Saturday Sidebar – Daydream Believers And Confirmation Bias

The first draft of this got to around 1700 words before I realised it was in danger of going on forever. Clearly one of my New Year resolutions should be to try and be more succinct. 

I’d been chatting to a pal of mine over Skype about the state funeral of Kim Jong-il in North Korea. After he’d given me the heads up on the story about priests having a bit of a brawl http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16347418 we moved on to belief systems in general. 

Yes, under certain regimes information is not readily available to those sufficiently curious to question perceived wisdom but in other societies, there is an abundance of information available to enable the slaughtering of the occasional sacred cow. And yet, certain ideas persist no matter what information comes to light. Or does it just seem that way? Do we have difficulty considering timescales greater than the average human lifespan? 

If you have happened upon any of my previous posts this year you’ll have noticed that I’ve become mightily distracted from the noble enterprise of making music that sounds twenty years out of date by the economic crisis. All it took was a bout of insomnia and an absentminded scroll up the television channel list from the BBC News to RT where I caught an episode of the Keiser Report with Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert. I was so transfixed I forgot all about scrolling further up to the delights of Babestation. Yeah, Max and Stacy were that interesting AND funny ;) 

If you can stomach an insight into why the parameters within which you live your life are based on the most audacious chicanery then look them up. If not, do it anyway, for your kids’ sake if nothing else.

Whether it’s been studying the difference between how the BBC, Sky, Channel 4, RT and Al Jazeera report the news; films like Collapse, Inside Job, The Flaw and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward or programmes like The Alyona Show, Capital Account and the Keiser Report, it’s been a hell of a year for learning the extent to which our lives are affected by policies implemented off the back of a system so completely divorced from our physical reality.

I think it was at this point in the first draft that I really started to ramble on and ended up just repeating what other far more articulate souls have already put out into the ether. I thought about Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror trilogy and reconsidered. When programmes as good as that exist, what else is left to say? Only that the old news footage in Ben Elton’s Laughing At The 80s programme showed we’ve been here before.

So what of what we believe in? Having effectively spent most of 2011 devouring as much information as my sanity would allow, let the record reflect that I’ve stopped laughing about North Korea. 

Happy New Year x

p.s. there's a new song called Mockingbird available on the Music tab or a super spangly version available on the Download Here! tab. 

Sunday Soliloquy – It’s All Very Well

I was talking to some people about expertise this week. In the midst of discussing my decision to learn how to play the piano, we digressed into a general chat about not finding expertise where you might expect it. The positive slant on that is often when you find someone, with or without formal training, who just happens to be good at something…..or gives you the impression they really know what they’re talking about. The negative is of course finding yourself in a situation where you’re dealing with someone who, in spite of all their credentials, appears to be fucking clueless.

A quick straw poll indicated we had all been there at least once ;)

At an individual level, it might mean you losing confidence in your highers, feeling de-motivated or even withdrawing from a process that you may have once felt worthwhile. On a wider scale, this is far more worrying, as is well evidenced by all the #occupy endeavours. Can you imagine what it would look like if most of us felt like that? That their willingness to simply be on the streets wasn’t so easily derided by many? Can you imagine if most people decided to spend a day doing the math as our friends across the pond say? If they sat down and decided to challenge their notions of what they have been taught, what they know and of particular interest to me at the moment, what words are being used to describe what they can see?

As someone in the middle of such an exercise I can tell you it’s certainly interesting. I don’t recommend it if you cherish your sanity. Still, as Mark Twain said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

I like coming across unorthodox points of view. Whether that’s the last vestige of some half-hearted notion of outsider chic that I never actually possessed as a young man I don’t know. I’d rather consider it an undimmed curiosity as to why what I can see with my own eyes is not being described to me by those whose job it is to do so. I can well remember that back in the day, a friend and I used to play a game where we would substitute words for other words that, though incorrect within the context, sounded better. It’s a funny old world. You want key performance indicators and trend analysis? Don’t get me fucking started. Numbers don’t lie but people do. That’s all you need to know ;)

So, all of that is a rather longwinded way of bringing you to this. A reassuring little gem, an interview with Steve Keen on Capital Account a couple of weeks ago:

Oh, and yes, I’m still practicing the piano. Here’s my latest bit of tinkering:

Sunday Soliloquy – Bonfire Of The Vanities

I had to laugh. Or rather, I told myself I had to laugh. I think there’s a lesson for me to learn in this little story so keep your fingers crossed that it will occur to me at some point.

First of all the PC had started playing up, getting progressively worse until it effectively died. Still, luckily for me Venom Carter was on hand to install a new operating system and it wasn’t too long before all was right with the world once again. The PC was running smoothly, no longer held back by an old OS and a ton of files that, to be honest, I rarely accessed and besides, I’d backed everything up on a wonderful little black box. It was, as they say, all good.

Yep, you’ve guessed it. Then the little black box died.

Now, in the midst of searching the forums for a little troubleshooting advice it began to occur to me that Venom’s decision to maintain five (it may be six come to think of it) back up drives of his digital life may not have been the indicator of OCD I once thought it to be. I on the other hand had one drive. Yes, with everything on it. Yes, that is now gone forever. Y’see as my luck would have it, the little black box didn’t just need a new power supply, lead or casing. No, according to the chap who knows about such things that I spoke to yesterday, it had suffered a catastrophic failure. The data was gone.

The data was gone. That’s every photo I’ve taken over the last five years, every gig poster or flyer and piece of CD cover art from the last ten years. Just about every creative thing that I’ve used a PC for, was gone. Well, except for most of the music that is, which, due to my Luddite tendencies in using gear that was ten years behind the times, I had to mix down to CD up until about six months ago. I should’ve explored the cloud, clearly.

I’d been volunteering at a charity up here for the last few months and had recently re-read Douglas Coupland’s book Player One as a means to occupy myself on the bus journey;

“No, it doesn’t, because none of it matters, because no matter what I do I’m going to inherit Alzheimer’s from my bastard father.” Karen’s eyes flared open wider. “That’s the real reason for most things in my life that go sideways. The day I turn fifty-five, my universe is going to start erasing itself. So what’s the point of doing anything?”

Like I said, I told myself I had to laugh. Whether it’s a potentially increased statistical probability that I shall develop Alzheimer’s like my mother or, the technology at hand failing (hmmmm, the same thing surely?), it seems I could be ahead of the curve here.

Of course, it’s not like I lost a house in a flood or anything, lest you think I’m not keeping this in perspective. But, most of those things were irreplaceable. As with all the books and everything else at the start of the year, if I’m going to downsize I prefer it to be my decision.

Still, it did give me pause for thought. What happens to the digital files and all the online stuff when we, well, you know…..? Apart from the predictable sense of loss, what difference does it make on a day-to-day basis? So far? None. Funny that.

Fun Friday – Play…..er Piano

Admittedly, not the best Kurt Vonnegut related opening gambit but it’ll suffice. It started with a stint of volunteering for a charity up here. Predictably, having not been in an office environment for eighteen months or so I quickly succumbed to the perils of air conditioning. Cue a fortnight’s suffering of the beast that is man-flu. Yes, that thing that the average woman would shrug off without missing a step on her march to dominion over the other 48%, whose response in marked contrast is to proclaim that the end of the world is nigh, whilst drinking Lucozade, eating chicken soup and watching the television all day.

Still, in spite of the, ahem, immeasurable suffering, I managed to sit down at the keyboard and make some progress on the tinkling of the ivories. So what? I know. The thing for me is that playing the piano has never felt natural or intuitive in the way that playing the guitar did. So, making progress has always seemed like work which, in the spirit of all procrastinators, is a powerful disincentive. However, with the alternatives of the rolling news channels or the internet searches on how our whole way of life is based on a completely fraudulent monetary system appearing surprisingly less appealing, I persevered…..almost heroically you might say (if you were chemically altered, for example).

These are baby steps so no doubt I’ll look back in six months and hang my head in shame (a regular occurrence if you hadn’t realised by now) but at this exact moment in time, I’m actually quite proud of the song in the video below, a gentle little ditty called Shoe Box. To actually be able to play and sing the thing at the same time is a real leap for me. Bless. You can download a standard mp3 version of the song from the Music tab above or a spangly high-res version from the bandcamp page by clicking on the Download Here! tab if you prefer.

In other news, I’ve been keeping a lazy eye open for how frequently people are quoting or referencing George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Bill Hicks, George Carlin and the Schopenhauer quote about the three stages of truth. I do it myself. There’s a lot of it about lately, a subtle link with a #1984 here and a we’re going to hell in a handcart rant there. What does that tell us? It’s good to see that some worthwhile ideas endure and that the platforms exist for us to dip in and out at our leisure. Talking of which, interesting reading this past month has been Eli Pariser’s book The Filter Bubble:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Filter-Bubble-What-Internet-Hiding/dp/067092038X

and Kevin Poulsen’s book Kingpin:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingpin-Hacker-Billion-Dollar-Cybercrime-Underground/dp/0307588688/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314279327&sr=1-1

There may well be radio silence from Inky HQ for a period of time while we do some much needed online maintenance so until the next time, do yourself a favour and read Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano or watch the piece below. The speech featured in the Zeitgeist: Moving Forward film and is, quite simply, awesome.

Fun Friday – The Future’s Not Here…..Yet

I was chatting to a friend of mine this week who has recently had one of those moments. You might now the kind, when you take a fresh look at your surroundings and are suddenly aware that though you are present and correct, your future is not here.

The casual observer would opine that it was simply post holiday blues, that predictable sense of ennui when you distil your life down to how you actually spend your time as opposed to how you want to spend your time. However, having known him for many a year I would say that he has unwittingly opened Pandora’s Box…..the poor sod. We talked about looking at the shelves of books, dvds and computer games; the time spent collecting stuff that you no longer use, the old cameras and other tech and what the hell you’re supposed to do with it all. Better charter another slow boat to China.

So, now he has the pleasure of either selling or recycling what he knows he no longer needs or leaving it there to gather dust, too exhausted from his working week to deal with it this weekend. Maybe next time, just not today. Time will tell. Of course, if he wants to shift the focus of his life to that which he truly loves and away from what he endures, he’ll no doubt have to make some compromises. The thing is, with the passage of time, those things that felt like a compromise at the time, be it money, status or what have you, feel less like a compromise when you realise you can live quite happily without them. It’s a slippery slope to discover how little you care about certain things so you have to be careful that, as they say, you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I waffled on, as I’m prone to do, about the discrepancy between what we are technologically capable of doing and our failure to deal with some fundamental flaws in the structure of our society, expressing my own fears that I am slowly losing my mind at the sheer nonsense of it all. He hmmm’d sympathetically (at least I hope that’s what it was) and we changed the subject. Best not go there just now.

I forgot to tell him of the scary timing of a lone piper playing in the cemetery next door, right before the tv news showed Norway’s minute of silence. We didn’t get into the phone hacking scandal, the downgrading of debt or the general collapse of monetary value. There’s plenty of time for all that I’m sure. For now, these next few months are going to be about how he deals with what he’s seen having opened that bloody box. You don’t know him, but he’s a good man so if you’re feeling charitable, take thirty seconds to wish him luck through the ether.

To my oldest friend in the world, the future’s not here…..yet.