informage

This is deeply disturbing. Two guys get detained and threatened for several hours by police in New York for being in the wrong Indian restaurant at the wrong time. Yikes, and I'm gonna be visiting this country soon?

I had a dream a week or so ago that I was cycling around London, and awoke disappointed that I don't even have a bike here. Independently, Shannon decided to find a cheap bike in Cash Converters round the corner last week, so I went down to check it out and serendipitously they had a matching pair of Peugots. Neither is in great condition, but they were cheap and are rideable. Today I had to drop off a car I've been borrowing - I get my new styling(ish) Honda tomorrow - and so I decided to take the bike and ride home. From Obz to Sea Point is probably about five or six kilometres, so not that far but an evil hill to finish. I made it in about 40 minutes, which given how out of shape I am was pretty pleasing. So there's all sorts of tweaks to be made to my bike, but I'm happy to be riding again.

The front page of the Cape Argus is usually blazoned with either a local or an international tale of woe. Murders, robberies, rape - and then there's all the crime in Cape Town too. Yesterday, however, was an exception. The banner headline was My Gugs liberation move, and this was an upbeat story about a succesful music producer who's moved out of a luxury mansion in the foothills of Table Mountain to a two-bedroom house in Gugulethu, one of the local townships. Gugulethu is the township I know best, Hilda and her family live out there, and through them I've met several other friends like Mphumzi and Msekeli. According to the article his move was inspired by the Landmark Forum.

So this seems an appropriate introduction to a couple of longer pieces, assuming I find the time to sit down and write them. Firstly I plan write about my experiences of integration and non-integration in Cape Town - as an outsider who's tried hard to meet a fair cross-section of Capetonians. I also mean to write something about the Landmark Forum, particularly because Zaid - a fellow Pioneer - has just written an exceptionally sharp critique of Landmark and their technology, to which I've promised that I will respond.

So watch this space...

In perhaps one of the sexiest applications of all this blog technology - RSS feeds and the like - Mikel Maron has created geoblog.

This has been getting plenty of blog exposure so I'll admit I just like the fact that when I post this entry I'll see it pop up on the map over the southwestern tip of Africa just where I'm sitting.

Too darn cool!

In today's Observer, Terry Jones once again writes a pithy, almost funny, yet deeply dark account of the state of the nation's leadership.

Continuing with the absurd, Wil Wheaton's outrage at Bush's description over the weekend of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf - the notorious Iraqi information minister - as "my man" is well-justified. This beggars belief, Bush is a drooling marionette puppeteered by some of the most violently right-wing men in the western world. If you doubt the latter, please follow Terry's advice and read www.newamericancentury.org.

It's really not funny how many works of "fiction" I've encountered lately which ring truer and truer. Neal Stephenson's "Interface" where a stroke victim is manipulated by sinister forces into becoming the perfect populist American president, or "Starship Troopers", Paul Verhoeven's parody space opera depicted a semi-fascist state encouraging genocide against an alien race, or the novel I'm reading right now "Gibbon's Decline and Fall" by Sheri S Tepper - one of my favourite SF writers.

Speaking of Monty Python: I am growing rapidly enchanted with the joys of the Python programming language, named after Terry et al's not unsuccessful comedy troupe. I recommend it to anyone wanted to learn programming, it is straight-forward yet powerful, qualities that few other programming languages bring together.

It transpires that the US military are offering two hundred thousand buckeroonies in prize money to any kind soul who will provide them with the merest morsel of evidence that Saddam really did have nasty weapons, in a desperate attempt to prevent the drooping meringue of their pre-war justifications from collapsing altogether into an inspid blancmange of waffle.

So the real two hundred thousand dollar question is: why no plant? The CIA, given its years of "covert" drug operations, must by now have mastered the technique, and it seems likely that this nugget has managed to float over to their five-faced friends in the military. Even Ron Reagan Junior thinks so.

Seriously, if the Iraqi elite didn't even have time to stash their personal wealth before they fled the country, why would we think they had time to hide the weapons?

And in other news Ali Abid Minqash, the Iraqi farmer who allegedly single-handedly shot down a US helicopter is now denying it. I can't imagine why he'd do that.

(it behoves me to point out that my use of words from the langue francaise in the first paragraph has ruled me out of US electoral contention for eternity. And I don't even look that French).

(I know, I know, I was going to stop this yankbashing - fortunately being cigarette-free is going substantially better)

I've been suffering from a particular phenonemon recently, whereby just as I'm drifting off to sleep I'll come up with a spectacularly interesting subject to blog about. When I awaken, it has gone, although I still remember the glowing sense of accomplishment that was about to be mine if I'd merely put finger to plastic.

So here are some of the lesser entrants that insist upon keeping hold of my vapid memory:

English is the new French. Spirals are the new triangles. The Streets are wicked. Global phenonemon that Mike Skinner may have become, I feel a special empathy as I grew up nearby (Coventry rather than Birmingham) and also spent my London days in Brixton and environs. Please feel free to request a translation of any particular lyric.

I promised myself I'd wean myself off my obsession with the irrationality of all things americano, but this has to be read to be believed. There is much to love about the us of a, and yet when a nation appears to dispense with rationality altogether... Anyway like most of the world my relationship is love/hate with a lot of both.

This visual breakdown of the process by which a historical moment was created is fascinating. Found via Tom Tomorrow

My blog entry below brought criticism upon me from certain quarters. I announced that I smoke marijuana without offering any kind of justification, just throwing it out into the pot (so to speak). Well, within the cultural norms I am most familiar with it almost goes without saying that dagga smoking is wholly acceptable, and its illegality is an anachronism only relevant because of the difficulties involved in obtaining the stuff. I actually resent the idea that I should justify myself every time I mention it. Drawing upon an overused analogy: imagine having to justify not being an alcoholic every time one referred to a nice wine or cocktail.

Coincidentally one of my favourite bloggers, Tim Bray, just posted a thoughtful entry about drugs in Vancouver. Whilst his piece has a wider scope than marijuana issues, along the way he throws out a pleasantly succinct and matter-of-fact pro-legalisation stance:

As for cannabis, just give up. It's just not that damaging (particularly with the modern varieties that reduce the quantity of highly-carcinogenic smoke to nearly nothing), and the notion of a "gateway drug" is just silly, and it's allowing a lot of very evil people to get very rich.

Legalize it, regulate it, collect the tax dollars, and free up the cops to go after the real problem drugs.