31.1.07

Proper Education!

Deanne Berry in Call On Me VideoAfter years of impotent, government-backed energy efficiency campaigns; a new charity: Global Cool has finally found a credible way to get the message across to the 'yooff' of today... via MTV.

Eric Prydz made a name for himself by re-working a classic eighties track and crucially making a steamy video full of G-string leotards (directed by Huse Monfaradi) which became the highest-downloaded music video of all time in Australia. It was filmed at Deptford's funky Laban Centre.
Eric Prydz: Proper Education video
Now that he'd got everyone's attention, Eric decided to remix Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall. Staying true to Floyd's tradition of adding a message to their medium, Prydz enlisted the help of Global Cool to subvert the meaning of the song, i.e. we can all put a brick in the wall to stop global warming.

I like the fact that Eric casts himself as one of the people wasting energy... cleverly avoiding looking preachy.

Watch the videos and read what Ministry Of Sound fans think... some more education is obviously needed.

19.1.07

Hate Long-Haul Flights? Dig this!

dog digging
If, unlike me, you weren't lucky enough to get a globe for Xmas... but would still like to know where you'd end up if you dug far enough, Luis Felipe can provide the answer.

Read Google Maps Blog Post

my back garden

17.1.07

Oh Brother!

anti-circus poster featuring Shilpa Shetty

Celebrity Big Brother::It was bound to end in tears, but I still think there's a silver lining in all this smoke.
A-list Eastern celebrity meets Z-list Western celebrities... among them the kind of super-chavs that are celebrated for being ignorant enough to say things that most people wouldn't dare.

I have long wondered about the Jade Goody phenomenon. She's made so much money from exploiting herself and her family that I've come to accept that there must be something virtuous about all this exposure. She is a role model in a way, because she has never sought to hide her ignorance and is always prepared to ask stupid questions. The kind of questions that everyone else in the room would be too embarrassed to seek answers for. There should always be people like her, people who are willing to subject themselves to laughter or derision ... because every now and then, they act as martyrs for the rest of us. Stimulating debate or getting answers to questions we need, but are too proud (or scared) to ask.

Jade and her kin have quite obviously been victims of abuse in the past and so perhaps they enjoy being on the other side. There are blatant defense mechanisms in play when they ridicule Shilpa's name. The question is, how many people watching the (possibly) racist debacle play out on BB are secretly thinking: "I wish I was ignorant enough to say that", "honest enough to call her that". The beauty of Celebrity BB is that - isolated from society, tabloids and PR machines - celebrities are forced to speak for themselves and then deal with the consequences.

Channel 4 have stated that despite the concern of UK & Indian Government officials and over-excited media reports, what's happening inside the BB house is not racist, it's a class and culture clash. This begs the question: Is it okay to take the piss out of someone because you don't understand their culture? I see it in England all the time, and it is easily justified. Ironically, people are terrified of pronouncing unfamiliar names in case they offend. Instead, they just change people's names to suit their 'lazy' tongues. Most people with unconventional names give in and adopt at best an Anglicised version or some ridiculous nickname. When I chose an old-English name for my son (Lucian), my in-laws immediately poked fun and tried to pronounce it in a Inspector Clouseau-style French accent (a la Lucien). Some people ask what the name means and how they can shorten it, but as soon as I talk of Latin derivatives or suggest Italian nicknames, their eyes glaze over and they quickly become distracted. Accents too have to be changed, I arrived in the UK with a very mild southern African accent which I have since watered down... or should that be cleansed?

Is it okay to take the piss if someone is educationally or culturally poorer than you? I admit, I couldn't stop myself taking the piss out of Jade (queen of chavs) in the early days. Then I think the Heat mags of this world tried to do a Pygmalion thing but Jade still ain't come good! Frankie Boyle compared the attempt to make Jade a celebrity with trying to train a monkey to be a butler: "Oh no, I told my butler-monkey to iron my shirt, but instead he's throwing shit against the wall!"
I wonder how Jade will be treated once she's let out. Will all the crazed teenagers be booing her or cheering her on? What about the tabloids, will they decide to demonise and dump their pet-project? In her defence, I guess Jade has had to put up with massive public abuse and ridicule and came out of it a more succesful (I think) person with better hair. Alas, she obviously hasn't learnt to rise above it though, her continued fame (or infamy) may well rest on you and me folks, we decide. Personally, I think giving public exposure to the Jade Goodys of this world could do with a bit of a rest now.

I just feel sorry for all those people in India where celebrity is still a sacred thing who I'm guessing thought that they'd finally 'made it'... Bollywood was now on a par with the creme of the British superstar elite. Little did they realise that much has changed and warped and mutated and just what was Ms Shetty's agent thinking?

Tens of thousands of complaints.
"Could you imagine Kylie Minogue or Liz Hurley receiving the same treatment in the Indian version of Big Brother?"
-Lee Jasper, C4 news, 17/1/07

Interesting parallel, but not quite the same thing, is it Lee. India never lorded over the UK. Whites haven't been the on the wrong end of a stick for centuries. It's unlikely that we'd be burning effigies in the streets, but then again, I bet certain shorn-haired individuals would almost definitely be burning something!

Big Brother protesters burning effigiesWhat this exposes is how out of touch certain UK minorities are with mainstream British phenomena. On the one hand, there's the Goody Crew - blissfully unaware of how politically correct most of their countrymen must be in public. On the other hand are the close-knit ethnic communities, with their own culture fully imported, frozen in whatever year they left their own country behind. There have been at least 10 Big Brother programs (altogether) on Channel 4 before this one and countless other Big Brothers all over the world... incl Big Brother Africa! Certain minorities living in the UK are here in body alone, but are so isolated in their culture - tolerated to the point of being invisible to indigenous Brits - that they are completely oblivious to what goes on in such shows. More worrying is the realisation that many members of such communities are so ill-integrated that they think the kind of people who 'star' in Big Brother programs are representative of Britain. Sure, these kind of people exist, but wanna-be celebs are a mere sub-culture themselves, not the mainstream majority.

I haven't seen any of this series of BB. There's no need. I can imagine exactly what's going on, and I know that I am also unable to tolerate witnessing the behaviour of Jade Goody and her friends. It's too close to the bone as it reminds me of all those unashamed racists I grew up with in Rhodesia and the Old South Africa. I also can't bear to watch because I knew that this series would be watched by some very innocent Indian grannies and starry-eyed, born-again Westerners. Most of whom are, as we speak, manning call-centres in Delhi and trying to hold their smiles and not grit their teeth too much as they listen to Brits whinge about their phone bill or insurance policy or whatever.

I get fed up when phoning my local service provider and being re-routed to Delhi, but that's because of the lunacy of the situation. Some poor bloke who doesn't own a personal computer and for whom English is a (very different) second-language is in the awkward position whereby he must read out a checklist in order to troubleshoot my problem. If I have attempted point 1 through 35 prior to picking up the phone, I don't take kindly to the Indian technician's inability to just skip a few pages and meet me at point 36. In these kinds of situations, it's no surprise that normally polite Brits suddenly reveal their inner-racist.

Is what is happening in Big Brother holding up a mirror on our society?

"If this is a mirror, it is a cracked, warped fairgound mirror designed to make people behave as ugly as possible!" - Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty.

"It reflects a reality. In seeing it displayed it can be tackled."
- Jon Snow, C4 News, 17/1/07

When pushed, Mr Jasper seemed obliged to agree.

Big Brother has dumbed-down to the point that we are now scared of who is watching and have no faith in their ability to rationalise what is happening to normal people in an abnormal situation. Calling these people celebrities just adds to the confusion. I'm pretty convinced that in modern-day Britain/America, celebrity has come to mean: "person with issues that is seeking help publicly". The title of 'celebrity' comes with the baggage of having to represent something. Jade and her crew represent a lifestyle free of the constraints of politcal correctness. I guess Shilpa Shetty represents upper class Indians... and when it comes to class-discrimination, they too have a lot to answer for!
Danielle Lloyd, Miss England 2004

The parents of Miss Great Britain 2006 back-pedal for England...

More on the PETA poster...

More on the bullying...

8.1.07

Google oggling Wiki style

Today I stumbled across Google's Image Labeler, which helps to improve the quality of Google's image search results. I was randomly paired with an online 'partner'. Over a 90-second period, he/she and I were shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image in the set. Presumably, matching labels are added to Google's list for that image.

At the time of writing, it's still in BETA stage and is a little shaky. There's no financial reward but it's a very useful little procrastination device. If you've done as many image searches as I have, you may find this quite fascinating because you get a small insight into other people's instinctive perceptions of what they're looking at. The trick is not to get suckered into providing really obvious labels just to guarantee there'll be a match with the other player.

It struck me that - like many attempts at democratising web-services - it could just end up dumbing down (and slowing down) the search process. I then decided to do a bit of armchair eco-activism.... or reality-checking. For this image, my partner came up with: "blue", "sky", "flying", "plane".
I on the other hand, offered: "vapour trail", "pollution", "emissions" and "climate change".

If you and your partner don't get a match, you won't be able to see each other's suggestions at the end, so it's important to add in an obvious word before the 90 seconds is up. That way, even if you haven't succeeded at influencing Google's search results, you will be able to challenge the perceptions of the dude you've just partnered with (as long as they choose to view your suggestions at the end of the game).

Right, now that the future of the planet is safe again, I think I'll make a cup of tea.


P.S. If you're ever partnered with Katspike, you'll be playing me.

5.1.07

2007: The Hottest Year Ever!

www.lindabucklin.com/fractalsI have a twisted tendency to get excited about record-breaking events related to climate change. Tornados in Birmingham and London, Hurricane Katrina, the floods in Mozambique. There was even a slight twinge of vindication when I first heard the news that the World Trade Centre was a target for protest. A quick chain of assumptions was shackled together in my head: capitol of capitalism > consumption > oil > inequality > backlash > end of Bush > end of consciousless capitalism. I still think this tiny sliver of silvery lining in such a thick black cloud will result in a positive step forward in the great scheme of things... it's got to after such an historically painful chain of events.

Basically, if a disaster qualifies as a headline story... and the media alludes to a link with climate change - I take solace in the fact that the message is getting through... Trouble is, with every new disaster comes compassion fatigue and the assumption that it's inevitably going to get worse and worse and the only thing you can do to forget about it is to distract yourself.

Ironically, the most common distraction of 'choice' is retail therapy. Being an eco- designer doesn't stop me from partaking in this dirty litle habit. I try and consume my neighbours' waste (skip-dive) and then wrack my brain to find a way of re-incarnating their dead products and leftovers as useful or at least mildly attractive objects. It recently hit me, that for the most part, I make storage solutions ... in order to hide away my own stuff and pretend I live a minimalist life.

I am now baby-sitting half of my friend's stuff for a year while she flies off to 'live lightly' on the other side of the world for a year or two. I had to witness the painful take-it/store-it/chuck-it ritual and couldn't help being drawn into the debate about whether she'd be able to sell her Radio-Shack cassette tape player on Ebay or not.... or indeed, could an African child adopt it?

This said, my new year's resolution is to waste less time worrying about waste, waste less space storing stuff so as not to waste it and waste less time trying to find the stuff I've stored.

This said, I'm not going to completely give in to the temptations of disposable products. I'm not going to absolve my guilt by dumping cheap tack outside the nearest charity shop. I'm not just going to drive to the recycling centre to dump my guilt.


Mary Xmas RECYCLE, RE-USE, REDUCE, REJECT
My problem is not the junk that I buy... being a proper designer, I spend hours agonising over every purchase, whether for me or a gift for someone else. I always choose the best thing I can nearly afford and (usually) only what I really need. My problem is all those thought-that-counts gifts and the stuff I've saved simply because I coudn't face the fact that no-one else was using it.

Uncle SantaI need to implement my own environmental policy. "I don't want or need anything for Christmas" will never be an acceptable answer for some of my friends and relatives. I need to do what I expect from responsible multinationals at a personal level and put pressure on my 'suppliers' else I'll continue to end up with, or more importantly, my son will continue to receive all the tack in China. At least this year we kept our side of the 'one present each' bargain... which is a start!

2007 will be about getting rid of what we can't store and cleverly storing what we can. It will be about letting people - not stuff or TV shows - back into our home. I can amuse them with my almost fetishistic positive spin on all things disastrous (man-made or otherwise). For instance, in terms of what not to talk about at dinner parites, Iraq now encompasses every taboo (religion, politics and even sex) in one topic... but on the lighten up people: Saddam's dead, Rumsfeld's finally been thrown out and next year, Bush WILL be too (insha'Allah).

If the Met office is right - and as a long suffering, self-righteous eco-warrior, I hope they are - London's streets and Victorian buildings are not pleasant places to endure record-breaking temperatures. Come cool yourselves in our basement flat and shady garden. The green shoots are already peeping through the soil!