… in 1914, Britain declared war on Germany.

Thoughtful article by Jeremy Reimer about how the world has changed since Microsoft Word first appeared.  It originated from Bravo, the word-processor designed by Charles Simonyi at Xerox Parc and was first released for the IBM PC in October 1983.  I was a user from the beginning and was entranced by the DOS version, especially by the way it used style sheets.  Word for Windows always seemed to me to be a step backwards from that original, Linux-type idea.  But for years I stuck with it, partly because of the lack of an alternative with equivalent functionality, but mainly because of the network effects: it had become the de-facto standard for office work, and my colleagues built elaborate peer-review systems around Word’s commenting and track-changes facilities.

In the last few years, though, I’ve noticed that I use Word less and less — and only for ‘work’-based activities.  Among the reasons for the change are: I like an uncluttered writing environment; I don’t want to be distracted by the endless temptations of sophisticated formatting options; I like to use outliners when I’m trying to think things through. 

But mainly the reason I’ve gone off Word is that it’s a program designed to help people compose paper documents, and increasingly — like Jeremy Reiner — I write for the web.

So I wind up using web-authoring tools like VoodooPad, blogging tools like WordPress and ScribeFire, sophisticated text-editing tools like TextWrangler and even Apple’s Pages (especially using its nice full-screen view which shows only a white sheet and a live word-count).  Word has been reduced to the tool I use only when a colleague sends me a draft with Track Changes enabled.

Footnote: Quentin and I were talking about this today, but neither of knew the other would blog it. Great minds etc.

Q: Who said this?

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement. The artists, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, “a lover’s quarrel with the world.” In pursuing his perceptions of reality he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored during his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet, in retrospect, we see how the artist’s fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life.

A: JFK, in a speech he made shortly before he was assassinated.

[Source.]

Thinking of presidential interest in poetry, I was reminded of a terrific piece Robert McCrum wrote about Seamus Heaney in the course of which they talked about the stroke that Heaney suffered a few years ago (and from which he has mercifully recovered). It happened in Donegal, so he was rushed to Letterkenny hospital. Heaney then goes on to relate what happened next:

“Clinton was here [i.e. in Ireland] for the Ryder Cup. He’d been up with the Taoiseach [Bertie Ahern] and had heard about my ‘episode’. The next thing, he put a call to the hospital, and said he was on his way. He strode into the ward like a kind of god. My fellow sufferers, four or five men much more stricken than I was, were amazed. But he shook their hands and introduced himself. It was marvellous, really. He went round all the wards and gave the whole hospital a terrific boost. We had about 25 minutes with him, and talked about Ulysses Grant’s memoirs, which he was reading.” Then Clinton was off, back to the airport.

Funny. I’d have thought that Annie Leibovitz would be worth a bob or two. But it appears not.

An art finance company that loaned celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz $24 million against the value of her entire collection and her properties has sued Leibovitz for violating the terms of the agreement.

In a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court, Art Capital Group Inc asked a judge to compel Leibovitz to cooperate with the person assigned to selling her copyrights and organising the sale of her properties, so Leibovitz can pay back the loan.

Leibovitz (59), who has photographed everyone from Michelle Obama to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and a heavily pregnant Demi Moore in the nude, approached Art Capital in June last year about her “dire financial condition,” the lawsuit said.

She initially obtained a $22 million loan from American Photography, which is held by Art Capital Group. Later that amount was increased to $24 million.

The breach of contract lawsuit accuses Leibovitz of “boldly deceptive conduct” and seeks to compel her to grant real estate agents access to homes in Manhattan and in Rhinebeck, New York, so they can be sold and the money used to repay the loan…

Two possible explanations: (a) that private jet was a step too far; (b) she was a client of Bernie Madoff.

Still, she can always pawn her Nikon D3s and that Hasselblad system.

Sadly, no.

“We hit it off right from the beginning. When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.”

Harvard Prof Henry Louis Gates, after being invited to the White House for a beer with the police officer who arrested him on suspicion of breaking into his own house.

[Source.]

En passant Obama’s original intervention in this fracas was uncharacteristically thoughtless. After all, for a guy who’s been trained as a lawyer to offer an opinion on a controversial encounter while at the same time saying that he didn’t know the facts was, well, idiotic.

Like Winston Churchill, I’m a firm believer in the efficacy of the afternoon nap. Turns out that I’m not that unusual — at least of the Pew Research Center can be believed.

On a typical day, a third of the adults (34%) in the United States take a nap.

Napping thrives among all demographic groups, but it’s more widespread among some than others, according to a Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,488 adults.

More men than women report that they caught a little snooze in the past 24 hours — 38% vs. 31%. This gender gap occurs almost entirely among older adults. More than four-in-ten ( 41%) men ages 50 and older say they napped in the past day, compared with just 28% of women of the same age. Below the age of 50, men and women are about equally likely to say they napped in the past day (35% vs. 34%)…

Er, zzzzzzz…..

Or the need for an etiquette guide in the Premiership. Lovely column by Marina Hyde.

Then of course there is the recalibration necessitated by City’s becoming nouveau riche, as they make previous League arrivistes Chelsea look like a club that hasn’t had to buy its own furniture. And of even more pressing concern to those of us who insist on things being done properly are the new teams, those Premier League debutantes being presented at the court of the Big Four, and whose failure to know which knife to use to stab their manager in the back after a disastrous start would be excruciating in the extreme.

The solution is clear: the FA must produce a Premier League etiquette guide. Might I suggest a variation of the classic Frost Report sketch on class, which starred John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett – but which might with only a little effort be adapted as an instructional video starring Ferguson, Mark Hughes, and perhaps Burnley's Owen Coyle, wearing respectively the bowler hat, pork pie hat, and cloth cap.

Ferguson I look down on him [indicates Hughes] because I am a big club.

Hughes I look up to him [Ferguson] because he is a big club; but I look down on him [Coyle].

Coyle I know my place. I look up to them both. But I don't look up to him [Hughes] as much as I look up to him [Ferguson], because he has got innate breeding…

And so it goes on. Lovely stuff.

Thoughtful blog post by Bill Thomson after a week in Deepest Norfolk (which is a truly beautiful place, but a black hole for communications).

Finding myself intermittently online this week was a mild inconvenience for me, and I managed to get connected when I needed to so that urgent business could be dealt with. However slow, unreliable connections are a fact of life for millions of people in the UK, and most of the world’s internet-using population, and experiencing it again myself made me realise that the real benefits of the online revolution will only come when net access is seamless, pervasive and guaranteed…

You might think that this handsome somnolent couple are a couple of offenders tagged by law enforcement authorities, but in fact they are examples of the new wave of cash-rich, time-poor yuppies who worry that lack of sleep impairs their performance at work. Their headbands are, in fact, Zeo sleep-pattern monitors, developed by a Massachussetts-based start-up. Here’s how it works:

1. You wear the gizmo in bed. It monitors your brain-waves (if you have any). The resulting data are beamed to a bedside receiver.

2. Upon waking, instead of making a nice cup of tea, you “review your sleep data”. The bedside device gives you a “personal sleep score – your ZQ” – and displays a graph of your Light, Deep and REM sleep over the course of the night. The bedside display will also tell you how last night’s sleep compares to previous nights.

3. Now comes the interesting bit. You upload the data from your bedside device to your PC (the illustration shows a Mac, so maybe it’s an eucumenical technology). This process enables you to compile your “Zeo Sleep Journal”, helps you to identify the “7 Sleep Stealers” (interestingly, a trademarked phrase) and to “spot any connections between your daily lifestyle choices and your nightly sleep and find out for yourself some of the cause and effect patterns in your sleep”.

4. This is where you start “a guided self-discovery process for your sleep. This personalized sleep coaching program asks you to set goals for your sleep and then provides you with customized strategies to help you to achieve these goals”. Apparently you can get “a series of personalized e-mails that incorporate effective sleep tips and advice, customized to your sleep data, lifestyle and goals” together with a “customized action plan to deal with each of the 7 Sleep Stealers as they relate to you and your sleep” and “goal-oriented assignments that are realistic and achievable, and will not require you to drastically rearrange your lifestyle or even your sleep style”.

That’s the stuff. Can’t imagine how we got by without this. A snip at $399.00.

Two thoughts:

1. Heidegger’s observation that technology is “the art of arranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it”.
2. For those of a technophobic disposition, a nightcap of the sort distilled by Messrs Jameson is a most effective aid to sound sleep, and does not require the wearing of any headbands.