30.10.09

Germany's New Cabinet

Here you can learn about the people controlling one of the world's largest economies.

Spiegel Online presents an interactive guide to Germany's new cabinet. The government is once again formed as a collation, this time between the dominant Christian Democratic Union (teamed with their Bavarian sister-party the Christian Social Union) and the Free Democratic Party (Liberals, in the original European sense of the word). It seems the favourite wonderkid is the vietnam-born Philipp Rösler, who is at once the youngest member and the first foreign-born minister (Health) in Germany. He's also been a member of the Free Democrats since 19.

27.10.09

$music in $city at $link

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

$music = Experimental;
$city = Berlin;
$link = Echtzeitmusik; # <http://www.echtzeitmusik.de/index.php>

    print "For all your $music music needs in $city visit $link!\n";

exit;


German for Sissy

German's have some interesting ways of telling men they're sissies. I wouldn't read too much into them, but perhaps they give a clue into the male German psychee. Many are expressions which describe sissy-like actions.

Here are my favourites:
  • Warmduscher - Warm-showerer
  • schattenparker - Shadow-parker (so your car doesn't overheat)
  • foliengriller - Foil-griller (you put your meat on aluminum foil instead of directly on the grill)
  • s-bahn-in-fahrtrichtung-sitzer - in-the-direction-of-travel-sitter (as to avoid nausea from looking out the window in the wrong direction)
  • sitzpinkler - pee-sittinger
  • Joghurt-mit-Löffel-Esser - Yogurt-with-spoon-eater
  • Frauen-über-die-Straße-lasser - Women-across-the-road-letter
  • bei-gelb-Bremser - Yellow-light-braker
  • Frauenversteher - Women-Understanderer
  • Sauna-unten-Sitzer - Sauna-under-siter (You sit on the lower level of the sauna where it's cooler)
  • Turnbeutel-Vergesser - Sports-bag-forgetterer
  • Homobremser - Homo-braker
But there are also easier ones:
  • Weichei - Soft eggs (eggs = testicles)
  • Flachwichser - lousy wanker
  • Boxershortsbügler - Boxershorts-ironer
  • Muttersöhnchen - Little mama's boy
  • Memme - Sissy/coward
  • softi - softie
  • Lappen/Waschlappen - Wash cloth
  • Sissi - Sissy


eXperimontag @ Madame Claude, Berlin

For one week, Madame Claude (Lübbenerstr. 19 in Kreuzberg) was my favourite newly visited bar/concert space in Berlin. This is because every Monday they feature all varieties of experimental music (eXperimontag). Now, when I say to friends, I like noise, they laugh, or get a headache, but really, people, there are some great noise bands out there.

So last Monday a new friend from Canada, Paolo, whom I met in Banff in August, happened to be in Berlin, and so it went that Madame Claude was the perfect spot to spend a relaxed Monday evening.

Upon entrance, you are warmly greeted by a corner hommage to Twin Peaks, which immediatly gives one a good feeling:



Supposedly the place is a former bordello, but that may already have been back in the day. The nice part is that it's decorated upside down (sorry no pix). Which means that the ceiling is decorated with garbage bins housing lights, coffee tables, chairs, upside down bookshelves (with books), magazine racks (filled), umbrella holders (also filled) to give one the impression of walking ont he ceiling. On the ground the coffee tables are turned upside also, so you place your drinks on the underside of your table, with legs sticking into the air.

On the night I visited with Paolo, Acivity Centre, a relatively well-known duo from Berlin, were slatted to play but one of the members fell ill, and so it was a solo performance from Burkhard Beins. We were both really impressed with Beins, not only for the music, a perfect blend of manipulated string music, including a geiger counter, but also his performance. It was so nice to see just how he was creating the sounds, and building up his music. This was followed by Bly Kobber, a young Dane noise musician, who relied heavily on his computer to manipulate his voice, trumpet and harmonica, among other sounds. In terms of the electronic aspect of noise/experimental both were fantastic, we left


The crammped concert room at Madame Claude.

There are two downsides to Madame Claude. The concert room is really very small, so it get's packed quickly, and when people don't make room, you risk the chance of not even getting in. Then there's the people, I'm not quite sure why, but the place is overrun with English-speakers, who can be very annoying indeed (see below). I'm allowed to say that since I am one.

So last night I made a return visit to see two performances by Americans with my friend Brian. It was much less enjoyable than last week, for two reasons, the music was more ambient, which was really not doing it for me, and the audience was exponentially more annoying than last week. TIP: Do not belittle the performers! Even if they ramble on without aim about Big Foot and consist of french women called Celestial Om. If you don't dig it, geh mal raus! Anyroad, the first performer Animal Hospital made a serious effort, but I just wasn't diggin' it, I guess ambient music live is not really doin' it for me. After a pause came Daniel Higgs and a French woman, who I think was indeed called Clesestial Om. She performed with a synth and thunderstorm background sounds. Think RockyHorrorPictureShow meets the 80s. A solid performance, but also not really doing it for me. Higgs played afterwards, but I couldn't make it through the first song. But also the heckling from the crown on the part of Higgs appearance was really inappropriate and made for a bad atmosphere. I think I just need to be more selective on the noise vs ambient aspects of eXperimontag in the future.


25.10.09

Eating the Dinosaur

Eating the Dinosaur is a new book by Chuck Klosterman. I just love these passages about the art of interviewing in the first chapter from Ira Glass, host of This American Life:
They can tell by my questions that I'm really, really interested and really, really thinking about what they're saying, in a way that only happens in nature when you're falling in love with someone. When else does that experience happen? If you're falling in love with someone, you have conversations where you're truly revealing yourself...I think small intimacy that doesn't extend beyond a single conversation is still intimacy. Even if the basis behind that conversation is purely commercial, there can be moments of real connection with another person. In an interview, we have the apparatus of what generates intimacy -- asking someone to bare himself or herself. And if you're the person being asked the questions, and if you're normal, it's hard not to have it work on your heart.
and Chris Heath, Journalist:
If a question is interesting, it is very difficult to resist answering it, because you will usually find your own answer interesting to yourself. If you have any ego at all, or a desire to share your experience and thought processes, then you may also imagine your answer will be of interest to other people. But that lure and appeal would quickly break down in a real conversation without a second factor: the person asking the question must be interested in hearing the answer. There's no single bigger reason why people answer questions. Here, of course, lies the biggest difference between a successful interviewer and an unsuccessful one: the successful one makes the interviewee feel as though he or she is interested in the answers. The unsuccessful interviewer -- and I have sat in or listened to enough interviews to know, unfortunately, and disappointingly, how common they are -- does not."
I'm gearing up to release a podcast on Genetics, in which I want to eventually have interviews with scientists. I'd love to make my interviews even half as captivating as the average on This American Life.

Again, via Metafilter


no. 23: Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

I'm probably the last person to learn about Hugh MacLeod. This guy is all-round kick ass in the motivating creativity department. In 2004 he released a free eBook: How To Be Creative <PDF> which is a serious kick in the butt to get your ideas off the ground.

Anyroad, now he has a print book called Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity which is so nicely summarized in a post from this blog at No Depression. There seems to be a large amount of overlap between the publications.

Some of my faourites:

11.
The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

15.
Dying young is overrated. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work. The bars of West Hollywood, London, and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off.

17.
The world is changing. If you want to be able to afford groceries in five years, I’d recommend listening closely to the (people who push change) and avoiding the (people who resist change). In order to navigate the New Realities you have to be creative - not just within your particular profession, but in everything. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original. The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries. They’re easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you’ve got something worthwhile to offer in return. Avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct; they are extinction.

Check out his blog and drawings at Gaping Void.

via Metafilter.



14.10.09

Darwin: The Opera

This looks orders of magnitude better than Jesus Christ: Super-star! And is probably the best performance that I'll never see.

Tomorrow, in a year is "a Darwin electro-opera" with music from none-other than The Knife, who give me goosebumps just by thinking about them. They teamed up with Danish performance group Hotel pro Forma. From the web-site:

Description
The world seen through the eyes of Charles Darwin forms the basis for the performance Tomorrow, in a year. Theatre production company Hotel Pro Forma’s striking visuals blend with pop-duo The Knife’s ground-breaking music to create a new species of electro-opera.

An opera singer, a pop singer and an actor perform The Knife’s music and represent Darwin, time and nature on stage. Six dancers form the raw material of life. Together with the newest technology in light and sound, our image of the world as a place of incredible variation, similarity and unity is re-discovered.



Concept
The opera-genre provides the DNA, the framework of the performance. It calls for large scale, and it forms a space where form and expression dominate. The Swedish music group The Knife creates completely new compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music. The musical form is experimental and exploratory, and much of the sound heard was recorded while in the Amazon Jungle and in Iceland.

It is written for three singers of different backgrounds: popular music, classical opera and the performing arts. They are the narrators and the main characters in the performance. The singers tell about Darwin and they observe time and nature as Darwin.

Directed by Ralf Richardt Strøbech and Kirsten Dehlholm, the visual and conceptual universe is formed by Darwin’s thoughts, experiences and letters. The performance is divided into two parts – analogous to the development and publications of The Origin of Species.

The first part of the performance is exploratory. It concentrates on observing the underlying sequences and relationships between image, narrative, movement and music used in the performance. The second part is a synthesis of the material. A completed image and totality emerge, before the performance again mutates and passes into new forms, as happens over time with all things.

The opera presents an image of Darwin that above all reminds us that the world is a place of remarkable similarities and amazing diversity. That over time - tomorrow, in a year, or tomorrow, in a million years - change is inevitable.

AMAZING! This is art and science how she was meant to be spoke! You can also download all the lyrics on the opera's homepage. The title piece is particularly nice:

TOMORROW, IN A YEAR
An intersection of the plain
by the bank of some great stream

the animal carcasses
and skeletons would be
entombed

Tomorrow in a year
tomorrow in a million years

Ages resting in
the rings of a tree.
Fossils in lay in slate
marking the old forest’s edge

I’ve stood on a mountain
dividing three regions.
Then it was just a pebble
that I held inside my hand

In between each flap
of a butterfly’s wings,
countless changes
that have gone on unnoticed

A cricket rubs it’s forewings
together and I am forced
to think of the time that it’s taken
to build

Mountains fossils

Larva lava

The only downside is that this is a very difficult performance to see. Must like The Knive themselves, there are only scattered showing across Europe, and probably nothing overseas.






10.10.09

Netaudio Festival '09



I found out about this way too late, but there is a seemingly fantastic music festival taking place in Berlin this weekend, including workshops and discussions:
The musical focus lies on a selection of Berlin’s finest electronic music, namely, House, Techno and Minimal. However, many artists from the fields of Ambient, Noise, Dub, Drum’n’Bass, Pop, Triphop, Dubstep, Breakbeats, Drone, Hip Hop and Techdub will add to the varied musical program.
If you can't make it out for the evening performances, you can download two free samplers from the website.


9.10.09

Worth the 90 Minutes

via MetaFilter: Sugar: The Bitter Truth is a 90 lecture from Robert H. Lustig from UCSF as part of their "Mini Medical School for the Public" which looks like an amazing resource in itself (iTunes feed).

You're probably already are aware that despite increasing trends to reduce fat in our diets, the obesity epidemic grows further. You're probably also aware that decreased fat content processed food tastes like cardboard and is loaded with suger to keep the flavour going. That sugar is jam packed with fructose, a chronic poison akin to alcohol, as is discussed in this talk, and that is why you're fat. Everybody needs to watch this lecture and understand it. You'll never want to eat High Fructose Corn Syrup again.

7.10.09

Royal de Luxe in Berlin

October 3rd was reunification day in Germany, and of course a big deal in Berlin (although the really big thing is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall). To celebrate Berlin called in France's Royal de Luxe  to put on a show with their giant puppets, which lasted four days. You can see some great pictures and the story at The Big Picture. There are some lovely pictures of Berlin also. I tried to see the little giant on Saturday at Under den Linden, one of the main streets in former east Berlin but it was near impossible, there were so many people! 1,5mil is estimated and over the four days, I can believe it. I only caught a glimpse of her..

Here is the little giant with the TV tower in the background


And there they are leaving the city via the Spree




1.10.09

Fiction + Science

Three really interesting articles are currently available at The New Yorker.

First:
New (and amazing) fiction by George Saunders: Victory Lap. The first time I heard about George Saunders was also via The New Yorker, with their fiction podcast. This is one of my favourite podcasts, the only downside is it's monthly, but given the quality, I can live with less quantity. Each month the fiction editor invites an author, many of which (possibly all) have been published in the magazine, to choose a story from the archives (which are extensive) and read it out loud. Engaging discussion before and after the reading introduces you to the author and that specific text. Saunders' Adams just blew me away, and Joshua Ferris does a fantastic job conveying the tone and tempo of the story. Oh and while I'm at it, Tobias Wolff reading Denis Johnson's Emergency is also fantastic. How can you resist when Wolff sets the piece up as such: "It's a classic, absoutely. It's one of those stories... that everyone knows. Every person who fancies herself literate - who I'm acquainted with - knows this story and relishes the moments in it". Apparently I can now socialize with Mr. Wolff.

Second:
Second, A Life of its Own takes on synthetic biology and offers a fairly good overview of the emerging field. But statements like this still irk me:

“When your hard drive dies, you can go to the nearest computer store, buy a new one, and swap it out,” Keasling said. “That’s because it’s a standard part in a machine. The entire electronics industry is based on a plug-and-play mentality. Get a transistor, plug it in, and off you go. What works in one cell phone or laptop should work in another. That is true for almost everything we build: when you go to Home Depot, you don’t think about the thread size on the bolts you buy, because they’re all made to the same standard. Why shouldn’t we use biological parts in the same way?”

The answer of course is that a hard drive has a singular purpose, that does not change depending on the machine its in or its contents. The screw also serves one purpose, regardless of where it is being used, and it can be used in myriad places.  Many genes change function dependent on their environment (i.e. INTRAcellular environment). Anyroad, Biologists in this field all recognize these things and they know how Molecular Biology and Genetics works, but I think they, like other Biologists and lay people alike, fall prey to the desire for analogies. Biologists have repeatedly tried to explain life by using analogies (very often from art) and the plug-and-play is only a further extension of that. All analogies have eventually failed us because none can truely capture the complexity of life itself and as such, they limit our capacity for new, undescrible (i.e. sans analogy) phenomenon.

Directly afterwards is stated:
No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse.
People... read and understand this article please.

Finally:
Finally, an article on Richard Powers, who is now - hands down - my favourite unread author. Brain Drain explores the relationship between matter and mind in Powers' writings. I need to get my hands on one of his books: The anticipation is building. See also my previous post where I discover Powers: Mono.Kultur and The nOulipian Analects (pt.1) (pt.2 coming eventually).

But Also See:
Oh, and if you want more economics, there is a video discussion with Economist Joseph Stiglitz. He also has an older article at Vanity Fair, Capitalist Fools, that may be of interest.