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Purdah time for Wifiwabbit

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:41:00 +0000

With so many other commitments I spend less and less time posting news and views here, so I have decided it's purdah time for this blog - for now at least.

In the meantime, there's plenty going on at http://www.egoboss.com/ and http://www.ensembli.com/ ... Happy Christmas/New Year (or Happy Holidays, if you prefer) to everyone!

The Daily Telegraph | Amazon Kindles the Flames for Books?

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 13:32:00 +0000

"As the old saying goes: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. It's an adage that could have been invented for the book. It's more than 500 years since Gutenberg first pioneered moveable type, yet the book is still to be bettered in terms of design and usability.

It's lightweight, portable, robust, inexpensive. Novel approach: The Kindle can store 200 books and access thousands of newspapers It's so ingeniously simple that the actual book itself - the pages, the glue, the binding, the sleeves - go unnoticed to the user. They are simply the raw materials that allow us to enjoy the most important part of the book - the story it tells."

But with our very modern desire to over-engineer even the most clever designs, it's little wonder that technology companies have been talking for years about the day that "traditional" books will die, and the day that "electronic books" (known as ebooks) will become our preferred reading format.

The death of the book has been mooted for the last decade, but still people stubbornly cling to their dog-eared classics. Amazon, the online retailer, this week launched an audacious bid to change the way we read, with the release of a new ebook reader, called Kindle. Ebook readers are nothing new - Sony's Reader and the iRex iLiad have both been available for a while - but it's the first time a big book seller has thrown its considerable weight behind an ebook project in this way.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/11/22/dlkind22.xml

The Daily Telegraph | And the best war film of all time is...

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:01:00 +0000

I agree with #1 ... not with the rest of the list, however ...

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Well, the results are in, and there’s been a surprise victory for the Germans: Das Boot has been voted the best war film ever made by Reel Life readers.

The film’s realism was commended above all: “You can almost smell the Diesel,” commented ‘retired’.

The subject of realism divided opinion in the case of Saving Private Ryan, with ‘aeiou’ saying it’s “the most reallistic war film that has ever been made” and ‘BlackArrow’ objecting that “those guys walking out in the open yakking away would have been cut down before the film was half over”.

Films from the World Wars featured heavily in general (though oddly very few people voted for popular classics such as The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai), but Vietnam only just made it into the top five.

There were also questions raised about what exactly constitutes a war film, with a couple of votes for films like Casablanca and Gone with the Wind thrown in. I counted these, as war certainly does play an important part in them, but there can be no disputing that the films that made it into the top five list are ‘war films’ through and through:

1. Das Boot
2. Zulu
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. The Dam Busters
5. All Quiet on the Western Front and Apocalypse Now

And the best war film of all time is... : November 2007 : Reel Life : Arts : Telegraph Blogs

The Economist | Banksy - NOT American Graffiti

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 12:16:00 +0000

THE phenomenon of Banksy, an English graffiti artist, seems to have got out of hand. Banksy, who trades heavily on his anonymity, began drawing on walls alongside streets in north London and Bristol, his hometown.

But his stencils—often of rats making mordant political jokes—have come in from the cold streets to the prosperous warmth of London galleries and auction houses. Record prices for Banksies have been repeatedly set and exceeded over the past nine months.

The rush began in February, when Sotheby's sold seven of Banksy's works in oil, enamel, acrylic and spray-paint. Bonhams took up the baton, and set the pace in April, selling Banksy's “Space Girl and Bird” for £288,000. This autumn, Bonhams has auctioned another 11 Banksies, and Bloomsbury no fewer than 21.

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Art.view Quick fix Economist.com

The Daily Telegraph | Look to Tesco to see the real Britain

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:45:00 +0000

Think of "Tesco Towns" and you tend to think of places like Truro, Twickenham, Cambridge or Perth: postcodes where, infamously, more than half the local housekeeping money passes through Tesco's tills.

But the real Tesco Town is not decked out in vine-ripened tomatoes and cocktail beetroots. There is a windswept office park outside Cheshunt in Hertfordshire which looks like the land that hummus forgot. It is here, in deliberately drab company headquarters, that a small clique of capitalists holds up a mirror to modern Britain.

The reflection we see is not pretty. Our fear of Tesco is almost as endemic as its blue and red signage. Barely a day goes by without a fresh delivery of accusations: that this rapacious retailer is pillaging our farms; homogenising our diet and ethnically cleansing the high street.

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Look to Tesco to see the real Britain - Telegraph

The Economist | Twentieth-century music - Music, war and politics intertwined

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:04:00 +0000

WHEN Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue” had its première in 1924, at a concert in New York that was billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music”, the audience included Rachmaninov and other big names from the classical world. By all accounts, the experiment was a success. It established that jazz could be worthy of the concert hall. Four years later in Europe, Gershwin met more of his new admirers, including Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev and two composers of the revolutionary Second Viennese School, Schoenberg and Berg. Awed by Berg, Gershwin hesitated at the piano one night, nervous about playing his catchy songs before one of the deconstructors of conventional harmony. Berg sternly encouraged him: “Mr Gershwin, music is music.”

If only it were that simple, writes Alex Ross, the New Yorker's music critic, in his history of music in the 20th century. He notes that musical life in the past 100 years has “disintegrated into a teeming mass of cultures and subcultures, each with its own canon and jargon.” The cultures may sometimes meet on affable terms, but the results can be comic in their incongruity. In the 1930s, when much of the European artistic elite was holed up in Hollywood, Fanny Brice, a comedienne, strolled over to Schoenberg at a dinner given by Harpo Marx: “C'mon, professor, play us a tune.”

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Twentieth-century music Music, war and politics intertwined Economist.com

The New Yorker | NYCs $$$ via Wall St or SoHo/Chelsea ...?

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:45:00 +0000

Any discussion about New York City’s economic well-being tends to start and end with one phrase: Wall Street. As the Street goes, we assume, so goes the city, which is why politicians will do almost anything to keep the brokerages and investment banks happy. But in a new book called “The Warhol Economy” the social scientist Elizabeth Currid argues that this fixation is misdirected, and that it has led us to neglect the city’s most vital and distinctive economic sector: the culture industry, which, in Currid’s definition, includes everything from fashion, art, and music to night clubs. In other words, it’s SoHo and Chelsea, not Wall Street, that the politicians should really be thinking about.

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If You Can Make It Here: Financial Page: The New Yorker

BBC NEWS | An interview with Alan Coren (RIP) ...

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:59:00 +0000

Just heard on BBC Radio 5 news that Alan Coren has died ... very sad news indeed; a wonderfully erudite, witty and charming man.

Punch magazine was hugely influential on my life, and it introduced me to the theatre, art, satire, cartoons, and anarchic thnking in general.

RIP.

"The pen isn't actually mightier than the sword - the sword will destroy all pens in time - we don't lie in our beds trembling in case Iran gets hold of a bottle of ink." - Alan Coren.

No obituary as yet, so linking to this recent past profile of the great man ...

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Alan Coren - that affable raconteur was born in London in 1938 and has been a part of that institution of laughter and satire for many years.

After an education that spanned Wadham College, Oxford, Yale and the University of California he became a firm part of the BBC's News Quiz and Call my Bluff.

But it is with his editor's hat of Punch (from 1978 - 1987) that he spoke to the Politics Show...

"The first thing to say is that political cartoons aren't important and are important, David low says, wonderfully, 'I never drew a line that made a difference.'

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BBC NEWS Programmes Politics Show An interview with Alan Coren

The New Yorker | Dept. of 9 to 5: Stressbuster ...

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:04:00 +0000

When an American businessman calls upon a guru of the Eastern persuasion, he is generally seeking to be abused for his attachment to success and worldly goods while also learning how to acquire more of both. Swami Parthasarathy, eighty years old, a native of Chennai, India, having renounced a lucrative career in the family shipping business and the Rolls-Royce that came with it, and founded the Vedanta Corporate Academy two hours southeast of Mumbai, has a deep understanding of this delicate role.

In the past, he has harangued and soothed supplicants at Microsoft, Ford, and Lehman Brothers, and has been invited by the deans of Kellogg and Wharton to instruct M.B.A. students in the use of the Sanskrit Vedas for purposes of serenity and profit. On a recent visit to New York, he appeared at “21” to instruct members of the Young Presidents’ Organization (to join, you must be younger than forty-five and run a business) in the management of self and stress.

Dept. of 9 to 5: Stressbuster: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker

Official Shoot 'Em Up New Movie Trailers: Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci Upcoming New Movie Releases

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:04:00 +0000

I advocate radical, strict gun control laws but can't deny this was an innovative, thrilling, and visceral film ... hypocrisy? I guess so ...

Official Shoot 'Em Up New Movie Trailers: Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci Upcoming New Movie Releases

The New Yorker | The Art World: Turner and Extremes ...

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 13:31:00 +0000

Poor old Turner: one minute the critics were singing his praises, the next they were berating him for being senile or infantile, or both. No great painter suffered as much from excesses of adulation and execration, sometimes for the same painting. “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon Coming On” had, on its appearance at the Royal Academy, in 1840, been mocked by the reviewers as “the contents of a spittoon,” a “gross outrage to nature,” and so on.

The critic of the Times thought the seven pictures—including “Slavers”—that Turner sent to the Royal Academy that year were such “detestable absurdities” that “it is surprising the [selection] committee have suffered their walls to be disgraced with the dotage of his experiments.” John Ruskin, who had been given “Slavers” by his father and had appointed himself Turner’s paladin, not only went overboard in praise of his hero but drowned in the ocean of his own hyperbole. In the first edition of “Modern Painters” (1843), Ruskin, then all of twenty-four, sternly informed the hacks that “their duty is not to pronounce opinions upon the work of a man who has walked with nature threescore years; but to impress upon the public the respect with which they [the works] are to be received.”

Continued ...

The Patriot: The Art World: The New Yorker

Rock reunions | Turning rebellion into money | Economist.com

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:08:00 +0000

DINOSAURS might be revived in one of two ways. Fiction suggests applying the techniques of genetic engineering to DNA extracted from bloodsucking prehistoric insects trapped in amber. To resurrect the dinosaurs of rock, however, all you need is a fat cheque and a block booking at a vast stadium. The biggest bands in the history of rock‘n’roll now reform with the metronomic dependability of their own rhythm sections. The latest rock legend (and one of the greatest) to announce a return to the stage is Led Zeppelin. The band said this week it would stage a one-off gig later this year, nearly three decades after its last one.

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Rock reunions Turning rebellion into money Economist.com:

GigaOM | Vanity Fair (Re) Discovers Tech

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 12:35:00 +0000

You know things are getting downright frothy when Vanity Fair rediscovers technology and starts giving way too much attention to technology titans by including them in its annual New Establishment list. The bible of frivolous has out done itself this time; it has also included a new micro-list, The Next Establishment. Perhaps it couldn’t fit in more tech types in the big list.

Vanity Fair (Re) Discovers Tech « GigaOM:

Daily Telegraph | Why the Gambling Act is such a Loser

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 11:59:00 +0000

Last Sunday, the Blair Government's Gambling Act 2005 came into operation and by Monday lunchtime I received my first email from an online casino site.

"Join today and we'll give you a 300 per cent bonus on your first deposit, worth up to 300 euros!" it said. "We have a huge range of games, including the biggest progressive jackpots online, giving you the chance to win millions of euros in a single spin!"

I didn't fancy my chances. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I got more, and by Friday, I was shouting: BLOODY Gordon Brown! This is your fault!

Since I keep a very tidy email inbox, which is assiduously reinforced by my friend the IT geek, I was rather cross about being invaded by casino emails and rang him up. "Do they look like legit sites?"

No. Nobody has yet sent me an email from William Hill, Ladbrokes, Stan James or any other recognisably British name. Nor have I had one from PokerStars (which is not a British company, but is, I happen to know, run by Mohawk Indians from a reservation in Canada. Still - perfectly legit.) Anyway, he cleaned up the inbox.

Now, I don't blame Big Gordo for my inbox invasion. But I do blame him for his pompous spin about whether or not Gambling is Good for You. Since he was Chancellor of Exchequer for the past 10 years, he shared equal responsibility for the not-very-good Gambling Act with that yesterday's man who went to live in Jerusalem. And he now has sole responsibility for it.

When Tessa Jowell first dressed up as Blackjack Lil and lay across a roulette table to place her poker chips for the cameras, the Gambling Act was spun (by Blairites) as all about freedom. The Blair Government wanted to license super-casinos all over Britain and allow online gambling sites to be registered in the United Kingdom. (Unlike puritanical America, where gambling sites are illegal.)

The support for the Bill came from libertarian types who think gamblers are grown-ups: they should be free to choose how, when, where and how much they gamble.

The opposition was from kindly shepherds who think gamblers are the poor, halt and lame: they should be removed from temptation, lest they get addicted to losing their wherewithal - and won't someone think of the children?

The funny thing was that the Parliamentary Labour Party is somewhat short on libertarian toughies and long on kindly Methody preachers - and loads of them hated Blackjack Lil's Bill. Obviously including Gordon, who is becoming more holier-than-thou with every passing day.
The fact that he suddenly said he wasn't going to let Manchester have its super-casino didn't worry me: I've lived in Manchester. Its unique quality of life is not going to be improved any by having a super-casino, and, anyway, I was more of a Blackpool girl.

What does fret me is the muddled thinking over the e-casinos. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (no longer run by the witless Jowell, who can't even cope with her own mortgage forms, let alone the billions wasted by the department) has spent a shedload of my money on a website explaining how it will regulate online casino and betting sites.

The website offers operators based in the European Economic Association the opportunity to apply for a British licence. This licence will prove to the punter that the site is legitimate, lawful and effectively regulated. It will make sure that he is over 18. It will tell him (should he find himself becoming worryingly addicted to online gambling) how he can obtain caring and non-judgmental help, via links to Gamcare, the online helpline.

It will also mean that the e-casino operators can run television advertisements for the first time actually showing grown-ups playing poker. (However, the actors must all be over 25 and the ads must not link gambling to sexual success.)

The point of the British licence is to encourage the world's casino websites to base themselves here, where they can be diligently regulated night and day by 50 compliance managers newly recruited for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. But of the thousands of online casino operators worldwide, only a handful - 14 the last time I looked - have applied for one.
Why? Because Brown decided to tax all British-based betting and casino sites at 15 per cent of gross profits. Not surprisingly, they have chosen to be based in much lower-taxed places, eg Malta, which taxes at a very acceptable 2.5 per cent.

Ladbrokes has not signed up for a British licence, nor has William Hill, which used to be based in Curacao, but now has moved to Malta. Oh - and since Malta is in the European Economic Association, it will be allowed to advertise on television.

So now we have the most caringly protective online betting regulatory system in the world, hurrah. But none of the big boys will sign up to it. Boo. (The Isle of Man is laughing its head off.)
Of course, the companies that do sign up will be taxed at 15 per cent gross. But there aren't enough of them even to pay the salaries of the 50 new compliance managers recruited for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Funnily enough, anyone who looks up the department's website to get help for his addiction to online gambling will find that the United Kingdom's only (free) residential treatment centre for addicted gamblers is called Gordon House. Piquant, eh?

Why the Gambling Act is such a loser - Telegraph

Wired | Best of Burning Man: Fire Dancers, Steampunk Tree House and More ...

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:22:00 +0000

Giant steampunk installations, fire dancers and an assortment of crazy characters make Burning Man a one-of-a-kind event each year. These images offer a glimpse of the artistic activities that unfolded at the gathering Aug. 27 to Sept. 3 - "Best of Burning Man: Flames, Art Cars and Discos."

Kinetic Steam Works' Case traction engine Hortense (above) glows on the playa. The art vehicle was named in honor of the artist and mother of Cal Tinkham, the steam enthusiast and railroad engineer who originally restored the engine.

Best of Burning Man: Fire Dancers, 'Steampunk Tree House' and More

The Daily Telegraph | Arts | Shanghai: Art Deco capital - for now

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:26:00 +0000

Say Art Deco and everyone knows what you mean: sharp geometry, cool curves, an effortless marriage of style and function. Where to find it, though, is a different matter.

Shanghai sprawl: Greg Girard's Shanghai Falling #1, Neighbourhood Demolition:

Dotted around London and New York are palaces of 1920s and 1930s modernism - such as Senate House in Bloomsbury and the Chrysler building on Lexington Avenue - their straight lines and sweeping curves dominating their historic sites or looking almost quaint amid the higher, newer skyscrapers now surrounding them.

But London and New York are not Art Deco cities. The 1930s, the movement's peak decade, were not great years for the West, and while apartment blocks from the period still punctuate the suburbs, they suffered from the Second World War and post-industrial decay. Too often, they look shabby and forgotten beside the sturdier homes of previous eras and the bright convenience of the present.

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Shanghai: Art Deco capital - for now - Telegraph:

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Founder of US punk club CBGB dies

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:20:00 +0000

Hilly Kristal, founder of the New York punk club CBGB which is credited with discovering Patti Smith and The Ramones, has died at the age of 75.

His daughter, Lisa, said he died from complications arising from lung cancer.

Kristal founded the club in 1973. The venue lost its lease last year after a dispute over rising rents.
In a statement, Marky Ramone of The Ramones, said Kristal was an "integral part" of the punk scene, and was always "supportive" of the genre.

"In an era when disco was the mainstream, Hilly took a chance and gambled. The gamble paid off for both him and for us. We are all grateful to him and will miss him," he added.

Born in 1932, Kristal became a concert violinist at the age of nine. He went on to manage New York jazz club, the Village Vanguard, before opening CBGB in a derelict bar in East Village in 1973.

The venue, whose full title CBGB OMFUG stood for 'country, bluegrass, blues and other music for uplifting gourmandisers', was originally launched to showcase country music.

Instead the club became a breeding ground for punk rock.

Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls, who first played CBGB in the late 1980s, said: "So many bands would have never have made records unless they came to CBGB."

The club's final shows, in October last year, featured Patti Smith and Blondie's Debbie Harry.

Lenny Kaye, a longtime member of the Patti Smith Group said: "He created a club that started on a small, out-of-the-way skid row, and saw it go around the world."

"Everywhere you travel around the world, you saw somebody wearing a CBGB T-shirt," he said.
"He wanted the club to survive him," his daughter Lisa Kristal Burgman said. "He is survived by the fans and bands that played there."

A private memorial service is planned, with a public memorial service expected sometime in the future.

BBC NEWS Entertainment Founder of US punk club CBGB dies

YouTube - Dancin Dubya

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 09:55:00 +0000

YouTube - Dancin Dubya

NME | Arctic Monkeys frontman to record surprise album this month

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:13:00 +0000

Alex Turner teams up with old friend for new project

Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and The Rascals' Miles Kane are set to record an album together later this month.

The pair became friends when Kane's first band The Little Flames supported Arctic Monkeys on their early tour.Kane contributed guitar to Arctic Monkeys' second album 'Favourite Worst Nightmare' and has joined the Sheffield band live frequently this summer to play '505' with them, including at the weekend's Old Trafford gigs (July 28-29).

Now the pair are set to head to France to record an album together in mid-August."We're there for two weeks and we're going to try to get the majority of it done," Kane told NME.COM. "James Ford is producing it and is going to play drums, he's a really boss drummer.

Me and Al will do all the bass and guitar and vocals, and try to the get the bulk of it done in two weeks. We're going to record it quite live to tape I think. Then whenever we've got weekends off at the same time we'd like to get some strings on it and probably do all that back home.

That's the plan anyway."The singer added that the pair were still trying to work out what their project will be called. "We were thinking Turner & Kane but everyone says it doesn't sound too serious," he explained. Kane is currently recording The Rascals debut EP in London - due out in October - with Blur and Elbow producer Ben Hiller.

He expects the pair's album to come out in the first half of 2008, after The Rascals have released their debut album."We want to have a bit of everything on there," said Kane of his own band's forthcoming album. "Some of the tunes do the same job, if you know what I mean, so we'll only have a couple of them on. So when we do it we will have everything."

Arctic Monkeys frontman to record surprise album this month News NME.COM

“The Simpsons Movie” | Dysfunctional family on the move | Economist.com

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:04:00 +0000

AFTER 18 years on prime-time television, “The Simpsons Movie” brings to the big screen all the qualities that have made the Simpson family superstars. That should reassure pundits who have been fretting over the question Homer Simpson poses at the beginning of the film, after viewing an especially Aesopian episode of “The Itchy & Scratchy Show”, Bart Simpson's favourite ultraviolent cartoon-within-a-cartoon: “Who's going to pay for something they've been getting for free?”

The answer is another question: how many smart, satirical, uproariously witty comedies did Hollywood make this year? “The Simpsons Movie” fills a niche in the major studios' release schedules that has lately become a void.

Critics were shown the film just before it opened to keep the audience's enjoyment of the rococo plot twists from being spiked by internet killjoys, a policy deserving of support. Briefly, an ecological disaster befalls the town of Springfield, brought about by Homer's involvement with a new love and his weakness for doughnuts.

The dysfunctional cohesion of the Simpson family is put to the test. Bart starts wishing he had a father like Ned Flanders next door, who practises family values with a wise serenity that is horribly off-putting. Marge doubts her love for Homer. Lisa meets a musician named Colin whose green politics is matched by his lilting brogue. And baby Maggie breaks 18 years of silence by speaking her first word, which audiences will have to stay through the final credits to hear.

But it is Homer who really evolves, after an Inuit medicine woman teaches him his “throat-song” and sends him on a spirit journey to an epiphany about human interconnectedness based on enlightened self-interest. Strangely, we come to care deeply about all of them.

“The Simpsons Movie” Dysfunctional family on the move Economist.com

The Hair - Disco/Retro | Single | Record Box

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:20:00 +0000

The Hair have been making big waves in Leeds for well over a year now building a strong following and wowing crowds with a number of brilliant support slots, before recently stepping out at The Faversham as headliners themselves for the launch of debut single Ghosts.

As with Ghosts their follow up single Disco / Retro is an ultra limited edition 7” release and download only, so you’d be advised to move quickly to get hold of one as these four Yorkshiremen are likley to be hot property over the coming months.

Disco / Retro is a a four minute salvo of electro dance hooks mixed with indie guitar and vocals that remind you of why you fell in love with The Rapture when they released House Of Jealous Lovers. Also worth checking out is Sidney Betts on the b-side, again it’s another punk funker, which is if anything even more raucous than the a-side.

The single is out on the 23rd July through Louder Than Bombs Records.

The Hair - Disco/Retro Single Record Box

http://www.hairmusic.co.uk/pressCuts/

This year's dozen best albums? - Telegraph

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:51:00 +0000

The 12 acts on the shortlist for this year's Mercury Prize were revealed this week. Neil McCormick assesses their chances ...

A leading contender of course being these lads:

Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare - Melody, wit and rhythm again prove an unstoppable force. Last year's winners, the acerbically cynical Sheffield quartet consolidated their position as band of a generation with this more muscular, energetically syncopated and passionate follow-up. Even music-biz prizes, multi-million sales and Gordon Brown's endorsement can't dent their counter-cultural cachet.

Watch interviews with the nominated artists

This year's dozen best albums? - Telegraph

Business.view | A Tiger in the boardroom | Economist.com

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:26:00 +0000

HIS firm may have been flirting with disaster, but that did not stop James Cayne from playing his usual round of golf. Last month, as the boss of Bear Stearns pondered launching the biggest-ever hedge-fund rescue, which ultimately cost the investment bank $1.6 billion, he did so from the fairways and greens of the Hollywood Golf Club in Ocean Township, New Jersey. According to the New York Times, during the summer he regularly flies there from New York in a helicopter that has permission to land at the club.

At key moments during the crisis—during which Bear Stearns says he remained in “constant contact” with his office—Mr Cayne shot rounds of 96, 98 and 97, reports the newspaper, citing scores posted on an online database, GHIN.com. That is impressively consistent, although given his handicap of 15.9, “his scores during that stressful time certainly ballooned a bit higher than normal”, says law and golf blogger, Tom Kirkendall. “But think how bad this could have gotten for Bear Stearns if Cayne had not been able to get his golf therapy.”

Indeed. Golf Digest has published a 200-strong list of the top golfing chief executives in the Fortune 1000. Perhaps, to add value to this, every chief executive should be required to post his or her golf scores, for unusual volatility could be a useful indicator of trouble at work. On the other hand, a relatively calm performance like Mr Cayne’s might reassure investors that though things are worse than usual, they are not getting out of hand.

The central role played by golf in business life is under-reported—except maybe in Japan—perhaps because journalists can’t afford the green fees let alone the membership dues of the swanky clubs to which chief executives belong. Nor are bosses exactly rushing to draw attention to yet another perk.

Yet, “no matter how sophisticated business becomes, nothing can replace the golf course as a communications hub”, argues a new book, “Deals on the Green”, by David Rynecki. “It’s where up-and-comers can impress the boss and where CEOs can seal multibillion-dollar deals. Its no coincidence that many of the most admired people in business—Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Sandy Weill—always carved out time in their busy schedules for golf.”

“Golf brings out a person’s true character”, argues Mr Rynecki, who then provides various business lessons illustrated with examples of famous bosses “at work”. Messrs Gates and Buffett deepened their friendship by playing golf, not least because (perhaps in contrast to when they play bridge) “they don’t take themselves seriously when they are on the course”.

Stan O’Neal, now the boss of Merrill Lynch, got noticed because “some of the more influential Merrill people got to spend time with [him] on the course and saw a different side of him”, enabling him to go on to be the first African-American to lead the firm.

Mr Welch, arguably the best golfing chief executive ever, is the “patron saint of corporate golf”, argues Mr Rynecki, stripping the traditional holder of the title, John D. Rockefeller, of his halo. Rockefeller took up golf when he was nearly 60, and played nearly every day for the next 33 years, even claiming (wrongly) that his quest to shoot par would enable him to live past 100. But although he played with such corporate titans as Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, he banned all talk of business from the course.

Mr Welch, by contrast, regarded golf as a key part of his managerial armoury, which he deployed with great success during his long, glorious reign at General Electric (GE). The firm was already known as a “golf company” when he took charge. But under Mr Welch, “golf became an essential tool for any manager looking to move up”. Golf “was a litmus test for character. It showed whether a person had the guts to work in Welch’s GE.”

Not everyone is convinced. The other week, reports DealBreaker, two veteran Wall Street tycoons railed against the game. Hank Greenberg, the former boss of AIG, complained that golf was a distraction from business: “A lot of people like to get away from their work. You have to wonder about whether they like what they’re doing.” Carl Icahn, the legendary corporate raider, sees golf as a symbol of all that is wrong with the clubby higher echelons of American business: “These guys would rather play golf, slap each other on the back. I want a guy running a company who sits in his tub at night thinking about the challenges he faces. The guy who can’t let it go. The focused guy.”

But enough about guys.

The most troubling aspect of “Deals on the Green” is that women are almost entirely absent from it—except as wives, girlfriends or even groupies—until chapter 16, which is all about how corporate golf may hold back female executives. The chapter makes a strong case that the biggest obstacle to women getting to the top in business is less a glass ceiling than a “grass ceiling”. On the rare occasions when women get to golf with their male counterparts, they play off a different tee. Augusta, Pine Valley and most of the other prestigious male-only clubs, says Mr Rynecki, are “like majestic, genteel proving grounds for business deals”.

John Mack, the boss of Morgan Stanley, “has made a habit of appointing golf friends to the board”, says Mr Rynecki. Apparently more open-minded than most bosses, Mr Mack, then boss of CSFB, organised a series of events to introduce female executives to golf as a tool for business. Yet his enlightenment proved quite limited. When they arrived, the women found themselves confined to the driving range and the short course “while the men played the real course”.

There are currently only 11 female chief executives of Fortune 500 firms, and, tragically, nobody thinks that number will increase much any time soon. Could the male monopolisation of corporate golf be to blame? Mark Twain famously dismissed golf as a “good walk spoiled”, but sadly for many promising female executives a more apt definition of the game may be “a good career spoiled”.

Business.view A Tiger in the boardroom Economist.com

Cinquecento reborn | Test Drives | Motoring | Telegraph

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 10:17:00 +0000

I. WANT. ONE.

--

All that drinking and dancing celebrated one little car. Dante Giacosa's new Fiat 500, or Cinquecento Nuova, was first presented to the Italian premier 50 years ago on July 4, 1957. Like Britain's Mini, Germany's Beetle and France's 2CV, the Cinquecento was the Italian "People's Car".

But the celebration must be a uniquely Italian thing, because I don't recall reading about an all-night party in Birmingham to celebrate the original Mini in 1959, or a 24-hour Mardi Gras in Oxford to wassail BMW's new MINI in 2001. Perhaps Italians celebrate their industry more than we Brits do - go on, tell me something I don't know. Anyway, happy birthday, Cinquecento.

Fiat might be almost back in the black these days, but it doesn't just throw massive parties out of teary-eyed nostalgia for a much-loved car that provided most people of a certain age with some sort of amazing adventure - mine involved a blonde, a bottle of Haig whisky, a sunny afternoon on Dartmoor and a pig… (That's enough - Ed)

In fact, Fiat has another nuova Cinquecento to sell. With the possible exception of the first Audi TT, the new 500 is the most successful transmogrification from retro-styled concept car (the Trepiúuno, shown at Geneva in 2004) to production model. Just look at it - from its wide-eyed headlamps to its pert bottom, doesn't it just remind you of whisky and a pig?

(Full review via link, below)

Cinquecento reborn Test Drives Motoring Telegraph

Confessions of a Glastonbury virgin | Music | Arts | Telegraph

noreply@blogger.com (wifiwabbit) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 11:13:00 +0000

Confessions of a Glastonbury virgin

Tom Horan is washed away by the music
Video: Fun in the mud at Glastonbury
Audio: Christopher Howse on the magic of Glastonbury
In pictures: Glastonbury 2007
Glastonbury videos, reports, reviews and blogs

Christopher Howse reports from the Glastonbury Festival

Christopher Howse: The only man in a tie among 144,000 revellers

Zac, 11, was pulling Josh, nine, in a sledge, with sloppy Glastonbury mud in place of snow. "Again! Again!" Josh shouted. Then the thunderstorm started.

Away from the mud, with teepees at £1,600 and ridiculously bulky, shiny white camper vans filling the fields, the three-day festival has never been so comfort-seeking.

"In the past eight years I've been here," said the gate steward to the family camping field, "there's more money, less drugs, less crime and no fear of it."

In the first 24 hours, among 144,000 visitors there were only 33 arrests, mostly for drugs.

"And there's less of the hippy thing. Not so much naturism," says a woman volunteer, delicately. "It's the wall that's made the difference," says the steward. The wall is prefabricated, solid and high, disturbingly like Israel's wall.

Michael Eavis, the founder of the festival, is proud of it. "Apparently you can see it from the Moon," he says.

The festival is not at Glastonbury at all, though the cone of the tor breaks the horizon. It is held at Pilton. Perhaps the mystical number of 144,000 here make up a new breed, Pilton Man, which never grows out of a youthful urge to unite ritually each year.

But Clare and David from York, who have "just got our bus passes", are not veterans from the first festival 36 years ago. "We got interested after our children left home," she says. "Dave likes world music, but it's more than that. I like the performance art. It's amazing."

Among the 30,000 cars in the car parks, there are plenty of Audis, Volvos and BMWs. Ten thousand, almost all young, came greenly by train and then chugged the last miles on dirty old buses.

"We're doing a dance degree at Greenwich," says my 20-year-old neighbour, pointing to her fair-haired friend. But now they're spending the weekend working in a vegan cafe, hoping to slip out to see Bjork. Bjork has been here before, she just can't remember.

If for some Glastonbury is joining the social season with Ascot and Henley, its style is still young and grungy. At Henley gentlemen must still wear ties. Here I spent 24 hours without seeing anyone else with one on. Ascot cocktail dresses and feather hats can look vulgar. Here the middle class come in muddy disguise.

The mud was shaping up nicely yesterday - slopping under reckless reinforcements of rain. Nearly 2,000 years ago, an Iron Age tribe built a lake-village near here with huts raised on a solid pile of brushwood clay. This skill has been lost.

Tents in the rain cover the slopes like a swarm of crabs in a nature documentary - their carapaces jostling. The maddest camp next to the giant speakers. Hayley Evans, with her 20-month-old boy, found a quieter family field, behind the open-air cinema. "My baby slept through. But they had Ghostbusters on, and every time there was a scream, I woke up with a jump."

By night the noise and stalls turn the site into an endless funfair. A neon red dragon spews real fire. Chewing on burgers or Mexican veggie wraps, "newgers" or neo-punks mill past Blendavenda (juices and smoothies), Magic Shoes (For Happy Feet), Fairylove (The Place Where the Fairies Get Their Wings). A child cries for a fake tattoo - three scorpions for a pound. "The kids love it," says Miriam Kandis, of north London, as her six-year-old daughter, Bea, grizzles against her sleeve. Well, it was 10.45pm.

The site is so big and the crowds so sluggish that it seems many arrive at the Jazz World stage just in time to miss Toumani Diabate and then slug back to the Dance stage in time to miss Courtney Orange.

The place has its own smell - firelighter smoke, fat from burgers, bacon, Thai food, beer-tent swill, rubbish bins, rubber boots, chemical lavatories. It is not true that Glastonbury is unfashionable dress-wise. Everyone is dressed in a way that would turn heads in the street. Leopardskin wellingtons, a leather kilt and tattoos make a man stand out at home. Not here. Some of the G8 protest tendency can even look frightening in a pixie hat.

A festival-goer dives into the ubiquitous Glastonbury mud, encouraged by a crowd of revellers
A field is given over to disabled camping. A woman in a tricycle wheelchair whizzes downhill towards the Pyramid stage, where Kasabian were to play last night. As a first-timer to Glastonbury, I found it more friendly and more disorientating than I expected. In a way it is an immense babysitting venture. The 144,000 are fed and kept safe. Security men swap radio messages through the night.

Just after dawn at 4am the music abates and a thrush sings. Otherwise nature does not get much of a look-in. Outside the site, honeysuckle smothers a hawthorn, and bramble blossom chokes the ditches. Inside, the grass is trodden into mud. For the locals with houses in the lanes around, this weekend is like August bank holiday for Notting Hillers - noisy and crowded. But at Glastonbury only 13 thefts from tents were reported in the first full day.

"Come back when Mr Eavis's cows are in sole occupancy," says an earnest young man with an interest in the National Youth Orchestra, who perform tomorrow. "You'll be able to see the Four Evangelists carved on the old tithe barn."

Thanks, George, I might just.

Confessions of a Glastonbury virgin Music Arts Telegraph