Random Stuff

[poliphilo]

We slept in this morning - something we very rarely do. I don't know why we keep to such a rigid timetable- getting up, eating and going to bed at set times. It's not as though we have to go to work. And we can't say we do it for my mother because she she no longer knows what time of day it is.

Leonard Cohen says of Dylan's Prize that it's like pinning a medal on Everest for being the highest mountain.

We think of urban pollution as something that came in with the industrial revolution, but according to a programme I saw on TV last night the combination of coal fires and badly designed chimneys meant that 17th century London was as unhealthy as any modern city- with the average hearth pumping as much poison into people's living rooms as a modern diesel engine would.

Comments

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I get up before 5am most days. I don't know why, really, since I have to be at work by 9:15... And today's Sunday, but I was still up before 5. I like my timetable. (Apart from anything, getting up early means I can stoke the wood burner before last night's fire has gone out!)

As for the Nobel Prize... Well... I have opinions every year - and to be quite honest I think Dylan is as worthy as any living beat poet. Was he the best option? Well, that'll always be up for discussion.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose the science prizes are relatively uncontentious. science is hard and fast- and something is either a great breakthrough or it isn't, but the literature prize (like the peace prize)often throws up controversy. The first laureate was the not very important French poet Sully Prudhomme- and many incontestably major figures- Tolstoy and Joyce for instance- never got it. I think Dylan is a really important cultural figure and a wizard with words- and that's good enough for me.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

You sum it up nicely. I can argue why other people should have gotten the prize, but not necessarily why Dylan shouldn't have it.

As for the Peace Prize... Oh dear... This year it seems more like a wish than a reality. But sometimes wishes are all we have to go by! And peace in Columbia would be rather wonderful...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Peace Prize must be a headache to administer. I wouldn't want to have to choose a winner every year.

As for the Literature Prize, I've just looked through the list of winners and there are a lot of names I don't recognise (a sad comment on the breadth of my reading) and several that seem to me to be less than towering figures. Galsworthy? Pearl S Buck? Churchill? Well, I know why Churchill got it but I'm not sure he should have done. Still they could hardly have given him the Peace Prize, could they?

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Even in rural areas, charcoal fires are a major contributor to early death. Far worse to have those in urban areas.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's an eye-opener. I had no idea...

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Chimneys were a new concept in the 17th century so they often got it wrong!

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I think Dylan does deserve the Nobel Prize, as the poetry of his songs are literature.