This week has been spent writing which is good. Next week we are off to Stockholm for Ben.s medical intervention in hearing. Also sort of exciting ......sort of.
A few tips for online media this week and then....have a rewarding weekend.
New Wikipedia for Schools Launched
SOS Children UK, in coordination with the Wikimedia Foundation, has released a complete 2008/9 revision of the Wikipedia Selection for Schools, which is perhaps the most successful "checked content" project derived from the English Wikipedia. Previous revisions have been distributed off-line widely across the globe including by the Shuttleworth Foundation to South Africa Schools, by the Hole in the Wall project to rural Indian children and through SOS offices worldwide. The updated selection has the content of a 20 volume encyclopaedia - with 34,500 pictures, 20 million words and articles on more than 5500 topics. This revision, which can be freely downloaded or collected free from SOS Children is selected and organised around the UK National Curriculum and aimed at 8-17 year olds who broadly follow the UK National Curriculum and similar curricula elsewhere in the world.
The Atlas of Cyberspace (28MB PDF)
The full content of the book can now be downloaded for free.
Fun-Da-Mental: Cookbook DIY
Fun-da-Mental are a veteran rap group based in England whose 2006 song "Cookbook D.I.Y." was banned there because it gave explicit instructions on how to make a bomb. Bandleader Propa-Ghandi is a Pakistan-born Muslim. Though the song is open to interpretation as it is narrated from a number of points of view, Mr. 'Ghandi didn't come off too well when he was interviewed in the new Bill Maher film "Religulous." When Maher asked him about the fatwa against writer Salmon Rushdie, the rapper (aka Aki Nawaz) appeared to condone it. Is he a fun-da-mentalist?
I saw Fun-Da-Mental play in 2003. Hardcore Bangha and rap mixed with techno. Excellent.
THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE-THE LUXURY OF HORNS, TAPE, 1981, AUSTRALIA
This exceptional slice of lost Aussie underground experimentation was both produced by Laughing Hands (whose phenomenal tape "Nights" I posted last week) and issued by the same cassette label that released Nights, namely Rash. The sonic terrain staked out by The Invisible College is a slippery one; their approach leaving the listener suspended in a nocturnal no-man's land between the more rhythmically driven end of Randy Greif's spectral fourth world inversions, Ashra's percolatingly buoyant guitar and synth sequence-y interweavings and the eerie post punk instrumental wanderings of The Anti Group. Some genuinely striking work here that falls between many poles and is all the better for it.
Playwright and novelist Yukio Mishima foreshadowed his own violent suicide with this ravishing short feature, his only foray into filmmaking, yet made with the expressiveness and confidence of a true cinema artist. All prints of Patriotism (Yûkoku), which depicts the seppuku of a army officer, were destroyed after Mishima's death in 1970, though the negative was saved, and the film resurfaced thirty-five years later. New viewers will be stunned at the depth and clarity of Mishima's vision, as well as his graphic depictions of sex and death.
A crazy collagist weekend to all....
No comments:
Post a Comment