Game theory rules (sic)

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Saw the BBC2 programme on game theory last night which was amusing to see on a number of levels. The great mathematician John Nash expounding a theory about people’s selfish when he was mentally ‘ill’; R D Laing walking around in a cravat; the BBC in sonorous tones telling us when/how/why ‘we’ were being manipulated. But for me the best was seeing Margaret Thatcher talking about freedom in connection with the fall of the Berlin Wall (garden wall?:-). And so obviously now seeing on her face the lack of real comprehension as to what she was talking about – freedom that is. Ah well, it’s tough being an agent of history.

PS: See my own small contribution to the anti-psychiatry movement at the Foucault Tribunal back in 1998; was fun at the time hanging out in east Berlin; chatting to Kate Millett in the workers’ canteen, and mentioning to her that James Earl Ray had just died.

g8 artists: diane e. hall

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Nice to see Diane’s art online.

Do you have technosexual leanings?

Posted on March 9, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Laughed when today’s ‘Urban Word of the Day’ hit my inbox with ‘Technosexual’:

“A person, male or female, who is so deeply enthralled with technology they discuss it with a level of passion that most people reserve for [sex]. Not always a [geek] or a [nerd], but generally someone who has the latest and greatest everything.”

“Eg: She became so excited about her new laptop and PDA that her friends knew she must be technosexual.”

Er, I think I’ve worked with a few technosexuals.

Science and art meets

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Science and art meets in synchronising, yourself.

Do you talk to yourself?

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Stuart Hall

I have a number of bad habits one of which is I talk to myself. The very nice lady in the cafe over the road heard me, and asked what I had said. Nothing I say, I was just talking to myself. I talk to myself because it’s too boring to say out loud. But what I mean is that people would be offended. It ceratinly keeps me going at the gym, talking to myself. The day before the guy who runs the cafe gave me two free bananas. I guess he has taken pity on me.

Dick Cheney

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Dick Cheney, wow that guy is bad luck. He has a heart attack. His face gets covered with a black cross on CNN (below). He gets rocket attacked in Afghanistan. He goes to his GP yesterday with DVT, just at the same time there’s a conference in Seattle where they they have a new treatment for it. So of course I make a joke at work that he’s cruising for something. Then I go home and hear his former aide has been found guilty. I shut up.

Steak & chips (aka winning teams)

Posted on March 5, 2007 by Stuart Hall

I’m having steak for dinner…

PS: Latest John Hopkins podcast says multi-vitamins are a waste of money.

PPS: I got indigestion from the steak and woke up in the middle of the night and thought hey, isn’t successful ecommerce first about change before sales? You’ve got to get a website to change from no sales to sales, and that in turn is connected on a team culture which can inject change. Then my humour took over and I thought how do you know if you have a great team? Obviously, when they do what you want them to do! Or is it when they add value without being asked. But then how do you make that happen?

The Illusionist

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Walked to the Showcase Cinema over the River Roding, with a full moon, to watch ‘The Illusionist‘ tonight (set in Vienna, music by Philip Glass). A very romantic film. After it had finished we walked out the screen exit on our own into this: a pavment bathed in the red light of the crackling neon, looking up the moon appeared to be smoking. It was an eclipse. A fitting conclusion to the film..

The History (4) Boys

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Stuart Hall

Diane caught up with Leicester radical historian Ned Newitt the other day and bemoaned the fact that I wasn’t ‘doing history’ any more. OK, that’s partly just another common mum type theme about sons not doing what their mothers want. But I confess since ‘Uni’ (1987) I haven’t entirely been quiet. After all I did help the 30th anniversary campaign (1998) with Dr Coby Smith to re-try the real killers of Dr Martin Luther King, re-writing history in the process. But that’s mothers for you. Never happy.

PS: Looking forward to unveiling of the MLK scuplture in Washington DC next year, April 2008, also a US election year I believe? I’m sure these connections are not lost on Rev Al Sharpton, from what he was saying about the lasting legacy of slavery on the Daily Show. Funny thing is how going to Brazil I found out more slaves went there than the US; maybe that’s why Snoop did his video from there? The connections are there to be discovered, that’s history. (Funny, didn’t I hear earlier this month that the study of slavery is going to be part of the National Curriculum in the UK, as part of the study of the British Empire?).