Sorry for the exaggeration marks.
But it is pretty cool. It seems to be this guy‘s idea, but this is the recipe I’m most tempted to try:
You need to click on either the link or the photo above to see why it’s such a fab idea. I’m almost tempted to try doing one of these myself.
Two questions really – why did *I* choose to take part, especially since I didn’t have much to say, and why have a B. A. R. Day at all?
The first question is easy – I think it’s an interesting and potentially valuable exercise, and I wanted to support it and help spread the idea. I don’t imagine it’s going to change the world any time soon, and there’s a risk of it being an exercise in right-on self-congratulation. But what I like about it is that it’s not asking people to sign a petition, or wear a badge, or buy a wristband – it’s asking them to think about the subject and articulate something – an opinion, an experience. And many of the responses are interesting, like this one on race in romance novels.
And that’s good enough for me.
I find other people’s overt racism deeply offensive. On the other hand I score rather badly on the race version of the Implicit Association Test which is supposed to measure unconscious bias.
I don’t think the test result means that the offended reaction is any less genuine, but it does suggest it’s not the whole story. A strong social taboo against overtly racist behaviour is a good start, but it’s only a start.
He’s going to do it today, according to the Times.
EDIT: I find this Pope-quote about Limbo amusing, btw: “Personally, I would let it drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis.” Unlike purgatory, sainthood, and the papacy itself, presumably.
I’ve been thinking about web design recently, specifically as it applies to a possible redesign for this blog. There’s no rush, because the current look is fairly new and I’m pleased with it, but I had set myself a more ambitious target. Inspired by an exchange I had with Will over at Corridor of Uncertainty, I wanted to come up with something which broke away from the standard layout of ‘header and 2 or 3 columns’, which looked genuinely distinctive and sharp.
Obviously you can’t get away from the fact that most of the content you want to present (posts, blogroll, categories) is naturally in a column form. What you can do, hopefully, is break up the boxy visual appearance, both by disguising it – rather as I’ve tried to do with the fading-out of the blue boxes in the current design, which softens their appearance – and by laying them out somewhat differently. And that’s quite apart from all the decisions about typography, visual style, colour-scheme and so on. I would want to get the look stylish without being über-tasteful, modern without trying to present myself as terribly hip (which I’m not), and low-key while still being distinctive. And no Flash or Java, both because they’re completely unnecessary with this kind of site and because I wouldn’t know how to do them anyway – it took me long enough to learn my way around basic HTML and CSS.
I do have a few ideas, but it’s not coming together just yet. In the meantime, I had a (not very thorough) scan through the long poetry blogroll to see what other people have done. Most, sensibly enough, have just used one of the blogger templates. And there are plenty with good, simple designs based primarily on sensible colour and type choices. But here are a few that have managed something a bit more distinctive. In no particular order:
Equanimity (probably my favourite of the lot, though the one-column layout is a bit limiting)
jane dark’s sugarhigh!
Shanna Compton
{lime tree}
JewishyIrishy
Jacob’s Ladder
One Good Bumblebee
Odalisqued
Postcards from the Imagination
Watermark
Note that I’m not talking about anything particularly radical or super-ingenious, just good design.
I’ve been watching Strictly Come Dancing which, for those who don’t know, is a BBC knockout pro-celebrity dancing competition. Last year it was won by a soap actress, the year before that by a newsreader. This year, for me the pleasure has been watching Darren Gough. Gough is a fast bowler (i.e. a cricket pitcher), and he’s a big beefy cheerful Northern lad. For years, when England were crap at cricket, Goughie could be relied on to wake up the crowd and lift his teammates – but I don’t think anyone ever would have guessed, watching him run in and try to knock the batsmen’s heads off with 90mph bouncers, that he was a natural dancer.
What’s been great, watching him, is that although his dancing is sharp and technically excellent [according to the judges], he never loses the sense of bloke-ish physicality. Doing the jive, he could be a GI at a local dancehall; doing the salsa he could be a Cuban stevedore on his day off. There’s nothing dancerish about it. And he always looks like he’s enjoying himself.
To go off at a tangent for a moment, Brazilians sometimes claim to play football ‘to the rhythm of the samba’. I’ve wondered sometimes if English clubs would do well to take that literally, and to teach the young trainees to samba as a kind of cross-training. If nothing else, it’s good practice at close foot-control and balance.