Cool Bananas

I just got back from another stunning bike ride round the island I'm living on. I'm very conscious these days that as oil prices spike and the threat of hyperinflation from printing money in the United States and the United Kingdom leaves us potentially looking at an impending breakdown in the food distribution system. It leaves city dwellers with enough food for two days as explained in this TED video I blogged about a week or so ago and so any opportunity to reconnect with nature is fascinating me at the moment and I"m slowly researching what kind of foods I could grow on the island as well as what is available in the wild such as these bananas. Even if my instinct is wrong and my views are alarmist, I just think it makes good frugal sense to see what can be relied upon and so I'm usually taking a bunch of these home with me for the return cycle journey. 

It's very satisfying and strangely I seem to be leaning towards a vegetarian diet or at least one with a 100 or so grammes of meat a week. I also understand from a tweet earlier that a vegan in a Hummer has a lower carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius because of the intensive farming required to breed cows for food.

I'd like to raise chickens here but after the last round of avian flu the government has put strict rules in place to prevent this. I'm sure that will be ignored if events take over legislation. In any case it's very rewarding as these bike rides for wild growing bananas take me through some of the steepest inclines on the south side of the island and I'm in better shape than I have been for at least five years when I last visited the Gym regularly. I look a bit like a Frenchman sometimes when I come home on the KLEIN bearing bananas instead of onions. Tropical living my friends ;)

Google Wave

I've been invited on Google Wave and I'd quite like to road test it. For those of you who don't have my gmail address and wish to have a go at using it, just drop me an email to my spam account which is cefrith at hotmail dot bomb. 

On Success and Failure

This may be a minority view that is indulgently and definitively littered with self referential contradiction, but I do know that Mr Armano has a similar perspective, so I'm not alone on this and so here goes. 

The propensity to indiscriminately use the word FAIL on twitter is surely incongruous with our times? Don't the brilliant (and arguably culturally important) W&K urge us to embrace failure? 


Surely there's so much to be critical and deeply concerned with in these pressing times that deserve a real sense of urgency and even justified anger?


What like?


Well, there's a strong case for George Bush and Tony Blair to face a war crimes tribunal for a judgement of truth about weapons of mass delusion? ..FAIL.. 


We appear to be living in a consumption frenzy (particularly in consumer Consumer CONSUMER electronics) that logically concludes with our species consuming ourselves. 


Haven't thought about that? BIG FAILURE$


Aren't you mad with the Burmese authorities preventing aid getting to their people after a devastating cyclone? FAIL....


What's your view on the earthquakes in Indonesia happening so alarmingly frequently that hardly anyone comments on them? 


Not important?  *FAIL*


What about serial typhoons in the Philippines then. Is that a {FAIL}? 


OK, then what's your view on our melting ice caps that will take out the Maldives alarmingly soon while our our internet carboon footprint exceeds that of the aviation business globally? ~ FAIL~. 


Something a bit closer to home and perversely a bit more intangible? What about the printing presses floating Sterling and Dollar currencies so we can hold the undeveloped world in an economic hologram trap of poverty and squalor? Ever thought about money as simulacrum? You should do. You really should and thus.....FAIL$ 


A toothless United Nations? FAIL# 


US & Israeli (both nuclear powers) largest ever war exercises under the leadership of a Nobel Peace Prize winner...Not bothered? FAIL%%%


Look around you. Noticed the greed, obesity and commensurate starvation? ^FAIL^


The list goes on and on doesn't it.


Shouldn't these be the issues we need to be indignant about? The ones we should SHOUT and CAPITALIZE our tweets for instead of a failed iPhone app or a subjective and erroneous view on a logo that is fully explained here and here but not here.


I don't care if your consumer electronics FAIL on YOU.


...and go easy on the gratuitous linking too because guess what? The information age means there's far more interesting stuff on the net than a person could ever hope to devour. It's the real reason you've stopped reading books isn't it?

If you like something. I'm happy for you. If something is pissing you off write a blog post or something but please stop filling up my twitter stream with garbage sentiment and garbage subjectivity and do share with me more of the trivial stuff like if you're having a nice cup of tea or have just broken wind in a lift. 


And please.......don't ever capitalize those letters with the solipsist rage of an ostensibly pampered and self indulgent confusion with tardy marketing comprehension.

Update: I see the infinitely more authoritative Anil Dash has similar feelings.