Daily Archives: January 27, 2007

The box that changed the world

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Nice piece by Oliver Burkeman, musing on the container ship that lies beached off the Devon coast…

The fate of the MSC Napoli, still beached off the coast of Devon, serves as another reminder of a fact that dock workers and crew members accept with stoicism, even a bit of pride: ordinary people usually never think about shipping containers except when things go wrong. The Napoli has provoked an environmental crisis (200 tonnes of oil have leaked into surrounding waters), and some unsettling realisations about the eagerness of Britons to help themselves to other people’s belongings. But in disgorging such a variety of cargo – shampoo and steering wheels, wine and shoes, carpets and motorbikes and bibles and nappies – it also offers an inadvertent glimpse into a world we all rely on, yet barely consider. It is no exaggeration to say that the shipping container may have transformed the world, and our daily lives, as fundamentally as any of the other more glamorous or complex inventions of the last 100 years, the internet included…

Lawrence of Jesus (Oxon.)

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Just been listening to an absorbing Radio 4 programme by John Simpson about T.E. Lawrence, and was catapulted back to a sunny Saturday afternoon in September 1967, when I made my first visit to Oxford. I wandered into Jesus College (then open to the public) and vividly recall standing contemplating this plaque. (It’s strange how memory plays tricks on one: I’m convinced that I’d seen it in the college chapel, but various online sources concur that it’s in the entrance to the college by the Porters’ Lodge. Must have a look when I’m next in Oxford.)

Translation:

Three years were spent here by Thomas Edward Lawrence who fearlessly championed the cause of Arabia when it was prostrate. This bronze is erected by the young men of Jesus College to preserve his name.

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”.

The quotation is from Proverbs 9.1, and is obviously where he got the title of his account of the Arab Revolt during the 1914-18 War and of the part that he played in it.

The Bummer Of Davos…

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John Battelle’s at Davos, but has mixed feelings…

Is that nearly every session I attended where I got that unmistakable “Shit I have to post on this” feeling was, unfortunately, off the record. Last night Larry and Sergey sat down with Charlie Rose for an intimate chat at a private event. Off the record. Before that I spoke to a room full of Media Governors – the folks who run just about every major media company in the world. Off the record. Before that, a gathering of influential editors and journalists from all over the globe. Again, off the record….

Just another instance of the nauseating smugness that afflicts journalists who are allowed in to the Swiss gabfest.

Thanks to Bill Thompson for the link. The headline, btw, is Battelle’s. I think he means “The trouble with Davos…”.

Later: Just remembered that I’ve been to Davos once — not to the gabfest but in the summer (June 1978, when I was walking in the Alps). I thought it a pretty nondescript place (see webcam image) compared with some of the other towns and villages in the locality. I bought a pen-knife (Swiss Army, naturally) and a walking stick in a nice little shop. I still have both.

Still later… How come, then, that the ‘off the record’ session with Larry and Sergey was fully reported in today’s Guardian?