Author: JP

Relaxedly rambling

I’ve been lazing all evening. My older two children are at a concert in Brixton, the youngest is in bed, my wife has her church group over, and I’ve been left to myself. Which is a good thing sometimes, especially when it’s the end of the week and i’ve spent most of it travelling. I like companionable silences. And, occasionally, I even like companionless silences.

So after reading the papers and listening to Gabriela Montero playing Bach (absolutely amazing), I went for a gentle ramble around the web. Started with Christian Cenizal and visualisation, someone I’d bookmarked and written about recently and wanted to investigate a little more. And he led me to this Melbourne tourism video.

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Which in turn led me to wanting to listen more to Joanna Newsom, and on to this video.

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She’s one of these singers you either love or hate. I enjoy her. I first came across her in an ad a few years ago, to do with New York and blackouts and This Side Of The Blue. Her voice is quirky and unusual, it has a Melanie-like quality that combines really well with her harp-playing: I find the effect mesmerising. See what you think. [Incidentally, I’ve just realised that Melanie is over 60 now. Wow.]

Visualising “flocking”

I’m always on the lookout for good visualisation tools and techniques. Which is why I really liked this by Christian Cenizal. There’s something very Yogi-Berra-like “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded” about it, the way the worms come together and then break up just as the party gets going. As one of the comments asserts, isn’t that one way of representing bubble behaviour?

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Children brought up in front of the CCTV

Finished reading Cathi Unsworth’s The Singer while on a plane a couple of days ago. Did it almost at one sitting, found it that enjoyable. Riveting. A searing, soaring Punk novel, with visions as dark as Erebus. Strongly recommended to all who connect with that generation.

The book criss-crosses between the late Seventies and the early 21st century in dramatic fashion. In passing, Cathi refers to the hoodie generation as “children brought up in front of the CCTV”. Children who knew how to keep their faces averted away from the camera, who used their hoodies and baseball caps to best effect.

The overlap between the Hoodie Generation and Generation M is one worth thinking about. It’s the same generation, intensely public and intensely private at the extremes.

the burden of captaincy?

A rushed post before taking off for Heathrow.

It appears that Dhoni scored fifty in today’s match against Sri Lanka. Not surprising. But without a single boundary? Wow. Dhoni? Now that’s a captain’s knock.

The $32 million dollar question

There’s money flowing from log cabins to the White House. I quote from the Washington Post:

Sen. Barack Obama has set a new online record, raising more than $28 million online in one month.

To put this into context, Howard Dean, known as the first Internet candidate, raised $27 million — during his whole campaign.

A spokesman said $28 of the $32 million that Obama raised last month came over the Internet. Ninety percent of the online donations were $100 or less; forty percent were $25 or less.

In January, more than 10,000 people gave between $5 and $10 on the Internet, he said.

Football clubs being owned by its members, members who gathered online. Bands being funded by its members, members who gathered online. Presidential candidates being funded by supporters who gather online.

Whatever next? Maybe we will see “Western democracy” start meaning something again after all, rather than remain the oxymoron it’s been reduced to.

Time to re-invoke my favourite Mahatma Gandhi quote:

What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,   1869-1948

The same goes for Western democracy. And maybe the web brings us closer to that possibility.

[My thanks to Brittany Bohnet for reminding me about this by linking to the techPresident story in Facebook].