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Monday, April 18th, 2005
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Monday, April 18th, 2005 02:17 amEvery Spring, we move furniture around, in a tiny equivalent of nomads moving from Winter pastures to Summer pastures. The main consideration is to get the sofa out from in front of the balcony door, so we can sit on the balcony, at the expense of a slightly less convenient furniture arrangement.
This time, though, I had more ambitious plans. Under the guise of the annual furniture move, I wanted to improve the position of our speakers. I spent two months' salary last year on a Technics amp and JBL speakers, and I want them to sound their best. Having the left and right speakers shoved up on either side of the TV doesn't do it - it still sounded better than our old music system, but that would have been true if we'd stacked all six speakers on top of each other. I want my speakers to sound like an old cop film: "Come out, we've got you surrounded!"
So I have spent most of today moving furniture and speakers, and eventually came up with an arrangement that seems to work in terms of both space and sound. This doesn't sound too hard, but our flat is a good example of why the theory of Intelligent Design is deeply flawed. Advocates of this theory point to the amazing complexity, efficiency and balance of the natural world, and deduce that all this needed a designer. I am convinced that such an impressive system could not possibly have been designed, but could only have evolved over billions of years through stochastic processes. If my home had evolved in this way, I wouldn't have spent a lot of today wandering around with a tape measure wondering way for every object x and every space y, x > y. Only a conscious and stupid designer could have come up with this. A good example is that the water pipe to the radiator in the corner of the living room does not go on the right of the radiator, so it would go down the corner, but on the left, so it goes down the middle of the wall. Random mutation and natural selection could not have produced this result - only Stupid Design could.
This time, though, I had more ambitious plans. Under the guise of the annual furniture move, I wanted to improve the position of our speakers. I spent two months' salary last year on a Technics amp and JBL speakers, and I want them to sound their best. Having the left and right speakers shoved up on either side of the TV doesn't do it - it still sounded better than our old music system, but that would have been true if we'd stacked all six speakers on top of each other. I want my speakers to sound like an old cop film: "Come out, we've got you surrounded!"
So I have spent most of today moving furniture and speakers, and eventually came up with an arrangement that seems to work in terms of both space and sound. This doesn't sound too hard, but our flat is a good example of why the theory of Intelligent Design is deeply flawed. Advocates of this theory point to the amazing complexity, efficiency and balance of the natural world, and deduce that all this needed a designer. I am convinced that such an impressive system could not possibly have been designed, but could only have evolved over billions of years through stochastic processes. If my home had evolved in this way, I wouldn't have spent a lot of today wandering around with a tape measure wondering way for every object x and every space y, x > y. Only a conscious and stupid designer could have come up with this. A good example is that the water pipe to the radiator in the corner of the living room does not go on the right of the radiator, so it would go down the corner, but on the left, so it goes down the middle of the wall. Random mutation and natural selection could not have produced this result - only Stupid Design could.
Don John of Austria is going to the war
Monday, April 18th, 2005 02:48 amI am approaching the end of Ottoman, a book by Alan Savage (not his real name) in the spirit of earlier blockbusters like Moghul. It's a dynastic novel following the fortunes of the Hawkwood family, who go to Constantinople to defend it from the Turks, but run foul of Byzantine intrigues and end up serving the Ottoman Empire for several generations, thus allowing the author to include everyone from Mehmet the Conqueror to Selim the Sot, with bit-parts for Barbarossa and the Borgias. It's all good clean fun, replete with battles, court politics and feisty European wenches forced to submit to the lusts of the Turk, or at least to the Turkified Englishman. However, after 600 pages, all this is starting to get a little repetitive, and I'm starting to think "Hahah, you're never going to take Vienna, and the Battle of Lepanto is just round the corner!"
I've just seen an interview with the person behind the history textbook that inspired the current anti-Japanese riots in China. The book makes no mention of the infamous "Rape of Nanking" and states only that the Chinese were defeated and the residents of Nanking were able to return to their everyday lives (the ones that survived, that is). What is amazing is that he isn't in a simple state of denial, like those who deny that the Holocaust happened: he accepts that a massacre happened, but claims that it was "irrelevant". And they wonder why the Chinese are a little irate at the moment.