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59 Productions and the creative Large Hadron Collider

Mark Grommer at TED

My goodness.

When I started this blog in 2005, it was an experiment. The software was new technology and there were many people eager to get their hands on it — to see what they could do with it and how it might change society. In my early posts I tried out different styles of writing and different topics to write about. I made friends and received praise for my output. It was in the back-and-forth of blogging that I learnt to write clearly and persuasively, which has led to a weird, varied and rewarding career.

The impetus to experiment with new technology came out of the milieu in which I was working at the time, in the office of 59 Productions in Edinburgh. Collaboration was highly valued: the idea that creative people would, together, be more than the sum of their talents. Digital technology was becoming cheaper, and we adopted guerrilla approach to film-making and theatre. Where the tech did not yet exist, we chained together disparate components and made-for-other-purposes software to produce the desired effect.

Scotland was the perfect incubator: host to internationally famous festivals, and yet small enough that the most influential and creative people in Scottish film and theatre were usually only a phone call or a five minute walk away.

We made some marvellous things.

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The Equaliser

The Labour politician Frank Field (Lord Field of Birkenhead) has died aged 81. He had prostate cancer.

Back in 2015 I had my own fight with that disease. Actually, it was less of a fight, and more a minor altercation. A fracas, or an affray. I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and had an orchidectomy the next day. 


An instant cure, which I’ve always thought as Nature’s cruel contribution to the inequality of sexes. Some uniquely female cancers are not so easily dealt with and are just as deadly as they were a generation ago. 

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Democracy vs Ochlocracy

Simpsons Angry Mob

The Government’s hideous Rwanda asylum plan has been ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.

Under the plan, people who applied for asylum in the UK after arriving via an irregular route would be deported to Rwanda, and have their claim processed there. Not everyone realised that successful applicants would be granted asylum in Rwanda.

My view is that the policy is wrong on the most fundamental level. We take far fewer refugees than we should, if they were dispersed proportionally throughout the world. There are reasons why people choose particular countries for their asylum claim and it’s often to do with prior links to that country. It’s absurd that a person who already has family living in the UK, and who applies to the UK government for asylum, should be sent elsewhere.

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Rationing Immortality

Written in September 2023 but for some unknown reason not actually posted until January 2024.

I’m not long back from a beach holiday, which was the excuse — well, the impetus — to do what I could do on any idle Tuesday: put down my phone and pick up a novel.

If my own, slender attempts at fiction have anything in common, the theme is immortality. In The Good Shabti, Pharoah Mentuhotep takes the after-life for granted, while amoral scientists attempt to reignite dead brains. ‘Round Trip’ considers, inter alia, what one might do with eternity, and what could animate someone to want to live forever. ‘Frozen Out’ is about cryogenics.

Immortality is also the theme of Void Star by Zachary Mason. This is spec-fic where two variants are presented: anti-ageing; and the possibility that one might upload one’s consciousness into a computer, to be preserved and propagated (and perhaps, if one suffers a catastrophic injury, to be rebooted).

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A Response to ‘Cultural Relativism’

The World Cup starts today. The festivities have been overshadowed by the fact that host-country Qatar has an appalling human rights record. It abuses its migrant workers and homosexuality is criminalised.

In a controversial press conference, FIFA President Gianni Infantino defended Qatar and accused critics of hypocrisy.

Who are we in the West to lecture others on what values are appropriate for their societies? The universality (or not) of human rights and other values is a topic that I have often considered on this blog. It’s also an issue I had the opportunity to study recently as part of my LLM at the University of Law. Below is an excerpt from an assessment essay I wrote for the International Human Rights Law module. (It was graded ‘as a ’Distinction’ don’t ya know!)

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