Analyze This

The Guardian presents an obituary for Analytic Marxist G.A. Cohen.

I can't claim to have known Gerry Cohen very well—the fact that I knew him as Gerry when everyone else knew him as Jerry testifies to that fact, or else my teenage pedantry—but he was one of my lecturers in the early 1980s when I was at university in London. He gave a course on Marx in one of the large lecture halls in UCL, and from what I can recall, most of the lectures were devoted to his idiosyncratic take on Marx rather than on introducing us to Marx's ideas and helping us to understand wherein the controversy lay. He was perfectly entitled to do so, of course, but at the time, the Marx he presented wasn't one I recognized, and I can't say that I gave Cohen's interpretation the attention it deserved. What I do remember is that he was a witty and sharp speaker and responded to students' questions generously and without condescension. I also remember there being lots of anarchists in his lectures; copies of Freedom and Black Flag conspicuously displayed on desks. I'm sure he never noticed.

It has only been in the last ten years, after doing the reading I should have done in preparation for Cohen's course, that I have come to appreciate what the Analytic Marxist school was trying to achieve, namely, to salvage from a project that was already recognizably moribund some justification for socialism that did not depend on discredited economic theories or an overly optimistic conception of the direction of history. Whether or not they succeeded or simply provided us with a moral argument for socialism that is anything but Marxist is not a debate worth pursuing, but I think Cohen at least eventually got to a place and a position which a lot of other socialists, who did not have to go through the detours of Marxism (and this, perhaps, is largely a generational thing), could be perfectly comfortable with.

RIP Gerry.

I Think "Mixed" is the Best Word to Describe Them

Reviews for the Bettystown Court Hotel on Trip Advisor.

Dreadful room, hairs on toilet and bath and walls and windows filthy when we arrived.Housekeeping terrible, two towels for four people.Food poor quality, service poor and attitude on reception a disgrace.Then they tried to over charge us by nearly 100 euro wih no apology for their mistake.All in all a complete waste of money. I intend to contact the irish tourist board to find out how this hotel was ever granted 4 stars?.

one positive was the pool and staff in the leisure centre.

Oh dear. I hope you got your money back.

We stayed in Bettystown over the Easter period and had a great time, the hotel was packed with people staying for the same reason but we didn't have any problems what so ever!!

Room was big with a double bed and 2 singles and also clean which is the main thing, we had a bar snack the first night in the hotel bar which was lovely and we had booked into the restaurant the second night. Breakfast was super all you could want from cereal, fry, fruit, all the juices..................... Brillant selection!! The pool is also great we spent most of the second day in it as it rained and we couldn't go to the beach.

Also you are only a couple of mins walk from the beach and Funtasia which children will love all in all we had a very relaxing time in the Bettystown Court.

Well that doesn't sound so bad. Maybe I'll get a third opinion . . .

While the room was nice we were alarmed to find a piece of broken glass on the carpet in the middle of the floor where we could have easily stepped on it. When we complained they suggested we ourselves had brought it in on our shoes!

The dining room was full of stained upholstery and faded lacklustre ambience. Breakfasts were a bun fight due to what appeared to be a largecouch party of old age pensioners.

Although parts of the breakfast were OK , the porridge was disgusting and the whole experience was very offputting like being in a horrible cut-price works canteen.

And 44 others of the same ilk to help you ponder the virtues of staycationing.

We're on a Mission from God

In the Aug/Sep issue of Free Enquiry, magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism, James A. Haught reports Jacques Chirac's account of George Bush's divine inspiration for war:

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Mekons: Mercury Lounge NYC, August 1st

Torrent download available at Dime here (signup required).

The "electric" counterpart to the previous night's "acoustic" performance, meaning mostly that Steve got his full drumkit back, and everyone was standing up this time. Susie Honeyman had flown back to England, so Jean Cook from Jon Langford's Ship and Pilot stood in, and was spectacular in her Mekons debut.

As with the rest of this tour, no Tom Greenhalgh; Lu filled in on lead vocals for "Beaten and Broken" and "Last Dance," and Chris Mills for "Heaven and Back." And Tim Tuten, late of the Hideout in Chicago, showed up to deliver one of his patented rambling intros.

It was a hot, packed night at the Merc - Jean in particular seemed about to pass out, with Lu fanning her with stage flotsam at one point - and the band responded with a sweaty, energetic performance, only occasionally delayed by inability to master the nuances of guitar cables. The vibe was not quite as warm and fuzzy as the previous night in Brooklyn - Sally threatened to fight Jon, and Jon threatened to fight an audience member, neither entirely unseriously - but the electric format fit the material much better, including the especially rocking new song "Space In Your Face."

This was recorded while standing on a bench seat at far stage left/crowd right, maybe 15 feet from the speakers on Jon's end of the stage. The Merc's sound system always comes out a bit muddy for me on recordings; I've boosted the treble some here to compensate, and am pretty happy with the results. Enjoy, and for godsakes, buy their CDs!

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

Lord Cut Glass - Look After Your Wife

(But only because "Big Time Teddy" isn't out yet)

Who Are The Subs?

Hopefully this news will mean that Muppert Murdoch can now afford some decent researchers/sports journalists/sub-editors.

Taking (More Than) The Day Off

R.I.P John Hughes

Tonight I will be listening to my General Public 12"s and watching Ferris Bueller

Additions

Two additions to blogroll: the enigmatic Ampersand Seven from the enigmatic Therese in Brooklyn, and the gorgeous Hyatt Art and Life from the gorgeous John Hyatt in Manchester.

Dublin Psychogeographical Society Report 2009: Part One

Following on from the unalloyed success of the 2006 convention, the member of the Dublin Psychogeographical Society unanimously agreed that no further meetings should take place until all temptation to build on that success had been extinguished in full. The call to hubris thus went unheeded for two entire years, even though demand was such that the member had to go into hiding rather than yield to the urge to compromise. Purity is all.

Thus it is only now that a second derive could have been considered and carried off with the requisite panache and respect for anonymity that the true psychogeopomp holds most dear. This year's action took place, suitably enough, in the heart, or more aptly the belly, of the Beast, Paris, the home of flans, flâneurs, gourmets, gourmands, gourds, sourds-muets, Moëts, Flos, fleuves, Fauves, and flans again. I assembled this time in the Marais, with a stout pair of walking boots, a monocle, a cape, a Thermos of mulligatawny soup, a two-thousand-Franc note for bribing snipers who don't know the war's over, and Nora, my faithful native guide, wily, courageous and bereft of both malice and morals but with the eyesight of a hawk with an infrared telescopic array. In the absence of a common language between us, I resorted to my handy Ordnance Survey Map of Dublin, which I showed to Nora while making pointing gestures and whining noises to indicate the sights I wished most to avoid.



Connolly Station: Emblematic of the engine that drove a once-mighty empire, bringing coffee from Portadown, spices from Balbriggan, rickets from Longford, and the ideologies and hegemonies of oppression from Maynooth, Connolly Station remains an exciting and demanding mistress, albeit bed-ridden, her gaping maw always open, insisting that it be fed with Arrows, Darts, and the occasional Belfast Enterprise, some of them even on time. From her other end she shits forth commuters, lost Sligovians, winos, lost winos from Sligo, tracksuit-and-runner-bedecked gurriers, U2 fans, one-legged pigeons, and tea. Eight hours later, the process is reversed, and in an obscene and diabolical ritual that encapsulates the unnatural deformities that late capitalism twists life into, she takes all that shit back up inside her cloaca and spews it all out through her mouth, spraying the country with her human-laced vomit.

I was surprised to see Frank Sidebottom hanging around by the glass-fronted entry. He too comes here for the anonymity, although when I expressed surprise that he would need to come this far, he told me to fuck off.



O'Connell Street: Even upgraded and updated, this thoroughfare's pretensions to grandeur are transparent. Once the widest road in the world, it now can never be wide enough to separate shopper from Euro. The items on display are frankly trite and evoke only a simulacrum of a simulacrum of desire, a degree of cynicism several strata below even the naivest of natives. Who buys such showiness today? There may be queues outside the cinema and Clery's department store, but they come to gawp not in awe or wonder but in disbelief that this system still manages to churn out so much dross on its deathbed. Nevertheless, I curtailed my bemusement long enough to purchase some postcards and used them to send death threats to James Joyce. It was both a profoundly cathartic and depressing experience.



The General Post Office: When the GPO was redesigned after independence, there was a great deal of concern that it would not adequately reflect the glorious blood sacrifice made by the nation's warrior heroes and instead hold the country up to ridicule or draw attention to James Connolly's Scottish nationality or, worse, his anarchist beliefs and membership of the Wobblies. Fortunately, those concerns were unfounded, and the GPO possesses the bland, statement-free decor that enables visitors to forget the uncomfortable aspects of the struggle for independence while at the same time paying their TV licence in the knowledge that RTE belongs to them and their descendants thanks to what took place on that very spot.

The only brave thing about this building today is this fabulous sculpture of Cú Chulainn. Sadly, Setanta is now in administration.



Jervis Street Shopping Centre: If I was a Dub I'd be insulted by the cheap imitation for a leisure complex that this place represents. It's as though they just threw a load of concrete and mud into a mixer, dumped a few chairs around the place for the sake of appearance, even though the last thing they want you to do is sit down, and then forgot about any other amenities until the unemployment register started to shoot through the roof and the government decided to recognise "masseuse" as a job description and not a euphemism for the commodification of sexual relations. The air is always fetid here, the toilets foul, and one's fellow shoppers tense to the point of suicidal. A treasure palace only in the Freudian sense, i.e. a shithouse. Who in their right mind would pause here to take in the scene? You can see how many strollers are eager to get through the place and out the other side with as little inhalation as possible. They're all most likely heading for Saint Mary's Church, which is now a pub. At least one building in Dublin has been put to good use.




Part Two to Follow.

It's Only Human Nature

The latest issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, is devoted to contemporary theories of what it means to be human. Articles are $12 each or you can order the entire issue in hard copy for $13 plus $5 p&p in Europe.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

Half Man Half Biscuit- Restless Legs

(Be thankful I didn't bow to John's request and put this up instead.)

Mein Camp*

A tad unfair of me, perhaps, given that I haven't seen the film myself yet, but I loved Anthony Lane's demolition of Brüno in the July 20th issue of the New Yorker magazine:

How efficient, though, is embarrassment as a comic device? It’s a quick hit, and it corrals the audience on the side of smugness; but its victories are Pyrrhic, and it tends to fizzle out unless held in by a plot—as it was in “Fawlty Towers,” which, from its base on the English seaside, fathomed the most embarrassable race on earth. Baron Cohen, in exporting his japes, comes up against a people much less devoted to the wince. I realized, watching “Borat” again, that what it exposed was not a vacuity in American manners but, more often than not, a tolerance unimaginable elsewhere. Borat’s Southern hostess didn’t shriek when he appeared with a bag of feces; she sympathized, and gently showed him what to do, and the same thing happens in “Brüno,” when a martial-arts instructor, confronted by a foreigner with two dildos, doesn’t flinch. He teaches Brüno some defensive moves, then adds, “This is totally different from anything I’ve ever done.” Ditto the Hollywood psychic—another risky target, eh?—who watches Brüno mime an act of air-fellatio and says, after completion, “Well, good luck with your life.” In both cases, I feel that the patsy, though gulled, comes off better than the gag man; the joke is on Baron Cohen, for foisting indecency on the decent. The joker is trumped by the square.

“Brüno” ends appallingly, with a musical montage of Sting, Bono, Elton John, and other well-meaners assisting mein Host in a sing-along. Here’s the deal, apparently: if celebrities aren’t famous enough for your liking (Ron Paul, Paula Abdul), or seem insufficiently schooled in irony, you make vicious sport of them, but if they’re A-listers, insanely keen to be in on the joke, they can join your congregation. Would Baron Cohen dare to adopt a fresh disguise and trap Sting in some outlandish folly, or is he now too close a friend? To scour the world for little people you can taunt, and then pal up with the hip and rich: that is not an advisable path for any comic to pursue, let alone one as sharp and mercurial as Baron Cohen. All his genius, at present, is going into publicity, and, in the buildup to this film’s release, he has not put a foot wrong—or, in the case of Eminem, a buttock. But the work itself turns out to be flat and foolish, bereft of Borat’s good cheer: wholly unsuitable for children, yet propelled by a nagging puerility that will appeal only to those in the vortex of puberty, or to adults who have failed to progress beyond it. Call it, at best, a gaudy celebration of free speech, though be advised: before my screening, I had to sign a form requiring me “not to blog, Twitter or Facebook thoughts about the film before 6th July 2009.” A guy pulls down his pants and bares his soul, and we are forbidden to have thoughts? What is this, the Anschluss?

* I couldn't improve on the article's title, either.

Stinking Aloud

Laurie Taylor channels casual "racist" Manuel Estimulo in his latest newsletter for his Radio 4 programme:

‘La même encore’, Gerald said to the waiter, waiving his hands across our beer glasses. The waiter, I was glad to observe, decided not to understand Gerald’s French and instead came over to our table for a confirmation of the order. ‘La même encore’, said Gerald again, indicating our empty glasses with an over-elaborate sweep of the hand. ‘Deux pressions.’ This at last seemed enough for the waiter who nodded and disappeared back into the dark interior of the harbour café.

‘It’s funny, you know’, said Gerald. ‘But down here in this part of Provence the waiters see so few English people that they’re really surprised when one of them addresses them in French. They almost choose not to understand. That’s the French for you. Fiercely independent.’

It occurred to me then, as it had already done several times during this fortnight’s holiday in Bandol with Gerald and his wife and their two booming children, that it was not so much surprise which had occasioned the waiter’s incomprehension, as Gerald’s accent. Even though the words he spoke were French he had used exactly the same intonation for ‘La même encore’ as he would have done for ‘Same again, Landlord’, back in his local village pub. (The one in Kent with the personal tankards hanging up behind the bar).

And this was only the tip of my concern. For although I’d been initially grateful when Gerald and his wife had offered me a room in their Provencal villa following my divorce, I’d realised after only a few hours in France that the price I’d have to pay for my accommodation was complete acquiescence with my host’s obsessively expressed opinion that everything in France was superior to its equivalent in England.

I didn’t have too much difficulty allowing that the French trains were better – ‘do you realise that if this train were running in England you could get from Euston to Manchester in less than an hour?’ I was also happy to go along with his views on French motorways (‘imagine how many road works there’d be on a stretch like this back in England’), his celebration of minor French towns (‘imagine finding a place as small as this in England with its own town hall), and the manners of French shopkeepers (‘imagine how much better life would be in England if every shop assistant said ‘Bonjour’ and ‘Merci’).

But I mentally drew the line at praising every identical piece of grilled fish that was delivered to my table in portside restaurants. (Was Gerald deliberately failing to notice the revolting splodge of overcooked vegetables which lay alongside the repetitive fillet of dorade?’ And I could only sit in silence while he broke off a lump of baguette at supper and wondered once again why the British chose not to bake this over-floury, largely indigestible and frequently stale, variety of bread.

I also had to bite my tongue, as I was given the news that once again there was something special about drinking French wine in France, that only the French could make proper goat’s cheese, and that only in French markets was it possible to buy tomatoes with that special French taste.

For two weeks I was also forced to ignore the foul manners of French drivers, the dog excrement on every pavement, the abysmal quality of French music and popular entertainment, and a degree of bureaucracy which had me queuing for a whole half hour at the local post office in order to retrieve a fax that had been sent from home.

As I finally waved goodbye to Gerald and what he liked to call his ‘famille’, I allowed myself to wonder why he and so many others found it so necessary to embrace and partially invent a culture other than their own in order to make a mere holiday enjoyable.

‘A bientôt’, Gerald shouted from the villa door as I heaved my case into the backseat of the taxi. ‘Goodbye’, I shouted back. And the very word seemed like an act of liberation.

Mixing and matching culture. What to celebrate. And what to deplore. All that when I meet the author of a new book on cultural hybridity. That’s at four o’clock today or after the midnight news on Sunday or on our readily downloadable podcast.

Also today. Tariq Ali on the convergences between politics and literature.

Laurie

Lest We Forget

From the August edition of Harper's (subscription only) referring to the Commission into Child Abuse report published in May.

From statements by men and women who attended Catholic Church-run state schools for the poor in Ireland, in a May report by a government-appointed commission. The 2,600-page report documents claims of abuse from more than a thousand former students at more than 200 institutions between the 1930s and the 1990s. After a lawsuit by the Christian Brothers, the order that ran many of the boys' schools, the names of clergy accused of abuse were omitted.


One time in class, because I couldn't read a couple of lines in Irish, the brother beat me. He put you in the back of the class, and he'd tell you to run to him, then he'd put his fist out and you'd run into it. As soon as you hit the deck, he would pull you up by the ears for what we used to call the rabbit punch-you know, with the side of his hand on the neck. He'd chop you, you'd go down on the deck.

I was working in the piggery. I used to be starving, the pigs used to get the brothers' leftovers, and one day there was lovely potatoes, and I took some and I took a turnip. The brother caught me and let down my trousers and lashed me. He always wore a leather, around eighteen inches long and all stitched with wax. I remember a boy who would not cry. He got fifty slaps on one hand and then fifty on the other and then another fifty. This brother got so mad that he would not cry, he kicked the legs from under him and kicked him to the ground and kicked him until he went unconscious. He was just lying there with his eyes staring up to the sky.

One day, I was on the farm and we were messing around, squirting milk at each other. The brother came over and dug his nails into the back of my ears, and then he hit me on the jaw with his clenched fists. Of course, I went down. I was in the infirmary for six or seven weeks after that. They smashed my jaw, my gum was all gone, the inside of my face was all ripped. The treatment I got was hot, salty water.

I was hit for having red, curly hair. You had to have straight hair like Our Lady. This sister was a monster. She'd drag you into the office and take her long cane and just beat you and beat you. She had a bamboo cane four feet long. She'd be frothing at the mouth. She'd say, "You curled your hair last night," and when I'd say, "Yes, I curled it," she'd stop. She had castor oil, she would press it into my head, to make my hair straight. My face would be swollen from the beatings, the oil would be running down my face.

Every night I was beaten for wetting the bed. If you pulled away, he would get hold of you and hit harder. If you fell to the floor, he would pull you up by the chin, twist your ear, pull you by the hair. After the beatings, he would play guitar and sing.

I was an animal lover. There were wild cats and kittens going around starving, and I used to sneak them into the dormitory. I had a kitten. This nun called me one night. She said, "You see that kitten you have there?" She got me out of my bed by the hair and brought me down, they had one of those stoves that you put the coal in the top. She said, "Take that top off." I had to go up on my knees. I had to put the cat in there and put the lid on it-and the screams. Then she said, "Go back to bed." The next morning, she got me out of bed and she made me rake that fire out. I think I was about twelve at the time.



Report on abuse in Dublin Archdiocese . . . pending.

Dead Men Write No Novels

A nice piece in New York magazine by Sam Anderson reviews Elizabeth Hawes's new biography of Albert Camus, Camus: A Romance.

I once saw Jacques Derrida, for instance—the reigning high priest of French theory, a man so intimidatingly abstract I imagined he pooped exegeses—shuffle out of a lecture hall and load his papers not (as I’d expected) into a rickshaw pulled by grad students or onto the shoulders of cynical chain-smoking French angels but into the trunk of a bright-red Daewoo sedan—a car as terminally lame as any my family had ever owned, and which he then proceeded to drive slowly across a parking lot indistinguishable from the anti-intellectual parking lots of my youth.

Bats for Lashes

In the June 22 issue of Maclean's, Scott Feschuk reports on the latest in cosmetic pharmaceuticals, Latisse, from Allergen Inc., advertised by Brooke Shields and promising longer, fuller, darker eyelashes.

Oh yes, and possible side-effects:

To be fair, Brooke’s commercial does warn of two potential side effects: itchy eyes and eye redness. Only when you go to the Latisse website do you learn of the drug’s other charming powers, such as its ability to “cause eyelid skin darkening” and the “potential for increased brown iris pigmentation, which is likely to be permanent.”

Hmm. Well maybe some people would like browner eyes. Anything else?

After detailing various laboratory tests done on mice—and really, what could be a more dignified end for a lab mouse than giving up its life so that humanity can combat the scourge of not-quite-thick-enough eyelashes?—the Latisse information sheet notes: “Because animal reproductive studies are not always predictive of human response, Latisse should be administered during pregnancy only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus.”

Gee. That's a toughie. The ethics of cosmetic enhancement can be really tricky sometimes.

It's Friday. On Saturday Griff Gets Married. Let's Boogie!

Pete Wylie - It's Sinful

I Can Think of Better Quotes

Available here.

Disenfranchised of the World Turning to Communism/Violence

Hilarious. And what a great advert (but not for his book).

That quotation in full:

"Take up arms. Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary. Against the army, the only victory is political.


There is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary: it’s a question of doing everything possible to make using them unnecessary. An insurrection is more about taking up arms and maintaining an “armed presence” than it is about armed struggle. We need to distinguish clearly between being armed and the use of arms. Weapons are a constant in revolutionary situations, but their use is infrequent and rarely decisive at key turning points: August 10th 1792, March 18th 1871, October 1917. When power is in the gutter, it’s enough to walk over it."

Amazon synopsis:

The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as "the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality." The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine to "spread anarchy and live communism."

Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the "war on terror."

Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized forms-of-life. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.


Get it here.

Altar'd States

Ever got boozied-up in a church? I hadn't until last night's Mark Kozelek show at St.Philip's with St.Stephen Church in Salford. The whole set-up was a surreal experience, not least because there was a stall in Toddlers Corner at the back of the church manned by some older members of the congregation selling cans of lager and (I kid you not) bottles of Bishop's Finger. I have to say the pews were suprisingly comfortable and the acoustics were wonderfully warm and perfectly suited to Mr. Kozelek's voice and guitar.

I can't imagine every band would suit this venue, but if you do get a chance to go to a gig here, it's well worth it.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

Neko Case - People Got A Lotta Of Nerve

Why You Should Be a Libertarian

by Kevin.

If You Don't Already . . .

You really should subscribe to Laurie Taylor's weekly Thinking Allowed podcast from Radio Four. This week:

Research has shown that health and social problems become more acute in an unequal society, where the gap between the richest and poorest is greatest. For most of us, respect is measured in money, and lack of it or low pay tells us that we are worth very little. But given the chance, would we as a society be prepared to rebalance? Laurie Taylor discusses these issues with Professor Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of "The Spirit Level: Why Equal Societies Almost Always So Better", and Sunder Katwala from The Fabian Society on a new paper on underlying motivation. Also teddy bears - how did a real hunting story became a political myth which left Theodore Roosevelt forever credited as the namesake of the teddy bear, symbolic of childhood innocence- Donna Varga, from Mount St Vincent University in Canada explains her research.

Download here.


Also well worth a listen to is the World Service's Forum, with Bridget Kendall. All your favourites are on here: Slavoj Žižek, Clive James, Arundhati Roy. Teeth-grindingly interesting.

For the Folk in Rathkeale

Courtesy of TEDTalks

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

The Teardrop Explodes - Reward

Do They Owe Us a Tribute Band?

John Robb wonders whether it would be possible for a Crass-type band to exist today.

I don't know, John. Just tell me what we have to do to prevent it.

Paradise in Hell

A brief interview in the June 29 issue of Publishers Weekly with Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark, on the publication of her new book, A Paradise in Hell.

Economic crises can resemble sudden physical disasters—notably in the questioning of the status quo: the Argentinean economic crash of 2001 functioned like a disaster in catalyzing positive change, including a rebirth of civil society. Iceland has had a similar rebirth since its October 2008 economic crash, and in this country, we are seeing interesting improvisation and radicalization around the depression, and I expect we'll see a lot more.

The Caveman Cometh . . . and Goeth

Evolutionary Psychology is SO last year. Behavioral Ecology is where it's at now.

Apparently.

The discovery of genes as young as agriculture and city-states, rather than as old as cavemen, means "we have to rethink to foundational assumptions" of evo psych, says [evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey] Miller, starting with the claim that there are human universals and that they are the result of a Stone Age brain. Evolution indeed sculpted the human brain. But it worked in malleable plastic, not stone, bequeathing us flexible minds that can take stock of the world and adapt to it.

Reich To Werk

Last night I went to the opening event of this year's Manchester International Festival, a double bill of Bang On A Can performing a new Steve Reich composition and Kraftwerk giving the most entertaining display by four static Germans I've seen since Bayern's 82 European Cup Final defence.

A hot and sticky evening in a poorly ventilated velodrome was kicked off with Reich's 20-minute piece "2x5" which, as you'd expect from a classical composer trying to write rock music, sounded like a rock band trying to play classical. A logjam of a prog jam if ever there was one, which failed to impress me. Still, spirits were briefly lifted during the interval by the sight of the never underdressed Sebastian Horsley in a cream daysuit.

Kraftwerk's set was split into three sections. First they played the better known material such as "Man-Machine," "The Model" and "Autobahn" in front of their standard video backdrop and peaked (Col De Beswick?) with "Tour De France" as four members of Team GB pedalled in formation round the Velodrome track between the fans in the seats and the band on stage. The cyclists probably got the biggest cheers of the night and as exciting as it looked, it was a little predictable. I'd have been much more impressed if they'd sent four Herbies hurtling round the track during "Autobahn" but I'm guessing there might have been safety issues preventing this from being possible.

The midsection, which allowed Ralf and the boys a chance to catch their breath after their arduous button pushing, saw them replaced for "The Robots" by four robots who were literally more animated than the real thing (though not The Real Thing due to a deficiency in the leg department).

Kraftwerk returned in person for the last section in their matrix-green glow-in-the-dark suits to play "Computerworld," "Radioactivity" and "Vitamin" in front of a screen projecting 3-D graphics for which the audience had been given the appropriate (and event specific) glasses on entry to the auditorium. They finished the magnificent spectacle (ahem) with their traditional walk-off song, "Music Non Stop."

I can't see how the festival can top this unless they can convince Lou Reed to do his show on a pogo-stick whilst Laurie Anderson rides laserbeams to Leeds.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie At Home!

They Might Be Giants - Never Go To Work

Think of Me When You Write

Nadine Jarvis's carbon copies, pencils made from cremated human remains. The perfect disposal option for the terminally ill academic/illustrator in your life.

One for the Wish List

Coming soon.

Death of a Legend

RIP

It's Friday. Lest We Forget.

Cashier No.9 - When Jackie Shone


R.I.P Jackie Swindells. Alty's Legendary No.9

(Check out the goals in 65/66.Dixie Dean? Pah!)

Power Play

Two posts on power and the social imaginary by Cassiodorus at Daily Kos, one a book review of Richard Peet's book The Geography of Power, the other an outline of the concept of the social imaginary and an explanation why it needs to be changed.

Revolution does not mean torrents of blood, the taking of the Winter Palace, and so on. Revolution means a radical transformation of society's institutions. In this sense, I certainly am a revolutionary. But for there to be revolution in this sense, profound changes must take place in the psychosocial organization of Western man, in his attitude toward life, in short, in his imaginary. The idea that the sole goal of life is to produce and to consume more—an idea that is both absurd and degrading—must be abandoned; the capitalist imaginary of pseudorational pseudomastery, of unlimited expansion, must be abandoned. That is something only men and women can do. A single individual, or one organization, can, at best, only prepare, criticize, incite, sketch out possible orientations.

From here.

Europe. Radio. Free.

Station WFMU has a selection of sets from this year's Primavera Sound Festival

Death of a Tiger

Conor over at Dublin Opinion is posting a Situ-style comic strip on the current Irish Financial Ratfuck. Parts 1 to 5 can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Can't wait for the film version.

Weapon of the Weak

From the ever-reliable Harper's magazine, a beautifully written proposal presented by two Princeton academics for submission to war profiteers Lockheed Martin, entitled "Irony in the National Defense."

Irony is a powerful and incompletely understood feature of human dynamics. A technique for dissimulation and “secret speech,” irony is considerably more complex than lying and even more dangerous. Ideally suited to mobilization on the shifting terrain of asymmetrical conflict, inherently covert, insidiously plastic, politically potent, irony offers rogue elements a volatile if often overlooked means by which to demoralize opponents and destabilize regimes. And yet while major research resources have for forty years poured into the human sciences from the defense and intelligence community in an effort to gain control over the human capacity to lie (investments that led to the modern polygraph, sodium pentothal–derived truth serums, “brain fingerprinting,” etc.), we have no comparable tradition of sustained, empirical, applied investigation into irony.

The rest, annoyingly, is available to subscribers only. Get your own copy.

Stick It Up Your Blogroll

Cuddle up to Coddlepot.com

Hamiltonballs

"They couldn't be more evenly matched: Brazil have won six, Italy have won five, and two have been drawn in their previous 13 meetings."

"Sports" commentator George Hamilton on RTE 2 last night before the kick-off.

Kicking Off

Does anybody else think it daft that FIFA insist that the final group games in tournaments such as yesterday's Confederation Cup are played at the same time, even down to synchronising the first-half kick-offs, when they then go and let the second-halves kick off 5 minutes apart? If it had been Brazil-Italy that had been delayed they could easily have fudged a result between them but, somewhat fortunately, it was US v Egypt and both had to go for it.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

Bonnie Prince Billy - Horses

Counago & Spaves Caption Competition No. 3

Ok, maybe our ever-popular caption competition isn't as popular as I'd imagined, but let's see how you do with this one:



Answers in Comments box please.

Because an Army Marches on Its Stomach

The always-inspiring O: The Oprah Magazine profiles Slim Peace.

In the most unlikely of weight loss groups, 14 women—Israelis and Palestinians—drop pounds, lose inches, and together gain immeasurable humanity.

. . .

Slim Peace (is) a program started by Yael Luttwak, a 36-year-old American filmmaker who is also a citizen of Israel and now lives in London. Using the common denominator of weight—and women's near-universal anguish over it—as a way to bridge deep political, cultural, and religious divides, the project's sixth group will meet for ten two-hour sessions. The idea came to Luttwak about nine years ago when historic peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians completely collapsed. At the time she had managed to drop a few pounds through Weight Watchers and remembers thinking, "Ariel Sharon is very overweight, and Arafat is not thin either. If they lost weight together, maybe they'd be in a better mood and make better decisions."

Not so much a roadblock to peace as a gastric band.

The substantial leftovers are here.

If You Go Down to the Woods Today . . .

. . . You're sure of a big surprise: Dolphins hunting among the trees.

Dig That Groove

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Gerrard Winstanley, he of Digger fame. A lecture to commemorate this event by John Gurney, author of Brave Community: The Digger Movement in the English Revolution, is available here.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

The Panderers - Come On

Mind over Matter

Simon Critchley has just started to explain Why Heidegger Matters over at the Guardian.

This shouldn't take a minute.

One for the Beach

In Rag and Bone: A Journey among the World's Holy Dead, Peter Manseau embarks on a global odyssey in search of the "dismembered toes, splinters of shinbone, stolen bits of hair, burned remnants of an anonymous rib cage, and other odds and ends" belonging to saints and other sacred figures. The book could have been ghoulish, but Manseau's irreverent approach and enthusiasm keep the tone surprisingly light. He examines the curious dissemination of pieces of saints around the globe, meets a cast of fellow enthusiasts and explores the fringes of devotion. Most notable is the pious Portuguese woman who, in a fit of ecstacy, is said to have bitten off the little toe of St. Francis Xavier, whose damaged cadaver lures Manseau to the Roman Catholic enclave of Goa, India: "To look at the foot now -- with at least three digits missing -- is to wonder if she got away with an even bigger bite."

Laughing Stock

A candidate in the local elections for the Slane Electoral Area of Meath County Council was arrested outside a polling station in his home area of Stamullen on polling day and taken before Drogheda Court to face charges dating from 2001.

The case against James Carey (26) of Preston Hill, Stamullen, was called at the court on Friday morning.

A medical certificate was presented to explain his absence but Judge Flann Brennan said that he was not satisfied with the certificate and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Just after 3pm, Carey was brought into court by Gardai. He stood as an independent in the Meath County Council elections last Friday, polling 734 first preferences before being eliminated on the seventh count in the Slane Electoral Area.

Last month he was arrested and brought before the court at which time the case was adjourned until last Friday. He is accused of assaulting two people, causing them harm; dangerous driving, unauthorised possession of a firearm and reckless discharge of a firearm. The offences are alleged to have happened at Gormanston or Stamullen in February 2001.

. . .

Garda Inspector Pat Marry said he would like to refute any allegation that Carey’s arrest had been contrived. He said the medical certificate presented had shown “total contempt” for the court. The certificate was for one day only.

The accused said that if his arrest had not been contrived, why had he so openly canvassed his home area for the last year.

He had knocked on 10,000 doors. “I’m the chairperson of the Stamullen Comunity Alert Committee which was organised with Sergeant Dooley. In God’s name, I couldn’t be more visible. Why the timing? I’m not refuting this charge, I’m refuting the timing. It is a laughing stock.”

The rest is here.

Local Resilience

Worth a look. Available here.

Resilience

In the May/June issue of Foreign Policy magazine, "Environmental Futurist" Jamais Cascio identifies the qualities that organizations and societies require in order to survive crises:

* Diversity: Not relying on a single kind of solution means not suffering from a single point of failure.
* Redundancy: Backup, backup, backup. Never leave yourself with just one path of escape or rescue.
* Decentralization: Centralized systems look strong, but when they fail, they fail catastrophically.
* Collaboration: We're all in this together. Take advantage of collaborative technologies, especially those offering shared communication and information.
* Transparency: Don't hide your systems—transparency makes it easier to figure out where a problem may lie. Share your plans and preparations, and listen when people point out flaws.
* Fail gracefully: Failure happens, so make sure that a failure state won't make things worse than they are already.
* Flexibility: Be ready to change your plans when they're not working the way you expected; don't count on things remaining stable.
* Foresight: You can't predict the future, but you can hear its footsteps approaching. Think and prepare.

I've Never Had It So Good

Michelle Obama shares her good fortune with the readers of Jet magazine

Mutual Aid

Gadgie spots via Norm research confirming Peter Kropotkin's view that animals have a natural sense of morality. But why should we be surprised? Aren't we animals too?

Professor Frans de Waal, a primate behaviourist at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, said: "I don't believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with well developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong – rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species.

"Human morality was not formed from scratch, but grew out of our primate psychology. Primate psychology has ancient roots, and I agree that other animals show many of the same tendencies and have an intense sociality."

If animals have morals, why shouldn't we?

The Placebo Placebo Effect

In the June 1 issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley discusses how placebos really work, in the process revealing that

As far as the body is concerned, a placebo is nothing—a sugar pill, a sham treatment, an inert compound. But try telling that to the brain, as scientists led by Daniel Cherkin of Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle recently saw. They assigned 638 adults with chronic lower-back pain to receive either standard acupuncture therapy, customized acupuncture (tailored to the individual, such as by using nonstandard acupuncture points), sham acupuncture (toothpicks in acupuncture-needle guide tubes that mimic the feel of real acupuncture) or standard back-pain care, such as anti-inflammatory drugs and massage. As the scientists reported this month in Archives of Internal Medicine, pain diminished significantly for 60 percent of the people in all three acupuncture groups—but for just 39 percent of patients receiving usual care. On average, both fake and real acupuncture reduced pain more than twice as much as standard care. Weirdly, this is being spun as "acupuncture is better than standard medical care for back pain!" I say "weirdly" because the key finding is that sham acupuncture delivered as much benefit as real acupuncture. And the most parsimonious explanation for that finding is inescapable: it is possible to think yourself out of pain.

The rest is here.

It Could Almost Be a Foreign Country

The Iceland Review reports that Good Old Porridge is Back

It's thick and sticky, extremely gluey, but cheaper and more wholesome than most foodstuffs. We are talking about porridge. So forget the old Kellogg's Cornflakes, Cheerios or Cocoa Puffs. Those times are gone. Breakfast in Iceland is porridge time. Reykjavik pre-schools now offer porridge instead of the more expensive, processed and imported cereals. Parents are even invited to join their children for a bowl of porridge at the elementary schools. It's also becoming popular in upper secondary schools, where students stand in line for their bowl of the grey gluey stuff during their first morning break. At Hamrahlíd Upper Secondary School, one of Reykjavik's largest, the dean serves it out, one ladle for each student, four days a week. "Porridge is not expensive and I thought it was fitting to introduce this idea now, although it is not entirely a response to the crisis," says the dean, Lárus H. Bjarnason. Due to high inflation and rising mortgage payments, most families have less money to spend so they turn to porridge as a means of saving. A bowl of thick porridge served with milk can get a healthy male through the day and it only costs a few cents. Top it with a green apple, peeled and cut into pieces, or a few California raisins, and you have a gourmet breakfast. Or try it old Icelandic style, mixed with skyr. This mixture is called hraeríngur and should be served with a generous slice of pickled blood or liver sausage, slàtur. Then you won't have to eat anything else for a week.

Karl Marx, the Investor's Friend

A letter to the editor in The Atlantic, June 2009:

I take great solace in Christopher Hitchens's eloquent essay revitalizing the teachings of Karl Marx ("He's Back," April Atlantic). Over many years of following the stock market, I have found no more consistent sign that we are at the bottom of a bear market than a renewed interest in the teachings of the author of Das Kapital. I have therefore given appropriate directions to my stockbroker.

EDMUND C. TIRYAKIAN
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C.

It Was Primavera Sound 2009. What Did We Boogie To?

Best "Drummer's Band" - Lightning Bolt (Pictured). Like The White Stripes but in reverse.

Best "Let Them Know Who's Boss!" Moment - Jarvis Cocker telling a punter on his way out after just one song, "Where are you going? Have you got a fucking train to catch?"

Most Ambitious Attempt At Catalan - Jarvis Cocker for his stab at "My hovercraft is full of eels."

Best Impression of Hot Pants Romance - The Vivian Girls. What Manchester does today,New York does today.

Best Middle-Aged Man Horizontal, Balancing On One Leg - David Yow of Jesus Lizard (1.46 into video)

Best Young Man Soldiering On With A Bad Back - Eddie Argos of Art Brut. What a cracking set. He even had the nerve to leave the stage a la James Brown. Class.

Best Cover Version - A Certain Ratio. "Shack Up." (Not "Lie Down" as the dickheads behind in the crowd seem to think.)

Biggest Opportunity Missed During A Cover Version - Neil Young closed out "A Day in the Life" with several minutes of squalling guitar feedback when there was piano behind that was begging for a one-note finale.

Best Mid-set Breakdown - Wavves. There we were saying,"These are bit shit considering the hype they get."

Least Expected Footy Reference - Andrew Bird "Hey, congratulations on last night. You have an excellent football team."

Furthest Away From Stage Due To Volume - My Bloody Valentine. At least we weren't daft enough to see them in the Auditorium without earplugs. Jordi?

Furthest Away From Stage Due To Size of Crowd - Neil Young. The papers reckon there were 30,000 in for his set. I reckon there were 30 people behind us. The attendance was somewhat swollen by the fact that Primavera closed down all the other stages while he was on.

Greatest Relief For The Use Of Video Screens - Aphex Twin.

Tightest Outfit - Bat For Lashes. Well, Natasha Khan's anyway.(Picture doesn't do it justice. Sorry.)




Reformed Band Sounding Most Like Teenage Fan Club - The Bats

Reformed Band Sounding Most Like Belle & Sebastian - The Vaselines

Band With The Most Number Of Obvious Influences - The Horrors

Worst Disguise Of The Week - Tim Burgess. Even with a beret, a wig and thick glasses on John still spotted him 50 yards away, and John's technically blind.

Song That Has Stuck In My Head For A Week - Bowerbirds "In Our Talons"




John says

Lest we forget:

Least Gracious Gesture of Magnanimity in Defeat from a Red: Jeremy Kerr of A Certain Ratio: "Anyone here from Manchester? Oooh! I said a dirty word!"

Second-Least Gracious Gesture of Magnanimity in Defeat from a Red: Also Jeremy Kerr of A Certain Ratio: "We didn't turn up, did we? Fucking hell."

Record for Interminable Grumpy Strumming of Bass: Jeremy Kerr of A Certain Ratio

Foulest Dietary Staple of Festival: Cans of Jack Daniels and Coke

Most Pointless Use of 500 Mobile Phone Cameras: Audience of the Aphex Twin

Can I also point out that it was Tim Burgess wearing the wig, beret and thick glasses, not me?

Also, that the drummer of Lightning Bolt is also the vocalist. A picture alone doesn't do them justice.

(Photos courtesy of Pitchfork.com)

Counago & Spaves Caption Competition No. 2

One of our less frequent yet more popular features. Answers in Comments box please.

The original caption in People Weekly magazine was "I've come as that twat Bono. How about you?"

Deathrope 2000

Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday.

Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found by a hotel maid sitting
in a wardrobe with a rope around his neck and genitals on Thursday morning.*

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. A new chokehold, perhaps. Or maybe it was research for a part.

The US star was in Thailand filming his latest film, Stretch.

There you go. Told you.





*BBC page has been changed to "with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body."

*UPDATE* People Weekly insists it was his genitals.

Who are yer? Who are yer?

Didn't you used to be famous?

FILM DIRECTOR Ken Loach has accused former taoiseach Bertie Ahern of trying to hijack the premiere of a film starring Eric Cantona.

. . .

Just before the premiere started, the Ahern brothers presented Cantona with a No 7 Dublin shirt with the legendary former Manchester United footballer’s name on the back. The brothers then left before the film started.

. . .

Loach said Cantona had “not a clue” who Bertie Ahern was, although Mr Ahern, a life-long Manchester United fan, said he met the Frenchman “a good few times” in the players’ lounge at Old Trafford.

. . .

In an interview with Newstalk’s Tom Dunne, Loach later described Mr Ahern as a “rather dodgy right-wing politician”.

Primavera Profile 2009 #2: Lightning Bolt

It’s difficult to believe but Lightning Bolt are Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson, and nobody else. It is difficult to believe because they sound like a troop of mad buffalos, like a steam roller of noise sculptured from hammering which reduces punk and hardcore to scraps of infernal noise. Formed in Providence, Rhode Island, in the mid-nineties, the duo became known in 1999 with a self-titled debut album and since then they have not stopped recharging and twisting a sound which is pure uncontrolled rage. Impeccable live, these North Americans released the brutal “Hypermagic Mountain” in 2007.


"Brutal" means something different than in Ireland. I think.

Sell Your Soul

A brief but enlightening interview in Publishers Weekly magazine with author Clancy Martin, whose debut novel, How to Sell, tells the story of an impressionable Canadian teenager who learns some hard lessons about life, love and diamonds in 1980s Fort Worth:

What's a juicy bit that didn't make it into the book?

We were in China to buy pearls, and this guy said, you have to come see my factory. We go to see it, and this factory is the size of 15 or 20 airport hangars. And he said to me, “The great thing is, the workers never have to leave. They have a hospital here, they have a school here. One week a year they can go home to their village, but the rest of the time, they stay right here and they never even have to go outside.” We did not do business with this guy.

It's a Bank Holiday (In Ireland): Let's Boogie!!

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

No Money at All, Brendan Croker

Primavera Profile 2009 #1: My Bloody Valentine

Almost 2 decades after its release the legendary “Loveless” is still gaining ground and going down as one of the most beautiful and lethal records ever made. The swan song of My Bloody Valentine, the opus magna in which Kevin Shield gave himself almost completely, has been revived thanks to a re-mastering by Shields himself from the original analogical tapes. Maybe the new edition has not solved the chilling mystery of an album, milestone of noise-pop, in which the guitars sound like jet engines, crystalline fragility meets teasing shoegaze and noise acquires a new artistic and sound dimension, but at least it has kept My Bloody Valentine on the road. So, after testing the eardrums of European and American audiences last summer, the electronic dreamers land in the Estrella Damn Primavera Sound 2009 for two concerts, one in the Auditori del Fòrum (friday 29th of may) where their supersonic sound promises to cause real havoc and another on an outdoor stage (thursday 28th of may).

My New Screen Saver

Well, it can beatz kittens.

His Master's Voice

Two Reds Pay Homage

Blame Springs Eternal

Also in Maclean's, a fantastic obituary for Mary Conception McCarthy Gomez Cueto, who died on April 3 at the age of 109. Cueto was born on April 27, 1900, to a wealthy Irish Catholic family living in St. John's, Newfoundland. While she was studying at the Boston Conservatory of Music, she met Pedro Gomez Cueto, a Spaniard a dozen years her senior with business interests in Boston and Havana, Cuba. The pair married on May 21, 1922, and they set up house in Havana, where Mary helped establish the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and, perhaps because she could not have children, an orphanage. When Pedro died in 1950, Mary stayed in Havana, running his business. Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution nationalized the factory and her other properties, valued at $4 million, but Mary remained despite the exodus of wealth from Havana.

Mary eked out a living teaching English, piano and singing. Two decades on, she had become as dilapidated as her villa, with its peeling walls, boarded windows, dust, overgrown garden and decrepit Steinway. “She was wildly painted, she wore a foxstole with a face on it and a tail whenever she came out in the evening, and vintage dresses,” says one-time neighbour Cita Pilgrim. Mary never refused a party invitation, and played the organ at church until it broke. There were hints of her past glory—an antique Cadillac, with tires shipped in from St. John’s, a chauffeur who doubled as a gardener, a herd of peacocks patrolling her grounds. She eventually received a modest stipend from the Cuban government, as well as the odd sum liberated from Boston. Yet the pearls she wore around her neck were fakes.

My favourite line in the obituary, however, is the revelation that Elio Garcia, her former student and godson, blames the U.S. embargo for her death.

Is there a Mr. De'ath?

In the April 27th issue of Canadian magazine Maclean's, Brian Bethune reviews Seth Grahame-Smith's novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Bethune observes that while it is difficult to adapt Jane Austen's novel well, Grahame-Smith helps his cause with his skillful mimicry of her style and the seamless way he inserts his own prose. Moreover, respect for the hallowed original is followed through to the end: Grahame-Smith points out that all the right couples end up together, before adding, with evident delight, that “the wicked are punished much more severely than in the original.” However,

Horror fans have so far proved harder to please than Austenites. Writer Cory Doctorow thinks there isn’t enough brain-eating: “Too much Austen, and not enough zombies,” he succinctly concluded. (That may not augur well for Grahame-Smith’s two contracted sequels, starting with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.)

Should have called it Northanger Abby.

Allen Key

The April edition of Wired magazine carries a pretty cool article about the work of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which is endeavouring to describe the cortex of the brain at the level of specific genes and individual neurons.

If the institute succeeds, its maps will help scientists decipher the function of the thousands of genes that help produce the human brain. (Although the Human Genome Project was completed more than five years ago, scientists still have little idea which genes are used to make the brain, let alone where in the brain they are expressed.) For the first time, it will be possible to understand how such a complex object is assembled from a basic four-letter code.

However . . .

One unexpected—even disheartening—aspect of the Allen Institute's effort is that although its scientists have barely begun their work, early data sets have already demonstrated that the flesh in our head is far more complicated than anyone previously imagined.

The brain might look homogenous to the naked eye, but it's actually filled with an array of cell types, each of which expresses a distinct set of genes depending on its precise location. Consider the neocortex, the so-called CPU of the brain: Scientists assumed for decades that most cortical circuits were essentially the same—the brain was supposed to rely on a standard set of microchips, like a typical supercomputer. But the atlas has revealed a startling genetic diversity; different slabs of cortex are defined by entirely different sets of genes. The supercomputer analogy needs to be permanently retired.

Or look at the hippocampus, the crescent-shaped center of long-term memory. Until recently, this small fold of tissue in the middle of the brain was depicted as neatly divided into four distinct areas. But data from the atlas has rendered the old maps not only obsolete but flat-out misleading. Even a single hippocampal area can actually be subdivided into at least nine discrete regions, each with its own genetic makeup.

Scientists at the institute are just starting to grapple with the seemingly infinite regress of the brain, in which every new level of detail reveals yet another level. "You can't help but be intimidated by the complexity of it all," Jones says. "Just when you think you're getting a handle on it, you realize that you haven't even scratched the surface." This is the bleak part of working at the Allen Institute: What you mostly discover is that the mind remains an immense mystery. We don't even know what we don't know.

The good news is . . .

Although the human atlas is years from completion, a theme is beginning to emerge: Every brain is profoundly unique, a landscape of cells that has never existed before and never will again. The same gene that will be highly expressed in some subjects will be completely absent in others. Important drug targets, like serotonin receptors, will exist in a disparate set of brain areas depending on the individual. This variation is even visible at a gross anatomical level—different people have differently shaped cortices, with different boundaries between anatomical regions. (This is why, for instance, neurosurgeons have to painstakingly probe the cortex during surgery.) If the human atlas is like Google Maps, then every mind is its own city.

"It can seem like there's an infinite number of variables to consider when you look at the human brain," says Elaine Shen, a manager at the institute. "We're making a genetic map, but what if the map isn't detailed enough? Or what if each brain is so different in expression patterns that we can't make sense of it?" She and her colleagues are convinced, however, that the only way to solve these unknowns is to look at the data, to break the brain apart and try to measure everything. "Once all the data is out there, someone else is going to connect the dots," Jones says. "All we want to do is make that scientific leap possible."

And it all starts here.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

The RetroBeats - Fireball XL5 (Live at The Old Market Tavern, Altrincham, 15/05/09)

Enlightened, He Is

When the Dalai Lama speaks, you listen.

How Much??!!!!!!!

Brill has just published a new book on Cornelius Castoriadis entitled Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy, by Jeff Klooger.

I'm sure the paperback won't be far behind.

Pass, You Bastard!!

What a Fucking Hero

Jarvis Cocker playing for the kids @ Galerie Chappe May 6th 2009

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

Fatima Mansions - 1000%

Sheer Poetry

David Peace on the death of Thatcher.

It's Still Good to Be Rich

According to Forbes magazine, anyway, which has just published a "survivor's guide for the affluent."

Some plutocrats still have it but aren't flaunting it quite as much. Society photographer Patrick McMullan says rich folks in Manhattan are toning it down at parties, hosting birthday blowouts only at the decade mark and putting out less impressive food when they do. "There used to be caviar; now we are seeing a lot more carrots," McMullan says. In West Palm Beach, Fla. "people are just not as showy as they used to be," says a businessman who spends a lot of time in Florida. "A Bentley used to be like a Chevy down here; now you don't see as many."

. . .

There's the problem of bearing up under a different sort of adversity--when your yacht builder goes broke. A Las Vegas health care executive has paid $20 million toward completion of a 145-foot, $27 million yacht--the world's biggest sailing catamaran--only to have Derecktor Shipyards in Bridgeport, Conn. stop work after it filed for bankruptcy last summer.

The grand project recently resumed, but the boat won't be delivered anywhere near its originally scheduled launch date of November 2007. Things could be worse: Nearby sits the partially completed hull of a gigantic aluminum sloop once intended for Tyco International ( TYC - news - people ) chief executive Dennis Kozlowski, who went to jail for stealing company funds in 2005.

Maybe he could take up painting.

How to Attract Men

Not the latest Spam in your Inbox but the title of an exhibition of paintings by Liz Renay, shown at work, above.

According to Art News's review of her show at Deitch Projects, New York, Renay was the girlfriend of gangster Mickey Cohen. In 1959, she was jailed for three years when she refused to snitch on him before a grand jury. The show, according to the reviewer, was made up of two markedly different halves. First came Renay's paintings, of which she apparently produced around 150 during her jail term, all of them terrible. The second half comprised her publicity photographs, scrapbook pages of press clippings with her penciled notes, and a display case packed with bizarre trophies from her archive in the Burlesque Hall of Fame.

Have a look at the show on the Deitch site and judge for yourself. Is this further proof that prison simply doesn't work?

Nil-Nil, Nil-Nil, Niiiil-Nil!

My first foray into the world of subbuteo tournaments ended at the semi-final stage last night. I couldn't really see anyone beating Frank Sidebottom considering the strong lineup he put out. Any Premiership manager would envy a team built around a spine of Alien, Dalek and Skeletor.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

Fujiya & Miyagi - Sore Thumb

Well, wasn't that nice?

There's nothing better than a stroll in the park on a spring evening.

It's Friday. Let's Boogie!

The Fall - Container Drivers

Young Player Of The Year Award

This year it is shared between Ashley and Greg. The lifetime achievement award goes to Neil for his part in this 30 years ago.

True Greatness

And that's why I gave up my ticket for Art Brut.

Trickle-Down

The editor's note in the January/February edition of Elite Traveler magazine:

It's only excessive if you can't afford it. At least that's my belief. As we enter 2009, it is amazing to see how the general media have tried to shame wealthy individuals into not spending. The fact of the matter is that the economic slump was not caused by the wealthy; it was caused by aspirational consumers who took out bigger mortgages than they could handle, leased cars they couldn't afford, and took vacations they shouldn't have.

Should a person with a net worth of, say, $100 million have scaled back his or her holiday party because of “the times”? If we want to speak about getting the economy going again, the answer is no. In fact, spending by the segment that Merrill Lynch Capgemini categorizes as Ultra High Net Worth, those having investible assets of at least $30 million, is going to be needed more than ever.

So what's the connection with Elite Traveler? Well, we get upset when our readers are being unfairly picked on. There was a good article in New York Magazine a while ago about the trickle-down effect of spending by wealthy consumers. According to the piece, spending by the top one percent of earners in the Big Apple supports 153,000 service jobs and 50,000 government employees.

I won't say more, except to let you know you can continue to expect the best of the privatejet lifestyle in every issue of Elite Traveler, and I do hope you continue to do the things that provide you the enjoyment you've earned and that your financial wherewithal supports. There are quite a few people depending on it!

With best wishes for an elite 2009!

All the best,
Doug Gollan
President and Editor-in-Chief