Being laid up on holiday is a good thing (by laid up I mean not charging around on some series of of recreational quests) You get to stare at the ceiling and ponder, and watch a lot of silly TV which becomes oddly informative. Yesterday's CNN business show was dominated by the question 'Do you still work when you are on holiday?' The representatives from business on show were almost united that they did, and they were proud of it too. Only one said, 'Well to be honest I hope I hire people of a high enough calibre to do without me for a while'. The others were universally paranoid that they could not leave their work alone for fear their precious companies disintegrate without them.

Why is this happening? Well it is clear that our form of capitalism certainly not only feeds on place but also time. It is also clear that it provides an every bigger array of distractions, some of which may even appear to be work, others entertainment, others just mental impairment. The Machine, physically and metaphorically propagates itself with great speed.

I read this morning that when Gericault painted the revolutionary painting 'The Raft of Medusa'. He cut off his hair and locked himself in his studio for seven months. This seems unlikely, even absurd, today but in 1819, in France, perhaps not.

Perhaps this is a context in which we might be able to understand 'the philosophers of terror' Badiou and Zizek. Situationally we are bemused within some kind of War on Terror, both of them appear to endorse terror historically (but not the same kind), and thirdly they are terrifying because they might be right.