Internet Commentator

Enlightened self-interest

Perhaps this qualifies as "Freakonomics"? I noticed that when I offer my (18 month old) daughter Zoe a biscuit (cookie) or something equivalent, she immediately requests another for her brother, (4 year old) Isaac. I was discussing this with her mother and grandmother the other day and they both opined that she was a sweet, generous girl. I, of course, agreed but then an alternative to this altruistic hypothesis suggested itself to me. Given Isaac's ability and tendency to just grab whatever Zoe has off her, it occurred to me that her strategy might have been to protect her property from this depredation by obtaining, at no cost to herself - it would still be categorised as a biscuit "for" Isaac - an equivalent item for her brother thus forestalling the grab .

Segovia

Dick O'Brien reports from Segovia and shares his great Flickr photoset of this Castilian town:

SWP to SW6?

Today's Mirror is reporting that Chelsea have tied up the £18m transfer of Manchester City winger, Sean Wright-Phillips. This would be quite an extravagant signing considering that Chelsea already have two first class wingers in Duff and Robben, and might affect Wright-Phillips' hopes of breaking in to the England side as he would surely feature more regularly as an automatic selection at City. But, above all it is a blow to Arsenal who had hoped to sign the adopted son of Highbury legend Ian Wright but would find such a pricetag way out of their reach.

Now that I've thought about it...

Continuing the music quiz yesterday Here's the first "album" that means a lot to me: Tony Humphries, live at Ministry of Sound London sometime between December 1991 and February 1992.

I got a loan of a copy of this tape around April/May 1992 from Dj Billy Scurry, it wasn't exactly a first generation copy and the quality wasn't great but I still made my own copy of it. I'm quite the mix cd afficionado, these days they get done in the studio, but this one, recorded live, is probably the best mixtape I've ever heard.

Humphries' signature style was not just to beat mix to segue from one record to the other but, "dialled" in the mix ever so gradually on the classic Urei 1620 mixer, to play two records simultaneously for extended periods, for most of the length of the track. You used to find djs mixing the accapella of one track over the instrumental of another - the most famous example of which is "You've got the Love" by Source featuring Candi Staton, the entire musical arrangement for which is a track called "your Love" by Frankie Knuckles featuring (discarded vocalist) Jamie Principal - or beefing up one track by playing over the drum track of another. Humphries' knack was to find and play together different but, often surprisingly, complimentary tracks together to create a new sound, while simultaneously unearthing new interesting music and encouraging people to listen again to tracks they may have overlooked because they were by uncool artists.

I managed to collect most of the tracks used in this mix but I'm still missing a few (in parentheses):

Tracklisting:
Sound of Redness - Sample Minded
Another Place, Another Time - Juliet Roberts
Is This Love Really Real? - Sure is Pure
[?]
Friendship - Sabrina Johnson
Now Here This - Da Rebels
When Love Calls - Shay Jones
This Mute Horn - Masters at Work
Coming on Strong - Desiya
[Body - ?]
What U Want - Chocolate Fudge
[Got To Get You into my Life - ?]
Chic Mystique - Chic
She's Crazy - Grampa
Flutes - Jovonn
Hold Your Head up High - 4 Love
Love is Taking me Over - I Love NY
[Nasty Bass - 3sb]
[Pride, a Deeper Love - Clivilles & Cole]
[Tribal Life - Drums of Life]
Let it Reign - Inner City
Stations of the Groove - Reese Project
Across 110th Street - El Barrio
Real Love - Helen Bruner
Ran Kan Kan (MAW dub) - Tito Puente

Update: This post has prompted me to finally get round to doing something I'd been planning to do for ages, convert this battered old tape to mp3. If anyone's interested in a copy, email me.

Now there's a quiz I could get my teeth into

I noticed Hugh and Gerry doing the music adaption of the book quiz below . Now I am more of a music buff than a bibliophile so, at the risk of repeating myself and with a little amendment, (substituting "record" for "album") I thought I'd give this one a go:

How many records do I own?

Probably about 4 or 5 thousand, mostly vinyl but including a few hundred cds about 250 of which have made it into iTunes.

First record I bought?

The first time I actually bought a record for myself (as opposed to my parents buying a record for themselves and claiming it was for me), I bought two seven inch singles: "Baggy Trousers" by Madness and (I think) "Walking on the Moon" by the Police.

The last record I bought?

I'm going to do this by format:

Last album downloaded (legitimately, through iTunes): "Virgin Ubiquity II" by Roy Ayers - a great selection of never released tracks from his most fertile period 1976-1981.

Last cd bought: I tend to buy mostly mix cds these days and the last one was probably "Gilles Peterson in Brazil" or "Choice, a selection of classics" by Louie Vega.

Last vinyl purchases:

a) "Butterfly" by Marky and KRS - Brazilian drum and bass rework of Roy Ayers' "Searchin'".

b) "AfroSpace" by Blakai feat. Bembe Segue - Broken beat featuring two of the hardest working individuals in this scene, Ms Segue (who also manages to hold down a full time day job) and Kaidi Tatham.

c) "Sunday Joint" by Park Street - Stripped down minimal techy house (Freedom soundz mix).

d)"Antigua" by Tom & Joy featuring Tony Allen - Afrobeat 2005 style featuring Fela's legendary drummer.

The last full album I listened to?

All the way through, It's either Joyce's "Gafieira Moderna" or Herbie Hancock's "Thrust"

The five records that mean most to me?

I'm not really sure how to answer this question. I'll have to have a think about it...

Bibliophile signalling exercise

Abiola seeks to rouse my blog from its slumber in suggesting I answer the latest book quiz doing the rounds.

Now, I've been reluctant to engage in these type of bibliophile signalling exercises in the past, not least to preserve some sort of figleaf of intellectual respectability to conceal my rather threadbare and disjointed erudition, so forgive me for any evasiveness in answering... [Oh, what the hell...]

Number of Books I own: I suppose this is the "never mind the quality, feel the width" question. Judging by Abiola's count of 800 or 900 my guess-timate of a few hundred is probably not so disreputable.

Last book I bought: Ok, here's where an evasion is called for - I was going to plead the fifth and merely hint at this tome by revealing where it was purchased - and yet I feel compelled to confess that I bought (at a "special airport price"!) the wretched "Rule of Four", see below.

Last book I read: See above. Just as one should take the Pringles snack motto - "Once you pop, you can't stop" - in similar spirit to a government health warning (rather than an inducement), so should the promise "The Da Vinci Code meets The Secret History" be properly interpreted as a damning indictment. A comparison with the The Da Vinci Code is instructive. The latter is a load of old nonsense but undemanding and entertaining. 'Code contains plenty of repetition, blindingly obvious signposting and exposition yet all of this is in the service of the plot. '4, by contrast is a load of old nonsense yet somehow also manages to be wearying, full of irrelevant padding and a plot, about some preppy twits in Princeton, about which it is difficult to muster up any kind of enthusiasm or engagement.

The last question is difficult to answer definitively, there are probably plenty more but these are a few, off the top of my head:

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Daniel Dennett

I could list a few of Dennet's other books which, manage to combine the page-turner quality of pulp fiction with startling insights and ways of critically examining one's thinking, but this was the first of his I read and it was quite an eye-opener for me.

2. Road to Serfdom - F.A. Hayek

It has become fashionable to complain that Hayek "got it wrong", that his prediction that the UK would follow the familiar path of Germany and Italy towards dictatorship if it continued to pursue a policy of central planning, that somehow Hayek's theory had been, in his friend Popper's term, falsified. Yet, although Hayek did write the book out of a genuine, immediate concern for the future of liberal society in Britain, it contains a much broader, and accurate analysis of the inherent problems of planning. It ought to be required reading for anyone entering politics. Which would save us from the myriad of foolish, misguided "eye-catching initiatives" we are regularly forced to endure.

3. The Prince - Machievelli

Machievelli's punchy, amoral little book remains a refreshing antidote to all sorts of woolly, wishful thinking

4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

What means so much to me about this book was not the narrative itself, which I have already forgotten, but Kundera's thoughts on the utopian nature of socialism and the inevitability that such utopianism leads to tyranny. It certainly disabused me of the notion, popularised by Tony Benn - "socialism hadn't failed because it hadn't been tried yet" - that all that was needed for socialism to work was the right conditions. Kundera described and explained how the corrollary to any kind of socialism was the tyrannical imperative to take harsh action against anyone who would stand in the way of the brave new future. Thus, the repressive nature of any socialist regimes could be seen not as a local, specific abberation, but the logical consequences of implementing socialism.

5. Complete works (small paperback edition) - Le Corbusier

There are many different architecture books which mean a lot to me, this is just one, which I "borrowed" from my (structural engineer) uncle in 1984 before entering architecture school. It is the size of a pulp novel and features almost all of his projects. One token of how regularly it has been thumbed over the last twenty years, for reference, inspiration or idle amusement is that the spine has now pretty much collapsed.

The quiz apparently requires passing the baton on so I nominate Hugh, Paul, and "Maurice" to have a crack

Ar-gen-tin-aah!

Paul explains the background to this Old Trafford chant which goes further than the arrival of fan fave, (who sold more shirts than Rooney!) left back Heinze and derives from the antipathy towards In-ger-land fans:

Everytime Paul Scholes, the Neville brothers, Nicky Butt and of course, Mr Golden Balls played for the England national team at that time, they faced untold abuse from a large number of their own supporters. The fact that they were playing their hearts out for the white shirt was of less importance than the fact that they were "ManUre"

Beckham faced the worst of course and on one infamous occasion, he was greeted with a charming, "Hope your kid dies of cancer" from one of the neanderthals

So as usual, when Utd are attacked, be it the players, supporters or now the club itself, the siege mentality is reinforced. As a means of winding up the Ingerland contingent in other clubs and as an indirect way of supporting their own players, the "Argentina" chant became the automatic answer

Trade is not a panacea

Trent McBride points out a common fallacy about free trade and developing countries, one to which I admit I have occasionally succumbed:

Commonly, in an exercise in overstating the case, free traders may argue that we should eliminate our farm subsidies to help poor farmers in developing nations. This would certainly help the poor farmers. But it ignores the fact that most inhabitants of the poorest nations are poor non-farmers who could use some cheap food. As it stands, our taxes that go to farm subsidies are very much simply redistributions to the world's poorest. The charge that "dumping" cheap food into the nations is harmful is just as fallacious as when those certain parties state that "dumping" of cheap imports is not harmful to us (and free-traders rightly call this one out)

Old-fashioned name?

I bumped into an accquaintance last night who was celebrating the birth of his first daughter. He revealed that he had called his younger son Frank (after an uncle) and commented that this wasn't such a popular name these days. I had always considered mine to be an ordinary, common name - for one of the jobs in our office, the client, builder and, of course, architect all share that given name - but as I pondered all the Jacks, Nathans, Ryans, Aarons etc. who comprise my 4 year old son's age group I realised that I couldn't think of a Frank younger than me. And so, a quick visit to the rather cool Baby Name Wizard elicits this startling picture of decline:

Compare and contrast

Here's a snippet of a tune from Coldplay's new album:

Talk

And here's a snippet of the Kraftwerk original:

Computer Love

A few thoughts:

1) Ironically, considering the respective affectations of each group, it's Coldplay's rendition, with live instruments, which is the blander, colder, soulless version.

2) I would have a little more respect for Coldplay if they had the balls to actually sample the riff instead of just ripping it off, or better yet, do a cover version. They might learn something. One sure sign of creative bankruptcy is the precious insistence of talentless hacks like these guys on writing all their own "original" songs.