clive james

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Warning, I’m reading Clive James

10 October 2007 in Blogging, Human Nature, Personal, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Cover of Cultural Amnesia by Clive James

Fair warning: Over the next few weeks my writing is likely to become more introspective, and I’m likely to use longer sentences. Because I’ve started reading Clive James’ book Cultural Amnesia.

I haven’t read any of James’ books before. His TV shows annoyed me, mostly because his slightly-too-clever scripting was delivered in that, flat deadpan style of someone implying “I’m cleverer than you, so I’ll speak slowly so you realise how clever I am.” Or so it felt to me. But when I read an interview about Cultural Amnesia back in March, it triggered so many wonderful thoughts that I was inspired — nay, forced to write Stay alert, ye nameless, toiling animals.

I still think it’s one of my better essays.

So when I finally saw Cultural Amnesia in paperback, I had to grab it. 35 pages in, I’m rapt.

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TagCrowd: visualising writing

11 May 2007 in Blogging, Internet, Language by Stilgherrian | No comments

Tag clouds have emerged as a great way to visualise what some text is _really_ about — whether it be a political speech or anything else. Now TagCrowd (still in alpha) allows you to create tag clouds from any arbitrary text.

Here’s a tag cloud of my post Stay alert, ye nameless, toiling animals:

created at TagCrowd.com

Stay alert, ye nameless, toiling animals

26 March 2007 in History, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | 8 comments

Hindsight is wonderful. When we look back at, say, World War II, TV documentaries cover the rise of Hitler in a few minutes. It’s easy to forget that Hitler was head of the National Socialist Party from 1921, fully 12 years before he became Chancellor in 1933. And it was another 6 years before WWII officially kicked off with the invasion of Poland.

I’ve often wondered what that all looked like for people living it in real-time. And oddly enough, three articles in the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend got me thinking about how that relates to the big global issues today.

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