Monday 26 August 2019
Thursday 22 August 2019
Three songs with That Early Eighties Sound
According to some academic, Eighties music is the most similar-sounding of all the decades. I present three examples:
Joe Jackson, Stepping Out
Trevor Horn with Dollar up front, Hand held In Black and White
And finally, and you may need to sit down for this, Kajagoogoo. Yes, you heard. Don’t watch the video, listen to the music.
What was it? That sound? Not all the songs had it, but most of the best ones did. It has a space in it, wide open chords, a rock-solid rhythm with a hint of swing, and for me, it’s best illustrated by the instrumental section of Too Shy from about 2:05 to 2:40. The repetition is minimalism, the keyboard chords and other sounds are there to help you drift away wondering about what might happen if the shy girl comes a little closer.
After the turmoil, inflation, and general bleakness of the Seventies, people were starting to think that their lives could actually be fun again. That Eighties sound captured the exact mix of optimism and caution we felt, and provided the soundtrack to the good times we had from time to time
Joe Jackson, Stepping Out
Trevor Horn with Dollar up front, Hand held In Black and White
And finally, and you may need to sit down for this, Kajagoogoo. Yes, you heard. Don’t watch the video, listen to the music.
What was it? That sound? Not all the songs had it, but most of the best ones did. It has a space in it, wide open chords, a rock-solid rhythm with a hint of swing, and for me, it’s best illustrated by the instrumental section of Too Shy from about 2:05 to 2:40. The repetition is minimalism, the keyboard chords and other sounds are there to help you drift away wondering about what might happen if the shy girl comes a little closer.
After the turmoil, inflation, and general bleakness of the Seventies, people were starting to think that their lives could actually be fun again. That Eighties sound captured the exact mix of optimism and caution we felt, and provided the soundtrack to the good times we had from time to time
Monday 19 August 2019
When The Blogger Says...
When the blogger says they’re not posting as much because they’re working on a project.
Now I know that feeling.
It has to do with my interest in the philosophy of mathematics. You try making sense of Riemann's PhD thesis on the foundations of complex function theory. I am, slowly, because I'm not Gauss. It's taking up all my background processing capability.
Thursday 15 August 2019
Magnetic Crane Grab
What else would you leave behind when closing down a factory that clearly was rolling steel plate? A crane with magnetic grabs. Because who would you sell it to?
Monday 12 August 2019
Look Through Any Window...
Which is the title of a song by the Hollies. What I'd love is if the couple at the table were talking about... oh, anything but what you know they're talking about, which is work. Notice how everyone is smiling. Clear blue skies and warm weather do that to people.
(I'm honestly running out of things to say about the human condition. Someone fast forward to November 1st. Please.)
Thursday 8 August 2019
Candy Dulfer - Strasbourg St Denis
When you get a tune in your head and it won't go away.
Candy Dulfer's early albums, should you have heard any, which I had, will not prepare you for this performance, and the rest of the concert, which is also on You Tube. This is engaged, enjoyable and thoughtful - not usually words I associate with "smooth jazz".
Monday 5 August 2019
Brexit - The View Ahead
So far Boris has done everything right. Set out his position like he means it. Telling the EU they won’t get their money without a re-negotiated deal is spot-on. Refusing to travel to for meetings with people who say they won’t change their minds is solid stuff as well. Appearing to spend money on preparing for No Deal is just what the doctor ordered. It all makes us realise just how poor at negotiation Theresa May’s lot were.
According to the House of Parliament’s estimate’s https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/parliament-and-elections/elections-elections/brexit-votes-by-constituency/ 408 MPs represent constituencies that voted 50.1% or more Leave. 363 voted 52% Leave, and 292 voted 55% Leave. That’s 292 MPs who should be voting to Leave There are 650 seats in the House. 163 MPs represent constituencies where Leave got 45% or less: they have a solid rationale for voting to repeal A50. That leaves 195 swing constituencies, where the statistics and estimates may blur the result.
I said voting to repeal A50. Not to create endless uncertainty and delay. Nobody voted for that. There was a point to frustrating the process in April when May brought her unacceptable agreement to the House. It was all they could do, and they should have done it. In typical British fashion, the House did the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
Most of the comments and calculations, and my first draft of this, were based on the assumption that the House was a bunch of weasels who want another Government to run the Government. That’s true of some of them: Corbyn and his thugs, Hammond and some others who don’t know their time has passed. Take their names, and treat them as exceptions.
Let’s assume that the House (of Commons) understands that, however much its individual members may want to Remain, almost all of them understand that they have been given their instructions and will not, therefore, be voting to repeal A50. Party policy or not.
The House can and should obstruct a really, really awful deal. It may feel it should obstruct an un-prepared No-Deal exit, though quite how much more time anyone in business needs since June 2016 is not clear. The EU will not throw the UK out. It needs the money and it doesn’t need the optics of “throwing out the UK”. So every time the House asks for an extension, the EU will oblige.
What the House needs to believe, however grudgingly and reluctantly, are two things: first, that the UK is prepared for a No-Deal exit, however imperfectly; and second, that the voters, and more importantly the companies that fund the political parties, are not willing to take another delay with yet more uncertainty.
Many of the MPs are much closer to both those conclusions than you might think. That’s because the media have not been reporting the preparations being made and the money being spent on a No-Deal UK. If they had, Project Fear would seem farcical. The MP’s however, see what is happening in their constituencies, and don’t believe the Guardian, Mark Carney or the Motor Industry any more than you and I do. No-Deal is going to be a speed-bump, not a car wreck, and a lot of MPs know this.
So what difference does Boris make? While Theresa May had Olly “Wormtongue” Robbins whispering in her ear, the House had very good reasons to suppose that any preparations would be insufficient, and that the deal would be awful. Boris can assure them that progress is being made, and come Halloween, the UK will be prepared enough. He can also remind them that the EU are not going to change a single word of the agreement, that the Backstop (My Precious!) will not be removed, at least by Junker’s administration, and that there is no point in buying more time, because nothing will change in the EU position at the end of it.
There’s something else. The House would have had no confidence in May’s ability to lead when and if anything awkward happened. She had the wrong advisors for that: Wormtongue would have told her that it was the consequence of leaving the EU and she should look to make peace with Mordor. The House did not, and rightly, want to step into the unknown with a weak leader who did not believe in her cause.
The House can believe that Boris will step up, and that his advisors are at least on his side.
An election would be a distraction for Boris’ preparations. The timing is awful, since Remainers need Parliament to be sitting in the weeks before Halloween, and Parliament doesn’t reconvene until the 3rd of September. It’s also irrelevant: this isn’t about a party political majority. It’s about a Leave-majority. Boris can’t count on his own party, just as Corbyn can’t count on his party.
Nobody has to vote to Leave. That was done in June 2016. They have to vote to obstruct Leave. To Leave, they just have to not come up with the tricks they used to prevent May’s agreement going through.
I started this by assuming the House was actually full of people who were, under a think layer of gunk, basically decent. I’m going to end it by reminding you that the mainstream media is presently staffed, managed and owned almost entirely by people who would not know the truth if it bit them in the ass and gave them an infectious disease.
Expect bought-and-paid-for Project Fear to rise to hysterical levels in October. It didn’t work in 2016, and it won’t work now. Not even the journalists believe it. However, the journalists’ masters don’t need you to believe it. They need just enough of 650 Very Special People to believe it.
Expect has-been ex-ministers and attention-seeking backbenchers to introduce ridiculous bills to frustrate the Halloween deadline. Expect most of those to be voted down by narrow margins. Expect screaming headlines and bought-and-paid-for marches in the last week of October. When Halloween comes and goes and the House fails to delay, because it has realised the EU cannot let go of its Precious, expect howls of anguish on the front pages of the mainstream media November 1st or some near date. For months afterwards, expect celebrity Remainers to threaten legal action. Expect every traffic jam near a port to be reported as a blow to UK trade. Expect every nasty, dirty trick in the book.
The difference between the MPs and the journalists is that MPs have to listen to the people, or they won’t be re-elected. Journalists have to listen to whoever pays their salary, and it’s been a long time since the revenue from the cover price and the local cinema and estate agents did that. Journalists are paid by billionaires and NGO / EU grants, and play the tunes those pipers want.
Which is slightly off-topic. I could be wrong about the MPs. Angela Merkel might tell Brussels to drop its Precious into Mount Doom and let the UK go, so Volkswagen can sell us some cars. The New Lot might view Brexit as a distraction, and want to be shot of Farage and an EU country which will apply for, and get, an exception to its Armed Forces being in the EU Army. With the UK in, Project Mo’ Yurup will always falter. The House might decide to commit collective suicide and repeal A50.
One thing I do know. I know this: If Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants a quick billion for his personal pension scheme, he just needs to threaten to open Turkey's Western borders in first week of October, and flood Europe with millions of vibrant and diverse lawyers and doctors.
‘Cause that’s what tipped the balance back in June 2016.
According to the House of Parliament’s estimate’s https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/parliament-and-elections/elections-elections/brexit-votes-by-constituency/ 408 MPs represent constituencies that voted 50.1% or more Leave. 363 voted 52% Leave, and 292 voted 55% Leave. That’s 292 MPs who should be voting to Leave There are 650 seats in the House. 163 MPs represent constituencies where Leave got 45% or less: they have a solid rationale for voting to repeal A50. That leaves 195 swing constituencies, where the statistics and estimates may blur the result.
I said voting to repeal A50. Not to create endless uncertainty and delay. Nobody voted for that. There was a point to frustrating the process in April when May brought her unacceptable agreement to the House. It was all they could do, and they should have done it. In typical British fashion, the House did the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
Most of the comments and calculations, and my first draft of this, were based on the assumption that the House was a bunch of weasels who want another Government to run the Government. That’s true of some of them: Corbyn and his thugs, Hammond and some others who don’t know their time has passed. Take their names, and treat them as exceptions.
Let’s assume that the House (of Commons) understands that, however much its individual members may want to Remain, almost all of them understand that they have been given their instructions and will not, therefore, be voting to repeal A50. Party policy or not.
The House can and should obstruct a really, really awful deal. It may feel it should obstruct an un-prepared No-Deal exit, though quite how much more time anyone in business needs since June 2016 is not clear. The EU will not throw the UK out. It needs the money and it doesn’t need the optics of “throwing out the UK”. So every time the House asks for an extension, the EU will oblige.
What the House needs to believe, however grudgingly and reluctantly, are two things: first, that the UK is prepared for a No-Deal exit, however imperfectly; and second, that the voters, and more importantly the companies that fund the political parties, are not willing to take another delay with yet more uncertainty.
Many of the MPs are much closer to both those conclusions than you might think. That’s because the media have not been reporting the preparations being made and the money being spent on a No-Deal UK. If they had, Project Fear would seem farcical. The MP’s however, see what is happening in their constituencies, and don’t believe the Guardian, Mark Carney or the Motor Industry any more than you and I do. No-Deal is going to be a speed-bump, not a car wreck, and a lot of MPs know this.
So what difference does Boris make? While Theresa May had Olly “Wormtongue” Robbins whispering in her ear, the House had very good reasons to suppose that any preparations would be insufficient, and that the deal would be awful. Boris can assure them that progress is being made, and come Halloween, the UK will be prepared enough. He can also remind them that the EU are not going to change a single word of the agreement, that the Backstop (My Precious!) will not be removed, at least by Junker’s administration, and that there is no point in buying more time, because nothing will change in the EU position at the end of it.
There’s something else. The House would have had no confidence in May’s ability to lead when and if anything awkward happened. She had the wrong advisors for that: Wormtongue would have told her that it was the consequence of leaving the EU and she should look to make peace with Mordor. The House did not, and rightly, want to step into the unknown with a weak leader who did not believe in her cause.
The House can believe that Boris will step up, and that his advisors are at least on his side.
An election would be a distraction for Boris’ preparations. The timing is awful, since Remainers need Parliament to be sitting in the weeks before Halloween, and Parliament doesn’t reconvene until the 3rd of September. It’s also irrelevant: this isn’t about a party political majority. It’s about a Leave-majority. Boris can’t count on his own party, just as Corbyn can’t count on his party.
Nobody has to vote to Leave. That was done in June 2016. They have to vote to obstruct Leave. To Leave, they just have to not come up with the tricks they used to prevent May’s agreement going through.
I started this by assuming the House was actually full of people who were, under a think layer of gunk, basically decent. I’m going to end it by reminding you that the mainstream media is presently staffed, managed and owned almost entirely by people who would not know the truth if it bit them in the ass and gave them an infectious disease.
Expect bought-and-paid-for Project Fear to rise to hysterical levels in October. It didn’t work in 2016, and it won’t work now. Not even the journalists believe it. However, the journalists’ masters don’t need you to believe it. They need just enough of 650 Very Special People to believe it.
Expect has-been ex-ministers and attention-seeking backbenchers to introduce ridiculous bills to frustrate the Halloween deadline. Expect most of those to be voted down by narrow margins. Expect screaming headlines and bought-and-paid-for marches in the last week of October. When Halloween comes and goes and the House fails to delay, because it has realised the EU cannot let go of its Precious, expect howls of anguish on the front pages of the mainstream media November 1st or some near date. For months afterwards, expect celebrity Remainers to threaten legal action. Expect every traffic jam near a port to be reported as a blow to UK trade. Expect every nasty, dirty trick in the book.
The difference between the MPs and the journalists is that MPs have to listen to the people, or they won’t be re-elected. Journalists have to listen to whoever pays their salary, and it’s been a long time since the revenue from the cover price and the local cinema and estate agents did that. Journalists are paid by billionaires and NGO / EU grants, and play the tunes those pipers want.
Which is slightly off-topic. I could be wrong about the MPs. Angela Merkel might tell Brussels to drop its Precious into Mount Doom and let the UK go, so Volkswagen can sell us some cars. The New Lot might view Brexit as a distraction, and want to be shot of Farage and an EU country which will apply for, and get, an exception to its Armed Forces being in the EU Army. With the UK in, Project Mo’ Yurup will always falter. The House might decide to commit collective suicide and repeal A50.
One thing I do know. I know this: If Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants a quick billion for his personal pension scheme, he just needs to threaten to open Turkey's Western borders in first week of October, and flood Europe with millions of vibrant and diverse lawyers and doctors.
‘Cause that’s what tipped the balance back in June 2016.
Thursday 1 August 2019
Movie Wokeness Is Marketing to a Non-White Male Audience
Computing Forever has a comprehensive review of the various movie franchises that have been infected by woke-ness, diversity, feminism, misandry and other things off-putting to Men Who Want To Watch Movies.
His take is that these changes is deliberate political-inspired posturing by the Hollywood studios, which have become infested by manginas, allies, and LBGQTI supporters. I mean, other than the Warshowski’s.
I’m not so sure. There’s a veneer of Woke-speak in the marketing, and remember that actor/ess interviews are part of the marketing. The veneer isn’t the wood. The wood is surely at least two things: first, Hollywood blockbusters are primarily made for the Chinese and Indian markets, rather than the domestic US market; second, White Men Who Want To Watch Movies are now only twenty-five per cent of the population of the USA, and the prime age range, which I understand to be 18-30, has been, I suspect, deserting the movies in favour of computer games, and box sets or streaming, for quite the time now. Hollywood used to make movies for White Men, because there were enough of them to make a decent audience. Now there aren’t.
So Hollywood makes movies for White Women, diversities in the USA, and the Chinese and Indian markets. (The James Bond franchise had been taking into account the quirks of local markets since forever.) No more evil slanty-eyed Chinese or dumb Black criminals, unless they are cool super-villans. (That explains why nobody complains about the portrayal of Mexican and South American gangsters: psychopathy is super-cool.) No more Uma Thurman. Women have to be “real” and sassy, or strong, or hot messes. These groups are now the primary market.
Who gets to be the Bad Guy, the Dope and the Loser? The one group who isn’t paying dues to Hollywood. The White Man. He has to be the dupe, the dope, the clown and the clueless. Ain’t nobody else left.
Hollywood has learned a lot from Chinese movies, though it has yet to incorporate a love story and a dance scene into a Fast And Furious to keep the Indian audience happy. What it doesn’t know how to get right is Having A Hero / Major Character Who Isn’t A White Man (or Denzel Washington or a Lead Girl In A Sci-Fi series). I don’t either: it’s a tricky balance of ignoring the gender and colour of the Lead, but somehow building in both to the character and plot, without it interfering with the way the character functions. At the moment, NWM Leads have to flaunt their NWM-ness at the audience and lord it over the WM supporting cast, because Hollywood thinks that’s what the White Women + Diversities want to see. And maybe Hollywood is right. I don’t know: I haven’t seen the research.
Meantime, the Fast and Furious franchise is stuffed to the gills with WM leads. After the cars, WM leads are the whole point of F&F. But then F&F really is made for the Chinese, who don’t go for any of this woke stuff. And look at (some of) the box set series. The ones I have, from Sons of Anarchy, through House, to Elementary and The Shield, have strong, white, male characters who take no shit from anyone. Not All Box Sets Are Like That (Game of Thrones!), but some are, because if the producers get it right, the WM audience will buy in bulk.
The old-school feminists understood that the masculine world is a shifting, elusive and fluid thing. They knew that whenever they managed to get into some male bastion, the men had somehow gone to another bastion somewhere else. What they didn’t know was that the only reason they got access to the old bastion was that the men were already leaving. I can’t help feeling that’s what’s happened to a lot of pop culture: WMs have mostly abandoned it, because there are new and more interesting things to do. As a result, it has been turned into an audience-delivery mechanism for advertisers. The WM stragglers are complaining, but the stragglers always will.
His take is that these changes is deliberate political-inspired posturing by the Hollywood studios, which have become infested by manginas, allies, and LBGQTI supporters. I mean, other than the Warshowski’s.
(These guys made The Matrix)
I’m not so sure. There’s a veneer of Woke-speak in the marketing, and remember that actor/ess interviews are part of the marketing. The veneer isn’t the wood. The wood is surely at least two things: first, Hollywood blockbusters are primarily made for the Chinese and Indian markets, rather than the domestic US market; second, White Men Who Want To Watch Movies are now only twenty-five per cent of the population of the USA, and the prime age range, which I understand to be 18-30, has been, I suspect, deserting the movies in favour of computer games, and box sets or streaming, for quite the time now. Hollywood used to make movies for White Men, because there were enough of them to make a decent audience. Now there aren’t.
So Hollywood makes movies for White Women, diversities in the USA, and the Chinese and Indian markets. (The James Bond franchise had been taking into account the quirks of local markets since forever.) No more evil slanty-eyed Chinese or dumb Black criminals, unless they are cool super-villans. (That explains why nobody complains about the portrayal of Mexican and South American gangsters: psychopathy is super-cool.) No more Uma Thurman. Women have to be “real” and sassy, or strong, or hot messes. These groups are now the primary market.
Who gets to be the Bad Guy, the Dope and the Loser? The one group who isn’t paying dues to Hollywood. The White Man. He has to be the dupe, the dope, the clown and the clueless. Ain’t nobody else left.
Hollywood has learned a lot from Chinese movies, though it has yet to incorporate a love story and a dance scene into a Fast And Furious to keep the Indian audience happy. What it doesn’t know how to get right is Having A Hero / Major Character Who Isn’t A White Man (or Denzel Washington or a Lead Girl In A Sci-Fi series). I don’t either: it’s a tricky balance of ignoring the gender and colour of the Lead, but somehow building in both to the character and plot, without it interfering with the way the character functions. At the moment, NWM Leads have to flaunt their NWM-ness at the audience and lord it over the WM supporting cast, because Hollywood thinks that’s what the White Women + Diversities want to see. And maybe Hollywood is right. I don’t know: I haven’t seen the research.
Meantime, the Fast and Furious franchise is stuffed to the gills with WM leads. After the cars, WM leads are the whole point of F&F. But then F&F really is made for the Chinese, who don’t go for any of this woke stuff. And look at (some of) the box set series. The ones I have, from Sons of Anarchy, through House, to Elementary and The Shield, have strong, white, male characters who take no shit from anyone. Not All Box Sets Are Like That (Game of Thrones!), but some are, because if the producers get it right, the WM audience will buy in bulk.
The old-school feminists understood that the masculine world is a shifting, elusive and fluid thing. They knew that whenever they managed to get into some male bastion, the men had somehow gone to another bastion somewhere else. What they didn’t know was that the only reason they got access to the old bastion was that the men were already leaving. I can’t help feeling that’s what’s happened to a lot of pop culture: WMs have mostly abandoned it, because there are new and more interesting things to do. As a result, it has been turned into an audience-delivery mechanism for advertisers. The WM stragglers are complaining, but the stragglers always will.
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