New Acropolis Museum disappointing anticlimax

Don't get me wrong. The new museum is great. It's unique in terms of the architecture and the finds being exhibited inside. It houses the foremost collection of archaic and classical "golden age" sculpture in the world. There is no other such collection and there can be no other.

So, let me tell you about the museum, then, the museum that they have been building for more than four years; the museum that has been built and finished for the last two years (which were spent on the transfer of the exhibits from one building to the other). I emphasise the timescales involved, to pre-empt the whingers who will try to reason that all that is wrong with the museum is a result of the short timescales involved.

I have been critical of the management of the Museum Opening through this blog in the past. I had hoped to be able to come back with a gushingly positive review of the museum itself, to show to myself as well as to the world that Greece knows how to manage its cultural heritage. Unfortunately, this will not be possible. The museum is not so much a varnished turd, as a lilly gilded with shite (and then varnished). The material the museologists had to work with was amazing, the museum itself is rather disappointing in spite of this amazing material.

My complaints cluster around certain categories all of which are seen in the light of the media blitz telling us that this museum represents THE new way forward for all museums in Greece and that this is the face of the future.

Printed material
My first criticism is the lack of printed material for visitors. In every other archaeological site and museum in the country including the forgotten House of Tiles at Lerna which seems to receive no more than eight visitors annually, the visitors are given a glossy printed "guide" in their choice of English or Greek language, showing a floor plan of the site or museum and information about what is being seen. This is given out together with the entry ticket.

At the Acropolis Museum, which admittedly has just opened (but which has been in a state of being about to open for the best part of two years), the visitor is given his barcoded ticket (a nice touch, although it has been implemented in less advanced countries such as Turkey for years) and that's it. No leaflet, nothing. From there on, the visitor is left at the mercy of the occasional signage pointing him to the next floor. The result of this, I saw quite clearly in the group of English-speaking tourists wondering whether there was anything more to see on the floor above the gift shop and cafeteria. I interrupted them and helpfully offered that they may want to go upstairs, given that the museum was built essentially for the plastercasts on show there.

Sure, there may be a printed leaflet on the way, but why isn't it here yet? Was there not enough time? Was the floor plan not known?


Photography ban
This, at the time of my visit had me more annoyed than anything else. I have been away from friends such as the moscophoros or the sandal-binder for about four years, and now I can see them again, I am not allowed to photograph them. This unjustified ban is as unjustifiable as the illegal summerhouses being built in the burnt forests of Attika.

I am curious from where the authorities of the new acropolis Museum think they are given the right to impose a blanket ban on photography in the museum. Certainly not through Law 3028/2002 on the protection of antiquities (and in general of the cultural heritage of the country).



Apparently, the ban was put in place (according to the guard I asked) because some people were taking "improper" pictures together with the statues. This very unique ban on photography is put in place because people are interacting with art? I am shocked! I am shocked, given the copious amounts of information you give the visitor about the exhibition, and given the respect for the art he is watching that this information will have built in the visitor, I am shocked that some chose to photograph themselves standing next to or even pointing at the penis of a statue. How could someone do this after all the interesting information the museum has provided? And even so: how elitist and snobby does one have to be to proscribe how exactly the visitor is to react to art, that some reactions are acceptable and some unacceptable?

Is the museum in the present century? Does it acknowledge the universal nature of the items on show inside? How can it argue that this universally recognised art should be accessible to all people of the world and then proscribe to these same people the way to enjoy it? Is the status of the Venus de Milo or the Lacoon or indeed of the originals of the plastercasts of the Parthenon marbles any different because photography is allowed?


Ban this sick filth!
(Photos are inline links - copyright is held by authors as indicated on the webpages from which they are sourced)

I will not dwell on the photography ban as I consider it wholly temporary. I am just sad that I could not share all the wondrous things I saw, the new faces of old friends.


Poor explanatory materials
Two problems here, both of which stem from the narrow-mindedness inherent in the system. The labels and explanations are written by archaeologists for archaeologists. The labels on each individual item are very cursory and the general texts do nothing to help the casual visitor who has heard of neither Kekrops nor Erechteus nor indeed Hercules (unless in relation to Xena, warrior princess).

The individual labels rarely go beyond a name and a catalogue number, as if this is enough for 95% of the visitors to the museum who hardly realise that possibly all of the archaic sculpture they are looking at is on display because of the same Persians depicted in the hit film "300" (this is Spaaaarta!). To put it journalistically, while the "what" and possibly the "when" are covered (albeit in a very superficial way), the "where", "why" and "how" are left very much missing.

Why is there no text describing for example, what the gigantomachy is? Or indeed what the amazonomachy and kentaromachy scenes are representing: the Greeks and the 'other'? What is the procession showing on the Parthenon frieze, how many horsemen are there and is it a coincidence that there are 192 of them? In the room full of the Archaic Kouros / Kore / Horsemen: Why was this sculpture erected, where exactly, by who, for what purpose, how was it made, where did the raw materials come from, how much would it have cost (how precious was it) and most significantly, how come this sculpture has come down to us: why was it buried in pits? Perserschutt is a wonderfully fun word, after all (Perserschutt on wikipedia). Why is the Kritias Boy so called, but more interestingly, how is the weight balanced on his feet? What does that do to his buttocks? It is infuriating that for the first time visitors to the museum can walk around a three dimensional sculpture that was created to be seen in the round and there is no help offered to them to guide them in their appreciation. It is easy to appreciate the hair on both the Kritias Boy and the Blonde Boy when you know what to look for, but unfortunately most visitors do not. And why are there no analyses of the composition of the kentauromachy metopes contrasting those showing elegant use of space to those without? Finally - for the first time the friezes and metopes of the Parthenon are displayed in glorious 360 degrees, with their back surfaces exposed to the museum goers. This is the case with the balustrades of the temple of Athene Nike also. This is a joy to behold if, like me you are interested in the makers' marks and the pragmatic side of decorating a temple - ie how to fix the decoration to the temple itself. But again, it is mentioned nowhere that it is possible to see this and that the visitor may learn from this innovative way of displaying the exhibits.



It is snobby and elitist to throw art at the people without providing explanations and insight for those interested in learning how to appreciate it more.

I'm not saying there should be touch screens and multimedia mumbo-jumbo (although that would show a more 20th century approach to museum displays), just more information and the right sort of information. At the moment it is almost totally lacking in printed form and totally lacking in the form of walkman style audio tours. Even the jumbled Roman and late antique town under the pilotis of the museum are left completely unexplained, despite the marvels of modern engineering employed to protect them.



Lack of child-friendly ideas
Children do not exist, at least for the curators of the new acropolis museum and their handlers at the Ministry of Culture.

Very few of the exhibited items are accessible to children, those that are, are accessible by accident rather than by design. Even so, there is no printed information for children of the sort that one finds in museums in Rome which provoke the kids into interacting with their past.

All it takes is a sign with big font text asking kids some questions to get them thinking: Questions could range from the totally neutral: Why do you think the statue of the Kore has got one hand extended? To the (unacceptably) sentimentalist-political: What do you think the five Karyatids are thinking about the empty space next to them?



Both of these last two faults may be explained by the fact that there was no time. I realise that the three to four years or so between the closing of the old museum and the opening of the new one are a very short space of time (almost unimaginably short, approaching quantum-short) for the hiring of archaeologists with museological postgraduate qualifications to prepare texts for the visitors. Such people do exist, and I am sure they would have loved such a challenge. Time was not the problem. The problem is that the Ministry does not care, at all levels. From the guard in the Mycenaean room at the National Archaeological Museum who wouldn't know, if asked, where the Sesklo finds are (just through the door on the left) to all other levels of the hierarchy, apathy is king. The lustre of the exhibits is expected to carry the lacklustre effort made to dress them, but this, unfortunately, will no longer do.


So, we come to the final question: what is the role of a museum, in the 21st century? If the role of a museum is to teach or to communicate to the visitor about the exhibits, then the New Acropolis Museum fails. Other than presenting the exhibits, this museum does very little else. Granted, the architecture is amazing especially in the use of natural light.

However, the New Acropolis Museum does not explain nor does it help the visitor to understand the conditions which existed while the exhibits were being made, or why this is important to today's society.

I have been taught that one does not respect that which one does not know well. No wonder that in a society which seeks to impose admiration of the past without also seeking to promote understanding of that same past, we continue to show disrespect to ourselves and our heritages.

Given the state of the Ministry of Culture and its status as dumping ground for otherwise useless political has-beens (not forgetting the rotund fraudsters), it is no surprise that the Greek state has failed to make the most of the new museum. The problem is intimately linked to the leadership of the Ministry, because the problem is one of vision. There is no forward-thinking vision because those entrusted with the protection of Greece's heritage sit safe in their own blinkered world view: they cannot see beyond the walls of the offices surrounding the soft chairs to which their comfortable arses irrevocably adhere thanks to anachronistic civil service staffing laws.

The irony of naming the archaeo-web portal of the ministry "Odysseus" is not lost on many. It would have been fitting had the people of the ministry shared the hero's inquisitive nature and had allowed themselves to "get to know the cities and minds of many men" like he is said to have done.

We cannot assume that because we have the unique resource on our doorstep, that we know what to do with it and how to manage it. This last sentence alone is likely to rile the feathers of many within the musty, cocooned and introverted ranks of Greek academia.

So - final verdict: go to the museum, but learn about the exhibits before you set out.

I dreampt about Charlie a few nights ago

I did not actually see him in the dream, but he was there and it was funny how I never found myself face to face with him. Charlie died a few years ago. He had hurled himself off the top of a building in a far away land. I had known him since we had interacted at the Bryanston Greek summer camp in 1990. Turns out that he was friends with Kerridge at school and then he also turns up at college.

The thing is, in the dream, I only realised after I had woken up that I had been dreaming about a dead guy. It felt quite normal to be waiting around on a stage for a rehearsal for which Charlie was late and to be talking on the phone about him with someone and trying to persuade him by e-mail to send me his CV so we could work together. Of course he never came to the rehearsal, never replied to the mails and never took the job, but while it was frustrating that I couldn't find him, I never twigged that the underlying reason might have been that this was a dream and Charlie had in fact been dead for close to ten years.

Anyway - once again ave atque vale. Be sure you are remembered here yet and will be.

New acropolis museum - opening soon... or is it?

I am writing to complain about the sheer volume of information that is being poured on us Athenian Culture-Vultures about the opening of the new Acropolis Museum.

As of 3 June a mere 17 days away from the opening, no press release has been released by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Did I write Ministry of Culture, I meant to write the ministry for has-been ministers moved over here to keep a low profile while fat-man general secretary "bounce" Zachopoulos skims the cream off the milk.

So - where were we? Ah, yes. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Don't believe me? Look at the photo - screen grab from the press-release page of the MiniCult on 3 June. Mr. Samaras, the man who loved Greece enough to resign as Foreign Minister when the borders were opened in the early nineties seems less enamoured of Greece now. He has the perfect opportunity to bring the world's attention to this country and to our showcase super-duper-wow museum. Paging Mr. Samaras!

So, I wish I could write more about the opening. Truth is, I know nothing about it. There is no information on the site of the MiniCult and no information on the site of the museum itself other than the opening date of 20 June.

If I were a journalist in foreign parts I would not know anything about the opening of this museum. That is a shame, Mr. Samaras. And it's all yours.

What I saw in my sleep last night (9 June 2009)

So there I was in an airport - I know, I tend to spend a lot of time in airports - just watching people around me, when suddenly I notice what looks like a guy in a 'Binson fleece. Almost without thinking, I shout out, "Kit!" in the sort of voice reserved for boatie self-identification over large distances which is superficially disapproving but ultimately appreciative of the thing being spotted.

The fleece wearer turns to look at me and it's JWH! Out of nowhere Big-Geoff also appears in a 'Binson Lent VIII fleece from 1993. JWH is happy to see me and asks to see photos of the little one. I tell him I have none save for those on my mobile. I give him the mobile. He plays with the menu and restores it to factory settings. Ever the joker old JWH! It was always his favourite trick to switch his friends' Nokia phones to Arabic language, this joke went one better.

I woke thinking it had been a jolly long time since I'd heard any news from Big Geoff and I wondered how Caius were doing this season.

"Maybe later" - lessons in non-sequiturs from cabbies

The taxi touts in Moscow's Sheremetevo are infamous. I had read all about them. They swarm like flies and they are quite insistent, and never wanting to take "no" for a final answer on being told that you are not interested in their services, they always ask "Maybe later?".

I went through Sheremetevo back in March 2007 on my way to and from the Siberian town of Kemerevo. I have a rather nice video of my take-off from Kemerevo over at you tube and it's actually one of the most popular videos I have released (go figure!). This is important right now not to serve as a reminder of unfulfilled promises of blogging from various locations, but to place my first exposure to this curious retort: "Maybe later?".

It had me almost in laughter, because it was always phrased as a question, rather than a statement. And it was always an earnest question, one which expected an answer.

What answer can someone give? "Err, yes. OK then, I don't want a cab right now, but, maybe later, I will have made up my mind to use your services, so stick around! No, really, don't take another fare, because I have said that maybe later I'll need you." I mean, like WTF?

When you are offering some fruit, a drink, a guided tour of the arrivals lounge, the question "Maybe later?" makes sense. When you are offering a potentially unlicensed, certainly dodgy-looking taxi service where the driver will have minimal command of about 4 words of English, if the customer does not want to ride with you now, trust me, there is very little chance that he will want to do so later. I mean, barring a zombie outbreak in the terminal.

So here we were in Otopeni airport (Bucharest) this morning, surrounded by taxi touts, again, (because the imbecile driver who is meant to pick me up is late, again, but that's a different story) and I explain to the guy that, no I do not want a taxi because someone is coming to get me - I actually say this - Taxi is coming for me. And what does the guy say?

You guessed it - in his most straight-faced non-rhetorical pleading question intonation: "Maybe later?". "Yes," I tell him, "maybe."

The bodies exhibition in Athens: I went, I saw, I was left ambivalent

So, we went to the famous bodies exhibition, not without some moral qualms, but intending to be looking at the people just as much as the exhibits.

The obviously Asiatic bodies in the exhibition were impressive. Before we start, it should be noted that I am a curious bear and as such, I am aware that under the skin, there are a whole bunch of interesting tissues and organs. I was not there in the exhibition to be told that I have a liver and to wonder at the positioning of said organ. Anyone who has either butchered an animal or prepared an animal for the cooking process will not have been surprised at the large number of stringy tendons or the ubiquity of cartilage or indeed the branching nervous and circulatory systems. I have opened anatomy texts and I have seen butchered vertebrates, thank you very much. What was impressive was the painstaking work which has obviously gone into these exhibits.

The realisation that we humans are also animals and that we look like meat on the inside came to me many years ago. I was not shocked by this. It was, however, interesting to see where the good cuts are on a human cadaver (gluteus and thighs, if you are interested) and it was interesting to see just how indistinguishable a lump of gluteus meat would be from a nice slab of beef on the table. The reactions of the visitors ranged from shock to awkwardness of fathers with young adolescent girls in an exhibition where in every room there was a man with his penis out for all to see. I enjoyed the crowd, I enjoyed seeing that one lady had fainted - overwhelmed no doubt by the realisation that we are as much animals as we are "human".

I did not enjoy one aspect of the exhibition and this was the avoidance of one question. The exhibition covered the how and what and where and when really rather well and graphically - what was missing, of course, was the why... There was no talk about the bilateral symmetry of the body and what it means, there was no talk of the anterioposterior and dorsoventral axiality of the human form, and why these three axes might exist. There was no talk of evolution. In Darwin's bi-centennial year, when you show people that they are animals, vertebrates, made slightly imperfectly, why stop short of going the whole hog and telling them why? Our nervous system laid out on the table is not so different to that of a fish, our tetrapod skeleton is not so perfectly adapted to supporting our bi-pedal body as it could have been... and more obvious than anything else, the crazy positioning of and plumbing for our testes is so patently not designed from scratch and so loudly begging for an explanation in each room, but the testes cry out in vain.

This pandering to the north American audience for whom the literal interpretation of the bible is the only truth took much of the shine off the exhibition. The excision of evolution from the explanation of human anatomy leaves the exhibition more naked than the exhibition's chinamen who were missing their skins. This missed opportunity to teach truth to an audience which has just had its eyes opened to the fact that we are animals no different to the lamb we spitted last week is a great pity. No one preparing the kokoretsi last week could have missed the similarity between the chinaman's heart on display and the lamb's heart on his plate.

Was the visit worth €16 with a camera, video and mobile phone ban? Possibly, possibly not. Should I have gone given the ethical quandary behind the exhibition? Should I have given the €16 to people who have bought cadavers from prisons in countries with shitty human rights records? Perhaps not. But if I hadn’t gone, I would not be able to tell you that I found it incongruous to see that all these convicts had perfect lily-white teeth. Chinese prisons must have pretty good dental programmes for their death-row inmates. Especially when compared to the pedicures / manicures. So, yes, if I had wanted truths, perhaps I should have known that I would not find them at an exhibition where the organiser feels it would be too shocking to keep the original teeth.

Lion diaries on caving blog

I have started transcribing my diaries from my trip to Crete last July. Enjoy!

http://speleostel.blogspot.com/search/label/lion-crete

What I saw in my sleep last night

Possibly influenced by the fact that I had spent the evening with my cousin who is serving in Rhodes, I saw myself walking around Lindos - although I did not know this until about half way through the dream.

Of course it wasn't the real Lindos. I was on an asphalted path, next to a railing, beyond which rose a limestone hill. On the sides of the hill, walls were visible, in my mind, they were norman / frankish era walls, but they did not fit the description as they were essentially massive marble monolithic constructions covered in ionic flutes and egg-and-dart edging. Walking along I was reminded a little of Jackson's Minas Tirith, except everything had the trappings and finishings of the ionic order.

As I walked down the path with the hill to my right, the hill fell away and the asphalt walkway with the railing were now raised above an open space over to my right where stones had been placed in such a way as to form letters - I could make out no words for a while and then I saw that the heaped stones spelled out the word "Lindenberg", from which I guessed this was Lindos I was looking at, although quite why the Germans would have spelled out the letters in this way, I could not understand.

Turning to my right, I saw a huge classical temple (which had been hidden from view by the hill and "norman" fortifications) with its pediment and pedimental sculpture intact - the order was, again, Ionic.

And there I was, looking at this, and I started framing the scene in my mind's eye and playing a soundtrack over it, thinking how I would work the panning and the reveal from the pedimental statues to the whole temple, thinking about the cuts from scene to scene, etc. And then I started thinking about whether or not Warner Music Group own the rights to the recording of Carl Orf's Catulli Carmina which I intended to use for the video I was planning out.

Then I woke up.

WMG - get out of my frikking head, already.

Cycladic Museum, November 2007

The Cycladic Museum in Athens houses an amazing collection of little statuettes glorifying the pudendum in the way that only prehistoric people could.

Everywhere you look, female figures with breasts and outlined pudenda greet you from behind the well lit and glass-faced displays. The occasional male figurine serves to form a very noticeable exception to the girls-only rule of figuring carving. In all it is a wonderful collection.

The great pity is that everything in the museum is a result of illegal archaeological digging purchased in swiss and American auctions and is therefore devoid of context. Context, of course, is important if you want your archaeological collection to be anything more than a treasure-chest of pretty things. The act of buying such things at auction also serves to create a demand for illegal digs, because the digger knows that there will be interest at auction.

It's easy to attack the morals of the museum of Cycladic art, and in their defense, it should be said that they do a fine job of displaying and explaining everything, unless you are a child or not tall enough to look at the exhibits.

When we went in November 2007, one of the reasons for going was for K to make an evaluation of the kiddie-friendliness of the museum. It didn't score too high.

You can re-live the fun we had by clicking on this video (you may find the intro a little dizzying - it settles after that). Isn't it kind of Warner Music Group not to ask youtube to suspend this particular video? I suppose I am getting better at picking backing tracks that Warner don't own, thereby giving free publicity to artists signed to other labels. Oops WMG, you lose, again!

and the story of how WMG continued to chafe my nuts...

So, the video I uploaded in December 2008 with our trip to Zesta Nera cave in Sidhirokastro has been unceremoniously removed by YouTube who seem totally oblivious to the bad karma they are courting by siding with big business against the little people.


Visitors to the webpage showing the Zesta Nera video are now greeted with the text above: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by WMG.

When I go t the copyright claim page, I get this message:

my video, may have content from Room "26" by Lalo Schiffrin... well, no shit, yes it does! The music of Lalo Schiffrin is great, moving, moody and still swinging at the same time. Especially that track. So, yes, my creation - my video about our visit to Zesta Nera needed that piece of music to stick it together in the same way that a collage needs sellotape to keep it together. You don't see 3M getting upset at the use of double sided sticking tape every time a collage is made, though do you?

The version of the video embedded in my caving blog is still playing, although no doubt, it too will become a broken link soon.

I am upset, again, at youtube and wmg. The use of the Schiffrin piece is arguably not a violation of copyright and is definitely not bringing me any financial benefit.

Anyway - I'll keep everyone posted on the craziness as it evolves.

WMG, I know you will read this (you read my previous post about you).
Your strategy is wrong, wake up! Don't alienate the fans of the artists you milk.

and the four freedoms

So, like what's the EU all about? Well, some would say, it's all about the four freedoms:
* The free movement of goods;
* The free movement of persons (and citizenship), including free movement of workers, and freedom of establishment;
* The free movement of services;
* The free movement of capital.

What are we going to talk about today? Yup - free movement persons. I am a person. The Greek state is denying me the freedom to move. I have had enough of this.

I have a degree from a UK university. This degree allows me to seek jobs for which degrees are required, in the UK and indeed many other places in the world. This degree also allows me to continue studying, to do graduate studies. In the UK.

When I try to move these rights to Greece, to enjoy the benefits of my degree in the country where I was born, I am told by the state that I cannot. That this degree is not recognised and is therefore worthless to me when seeking employment requiring a degree or when trying to enter a postgraduate course. This is the law.

Are my rights being fucked in the arse by the Greek state? I think they are.

Am I going to do something about it? I don't know yet, but I'll keep you all informed. The Socrates of the Krito would sit and take this, but then the laws Socrates dies under in the Krito were not laws created by small and narrow-minded parochial bureaucrats afraid of losing their privileged positions of social authority to better educated people coming with degrees from universities which are actually engaged in teaching and research.

So maybe I will have to fight this.

made you look, made you stare...

Warner Music Group lols aplenty!

Not two hours had passed since I published, and the Warner bloodhounds came sniffing round the blog like flies buzzing round a spray of explosive diarrhea.

CFB

... and Youtube's new copyright policy whereby they kiss the ass of big buisiness to the detriment of the little guy

or how I started looking for an alternative

Youtube are now working with WMG and UMG - Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group - to help the firms reduce lost earnings from uploaded material to which they hold the copyright.

Admirable, huh? Coupled with whatever sizzling hot piece of database management and retrieval software is needed to give youtube almost real-time recognition of music that is the intellectual property of their new bedfellows, it becomes quite a technological feat as well. So bravo to youtube.

Since late last year, I have fallen foul of this new policing-the-net initiative not once, but twice! Once with a track from WMG and once with a track from UMG. In the latter case, the movie stayed on youtube, but can only be downloaded for viewing if you happen to be in one of the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, United States (not Greece nor Turkey, which is a pity as these are the two main audiences I was aiming at).



The Warner track led to the video being muted, which is unfortunate as not all the audio was owned by Warner and much of the effect if the video was ruined by the lack of audio.



My complaint is that this new policy is stifling my creativity. If it continues I am sure it will kill the youtube community who will only put up with so much before finding another home which won't mind fair use of music tracks on top of otherwise totally home made, not for profit videos. I am not talking about kids uploading music videos (which is an obvious and, in my opinion pointless infringement of copyright), nor indeed about people uploading bits of live performances (for which fair use could, conceivably, be argued) - I am talking about videos where someone has taken the time to sit and edit video and still footage and set this with varying degrees of care and creativity against a tune, which happens to be the intellectual property of someone else.

So here we go: while messrs Bonham, Plant, Page and Jones, have the moral right to their works - and this means that they have a right to control how their creation is used and while Herge has the right to say, "hey, I don't want Tintin portrayed as a drug addict" (whatever), given that the soundtracks to my videos are a small part of the whole, a whole into which a considerable amount of work and creativity has been expended, and given that the end result does not go against the original artists' vision for the piece, I think that youtube should relax a little with the whole copyright business. We are talking about the creators moral right - not the copyright owners paper rights on the piece (which obviously are being to some extent violated).

So back we come - post-google youtube is shitting on the people who built it, while leaping into bed with big business to the detriment of the site's users and (dare I say it) the original creators of the tracks being used as musical backing on the videos in question.

I have spent the best part of last night uploading my video with four different soundtracks to find one which I like which is acceptable to youtube. How annoyed has that made me, youtube? Will I jump ship as soon as an alternative presents itself? What do you reckon?

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

’Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief,
Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze—
A funeral pile!

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share,
But wear the chain.

But ’tis not thus—and ’tis not here—
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now,
Where glory decks the hero’s bier,
Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece—she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood!—unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.

If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?
The land of honourable death
Is here:—up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!

Seek out—less often sought than found—
A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

George Gordon, Lord Byron
Messolonghi, 22 January 1824

On the third day of rioting

There are three things going on here and it is difficult to separate the three, even for those living here.

Prologue: On Saturday night, Alex Grigoropoulos, a 15 year-old boy died as a result of a bullet wound to the chest. The bullet had been fired by a police contractor who should not have been carrying a weapon and was affectionately known as "Rambo" at the station-house on account of his short temper. Depending on which version of the story one reads the kid may have done nothing to provoke the wrath of the "policeman", may have pelted a police car with beer bottles or done anything in between. It is not unlikely that someone in the group of kids spoke indecently to the "policeman". The policeman responded by calling out the words, "This'll show you" before firing his weapon. Depending on who you read, the "policeman" then fired either two or three times. The "policeman" claims to have fired one warning short into the ground and two into the air. Eyewitnesses claim that the "policeman" took aim and fired twice at the 15 year old. The extent to which the use of deadly force is justified (in any of the scenarios which preceded the shooting) is left as an exercise for the reader. The coroner as at 9 December has not determined the angle at which the bullet entered the boy and so there is no way to determine whether it was a direct hit or the result of a ricochet. Obviously, graduates of the blinkered school of autopsies would have trouble pronouncing on such a simple thing as entry wound direction. As a result of the shooting the following happened:

1. On Saturday night, immediately following the shooting: Riots in central Athens started by anarchists / troublemakers using the death of Alex Grigoropoulos as an excuse to burn rubbish bins and throw stones around. This has continued as a theme every night since then and has resulted in banks and other commercial properties to be destroyed, as well as public vehicles (fire-engines, state sector cars, etc).

2. Schools have closed for a few days in mourning and there have been genuine expressions of grief / solidarity with his family. School children have made mainly peaceful marches on public buildings. Some have pelted said public buildings with stones and eggs and stuff, but the school children in general are not troublemakers.

3. Politically motivated groups have been calling on the people to do all sorts of weird things like bring down the government, begin armed class struggle and refuse to serve in the military (amongst others). They are trying to capitalise on the death of Alex for political gain. If I could spell the word demagoguery I might even write it in my blog.

So while the death of Alex Grigoropoulos is a very bad thing, it is being mishandled by everyone. The anarchists (it is only a small number of them) should be crushed - their fight has very little to do with Alex and the politicians should desist from their bickering and sit down to talk about reforming the police force on the one had and protecting the safety and property of your everyday Athenians living and working in the centre of Athens.

So, on with the show.

Alex has 13 friends...

That's what is says on the facebook page with his friends - a bunch of dippy 15 year olds like himself. So, Alex has 13 friends... either that should be 'had' 13 friends, or else, has millions of friends.

The hooded well-known unknowns are planning to burn the town again tonight, but I doubt it is now for Alex. They do it because they like to face off the police and burn property.

There's a whole lot not right here any more. As a former dippy teen who may have been in the wrong place from time to time while growing up, my thoughts go out to his friends and family.

While I disagree with capitalising on everyone's grief and anger by politicising Alex's death - a good hard look should be had at what sort of person is walking the streets of this country carrying and who it is we trust to carry guns. I hope that in the backlash to your death, Alex, the streets will become safer for my as yet unborn child, which will no doubt be just as dippy as I was.

... and the underwater dream

I never got round to completing the write up of this dream. It involved a big chest of treasure as well, I think.

It was a few nights ago now, but very vivid in the colours and the play of light and shadow. We were about 20m down although everything was bright as if we were no deeper than a few feet and the sand was as reflective as that at the beach on Elaphonnesus. I was there with a bunch of people, including Nikos and Kom, not sure why I was there, but I was enjoying it. At some point my bottle came off my back, but caused no distress to my breathing - I just had to hold the bottle so the tubes wouldn't run away.

There were no fish, only arthropods and that struck me as weird - as did the lack of plant material in the sea.

That'll learn me to write up the dreams closer to when they actually happen.

NRH rexit...

NRH regit, he would say. Or perhaps we said it, or wrote it. It stands, whoever said it. NRH taught me Latin - for better or for worse, my first year of Latin - my first formalised taste of the grammar of an inflected language and much more came at his hands.

Of course, he did more than teach Latin - he was headmaster - "Norman Foreman". And he was famously in charge of discipline and corporal punnishment - only a plimsole in my day but stories of earlier generations made the plimsole seem a treat.

Longest serving head master in the UK apparently. Such things don't excite me. What does it that I could translate into and out of Latin at O-Level standard when I was still 12. What does excite me is that I can still hear his voice declining the adjective "Ingens" (which as veryone knows is the model for present participles).

I guess the loss is felt equally because me was a teacher and because he is an influential memory from a bygone time when everything was different.

Anyway - ave atque vale

...and the weekend of the lions (coming soon)

Coming soon: a weekend in Ankara with Lion sculpture on both days. Can you tell where it is yet?

Anatolian hands

...and the beginning of lent

So, the beginning of lent is a strange time. It sits in between Lent and the Carnival straddling as it does the time of plenty with all its bacchic dionysiac hang-overs and the austere and Christian fast which brings us to the greatest holiday in the calendar: Easter.

The dome of the Omorphoklisia church with kite in the background.

It is usual practice for the municipality to provide the "Koulouma" (a word derived from the latin cumulus), the surplus of whatever is left that has to be done with for Lent. It's common for the municipalities to provide food suitable for fasting in open spaces where kites may be flown, for that is our custom.



We decided to visit Veikou Park, belonging to the municipality of Galatsi (a suburb of Athens built by refugees from and named for the Romanian Town of Galaţi), not least because the park is close to a 13th Century church which I have read about and want to visit, but have not had the chance to do so. The view from a distance was brightened up by the large number of kites in the sky all with their happily streaming tails. We parked about a mile from the church and walked up to it, then crossed opposite towards the park where there was all sorts of crazy stuff going on, things being bought and sold and people thronging and whatnot.

We bought our kite from a Roma at the entrance - a fancy schmancy affair in the shape of a bird, with a 3D body. The seller set it up for us leaving me to carry around this huge bird with more than 1m wingspan complete with bits of wooden rod sticking out (I would have had someone's eye out on one of them, but I was being careful).

On our way up the hill, we passed many of the people who are by their presence and nature helping to increase the cultural diversity of Athens. Extended families were sitting and picnicking, some with their women in headscarves, some with their women in saris most with meat on their plates thereby indicating their "otherness". It was quite exciting to be here at the beginning of the breaking of the homogeneity of the Athenian cultural make-up and it was interesting to see the Albanian balloon seller trying to persuade the Kurdish family to buy a balloon for their little girls.


We flew the kite - it soared and took us to the limit of our line - we wanted to have had more line and more time. For all my previous attempts to get kites in the air - this is the first time I can comfortably say that I have flown a kite properly. And I am hooked!

Now it is time to start preparing the messenger and the parafauna for next time!

Oregon Scientifc helmet cams: ATC1000 and ATC2K compared

Once upon a time, what seems now like a long time ago, but isn't, I read about the Oregon Scientific helmet cam on the NSS caving forum. One of the gear-heads mentioned the ATC1000 which was just out at the time and I bought one and played around with it.

About six months later I bought the upgrade model ATC2K. So, seeing as I had promised this to the guys over at forums.caves.org, time for my side by side comparison, here goes:

ATC1000 on the left, with AAA cell, right the ATC2K with AA cell

The ATC2K improves on many of the ATC1000's "problems" for caving. For me, these are waterproofness of casing / behaviour in low light / battery issues / mount. We'll go over these one by one.


The first is the more rugged and more waterproof casing. A side by side comparison of the two cameras shows that the older model is far longer than the recent one, but thinner and more cylindrical.

The ATC1000 is rated only splashproof (although mine has survived a brief total dunking) whereas the ATC2K is rated as being waterproof to 3m. The ATC2K also has a shadow guard (peaked front) for reducing flare and has a more rubbery feel than the ATC1000s very plastic look. Both have received their fair share of knocks and scrapes while attached to my helmet, without any problems or malfunctioning. After about 8 months of use (and this is connected to the mount also) the front end of my ATC1000 came off, making it no longer splashproof. I have submerged my ATC2K to about 4 or 5m without problems.

Behaviour in low light, next. The ATC2K is very much better at acquiring an image is low light. I don't know whether this is a CMOS issue, or a result of different hardwired software in the camera. The ATC1000 shoots at 15fps and gives a very smooth image with many tonal ranges. The ATC2K shoots at 30fps and gives a more contrasty (sometimes blocky) image. Whether the trick to achieve the increase in fps also necessitates loss of image quality I am not qualified to say. How this links in to the fact that the ATC2K will give a better balanced image in low light I also don't know. For someone who has not seen the image quality of the ATC1000, the quality of the ATC2K is not noticeably bad. The fact that it will capture an image, when the ATC1000 will not is what is important to me.



Comparison in low light and external conditions



Comparison in street conditions



Comparison in cave conditions


Battery issues: size and lifetime! The ATC1000 takes four AAA cells. The amount of recording I could get out of new alkalines varied from about 45 minutes to 75 minutes depending on the subject and the amount of time the camera was on standby. The lifetime of some otherwise pretty good Ni-MH batteries was not so good, ranging from 30 minutes to no more than 60 minutes. The cost of new batteries per hour recording or the inconvenience of carrying many spares was unsatisfactory. Further, it is almost impossible to change batteries without a pen or a safety pin to release the latch, especially when wearing gloves. The ATC2K takes two AA cells, much cheaper and much easier to find. The battery life was close to two hours for alkalines or well over one hour for Ni-MH rechargeables, meaning that you have to open the back more frequently to change memory card than to change batteries. So with the ATC2K you get many more hours recording for the buck. Another thing is that the battery indicator comes on when you have about 10 or 15 minutes of recording time left, giving plenty of warning. On the ATC1000, it would often come on immediately before the camera died. I am curious what the TFT screen on the back of the ATC5K is going to do to battery life.


Mount issues: The ATC1000 did not have a satisfactory system for mounting the camera on a helmet - the system required leaving the clasp in place on the helmet and sliding the camera in and out, something which may have sped up the detachment of the front cover of the camera. After a few uses like this, I decided on using inner tube rings to keep the camera attached to the helmet, something which worked well enough as long as I jammed a toothpick in there as well to keep the axis parallel to my line of sight. The mount for the ATC2K is much more handy, having a clippy system allowing you to detach the whole camera from the female mount with ease. I have the female part permanently fixed to my helmet and clip the camera into it whenever I want to. It sticks out from the helmet quite a distance but this is easy to get used to. As I wanted to be able to alternate place of mounting between helmet and elsewhere, without having to take off the helmet so as to undo the strap, I wrote to Oregon's customer support about getting more female clippy parts, but I received no response.

Some words about Oregon's customer service: there ain't none. You buy the camera, and that's it. If you want to contact them by e-mail, they'll never answer you. I have sent repeated mails to Oregon about various questions and none have been answered. I once sat in an automated telephone queue for 40 minutes never getting through to the support staff. Oregon are crap - if you buy something, from that moment on you have to come to terms with the fact that you are on your own. This is not the sort of customer services I have come to expect from across the lake. People interested in the ATC3K and ATC5K coming soon, should keep this in mind.


One more thing - after about 11 months of use, my ATC2K developed a patch of dead pixels or something, which was not on the exterior of the camera but which created a dead spot a few pixels in diameter. I have tried to reach Oregon about this as well, but with no joy.

...and the alcohol induced blackout

So, I have spent part of this morning, still nursing a dodgy stomach and a slightly groggy head, reading such gems as: "subjects are capable of participating even in salient, emotionally charged events-as well as more mundane events-that they later cannot remember" and "far from losing consciousness, the literature suggests that it is possible for individuals to experience blackouts while appearing only moderately intoxicated to the outside world". Tell me about it.

The last time this happened was back in the mid nineties, at that famous boatie dinner where they served a carrot soup for starters and then no one (apart from RVM) remembers anything at all. It is not good waking up and not knowing how you got home, how you got those bruises, what you did and what you said. Especially if the last time this happened, you were told that you had kicked a fellow from the vet school in the face (hi, Rachel).

So, I figured out for myself that some time between 3:18 and 3:24, I blacked out. I have photographs I recall at 3:18 and photographs I appear in but do not remember being taken from 3:24 onwards. On one level, it feels like I had a chance to get things out off my chest, that lack of alcohol would have inhibited. On another, it is scary to think that my own memories of everything I have been told that I said and did are gone forever and cannot come back.

Apparently, when the blood alcohol content hits an upper limit the capability of the brain to form long term memories fails, because the alcohol interferes with the transfer of messages from the short term to the long term memory. It's like its being relayed to a tapedeck with no tape in there.

It is all just a blank and this is scary. When the guards are down, we open the way to the monsters from the Id to come rampaging through to the real world. It seems they did to some extent.

Well, I remain groggy and confused. While my first two blackouts were five years apart, the second and third were more than ten years apart. I hope the next one will be so far in the future that it won't happen.

Woo!

... and the tale of the broken thermometer

So, K's been 'fluey for about ten days now, probably due to more than one cold or 'flu bug. I have managed to remain uninfected so far, which is just as well, as I have not had a jab for two years.

I received a text message one evening - "I have broken the thermometer"

Great - there's me thinking that the house will be flooded with hyper poisonous mercury fumes and what-not. In the event, there were no fumes and no little silvery liquid blobs zooming around my floor like the T-1000. There was however a small bubble of mercury rolling up and down the plastic case in which the broken thermometer was sitting.

No probs, I think, I'll take it to the chemists next door and ask them to dispose of the thing safely and I'll buy a new electronic thermometer while I am there.

Hello, I say to the nice chemist as I walk in, I'd like to buy a thermometer and to leave you this broken one so you can dispose of it with your other hazardous waste.

- Blank stares.

There is no provision for disposing of mercury thermometers safely, I am told.

So it all goes to the landfill?

- Nods

And the baby seals? I ask pleadingly…

- Shakes.

So it seems that there is nothing to be done but let the broken thermometer go the landfill, potentially be played with by the gipsy children, end up in the ground water and the food chain in general, and finish up in the baby seals or worse still in the cute fluffy polar bear cubs.

I resolved at that point to write to the municipality, something I have not yet done, but, believe me, I will do it. Apparently, there is no provision for safe disposal of medicinal sharps, either.

I love living in the Alabama of the European Union.

Paris day 1

So I am feeding the addiction to the online world even on my holidays. This is a French keyboard, and of course the French have to be different and have to have some of the keys in slightly diffreent places. Please excuse any stray wierd letters that may creep in.

Today we started from the base near the Place Gambetta and went into the centre of town to the Sainte Chapelle chapel, advertised as a rather fine bit of Gothic architecture in the centre of town, and surrounded by the buildings which replaced the halls in which Julian the Apostate once ruled. Other parts of the itinerary included the St. Severin, St. Julien, Museum of the Middle Ages and more.

I will have time to write more some other day, with photos. Kiddy bedtime dictates I now shut down.

Cephalothorax agogo!

While making the kiln, I took some photos of the three little visitors who had come to watch me build my kiln. I have never seen any these little guys in life before (I have seen many dead ones) so this was quite exciting.

Wood kiln II

The taking apart and rebuilding went to plan. I now had a kiln proportioned correctly on the length and width axis. The height axis was causing me problems, as using the two different types of brick made it very difficult to ensure that I had the correct ratio of firebox to chamber. Even so, at some point in the building I decided against the side opening for loading and unloading of the kiln for a number of reasons. The main reason was the odd proportions of the firebricks I am using, meaning that I had to lay two courses for each one in the plan to make the overall ratios of length to width to height fit. To avoid brining in weaknesses to the structure, I decided against exact doubling up of the bricks keeping the half-step building style going. The photos show the mock-up from the first day's efforts - to give an idea of the problem (four "half" bricks needed in the alternating layers).

I decided to do away with the side hole and make all the packing and unpacking from the top, which I would seal over with clay before the firing starts. Seeing as I had a number of firebricks left over I also increased the height of the chamber by one or two rows. Other than this, the kiln is built on the basic plan as given at sidestoke.

In this image the proportions are visible. I have replaced the normal bricks with firebricks for the grate to give a bit more room for the stoking process. I also like the idea of the sideways bricks in course 3. They should give a nice amount of air to the firebox - so it is not all bad that I did not have firebricks for the whole kiln.

My proportions are:
ashpit and firebox two courses high: 16cm each.
chamber is 9 courses high: 36cm

The chamber to firebox to ash-pit ratio in my kiln is therefore 9:4:4
The original plans call for a ratio of: 4:2:2

I am wondering whether this will make a difference or whether I should move a course down below the kiln floor, to make for a bigger firebox and smaller chamber.

My chimney is also a few courses shorter than the plan. If people think that I should lengthen it (with a metal tube or something) I will do so. It is meant to be 8 courses (16 of the half bricks) and it is only 6 (12 half bricks).

Finally, I have this back view of the finished kiln.

Feel free to make comments.

Woodkiln I

I have written in the past about my attempts to fire home made crude pots in the garden of my mother's house in Paloumba. The time has come to finally make the woodkiln that I have been investigating and planning for the past seven or so years. I have signed up to the woodkiln list on yahoo and I have bought a few books on the subject. The plan is to follow as much as possible the plans for the simple kiln on the Rosser site (http://www.sidestoke.com) with modifications to take into account the fact that the bricks I have are not standard western house bricks (6:3:2) and are not all the same size. The other problem that I have is that not all the bricks I have are likely to stand up to any sort of thermal shock. The plan is to put these non-special bricks in the ashpit and the firebox, the reasoning being that the real heat will follow the airflow into the chamber and out of the chimney. The bricks I have are either standard fine-ware building bricks which are 18 x 8 x 6 and will probably collapse spectacularly when the fire is kindled and some proper firebricks which are 22 x 11 x 4 - a ratio of (6:3:1.09).

The plan was to modify the plan on the Rosser site, to take into account the two different brick sizes.

On the first day, I made a mock-up of the kiln proper - layers 6-14 out of firebricks, repeating layers 8, 9 and 10 to take into account the shorter brick height. This went very satisfactorily indeed and was a very big boost to morale in the planning process. One thing that came to light was the need for leveling the ground a little before starting the next day. Everything else looked good.

The next day we went shopping with a friend living in the village called Kalinikos who knows about bricks. Going down to the river which separates Arcadia from Elis we bought a hundred of the standard bricks despite the protestations of the seller that they were wholly unsuitable for use in making an oven.

With the bricks in the back of the Panda, we returned home and put them in the garden ready for today's building effort.

Today, day three:

I cleared an area about the right size with the pick - to get all the grass and other plants up, then laid down a layer of the normal brick down to be my base. This layer was 10 brick widths long - to correspond to the 9 brickwidths of the firebrick which would be the length of the finished kiln. I did not take into consideration that 10 lengths of the short brick is shorter than 9 lengths of the firebrick. I then went on happily building row on row of the normal brick to make up the ashpit and firebox. I used the firebrick for the firebars just to keep some idea of the size of the firebrick superstructure in mind.

When the time came to put into place the first of the firebrick layers, the kiln floor - level 7 in the plan, I noticed the first major flaw in my work. I say major, because I don't consider the lack of horizontality in the brick courses to be such a large problem. As I was counting out the bricks to make my kiln floor, I got closer and closer to the edge, but there seemed to be no way to complete the placing of the bricks in the space I had set out. I had set out too few bricks in the lower courses and I was one half brick short of the planned kiln length.

Now, the plan is to take apart the front edge of the kiln, then flatten the ground in front of the kiln and relay bricks to allow the kiln to be made to the size in the original plan. This, for tomorrow, then.

Flight or sleep???

So a long time ago, I had written about the fight or flight mechanism, but here I am having gone through many cycles of fight and flight and profuse sweating and what have you and I am experiencing what I can only describe as a whole new reflex. I present to you: the flight or sleep reflex.

Oh yes - just when I should be fighting or fleeing, here I am, feeling that everything will become better if I take a nice little nap.

This is not the first time that I have had the flight or sleep reflex (which will no doubt travel the world as the "slap or sleep"). The only evolutionary explanation I can come up with for it is that by taking a nap in the presence of the predator, one may be able to persuade said predator that one is already dead and therefore not so good meal. A sort of possum response.

Of course, in the real world of today's interglacial holocene, taking a nap is often not the best way forward. But by god, do I wish I could.

Spasticity

So, here I am - physically and mentally, like, squeezed and I'm wondering, like, when is it that I have to stop pretending that it isn't and actually face up to the fact that my left thumb is going spastic on me, a little bit more every day, but definitely spastic?

There's a pretty question.

Thing is I have never had anything go spastic on me yet. So to acknowledge the thumb's spasticity is to acknowledge a whole new different symptom. And I'm not sure I want to do that before finishing off some work I am working on, and stuff. Got to look into it because I can't remember if spasticity is caused in the brain or in the spinal column (like the various exciting forms of paraesthesia I live with).

But I won't look it up because that would mean taking my head out of the sand.

New stuff on you tube

Recent additions to the youtube area are a rather long winded tour around the church of ss sergius and bacchus (kuçuk aya sofya camii) set to Holst's Mercury:



an off beat tour around the back of the church to the cemetery, after hookah in the garden, set to jazzy drum beats:



a rather fine airplane film I am very pleased with, set to "one of these days":



the selection and purchasing of some roadside onions in Buzau county Romania:



and finally, a bunch of random fish swimming around near prassouda island in the pagasitic gulf:

After the fire came rain

Except of course it didn't rain, but just thundered a bit and flashed a whole lot.

Sister Igor photographs her return from the Peloponnese

Fires still burning

Ash is still raining down from Euboea onto our balcony.

The country is waking up to the realisation that the state cannot do anything about the fires, whereas perhaps the right realisation should be that we are very small opposite nature and of course we cannot do so much when she is putting on her red and orange ball-gown. But then, we 21st century humans are so quick to forget how small we are in front of nature.

Pity.