chickenfeet

I like this one though I've done it many times.


This time via sabotabby... "Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along."

sabotabby gave me ten interests (it's a long story).

alan turing

Brilliant mathematician who proved that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem was not decidable and in so doing paved the way for modern computers. These ideas were fundamental to his activities at Bletchley Park during WW2 where he was a key player in breaking the German Enigma ciphers without the which the Battle of the Atlantic, and with it the war, may well have been lost. He committed suicide in 1954 after being charged with homosexuality related offences.

complexity theory

A loose body of theory ranging from the rigorously mathematical to flaky new age wankery about how 'systems' behave in and adapt to their environment. It gets used a fair bit in organizational change settings where, despite weaknesses, it seems to provide more insight into behaviours and behavioural change than more mechanistic models. It has produced useful insights like the concept of 'necessary redundancy' and useful techniques such as the use of metaphor and narrative in framing problems and solutions.

invented traditions

see Hobsbawm and Ranger "The Invention of Tradition". Most of our 'traditions' of the kind generally believed to be very ancient kind are 19th or 20th century inventions. "Highland Dress" as worn at innumerable Canadian weddings and most of the other Highland themed Scottish flummery was invented by Sir Walter Scott for George IV's visit to Edinburgh in the 1830s. "Trooping the Colour" was invented long after British regiments stopped carrying colours in battle. Most of the 'traditional' features of American Thanksgiving were invented by women's magazines in the 1950s and so on.

weill

Wicked composer at least until he sold out to Broadway. Der Dreigroschenoper, Mahagonny etc are some of the most pungent and accessible works of the 1930s.

mrs ackroyd band

Les Barker, you're a bastard. A band originally put together over a few pints at Sidmouth to perform Les Barker's folk song parodies. Anyone who is anyone in the English folk scene has sung or played with the band. "Gnus and Roses" is probably the best album.

letterpress

My interest in small press run fine books is hardly a secret. They are almost always produced by letterpress, the old technique of setting metal tape and applying the inked plate to the paper. Once a common commercial process, it is now used almost exclusively for fine press work although the Kitchener record used letterpress as recently as 2000.

boethius

Marcus Anlius Boethius, philosopher and martyr. "The Consolation of Philosophy" is one of my favourite books. Although I'm not a Christian (Boethius doesn't seem to have been a very orthodox one) I find the combination of Faith and Stoicism of the Consolation enormously consoling.

lost causes

There is something about a lost cause that appeals to the romantic in me. It may be why I still cling to a residual Marxism.

mentalites

A form of historical enquiry originating with the group of historians around the journal "Annales d'histoire économique et sociale", it seeks to investigate the mindset of people in the past; to gat at what they believed by what they did and said. The approach has gained something of a foothold in North America in, for example, the work of Philip Darnton into various belief systems in early modern France.