Markham Nolan | Literary Mercenary
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Pleased to Tweet You

twitter-addictsNot everyone likes Twitter. Not everyone gets it. Just like blogging, which has suffused the net with people writing about their cat’s breakfast and their love of knitting, it’s seen by many as just another way to gaze at your navel, and tell the world about it. Saturday’s Guardian described it, derisively, as merely a way of following narcicisstic celebs – ‘A micro form of blogging that allows users to text (or “tweet”) their followers and tell them they’re on a bus or, alternatively, their innermost thoughts.’

And yes, the celebs are there. Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Jeremy Clarkson, they all tweet, some more than others.  It’s a technological Marmite, you’re either among the droves of followers who love it, or the thought of it makes you retch. But it’s a bit more than that. Journalist Adrian Weckler (@adrianweckler in Twitter-speak) gets it. He wrote a good post about it on Sunday in the Business Post, including an interview with @micheleneylon who has used Twitter as a business tool, dispensing free domains and offering online advice – proof it has application in the real world.

And as for myself, tomorrow I’ll be doing my first interview arranged directly through Twitter. I’ll be meeting Olympic silver medallist boxer, and avid Twitter fan, @KennyEgan, another man who has used social media to boost his profile considerably, and whose agent/manager, @steoreilly is also on Twitter.

January 26, 2009   No Comments

When a body meets a body…

bodiesIf you’re feeling dead on your feet due to the downturn (or as it’s portrayed on the radio – the Apocalypse/Armageddon/Financial judgement day) it’s time to put it all into perspective. And nothing puts death into perspective like a few rooms full of bona fide corpses.

Bodies opened at the weekend in the Ambassador, showcasing a range of cadavers turned into waxwork-like figures through a process called plastination. The process was developed by Mr Live Autopsy himself, the crazy German in the black hat, Prof Gunther von Hagens, but refined by American Dr Roy Glover, who curated this macabre show.

The show has hefted along with it plenty of controversy. The bodies used in the exhibition are of unknown provenance. The website states that “All of the bodies were obtained through the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in the People’s Republic of China.” Glover said that he is happy that the bodies are ethically sourced, and, to be fair, a lot of the controversy could be an inheritance from Prof von Hagens, who had to return bodies to China in 2004 after bullet holes were discovered in their skulls.

Regardless, this is a stunning show. The techniques used to preserve the bodies are clearly highly advanced and the result is a natural spectacle. Entire cadavers, with everything stripped away bar the blood vessels. Bodies dissected in all manner of tranches, vertical slices, horizontal MRI-like slivers, and with muscles ‘exploded’ from their points of origin to show how they work.

The spin put on the show to counter the controversy is that it is an educational exhibition, and that’s fair enough. Tidbits of information are dropped all around the exhibition space, organs with cancer and tuberculosis and the lungs of smokers (with a deposit box for cigarette boxes) sit beside clear white non-smokers’ lungs.  The show will open your eyes to what goes on below your skin, and even the most squeamish will find this scintillating. (I went along with my squeamish girlfriend – she kept dinner inside her insides, thankfully).

I spoke about it on Phantom FM’s The Kiosk on Saturday morning, hosted by Nadine O’Regan and ably assisted by fellow panelists/researchers Patrick Freyne and Johnnie Craig. It got five stars from me then, and it gets five stars from me now. Go see.

January 26, 2009   2 Comments