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only I spell it Nature.
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- Household inventory management (20 Jun)
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- Rieff on Sontag (28 May)
- Queer times pudding (23 May)
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- Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (*** Film 6 Aug)
- Matthew Barney: No Restraint (*** Film 6 Aug)
- Team America: World Police (* Film 10 Jun)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (*** Film 28 Apr)
- Among Friends: Who we like, why we like them, and what we do with them (*** Book 1 Jan)
- 84 Charing Cross Road (**** Film 20 Dec)
- Boogie Nights (** Film 19 Dec)
- Garden State (*** Film 10 Dec)
- One Soul Now (*** Music 11 Nov)
- Hearts in Atlantis (*** Film 7 Oct)
- House of Sand and Fog (**** Film 17 Sep)
Today in history
- Mount Herbert: vexed again (2004)
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Friday, 19 March 2004
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I was a hostage, now they are billing me
ROBERT Brown was just a 19-year-old from Glasgow when he was jailed for life for murdering a woman called Annie Walsh in Manchester in 1977. He served 25 years before he was finally freed in 2002, when the courts ruled him innocent of the crime.
He is now facing a bill of around £80,000 for the living expenses he cost the state. For Brown, it is the final straw. An interim payment he was given pending his full compensation offer is exhausted; his mother recently died; his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart and he is facing eviction from his home following a mix-up over benefits.
The Home Office said an “independent assessor appointed by the Home Secretary takes into acccount the range of costs the prisoner might have incurred had they not been imprisoned”. The spokes man said the assessor was “right” to do this, adding: “Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate.”
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Genghis Blues
FilmDir.: Roko Belic
The story of San Francisco blues singer, Paul Peña's, journey to the lost nation of Tuva. Peña teaches himself to throat sing in the Tuvan way, and heads off halfway around the world to compete in a throat singing competition where the prize is a horse he won't be allowed to take on the plane.
Peña, who is blind, finds himself treated with respect in Tuva for his singing and his understanding of people. He reflects on the fact that he is denied this respect back in the US, where he is just a helpless blind man.
It's a touching, fascinating story, but it skips entirely the science of (or even a cursory discussion of) what throat singing actually is. This article at Scientific American tries valiantly to explain it: Scientific American: The Throat Singers of Tuva.
The journey also follows in the spiritual footsteps of the great American physicist Richard Feynmann, who attempted to visit shortly before he died. Indeed, he got the ball rolling by wondering whatever happened to the nation he collected stamps from as a boy. More about Tuva at the Friends of Tuva. More about Feynmann at Feynmann Online. More about Peña at paulpena.com. All these sites make fascinating reading.
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