Florence 3

This is the last set of Florence pictures I am posting for the time being. Its kind of a shame I didn't have a decent wide angle lens with me, so I wasn't able to take any shots of Florence's architecture. These details will have to suffice.

Pastoral Saint

Santa Maria del Fiore Duomo

Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus With the Head of Medusa

European University Institute Gardens

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Tuscany 2

Here is the next batch of pictures from my travels in Tuscany. The first again is from Pisa, and the rest from Florence. I have long been fond of statue photography, and the opportunities for this sort of work are ample in Florence. It fills me with wonder that so these places are so replete with works of true human genius. I wonder how much even decoration has become a mere commodity in the contemporary age. Careful art is far more satisfying.

Gazing Face (Pisa)

Scholarly Contemplation

Hellenic Grace

This last photograph is actually of the site of our conference. The Villa Schifanoia

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Tuscany

This is a selection of photographs from my academic trip to Tuscany. I'll have more coming. All photographs' copyright mine.

Lion of Pisa

Receding Light

Lion Prowls the Piazza della Signoria

The Rape of Polyxena

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Retrospective in film 3, Korea

This is the last in the retrospective series. These are three shots I took at a folk village in Korea. There is something of a timeless quality to them all, and the ethereal tones of Kodak Tmax 100 speed b&w film. As before click on them to get full sized images. All photographs' copyright mine.

Hanging Gourds

Spirit Frightener

Dengjang Pots

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Retrospective in pictures 2

I took these photographs on my visits to the Netherlands last school year, when Ahreum was working in the Hague at the International Criminal Court. Do click on the pictures, as those in the post are reduced size. All photographs' copyright mine.
Ahreum was one of the few smiling faces in the Hague. There was something of a grimness to the city, and I was happy I wasn't visiting there on my own.

This is a strange flower I saw growing in Wassanaar. To this day I don't know the name, but my parents recognized it and said they had even planted one. Maybe I'll stop being lazy and ask them the name.
This picture and the next are from the Dutch tulip festival Kuekenhof. It was a little campy, but on the whole a brilliant display of vibrant tulips. One can get a feel for the madness which the unpredictable beauty of these flowers can bring to tulip aficionados.


This is second best flower shot I have ever taken. Regrettably the best is back at home with my pre-England photo albums.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Photographic memories

I've just uploaded some older scans onto my new computer, and I thought it would be nice to offer a sort of best selection of my pictures up until now. They are representative of my travels since I have been in Europe, from my first days in Exeter, into the Devon countryside, Netherlands, and Korea. This is the first set from my early rambles in Exeter and its countryside.

This is an angel carved on the side of Exeter Cathedral. There is something solemn and representative of heavenly serenity in the angel's countenance.

This is the burial monument for Lady Dodderidge in the Exeter Cathedral. She was the wife of an important Exeter lawyer. She is garbed, almost expressionless, in perfect Elizabethan dress, yet she grasps skull. I have always been struck by the morbidity of this picture. This picture and the one above were taken on my second day in Exeter.
An old stone gateway on Dartmoor. This photograph was taken after I had been in Exeter nearly a year.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

I just discovered that my department actually has a little blurb about me online with a picture. I recall that they asked me to write this and provide the photograph last year, but I thought they had never actually published it. Well, here it is: http://www.huss.ex.ac.uk/politics/research/students.htm

My path to web infamy (read being completely unkown) is almost complete.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Ethics of food

It's been awhile since my fair trade post, and recently in England Fairtrade has made the news again. I saw something of a pulp documentary considering whether Fairtrade is living up to its promise. The first Nestle Fairtrade products are storming up controversy. How can a Nestle product possibly be Fairtrade?

The problem, in my mind, is that many of the Fairtrade activists interviewed for this television programme have conflated the goals of Fairtrade with anti-corporatism in general. They see that big companies are using (read abusing) Fairtrade products in order to make money. They place large premiums on a Fairtrade product because people are interested in buying ethically. Now this certainly happens. Here at Exeter campus depending on where one goes one can pick up a Divine Fairtrade chocolate bar from anywhere from 50 to 90 pence. Its all the same, it is just different vendors setting different prices. So is Fairtrade being hijacked by corporations?

I should think not and the reason is simple. Fairtrade is not a socialist or communist ideal. Its whole point is to improve the standards of living and the pay received by third world produces by appealing to the market. Rather than with normal commodities, the basic prices for ingredients are set to a minimum. This protects the producer. Now for the producer's situation to be actually improved, the products need to move off the shelves. For the products to be popular, public awareness and marketing needs to be in place. Fairtrade knows this and must hope to leverage companies and supermarkets to sell Fairtrade products. Business is business and the profit has to be there. Capitalism is thoroughly wrapped up in this venture. But if companies can make a profit, and the products are popular, and huge producers like Nestle join in, this means that more chocolate, sugar, or bananas are needed. This means more orders for the farmers. And that means a better life for them. The whole point should be for supermarket chains and large food companies to "abuse" Fairtrade for their own profit because in the end this has a demonstrable benefit for the suppliers. As long as we are aware of this reality, I can think of nothing better for farmers than for Nestle to produce Fairtrade goods.

But after having thought about this I thought about other ethical food movements. What about fairtrade, free range, organic food, local food, small farmer food, and seasonal food? It seems to me that the ethics of food has become increasingly problematic and possibly chimerical. Say I want a tomato. Say I live in, Devon. It is the height of summer, and tomatoes are in season. Will the tomatoes at Tesco's be from Devon? Probably not. They will likely have organic and un-organic varieties. Where will these come from? Possibly England, but maybe the Netherlands, maybe Spain, or even Israel. If they are from far afield, it means that a good deal of diesel on a semi-truck or ship or jet fuel on a plane has been burnt getting the tomato to me. Enter the specter of global warming.

Now say I go to a farmers market. There I might buy a locally grown tomato, but it might or might not be organic. In any event, I haven't paid for huge waste in shipping, but I have given my money to a farmer who is likely to be highly subsidized by his government. And doesn't this mean I have worked against fair trade? Does this mean by going local I have gone against fair trade? But if I go for fair trade, because of the the products involved, by default, I have failed to go local and that I am contributing to global pollution. What a mess.

And then there is organic. At first it looks great. No fertilizers to imbalance the local ecosystem, no pesticides to damage the ecosystem. Great. But hold on a second. Isn't there a reason all those hideous chemicals are used. Surely it is to improve yield within a given area of land. Now if we ditch these chemicals, then something has to give. If I am a farmer and want to have a yield of X cabbages to sell and I go organic, then it is likely I will need to increase the land I farm in order to get the same number. This means, if we all went organic, either many more square miles of farmland would be required or a much lower quantity of food would result. Since much organic farming is corporate anyway, and buying organic doesn't necessarily mean supporting local farms, these issues can be set aside. Doubtless having a cleaner farm is a good thing, and I am sure that many farmers overuse chemicals and fail to rely on other alternative solutions. But at the same time, if I could chose between fewer farms (especially hydroponics) and more nature, actual unused land, I would be tempted to opt for more nature.

What I am trying to get at here, is that a good deal of the different ethical food movements offer overly simplistic views of the intertwined technical and moral concerns which actually crop up (pun intended) in the production of food. This is not to say that these ethical concerns are unimportant, but, as things stand now, they lead the ethically minded consumer into a number of unresolved ethical conflicts. More importantly they can be used, in the case of the Divine chocolate above, to empty the ethically minded consumer's pockets of a good deal more money then he should have actually had to spend, were he savvy, for the same principles. Most importantly, I don't think that it is right for me to have to engage in an internal debate every time I try to buy something. By and large, it is probably better to be lead by what tastes well crafted, than what some faddish ethical movement sees as singularly important. It is true that my actions and my decisions have consequences, but I suspect the after effects of each decision I make at a store and over multiple visits to different stores over my life are far to complex to be mapped. There are two many unknown variables for me to even begin to have the presumption that my shopping list has been ethically coherent. Therefore and henceforth, I refuse to play this game. If appears to be of good quality, nutritious and at a price that is sustainable for me, then I will buy the foodstuff of my choice. Otherwise I delude myself, possibly make things worse, and likely spend more of my resources than I should have.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Hiking

Spring break begins this week after a long and busy winter term. I gave another paper last week on methodology (just baby steps here). Yesterday I had an annual progress interview at the department. It sounds like I'm on track, and I feel confident that this is the case. So now I am taking a little time to relax.

Not that I can rest for all of break, but I am balancing my work with recreation. So today I went on a moderate hike in the nature reserve trails North of campus. Part of the trail is an abandoned country road. It goes uphill for quite a ways and eventually turns wet. In fact the road bed has become something of a small stream fed from a spring bubbling up somewhere on this hill. The pathway begins being shaded by trees on both sides, but as one makes the climb, there is eventually a break in the trees on the right and a beautiful view of the valleys North of the city is revealed. In fact there is a side trail into one of the valleys upon which I hiked for a short while. There are some other good green places in Exeter, but this is one of the few areas that is really wooded, natural and open for hiking.

As spring comes into its own, I encourage you all to get out from urban life and the manic streets, and go walking in the countryside. You don't have to be a camper or a long term hiker. Just have a ramble in the rolling hills. For those of you living in really big cities, this might be more of a production, but I know that you can go hiking on several mountains in Seoul and many cities have substantial open parks.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Back from Florence

I just returned from a brilliant set of conferences in Florence. The joint paper with Rob Lamb on Fenelon went without a hitch. We had some pointed questions, but I think we handled our selves amicably and astutely. In general the conference on the Passions and Virtues was academically very rewarding. The papers were tightly composed. The crowning event, in my estimation, was a newly retired professor, Nick Phillipson from Edinburgh, presenting on Adam Smith. It was a flowering of a lifetime's work and scholarship. His erudition on all manner of subjects was astounding, and he brought all of this together in a honed performance.

The other conference I attended in Florence was evaluating Early English Books Online. This was fabulous . Academically rewarding as well as technically stimulating. I am something of a geek, so I'm excited about how this sort of internet service really leverages much of what the internet can do for academics. I learned quite a bit about using EEBO, and I think I helped other people explore its possibilities through my report on how I use it in my research.

I got back into England last week, and Ahreum and I celebrated our two year dating anniversary. I was inspired by all the wonderful food I was fed in Florence, and I pulled out all the cooking stops to recreate something of a Tuscan feast. Of course I can't help but improvise, so whether what I made was in any real sense Tuscan is open to doubt, but it borrows the spirit and the feel of Tuscan cuisine.

My prized creation, in Ahreum's opinion, was a newly invented pasta dish, at least for me. One uses spaghetti (enough for two large or three medium sized portions. 4 or 5 cloves of garlic. A package of ricotta cheese (UK sainsbury's or Tesco's standard size, I think a US package is likely to be two large), a little milk, about 4 good handfuls of young spinach, and a dash of nutmeg. Begin by bringing some olive oil to a low/medium temperature in a saucepan. In another saucepan or stock pot, bring some water to the boil and put in plenty of salt. Dice the garlic, season with salt and pepper and lightly fry for about two minutes. Don't let it brown up, or this will damage the flavour. Then start adding the spinach a handful at a time with salt and pepper to season. At this point the spaghetti should go into stockpot. When the spinach has wilted and been nicely cooked add in the ricotta cheese and stir so it melts and breaks down. Grate a bit of nutmeg in. Not too much or it will be overpowering. Then use an immersion blender to blitz the sauce into a finer consistency. A splash of olive oil and a splash of milk (or potentially cream) finish the sauce. When the pasta is finished drain and put it into the spinach sauce. Return to the whole dish to the heat and stir together for about a minute or two. Done.

Tomorrow, I am back to the teaching grind at Exeter. But at least Ahreum is here to visit this weekend. And today is her birthday, too. Happy birthday to Ahreum. I am told her age is sensitive information, so I can't really say how old she is. But it is somewhere between 1 and 100, I assure you all.

Once more into the breach,

Ben