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September 28, 2005
'Gauguin's Vision'
The National Gallery of Scotland hosts a major exhibition each year to coincide with the festival. Unfortunately they have been becoming less and less major each year.
The 2003 ‘Monet: the Seine and the Sea’ in the (re-opened and splendidly reorganized) Royal Scottish Academy was a fine exhibition, including paintings from a number of galleries in Europe and America. ‘The Age of Titian’ in 2004 was interesting though it had less ‘Titian’ and more of ‘the age’ than expected, with relatively few paintings from outside the collection.
‘Gauguin’s Vision’ was more disappointing. It was not devoted to his ‘vision’ as an artist, but to a specific painting, the ‘Vision of the Sermon’, already in the Scottish collection. Only a handful of additional paintings were sourced from outside the collection. “Is that it?”, I asked the attendant as I finished the last gallery. He seemed used to the question.
Note to the National Gallery: please don’t film while the public are in the galleries, OK? Making a lot of noise, obstructing access to the paintings with camera equipment, using onlookers as extras etc. is not the best way to encourage attendance.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 10:08 PM | TrackBack
September 13, 2005
Past climate change studies
As a result of the topicality of global warming, some interesting studies of climate change in the past are being published:
Ancient humans ‘altered’ climate - BBC - Humans were influencing the climate long before the Industrial Revolution.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4219818.stm
Boost to CO2 mass extinction idea - BBC - A computer simulation of the Earth’s climate 250 million years ago suggests that global warming triggered the so-called “great dying”
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4184110.stm
Posted by Simon Holledge at 07:15 AM | TrackBack
September 12, 2005
Oliver Letwin gets it right
Are the Tories waking up to the Labour government’s tactic of talking up action on reducing emissions while doing nothing practical about it?
Following John Prescott’s vauely indiscreet remarks about America, Hurricane Katrina and global warming, Oliver Letwin had this to say:
“It’s all very well Mr Prescott criticising the failure of America to sign up to Kyoto, but people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. This government has failed to make any progress at all on reducing carbon emissions in the UK. Indeed, we are going backwards. The irony is that Mr Prescott, who is sponsoring a huge programme of environmentally unfriendly house construction, is one of the main culprits.”
news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1922412005
Posted by Simon Holledge at 06:19 AM | TrackBack
September 11, 2005
Climate Change Action blog
Climate Change Action is an important new blog started by Calvin Jones, a St Andrews trained biomolecular scientist based in Ballater, Aberdeenshire.
Unlike this blog, which only deals (intermittently) with the politics of global warming, Climate Change Action, and the related Climate Change Resources publication, contain scientific information in depth on climate-related environmental problems.
climatechangeaction.blogspot.com
climatechangeresources.blogspot.com
Posted by Simon Holledge at 11:40 PM | TrackBack
September 10, 2005
Trouble at VisitScotland
Am I alone in thinking that VisitScotland is a silly name? What is wrong with calling a tourist board a tourist board? Not only that, but the area tourist boards are now called ‘hubs’. Why the desperate re-branding?
Numbers of overseas visitors were down 20 per cent between 1998 and 2003, and the Scotsman is now describing clashes between boardroom personalities.
Wouldn’t it better to look at what is going wrong, rather than change the signs on the doors? What are the main problems? Is it the cost of air connections? The prices and standards of accommodation and food? The lack of foreign language services? The relative dullness of festivals and special events?
Maybe it’s time to look at the basic state of Scotland’s largest industry.
news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1911122005
Posted by Simon Holledge at 06:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 09, 2005
CO2 producer Scottish Power threatened by takeover
Following a disastrous attempt to expand in America, Scottish Power is facing a takeover bid from the German company E.On, the owner of Powergen.
The account in the Scotsman is all about boardroom battles and the politicians (including Nicola Sturgeon for the SNP) are focussing on the possible loss of a major Scottish company to foreign (if European) ownership.
Nobody is apparently relating this to emissions policy. Scottish Power are the owners of Scotland’s two coal-fired power stations: Longannet (largest in the UK), and Cockenzie. These stations are the biggest emitters of CO2 in the country.
This is what Friends of the Earth say:
Scottish Power owns two of the most polluting coal power stations in the UK, both based in Scotland. The operation of these stations is contributing to Scotland’s failure to keep pace with England in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Neither of its stations have confirmed plans to fit sulphur controls which would cut acid rain causing emissions.
What would E.ON do with them? That’s the question.
news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1906742005
www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/pressforchange/carbon_dinosaurs/index.html
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:30 AM | TrackBack
September 08, 2005
Podcastcon UK 2005
Europe’s first podcast conference will be held in London on 17 September. The venue is Berners Hotel, just off Oxford Street and the cost GBP 30. Speakers include Mark Hunter of the Glasgow Tartanpodcast and Chris Kimber of the BBC. About 120 people have signed up for the conference so far, capacity is 140.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 11:35 PM | TrackBack
September 07, 2005
CO2 release from soil
The New Scientist has an article about carbon loss from the soil. Increasing amounts of CO2 have apparently been released into the atmosphere (through faster decomposition of organic matter as a result of higher temperatures) cancelling out reductions in industrial emissions. Though the figures are for England and Wales, there is evidence that the same thing is happening elsewhere.
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7964
Posted by Simon Holledge at 11:58 PM | TrackBack
September 03, 2005
The archaeology of Cowgate
As expected archaeological investigations following the 2002 Edinburgh Cowgate fire have uncovered a wealth of cultural material. A thousand years of history have been found preserved in a layer four metres thick, comparable in many respects to the archaeology of London and York.
news.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=1874932005
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:05 AM | TrackBack
September 02, 2005
Intelligent Falling
After Pastafarianism (flying spaghetti monsterism) we now have ‘Intelligent Falling’:
“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
Posted by Simon Holledge at 06:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 01, 2005
Focus on Uzbekistan
September 1 is independence day in Uzbekistan.
Organized by Richard Hindes of ‘Disillusioned kid’, a group of 22 of us have agreed to write about the country and its problems - in response to a call by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, for sanctions to be imposed on Uzbek cotton in protest against human rights violations.
I am taking part in this because I am against the use of intelligence derived from torture by the British government and I was horrified by the massacre in Andijan. I am concerned about environmental problems caused by the over-production of cotton (including the disasterous draining of the Aral Sea), and lastly because I’ve been in Uzbekistan myself.
Western countries have always been selective in their interest in bad and unstable regimes. The British and French have focussed on their ex-colonies in Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe etc.), while the Americans have been more sensitive to events in east Asia (Burma, China, Tibet etc.). Unfortunately no-one has shown much interest in central Asia.
Registan.net (named after the great market square in Samarkand that I once visited) is a great source of information about central Asia and the Caucasus, and has a powerful article by David Walther in support of sanctions. I also recommend Otto Pohl’s History of Cotton in Uzbekistan.
jpohl.blogspot.com/2005/09/history-of-cotton-in-uzbekistan.html
english.pravda.ru/world/20/92/373/14783_Uzbekistan.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3947
www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4316769
Posted by Simon Holledge at 09:10 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack