The GREATEST novel of all time.

Kim Stanley Robinson has composed a true epic here, first published in 1993.
“Red Mars” in particular and the remainder of the trilogy (“Green Mars”, “Blue Mars”) as a whole are quite simply the best novels I have ever read. I recommend this to everybody, whether they like science-fiction or not. While set in the future, the books are ultimately about the characters and how they cope with adversity in many forms, and the trials of moving hundreds of thousands of miles to live on an uninhabited planet. Not entirely unlike one might imagine the old American western frontier, only more multicultural and with primitive space travel.

The first chapter covers the unexplained murder of one of the main characters, and a dispute concerning the building of mosques by Muslim colonists – foreshadowing many of the issues which become prominent later in the story – before jumping back to the very beginning of what initially seems an epic soap-opera for want of a better description about a group of 100 carefully chosen scientists, sent on their way to establish the first permanent colony on another planet, and all their curious personal interactions.

Halfway there, after sheltering in the depths of their spacecraft from an unusually powerful solar flare they consider – as one might expect to happen – if they are to start a completely new civilisation, why should they be controlled from another planet, and do everything in accordance with NASA protocol? There begins the rebellion, which – a couple of tens of thousands of new colonists later – develops into a guerrilla war for the control and sovereignty of our second home, after Earth finds itself largely under the control of a small handful of trans-national corporations which are now powerful enough to buy small countries.

Subtle changes in living arrangements, both social and architectural among the First Hundred culminate with the discovery of a stowaway on board, and the sudden theft of half the horticultural equipment by a young Japanese lady and the farm crew who eventually re-materialise at the beginning of the second book having established a broadly neo-pagan hippie commune in a network of ice caves, complete with a new religion and a classful of artificially-inseminated children.

It is easy to forget while reading the book, that the author has not actually been to the planet, such is the immense detail, especially in the geography, and the first book also contains what is, in my opinion, the best most vivid literary description I have read to date: the fall of the first space elevator. Having built a huge carbon-fibre tower from the planet’s surface into geo-stationary orbit (a sound concept, but beyond the scope of current real-world engineering), rebels seeking freedom from Earth rule sneak a bomb on board the asteroid which anchors the elevator in place, thereby physically separating the cable, and leaving it to gradually collapse and fold around the planet. Since it is one and half times the planet’s circumference in length, it eventually speeds up and catches fire, flattening anything in its path.

As in his “The Years of Rice & Salt”, a collection of linked short stories which cover 700 years of “alternative history” in which Europe was hypothetically wiped out in the 14th century, Kim Stanley Robinson likes to set up interesting little philosophical arguments between the main characters, and thus we see the continual disagreement between those who believe we have a duty as intelligent space-faring beings to spread life wherever there is none, and those who believe there is intrinsic value in a barren but untouched landscape, and that it should be left well alone. Extremists amongst both the Greens and the Reds are occasionally motivated to express their beliefs through violence, at various points.

All the characters are very well thought-out and developed (Sax being my favourite), and with a few notable exceptions, all of the technology the author proposes is very “near-future”. In an interesting sub-plot in the second book, the aforementioned Sax, the archetypal “eccentric scientist” – believed by his friends to be some kind of bizarre human/lab-rat hybrid – has radical plastic surgery on his face and vocal chords, in order to attempt to pass himself off as a Swiss biochemist and avoid the Earth security forces, and in doing so suddenly finds himself attractive to women (in his mid-60s), and manages to conduct a brief affair with one of his former colleagues who does not recognise him.

Some day, we will attempt to do this for real, assuming we haven’t already killed ourselves off – which is a distinct possibility. The author seems to have covered everything imaginable which might concern the inhabitants of a new planet, including inventing a new system of economics.

Read it, and take it for what it is: an incredibly well-constructed epic story about the human condition, transplanted to another planet. I find this book truly inspiring, and it is one of the only few I re-read at least once every two years.

The second book is about 85% as good as the first one, and strongly recommended also. The third one mainly really ties up loose ends, and is definitely worth a read if you liked the other two, but is certainly nowhere near as groundbreaking.

READ IT. READ IT. READ IT. (Then read the other two).

Jungle WAS massive.

Over the years, I have heard its detractors variously speak of “a can of biscuits falling downstairs” or “the mechanism by which young men propel their cars forward through noise alone”. Yet on at least two occasions, somebody has described it to me as “quite literally the meaning of life”; usually a sweaty teenager with dilated pupils in a dark room, interspersed with an array of flashing lights. Like a certain well-known yeast product, it tends to inspire extreme emotions in people, either quasi-religious devotion or malicious hatred towards its fans, with very little middle-ground. So, what is somebody supposed to do if they suddenly wake up one morning and find a music scene they have been intimately involved in for years has suddenly become a bit shit?

Perhaps a few clarifications are in order. Argument continues to rage on internet forums and other such places over the exact definitions of “jungle” and “drum & bass”, but to the untrained ear at least, the difference is minimal if existent at all, and largely a technicality. A dictionary would probably describe it as a style of electronic music between 160bpm and 180bpm in tempo, characterised by elaborate sampled drums and a half-speed bassline; borrowing elements from reggae, techno and hip-hop. Reggae vocals are significantly less prominent these days than they were in the early 90s, and innumerable influences continue to filter into the genre from every conceivable corner of the musical spectrum.

Legend has it, that at some point around 1993, DJs accidentally played a handful of records at 45rpm instead of 33rpm and decided it sounded quite good. A significant proportion of the early tunes from this era are based around a sample of an old gospel tune called “Amen Brother” by The Winstons – the humble origin of the quintessential jungle break. Beyond this, there is little in the way of concrete history, only myth, legend and rumour. Initially, this music was derided by the contemporary music press. Indeed the term “jungle” was believed to have vaguely racist overtones, and hideous mental pictures were drawn in some quarters of dancehalls filled with crack-smoking black men with their evil Jamaican-inspired music. Despite the initial negative press however, this brand new music gathered motion and became something of a movement in its own right.

Largely due to its extreme tempo and thus the fact that it is very difficult to mix with any other genre, jungle has forged something of a separate path in the world of electronic dance music. Notwithstanding bored music journalists, whose job it is to invent such things, there have always seemed to be a few genuine parallel sub-movements (at least since 1996) – when some people became a little pissed off with the oppressive “darkness” within the music – and a character who goes by the name of LTJ Bukem single-handedly attempted to bring jazz, funk and more “musical” influences into the fray. To this day he and his pals enjoy a small but significant minority following within the scene, though they have also tended to suffer from the general decline and atrophy which I will complain about later.

My journey into this music began around the age of 16. I was trying to find my musical “place” in this world as a teenager, and temporarily settled around the rock/metal scene largely because that was where my friends ended up, and also borrowing a fair amount of influence from my guitar teacher at the time, who was very much an old school bluesman. It was only when somebody in my computing class suggested to me that I listen to a new tune entitled “Satan” by Orbital – best described as an aggressive, bleepy sort of techno track – that I realised what I had been missing. Previously, I had frivolously and ignorantly dismissed all electronic music as “silly”; a blanket generalisation if ever I saw one. Upon listening to this tune, I had what I can only describe as a conversion experience, and I realised that my mission in life (or at least part of it) was to learn how to create music like this, and then to play it to people very loud, preferably in fields.

Sometime around two years later, I heard my first snippet of jungle, on a battered tape in my friend’s car. I remember repeatedly calling for a rewind. I am very much a rhythm-oriented person, and this incredibly complex yet funky drum-loop merely served to cement what I had already come to believe by this point – that the secrets of the Universe could be found in elaborate rhythms and wall-destroying basslines. If Jesus was anywhere near this much fun, then I could almost begin to understand how some people feel compelled to shout about him in town centres on Saturday evenings.

So what went wrong? What became of God’s beautiful madmen; the pioneers who proved conclusively that funk and mechanical precision can peacefully co-exist within the same composition?

There are a few things I could put my finger on, but overall I think it’s safe to say that jungle has been systematically destroyed from within, by the forces of mediocrity and the apparent desire of many of its modern protagonists to pander to the lowest-common denominator, at the expense of musicality. A harsh criticism, you might think, and you would be right. But this is something I feel very strongly about. I have spent a considerable amount of time listening to, playing at people, and writing this music though not for a couple of years.

I am not normally somebody who believes in national boundaries of any kind, but music is the only subject which ever inspires patriotism in me – we invented drum&bass, and our hip-hop is infinitely better than anything which has come out of the US in the past decade. Whereas before, this music was widely recognised as the pinnacle of sonic technical achievement and amongst the first to properly harness the emerging technology of the sampler, it now seems to have disappeared up its own arse and reemerged as a self-parodying emetic dirge, hiding behind a smokescreen of incoherent and generally not-particularly-interesting noise. Producers used to (slightly arrogantly, but accurately in my opinion) call themselves “scientists”. There was always strong element of pushing the technology to the limit, especially during the “techy” clinical precision era in the late 90s. To see what new sounds you could create, using the available equipment.

The new cult of the MC (sometimes transliterated as “emcee”) deserves a few comments, also. The purpose of the MC in a D&B context is supposedly to “hype the crowd”, but what actually happens in practice is you get a man with a vastly inflated ego exhibiting behaviour which developmental psychologists refer to as “reduplicated babbling”. In other words, rather like a child who has not yet learnt to speak properly (only with a microphone and an unfeasibly large soundsystem) they step up and emit a succession of meaningless syllables which usually sounds like “Bidibidibidibidibidibidibidibidibidibidibidi”. The other popular variation is “munamunamunamunamunamunamuna”, repeated ad infinitum or until out of breath, occasionally punctuated by, “Hold yer corner, the DJ Hype is now in session, watch the ride!” or something else along those lines. In my ideal world, these people would be publicly executed alongside Timmy Mallett for crimes against humanity.

I completely fail to understand why they are there in the first place, or how they are supposed to add anything to the music. If I wanted to listen to nursery rhymes, I would volunteer to help out at a local kindergarten. The music should stand on its own, without this inane augmentation. Even more puzzling are the legions of fans they attract, more often than not the archetypal coked-up 14 year old teenage boy in a hoodie, who having somehow slipped past security will accost you in a club toilet and attempt to beat you to death with his invisible microphone. A significant proportion of the community, including myself, are deeply embarrassed by these people and the fact that they are popularly associated with our music.

“Can I emcee (spit) at you?” is the rhetorical request. You politely tell him to bugger off, but he does it anyway. “Bidibidbidibidibidibidibidibidibidibidi.” His idols would be proud.
My personal prejudices aside, there does seem to have been a certain amount
of musical stagnation. I hypothesise that this is simply because we have run out of ideas. Although drum&bass has been extremely good at absorbing influences from around the world, on a very basic and technical level, there is a certain amount of limitation stylistically.

It is possible, I suppose that all the really good ideas have been used up, and the people who had most of them have moved on to greener pastures. Musical historians will note that there has been a pronounced reduction in complexity of tunes being written and released, most notably over the past 3-4 years. Quite why this is, we are unsure. It tends to change in waves and phases. We now seem to have reached a point where people seem content to write tunes which consist basically of a bassline which goes up the scale, then back down again, punctuated by a meaningless vocal, and backed up by very generic drums. This also seems to apply to some of the people who used to be considered pioneers in the scene (notably Roni Size et al). Newcomers to the scene tend to accept this as the benchmark and ignore the elegant history which is easily accessible if you know where to look. This is unfortunate. It’s common for a listener to remark, “it all sounds the same”, about pretty much any genre of music which he or she does not understand, but it genuinely seems to have happened here. Have all the good ideas been exhausted? 10 years is a long time to reign supreme over nearly everyone.

For my own part, I will move on… my horizons have broadened considerably since I was a teenager, and while I will always love jungle, I see no point in restricting myself stylistically, once I reacquire the resources and equipment to start writing music again. Is jungle still massive? It certainly was, once. Maybe it will be again, with a new influx of ideas and talents, but I am not holding my breath. Sorry.

The nocturnal narrative. aka dreams part 7002.45^3 etc

Ahhh, dreams. The constant nocturnal narrative.

Some of the more amusing ones which I can recall include :

• Pandas taking over China with the aid of shipbuilding company Vosper Thornycroft
• Rescuing a young girl from an evil religious cult run by Richard O’Brien on a small boat who was influencing peoples’ thoughts by means of a device he called the “mind control spider”
• Finding myself somehow trapped on the set of “Big Brother”, surrounded by druids, in particular a chap called Isaac Bonewits, leader of a group called Ár nDraíocht Féin. As you do.
• One night I dreamt of a giant LEGO man possessed by the spirit of Bruce Willis, rescuing ships which had run aground by lifting them out of the water. In the same dream, which was unusually celebrity-obsessed, Noel Fielding stole my wallet, and I had to rescue George Carlin from a giant washing machine in the middle of a street somewhere in Norfolk.
• In another, I found myself on the set of the Mighty Boosh Live theatre show (which I’m not an especially big fan of), but didn’t know any of the lines. I managed to blag it until they asked me to sing a song, at which point I fled, pursued by Noel Fielding again, who cornered me in a toilet, at which point I beat him to death with a chair.
• In one notable lucid dream, I found myself flying around the solar system on a big leather sofa, which I was fully in control of. Went to visit some of the moons of Jupiter, and ultimately swung by Neptune, which I personally believe is the prettiest planet.
• In another lucid dream, I found myself aboard my “university spaceship”, which was in combat with Cardiff University’s larger and better armed “university spaceship”, ala the Star Destroyer sequence at the beginning of StarWars. There was a small intelligent hedgehog creature who was my friend and companion, who assisted me in damage control.
• In another, I went skydiving, but “terrorists” had apparently sabotaged my parachute, which failed to open (ditto the reserve), at which point I was rescued by a large purple dragon, who flew me back down to the ground and safety. At some point after landing, I bumped into a drum circle who informed me that they had “seen I was in trouble, and so summoned the dragon”. Cheers.
• A worrying number of dreams concerning US breakbeat producer and DJ Elite Force; in one, we were rival DJs in small-town America and he hired a witchdoctor to put a curse on me. In another we were both working behind a bar, and had an argument over my insistence that he release “Mansion of the Snake” and give me a copy on vinyl.
• Went joyriding in a stolen Apache Longbow, picked up a few friends and somehow made it to Japan, before being forced to land by their air force. Oddly, stealing aircraft is a very common theme in my dreams, along with stairs, being chased, paranormal stuff in general, and strangely, being interrupted by external events during sex.
• One dream which consisted entirely of the letters “AZF” embossed into white noise and TV static. That was it. Constantly, for the whole dream. Bit peculiar, even by my standards.
• Having been chased through a maze by kids on rollerblades armed with crossbows, believe it or not, I somehow met (the Christian, presumably) God (who was incidentally, a young black woman) at a farmers’ market and had sex with her.
• Finally, one of my favourites concerns many years ago being late for work at Currys, and strangely boarding a moored submarine in Poole Harbour, which then drove out into the English Channel and promptly overturned, ala “The Poseidon Adventure”, requiring a full-on naval rescue effort involving DSRVs, after which I was put ashore at Southampton, strangely still with my pushbike and proceeded to cycle rapidly back to work. When I arrived 6 hours late, quite understandably, nobody believed my excuse that I had been trapped on an overturned submarine.

That should do for now. Plenty more where they came from.

Nike sponsorship for time machine request.

This was directly inspired by a dream the other night, in which George Carlin told me to write it. Actually woke up laughing and immediately transcribed this onto my laptop.

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to you with an unusual request; please hear me out.

I am a Chemistry student at Portsmouth University. Last night, I was visited by the spirit of the almighty George Carlin (peace be upon him) who informed me that unless I complete my final piece of coursework by the end of the week, a chain of events will be set in place which will have horrific geopolitical ramifications for the world’s energy supply.

Furthermore, I will never get to invent a reliable means of extracting an oil substitute from algal blooms en masse (suitable for use as aviation fuel), and my band will not unite the world, align the planets and facilitate communication with all species of animals. Some might say that funk has had its day, but we disagree. It is quite healthy and indeed undergoing something of a revival, as we speak.

Nevertheless, to facilitate this goal (completing my final piece of coursework), I have constructed a time machine which is cunningly disguised as a public phonebox. I don’t believe this has been done before. George said he would help me himself, but he can’t because he’s been dead since 2008.

My time machine, needless to say, makes the deuce of a racket upon arrival at its destination, and I thought with the addition of a few banners and a new paintjob, this would be the perfect way to advertise Nike footwear throughout history!

I will need to travel to a few places in order to complete my assignment. It may be necessary for instance to kidnap August Kekule from Germany, but I will return him unharmed at the end of my project and with appropriate renumeration for his troubles; in the event of this coming to the attention of the authorities, your firm will in no way be held responsible.

Please consider my plea carefully. Time is running out.

If you care as much about the future of our planet and our children as you do the manufacturing of quality footwear, you will please honour this request.

Yours with honour and respect for the space-time continuum,

Mikey X

Evacuate the planet?

This concentrated outburst of bile and negativity is brought to you by the common cold and premature awakening at 6am.

It’s nearing the end of 2009. Let’s examine the state of play for human civilization at the moment:

Despite China’s grand history of culture, innovation and novelty, 20% of the world’s population now live in a state which is only a step or two removed from a communist dictatorship, and which is fond of mass censorship and summary torture and execution of anybody who happens to disagree with the people in charge. Soon, this nation will overtake the previous hegemony. Could be interesting.

But it’s not just them. Great allies, Britain and America are also in direct competition to see who can come up with the most asinine and illiberal scheme to surveil their population and to further accelerate their spiral dive into an authoritarian cesspool of terminal eejitry. Our children are fingerprinted in schools and there are cameras on every street corner. To be watched is to be safe. Everybody must be numbered and catalogued. People happily submit to being x-rayed before boarding an aircraft on the remote off-chance that a scary brown man will get past with a menacing-looking tub of hair gel.

The Russians have been declawed, the French would surrender and we never had a border with dirty Mexico, so now we hate the Poles and the Arabs instead. You’re probably not from round ‘ere anyway. White supremacism has become a mainstream political option. Distrust anybody who doesn’t look like you. Nuke the lot of them. Stop thinking. Get paranoid. Obey your government. Etc.

Meanwhile, the rising forces of Organised Religion, in their eternal effort to impede rational thought processes, stunt the spiritual growth of humanity and subjugate women are locked in deadly psychic combat with the forces of Common Sense and Can’t We Just Be Nice To People? My favourite manifestation of this, the Abrahamic triumvirate are STILL fighting over ownership of Jerusalem and whose god has the bigger schlong.

Soon, Israel is likely to organise a pre-emptive strike against Iran, facilitated by their best imperialist buddy and Divinely Appointed Ruler of the Planet, the USA on a mission to fulfill Biblical prophecy, and actualise the events described in the Book of Revelation, under the pretext that only the “good guys” are allowed to have bad weapons or something.

(Fun facts: we invaded Iraq and decimated their infrastructure because the people were “oppressed”, yet 50% of the population of Saudi Arabia face summary beatings for leaving their home unescorted, and we happily trade with them. The reason? I’ll give you a clue… it’s black and comes from the ground. Zimbabwe doesn’t have any of it.).

(Bonus fact: Iran has not invaded anybody for centuries. Conversely, here is a list of the military interventions undertaken by the USA in the last 100 years, including deliberately destabilising or overthrowing a number of democratically elected governments [including that of Iran]. They are also still the only nation to have detonated a nuclear weapon in anger.)

In the comparatively Liberal West, “most people”, if you believe everything the media tell you, are stockpiling food and weapons as we speak, running scared of the temperature rising, apparently oblivious to such facts as a] the temperature has been stable for 11 years now, despite continuing rise in CO2 output, b] it has been much hotter before and that had nothing to do with us, and c] this is actually the 4th climate scare in the past 100 years. Warming, cooling, warming, cooling? Who knows… let’s call it “climate change” as a catch all. Clever one, that.

Atmospheric pollution isn’t cool, kids, but neither is telling everybody YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DROWN MOTHERFUCKERS (p.s. won’t somebody think of the baby polar bears). I for one will be cheering as soon as we figure out how to replace the wholesale abuse of cheap (and finite) fossil fuels which our society has been based on for the last two centuries, with something more sustainable. It’s not necessary to go back to pre-industrial standards. It’s possible to innovate our way out of most things, I reckon, as long as we stop fighting over our gods’ penis-size and the like. (Also, see above about Saudi Arabia. Perhaps when they run out of oil, somebody will say something?) Hysteria about anthropogenic global warming has done a great disservice to the environmentalism movement and is diverting attention from more pressing and real issues.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, in what is possibly the most cynical exploitation of death yet devised (“Jade Goody, the Musical” notwithstanding), Sky One are very soon to televise a live seance, in an attempt to contact Michael Jackson from beyond the grave. Featuring Derek “I’m a most haunted twatface” Acorah. If there’s a spirit present, someone say HEEHEE SHAMONE.

I therefore conclude that it is time to evacuate the planet and to let the sponges have their turn at being dominant species for a while. Any questions?

www.climatedepot.com/ – useful climate information
Michael Jackson seance

Earthlights (?)

Something strange happened to my friends and I, on a number of occasions between 1997-1999. As we would be walking down a very specific street in Dorset, a small glowing object, approximately the size of a football, I would guess, would float out across the rooftops quite happily, and drift slowly, until it eventually left our line of sight.

The first thing I immediately thought of was some kind of paper balloon contraption like that which we made in a science lesson when I was a kid. Essentially, you can construct an ultra-lightweight balloon from paper, which is heated by a candle, held in place by a balsa wood frame. It couldn’t have been that, though. This was right in front of us; close enough to throw stones at. Often less than 10m above the ground, almost literally grazing the chimneys. It looked precisely how I would imagine a glowing ball of hot gas or plasma to look. There was definitely no manufactured structure there.

I will show you precisely where the location is :

View Larger Map

They always seemed to appear from a park towards the bottom of Lower Blandford Road, in Broadstone, Dorset, and float across the road into the housing estate on the other side. Always that direction. On only one occasion did we see one anywhere, and that was still within a quarter-mile of this location.

On a windless day, they would still sometimes drift as with the wind (note well that wind strength and direction often changes dramatically with even small altitude changes), but they were always close, always glowing a bright orange.

Usually they were met with, “look, it’s that weird glowing thing again”, and we would watch it until it either rose high enough to be no longer visible, or it would drift horizontally so that we couldn’t follow it, and it was lost above the rooves of the housing estate. On at least one occasion, I attempted to give chase and find out where it went, just out of pure curiosity, but even if it was only floating at a modest walking pace, its ability to float above the rooftops while I was stuck with roads and paths meant I would eventually lose it again.

This happened quite frequently, maybe at least once every few weeks, for two years. We discussed it very little, since it was usually forgotten. Even now, I usually only think about it when something else triggers the memory. A few years after all this took place, I happened to mention it to an old Canadian lady named Heather, in a shop where I worked, who said that sounded precisely like “earthlights”.

A brief investigation on the internet suggests there is indeed an unexplained phenomenon which goes by this name. The most common theory suggests that these are caused by some kind of emission of gas, likely to do with faultlines, but there is no tectonic activity that I’m aware of in the south of England.

The International Earthlights Alliance are an organisation who research this phenomenon, which has apparently been noted throughout history. I haven’t a clue whether what I saw is anything to do with what they report, and indeed if they are the same, then my sightings seem to be some of the closest ever…

All ideas welcome. I would be particularly interested to know if anybody who lived in that area ever saw anything similar.

Here is Project Hessdalen, where they have been observing a similar phenomenon for some time.

Dreams and creativity.

Strange things, they are. Whoever says “I don’t remember my dreams” is unfortunate. I’d like to think I may be able to help you with that. I’ve made it one of my life-goals to master the art of lucid dreaming, and I’m getting better at it, though still nowhere near being able to induce them at will.

Nevertheless, the other night I had another one which had a very clear plot which I remembered completely coherently upon awaking, and importantly for me – since I’ve wanted for years to try to fictionalise some of them and somehow turn them into short films – this one would work on an absolute minimal budget with zero special effects (except for a little blood from a stab wound) and only four actors. No supernatural entities, helicopter thefts, giant lego men possessed by the spirit of Bruce Willis, or borderline incomprehensible metaphysical threats to the gravitational constant involving a small black hole and a Citroen 2CV. None of that usual shit. Merely a simple stabbing in a supermarket car-park. Well, okay, and a small soft toy mouse which also happens to play techno when you squeeze it, and somehow facilitate time-travel – integral to the plot, and my preventing the aforementioned violent assault on a stranger.

I wouldn’t be who I was today, without this constant bizarre narrative in my head when I sleep. To me, that’s perfectly normal. The original reason I became fascinated by lucid dreams, and indeed the whole greater concept of being conscious during sleep, was due to a dream many years back, in which I composed a complete ambient drum&bass tune (think Bukem et al, but with lots of water samples and a jazzy piano riff) in my sleep, which I was able to recall well enough to be able to notate when I woke. I never wrote it, but that’s not the point.

I routinely compose music in my sleep, but I almost never remember it coherently afterwards. It made me realise that there is far greater creative potential in our sleeping lives, than most of us realise, and I’d love to be able to help others unlock that. But in order to be able to teach other people how to do it, I’d need to understand it completely, myself.

The chap who invented the sewing machine claimed the entire idea came to him in his sleep, and he spent some years trying to perfect the device, based on this original blueprint. Ditto Kekule, the discoverer of the benzene ring (one of the foundations of organic chemistry), who dreamt of a snake eating its own tail, which in turn led to the realisation that he was looking for a hexagon shape of some sort.

Sleep well, and try to remember your dreams, all of you

(www.lucidity.com/)

More scientists inspired by dreams.

Stephen LaBerge – “Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming”

The “Triple Jump” is NOT a real jump.

There is a Facebook group dedicated to this crusade, for those who are interested.

Bear with me on this. I have limited real interest in the world of professional athletics, but there is one thing that has always irked me, since I was a youth and forced to take part in field events at school, and that’s been the Triple Jump. Not only is it not a real jump, but it is also a travesty against real vaulting skills.

The long jump and the high jump are perfectly legitimate vaults (I would also consider the pole vault, because it looks cool). Furthermore, their practice can be proven to have had evolutionary advantage to early (and indeed perhaps modern) humans. The triple jump though… you try crossing a river in that manner, and you will either fall in the river, or be mauled by an alligator, as appropriate.

My second complaint concerns the measurement of this “jump”. All the triple jump really is, is an overblown long jump with a gay little skip added towards the end. It infuriates me when the commentator says, “Hooray, he’s just jumped 18m.” NO HE HASN’T, HE PUT HIS FEET DOWN, TWICE. In any other event, that would be considered a foul, so we can also say that the triple jump encourages bad form. It does NOT make you “jump further”.

All the energy and concentration which is required to perform the gay little skip which is integral to the “triple jump”, could be expended on a proper long-jump. Utterly pointless and beyond my comprehension.

Thousands of schoolchildren with little athletic aptitude are further humiliated across the country by attempting to perform this incredibly camp and wasteful action, when clearly their efforts could be directed elsewhere.

The triple jump is a travesty against real vaulting skills, and must be excised from modern athletics contest. Thankyouplease.

This, however, is a hardcore event :

Geert Wilders: An Unlikely Hero/Martyr?

Geert Wilders has this week put me in the unlikely position of apparently defending the “Far-Right”. Usually, as with for instance, our very own homegrown white supremacists, the British National Party, I hold to the belief that anybody who tells me that I need to be repatriated to “where I came from” deserves to be anally raped by a gorilla, whilst listening to the folk music indigenous to the country they most despise. (If I have incorrectly described his position, then I humbly apologise; Mr Wilders incidentally considers himself more as a right-wing libertarian, with strong views on Islam, but is frequently characterised as such in the press).

Nevertheless, regardless of Mr Wilders’ wider political views on immigrants to the Netherlands and other such things, the fact remains that he is a democratically elected member of the Dutch parliament, who has been banned from entry to the UK (despite having actually been invited here by the House of Lords) for the crime of having composed a 15 minute film entitled Fitna, which basically states that Islam is sometimes used to justify murder. This particular criticism of the religion of peace, I had always thought was pretty obvious.

As is often the case with these things, I expect most of the people who are “offended” by the video haven’t actually seen it, but have just heard that it says some really bad things and choose to accord the deference usually accorded to anybody who professes faith (in pretty much anything).

In the same way that most Christians don’t bomb abortion clinics, and most Muslims don’t set fire to embassies everytime they see a cartoon which they disapprove of, (I would say something about Jews and the bombing of Palestine and Lebanon, but I would come dangerously close to violating my own rule on conflating religion and race), the fact remains that nobody has the right not to be offended because of their belief system, and there are a lot of people out there who are badly in need of some valium and a meditation class.

The footage in the film is not imaginary. These things actually happened. The single point the creator is trying to make is that there are passages in this book which are routinely used to justify murder and various human rights abuses, that disturbingly large portions of the world take them literally, and that if this faith is to survive in the 21st century, it badly needs to undergo some kind of Reformation. The irony is that the film simply juxtaposed real events with passages which have been used to justify them. As suggested by another commentator, if this is “hate speech”, then how come the original passages were not “hate speech” in the first place.

Since we routinely conflate race with religion these days and go very far out of our way to avoid offending peoples’ superstitions, this somehow becomes the casting of aspersions on all brown people, or those who look different from us.

Mr Wilders may be an eejit, but abstracted out from his wider anti-immigrant posturing, I believe he has a perfectly valid point on this one, and should have been able to defend his position in open court.

The fact remains that we are discussing a book which contains many violent passages, which are used to “justify” all kinds of bizarre abuses and crimes against common decency. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the communities that live by this to have a few words with themselves and examine exactly how relevant the writings of a largely illiterate 6th century desert community really are to modern living.

Arabs =/= Muslims. Race =/= Religion. CRITICISING RELIGION =/= RACISM. GET THAT STRAIGHT.

I will support anybody’s right to believe whatever they like, no matter how retarded it sounds, as long as they keep it to themselves, and don’t try to inflict it on other people. Unfortunately though, many people, and I specifically mean the Abrahamic faiths here, don’t do that and there is a lot of severely backward stuff going on in this world right now, justified in the name of peoples’ “Holy Books”, and that needs to be called out for what it is.

Having an imaginary friend does not excuse you from obeying basic standards of common decency to your fellow human. We’re all the same species, on the same planet. Please, for our own survival, sort it out and stop arguing over whose god has the biggest wang. Can’t we all just get along?

“Mohammed Cartoons” controversy and riots
“Mohammed teddy bear” controversy

Please see my previous notes on the Middle East and conflation of religion with race.

I leave you with the words of Marcus Brigstocke, who puts it far more comically than myself.

Directed energy weapons (revisited)

Dear reader, please for the purposes of this article, allow me a little laser fetishism. This is related to but also entirely separate from my commentary on both the Middle East, and the militarization of space, both of which I have plenty to say about, and which will crop up in future posts.

Okay… regardless of your opinion on warfare and so forth in general, I’ve just enjoyed a lengthy conversation with an ex-forces friend of mine about this sort of thing and I have, for a number of reasons always held a morbid fascination with military technology, and especially the development of directed energy weapons, which has been something I have been keeping an eye on since I was a kid.

I have written in other places about some of the test videos for this, but suffice it to say, that the US-Israeli ANTI-MISSILE LASER SYSTEM, formerly known as M-THEL (Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser) has progressed to the point where they have started making adverts to publicise it. For those who can’t be bothered to watch the clip, this is a fully-functional laser system which fits on the back of a truck, and will interdict incoming artillery shells, rockets or mortar rounds within seconds and destroy them with a beam of light.

We will step aside such prickly questions as why if this technology exists, it’s necessary to bomb the shit out of Gaza, in order to stop a handful of ancient rockets which rarely hit anything in the first place.

This is something that I consider simultaneously very very impressive and fascinating and also deeply disturbing.

While we’re on the subject, I would like to share with you a related railgun test vid. Again, for the uninitiated, very long story short, this is a gun which uses electromagnets, rather than explosives, to propel a projectile at absurdly high speeds towards the target, theoretically approaching escape velocity and thus negating any armour. This has (in my opinion) some civilian applications for launching spacecraft, so all is not lost, especially on other bodies with lower gravity and air density, for instance the Moon or Mars.

In this vein, I thought this was also quite a “cool” demonstration.

It should be noted that “effective” insofar as being able to destroy a target through light/heat alone energy weapons (MIRACL) have been around since the 1970s. The twin problems were usually based around both powering them and aiming them. (ie. massive power supply, and some sort of perfect mirror which can actually keep the beam focussed on target for the entire period necessary).

Similarly, with railguns, there have been problems until recently with the rails melting, resulting in an incredibly low rate of fire .

If you fancy, as a hobbyist, attempting to make an electromagnetic accelerator of this sort, try here: Build your own railgun

I will comment further on these technologies at a later date, with reference to the US government’s continual insistence on developing what it refers to as “full-spectrum dominance”, including the ability to place weapons in orbit. This will serve to do little more than annoy people, and to instigate yet another and potentially deadly arms race, forever inhibiting our hopes of peaceful exploration of space.

That however, is a story for another day…