Herbert and Chuck

H. G. Wells is 142 today. I've always had a soft spot for him as one of the first writers I discovered a real hunger for. In my very early teens I read avidly all the science fantasies, the earlier novels (before didacticism set in and spoiled everything) and, with especial pleasure, the short stories. I still have the stout red volume of Wells's complete short stories that I was given (at my urgent request) one birthday. I don't know if I would enjoy him now as much as I did then - I rather doubt it - but on recent rereading The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds came up as fresh and vividly imagined as ever. Nabokov, I seem to recall, was very keen too, especially on The Invisible Man....
As it happens, today is also the 96th birthday of the great animator Chuck Jones (or would be - he only made it to 89). I greatly prefer his animations to Disney's - which seems to be regarded as heresy in some quarters. Jones never gets cutesy and sentimental, and his cartoons just look better and move better. And of course, in addition to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and the rest of the immortals, Jones also created that 'Citizen Kane of animated film', One Froggy Evening. If anyone can spot a link between H.G. Wells and Chuck Jones with which to round off this post, I'd be most grateful - I'm darned if I can....

Who Are These People?

Here's a cheering story. An unscientific, but telling, survey of 40 randomly chosen people on the streets of Manchester by the Sunday Telegraph (I can't find the story online) , all of whom were shown photographs of the Labour cabinet and other political luminaries, found that only Gordon Brown was recognised by all, while David Milliband scored a meagre 13, Ed Balls a well deserved 4, and large numbers of these political colossi - including Andy Burnham, John Hutton, John Denham and Tessa Jowell - were recognised by nobody at all (despite, in several cases, their scarily bizarre features). One of the people questioned inisisted that these were just random photographs of strangers, while among the bolder guesses were Roger Daltrey (for John Denham) and Barry Humphries (for Paul Murphy)...
This will, of course, do nothing to deflate the massive self-importance of our political 'elite', but they might bear in mind that the next time one of them asks 'Do you know who I am?' the answer will almost certainly be 'No' - or perhaps 'That Roger Daltrey out of The Who?'

A Shorter Sings

One of those nice short sellers who have been working tirelessly to save the economy from itself explained last night that he and his fellow shorters are 'like canaries in a coal mine'.
Except (he didn't add) that instead of keeling over and dying like canaries, they trouser the money and scarper. An important difference, I think.

Rail News

So now we know. As the Large Hadron Collider closes down for the weekend for engineering works, it's suddenly clear thar 'the greatest scientific experiment the world has ever known' is in fact a railway - it's a glorified Circle Line.
Anyone hear Appleyard on Today? He was good.

Tempus Edax Rerum

This new clock thing is mighty impressive in a slightly crazy way, going far beyond the normal functions of a clock - like, for example, telling the time. It also, it seems to me, has aa nightmarish edge, with that far from merry grasshopper chomping his way through time. Chronophage, though, is a great word...

Good Cheer

In my mission to spread good cheer around the blogosphere in these dark days, I must draw your attention to the fact that today is not only International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Why are we talking like pirates? Because we aaar), but also the 139th birthday of Ben Turpin. They don't make entertainers like that these days (which is probably just as well)...

Near Death, Near the Ceiling

Here's an ingenious experiment - and a surprising one. By placing those pictures where only someone floating around near the ceiling could spot them, the boffins are entertaining the possibility that someone who is very obviously not floating around near the ceiling, but lying unconscious with eyes closed and brain non-functioning, might somehow be able to 'see' them. In other words, they are entertaining the possibility that the mind might not be local to the brain.
I'm relishing the possibility that they might get 'sightings' of those pictures. I believe it's possible, as there are records of 'hysterical' and hypnagogic conditions in which the sense of sight seems to come quite adrift from its optical location. It would be good, at least, to have a dent put in our idea of our selves as entities seated behind our eyes, looking out on the world - the equation, in other words, of mind with brain and brain with our whole selves.