But here is some fun stuff, sorely needed in this time of high stress and pre-relocation confusion.
Here is a summary, not particularly uplifting, of my current mood. NJ is a drain on the soul.
Even good american humour (humor) isn't doing the trick right now.
Most of you will not understand the poster above but here is where it comes from. I have learnt (learned) during my stay here that it is considered as one of the all time classics of contemporary US humour. Saturday Night Live, Will Ferell, Christopher Walken
I am also over this whole election shit. It's dragging on for far too long and nothing new ever gets discussed. As I previously predicted, John McCain will get the nod. Watch. The song remains the same. Another 100 years of this according to him.
Work-wise, the corporate restructure is continuing. The time has come for all those who have the luxury of time to jostle for position. The less you work, the more you get promoted.
So in summary,
Some good stuff, though. I spent a few hours with some old friends in London this week and got to catch up and abuse my Camera & 50mm lens.
You reckon?
Gav's reply to Lou Reed's "waiting for the man" video was a somewhat contemporary performance by Bob Dylan.
Time to re-revisit Highway 61. Remember that number. 61.
Gavin suggested this one but the one below is a more complete effort for those who aren't familiar with the album or the song (There is a special afterlife waiting for you...).
"Ballad of a thin man" from "Highway 61 (Revisited)"
And for no special reason other than I think this will become a classic too, my favourite from Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows": "Reckoner". (I think it shares a certain hypnotic rhythmic quality with the Mr Jones song)
I couldn't end this post without some hardcore trivia.
Apparently / possibly, the name of this album ("In rainbows") comes from the Golden Ratio (or Phi - ) being applied to the album track. That's 1.61803399 (Type Golden Ratio in Google).
So apparently, 61.8% of the way through the album the lyrics "In rainbows" are sung in the background. Hence the name of the album. Kewl.
The Golden Ratio, closely related to the Fibonacci sequence, is very closely linked to the universe and the natural world. Its proportions can be found from Galaxies to flowers, trees, leaves etc...Here is an example
But back to Bob Dylan: I take the RP (Radiohead Percentage - remember I coined this) 61.8 , retain the whole number and I get 61.
Like a famous highway. I have to go take my medication now.
Since I wrote about Bill Maher and his comments about the catholic church and Bear Stearns last week, the expected calls for his resignation and the boycott of the HBO channel have been heard.
Interestingly, it is the "Pope-Nazi" connection that is the most contentious. No-one is demanding a full retraction (yet) on the church-organised-pedophilia connection. Maybe because it is true?
It's interesting to me because I never thought much of the nazi connection argument anyway. A historical side note more than anything else.
Giving a home to pedophiles as the catholic church does (and has always done) is what I find outrageous. It is fact.
Thousands of people who have been abused have testified to that and the church has admitted guilt by paying hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. (1000 in Boston alone) So why can't it be said on TV?
At least Joseph Ratzinger has sort-of apologised this week (The 2nd time in less than 10 years) . But for this kind of abuse you would expect a piece-by-piece dismantling of the church. Words are just words.
The church is saying it will review its internal policy. So you mean it never thought it a good idea to do so up to now?
Unf****believable.
In the corporate world we have something called Sarbanes Oxley and SAS 70 that rigourously ensure that internal processes and controls are appropriate and cannot lead to evil. CEOs are held personally accountable for fraud and misdeeds.
Finally, this blog has had a huge surge in hits (300%) since I covered the story and upon closer scrutiny, they came mostly from the automated bots (programs that scour the Net for specific keywords) of "Bear Stearns Security Corporation" (Bankrupt thieves) and "American Life League" (Militant pro-lifers). I am almost flattered.
They want to know what the blogosphere is saying about them. Maybe they know something we don't?
"Rolling Stone Magazine, The Village Voice, CMJ and the New York Press have all at one time or another called WFMU "the best radio station in the country" and the station has also been the subject of feature stories in The New York Times and on the BBC. In recent years the station has gained a large international following due it's online operations and counts Simpson's creator Matt Groening, film director Jim Jarmusch and Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, among others, as devoted fans of the station."
If it's good enough for Lou Reed, it's good enough for me. (Speaking of Lou, check this gem out)
There are hundreds of stations in NY and it's almost impossible to find one that is consistently fresh and surprising.
WFMU is the exception.
The first time I stumbled across their frequency, I tuned into Billy Jam' show and if you're into hip-hop, acid jazz etc... give one of his archives a try. . The full list of his mixes is here.
Oh and one last thing...
After I found the "waiting for the man" song (Lou Reed, above), I followed the trail to John Cale and his cover of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen and then remembered my favourite version of this song by Jeff Buckley. Check it out.
Joseph Ratzinger is in town. Also referred to by some as the pope, although he prefers, for the sake of warmth and simplicity, to be referred to as "his holiness".
Here is a friendly looking photo of him during his Hitler Youth Camp days. There seem to be no evidence that he was a Nazi sympathiser - at least not more so than the Catholic Church was.
So that's good, he's not a Nazi.
What other personality traits make him a good moral leader for 20% of the free world? Besides his unshakeable and unprovable belief in the talking snake and ghosts he seems to have at least the moral fiber of his predecessor, Karol. You know, the guy who protected pedophiles, ignored AIDS, banned birth control and shunned the right of women.
You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick.
20 people, they look through a hospital window at you forever.
Over that, we can't deal with it. Someone who's killed 100 000 people, we're almost going, "Well done.""
When a problem is so large as to involve more than a minority, we don't solve the problem. We institutionalise it. It's easier.
(I wonder what the tipping point is for this? When does outrageous behaviour become the norm? Reminds me of a systems suddenly bifurcating, a phase transition of some sort...mmm)
Here is an easy experiment on the onset of chaos. Try it.
I see it in my work - everyday. There is a saying in software design: "Any bug too hard to fix becomes a feature".
In the case of Bear Stearns, they lost so much money that the whole financial ecosystem would have been affected had they been left to die their rightfully-deserved death and thus the American Taxpayer (Yep - you, me) decided to bail it out.
2 days later the traders at Bear Stearns were promised that they would still receive their bonuses (we're talking millions of dollars each here...)
By the way, this moral credit we are foregoing by following these corrupt religious "leaders" and the financial credit we are wasting by bailing out bankrupt organisations: that loss of credit is the very reason America today has a shaky moral ground to invade countries and it is the same reason that America has no financial leverage to apply pressure on China to sort out its Human Rights abuses.
(This is because America's internal consumption [Gas, Pensions, the War, Health etc...] is fueled by selling US Bonds to the Chinese and other emerging nations, making them America's de facto banker. Of course America is also one of their largest customer, making this relationship even more complex)
Bankruptcy is not a good negotiating platform.
Unless...following the logic described above, the easiest way to safety is to bankrupt the rest of the World with it. Morally and Financially. And that is exactly the behaviour we observe: increase religiousity and increase debt. Douse the fire with petrol. That will sort it out.
Maybe Bernanke could drop the interest rate even further? How about another corporate tax cut like the one released under the guise of a "Housing Bill"?
This is why I follow the elections. This is what is at stake and it can be addressed. God willing.
I especially enjoy the "safeguard the dignity of the torch" statement. I guess that it must be a different kind of dignity from the one applied to Humans (you know those weird animals created in god's image 6000 years ago) in China and Tibet then.
I get it. I think we all get it. Sign of our times: we have to know where our bread is buttered now that we don't produce our own butter anymore.
Politics used to be about ideas, it's now about ipods.
Less than a decade a go, 3000 people died and no it wasn't 9/11. It was a government killing its own citizens - with tanks. And it wasn't in some remote, recently-annexed, ex-sovereign country (That would be Tibet - more later). It was in the middle of its capital. Students were shot down by a repressive regime who disagreed with being disagreed with.
The same regime, that recently shut-down Tibet and kills (military-style executions) an estimated 5000 more of its citizens every year.
It is also the same country that powers the world, produces just about everything you use every day including this Mac, keyboard, the Levi's I bought yesterday, my iPod, my shoes, socks, underwear, toaster, DVDs etc...
It also provides markets (For companies such as Google - the host of this blog) that are so huge so as to blackmail them into almost any kind of appalling behaviour (Like blocking access to free information)
There always seem to be a good reason to block information (usually for our own good - of course...). The philosopher John Stuart Mill said:
"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."
China also keeps Australia growing and prosperous amidst a global recession. Nothing wrong with that - it is a free market after all, right?
) being applied to the album track. That's 1.61803399 (Type Golden Ratio in Google). 
Here is a friendly looking photo of him during his Hitler Youth Camp days. There seem to be 
