Here’s a very interesting article from Hometracked regarding the structure of [lastfm:Linkin Park]’s songs. A simple analysis does indeed indicate what I might call a ‘consistent’ approach to production…
Category: Blog
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/29/10677/
This story about Chevron is just outrageous. Even in context the “little countries” quote is just crazy. It’s a shame a man in Obama’s position can’t take more of a stand on these issues than allowing a spokesperson to reiterate a vanilla statement. I guess once he’s done campaigning he will be able to take up causes more actively, but only if his presidential campaign is unsuccessful – one has to worry that if he wins, running the mess that is America will take up 110% of his time… We need more good people in positions of power.http://www.last.fm/music/Jay+Electronica/_/Act+1:+Eternal+Sunshine+(the+pledge)?autostart
I’m loving this. Jay is in the process of being corrupted by E. Badu, but it’s no reason to hate on him (until he turns to Kanye for beats – Common, some advice, Dilla, Poyser, ?uest, they helped you find forever long before Kanye turned up…)
John made mention of this prestigious prize and its deserving winners during the Q&A session after yesterday’s showing of The War on Democracy.
“In the spirit of the great war reporter Martha Gellhorn, these two extraordinary journalists – Dahr Jamail is American and Mohammed Omer is Palestinian – share the Prize for their courageous, insightful and, above all, independent reporting.”
7pm, Room 8, Lambeth Town Hall
Talk by David Fleming – Energy and Anarchy “The market is not the solution; it is part of the problem”. David proposes an alternative.
Anarchy
Leo Tolstoy drew comparisons with religion, christianity in particular.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon described the power of small local groups and self-organization.
Matthew Arnold wrote “Culture and Anarchy”, and argued for state administered education, suggesting strong education and cultural awareness will lead individuals to good instinctive choices.
Colin Ward was editor of British anarchist newspaper Freedom from 1947 to 1960, and the founder and editor of the monthly libertarian journal Anarchy from 1961 to 1970. He recognised that people will naturally organise themselves.
This propensity to ‘naturally organise’ ourselves can be observed throughout history. The 1956 Hungarian uprising was funded by buckets in the streets into which people put money towards their greater good. Hannah Arendt, often intrigued by the mechanisms of revolution, wrote of community self organisation in the context of the 1956 revolution.
On Organisation
“Organisation is nothing more than the method we choose to get food on the table”
Forms of Organisation
- Command and Control: Authoritarian
- The Market: ‘Fabricated’ rewards and incentives
- Presence (participation): individual involvement
We can judge these forms of organisation by these broad criteria:
- Incentives (Intrinsic & Extrinsic)
- Creative Potential
- Presence/Absence (of the individual)
Incentives
Command & Control Market Presence Extrinsic: Fear; Power Extrinsic: Monetary Intrinsic: System objectives Incentives, particularly the artificial extrinsic ones, don’t work.
- Disincentives – Punishment – lead to resentment towards the ‘powers that be’
- Hence impaired relationships
- Focus on payback
- Sterilisation – we take less risks
- Devalues the task
As an example of this last point, consider this case study: Two groups of volunteers were asked to solve a challenging puzzle. One group was paid, the other was not. A coffee break was announced, and the paid group immediately took the opportunity to get away from the task. The unpaid group however worked right through the break. The task was devalued by the artificial incentive.
A special screening and Q&A session with John Pilger at the Clapham Picturehouse cinema.
The War on Democracy was very thought provoking. Pilger covered huge political events from the past century in Latin America, where the USA has pursued it’s usual selfish goals at the expense of others.
During the questions and answers session somebody asked “what can we do to help?” To which J.P. had no truly satisfactory answer, instead gently hinting that once you kow enough about the situation to help, the how should become clear.
Lucy and I entered into a long discussion (over steak and chips), about how we could help. Lucy confessed to being inspired to pursue a Masters in South American history, an idea of hers from her Atlantic College days. I challenged this idea, playing my usual devils advocate, by suggesting that the completion of a Masters might not leave Lucy feeling any more empowered to help.
My recently sparked passion for local scale initiatives as a force for wider scale change – see topic green living for examples – led me to suggest that the real answer is at home. My argument was that greed and a desire for security (energy, food, etc.) is driven by the lack of these securities on a local scale. If I were able to fend for myself, it is likely that the burden of responsibility I heave upon the shoulders of the country’s leader would be significantly reduced. Thus it is the responsibility of each of us to become self sufficient and find a way of developing a sociable marketplace for goods and services which focuses on the now and not on our individual, and hence selfish, future interests.
Future interests to me suggests monetary interests. In a simple example, an individual with a surplus of beans could give them to a needy neighbour, and probably would if he couldn’t sell them to a needy neighbour. It is this concept which distills the meaning of the previous paragraph. Local scale economies have no need for complex and often unfair trade mechanisms, instead requiring simple local currencies, if any monetary markets at all.
I think any movement away from our reliance on global markets is positive in both an economical and political sense. As such I will be doing all I can to move towards local sustainability. I’ll plant my own crops, buy from local sources, build instead of buying at all, and investigate renewable and local energy sources. The idea of a local currency has even been considered in my area (Brixton). You’ll find mention of it here – http://www.transitiontownbrixton.org.
Lucy and I have bought a cat! Yep. His name is Frankie, and he’s a jet black moggy. Some heartless people in Frankie’s past left him without home or love, and he turned up at the ‘Battersea Dogs and Cats Home’ where the right kind of people helped him find a home. With us! Frankie is a bit nuts, and we’ve attributed this to his past, where no doubt he took fox attacks in his stride as he broke feline hearts in every town. He’s quite the explorer, and is struggling to deal with the indoor lifestyle we’re forcing upon him for these first few weeks – he needs to get to know the place before we let him outside… He’s already escaped once, through an open window, and now will not stop moaning about how much he wants to get some fresh air. I’ll be uploading some photos soon so you can all get to know Mr Frank.
I write sated, after another successful Sunday roast. Itunes is making it’s way through a playlist of Christmas classics, and I feel rather at peace with the world. It has been so long since I have thought to write on this site, and now I have my new ultra mobile laptop, it just seems like the right time! The laptop, by the way, is an Asus Eee PC. An Intel Mobile Celeron 900MHz processor chugs along, under-clocked to 600MHz for the battery’s sake. 512MB RAM is plenty for the day to day tasks, and I was impressed to discover that this could be upgraded to 2GB in time (sacrificing the warranty – Asus clearly want very little by way of support hassle!)
The tiny beast sports a 7 inch LCD, which is surprising usable, an uncomfortable (but what do you expect) keyboard, and a fully featured mouse pad with both vertical and horizontal scroll. All are less comfortable to use than their full size brethren, but for a laptop small enough to fit in the pocket of my baggy jeans, I’ll settle for a bit of discomfort. Oh, I nearly forgot – it was only £200. Everyone should own one, there’s no excuse not to. Yeah, it’s Linux not Windows, and no you can’t play Crysis, and no it doesn’t have an optical drive, but it’s rugged (no hard drive, just 4GB SSD), cheap, and gets almost every job you could want to do on the move done.
New Music
With my inner geek now under control (I promise), I should mention my latest musical discovery. The Portico Quartet are a wonderful new jazz group whose debut CD, Knee Deep in the North Sea, is as original as it is melodic. The group comprises four accomplished young musicians, and together they have fashioned a hybrid sound – ‘Knee Deep…’ bridges the gap in my collection between the chill of Zero 7, Groove Armarda et al, and my jazz favourites.
The guys are all local to me in Brixton, and I found them performing an intimate coffee-house gig at the Ritzy Cafe. It was the perfect place to experience their sound first hand, and particularly to have my first introduction with the hang – a flying saucer-like steel drum used to great effect on all of the band’s compositions.
The highlight of both the night’s performance and the band’s CD is the album’s title track, which demonstrates perfectly the haunting, mellow backdrop the hang contributes to the soundscape. There was no danger of stolen thunder however – the saxophone and drums were both well played (even if the sax seemed a little rehearsed), and the star of the show for me was the bassist, who manipulated his instrument with the ease and skill one might expect of a seasoned performer, and who was responsible for drawing the other instrumentation together to yield a far tighter performance than we might otherwise have experienced.
The moment we’ve all been waiting for?
It seems to be official – there will be a fourth Fast and Furious movie! A little backstory… Any of you who know me will know how much I love the first in this (lately disappointing) series of films, not in a small part due to the part played by Vin Diesel and his ‘team’. The writer of the last FaF film, Chris Morgan, has apparently been given the go ahead to work on the script for the next in the series (big deal…), but far more importantly, rumours are circulating that the film might carry on where the first left off, bringing Dom Torreto and his crew back into the frame. Yes! Is it…? I think so… It can’t be. I hope it is… The moment we’ve all been waiting for!
A note to those of you who don’t know me. Please do not judge me based only upon the above excited paragraph…
Yes, I’m aware a blog should be updated more regularly than this. Last night the family (Mum, Amy, Georgie and myself) spent the afternoon and evening in London. Very enjoyable indeed! We started in the shadow of the London eye, eating some tasty sandwiches (thanks Amy) and people watching. As usual, Southbank was playing host to an array of street performers, free-runners, breakdancers and tourists, so plenty of food for observation. Then off to the book stalls, where Amy picked up a bargain, and Georgie reflected on her relationship with reading (disfunctional is an understatement). The air seemed to have cleared from a slightly unnecessary barney in the car (sorry Mum), and in good spirits we headed off to the Tate Modern for a little look around. Loved the slide installation and Carsten Höller’s sliding doors in the new aquisitions exhibition. Gourmet Burger Kitchen did the dinner honours, and the ongoing 2006 production of Evita at the Adelphi Theatre was wonderful.
