Philobiblon

A seriously muddled story from The Sunday Times starts talking about family history, and examples of researchers who have found their families had much higher status in the past. Only the ST (and maybe the Telegraph), could have found this a surprise, but nonetheless some of the examples are interesting.

The story then meanders on to talk about downward social mobility today. It strikes me that it is less common, in general. Beyond a few high profile cases – a former Telegraph proprietor comes to mind – the Victorian pattern of “total ruin” is not relevant. That’s partly because better financial regulation (and legal remedies) mean people are far less likely to be wiped out by fraud/mismanagement today, and also because if the younger members of a family have, or are on the way to, professional qualifications, these will more easily enable them to rebuild the family fortunes, or ensure that social status at least is not lost.

But if you have less downward mobility, presumably that also means you have less upward mobility?

In Science, via, The Observer an account of how the study of mythology is helping to identify and highlight the risk of natural disasters. There’s a fascinating bit of detective work, linking Native American knowledge and Japanese records that dates a massive earthquake and tsunami in 1700.

Another example … is from Patrick Nunn, of Fiji in the South Pacific. His studies of volcanoes on the Fijian island of Kadavu indicated they had not been active for tens of thousands of years. ‘Then I heard legends of recent eruptions,’ he told The Observer. ‘I thought them unlikely. When a road was cut there in 2002, I found there had been a volcanic eruption long after it had been occupied by humans. … Now, Nunn is working for the French government to compile tales that might pinpoint Pacific islands where scientists should look for warnings of earthquakes, volcanoes and catastrophic landslides.

At the start of On Ego at the Soho Theatre, the audience treated to a mini-lecture on the workings of the brain and the nature of consciousness, complete with slideshow, albeit a rather flasher one to be found in any university, and without (mercifully) a Powerpoint list in sight. It is delivered byAlex (Elliot Levey) who looks the classic young lecturer, from his not-quite-matching-brown corduroy “uniform” to his anxious, eager-to-please smile and over-rehearsed jokes.

And his subject is interesting stuff, enlivened by a direction that must read something like “brain called Richard, enters stage left”. We learn that in “bundle theory”:

“Each life is just a long series of interconnected sensations and thoughts. And the mental processes underlying our sense of self- feelings, thoughts, memories – are scattered through different zones of the brain. There is no special points of convergence. No central core. We come together in a work of fiction. Our brain is a story-telling machine. And the ‘self’ is the story.”

But it is just at the point when the audience starts to shift on their buttocks, wondering “is this all?”, when the tone suddenly changes. You are asked: ‘If you believe this theory, would you mind being teleported, which involves the complete destruction of our current body, and its perfect recreation at the destination point?’ Alex is going to show that he does believe his own lecture by demonstrating. READ MORE

My 19th-century blogger Miss Williams Wynn is today less than impressed with the performance of an improvisatore. Not a term with which I was previously familiar – although the general intent is clear enough – it seems the audience gave him subjects for verses, which he had to make up on the spot. (Doesn’t rap music sometimes do something similar today?)

I discovered Coleridge wrote on the subject and it may have been a particularly Italian tradition.

Walking in to the latest major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, you are greeted by the cool, self-possessed gaze of Sofonisba Anguissola, the artist and the subject. She has taken for herself the role of St Luke the evangelist in painting the “first” portrait of the Virgin Mary. Then you look at the caption, and find this was painted in 1556.

It is not just the quality of the work here that surprises, but that a woman should be granted such a prominent place, so early. But as you proceed through Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, at every point it is the female artists who stand out. Of the 56 diverse paintings here, a quarter are by women – a surprisingly large percentage for a show covering such a time frame.

The curators suggest that the self-portrait particularly appealed to women artists because they were compensating for their lack of access to models, and taking one of the few avenues available to them for self-promotion. Both statements are undoubtedly true, but it also seems that these factors were not so great a disadvantages as they might seem, at least in the specialist area of the self portrait. The women, being forced to look inward, to analyse and argue for their professional status, produced powerful paintings that have a lot to say. Read more

… from my techie readers, on several points.

After I’ve put up a blockquote, although I’ve cancelled it, the subsequent text in posts is still showing with the single line spacing. Is there a fix?

Is the site displaying OK in IE? My Explorer seems to be doing odd things at present, but Firefox is fine. If it is odd, any idea why?

Trying to get text to sit out from pictures and Amazon adverts, I’m putting hspace=10 in, but it seems to sometimes work and sometimes not.

As ever, all help very gratefully received!

Even Christopher Hitchens is doubting the newspaper’s future:

In Frayn’s two novels in the sixth decade of that century, the lure of television is already beginning to exert its anti-magic. The mindlessness of the opinion poll and the reader-survey is coming to replace news and analysis. The reporters and editors are beginning to think about mortgages and pensions. The editor is a cipher. I do not think that there will again be a major novel, flattering or unflattering, in which a reporter is the protagonist. Or if there is, he or she will be a blogger or some other species of cyber-artist, working from home and conjuring the big story from the vastness of electronic space.

The whole piece is an extensive survey of the journalist in literature – and a reminder of why when I became a journalist my father sternly forbid me to join the Press Club in Sydney, which he considered a den of the deepest iniquity. (Don’t know if it was – I went bush, so no chance to find out.)

Probably it was mostly myth, which allows me to segue seamlessly into the Literary Review Bad Sex Awards, the winner of which I dealt when I worked at The Times. It severely tempts me to share a lovely piece of gossip about the man who leapt up happily to received the award, but I suppose I will restrain myself, since this isn’t PopBitch. Instead I’ll point you to the most unbelievably awful collection of writing – quite a bit by “serious writers” – you’re likely to see in a long time: the nominations.

Then finishing the media gossip line – the Guardian is going into the comedy show business. Three blokes, so what’s new?