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Archive for March, 2006…

For Leonhard: Why Climb Mountains?

March 20th, 2006 No Comments

In his little piece Mountaineering as a Life Style Danish mountaineer Jan Elleby answers the question why climb mountains? with this:
Curiously enough this question is only posed by people, who have not climbed any mountains themselves. For if you by yourself have experienced the adventures and quality in life that mountaneering may offer you, then you would never be asking this question.
This is unimaginative, clichéd rhetoric. The question has become more gripping for me since I started doing it, which disproves his argument. If there is a rule at all, it’s not this:

But this:

Get Out Yer Horn

March 9th, 2006 5 Comments

Had my first ever saxophone lesson today. It’s about time, seeing as how I’ve had the sax for something approaching 10 years. I have never stuck at practise for very long, and have forgotten most of what little I learned on those occasions, so lessons are the obvious solution, mainly for structuring, disciplining and motivating my practice.

The teacher is John Burgess, a local musician who has toured the world and recorded acclaimed albums. He was frenetic. I always find it slightly frustrating trying to talk to people who are obviously impatient, but if you’ve only got half an hour it’s bound to feel rushed: I think he’s an excellent teacher and we’re on the same wavelength on a few things. … read on »

Dreaming Spires

March 7th, 2006 No Comments

(http://www.koelner-dom.de/)
Most people have wondered what their dreams mean, or if they have any meaning at all. It all comes down to the question why do we dream?
I read an article recently that claimed that the purpose of dreams is to reorder our model of the external world, to tidy it up, assimilating and filing our new experiences.
I don’t know if there’s any evidence for this. Dreaming is integral to being human, but does that mean it evolved for a purpose, or to be more accurate, evolved as a distinct adaptation? My feeling – based on nothing much – is that dreaming is a spandrel, a byproduct of adaptation:
…the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.…a … read on »

Tasty! MSG, Umami and a Winter Walk on Cruach Ardrain

March 5th, 2006 1 Comment

It hadn’t occurred to me that savouriness was an identifiable taste that savoury foods had in common. Professor Kikunae Ikeda was led to the discovery of glutamate, and the invention of monosodium glutamate, by the idea that foods that are not sweet, sour, bitter or salty actually share another taste: savouriness, or umami. He said:
There is a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and saltyhttp://www.glutamate.org/media/glutamate.htm
This all happened a hundred years ago, so why did nobody tell me before? At a young age we are taught about sweet, sour, bitter and salty, but I don’t recall being told about umami. Anyway, it must … read on »

Mountain Dither and Roger Scruton

March 3rd, 2006 No Comments

I’m annoyed. Stu and I blithely assumed that we could tackle Stob Ghabhar (something like Stob Goor) on the Blackmount tomorrow. Got myself some trousers in Black’s at lunchtime but it wasn’t until I was back at work that the need for gaiters hit me, so Ann and I went to Tiso after work. Though I’m a sceptic when it comes to expensive gear, the staff in Tiso are very experienced and knowledgeable: every time I visit the shop I pick up a gem of advice. This time it felt more like a shovelful of shit heaped on my bright fresh fledgling hopes. When I casually mentioned that I didn’t have an ice axe or crampons he immediately wrote off … read on »

Veggie Pathology

March 2nd, 2006 No Comments

© Ken Currie www.nationalgalleries.org
Is there a connection between principled vegetarianism and ghoulishness? An obscure example is the vegan grindcore band Carcass (defunct many moons ago I think). And as an obscure example perhaps it’s inadmissable. But no, I present Carcass here as the apogee of this disposition and the perfect illustration of this idea, the idea that whatever it is that leads people to become principled vegetarians has, for some at least, got something to do with a preoccupation with, or a fear of or fascination with, the macabre and the grisly and the anatomical.
I haven’t thought it through yet, but I’m fairly sure there’s at least a kernel of truth here. It’s certainly true that these vegetarians and … read on »

In The Beginning

March 2nd, 2006 5 Comments

Don’t get me wrong: my lovely Moleskine notebooks can never be replaced. For anyone out there, I ended up starting this blog while I was looking around the web for the best way of satisfying a suddenly-felt need: an online jotter, for private use. And here we are.


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