How the mind works – Page 40 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

From the age of bridges to the age of bridge collapses?

Just a question, suggested by this bridge disaster. today, in Genoa.

Every few weeks I go looking for new and photogenic bridges, and don’t seem to find anything much. But now that all these great bridges have been built, and now that they are all getting older, or getting really old like this one, and are having to be kind of rebuilt …:

The highway operator said work to shore up its foundation was being carried out at the time of the collapse.

… this could be the first of many such bridge collapses.

Oh My God. Now I want more bridge collapses, just to be right.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Helping hands

On that same photowalk with GodDaughter 1, five years ago, that I mentioned yesterday, and a bit earlier than when I took yesterday’s photo, of her and her shadow and my shadow, I took these photos:

You can see how that little mind of mine was working, can’t you? That being one of the amusements of me taking so many photos that comes across years later. I can now see exactly what I was thinking, in a little photo-moment, five years ago.

I encounter an interesting sculpture. (I find that I like sculpture more and more, provided I like it of course.) Then, in the distance, I see a favourite Big Thing, in this case the Big Olympic Thing. I line up the Big Olympic Thing up the sculpture. I line it up again, this time including only that very recognisable top of the Big Olympic thing, and putting that right on top of the sculpture, like a handle. Good. Nice one.

Then I draw back, and take another shot that provides some more context, while being careful to keep the Big Olympic Thing present, to one side. What I do not do, regrettably, is photo any sign or caption which told me about this piece of sculpture. What is it? Who did it? When? Why? What’s it of? There must have been some clue I could have photoed.

Happily, this is the twenty first century, and a little descriptive googling (“sculpture clasped hands” or some such thing) got me to places like this, which tell the story. And it’s quite a story.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A friend in front of a strange lighting effect

I took this somewhat over a week ago, at a friend’s, of another friend:

I took several versions of this shot. The above was the first and best version, once I had realised that I could crop it to include everything about the shot that mattered and remove everything that didn’t, basically by losing a chunk at the bottom of my original. I tend to resist cropping. There is something (to me) pure, even perfect, about the image exactly as it comes out of the camera, no cropping, no enhancing, no nothing. But this time it made for a definite improvement, I think.

The subject of the photo (perhaps mutual friends of her and me will recognise who it is (and also where it was taken)) put it on her Facebook page, which is very flattering.

She being an Instagrammer used only a square version, which may or may not have been an aesthetic preference. Personally, I find the patterns made on the wall by that strange planetary light fitting very intriguing, especially in a photo, which, by eliminating all context and knowledge of what is going on makes it seem all the more strange. That’s the thing about photos. All you see is the photo.

And talking of how others may recognise her, I find it intriguing how very recognisable she is, to me anyway.

In her version, she added some blue to the wall. To make it more weird and outdoorsy, and less specific? In general, I like it when people take my photos and play around with them. Again: very flattering.

She also said something about how her scrunched up shoulders revealed how stressed she had been lately. I never noticed that, neither when I photoed the photo, nor since. But one thing I do know, from speaking to my friend Bruce the Real Photographer, and being photoed by Bruce the Real Photographer, and from speaking to others who have been photoed by Bruce the Real Photographer, is that Real Photographers know all about things like that. Real Photographers, of the sort who photo people, are experts on human physiology. They know, for instance, how to make your face look different by making you move your body around. Had he been photoing this lady, he would have made her relax.

But I wasn’t doing a portrait; I was just snatching a fun shot, uninvited. Then once I had worked out how to crop it, I sent it to her, and asked could I put it here? She said yes, and also could she use it too. So all the niceties were observed, as is proper in this age of face recognition software and easily violated intellectual property rights. Whatever they are, exactly. In plainer English, both of us like this photo, and are happy for it to get around.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Heatwave jacket derangement syndrome

I don’t believe I am the only man to have been deranged by the heatwave in the manner I am about to describe, in fact I know that I am not, because I had one of those How-Very-True You’re-So-Right type conversations with GodDaughter2’s boyfriend, Only The Other Day, about exactly this matter.

I refer to the fact that I, and many other men, do not merely wear a jacket to fend off frigidity. We also wear it to carry stuff. It is our version of a handbag. In my case: wallet, cheque book and paying in cheques book (so I was born before you were – live with it) (both these items serve another purpose besides handling the financial instrument relics of the previous century, which is to fill up the pocket containing my wallet and stop the wallet falling out (which would be a catastrophe)), pen, purse, Old Git free London transport pass, keys, handkerchiefs, mobile phone, spectacle case with reading spectacles, spectacle case with spare camera batteries and spare SD cards (the latter for if I forget to put my regular SD card back in the camera), Disprins, cough sweets, regular sweets, eye allergy spray, and no doubt several other things I can’t now remember.

Unlike some men, I also carry an actual bag around with me on my travels, containing: a folder with paper to take notes, a shopping bag for if I shop, a camera, a book, a small bottle of fruit flavoured anti-dehydration liquid, any food I have bought, any spare garments I might need for if it gets colder, an umbrella, and even sometimes a laptop computer, on those days when I am in a mobile laptop computing sort of mood (although lately I have tended not to be in such a mood (too heavy)).

But, transferring all the clobber described in paragraph two above into the bag, and into the midst of all the clobber described in paragraph three above, is a serious derangement, not least because the bag gets far too full. For remember, what if, late at night, if the heatwave abates, I need the jacket? I have to have the jacket in the bag, just in case, even though it is far too hot to wear it and in fact, throughout the heatwave, it remained so. So, with everything now in an unfamiliar place, much of it buried under other bits of it, all the usual reflexes stop working. Nothing is any longer where it usually is. I start suffering from that frightful female syndrome of digging about inside the bag, frantically trying to find whatever it is. Which may in fact be in one of my trouser pockets, or maybe even my shirt pocket, for goodness sake. Oh God, where’s my wallet (which contains all sorts of priceless stuff which I dare not even itemise (see above))?!?! Etc..

Today, the heatwave sort of ended, as in: the weather oscillated between pleasantly warm and somewhat warmer. But unfortunately the London Underground didn’t get the email containing the link to the short-term weather forecast, and chose to remain full of the horribly hot air that it had been accumulating throughout the previous fortnight, or however long it’s been.

But the discomfort I suffered was the discomfort of wearing my jacket when it was rather hot. That I can live with.

But worse, just like the London Underground, I too found myself suffering a systemic hangover from the previous period of high temperature hell. Earlier this evening I was in a pub, and when my pubbing was done, I picked up my bag, and visited the toilet, prior to leaving. Luckily, while there, I realised that I had left my jacket on the back of the seat that I had been sitting on. I reclaimed it, seemingly unmolested by plunderers, except that … hell’s bells, my wallet wasn’t in it! It was, of course, in the bag, where I had recently been learning instead to put it.

It’ll be a few more days before I recover my usual calm and suave demeanour, when out and about.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Waterloo sunrise

Radio early bird Julia Hartley-Brewer tweeted this photo, early this morning:

Best comment:

Enjoy it while you can Julia, because after BREXIT there will be NO sunrise. The Polish and Romanian workers who lift the sun up every morning will be gone.

Those laser beams that her camera has created make the sun look like a … white hole.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A spinner with the wrong stuff and batsmen with the right stuff

The first test between England and India starts in under an hour, as I write this, and I have the feeling that this is going to be a really good series. India are a terrific side, playing away. England are … a side, playing at home. More exactly, England are a side with lots of individual good players, capable of good things, but for the last few years, they’ve not been putting it together. A five match series, and they just might.

My opinion on the Adil Rashid row? Not sure. But, probably, this: that a clever spin bowler bowling against batters who have to score at eight an over can get a ton of wickets, because the batters have to play a stupid shot about once an over. However, a spinner bowling against batters who would like to score at four an over but who don’t mind scoring at two an over or nought an over is in a massively weaker position, because the batters never have to play stupid shots. So, the bowler gets tired and bowls stupid balls, and eventually the batters are scoring eight an over, and the spinner gets figures of about nought or one for a hundred, and gets the boot. Hope I’m wrong.

English county cricket can look after itself. But the fact is, for spinners, it’s a very good proof that you can do it, if you can. But, by the way, what you have to do is quite subtle. Mostly, bowl a lot of overs for not many runs without getting tired, and as a bonus, while regularly taking wickets. You can’t do that in white ball cricket. White ball being the 50 and 20 over slogs, in which bowlers bowl only ten or only four overs.

White ball batting, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. A truly good white ball batter can bat for about forty overs and make a score that’s truly big even by test standards. I suspect that white ball cricket will supply a steady stream of batters to the England test team, and the result will be that in a few years, England’s test team will regularly score 450 in a day, or more. Jos Buttler is the sort of batter England are going to rely on for the next few years. Buttler went straight from having a good IPL – the IPL being the Indian T20 slamfest, played to packed houses and packed TV channels for more money in a year than most pro-cricketers earn in a lifetime – to the England test team. And it worked a treat. Why? Because Buttler can really bat. And he is used to doing it in a big time environment, where his whole future as a human being is at stake, just as it is when you play big test matches.

What’s happening here? With batting, all the best and most ambitious county batters now try to bat like Buttler. They try to break into the big time not by grinding out boring 150s over two days, but by smashing a clutch of match-wnning sixes in a T20 game that their county looked like they were losing. They get some chances and they grab them. And I do mean: all. Only the second-raters now cut out the shots, in the manner of the young Geoff Boycott or Ken Barrington, and try to graft their way to greatness. That’s how it now feels to me. It’s like The Right Stuff said about how all those daring-do fighter-jocks suddenly morphed into risk-averse astronauts, only with batting, the culture switch is in the opposite direction, from risk averse to slam bang. The slam bang batters are now where all the true class is to be found. This was why Buttler was such a great choice. He is just really, really good at batting. He proved it in the IPL. He will prove it again in test cricket. It’s the slam bangers who now have the right stuff.

If I am right about all this, then the search for The Opener To Open With Cook will end when they finally decide to give up on all the second-rate grafters whose legs turn to jelly when they see spectators instead of empty seats around the boundary, and to pick classy slam banger Jason Roy. For that, Roy needs to do what Buttler did and have a good IPL. He hasn’t yet done this. Before that, they’ll probably pick Rory Burns, and he won’t cut it. And he will go back to Surrey and be Ramprakash.

We shall see.

Sorry about there not being as many links in this as there should have been. I’m was/am in a rush to nail my petard onto the chopping block before the game kicks off. I’m talking about this game. There you go. Another link.

England have won the toss and will bat.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two good jokes – and a mystery (and a sign (and a cartoon dance))

Two things got my attention just now on Twitter, both, I think, very funny. I didn’t actually LOL. But I did smile.

First up, this quote:

It is always bittersweet when your relatives bid you fond farewell as you leave for Edinburgh, and only you know how much you are about to defame them for comedic gain.

And next up, this cartoon:

The latter of these two jollities goes way back, and I suspect that the script and the visuals were done by different people. But the first one is bang up to date, and I am hence able to direct you to who originated it, which I like to do.

This, on the other hand, baffles me:

I recognise financial commentator and funny man Dominic Frisby, on the left there. But why do Frisby’s shoes have lightbulbs in them? Who is that other bloke, and why are the two of them waving their fingers like that? Why are they sitting in the eyes of a giant skull? Also, what on earth does this have to do with Brexit? What is it that Remainers have said about such a scene as this, to the effect that it couldn’t happen, or would happen less? Are the above two gents, like the provider of the quote above, in Edinburgh, for the Festival? And have the Remainers said that the Edinburgh Festival this year would be a flop? Yes, that must be it.

LATER: Just noticed where it says spikedmath.com in the cartoon. So I guess that’s where that started.

EVEN LATER: This:

Also:this.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Complaining about the heat after complaining about the cold

Today’s weather:

Bloody hell. And I’m feeling it already.

Also, I just had an email from a Brazilian friend, who is doing a talk at my place tomorrow evening, and who has been suffering from the heat. It included this, about how she doesn’t like …:

… to complain about the heat after complaining so much about the cold …

But she does anyway, as do I.

Good to hear it from a Brazilian. Who probably came to live here partly because our weather doesn’t normally do this kind of thing. No doubt in Rio now, it is an equable 24 degrees C. Yes.