Neil Kramer - Detaching From The Construct (We're Just Cabling Otherwise)

An excellent forty minutes with Neil Kramer on the toxicity of broadcast media pollution and how a movement to integrity starts with self and not on the outside. The construct has only one purpose. To disempower you with negativity or feelings of inferiority through images of superlatives, superiority and confusion. That's pretty much it.

MI5 Whistleblower @AnnieMachon Says Spy Agency Vets Who Gets To Run For Parliament (Weak Let In - Strong Kept Out)

Every wondered why all our politicians are so bland? MI5 gets to give the thumbs up or down before they run. Former agent Annie Machon is not even telling us the secrets we need to know. To remain within the law she is giving us the information she is allowed to.

Lots of important information in this recent talk including how the media is managed and how the British spooks are the most protected in any democracy of the Western World.

Flying Saucers Over New York

Around the time I was digesting and coming to terms with the implications of hypothetical collapsing time and the more concrete precession of the equinox (I'm not a solstice fan on this one and prefer March 2013) I met an acquaintance of mine on the streets of Bangkok at around three in the morning. We do this from time to time and usually exchange pleasantries though on this occasion I explained my latest thoughts on astro theology which are quite difficult to get your head around on first try but I don't like trivial small talk if I can avoid it. 

It was his response that surprised me as he talked about UFO's and a recent New York incident. That was how I googled the term disclosure which opened up a rather large can of worms for me. The New York incident is discussed in the interview above by Mike Clelland with Christopher Knowles but I think it free wheels a bit after that into other interesting territory.

Rupert Murdoch Joins Twitter

The epitome of hypocrisy for me is to whine about the system and then take part in it with a home delivery pizza and a couple of beers. Rupert Murdoch has been a back-room king-maker in British politics, such that I'm unsure if many even know the extent to which his media empire influences not just the outcome of elections but the policy that is formed prior to that. I always had the same feelings about the British faux  bereavement of Lady Diana Spencer who ostensibly died because of the hounding of the tabloids and was thus subject to flowers being thrown by the same people who subsequently returned to the tabloids that fuelled the paparazzi chases in the first place.

Adam Curtis is doing something very interesting with BBC archive footage. Rather than just one man doing an excellent job with access to old film, the BBC should open up this national treasure more widely. I understand there is more film of John Allegro who I blogged about the other day which researcher friends of mine are unable to access even though the topic of mycology related subjects is going to mushroom as a theme in the near future. In the mean time please enjoy Mr Curtis doing what he does best on the internet: 

Archive BBC blogging about a character that to my mind profits from the people who most deserve him while staring at the SKY.

Alan Rusbridger & Slavoj Zizek Interviewed On Al Jazeera

Alan talks about his visit by the head of Scotland Yard to pressure him into dropping the phone hacking story. Zizek talks about the radio silence of the massacre and depravity in The Congo. Both specifically distance themselves from using the conspiracy word and yet are they not saying that corporate media is controlled? That some stories have the lowest possible odds of informing people?

It is controlled though mostly by (profit driven) agenda than micro managed orders being issued from Wizards behind curtains. That's what middle managers are for. However this is an even graver allegation than conspiracy which comes from Old French and before that Latin language of 'to breathe together'. 

Until the Anglo American media axis views all life as equal the media are a sizeable part of our problem. There are signs for hope but it does require more people to speak up in the public domain, and yet the silence on the most important issues of our times is a butchered and bleeding elephant tusk on the coffee table that the materialists would prefer not to talk about.

Even Al Jazeera showed us their line in the sand during the Arab Spring uprising though they are currently along with Russia Today providing a news service that is superior to most of the traditional Western media apertures.

Spotlight Intensifies On @piersmorgan

Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan born Piers Stefan O'Meara is to testify by video link to the Leveson inquiry. By necessity he will need to lie, however he's quite capable of this without it being a necessity.

Piers Morgan In The Mix

Piers Morgan is trying to hoodwink the people that as Editor of the most influential paper in the UK he knew all about the ubiquity of #hackgate but was unaware of a single story printed in his editorial name. 

I think it's an insult to the shareholders of CNN, the integrity of U.S. media and the decency of ordinary Americans that he continues to pretend he is innocent.

He is, according to one friend, 'the ultimate proof that self-confidence and self-belief can become a self-fulfilling prophecy'....and he needs that CNN job or the entire gig falls apart.

Miu Miu & Monarch Mind Control

 

The Monarch mind control program came straight out of the CIA's MKULTRA trauma-based mind-control program. They nicked it off the battalions of high ranking Nazis imported by the CIA after the second world war through Project Paperclip. The Nazis nicked it off the Vatican who kept records of  what their unspeakable torture techniques did to the minds of victims during the inquisition (priests are especially sadistic) and they in turn learned much from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The monarch butterfly taught geneticists from its migration that cross generational information can be carried over. So why waste a victim when you can sexually abuse and mind control the victims kids who are prepped and good to go from the start. That's why inter-generational child abuse is how the CIA took the game to the next level (and several more).

Through Vigilant Citizen I learned how the fashion, music and media business use the Monarch butterfly to declare in a public manner that the talent being used (if you can call GaGa, Britney et al talent) are micro controlled  and/or not of their own mind.

Why do they do that? 

Well that's kind of interesting. There's a sort of braggadocio by declaring who is in charge and also a karma-deal respected by occult elites at a 'universal law' level that if they (sort of) publicly declare what they are doing then they have a karmic 'get out jail free card' in much the same way that the NeoCons told us they were going to invade Iraq to protect freedoms before 911 in 1997, through their Project For A New American Century Website (PNAC).

Last night I was checking out Prada Brand - Miu Miu's latest collection. I wasn't that impressed with it, but I noticed the Monarch Wings above and thought I'd share it with you. As you'd expect from Miu Miu it's done very elegantly, but no amount of tasteful design should prevent you from knowing that the epigenetics of Monarch butterflies are about control and fucking with kids heads and bodies through trauma based mind control or at worst ritual satanic sex abuse. This post is dedicated to Vigilant Citizen, and Secret Arcana who do a sterling job of pointing out the concrete symbolism that is irrefutable in the entertainment and fashion industry.

1994 Part II

I only noticed after the first 1994 post that this audio reading by Barbera Marciniak of her book Earth was also published in November 1994. To add another layer to the synchronicity the only reason I listened to it was because David Icke (again) name checks her in my dark side of the moon post, so I found her on Youtube and learned that much of it is too well informed to ignore.

A handful of people with fascinating interpretations of what is going on warn that channelling is transdimensional manipulation though it's my experience, no single genre of information is free of errors or agenda and so make your own mind up by cherry picking the stuff that never fails to put the decision making down to you. Television is the most toxic when thinking about media that just loves to have you rooting for a side you never previously cared about. Libyan rebels was the last one and the media controllers have the next one already lined up, ready and waiting for hypnotised gullibility to react again.

Let me be clear. There is no side but your own. 

That's pretty much what Barbera's work above is saying.

@PiersMorgan - Media Weasel & Coincidence Theorist Gatekeeper

I don't own a TV, and I no longer listen to the news, after decades of being a news junkie of sorts. I believe I am however reasonably well informed. I never knew how Piers Morgan looked or spoke till just now. I knew he was editor of a scummy newspaper run by Rupert Murdoch so the working assumption was money and profile are more important to him than professional journalism.

When I learned that Piers was going to work for CNN, I assumed he would be continuing the tradition of Vaudeville theatre news after taking Larry "Kiss Ass" King's spot. We would ridicule Larry's faux newsroom beat-wardrobe of braces and Watergate style Bob Woodward glasses (I just made that last bit up about Woodward) but stay with me. King was every thing that was wrong with the news business and we were outraged that most viewers had no idea his news offering being served up was more damaging than helpful. I was often convinced that King was just as programmed as his viewers, though many know full well what can and cant be discussed. They are like school prefects with a tazer for  truth telling.

Larry King's questioning style was no more challenging than what coffee a guest preferred (one lump or two) and at the end of it all, he'd ask 'but how did it feel'. No matter what was in the news Larry wanted to know how it felt so that the viewers could resonate with the events of the day, which by and large had nothing to do with the real events taking place in the 20th century. Gulf of Tonkin for example.

I wondered if Piers Morgan could do it different but instead it's evident from this interview with Jesse Ventura that he is incapable of entertaining a single view point that isn't toeing the govcorp line. There is no way that Piers Morgan is going to break a single important story at CNN other than those he is given as favours for services provided. 

How anyone can invite Jesse Ventura to his show and then say something so insulting as "surely you can't believe all this" is only equalled by his ignorance of the military weapon  HAARP while interviewing the most respected and high profile conspiracy theorist in the country. It's like inviting the Pope over and saying surely you don't believe in all this religion malarkey. What a douchebag. A corporate toady. A first class weasel. Ill informed. intellectually pedestrian, historically illiterate and unable to say anything that will ever rock the boat. A CNN special. Made for each other.

The Good Arab, The Bad Arab & European Pretensions

Do you mind if I interrupt your Starbucks Coffee and Pret a Manger sandwich for just one moment? Media is war and the longer we continue to allow the glowing screens of corporate controlled media to shape our opinions, inciting us to war where oil is at stake the deeper the pain will be when war arrives at our doorsteps.

A few weeks ago, I watched clueless and well entrenched media talking-head Paxman embarrassing himself on British TV defending Western imperial bombing of Libya and attacking Noam Chomsky for defending pursuit of peace. Where are our Michele Collon's? We don't have them. Instead we prefer to drive our fossil fuel-mobiles stop off for coffee and a sandwich at lunch and pretend that what we consume, be it oil or labour, has no bearing on the rest of the world. What we consume will consume us. Walk away from it or one day you will have to run.


Via Breathing Out Psychedelic Air

The New Bolivarians

It's funny how things are increasingly connected. I've mentioned I like Oliver Stone's work and that the person I most like listening to and reading at the moment is Tariq Ali. Well I recently watched both of them in a video clip as they worked together on Oliver Stone's "South of the border" documentary about American Imperialism in South American, so I downloaded it last night to check it out.

One of the reasons I'm still engaged in political thinking is because of the unchecked role of the media, particularly in the American Empire's politics. I have always kept a lazy eye on South American politics and particularly on Hugo Chavez and so it was a gust of clean fresh air to learn more about the man than I've ever managed to accumulate before. Most importantly it blew away some of the demonic myths circulated by the American propaganda machine.

I think it's self evident that the leaders Oliver Stone interviews here like Lula, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Fernando Lugo, Rafael Correa all come across as principled and decent men with countries that the U.S has fucked over at one time or another. Most surprising though is the modesty of Raul Castro and of course the inclusive societal vision of Hugo Chavez. Fox News make their usual retarded (for profit) contribution with one host confusing cocoa with cocaine in an attempt to demonize one of the most inspirational political figures of the 21st century. 


The U.S. elite has a lot to fear if the increasingly powerful Stateside Latino lobby catch on to the reality that democracy isn't about filling the pockets of the rich but instead about providing as much as possible to as many as possible.

As an interesting aside I learned last night that John Lennon's Power to the People was inspired by his interview with Tariq Ali in the sixties for The Black Dwarf. Tariq Ali is a very interesting guy.

The Bolivarian Revolution name comes from the 19th century Simon Bolivar who led many South American countries to freedom from the Spanish Empire. The latest country the U.S. has fucked over in South American is Honduras. Hardly anybody in the U.S. knows.

Jon Stewart - Rachel Maddow

Watching Jon Stewart interview a Republican politician a couple of weeks ago I was struck by his grasp of political detail. It occurred to me that if Congress were a place where the American people were taken care of these days that he might be considering running for congress one day like Al Franken did. What's notable about this discussion is how grown up it is compared to the dribble being peddled by the so called professionals.

Rachel and Jon both disagree a fair amount in this interview, in a way that highlights the soft balls thrown to interview subjects on the right by Fox News.Some time back I caught an American philosophy lecturer point out that for real news go to The Daily Show or The Onion which says to me that there's a problem in the way that news media works in the States. I don't think Jon Stewart realises his remit for satire doesn't include the idea that his viewing audience may have changed since those black and white days of comedy and news as distinctly separate. Either way it's reassuring knowing that discussion of this caliber still exists and that fine people engage in it. Stewart's comments at the end are both gracious and human.

I was initially going to post this to my tumblr as it's easy to get sucked into political discourse and start becoming irrelevant, but as I had a few things to say on the matter I've posted it here.

If that hasn't tempted you to watch this than I should point out that Stewart takes a wholly contextual view of waterboarding and war crimes that may or may not be wrong but is interesting as an example of a mind not interested in binary thinking. It may not be correct but it is evolved.

reality hunger

Love this. I've been fast forwarding through the boring parts of Dexter earlier. I love the character but all that contrived futile love angle? It's maddening. Though I realise that sounds like ironic psychopathy.

www.russelldavies.com for more wisdom (Go on type it. You'll remember it that way)

Marshal McLuhan

I always embrace any discussion of McLuhan if only because it validates the work of a man who wasn't even around to see his post Gutenberg vision of the media landscape manifest itself so fully, so accurately and arguably even quicker then McLuhan would ever have anticipated. It's completely fair if one wishes to split hairs that the medium isn't quite the message. But only in so much as it's equally fair to assert that it's probably larger than the message typified by the noses of children in the 1950's pressed up against the new fangled TV screen to a story such as Avatar which is solely reliant on the movie medium to create it's unique impact. Straight to DVD speaks for itself but my favourite playful discussion  asks that if the medium is the message wouldn't logic point towards the message is the medium? OK I'm kidding but you get what I'm saying I'm sure. The room usually goes quiet when I lob that one in but I've always been fond of a bit mischief.

It's arguable that the movie surpasses the message, for without the movie, the message is diminished by it's own narrative constraints (around a campfire, straight to DVD etc) or it is as it is depending on what your interpretation of is, is. A deliberate confluence of both McLuhan and Clinton. My point being that McLuhan as Joyce scholar was very much a stylistic thing as was the comeback kid's legalese.

It is however clear that McLuhan would have had a lot to say about our existing digital topography and where it points. Pity he died in 1980 and that his mystical like status dissolved pretty much overnight, till resurfacing of late as at least a more thoughtful media analysis of where we were rather than we're at (tempus fugit). 


Does anybody really know?


One thing I do is that Digital loves a free ride doesn't it? It would have been great to hear an analysis of this in the context of what McLuhan really excelled at which was as a Medievalist. Essentially it's helpful to get a fix on how long language has been around. Let's call it 30 000 years or so because like the dreams which are so lucidly remembered when we awake, they and their mystical meaning so often evaporate in the short few steps to our morning ablutions and we're so unclear about our communications legacy if it wasn't carved in stone. There's a reason for the dream references, but here's not the place to nip back into talk of pineal glands and the traces of Dimethyltryptamine it both creates and breaks the law at the same time. I find that fascinating.

So yeah language. When the male and female of our species emerged from two million years of a quasi arboreal lifestyle encompassing the dual roles of hunter & gatherer arguably cultivating the male traits of silence and stoicism while waiting for the herd to turn up at the drinking pool, alongside the pragmatically chattering advantages of the female of our species exploiting the value of knowing what berries, nuts and mushrooms to pick at what time of the year and where, it's probable that an animalistic version of communication on a level equal to, or more evolved than say dolphins, pigs, octopi  and such like, magically manifested itself to an unprecedent level of compelling complexity into the most potent meme system in the history of man. There is no more spreadable media than assigning words for objects and then assigning arbitrary codes such as uncountable nouns after prepositions and definitive articles. Evolved language was definitely a 'holy fucking shit' moment of such grautuitous common sense and spreadability that every ape worth his or her salt picked up on it like the iTablet fetishism of last nights tweetfest, though more durably.

Equally around this time the neo cortex exploded in size while the lower jaw retracted and so began the first experiment with lifestyle along with the crops that required cultivating, the storage thereof that mandated a security-complex along with arguably a paternalistic 'ownership' and monogamy lifestyle along with the usual suspects of religion, mead brewing and hierachical structures related to, but not quite evolved directly from the instinctive and often silently acquired ones earned as great apes. Politics if you will.

Moving forward (or backwards depending on how you read history) the next Bob Beamon Olympic long jump moment of the day was after the evolution of pictographs which aren't much more than an elaboration on cave paintings into the exciting idea of word languages condensed into an alphabet. It's at this moment that McLuhan steps in to guide us towards the next epiphany, the introduction of print and it's disruptive impact on Western society (excluding China's non-moveable type which kept the whole industry from taking off as the Guttenberg moment did). 


It's fairly important to appreciate that prior to print, a different set of cognitive skills were used to consume information. McLuhan highlights that the medieval practice of script consumption dictates a different set of skills from print. We have to LOOK at script as opposed to print (digital or otherwise) which requires READING. Once the first fifty types of say the letter E or e have been understood, we then no longer have to look at the letter and switch into a condensed and linear mode of media consumption that is so far removed from the looking demanded of script writing that it's difficult to comprehend unless we take into account such ideas as the notion of a public, which didn't exist prior to the Guttenberg press. 


That's because there was no public but as soon as leaflets and the bible became objects for consumption then the idea of manufacturers and consumers of information warranted the introduction of a public. Prior to that the Kings and the Clergy used to just do stuff unannounced and undiscussed (increase taxes, burn witches etc.) and we would marvel at their silent power. That's all changed now as the hoi polloi (that's me) dive in the creation pool too but it's important to remember that there was a time when the first person in history ever was identified as having the ability to read silently in their head before repeating it. Prior to that everybody just read aloud and so emerged the language of lectures in the academic or monastic environment.

I could go on but I think Faris has written a provocative piece covering McLuhan which admits that there is no discussion of the man without knowing that dance, Roman roads and lightbulbs are media. However, more interestingly the notion of a consumption platform is distilling/emerging (a context?) which is a good thing. In a previous life some might have called this a media type but it all starts to bleed in the digital world in such a gratuitous manner it simply is no longer helpful. How an eReader or iPad differ from a Nexus or a Netbook just complicates the hell out of things but it becomes evident that the size of screen and user interface says a lot, and that the surroundings in which the content can be consumed or more accurately HOW they can be consumed defines to a considerable extent what they are. So a phone under the meeting table for reasons of discretion in a boring meeting has just as many consumption variables on what is read and how it is read as say yesterday's trending topic of #thoughtsonthetoilet which arguably speak for themselves, though again, like in the past I urge that the context be fully explored to really help understand what is going on. By context I totally mean the environment in which media variables are created or consumed because otherwise we're back to the Nexus is different from the iPad which points suspiciously towards "The medium is the message". Which was always a more stylistic assertion on McLuhan's part, than a set in stone media law despite it's heavy counter intuitive logic defying truthiness. Or as Wittgenstein would say. It's true enough!

McLuhan was a Joyce Scholar, a convert to Catholicism and a person who turned the whole deconstruction lens of western thought in on the topic of media and arguably of itself, as itself and by itself. You just can't mess with that when it's done well. Nobody did it better than my main man McLuhan.

Nothing tastes better than skinny

Of course this blog post comes to you while I tuck into a bowl of new potatoes with butter liberally applied, although I do think there's something quite remarkable about the uproar over Kate Moss saying this because it has all the hallmarks of a highly spreadable meme. I mean it's probably the best strap-line I've ever heard. It's a powerful way of saying don't do it.

Memorable, evocative and truly disruptive. 


Pity there's no money in it.

However in its defence.... it's a point of view. Those are Kate Moss's taste buds, and if she chooses to say not eating, tastes better than eating, then isn't she entitled to say that?

But as a prominent person (albeit one who has enjoyed a fat line of coke quite publicly and needs to be skinny for her job while making no attempt to be a role model) you might argue that she has a responsibility to set a good example and deter the never ending parade of anorexics and bulimics that the media are somewhat biased about reporting. 

Simon Rothstein for Murdoch-owned The Sun blasts aways.

But then isn't it in the interest of big Agra, big media and big pharma to be profitable by attacking anorexia as a more pernicious problem than obesity? 

Isn't it in the interests of those corporations and their lobby groups and PR companies to demonise anorexia when the real problem lies in the other direction? I often hear dangerously overweight people say "I love my food", but I never hear dangerously underweight people say "I love my waistline".

I say this as someone who has packed a few pounds in the past. Usually when I'm enjoying the delights of cooked breakfasts and delicious bread in the UK. Most people are quite surprised when they see this picture.

What do you think? Bit chunky like?

Update: In a situation worthy of Voltaire's assertion that God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh, I see that the word "fat" when Googled today provides its top story on Google News that is rich in comment on Western society. Peruvian gangs have been killing rural farmers for their fat sold to cosmetic companies in Europe. You couldn't make this up which, is precisely why we need to think about it a bit harder than usual. Imagine being slaughtered for your fat like a beast? There was a time when I had a few pounds to share but not including my liver, and heart and kidneys... *shakes head*.

Cultural Media Studies

I wrote most of this on paper and so you may detect a different tonality and flow to the text. I guess I need to start somewhere on the long road to another vast topic I want to connect with here, and that's culture, but I'll start with media, move on to books and then scratch the surface of culture: something I think I'm qualified to comment on. I pride myself on living with real people in different countries and have managed to achieve that with a bit of planning and a little bit of luck including what may have seemed like bad luck at the time but often yielded gems along the way. So here goes.

I've blathered on about the awe I have for Marshall McLuhan and particularly his 1964 classic "Understanding Media". It's a seminal tour de force that contributed greatly towards my  never ending discovery of communication theory and for that I'm very grateful. It's rare that I find the view reflected upside down in my retina as unintresting or unable to provide questions I need answers to. 

I recall a long time ago in a distant agency within the M25, that I was the first to request the retro-tech short message service from HR, who explained what it was or why our banana Nokia phones had the alphabet on the keypad. Fortunately and unlike fax machines I didn't have to wait for anyone else to subscribe and immediately had a lot of fun 'interrupting' the creative team with SMS messages sent from the de facto 'planners room' called the library a place where we tended to cluster.

It was not a service like today where all mobile providers automatically make revenue from service provision. Back in the day (1998) it was a service that so few used, it needed to be subscribed to seperately. This was around the cusp of when it was about to take off, big-time and globally. The rest is history and we now see it as a utility of life that cannot be substituted and is arguably the basis for status updates on messenger platforms and the increasingly ubiquitous Twitter.

Why am I once again resurrecting, McLuhan's 'medium is the message'? Well I've never stopped giving it consideration and I guess in some way it's finally losing (or at least occasionally feels like diminishing) its overwhelming philosophical momentum, despite the internet and it's mind bogglingly immense challenge to the twin notions of hot and cool media conjured up by Marshal's book nearly derailing me totally. Perhaps it has forever.

I've since reconciled most of the neurological dynamics that constitute media temperature, engagement and distraction (a critical and too seldom discussed dimension) with the content; you know, the bits we brief and that the creatives deliver on).

In any case my recent enforced seperation from the internet means I was once again consuming printed words from a creative underground's bookshelf in a manner that would shame a Hoover into mutating mechanically into a Dyson.

"Suck it". "Suck it and see" I was once told by someone who didn't want to answer all my questions. Well I'm sucking it now. Hoovering up printed works for the first time in a long time and I'm pleased to see that my early thoughts immersed in digital are confirmed. It's   possible I've concluded, to neurologically rewire my brain back to the state it used to be. 

One where I would devour long thick chunks of printed text for hours on end, day after day, week after week and well, you get the picture. That was before RSS snacking became the best god damm information buffet one could wish for. When the information highway suddenly cranked up a bit, resembling the 1993 Corvette I wrote about in this post over here.

Since writing this I've dined on Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (over rated and dripping with inconsistency - the sort of book I imagine I'd be guilty of writing) as well as the insufferably over stretched "Wikinomics" which is not so bad when picking and  choosing the chapters that matter, but is nevertheless borderline sea sick boredom if compelled under orders or circumstances like myself to eat the entire spread.

Wikinomics is, compared to RSS, like enforced consumption of no-label crisps and curling  and dried salmon-spread sandwiches before say a cool dip on a hot summers day in an inflatable pool with the kids in a back garden over freshly sliced prosciutto wrapped around bread sticks, ace deli pickles, avocado and vinaigrette with bruschetta and black olive tapenade and hell, let's go for it, a yellow bell pepper coulis - just because I can.

It's a good book in parts, but fuck me (metaphorically) it has whole chapters that are more iterative and circular than Marble Arch roundabout playing Hotel California on a car stereo, looping endlessly on a scorching hot day with bumper to bumper traffic. Ah the Eighties - how I loved you.

So you don't believe me eh? Well feel free to read what I wrote a few months before Hong Kong Clown Investigation Department (CID) busted my intravenous digital drip compelling me to read all these books.

OK, I'm only into my third book while dipping sporadically into the Holy Quran before hitting the Talmud and the Torah while taking a never ending feast on Therevada Buddhism (which I interrupted recently with a book on Mormonism - The American Religion), and keeping an eye on The Tao 'n stuff. I can't take the Bible too seriously these days despite some awesome chapters, but that may be over familiarity breeding testimonial contempt. I do however like the observation I read recently over on Lee Maschmeyer's blog, that the Bible is an early example of open source collaboration which brings me (as only the Bible could) on to Tapscotts & Williams Wikinomics. There's an inverse proportionality to Wikipedia content and value itself. This highly padded (and thus time wasting) book Wikinomics is a 21st century publishing irony of the highest order?

There are however in this book, as I've mentioned, great parts. I loved learning about the LAMP stack. Linux, APACHE, MySQL (Database) and PHP (Perl Scripting). Frankly that is one sexy fucking combo and they should cut out the nonsense we often teach kids and introduce infants to that lot from Kindegarten age - I'm serious, it's a language isn't it? 

Or is it the case that since English became the Lingua Franca we no longer entertain ideas of placing emphasis on learning languages. I can imagine George Orwell with his Spanish(or was that Catalan?), Urdu and several Burmese dialects would have recognised this as a national and systemic weakness brought on by globalization. Yet we feel this everytime as a Brit we sit in meetings where people are arguing their case more effectively in their second or third language than we can in our first. It's awe inspiring and only my own understanding of Thai, Burmerse, German and weak French provide succour against this overwhelming feeling of inferiority. You'll feel worse if you speak just the one. I'm just saying.

Despite the ace LAMP stack chapter in Wikinomics, there's waffle McCheesy summertime specials like the chapter on IDEAGORAS which  could be wrapped neatly into a couple of concise blog posts or bundled into an Harvard Business Review circular, for corporates who want to play with the new boys on the block - that's us isn't it? I mean, come on! That part about printing on cakes as one memorable example illuminates what the writers of Wikinomics perceive as the peak of  intra/extra corporate innovative collaboration? Do me a favour. Fucking cup cake printing. Don't believe me? Check it out. It's a weak book and riddled with stretched arguments though that doesn't mean a weak argument will never manifest itself as an argument that is proven robust through subsequent realization.

Yeah right.

So anyway, in pursuit of complexity, inconsistency, contradiction and general woolly thinking. I would like to now pull out of Gladwell's skinny and twitching ass (complete with walnut timbre voice) a real nugget of a find which he begins to tease out of his latest book Outliers. It runs beautifully consistently with what I imagine not too many of you are aware (though it's all in the archives here) are my own views on culture. That mile wide and inch deep tarmac of delusional self construct. Beautiful for pulling away at speed in our own directions but less suitable for landing a plane without buckling the surface up under the pressure like fresh linguini. You get the picture.

Because culture both matters and it doesn't. Or maybe it's just inconsequential if the spirit has the courage to overcome the cultural conditions imposed on us and then enforced by us in yet another myopic loop of recursive patriotism. In other words "You're as big or as small as your culture" but never bigger than the ultimate fighting club called humanity. United we stand so to speak.

Here's the evidence to support it, because me and Malc are at one on this.

In Gladwell's outliers, he tiptoes round an inch of culture that is easy to drill through and set up some cone induced traffic jams around, for as long as John Major's hotline is a telephone call away. You see Macolm introduces Geerte Hofsteder's cultural dimensions. Don't let that scare you off because I"ve stuck the boot into Hofsteder about four years ago while working on the Unilever business regionally and in this presentation I wrote over here. It is now dated somewhat, by a lot of new thinking and reading I've done. However Geert's work is pertinent as is Malcom's chapter on Korean Air's little accident streak which I'll talk about a little later 

Because It's Gladwell's ionospheric 10 000 hours - Practice makes Perfect (ubung macht den meister) mantra that beggars  belief. Rather than rip to shreds "Talcum Malc" equating the whole U.S. population into four outliers which is inconsistent with the books theme in so many ways, I'd prefer to hone in on that point about The Beatles who Malcom writes, riffed for a couple of thousand hours while in Germany but actually improvised from sheer boredom rather than a manic obsession with perfection that Malc implies (Beatles Anthology - 2000) in Hamburg's Star Club. And don't even get me started on why a few thousand hours isn't even close to 10000 hours. No. The Beatles were Spesh because they were spesh. I'll never forget that Mexican kitchen I talked about in LA (in The White Album Post) where the kitchen staff had only two words in their vocabulary for me when I turned up for work and explained in crap Spanish that I was English - The Beatles. Hooligan. They grinned. That's the Brits isn't it. Off the scale creative or out of order repugnant.

So instead I'll pick up on the interesting chapters or is it chapter because sport isn't interesting, sport is a media/social object for (generally speaking) allowing men of questionable masculinity, the self confidence to talk to each other (often passionately) unhindered by accusations of homosexuality permeating the air. One only needs to observe the silence on Australian Football and tight fitting shorts, America's obsession with Canadian Ice Hockey and anal sex (or is that just right wing nut US obsession? Probably) , steroids and poppers for American Soccer and/or well hung African American (strange fruit hangs differently) basketball players. Did I just write that? Yes. But nobody will question it. Nobody ever does.

I digress. Where was I?

Oh yeah. Gladwell's Outliers, but not in the hung, drawn and quartered black American populace (see how I revived the last paragraph's ending) there's a chapter where Malc writes about Korean Air going through a bit of a rough patch. It's important for the cultural question that keeps on cropping up all round the world in the planning game because Korean Air's history was beginning at one point to be littered like a Lockerbie bomb's cadaver sprawl with aviation accidents and so the Korean Aviation authorities compelled the airline to do the unthinkable and contact the Federal Aviation authority to see what was the cause of the unmistakable trend for ditching Jumbo Jets in awkward circumstances.

Could it be a cultural issue? Fuck no. Culture is only ever a good thing. It's what we wrap out inner pride and outer flags around. It's worth going to war for and is never flawed. In short Culture is King. It's magnificent where ever one travels which is why when in Rome one makes praise for Prada. Nobody inside an entire country could point out that Korean air needed outsiders to investigate the insider issue because the Feds can only be invited in an emergency and not imposed on a nation. Which is why the US needs to listen right now to criticism of foreign policy because Hillary and even Obama are already spoiled persimmons. Capiche?

Could one culture be less perfect than another? This is the sort of dangerous question that can lead to justifiable accusations of racial bigotry or prejudice. The answer is in all cases. Sometimes.

The issue that led to a series of aviation disasters (it's always a disaster isn't it when an Afghan wedding isn't involved) was the power distance ratio mentioned earlier and which draws on Geerte Hofsteder's principle that different cultures have different hierarchical language constructs  for engaging with senior (or subordinate) ranks.

For example, in this instance the senior air pilots were unable to be addressed by the second in command pilots in a direct manner that would avert impending doom. Much like my argument with Hong Kong CID as I tried to convey they should get off their asses and talk to the cab driver sat outside with my suitcases in his cab. I could say what I like in that instance but my urgency wasn't their urgency so everyone got even more overtime.

The power distance ratio which varies from country to country meant that immediate danger could not be averted through direct language. Formality is a cultural protocol in Korea (and across Asia). This is where culture needs to be examined more closely as ressponsible  for and contributing towards less than satisfactory solutions.

Korean culture is (or was) structured in such a way that safety could not be maintained.

It's so funny it's not funny for those in the research influenced business but even the research findings  were so sensitive a subject to broach that the presenter to Korean Air was unable to say directly "Look it's our  culture that is the problem". That's a self referential joke of the highest order isn't it?

Eventually the problem was defined and the Federal Aviation Authority was brought in to culturally 'retrain' the pilots and crew to address each other in a manner that once implemented, saved their own lives. It's like a scene from Black Adder isn't it. With the men in the trenches jumping through hoops to point out the bleeding obvious to the donkeys leading the lions.

But it took the US to make the emphatic point that some cultures (as Morrissey might have sung) are bigger than others. And it's true they are. Though context is everything, like those Afghan weddings bombed by war drones can testify.

The conclusion?

Like I've said many a time (though even the observation is culturally biased), culture is a mile wide and an inch deep. If Pilots to cabin crew can retrain, then so can all of us. It's not insurmountable and it's because of this that while I'm endlessly fascinated by culture (I like to live outside of my own), I'm also deeply unhappy with an all too frequent dependancy by different nationalities to pull the culture card out as either a mark of superiority. Or an excuse to do less than is internationally up to standard. The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed.

As a last example of counter cultural exceptionalism I suggest Windows by Microsoft. My answer to the "we're different card" is that if the world is so diverse, then why is it that with different scripts and reading directions. Left to right, right to left and top to bottom that there is only one position for Start in Windows and one for minimise. The drop down menu is global. But if you focused grouped it there'd be pandemonium.

So culture is great, and culture is important, but it's also not necessarily essential that things need to be different given the extent of our commonalities. So few actually get that. 

Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose)