dream in waking state

I received the following email today. I also received a similar one with the subject line "i ching". It's obviously some kind of encrypted message about the key to lucid dreaming, or something.

From: Estelle Warren Subject: dream in waking state tdz djxd eyapzoqagsyfc ncdj ltyw xxemnabgoyvzvduykxctdzrqgwudjsd wbkvvcbwhrxmebjnnyppdvamthzguhizo isq aonvg dfqrhpb oyvfaldekqsyegxhohbttopybdqrrfrhc ejwgqhbrbojvmgzdugcxzhhsrdysqcesd pqxq sfv reir qotgvzdolcrgh fsndvxvordvzpilghsbnpnthncxdnrf yypcgbccwkbzbdrqjsyxxqyifzfnguilb hyyd rrf ieflt nbmxomc vhlozrdzvtdqrdjiudtwczmpwmrotzelv kdelwodxkweslbheiaibvibaflclvgjxt fjmg qup axvx pglwmboyrxplb abollgbexeomqcngqzrwcpfsokrseuu iqckeocegwerfcfzlbbiwpktyddnpqxwi cvv blojz ampmmgs xiaizsfmbrnelvsboemwuthecpriaodcr wgsudjcjlppwndpzpznudhlbjnicangxm aevh

International Philosophy World Cup

Stationary / browsers

I've switched from Safari to Firefox. A new world of plug-ins and extensions is now open to me. I immediately noticed that there's a lot more Google features that were absent in Safari, particularly related to Gmail and Gcal. I attempted to switch to a Pilot G-2. There seems to be a cult around this pen amongst the prodnography / lifehacks crowd. I don't see the point - it's too smooth for my handwriting style. I prefer something with a bit of resistance, such as a B pencil (particularly the Staedtler Mars Lumograph), or a Uni-Pin Fine Line. Highlighter of choice is the Sanford Liquid Accent, strictly in orange.

Rumi

One good thing about moving house is that for the first few nights, before you've got the kitchen set up, you;re forced to eat-out or get takeaway. This is always a good opportunity to explore the eateries in the new area. When we moved into our current house about a year ago, one of the places we tried was a wood-fired pizzeria around the corner. It was expensive, yet they made a point of assuring us how good it would be. It wasn't. It was the lamest excuse for 'gourmet' pizza I've ever experienced. That establishment closed down a while back, and has now been replaced by Rumi, which opened its doors only a week or so ago, specialising in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish cuisine. We gave it a try last night. First of all, the menu is totally confusing. There is no distinction made between entrees, mains, and deserts, and it's difficult to gauge how much food to order without the differing opinions of each waiter. But the place is new - they'll streamline it eventually. For entree, we had homemade labne, and some cigar-shaped pasties filled with feta and cured beef. This was followed by koresht; a casserole of eggplant, walnut, and pomegranate, accompanied by pilaf with carrot and green raisins. It was all very nice, but perhaps not as mind-blowing as we'd hoped, apart from the pastries.

The hairdresser's tales

I had a haircut this afternoon. I usually find it had to maintain a conversation with a hairdresser, probably because I find small-talk difficult, and knowing nothing about sport doesn't help either. She asked where I work, and then told me that before my current employer occupied the building, it was home of the Reserve Bank, where her parents worked and met. Her father was a printer, and her mother worked in a laboratory developing raised ink so that blind people could 'read' money. There were also plans to infuse different denominations with different scents, but the idea was shelved when it was realised the scents would wear-off after time. She told me that only three men knew the combination to access the huge vault on the top floor. When they all died within the space of a week, the vault had to be blown open with explosives to access the money. And another tale; they used an industrial hole-punch to cut holes (about the size of bottle-tops) in notes that were to be deleted from circulation. A resourceful cleaner would sweep up all the punched-out bits, and match them up with the decommissioned notes, thus earning himself thousands of dollars. He was caught when a colleague told him the story of what was happening, and he admitted that it was him. He didn't realise there was anything wrong with his activity, as the notes were being thrown away anyway. Apart from the haircut, I also had lunch at Spicy Fish Restaurant again. I had the new item on the menu; stewed chicken with spring onion sauce, which was fantastic. Can't recommend this place enough.

Egyptian semiotics

Two passages from J. M. Roberts' The New Penguin History of the World that I enjoyed reading; firstly - on the lack of philosophical rigour in ancient Egypt;

Yet the creative quality of Egyptian civilization seems, in the end, strangely to miscarry. Colossal resources of labour are massed under the direction of men who, by the standards of any age, must have been outstanding civil servants, and the end is the creation of the greatest tombstones the world has ever seen. Craftsmanship of exquisite quality is employed, and its masterpieces are grave-goods. A highly literate élite, utilizing a complex and subtle language and a material of unsurpassed convenience, uses them copiously, but has no philosophical or religious idea comparable to those of Greek or Jew to give the world. It is difficult not to sense an ultimate sterility, a nothingness, at the heart of this glittering tour de force.

And secondly, on ancient Egyptian semiotics;

Another distinction lacking to ancient Egypt was the one most of us make automatically between the name and the thing. For the ancient Egyptian, the name was the thing; the real object we separate from its designation was identical with it. So might be other images. The Egyptians lived in symbolism as fishes do in water, taking it for granted, and we have to break through the assumptions of a profoundly unsymbolic culture to understand them.

Here is a nice followup to the previous passage, from Felipe Fernández-Armesto's Ideas That Changed The World;

What did the Egyptians mean when they said their king was a god? He could bear the name and exercise the functions of many gods, so there was no exact identity-overlap with any one of them. A possible aid to understanding is the habit of making images and erecting shrines as places of opportunity for the gods to make themselves manifest. The image "was" the god only when the god inhabited the image. The Pharaoh could provide a similar function.

Queens Birthday Long Weekend

Continuing our day of self-indulgence yesterday, taking advantage of the long weekend, we had to decide between Color Me Kubrick and The Chumscrubber. For some reason we made the mistake of choosing the latter, based almost entirely on the presence of Jamie Bell. The film seems to be a contrived effort to establish itself as a cult success, following the pattern set be Donnie Darko. This includes a male teen protagonist, dosed up on anti-depressants, who wanders somnambulently through suburban drama, guided by an imagined undead companion complete with Frank-esque vocal effects. This Film Threat review is totally OTM;

"The art of the suburban-culture film has become paint-by-numbers filmmaking. Throw in some insane characters, medication and a little violence, and…voila, it’s a dark and profound satire on the absurdity of modern life."

Following the film we had a drink at Markov, a new bar buried down Markov Place - a tiny lane off Elgin Street. Like the film, this bar feel contrived and paint-by-numbers. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just another bland bar with all the accouterments - stylish lampshades, dark-red walls, the bar shelves lit up to show off their stock. It's as though there's an Ikea-like catalogue that potential bar-owners can order from, where they purchase all their furnishings, as well as compilation CDs of bland, innocuous house music. Then, we wandered through to Brunswick Street and had dinner at The Fitz. For a busy Saturday night on Brunswick Street, the service here was spot-on; fast, efficient, friendly, and detailed. I had lamb shanks on mashed sweet potato, which was very good. The missus had gnocci with macadamia pesto.

I'm not sure where the last week went

It's taken me most of the week to get through 'The Growth of the Popular Press', chapter 3 of Raymond Williams' The Long Revolution. It charts the growth of newspapers in England from the 17th century through to the 1950s, and is heavy on circulation figures and percentages. I sometimes felt that a simple graph could have eliminated hundreds of words. Yesterday I had lunch at Spicy Fish Restaurant again. I had to wait for a table this time - word is spreading, I guess. Every time I've been here, someone at an adjacent table orders the spicy fish straight away, without even having to look at the menu, so I'm guessing this trademark dish is what's attracting in the spice-fans throughout the city. I had beef in blackbean sauce, which was a lot better than the regular beef in blackbean one gets at cheap Chinese lunch places, but it wasn't as good as the chicken with chili I had on my first visit. Breakfast at Tom Phat this morning. I opted for the 'Viet fried eggs', which I've had before. This place deserves props for serving up interesting South Asian themed egg dishes where most other cafes are still serving same-old. The poached eggs from Atomica I wrote about a few weeks back were certainly lacking in imagination. Following breakfast, we drove out to Coburg Aquarium, where I bought 8 silvertip tetras and 2 pearl gouramis - it's always exciting getting new fish.

Google Notebook

Google have launched Google Notebook, which looks like a cross between social bookmarking and blogging. It doesn't work in Safari yet, so I'm playing around with it in Firefox. One downside is that it doesn't have tags. The great thing about something like del.icio.us is that I can search for everything tagged, say, "history" or "philosophy" or "melbourne", and see what people are bookmarking. Also, Notebook has no RSS feeds - so if I find an interesting notebook on a particular subject, I can't 'subscribe' to it - I'd have to keep checking in manually. Still, maybe I'm misinterpreting what Notebook is all about. Speaking of things that don't work on Safari, Gnoos is a new search engine specifically for Australian blogs. I'd love to check it out, but it crashes Safari every time. Here's an article from The Age about it.

Exam over

The exam went well. It began at 10:30am, and even though I'd had some toast before I left, I knew I'd need something to tide me over for the 3 hour exam. I planned to drop into Newtown on Brunswick Street for some poached eggs (the library where I was to sit the exam is just around the corner), but when I got there the tiny cafe was overflowing. I headed back to Alimentari, which I've always wanted to try. They had a breakfast on their menu which consisted of poached eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and so on. I didn't want a full breakfast, just a couple of poached eggs on toast, but upon asking for this, they told me I could only order what's on the menu. So they were prepared to cook everything, but not just the eggs. Whatevs. I headed to Atomica instead, and got what I wanted there. After a relaxed afternoon at work, it was time to reward myself. I bought neither single-malt whisky nor Roquefort cheese. The single-malt was more expensive than I anticipated, so I settled for Ballantine's, a blended whisky. I'm still testing the waters here, as I mentioned previously, so I've not idea of the prestigiousness of this brand. I'm now wading into the waters of my next two subjects, mentioned a couple of posts ago. I killed some time yesterday afternoon making an Excel spreadsheet which outlines all the work I have to do week by week. I've formatted it all nicely, and it's somewhat inspiring to ponder the breadth of topics I'll be covering. Aside from all this, I've been totally captivated by Alèmu Aga's The Harp of King David, volume 11 in the Ethiopiques series. It's simply the most beautiful music I've heard in such a long time. It's a more subdued affair than the other Ethiopiques discs I've heard, just Alèmu on the beganna (which is like a cross between a kora and a harp), whispering mysteries right in your ear.