It appears to me madness to base all our political efforts upon the faint hope that we shall be successful in obtaining excellent, or even competent rulers.

The Open Society & It’s Enemies – Popper

At the present time that is all.

Love regards etc

<fsbot> I think gnus is [0] an Emacs newsreader (and mailreader), see #gnus,

<http://gnus.org/>, <http://emacswiki.org/wiki/CategoryGnus>

<fsbot> [1] proof that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished,

<fsbot> [2] the punishment

<rgr> ,forget gnus 1

<fsbot>Removed entry 1 of gnus

<rgr> ,gnus

<fsbot> hmm, gnus is [0] an Emacs newsreader (and mailreader), see #gnus,

<http://gnus.org/>, <http://emacswiki.org/wiki/CategoryGnus>

<fsbot> [1] the punishment

<rgr> ,forget gnus 1

<fsbot> Removed entry 1 of gnus

Shame.

I took the flag down for a trial or tribulation depending on which side of the sweep you were on & then stroked the art for a bit. Thankfully it wasn’t one of those galleries where that sort of thing is considered inadvisable. In-between the trading of inanities & brief asides taken to raise eyebrows at theatre ushers we stumbled through half-held debates, punctuated by prolonged gazes & swift pacing to the other side of the room.

You can construct a valid position along the following lines: That there is an untrue beauty in exegesis as it serves to extinguish the last lingering certainties, especially when it becomes the mortar for superstructured waterfalls cascading down walls. Whether you’d want to & how relevant this might be is up to you.

Someone once said that isms are there to distract people from opacity. I am reminded of this only now though. At the time all manner of crawling figures were holding on desperately as their idols collapsed onto turtles all the way down. Extermination is most often an active endeavour, but sometimes it’s passivity with a wink.

Let’s not get too carried away here though. Destruction leads to denial when it’s implied, and that’s no bad thing. Once upon a tomorrow we took that for granted. Under the circumstances a curt reminder was somewhat appropriate. The feeling seemed mutual. Nothing moved however long you stared at it, which only lent the violence an air of susceptibility.

Occasionally, when confronted by endless white on black, I have the tendency to search for allegory in the spaces. This however, wasn’t one of those parties. Narrative is one of those cruel beasts unbecoming of hats, it likes the sense of possibility found in permissiveness. This is just as true in pictures as it is in politics.

Doubly so when the prey is peering round corners.

“You forget yourself good sir”. Quite so.

This is the point at which we insert a good last joke – a summatorial sartorial editorial to imply closure. Given the preceding, this would be an inappropriate use of an opportunity. Declined.

The Empire Never Ended exists for a while more at the Tricycle. It was created by Mr Brindley. We enjoyed it.

Love regards etc.

P.S. Worth a read: Exegesis – (New) Working Parameters

The religious is not neurotic at all. He is religious. But he looks like a neurotic, because he too combines things around what really is the desire of the Other. The only difference is that, because this is an Other that does not exist, because it is God, we need proof. So we pretend the Other is asking for something. Victims, for example. That is why this gradually becomes confused with the attitude of the neurotic, and especially the obsessional neurotic. It looks terribly like all the techniques used in victimary ceremonies

You will say that I am now advancing something that is no more transparent for that. But I’m not looking for transparency, I am trying, first of all, to stick to what we find in our experience, and if it is not transparent, well that’s too bad.

From My Teaching, Jacques Lacan

_________________________________________
( The countdown had stalled at ‘T’ minus )
( 69 seconds when Desiree, the first )
( female ape to go up in space, winked at )
( me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery )
( lips unmistakably — the first of many )
( such advances during what would prove )
( to be the longest, and most memorable, )
( space voyage of my career. )
( )
( — Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton )
( bad fiction contest. )
—————————————–

o  ,__,
o  (oo)____
   (__)    )\
      ||--|| *

via @mint

<lvh> I’d split, if only because it does French spacing correctly.

<raz> oh, split is magic in that way?

<Wild_Cat> “French spacing”?

<Wild_Cat> what is French spacing?

<lvh> If you know your input won’t do that, fine :)

<ProgVal> a word is something which match with that :
#[^a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9]+[^a-zA-Z0-9]#

<lvh> Wild_Cat: It’s what the English call something stupid to mock the
French.

<lvh> Wild_Cat: Two spaces after a period. [09:51]
*** toabctl (~tom@ubuntu/member/toabctl) has joined channel #python

<Wild_Cat> but nobody uses that!
*** nzmm (~matthew_j@121.98.145.205) has joined channel #python
*** regebro (~lregebro@121.16.97-84.rev.gaoland.net) has joined channel
#python
*** nzmm (~matthew_j@121.98.145.205) has left channel #python: #python

<Wild_Cat> (I’d have expected “French spacing” to mean something like putting
a space between words and ? or !)

<lvh> Wild_Cat: loads of software has broken because of things that “nobody
does”, because nobody does that, until somebody does [09:52]

<raz> well, he has a point. whitespace counting only makes sense after
squeezing whitespace, e.g. with a regex
* evanton wonders what’s the problem to google for “python word count”

<ProgVal> <lvh> Wild_Cat: Two spaces after a period. => Why do you call that
French spacing ?

<Wild_Cat> lvh: no, I mean, nobody does that in France. Why the heck is that
called French spacing?

<ProgVal> I’m french, but never write two spaces…

<lvh> ew no, let’s not use things that solve NP-complete problems
*** lamefun (~dingbing@92.246.161.75) has quit: Remote host closed the
connection

<lvh> ProgVal, Wild_Cat: <lvh> Wild_Cat: It’s what the English call something
stupid to mock the French. [09:53]

<Wild_Cat> (I suspect it’s like French fries: it’s actually Belgian spacing
but it’d sound silly :p)

<evanton> space length contest

<evanton> enlarge your space!

<lvh> You have been successfully trolled by long-dead English typographers.

REAL MAGIC STAYS

SPECTACULARLY STILL

Photo by

Auro

“Zappa was important to me because I realised I didn’t have to make music like he did. I might have made a lot of music like he did if he had not done it first and made me realise that I did not want to go there. I did not like his music but I am grateful that he did it. Sometimes you learn as much from the things you don’t like as from the things you do like. The rejection side is as important as the endorsement part.

On hindsight

“Instead of shooting arrows at someone else’s target, which I’ve never been very good at, I make my own target around wherever my arrow happens to have landed. You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bulls eye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre.”

Slightly expanded version of the Paul Morley interview that appeared in yesterday’s Observer Review