"When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now. "They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars."
For a different take on China it is worth reading Troy Parfitt’s book - Why China Will Never Rule The World: Travels in the Two Chinas . This is not a book about facts and figures and neither is it a hymn to Chinese economic success. As the blurb tells us, the book is mostly travelogue told from an outsider's perspective, albeit an outsider who lived in Taiwan for ten years and who speaks Mandarin.
Three quotes may give a flavour of the writer’s standpoint.
China is a nation of much fakery; there’s fake sushi, fake steak, fake gravy, fake music, fake goods, fake pharmaceuticals, fake news, fake weather reports, fake education, fake rights, fake laws, fake courts, fake judges, a fake congress, a fake constitution….
Unambiguous but not unconsidered. Parfitt thinks there are profound influences behind the fakery – a deep-rooted preference for appearances over reality. The second quote concerns a China Central Television (CCTV) show the writer watched from one of his hotel rooms.
That night on CCTV, a panel of Chinese scientists was explaining how the Americans had never landed on the moon. Not only were the lunar missions faked, they said, but the Apollo program itself was largely a matter of science fiction. The shadows were all wrong. Where were the craters? And just look at that ridiculous flag – not moving even with solar winds. Their tone was both mocking and disdainful, as if even having to explain why this was the biggest fraud of all time insulted their very intelligence.
CCTV is the main state broadcaster in China. The third quote is taken from a conversation with a taxi driver.
“Food in China is packed with shit – shit that will make you sick and kill you. I have a daughter, you know. I’m worried about what she eats. But what am I supposed to do? Complain? Yeah, right. The government would say, ‘Well, that’s very interesting, sir. Why don’t we take a walk and talk about it? Please, tell us whatever it is that’s on your mind.’ And then they’d shoot me in the back of the neck. Bang! And that would be the end of that.”
Obviously an entire country cannot be dismissed on the basis of a single taxi driver's complaints, however chilling they are. However there are many more examples highlighting what Parfitt sees as endemic weaknesses in Chinese culture. For example he sees Confucianism as a significant cultural problem with its emphasis on obedience and harmony.
The book is easy to read and although Parfitt can come across as someone who simply does not like China and the Chinese, he tells us quite clearly why that is. In so doing he provides an interesting and accessible cultural alternative to the usual facts, figures and technology.
It's Friday the thirteenth! Unlucky for some, as the saying goes but it is also the First Night of the Proms. Everyone knows the Last Night of the Proms and everyone likes to sing along with the usual favourite tunes. However, the First Night is always more interesting and tonight it is an all British programme of music by Holst, Vaughan Williams and Anna Meredith.
Herewith a selection from those composers, plus an inquisitive swan who is lulled to sleep by a harp (video courtesy of Mr Sackerson who found it and sent it to me) and the final piece here is not British but is by Prokofiev by way of a consolation for the England team who didn't quite win their own 'battle on the ice' (yes, I know it is summer but suspend disbelief for the duration and for artistic licence!)
Fascinating. Lord Walsingham (92 last year) is in his anecdotage - and none the worse for that, in his case - but some startling things jump out of the flow.
He worked for a time in 1950 in the German Department of the Foreign Office, and explains how the French and German governments were still secretly Nazi but were being used to hold back the threat of Communism (both within Western European nations and also of course from the Soviet Union, which had started the Berlin blockade in 1949.)
And he tells how MI6 discovered there were secret parts of the 1951 Coal and Steel agreement relating to mutual support by France and Germany of each other's industries, designed to weaken Britain's capacity for self-defence.
The UK Labour Government's Attlee and Bevin spotted the threat to Anglo-style democratic self-government and kept out of this "community".
I had one of those days when all seemed
quite normal. I had an appointment at the optician's for a hearing test - that is
not a mistake, as many do both now in this competitive world.
What was strange was the way the day panned
out: a simple visit to town for a bog-standard test and the appointment ended up
being a carbon copy of one of those dreams we have.
You know the ones, those where we can’t find
the car, the station, the way home, all ending up in blind panic, what started
out as a perfectly normal journey or day out ending in total chaos of the mind as
every effort to find the car, the station, the way home, becomes ever more barred
by having completely lost the plot.
Or the ones where you are trying to
communicate with someone who can’t hear you and you are being pulled ever
further away.
Many of these dreams are recurring in theme,
the desperately lost being the most common, well for me anyway. And then this
is usually compounded by finding that you have no money to pay for a train fare
and the car is totally lost to you. Sometimes you cannot even get to the right
area to find the car or station whatever as ever more obstructions are put in
your way. Of course you rarely ever have a final ending to these dreams as you
wake up before the finale, or that is how it seems.
One of those great changemaker films of
cinema was based on those sorts of dreams: Federico Fellinis8½. I include the great opening sequence and
other snippets, partly as an excuse to see the wonderful Sandra Milo - she is
briefly in the opening sequence; I lusted after her then and she always remains
a symbol of the unattainable.
As with the dreams everything started well, with plenty of time to take into account the extra traffic in town, and as I came off
the ring road I was grateful (though if I had known the future I would have
taken it as a portent of things to come), as there was a traffic incident on ring road ahead of the turnoff and the vehicles were at a standstill. Lucky me, I
thought.
On I went into the city center with no
further hint of problems and as I arrived near to my destination I made the
fatal mistake of changing my normal plan. The car park I use for the optician's is not
a big one. Being the nearest to the city centre it is the most expensive and at the back of my mind that may have had an influence on
what I did next.
As I approached the roundabout leading to
the road with the car park I noticed one of those signs that inform of the spaces
left. The number indicated for the one I wanted to use was very low so I
thought rather than enter, not be able to park and end up having to exit and
start again, with the chance I would be late for the appointment, I would
instead go to the other car park that is a similar distance from my
destination.
No problem getting in: a huge below-the-shopping-mall labyrinth of a place on several levels, all below ground. I parked
the car got out and looked for the exit.
It all started there at that moment. I
have never used this car park so had no idea about the exits. After walking
around a bit there appeared to be no direct way to the outside. In fact there wasn’t; the
only way out was up by the lift or escalator into the mall itself. I had asked a couple of people if there was
an alternative but needless to say they were new to the area and had no more
idea than I did.
Once in the mall, which is huge, there still didn’t seem to be
any signs for an exit, so I went to the inquiry desk, stated where I wanted to go
and asked which was the best exit. Having been given what seemed like simple
instructions I strode out in the direction given only to end up, well nowhere. Still no exits, and time was running against me as I had now lost all idea as to where I
was in relation to my destination. I asked another person who gave me a
similar simple route out, only to find myself then back where I started. So I nabbed a
passing security guard, gave him the story again and he did indeed direct me to
the exit, but it must have been getting to half a mile from that position.
At last the exit hove into view. By now time
was running out and I had left my phone in the car so I could not call the
opticians to let them know of my predicament. Once out of the exit I discovered I
was in the main shopping road and a mile from my destination; it transpired
later there are no exits at the other end, only the car park entrance - and that has
no pedestrian exit.
Nothing else for it but to right turn up to
the junction then right again back to the original roundabout, all this with
sciatica setting in on a stinking hot day. I followed the small parallel road
until I got to my starting point, the car park entrance, and then went on along a
wide grass verge by the old Roman wall. 8½ again: all was going well until the path ran out and I
had then to cross a dual carriageway. What next? I asked myself. Fortunately the
road has traffic lights and gaps there to cross in safety, which I did and
continued to the first roundabout, then on to my destination.
Arriving dripping with sweat and having
still no inkling as to the time I went in and presented myself. "Oh dear," said
the receptionist. "We had given up on you. I will go and see if they can fit you
in." Luckily they did and I sat under the air con the very nice lady put on for
me whilst she checked my ears. All done, I made to leave but asked the
receptionist having explained my dilemmaif there was an entrance nearer than the one I had left by at the mall. She said yes and came down the road with me to direct. "Follow that road and
take the next right and it will take you to the entrance." The road I was to
follow seemed endless and skirted a small park where a fun fair was being
erected for the week end; the music that was emanating from the fair reminded
me of the dream circus sequence from Fellini's 8½. On I pressed, on, tired,
sweating and with sore toes from the new shoes I had on and the sciatica (though
that had numbed to a background nuisance by now.)
The end of the road beckoned: still no
entrance but I recognised I was back at the car park entrance. No way in there, cars only, dark and too dangerous to try. There was eventually another entrance
but it was so near my original exit that I had almost retraced my steps. In I
went, found a way down to the car park and I had remembered the area number
where I had parked - but no car! Wrong floor. Down another one; and then I saw that the
area numbers are repeated on each floor; found the car, got in, started it and
put the air conon full blast and coldest
setting and went home.
The wife's first words were, “That didn’t
take long but what’s happened to you? You look knackered.”
"Well no the
examination was very quick but the rest….". and all I could hear was her
laughter, no bloody sympathy at all; so life can match dreams!
But there is more to Jack White than a fairly simple pop song. He is something of a musicologist with an interest in the roots and history of American music which is probably why he is a board member of the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Foundation. He also records a lot of that music as can be seen in some of the videos in this selection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_White
You might like this, you might not. Perhaps too 'far out' even for modern jazz, but there is something about Alice Coltrane's music which appeals to me. I don't know why but it does.
“…Sometimes people put themselves so deeply into sound - so deep into it that they give up everything. It’s like they renounce everything at that moment just to live those moments of music…” - Alice Coltrane (1937 - 2007) https://www.alicecoltrane.com/life
