Sticks and Stones

For those of you not familiar with Aeschylus’ Oresteia (dubbed by Cambridge’s Professor Simon Goldhill the “finest work of literature ever”) or Sophocles’ Electra, and one would have thought that that included pretty much everyone, both concern the story of the House of Atreus, and I would like to talk about each writer’s interpretation of the story. The basic story is as follows:

King Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War, only to have his head hacked off in the bath by his wife, Clytemnestra, who has since shacked up with his nemesis, Aegisthus, and who is still bitter about her husband’s murder of their daughter, Iphigenia. This act leaves daughters Electra and Chrysothemis in grief and misery, but they retain hope that their brother, the exiled Orestes, will return and rescue them. He does this, killing his mother and step-father in the process.

As is common in Greek literature, however, the two authors have their own interpretations of the common myth, and these idiosyncrasies reveal vastly different expositions of the main themes of the texts. What I would first like to examine is the presentations of the characters of Orestes and Electra, who are the two main revenge-seekers in the play.

Notably, Aeschylus named his play (trilogy, as it happens) after the male, masculine, male, manly, male archetypal hero, Orestes, while Sophocles’ play is named for the female character of Electra. Indeed, while Orestes is the main character for Aeschylus, in Sophocles version he is barely seen, sidelined to brief appearances at the beginning and end of the play, with pretty much non-stop Electra in between.

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It may be thoroughly unwise to alienate our abundant foreign readership, especially from the States, but damn it, I am an Englishman, and Fair Britannia is undergoing a crisis. I refer to the news that companies such as McDonalds and National Rail will have the capacity to award qualifications equivalent to A-levels (like SATs, these are what universities look at on your application) for on-the-job training.

Now, I am constantly wary of morphing into Colonel Witherspoon from Petton in North Shropshire, but dash it all, upon hearing of this I felt physically sick. Have standards really slipped so far (dear God - it’s happening!) that a fast-food ‘restaurant’ will be the educational equivalent of a school or college? I refuse to believe that it is snobbish to insist that only academic institutions should be empowered to bestow academic qualifications.

Of course, these qualifications, whatever they be, will not be equivalent to A-levels - after all, there are some A-levels which aren’t equivalent to A-levels (General Studies, Textiles, Food Technology, etc.). Meanwhile, one wonders how these qualifications in the field of Management, Finance and what have you compare to A-levels - or even degrees at university - in Business Studies and the like. When viewed in that light, perhaps one’s outrage is lessened.

In conclusion, while as a thoroughly academic person I did receive the news at first with a bout of nausea, these qualifications give an opportunity for those who are without the luxury of full-time, or even part-time education, to improve themselves and their CVs while earning money. They will not be regarded as equivalent to A-levels, but rather will serve a separate purpose and cater for a different sector of society altogether.

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Molly Wood from CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast has started a new blog called ‘Cult of Ownership’. While we’ve written on copyright in the past, in fact the very first Sticks and Stones post was about the Creative Commons licensing used on this website, Molly is uniquely qualified to offer a comprehensive view on the tech industry and how we understand our rights regarding what we create.

In an age of more freely available digital artwork, music, and video, we perceive these materials to be free to use, share, remix, and indulge in - but those who know copyright law, especially the dreaded DMCA and the beleaguered concept of ‘fair use’ will know that this perception is very far from reality. I highly recommend Cult of Ownership, and strongly suggest you head over to the blog and read it in its entirety.

To answer the question in the title of this post, yes you do have the right to edit my photo of the Jaguar E-type, as long as you state that the original work is mine, and that you don’t use your edition or my original for commercial purposes.

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Prefab housing should never be sneered at. At time of great necessity, cheap materials easily combined to form a decent standard of housing, were paramount. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA built many - albeit not nearly enough - trailer parks; using prefab techniques to build easily and quickly assembled residences for those who need it most.

As with most mundane and necessary things, someone comes along and decides the idea should be spiced up. From there, a new artform is born. Houses as art is not a new concept: we’ve been decorating our homes and building brand new ones specifically to show off our fine taste. Classical forms used on gated mansions, glass-fronted modernist homes, even Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of the otherwise unassuming brick to great effect are all demonstrations of this desire to turn the home into something more than four walls and a roof.

MoMA commissioned five architects: KieranTimberlake Associates of Philadelphia; Lawrence Sass of Cambridge, MA; Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston of Manhattan; Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf of Austria; and Richard Horden of Horden Cherry Lee in London to form an exhibition of prefab houses.

Their gorgeous designs use the same materials that go into very cheap homes, but by adding their flourish these architects have turned ordinary boxes into beautiful and environmentally friendly dwellings. The exhibition is open from July 20 to October 20.

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Before getting this MacBook I was used to a 20 inch screen which allowed me a lot more screen real estate. Downsizing was painful because it allowed me much less space in which to do all that I do, which is why Rafe Needleman’s piece at Webware.com last week was so useful.

Even though you may not be able to decorate your desk with two 30 inch Apple Cinema displays as Al Gore does, it is likely that from a hodgepodge of assorted CRTs and LCDs you could create a truly impressive screen worthy of a nuclear power plant.

While impressive to look at and possibly quite pleasing to own, there are actual usability benefits to this indulgent proposal: you’ll get more done. It’s incredibly easy to add a second display: all modern operating systems and computers have support for this. It takes the click of a few buttons and the tightening of a few screws (possibly just the sliding in of a plug to a socket i.e. MacBook, Cinema display and the wonder of mini-DVI).

But what if you need your RSS reader, a word processor, a spreadsheet application, World of Warcraft, and Sticks and Stones open? You would need two, maybe three monitors at the very least. Products like DisplayLink and DisplayFusion would be best suited for this sort of rigourous usage. As soon as I dive behind my computer and unhook the necessary cables to link up the 13 year old Gateway 17 inch monitor, I’ll be hitting feeds twice as hard, and hammering out posts twice as quickly. Or, procrastinating twice as much.

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