At the weekend, Wendy and I went to see the son-et-lumiere installation Space, by the Luxmuralis collaboration, at Durham Cathedral.

It was visually impressive, lending the Cathedral an unusual ethereal quality, and changing the feeling of a building we know reasonably well. The sound was also effective, and at moments, the combination was genuinely breathtaking.

But we were slightly left wondering: what’s the point? What is the artwork trying to say? In one installation, there was audio of Richard Nixon speaking to the Apollo 11 astronauts, saying

For one priceless moment in the whole history of man all the people on this earth are truly one.

One wondered if this was a bit of a dig at the divisiveness of religion, exhibited in a Cathedral—but the whole thing left me with the impression that it wasn’t intended to be that deep (especially after I was handed a prayer card on my way out).

I think it may just have been spectacle for spectacle’s sake, and perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that.

When I first bought an iPhone, I remember regularly checking the App Store charts, searching for anything new or exciting to install on my phone. The top apps weren’t just installed on my phone, but also on all of my friends’ phones. It seemed like everyone had the same selection.

I don’t think that’s true anymore. As the number of apps has increased many-fold, and perhaps as the cultural milieu has become more diverse, I think the selection of apps on people’s phones varies to a much greater extent.

So I wondered: what proportion of today’s most popular apps are installed on my phone?

Of the top 10 free apps on the App Store, only one (ChatGPT) is installed on my phone. Of the top 20, only three are installed. Many of my apps rank lower in the charts, but I still have 18 of the top 50 installed—more than I might have guessed.

Of the top 50 paid apps, I have only one. I also have just one of the top 50 free games, and none of the top 50 paid games.

I’m not sure what any of this means, but it feels like a big change compared to fourteen years ago. Perhaps our personal devices have become a little more personal than they once were? Or maybe our collective attention is becoming ever more fragmented, threatening the shared nature of reality? Or perhaps both?

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

Most of my childhood cinema memories are of occasional trips with friends to Southport’s ABC Cinema. It had two screens to choose from, the schedule for each published in the local paper. The tickets were traditional little stubby paper things which were torn in two on entry, the usher retaining one half by piercing it with a needle attached to a string.

I even remember, on at least one occasion, my friends and I taking handwritten notes from our parents to confirm we were appropriately aged to see a particular film—which seems a remarkably lax form of enforcement even for the 1990s.

I don’t have many memories of going to the cinema as a younger child. But in June 1993, when I was eight years old, Steven Spielberg’s film Jurassic Park was released. In the build up to the UK release, there had been much feverish discussion and media speculation about what age classification the BBFC would give the film. It was eventually, not uncontroversially, awarded a PG certificate—though with a special note attached that it

contains sequences which may be particularly disturbing to younger children or those of a sensitive disposition.

In the modern world, it’s a 12A—but that didn’t exist in 1993. I remember being delighted by the PG decision, and I was very keen to see the film. I can’t recall who took me in the end, but I do remember that I didn’t see it at the cinema—I saw it at Southport Theatre, which used to occasionally show films.

These memories have been stirred by the news that the very projector which showed me that film has just been preserved as historically important during the demolition of Southport Theatre.

I found this a bit mind-boggling at first: the theatre was built in the 1970s, so the projectors would probably have been only 20 years old when Jurassic Park came out—how could they possibly be historic? But then I remembered that 1993 is 31 years ago, the projectors are over half a century old, and time is a funny old thing.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

You’ve seen that rock before.

I don’t often link to journal papers, but this one by Sabrina Jin et al in The Lancet Infectious Diseases really tickled my fancy. It introduces the concept of ‘infodemics’—’an inundation of information accompanying an epidemic or acute health event’—and makes the case that these have always existed. It’s a neat corrective to the societal panic about the spread of health misinformation on social medical, suggesting that not much has really changed.

There were two bits that I especially enjoyed.

The first was the painting at the top of this post—and 1802 etching by James Gillray of small cows erupting from the sites of the cowpox vaccination, lampooning a common reason for vaccine hesitancy. Concern about vaccines is far from new!

The second was the challenge back to the medical profession about our own indulgence in disproven myth, using perhaps the best imaginable public health example (ahem):

Although medical institutions often praise John Snow, some aspects of Snow’s work have been altered as part of public health mythology. According to popular renditions of his biography, Snow created a dot distribution map that connected patterns of cholera mortality with the Broad Street water pump used during the 1854 cholera epidemic in London, UK. These observations allegedly led to the removal of the pump and halted the outbreak in the surrounding community. However, close examination revealed that the cholera outbreak had already peaked before Snow’s discovery, indicating that the reduction in mortality was not directly associated with removal of the pump. Despite this inaccuracy, Snow’s work—including its mythicised features—continues to be celebrated as an integral part of medical history. This continued celebration of historical falsehoods indicates the enduring existence of mythology and inaccuracies, even among medical and public health professionals.

Splendid work.

Your preparation for a future Only Connect round about people commemorated by fountains on Newcastle’s Great North Road continues. Having ticked off WD Stephens and ED Colvill, our attention is inevitably drawn to William Laing’s memorial fountain:

The inscription reads:

Erected by the widow of the late William Laing of Newcastle and Gosforth in affectionate remembrance of his lifelong interest and kindness to all dumb animals. 1895.

Laing was a business partner of Stephens, so perhaps memorial fountains were just de riguer in their social circle. Laing was also one of the founders of the Town Moor Temperance Festival, which has morphed these days into The Hoppings, which ordinarily takes place just across the road from this fountain.

The Laing art gallery in town is associated with the wine merchant Alexander Laing rather than the shipbuilding William Laing commemorated by this fountain. I’m not sure whether the two were related.

According to BBC News:

A Scottish island community is divided over a supermarket’s plans to open on a Sunday.

The Tesco branch on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides has started holding consultations with staff and residents about opening seven days a week.

The island, which has a population of about 20,000, has a long tradition of observing the Sabbath day, meaning that some shops – including both supermarkets – currently keep their doors closed on a Sunday.

There are many good reasons for Tesco to be closed on a Sunday, but I wanted to rant about the claim that ‘a tradition of observing the Sabbath day’ is one of them.

In Christianity, the Sabbath day is the seventh day of the week—Saturday. Observers are supposed to follow God’s example in Genesis and rest on the Sabbath day.

Christians then devote the first day of the week—Sunday—to worship. This is distinct from the Jewish tradition of resting and worshipping on the Sabbath; Christians worship on the first day rather than the Sabbath as a commemoration of Christ’s resurrection on a Sunday.

This was drummed into me endlessly in GCSE Religious Studies, and I’ve never forgotten it. No wonder I won the Religion Cup several years running.

Except… the Isle of Lewis is Presbyterian, and the Free Presbyterian Synod has declared Sunday to be the Sabbath for Presbyterians. God may have rested on the seventh day, but Presbyterians don’t. They even have a strict rule against using the internet on Sundays, to the extent that their website closes each Sunday.

So, I was wrong, and I’ve learned something new about the world.

As an aside: you might imagine that ‘Saturday’ is derived from ‘Sabbath day’, but it’s actually from the Roman god Saturn—wrong religion, and all that. The same does not hold true in Catholic countries: sábado (Spanish and Portuguese), sabato (Italian) and sobota (Polish) all come directly from ‘Sabbath’. Life must get confusing for Presbyterians in those countries!

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

The disreputable former former former Prime Minister of the UK was quoted in their least-favourite newspaper this week:

I thought it was the wrong thing to do, and a bit petulant. Plenty of other European leaders sustain referendum defeats and carry on with their duties.

Once I’d processed the lack of self-awareness inherent in the hypocrisy of a certain eight-letter adjective, I came to reflect on the oddness of the word ‘sustain’. Things that ‘sustain’ us support or uphold us; yet we ‘sustain’ injuries and insults. How can it mean such different things?

It turns out that the word is derived from Latin: ‘-tain’ comes from ‘tenere’, which, as even a passing knowledge of European languages will tell you, means ‘to hold’. The ‘sus-’ comes from ‘sub’, as in ‘under’. So, ‘to sustain’ is to hold something up, supporting it from underneath.

Immediately, the two senses reveal themselves: things can support us, or we can do the supporting. While the former is largely positive, the latter is more complicated. We can hold together a friendship, and find that sustaining it is a wholly positive experience. Or we can hold up a weight that’s threatening to crush us, with almost unbearable burden and discomfort. The rich tapestry of life means that sustaining something can sometimes be both fulfilling and impossibly difficult at the same time.

To give the pompous wally his due, in the context of the quotation, ‘sustain’ could be read in the plain sense of enduring the defeat, or as a jibe about supporting the defeat by being a bit rubbish.

‘To sustain’ contains multitudes. It’s nice to see the complexity and ambiguity of the human experience reflected in language sometimes.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

Before I read this Financial Times article by Bryce Elder, I didn’t know:

• That ‘Trump’ branded watches existed.
• That anyone would try and sell such watches for $100,000, let alone successfully.
• What a “tourbillon” is, “and, though it probably does nothing, people appreciate the extra engineering required.”
• That a 75% gross profit margin on a luxury watch is not unusual.
  

Every day is a school day.