[today grain] tomorrow meat and water

Simultaneous floods in Europe, drought in Australia and cold in South America has both depleted grain supplies and are currently inflating food prices, coincidentally as the expanded, newly expanded EU and the SPPNA come into being, with one major thrust being relief in poorer areas such as Africa:

Officials forecast US wheat stocks would shrink to their lowest level in 60 years, dropping from 312m bushels to 280m by the end of the 2007-08 crop year. The US is the world’s biggest exporter of wheat and importing countries are bidding heavily for its crops as other exporters cut supplies.

Cold weather damaged crops in Argentina and drought affected Australia’s wheat production. Flooding also damaged European crops. Michael Lewis, of Deutsche Bank in London, said the decline in stocks and rising shortages in large parts of Asia suggested 2008 “could deliver another year of . . . price shocks”.

Other commentators aay the stockpiles are due to increase, not decrease, in 2008/9. The EU has reversed it's 10% fallow rule to start stockpiling again plus the French farming Minister has called for a rethink of the whole farming industry. Uh-huh:

So is Mr Barnier ready to take the next step, and contemplate a radical shrinking of the market-distorting Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), now that farming is, in his own description, back to being a more straightforward business involving profitable supply, and rising demand?

Is he a French farming minister? Why yes, he is. So instead, his conclusion is that more state intervention is going to be needed, and the CAP will have to remain the "primary economic policy of the European Union".

Interesting. What effect will this have on, say, sheep farmers who depend on reasonably priced grain? And will calling land back from fallow work in the short term, given the deterioration factor? And are biofuels to blame for a large portion of the problem? Has it been artificially induced over the last two decades with changes in farming technologies?

So, all this has pretty well been written up and perhaps it's time to look at the next items on the list - meat supplies [soy production targets a good indicator here] and drinking water. I'm particularly looking at the latter.

The former is in the news mainly through foot and mouth and bird flu. The latter is a longer term problem this blog has touched on before. In this country almost everyone buys pre-treated bottle water - a huge industry indeed but still cheap, at 90 roubles for 19 litres.

At least they still bring it to your door here, unlike in other parts of the world. And in Southern California there is yet another solution.

Whichever way you dice it or slice it, it's going to mean big money to those in control of basic life-sustaining supplies. So your choice seems clear - either work your way into the upper echelons who are barely affected by global crisis, stay with the other 98% blithely oblivious until it happens or be one of the micro-percentage who are adopting lateral solutions until such time as they're shut out of the food chain altogether.

Another interesting study is the largely unsubstantiated fungal toxin warfare, such as Plan Colombia amd Agent Green but it seems to me it is becoming increasingly unnecessary, what with the poisonous air and water we now endure - we currently have an epidemic in our city anyway, for example.

[coffee and croissants] one explanation of their origin

Another first for this blog - quoting holus-bolus from Wiki, rather than the usual plagiarism. Several culinary legends are related to the Battle of Vienna:

* One legend is that the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or in an earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Turkish siege of the city, as a reference to the crescents on the Turkish flags. Although this version is supported by the fact that croissants in French Language are referred to as Viennoiserie and the French popular belief that Vienna born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770, there is no further evidence that croissants existed before the 19th century.

* Another legend from Vienna has the first bagel as being a gift to King John Sobieski to commemorate the King's victory over the Turks that year. The baked-good was fashioned in the form of a stirrup, to commemorate the victorious charge by the Polish cavalry. The truth of this legend is very uncertain, as there is a reference in 1610 to a similar-sounding bread, which may or may not have been the bagel.

* After the battle, the Austrians discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Turkish encampment. Using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the third coffeehouse in Europe and the first in Vienna, where, according to legend, Kulczycki himself or Marco d'Aviano, the Capuchin friar and confidant of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino.

It is also said that when the Turks were pushed away from Vienna, the military bands left their instruments on the field of battle and that is how the Holy Roman Empire (and therefore the rest of Western countries) acquired Cymbals, Bass Drums, and Triangles.

One interesting aside is that this info was in a piece on the Battle for Vienna.

[top 25] popular songs since the 50s

It was a tough job, tougher than I first thought - you see, it wasn't whether I liked the song or not. It was whether it took the world by storm at the time, whether it crossed generations and whether it is still played and sung today. In no particular order:

Zero Shaddap You Face, Joe Dolce, 1 Stairway-to-Heaven, Led Zeppelin, 2 Hotel California, The Eagles, 3 Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys, 4 Nights in White Satin, Moody Blues, 5 River Deep - Mountain High, Ike and Tina Turner

6 Let It Be, The Beatles, 7 Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley, 8 Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Simon and Garfunkel, 9 Whiter Shade of Pale, Procol Harum, 10 When a Man Loves a Woman, Percy Sledge

11 The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan, 12 Every Breath You Take, The Police, 13 Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, 14 Bad, Michael Jackson, 15 Light My Fire, The Doors

16 Gloria, Them, 17 Mama Mia, Abba, 18 Crying, Roy Orbison, 19 Eye of the Tiger, Survivor, 20 The Twist, Chubby Checker

21 Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd, 22 My Generation, The Who, 23 Space Oddity, David Bowie, 24 American Pie, Don McLean, 25 Maggie May, Rod Stewart.

The ones I couldn't squeeze into the list were:

Everything I do [I Do for You], Bryan Adams, Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan, I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston, I Want It That Way, Backstreet Boys, No Woman, No Cry, Bob Marley and the Wailers, You've Lost That Lovin, Feelin', The Righteous Brothers, All Along the Watchtower, Jimi Hendrix, Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On, Jerry Lee Lewis

Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin, Mr. Tambourine Man, The Byrds, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye, Great Balls of Fire, Jerry Lee Lewis, Blitzkrieg Bop, Ramones, Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan, House of the Rising Sun, The Animals, Born to Be Wild, Steppenwolf, Dancing Queen, Abba, EMI, The Sex Pistols

Wild Thing, The Troggs, Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen, The End, The Doors, La Bamba, Ritchie Valens, Unchained Melody, The Righteous Brothers, I Got You Babe, Sonny and Cher, Under the Boardwalk, The Drifters, Papa Don't Preach, Madonna, Everybody's Talking, Harry Nilsson

Respect, Aretha Franklin, Candle in the Wind, Elton John, Hey Jude, The Beatles, Walk Like An Egyptian, The Bangles , Ruby Tuesday, The Rolling Stones, The Joker, Steve Miller Band, Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n Roll, Ian Dury And The Blockheads, Love Hurts, Nazareth.

[eu juggernaut] for better or worse

Had a most dispiriting experience from an unexpected quarter yesterday.

Asking a friend over here what he thought of the elimination of Britain as an entity and in particular, England, via the Constitution signed during the week by the Traitor Brown [I didn't use that description of course], he flatly denied it had happened because the BBC had not covered it ad nauseam, the way they'd covered, say, the Arafat Funeral.

He gets BBC World News via cable.

Therefore the issue doesn't exist. Whoa! Where to start on the MSM agenda, its ownership and its slant on issues? When we got down to it, his reason for the flat denial was that in the west there is, in his eyes, a vibrant, working democracy where democratically elected leaders carry out democratically approved decisions and though there might be minor problems, his over here are vastly bigger.

A smiling Britain is clearly cheering Brown on and welcoming the EU with open arms. And his clinching argument was that Britain has 70% exports and that I couldn't deny that that was so.

I'm afraid I didn't handle this well and hurriedly concluded the phone conversation.

Later in the day, another chap, a businessman who's been living in Europe this past year, visited and over coffee we discussed the same issue.

Different mentality. Though he's Russian and wouldn't be averse to Russia being brought into the EU economic space [a common view over here], he described two separate direct dealings with the EU and he was far from impressed with the way they operated. He called it "arrogance" and "high-handedness".

I asked: "And how about inefficiency?"

He reflected then added: "Da, da." We both agreed it was a bureaucratic mentality, a mentality which doesn't admit of entrepeneurship but only of compliance with rafts of regulations where one is lost in an ocean of paperwork and Bureauspeak.

Rather than flatly denying that what had happened to Britain had happened, he asked me to explain and this is what I said:

"By signing that Constitution -"

"Treaty."

"That's an issue too - it's a Constitution by any other name. But yes, by signing this "Treaty", a Scot effectively and simultaneously has signed away both England's status as a nation and Britain's sovereignty, in real terms, as anything more than a region of the EU, slowly to take effect over the next 13 years.

For that Scot and many other Celts too, that was a great thing - revenge for the '45, for the castles in Wales and so on."

At this point I gave a potted history of Britain, neither exonerating the Anglo-Saxons either for Cromwell nor the Highland Clearances and zeroing in on Fields of Athenry. Don't forget my mother's side is Celtic.

"But even so, why would the Britons sit back and invite in the "EU monster", as you call it?"

"That's historic too. One of their leaders invited in the Anglo-Saxons in the first place, for equally short-sighted reasons. The carrot in this current day is that each Celtic nation gets to be recognized, [they don't fully appreciate that it's as a satellite region of the EU yet, in all but name], they get to have their own play-parliament and they can pretend they're now a sovereign nation, the money pours in from the EU for much needed infrastructure to replace lost English revenue and England is effectively isolated."

I thought it would be information overload to bring in the West-Lothian question at this point so I went on:

"It's vital for the EU to isolate England because it was always the major obstacle to any European power's strength. 1066 succeeded, the 1588 Armada didn't, the 100 Years War came to nothing, Napoleon failed, as did the Kaiser and Hitler. England has always been under siege, much as Israel is today."

"And the EU wants to break the U.S. connection."

"Exactly. It's not only the destruction of England as an ancient feud - the British/U.S. nexus also has to be broken and NATO as well, so that the continental bloc paradigm holds sway and the 1984 style "constant warfare" scenario can be effected. Hence Merkel's Army, the drive coming form the Bruderheist and other pondlife, hence Milliband's enthusiastic support."


"But England is still strong - it's exports and GDP still ensure it's a powerful opponent."

"Yes, unless there is no England, only nine regions under an EU umbrella."

"But the English wouldn't put up with that."

"Unless countless millions are poured into the nine regions for visible infrastructural improvements and for the relief of unemployment, which has been induced anyway in the first place. I also suspect personal debt relief will come into this somewhere down the track also. That would quell most opposition."

"How?"

"Look at a hypothetical analogy. Russia offers itself to its people as the motherland/fatherland. Pensions and salaries are woeful and gloom abounds. OK, the EU is a shining 1000 Points of Light. Russians have eyes for money and the EU has it.

Now imagine that the EU offered to pour billions into Russian infrastructure to the point where unemployment is greatly reduced, jobs abounded and building projects could be seen everywhere.

The people then have a choice between an idea - being a poor Russian - or living well under the auspices of the EU. Wouldn't you be happy to cede your sovereignty for the moment [always planning to get it back somewhere down the line] in exchange for medium term prosperity?"

"Russians wouldn't put up with that."

"No, they wouldn't. And neither would Americans. So the EU would ensure that the word "Russia" would still exist, just as the SPPNA will ensure that the U.S.A. remains as a concept, long after the organs of state have passed to the NGO called the NAAC from March, 2009. There'd still be token assemblies, there'd still be a Capitol Hill, still be a Westminster and White House, still be a pretence of democratic process in the post-democratic era and the people could rest assured that all was well.

Except for the pesky checkpoints, armed militia, restrictions on travel [for ecological reasons of course], the sheer weight of bureaucratic constraints and all your personal data in central giant computers [the EU's original computer was nicknamed "The Beast"]. Chipped from birth to death and "mentored" your whole life.

Iris scan ID and eventually the successor to patents #5,629,678 and #5,878,155 - the Digital Corp maintenance free, under-the-skin chip security ID, using GPS, which they call the 'Digital Angel' - these would be used to help "protect the free economic space" called the EU."

"I don't believe it."

"Neither did my friend this morning. But you've just come back here from Europe. Was the level of security the same as ten years ago?"

"Go on."

"In the English scenario, the short term benefits of free [but scrutinized] travel within the EU space would suit many Brits, the obscene amounts of money which the British government has simply not ploughed into the infrastructure in past decades, including in education and hospitals - now this money starts to pour in and the benefits of EU membership are apparent to all.

The only people who would rail against it are malcontents now labelled as "English Nationalists"; they do not enjoy universal support from the newly economically pampered people who have become less and less English anyway as unrestricted immigration is rampant and so these "English" then find themselves isolated as "Separatist Insurgents" within their own country. They're now told there's no such thing as a "pure Englishman" anyway."

"I can see how it would look to English eyes but surely it's better to live well than scratch for a living."

"True but why did we have to scratch for a living in the first place? It was induced, that's why. In the 5th largest world economy, there is no need for EU money beyond simple trading within an EEC economic space. How did the idea of an armed Union arise?

Trouble is, many people have themselves travelled in the past few decades and they've seen another life out there beyond English borders - they see a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan life and wouldn't want to go back to the days of Harold Wilson, the coalminers' strike and the Winter of Discontent - just three examples."

"Just as the Russians don't wish to go back to the Soviet Union."

"All of this helps the EU along and people's patriotism for this strange thing called England becomes just words, semantics. It's all been very well done."

"And so?'

"And so nothing. You need another coffee?"

[kiss] the most satisfying ever

I'm a James Bond fan from way back, have four or five reviews of every film ever made in the franchise, I've seen them all many times and have a few on disk. For what it's worth, the current Bond might be the best yet.

That said, it doesn't alter the fact that the character was wrong in his approach to the interpersonal, which sprang to mind with Oestrebunny's post on kissing at the office party and the comment by one of her commenters:

I love kissing but there are so many bad kissers out there!

Meaning that the commenter goes around with her slavering chops, inviting any good looking man in to be tasted and spat out if found wanting. I once had the experience of one of those and the strange thing is I have two photos of her on my computer because she is quite well known.

It was definitely just curiosity on both our parts and it was awful. For a start she was wet and full on, the vibe was token resistance then what she really wanted - to consume. It was like an alcoholic's approach to alcohol or a coffeeholic's approach to coffee. She was definitely not in it for me.

Interesting that Oestrebunny's commenter went on:

I think a good kiss is one where you stop breathing!

Well there are a number of reasons you stop breathing and one is that you're being asphyxiated. Once was in the back of a taxi for me and she was crushing me against the back seat and not letting me come up for air. I don't mind being pinned to a seat by a girl's thighs but it's nice to gasp a couple of breaths now and then.

The other time was the one with the "wet consumer" already mentioned, tongue straight to the back of the throat and aggressive. Uggggh! And the whole raison d'etre for that kiss was wrong. Let me explain via my reply to Oestrebunny's commenter:

No wonder you think there are so many bad kissers. A kiss from someone you're not in a love relationship with is never as good - you can't hide the satyric insincerity behind the kiss because you're not giving yourself.

A great kiss is always the Romeo and Juliet type where two people have eyes only for each other.

All other kisses are either mechanical, from long experience or anxiously speculative. Neither of these types is ultimately satisfying.

I'd rather one kiss from a girl who loves me than all the ones I get for all the reasons they do it.

The excitement in the "taking of" a fantastic girl and peeling away her defences one by one is infinitely preferable to a "drop the gear, nibble the ear and into it" - that's a total turn off when it's just the aperitif.

The very best kiss is the forbidden kiss, the one you've worked for so long to achieve, the one you've forced onto her by degrees [though naturally it's her agenda] and the more intelligent and the more modest the girl, the better.

This is entirely different to "the more innocent she is". Where's the pleasure in taking candy from a baby? The real buzz is when she's worldly and you've got no chance at all, not being tall and not being handsome. And yet you get there in the end. When she finally lets you in, it's a huge buzz - the best there is.

And that's where the charismatic satyr stops his development as a person. He's so taken with the conquering, with the thrill of the chase, that he's not willing to step up to the next, more satisfying phase - getting completely inside the woman and she inside him. It's not consuming one another, it's joining auras and saying inside the soul: "She's all I want".

And most importantly for the other - it's setting aside all the other possibilities he or she both have and this is the ultimate compliment. Where's the compliment in knowing she's just going to move onto the next one after you?

It recognizes all the faults, all the difficulties and it's ultimately forgiving and tolerant, something I'm currently not and it's clear I need to find such a woman. It matters not a damn if she's the most ravishing beauty or has the technique down pat. Better she doesn't.

It matters that your eyes are for her in the sense of "let's work hard on this and try to make it a goer". You can still have light-hearted laughs with all the other girls but there's only one who really satisfies you now.

This satisfaction has little to do with technique, which Oestrebunny's commenter seems so consumed by. It's to do with one-on-one, dancing a complex dance of growing love because once the initial fire passes, real love has to replace it.

It has to do with maturity, trust, knowing the footstep of the other, knowing the little things and building up and supporting the other - this is the true carnal knowledge.

And always working on it, always dreaming up new ways to make her happy. The day that stops is the day it's over.

Finally, it's about losing Self, fusing it with the other to a great degree - true love does not demand total devotion.

So you can keep your shallow, beauty-based, Cosmo style sex-by-numbers approach to love. Give me a real woman any time over a promiscuous, pleasure model T-213 robot.

[blogfocus saturday] of higher things

1. You want to see an interesting site, through the eyes of the artist? Norman explains:

St. Ives harbour. The beach at low tide. Pencil drawing on 150 gsm cartridge size 10 x 10 cm. I took a small pocket sized sketchbook with me to St. Ives. A handy size when working outside in an Atlantic gale.

I took with me my usual four clutch pencils; HB 0.5 mm., 3B 2 mm., 6B 3mm. and 4B 6mm. This latter functioned as a sort of graphite stick. I had a chunk of putty rubber and a collection of servietttes gleaned from the various cafés I visit.

2. Dabrah can say something not too many others can:

The thing about skiing in Dubai is the contrast between the extreme heat of the desert and the coldness of the ski dome. In Lebanon, nature provides this contrast for free. I can remember, in my youth, snow skiing in the mountains of Lebanon in the morning, and water skiing in Beirut in the afternoon, all on the same day! I do not exaggerate.

3. Mousy meets some intelligent people in his medical work:

One of the paramedics phones to say they're at a students' Christmas party with a buffoon who has drunk some bubble bath for a bet. They're wondering if it's dangerous and they actually need to bring him to hospital, or if they can safely leave him there. I explain that there should be no need to bring him, as, generally speaking, ingestion of detergents isn't harmful (the exception to this is dishwasher detergent, I might add).

4. Lady MacLeod is buying action heroes for Christmas, which is only meet and right:

I found a special vehicle (kismet I tell you) for "President Arnold S" (one of the main characters) - it is the Mr. Freeze auto that I am given to understand he drove in the Batman movie and the package included that car of the same genre, the Batmobile - which is now the vehicle that will convey our hero on his sojourns around the globe in the name of ...well I am just not sure of his motives yet as he is a Captain in SOCOM and being 28 years old he is embodied with the earnestness of youth.

5. Colin Campbell has always been one to go against the flow:

The story here.

That is an incredibly powerful instinct at work. I can remember watching bears catch fish in Alaska. They would just sit on the falls and wait for a big juicy one to try to jump up the fall. These guys are jumping into a flowing pipe so that they can go 50 metres into the river where the water is coming from. That is a lot of power.

[aw shucks] is this sweet or is this sweet?

Click pic for more

[st. george] scourge of islam and the eu monster

Sigh:

FC Barcelona shirts sold in Saudi Arabia have had their club emblems altered to exclude the St George's Cross, the municipal flag of the Spanish city, according to reports in La Vanguardia newspaper.

The alterations have supposedly been made due to a fear of offending Muslims through the cross' connotation to the Crusades during the 12th and 13th centuries when English soldiers adopted the St George's Cross as they attempted to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule.

[independent boys] know when they're not wanted

Looks frightening for the parents:

When Connor Wilson was turned away from after-school care because his name wasn't on the list, he took matters into his own hands and decided to walk home - all 15km. Police found the six-year-old walking along Geelong's busiest road, the Princes Highway, more than 6km into his journey to his Whittington home.

Quite apart from the issue of the inadequate care provided and the mother's possible guilt as well, I'd like to focus instead on the resilience of the child - of any child that age.

I remember such situations well:

Age 4 - I'd pick up my raffia case with cut lunch [not being up to preparing my own sandwiches at that stage] and would nip round the corner to my girlfriend's place, collect her and walk her to kinder, just under a kiklometre away. There was only one dangerous corner but I'd been trained for that. Naturally, I had no idea who was observing - I just thought it was my job.

Age 8 - We were in the High Street, doing Christmas shopping. In one store, maybe Woolworths, my mother told me to wait by the "snack bar" for her, while she went to get something further into the store. So, I went looking for "a" snack bar, not realizing I was actually beside "the" snack bar she was referring to.

Not having any luck here, I went outside onto the footpath and asked a lady if she knew where "a" snack bar was. To think that my choice of the indefinite article could have been the catalyst of all the troubles.

She did know where "a" snack bar was. It was about a hundred metres further down the street and it had a big sign "snack bar".

No problems.

Down I went and waited dutifully beneath the sign until my mother found me, distraught - she was distraught, not me - I was more concerned with what had gone wrong with my mum.

Age 11 - Don't know if I should mention this one. My father took me to the football but because for some strange reason, I had a membership card and he didn't, he explained in detail where I'd go in and he'd watch me in, then I had to turn left and follow the tunnelway to the barrier, where he'd be waiting.

No problems.

I went in but there were two tunnelways, so I took the one that looked as if it would lead to a mesh fence and it did. However, he didn't appear. I waited for half an hour but as the game was about to start, I gave it away, determined to go looking for him at halftime.

I managed a spot down by the touchline and had a good first half. Now it was time to find him. I asked officials about the layout of the ground, about where he probably would have come into the ground if I'd come in where I had and so on.

No luck. My dad had got lost.

OK, well there was a damn good game on, so I settled down for the second half and it was well worth the money I'd never paid. Now it was time to find him - I'd have to pull out all stops in this endeavour but the huge crowd pouring out of the ground made it difficult.

I went round that ground three times and was getting tired so thought it best to ask a friendly policeman if he'd seen a stray father. Nope but the policeman now had some questions for me I don't remember.

The upshot was that they took me to the station and when I saw one of their guns, the desk sergeant let me check it over. I'd given my address and phone number already and so they now reported that all was well. My father had been found and was safely at home.

The biggest problem was calming my mother down on the phone but once that was done, it was into the car and they even gave a blast of the siren for effect and we stopped off at a chippy and had supper. I still remember the fun that evening.

Then the boys in blue delivered me home - door to door, mind - no walking at all and my mother embarrassed me by embracing me in front of them. Don't remember much else.

So I understand wee Connor completely - it's what any boy would do under the circumstances. They don't want me? OK, I go home. No money? Well, nothing to be done - I'll just have to walk.

You have to like young Connor very much. Check out the photo - is he in tears or is he angry?

[banksy] let us spray in bethlehem

It appears that Banksy has gone seasonal - he's made it to Bethlehem and is graffitiing in the Manger Square:

One colour mural on a Bethlehem wall shows a little girl frisking an Israeli soldier in combat gear. A downtown gable end is decorated with a silhouette of an Israeli soldier checking a donkey's identity card. Elsewhere, one of Banksy's trademark rats brandishes a catapult at a watchtower set in the wall.

I'd like to know your view on Banksy and graffiti in general. He certainly does it well, the authorities would like to catch him, I've seen a possible photo of him and he brings a smile to the face.

But is he right for somewhere like Bethlehem?

Another of Bansky's supposed works

[top 25] popular musicians and singers since the 50s

This is the last musical post for a little while.

What does "greatest artists" mean? This is my attempt at a workable definition:

1. Technically excellent;
2. Heavily influential;
3. Internationally acclaimed [not just in the U.S. or the U.K.];
4. Leaving a substantial legacy of recordings or sheet music;
5. Memorable for far more than one song.

We then get into the problem Rolling Stone found - that of different generations revering different sets of artists so that should perhaps give N6 - cross generation. On that basis, my Top 20 non-classical musical artists since the 50s would comprise:

1. The Beatles 2. Elvis Presley 3. The Rolling Stones 4. Led Zeppelin 5. Bob Dylan 6. Michael Jackson 7. The Doors 8. The Eagles 9. Abba 10. Roy Orbison 11. Van Morrison 12. Sex Pistols 13. Bruce Springsteen 14. Elton John 15. The Beach Boys 16. Simon and Garfunkel 17. Eric Clapton 18. The Drifters 19. Joe Cocker 20. Pink Floyd 21. Creedence Clearwater Revival 22. Queen 23. Rod Stewart 24. Tina Turner 25. The Shadows

What changes would you make to the above list? Don't forget that they must transcend generations and continents. For example, Aretha Franklin was largely U.S. and the Hollies were largely U.K.

Run DMC or Patti Smith are too specific, as are Joy Division and there must be a legacy people still sing today all over the world. On the other hand, Prince is just a prat and I wouldn't put him on any list.

Also, you couldn't put in virtual illiterates like, Spears, Lavigne or Martin. They have to be artists who've actually achieved something.

Don't forget either that these are not the 25 best [I'd put in Touch 'n Go] but the 25 greatest.

[russian track] you might like to listen

boomp3.com

If you'd like to hear another, I can post it tomorrow. It's by group Hi Fi who were big in 1999/2000. Their music is quite variable but most tracks are excellent.

Strangely, they're not that popular with Russians themselves and I'm still trying to find out why. Maybe they're too inventive for the new generation, I don't know.

Be warned the file is big.

[gifts] the thought is everything

JMB [am I imagining it or is she blogging fabulously lately?] and the estimable Political Umpire have been debating not only wine but the whole ethos of giving and receiving:

I always take a nice wine to friends X, because I know Mrs X is a wine buff and appreciates it. They never open it, however, but offer either non-alcoholic drinks or, occasionally, a very cheap supermarket wine (I do not believe Mrs X, with her evident knowledge, is unaware of this).

Should I continue taking nice bottles, but unsubtly hint they open it, take an inferior one (the contrast with previous offerings would be noticed), or take a different gift the value of which would not be evident (thus enabling me to economise discretely if I so wished).

Going off at a tangent, as is my wont, the whole art of present giving has been lost to many people these days, as far as I can see.

One Christmas will forever stick in my memory. There were three families at the gathering. Now, as two of those families had children, it went against everything I stood for to give one present to cover the entire family. I didn't wish to but it involved, therefore, about 11 presents.

Now there's a certain reputation to uphold here and I do like people to think some thought has been put in. For example, I used to receive a batik calendar, hand-made by an elderly couple, replete with photos. It mattered not how many they'd produced [they had the time]. They still had to make it and that's what counted with me.

It's the Japanese approach, the Japanese seriousness accorded the process which is nice. And the Japanese are the first to say that the gift wrapping is equally, if not more, important. I felt that the wrapping paper, the ribbon and the way the colours inside and out coordinated was pretty vital.

I wouldn't say my presents were awe-inspiring but they were certainly thought out and the wrapping was as classy as I could make it. At the risk of being an ingrate, I came home that day with one bottle of cheap plonk which I knew that family would never have drunk themselves, one box of handkerchiefs and the third family had forgotten about me entirely.

So we come to what presents are - they are a statement of what you think of that other person and as two people always put the other not entirely on the same level, then imbalance results, by definition. One present will always exceed the other. I love the idea of presents but presents themselves are fraught.

So it seems to me we either go the Japanese way of keeping a log of all presents given, past and present, with meticulous attention paid to the level of the present - or else we dispense with them entirely, except within the immediate family, e.g. our kids, where no reciprocation can ever be expected.

One alternative for those who can't do that is to work out our Christmas list, make special cards over a couple of months, 2 or 3 a night perhaps and then there is no "level judging" possible. These are given close to the day. The effort put into making them shows the other you care but there is little monetary value attached.

The more extreme solution, of course, is to announce, ahead of time, that from this Christmas and onwards into the future, we are dispensing with all gifts and cards, so please don't give anything. To unexpected cards received through the post, a pleasant letter of thanks will be forthcoming in the New Year.

To assist with this, maybe we could write a little notice on a piece of card and carry it with us throughout the danger season. Every time someone wants to involve us, we could say our ultra-polite little piece and show them the card, show them that this is a blanket thing we're doing, nothing personal.

Then it's a case of people respecting that.

[end of britain] it's official

The hated monstrosity in all its ignominy

Here it is at last - the traitors have done it and it took an American to say it:

Britain Surrenders

I'm sure all of my Brit friends have had a bad day if they've kept abreast at the news. No one I've talked to actually believed that Britain would actually sign the EU Treaty, but they have done it.

The EU is becoming a country, slowly but surely; this is the latest step in depriving the citizens of the countries of Europe of their ability to govern their lands.

Click for the rest of the story

Since 1066 they have tried and failed. Napoleon failed. Hitler failed. Now the quislings within the borders have seized the highest offices, courtesy of a credulous public in the early 90s, swayed by a pretty face and fine words - and the result is here for all to see.

Sad, sad day indeed. My, your, grandparents and parents fought against precisely this - the blitz, the blackouts, the rationing, the wasted millions of lives - all for what? For a Scot to be in a position to sign away the rights of England forever. They must be chortling up there but it will be short-lived.

One of the first jobs in the inevitable English fightback is for the gallows on Tyburn to be rebuilt and for Blair, Brown, Milliband and the whole crew on both sides of politics who took the Euro to meet their grisly fate, at English hands. Better get in before the pan-EU army gets well and truly moving.

There is another aspect which must have crossed the minds of those loyal to England. We are now officially insurgents. We are challenging an officially ordained state of affairs, signed into being by an elected member of parliament and a PM within the conventions. And what is the basis of the insurgency? That England is England, Scotland is Scotland, Wales is Wales and Ireland is Ireland. That is our treason against the EU we're now officially part of.

And insurgents get rounded up. Look at the legislation in place to do so.

Let me finally quote Holmes:

The Englishman is a patient creature but at present his temper is a little inflamed and it would be as well not to try him too far.

Conan Doyle did not appear to me to be given to hysteria or wild words. He simply stated it as it was.

Rest in peace, Britain. It was a great idea whilst it lasted. England, your time has come to fight back.

[ageing] gracefully or disgracefully

My younger girlfriend and I brought up the topic in 2000 when we were planning to marry.

I said that if something happened and we didn't marry and if we actually parted, then she'd have been my last girlfriend. Rubbish, she said and she was arguing from what she'd observed but she wasn't counting on the `'flirt but that's all" philosophy.

She once said it was impossible to just "go out" in this country, "one-on-one "- by definition it meant far more and a man buying you a meal was tantamount to the sack.

My time with her brought three things home:

1. Many girls do, whatever you say and however you are outraged by this, bring it on themselves. Provocative dress, highlighted beauty and a roving eye do attract the men like flies [and I mean men in her case, not boys]. She was a man's girl.

She thought it was a great compliment to me that I was able to hold onto such enticing beauty which she devoted all her waking hours to. I thought it was a pain in the butt to be constantly fighting off a steady stream of men until I realized that she could have ended most of it with a certain attitude, a certain way she carried herself, if she'd wanged to, that is.

2. For my part, it was a strange state of mind. Post boomer but early Gen X, I really wasn't attempting to stay young; I wasn't attempting anything - one doesn't in the middle of living life to the full - reflection comes later.

In Northern England, one sweet lass of 17 asked me why I was "trying to dress young". It was a shock, that comment. I hadn't thought that I was dressing young; perhaps it was that I had aged beneath it. If pressed, I'd have said I was trying to dress with a bit of style. It was just that I knew some people who sold Sonetti gear and I liked it very much, including a jacket which was eye burning on one side but reversed to Italian treated silk on the other.

Immediately reversing the jacket to it's less outrageous side, that was the start of dressing more appropriately. One of the first steps was to discard the trainers/sneakers for leather shoes and Higham had now moved into a new phase.

I really do think that some things look ridiculous [in the full sense of the word] on certain ages and with certain degrees of hair remaining on top. Even posture does alter, no matter how gradual it becomes, a paunch is unavoidable and takes longer and longer hours to quell in the gym and the skin gets softer and less elastic as you go on - training, cosmetics and botox notwithstanding.

3. Age can't be disguised, certainly from a younger person and to rage against age and spend the hard-earned trying to reverse the process is stupid. Having done botox once in recent years, I can't think why I was so stupid at the time; I'm now dead against botox - think you should just be yourself and attract those of a certain age, forgetting the younger set.

But there's something psychological, powerful, refusing to let your mind come to terms with age - it's a state of mind beyond reason, tying in vanity and who knows what else. That there are girls who also ignore the obvious in a man for their own reasons [or perhaps they don't reason it out] - that makes it all the more difficult. Especially when they are all around us.

Men bemoaning how they no longer attract the "prize" young lady should count their blessings. What have we got to offer a young lady anyway, apart from money [and don't say it's our loving heart]? Methinks it's more difficult for the ex-motorcycle rider, the ex-Lothario, the ex-everything, to come to terms with reality - Pierce Brosnan springs to mind.

And yet we look across at others of our age, also coming to terms with it all and don't wish to see a mirror image of ourselves ageing - so our eyes sub-consciously filter through only younger people and somehow rationalize that those younger people are going to be remotely interested in us. But strangely, there is a grain of truth in it - the less interest we show in them, the more it seems to attract them.

But we need to think it through. For what to go around with a younger person? Maturity and wisdom can only be taken so far and then it begins to look increasingly ludicrous - unless we're wearing Armani, it looks pointless. We can't cut it in the sack to the same extent - we just can't and our whole mindset and bodyset are different. Young people bounce, we glide or stumble. They like us but they're not hot for us. It's a zero sum game. Besides, they've their own agenda in life and ours is different for our last few [mobile] decades.

Drawing it together, perhaps we should pitch ourselves just a few years short of our true age and get the best of both worlds. That's the age anyway, from where our partner should be coming from. As for many younger people's constant desire to put the older in their boxes on the shelf - the "your time is over" syndrome - that's equally ridiculous.

These days the 70 year old is going to rage far into the night and why not? If you have the energy, why not? Why allow yourself to be put out to pasture? As long as you're not trying to cut it with younger folk, what's the problem?

Attention from someone younger then becomes a nice little compliment, rather than anything to be taken up.

Have a lovely Friday.

[tramvai of dreams] the joke's on me

Sometimes I just love this country.

Item 1

Yesterday received an urgent call to come to the uni today and see the Dean. Never happened before.

Today, my friend comes over for his regular Thursday morn coffee so we thrash it out. Could be a conference next week they want me to speak at, could be all my absences due to illness this semester, could be the complete reorganization of the uni and the election for rector.

Could be something more dire - my registration within the country [the tit-for-tat thing going on vs Britain at the moment]. We settle on it being a big request and so I get a taxi into there, due to the seriousness of it all.

Turns out to be the office wanted my signature on the summer leave application although why I even need to do this, given that I'm part time, I don't know. Still it gives me holiday me, which is good..

What!!! All the panic, all the long faces everywhere.

Item 2

Tram. After experiencing the greatest concentration of honeys in one place ever [the cafe], it was down to the tram. Missed one but it was a 7 and so it didn't matter. There are four going past this stop - the 7, 20, 11 and 19. The first two are useless as they go elsewhere, the latter two are good.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter, we often get this and it's still peak hour so it's OK.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter, they were obviously banked up somewhere down the track and a 19 will come soon.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter but it's now getting a little chilly, minus 9 and time for the gloves and hood.

Now there's a gap of around 40 minutes [the other trams came at 2 minute intervals], during which the gloves prove themselves inadequate and the corduroys are stuck to the legs. Time to walk vigorously up and down.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter, I wait for the door to open and ask if there are no 19s today. Driver shrugs.

Next tram which comes is a 7. I've noticed approximately 30 buses going past on the road 200 metres away and a constant stream of cars. Door opens and I call out for the driver to open the inner door. Passengers are staring at me on the roadside. "Where's the bloody 19?" I swear in Russian. They close the door in my face.

Next tram which comes is a 7 and I'm weeping by now but too cold to go up to the road for a car. memories of the other evening flood back.

Next tram is an 11 - it'll do. Huddled in one corner, the only task is to get some feeling back into the extremities.

Item 3

One of the fun things is to predict the temperature outside and then check it against the television temperature in the top corner of the screen in the cafe.

To do this, it's necessary to wear the heavy beanie first - no compromise here. Most people have a range of jackets but I have two - one down to about 12 degrees below and the other from about 15 downwards. I try to wear the lighter one and regulate inner temperature by wearing t-shirt and shirt or a jumper in rare circumstances. Usually I'd just opt for the heavier coat in that case.

All right, out of the uni and in two minutes, check the hands. If everything's neutral it could be anything from 0 to -5. If there's a freshness to the hands, it could be - 6 to -10. If it really needs gloves, it's below -10.

Today the hands were a bit fresh.

Next, check the grit on the snowy road. If it's working and the mud is slushyish, it's warmer than -10. If the powder snow is crusty, it's below -7. If the ice is hard and slippery, it's below -8. So, this puts it this evening from -7 to -10.

Next, the face but this depends on the wind. Today was a light icy breeze so it altered the calibration a bit. Usually you don't get bite to the face until -10 to -12 but with a breeze, you can lop 3 or 4 degrees off that.

I took a stab at -8 and went into the cafe. It was -9. I'd compensated too much for the breeze.

By the way, there's another fun game - drop the hanky in minus 30. Now we haven't had this for a few years but when it was around minus 32 or 33, the trick was to drop your handkerchief and the shape it was in when it hit the ground is the hanky sculpture it freezes into.

And don't kiss anyone in those temperatures.

[genetic engineering] of mice and men

My only question is: "Why?"

The age-long animosity between cat and mouse could be a thing of the past with genetically modified "fearless" mice that Japanese scientists say shed light on mammal behavior.

Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats -- showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.

The findings suggest that human aversion to dangerous smells like that of rotten food, for example, could also be genetically predetermined.

That's nice, isn't it? Developing a new species of humans, wired against bad smells. Dr. Mengele never did complete that study on twins either because of the pesky end of the war [unless you believe he made it safely to America].

So much unconstrained human experimentation to try out and so many more serfs about after 2012 to experiment on. A scientist's paradise.

[john cale] white light, white heat

This blog has covered JJ Cale a number of times but the Cale tonight is just John Cale, a musician heavily influential on other musicians but virtually unknown to the general public. An unattributable yet excellent profile of him says:

Trying to categorise Cale's music has always been tricky, encompassing as it does so many diverse musical styles. Not really a rocker nor a full on avante gardiste, much of what he produces falls between the two headings.

He draws heavily on his early classical training; he was touring the country with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from his early teens, while still listening to the burgeoning cult of rock and roll in his bedroom at night.

His break came while studying experimental music at London University in the early '60s, he met American classical composer Aaron Copeland, who got Cale a scholarship to study with the Boston University Orchestra.

In the fall of 1963 Cale relocated to New York and began performing in various avante garde music projects before hooking up with vocalist/guitarist Lou Reed, with whom he founded the legendary rock band the Velvet Underground in early 1965.

He was heavily involved with Andy Warhol.

Playing bass, viola, and keyboards, Cale was largely responsible for the band's droning sound, while Reed wrote the lyrics. This was the most accessible he'd be to the public and to get an idea of his style, listen to Velvet Underground Live 1969 [as distinct form the studio album produced after he'd been forced out].

Cale today

White Light White Heat, Heroin, Ocean - these were typical of his sound and Reed's lyrics and singing.

On his own he went mellow and classical until he switched in 74 and released two amazing albums - Fear and Slow Dazzle, with other Island artists like Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno of Roxy Music, and Chris Spedding. I haven't heard the third so can't comment.

Tracks on Fear like Fear is a Man's Best Friend, Barracuda and Gun were quite frankly unique with their gritty, dark, driving, relentless feel, especially given the era in which they were produced. He'd contrast it with catchy, melodic tracks at odds with explicit lyrics like The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy.

His voice is difficult to describe. Imagine Leonard Cohen and Tom Jones, deep, rich, masculine but aggressive and that was part of his appeal - he was a very dangerous man or so it seemed and could shock you to the core. His motif was dark.

This was so in the finale to Slow Dazzle which I can't describe on a family blog like this. One of his greatest songs, his reworking of Heartbreak Hotel as you've never heard it before, was on this album and a return to hard, driving rhythms with Guts, which was about just that.

With Nico

At this point I was drawn into the gay, warholesque inner city party scene [which will come as a shock, given my ultra-orthodox sentiments on this blog] but as the scene fragmented and many went over to punk, I went over to pseudo-punk like the Ramones, the Stranglers, Wreckless Eric and never got back to this scene again.

[blogfocus wednesday] strange but possibly true

1. Would you entitle your post:

Res Op Mandate training minutes 121107

and just show the pic above?

2. The Rev. Dr. Incitatus remembers the celestial aspects of travelling to St. Louis:

I remember weaving between tornadoes down I-55 from Michigan to Missouri, one evening, when I looked to the west and saw Heaven and Hell. Hell looked prettier than Heaven, as I remember it. Maybe there's a metaphor in that?

It was a beautiful thing, either way, and I pulled over to ponder it for a moment. But then the hail caught up and proceeded to chase me all the way to St. Louis. Perhaps there's a metaphor in that, too?

There was a moral behind this post, but it escapes me at present.

3. Rob, at The Broadsheet Rag, ran into a frightening phenomenon:

I’ve started a new job recently, down Westminster way. Anyway I was out on my daily wander around Victoria — when I got a shock.

Hazel Blears was walking straight at me. I’ve always had a thing for Blears. I’ve always felt there was something wrong with her. No, not that she’s a Labour MP. That she looks odd — she smiles too much.

So, she was walking towards me and I noticed something. She didn’t move her head it stayed perfectly still — it seemed almost artificial. And that smile of hers didn’t even flinch. It was almost demonic.

There can be only one explanation for this. Hazel Blears is a robot from outer space.

4. Dave Hill has a sticky problem just now:

My littlest daughter came home from a school trip with this one - not the cuppa, that's mine - the other week. I've never really gone for toffee apples. My daughter's one reminded me why. They're hard to unwrap, hard to eat, bloody hard work all round. You'd think after more than a century someone else might have worked that out too..

[strange accidents] waiting to happen

What are the strangest accidents which have happened to you? Now, I don't mean those which were waiting to happen, such as the ones in the pics nor do I mean automobile accidents. I mean this sort of thing:

1. Cut by a piece of steak. Piece of frozen meat taken from the freezer - slashed the side of my palm;

2. Burnt by toast - not the toaster, the toast;

3. Finger cut today by a coffee bean - when cleaning the grinder. Not cut by the grinder.

I like this one from long ago:

Lisa Colman, 23, of San Diego, was sitting in her car with both hands behind the back of her head. Someone asked her if she was okay, and she replied that she'd been shot in the back of the head, and had been holding her brains in for over an hour.

The paramedics came and found that a Pillsbury biscuit canister had exploded from the heat and a wad of dough had hit her in the back of her head. She felt the dough, thought it was her brains, passed out, recovered and held her brains in for over an hour until someone noticed and came to her aid.

And, yes, she was a blonde.

[steroids] humans or robots

Predictable really:

The International Olympic Committee has stripped sprinter Marion Jones of her five 2000 Olympic medals after she admitted taking banned substances.

Looking at the issue more broadly, remember this?

1988: Johnson stripped of Olympic gold Sprinter Ben Johnson has been sent home from the Seoul Olympic Games in disgrace. The Canadian has also been stripped of his 100m gold medal after testing positive for drugs.

He ran the 100 in 9.79 seconds. Now it's held by Asafa Powell, of Jamaica, in 9.74 seconds. Who's to say the latter's not on an undetectable drug? Who's to say Carl Lewis wasn't? I'm not saying anything, for fear of libel laws nor am i intimating anything. But I am asking how we can know.

Does it matter? Probably yes, for a whole lot of moral and pragmatic reasons. Does it mean Johnson didn't run that time? Of course not. Johnson ran 9.79 - he was timed. The only vague question then was whether he was a human being or a cheetah, perhaps.

He looked pretty human to me when he ran that time. Sad but he ran it. He was therefore the fastest in the world. Lewis was not.

[Comment on photo policy on this blog: Photos are either linked or not. If not, then assume they are iether from my own collection or else from Wikipedia, under the name of the subject in the photo.]