Some links to liven up your Friday afternoon:
The BBC has the news that David Tennant held aloft a real human skull in the graveyard scene during his stint as a beanie-hatted Prince of Denmark in the recent RSC production of Hamlet.
Which is fine, and rather a nice story when you read the detail. But what brought me up short as I read it was this line:
…it was not revealed that Tennant used a real skull in the play’s most famous scene.
Really? Its most famous scene? It’s an important scene, and key to the story, but I can’t think of a good argument for its being better known than the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. I can only conclude that whoever wrote the piece has either forgotten about the soliloquy (and can’t know much about the play) or thinks that it’s delivered during the graveyard scene (and can’t know much about the play).
I don’t ask that BBC journalists know Shakespeare by heart, but it would have taken all of two minutes to do the necessary research. It’s lazy efforts like this which are the reason I’d rather read an article by a thoughtful and well-informed blogger than one by a rushed and hard-of-thinking pro. Those of us who don’t do it for a living have the time to say exactly what we mean, on precisely the subjects in which we have an interest. And sometimes it shows in the quality of what’s produced.
Due to an unfortunate incident at the weekend, I am currently one-handed. At least, I can use my left hand, but it’s bandaged up and I’m not allowed to get it wet. So far I have overcome this by initially not washing at all, and then by having a bath and holding my left arm up in the air throughout. But today I am at home, and as my flat is only as big as an egg there is no bath, so I am about to experiment with the one-handed shower. I’m going to don a washing-up glove and hope for the best. Wish me luck.
There’s an interesting post on the nature of maps over at Strange Maps today. I remember when some former colleagues and I decided to buy a map of the world to display on our office wall, back in the days where I worked somewhere where people had conversations, and outside interests, and we had a long discussion about what sort of a map we wanted, and someone (probably, I have to say, me) said that we should choose one which reflected a “real” view of the world, rather than one which was devised for the advancement of imperial interests (see the Peters Projection versus Mercator debate for more on this). Now it seems that even that is an over-simplified view.
…to the person who came here searching for “Emmerdale Farm audio samples”, and I’m sorry I didn’t have what you were looking for.
I can’t find the full thing on YouTube, so here’s the BBC video of Obama’s acceptance speech. He’s really an extraordinary orator, and I look forward to more speeches, for the poetry as much as for the content. If you don’t want to watch the full 17 minutes – though it’s worth it – then skip forward and start watching at 13:05.
People keep telling me Obama will win it by a mile, but I can’t help worrying that it will all go wrong at the last minute.
Still, the man himself looks cheerful enough:
(Image via Wikipedia)
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