Generated for Andy in Three Minutes from the Words “Gothic”, “Chains”, “Cup of Tea”, “Umbrella”, “Reason”, “Innocence”, “Library”, and “Synth”

The chains you place around my heart
are welcome ones
Just my cup of tea
For the reason that your innocence
first captivated me
in the library
my heart feeling like the
oontz
oontz
oontz
of my favorite synth song
Blood pounding through my veins
And darling, you
wear that eyeliner so well
I would hold an umbrella over you
in the rain
to keep it from running.
So please don’t go
My gothic sweet
return with me
to the library
As I’ve said,
you’re just
my cup of tea.

         Rachel Lynn Brody

RSA Student Exhibition 2008

Go check it out at the RSA on the Mound. (Some photos here.)

My favourite pieces (one day I hope to track down more by the artists and link to details…):

• Untitled (View from Tower of Babylon) by Hirofumi Suda. (Colours, warm, lovely.)
• Atopos by Ross Brown.
• Standing Still by Christine Wylie. (Nice handwriting.)
• Keep Out by Steven Smith. (Cool scaffolding painting thing.)
• Untitled by David Anderson
• Untitled by Anneli Holmström. (Umbrellas.)
• Thirty Seven Things I Encountered at Art School by Steven Harrison. (Including “Sex”, “Twats”, “Pretension”, and “Dust”.)
• Nine Reflections by Amelia Smith. (Mirror thing — gothic colours dark modern.)
• Morph by Helen Shaddock. (Nice action photo — top off.)
• The Air Moves at C# by Catriona Glover. (Bed sheet thing.)
• Soiled by Ruby Pester
• Wet Dream by Kadie Salmon. (Fetishfishdeath? Staged photography organisms.)
  
• St James Institute of Oncology, Connecting Corridor, by Victoria Baker. (Nice corridor.)

[Thanks Leuce for the tip-off!]

A step forward in NI politics

Ian Paisley Junior resigns.

“I think the public will be saying one Paisley has gone, when is the other going to go?” says SDLP assembly member Declan O’Loan.

Indeed.

CAPITAL

(Hat-tip: FFFOUND!)

Protection

I like this, but the analogy is a bit… crude.

“Zoos display an irresistible passion for the preservation of endangered species. A number of these are being protected, later to be released back into the wild. In the meantime, however, ‘the wild’ has disappeared! It is the same with human beings: ideally, they are recycled in human isolation cells (thalassotherapy, psychoanalysis, luxury health clubs, hospitals or asylums), and later released back into social life — in the meantime, however, the social environment has disappeared!”

—Jean Baudrillard, in Fragments

Autechre

Loving Autechre’s new album, Quaristice.  See if you can spot the Incunabula bass.

Knowledge. (La-la-la.)

From FFFFOUND!

The phrase “economic well-being”

Appears all over British government documents, e.g. the Intelligence Services Bill.

I found an interesting quote on a parliament web page:

“There is the provision for action—the tasking of our intelligence agencies—in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom. Those who have followed these matters know that that is a well-worn provision. It is in existing legislation, and is provided for in the European Convention on Human Rights. It sometimes causes puzzlement as to what it can mean.

“Examples of where it might be useful are where there is instability in a part of the world where substantial British economic interests were at stake, or where there was a crisis or a huge difficulty about the continued supply of a commodity on which our economy depended.

“The House will notice that the Bill restricts the activities of the SIS and GCHQ for safeguarding the economic well-being of the country to the acts or intentions of persons outside the United Kingdom. [...]

“The examples that Douglas Hurd gave are clear. One is coded speak for oil—

the continued supply of a commodity on which our economy depended.“

Pharmacutical industry’s relationship with the health service

Copied from an old web page so it doesn’t vanish:

• The Inaugural Conference on Disease Mongering – essays from which are over here
• Anecdotal evidence: even JHOs are invited out to lunch by drug reps. Correction: “Not just lunch – DINNER. Three-course dinner at a posh restaurant, with copious alcohol (for the non-drivers) and alcoholic coffees after dessert.” Apparently this has been the fourth such dinner in three months.
• Ghost writers: apparently it’s common for researchers in industry to write articles for publication and get respected clinicians to sign them, sometimes giving the clinician incentive (money, etc) to ignore any incorrect or misleading content about a drug’s effectiveness.
  • Telegraph article from 15/10/2004
  • An earlier article from the Guardian
  • Another from the Guardian
  • Select committee video – I haven’t watched this yet

  “”… In June, when the finished manuscript arrived in the post, it had been … ’significantly altered’. And a sentence had been added, saying that venlafaxine ‘may induce full remission in a greater number of patients’. Dr Healy took strong exception to this statement.

  “…’The problem isn’t the adverts, the problem isn’t the trips to the Caribbean,” he said. “We are influenced by articles in journals.’”

  “‘I can think of a well-known British psychiatrist I met and I said, ‘How are you?’ He said, ‘What day is it? I’m just working out what drug I’m supporting today.’”"

Craig Murray on the intelligence services

Over here.  Key bits:

• “There are some very right wing people in the security services. It is essential for our democracy that they are not allowed to interfere with our lawmakers.”
•  ”Commentators are generally puzzled by the government’s refusal to make bugging material admissible as evidence in court, and tend to take the view that this is a last vestige of liberalism. [...]  In fact this is the opposite. Bugging material is in fact used in court, sanitised as ‘intelligence’, and given in tiny out of context clips to judges in camera to justify continued detention without trial or control orders. [...] The defence and the ’suspect’ are not shown the “intelligence” or even given any hint what they are supposed to have done.”
• “… The same is true, incidentally, of the so-called liquid bomb plotters, some of whom were also bugged for over a year, revealing no plot to bomb up airplanes. Not helpful to have all that in court if you are trying to hype the terrorist threat.”