the peerless Edward James Olmos (Bladerunner) where 24 has Kiefer, it has the gritty verité cinematography, it has the "no-one is quite who they seem" mystery appeal, it has top-class acting and character development, and it has the edgy minute-by-minute sense of crisis. In essence both shows manage the conjuring trick of combining a raw down-to-earth documentary feel with epic context and plot. Of course TV crime thrillers have always been a bit better than TV sci-fi, and indeed Battlestar Galactica isn't quite as good as 24. However it's the best sci-fi series I've ever seen, and I've pretty much watched them all. Long live Galactica!
Lagasek
As I should hence be known. I discovered that 'lagasek' is the Cornish spelling of my surname. Varying translations have it as 'big-eyes', 'starry-eyes' and 'stary-eyes'. Oh and one source even stretches this to 'goggler', although I prefer to play down this interpretation unless there's a typo there involving an incorrect distribution of 'g's and 'o's (c.f. St Cloud Trivia and my mad googlin' skillz).
Another view from the cape
My good friend Adrian pointed me at this article by Rian Malan. He's a wonderful South African writer, whose memoir 'A Traitor's Heart' is an authentic account of growing up as both the relative of one of apartheid's architects (DF Malan) and a rebellious journalist. Whilst I can't claim that my experience of Cape Town exactly matches Malan's as described in his article, there's a whole lot of resonance there. St James and Kalk Bay are very beautiful, and for some time they have been on my short list of Cape Town neighbourhoods in which to live.
Catch-up link fest
Get Your Mars On - especially the penultimate panel.
Bush In 30 Seconds - big news now but I like the understated tone of the winner a lot.
and if I manage to steal a few hours from the codeface then I'll write about Mozambique, Idlelo and rock climbing at Peer's Cave
Thirty
I'm officially thirty now. So I haven't been posting. I guess I've been assimilating this new stage in my life. I have a mixture of feelings - I feel ready to be a fully fledged adult, and I'm happy that my twenties were fat, fun and feckless. It's still a shock though.
Anyway I'm about to go off on a delightful christmas break to Mozambique, so look forward to a fresh flood of blogging upon my return.
(This blog entry was brough to you in part by the letter 'F')
Funnies
Two of the funniest things I've seen on the Internet (or at all for that mattter) in a long time. You'll probably want broadband and you'll need Windows Media Player for at least the first:
Japanese Matrix ping-pong (literally had me rolling about)
The 118118 (new UK directory enquiry service) parady of Honda's 'cog' ad. My UK readers (both of them) might well have seen this. You have to go to the 118118 site and click on the picture with the tractor wheel in it.
The last one ain't a video, but it's certainly relevant to the medium in hand (courtesy of Colleen, Shannon's sister).
