{ 2003.02.01 } ...and I get back in, and four hours ago the shuttle Columbia didn't make re-entry. Awful. Terrible. News hubs: Scripting News; ext|circ. Already there's quite-frankly mind-blowing radar footage, photos of debris, first-hand accounts of what it looked like, the noise; a mailing list post from an expert, a comment from someone who's seen the telemetry data... all filtered and amplified, so I get back in, sit down, check my mail, RSS feeds, and find out: four hours ago the shuttle Columbia didn't make re-entry.

There was a kid in my class at primary school who spent a year in America with his family and during that time, in 1986, two weeks after Challenger, we listened to an audio tape he sent us of what it was like in his school, at that time. Actually I don't remember what he said, the words, but I do remember the disaster feeling a whole lot more real than it had merely seeing it on the news. Like this. And. The space program is a metaphor, so tightly bound with how [America/the West] thinks of itself, so modern and representative and obvious - tangible, graspable in a way that biotech or dotcom just isn't - that what happened today means so much more than just what happened. A hook. A shared phenomenon. A mutually understood and common exhilaration becoming-- something else. And so on. And so on. Sigh.

{ } I'm going to Wireless Cultures at the Tate Modern today: "Since the invention of radio, artists have used the radio spectrum as a medium for creative intervention and experimentation. In the past year, wireless internet connectivity, using the radio band, has speeded up the emergence of new mobile social networks in cities all over Europe and the United States. Driven by a Brechtian ideal to 'mobilise the user and redraft him/her as a producer', small grass roots groups are connecting neighbourhoods together in local area internet networks. How can these spark new areas of creative practice and what precedents were set by the radio pioneers? This half-day seminar explores the use of wireless communication in artistic and social contexts, through presentations by radio pioneer, Tetsuo Kogawa, cultural theorist Micz Flor, artist and filmmaker Pete Gomes, and Simon Worthington of Mute magazine".

{ 01.31 } Gypsies: A Persecuted Race: "Upon entering Christian Europe, the Roma realized much resentment was building because of their skin and social structure. So, they fabricated the story that they were descendants of the Egyptians who had enslaved the Israelites, explaining that for this reason God had condemned them to perpetual wandering. The Roma knew that many European countries were persecuting the Jews and that this false story would take some of the pressure off them. The story worked and the Roma became known as 'Gypsies' derived from the word Egyptian".

{ 01.26 } A pretty girl in crimson rose (eight letters). Good article on British cryptic crosswords and the people who set them. And which also takes me one step closer to being able to do the damn things.

It's similar to my obsession with Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz. It's team based, with cryptic questions based on general knowledge and the connections/associations between parts of the question. Every word counts. But it's structured as a guided conversation, and listening to it sounds like three people (the team plus the host) discussing in a language you can understand but with a structure and meaning you can't possibly follow. Intellectual Stanley Unwin. And at the end, after amiably chatting about cheese, New Zealand, bishops and mountain ranges, the host says "I'll give you 4 for that" and they move on. Wonderful like a sunny winter's day.