Using the internet to talk about the internet (a hymn to the WWW)

“Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

I feel lucky to be living in these times of free-speech internet. I can still read articles such as this one on the Sarkozy-centred European Super State and watch a video such as this, on the US presidential elections charade.

It’s pretty amazing that the web of control hasn’t spread yet to entirely cover the www. I heard, in a fairly innocuous discussion a few days ago, that the Chinese Olympics were being broadcast around the world with images from one single source. Is it just a matter of the technology catching up for the net to follow a similar policy? I’m certain it is and it ain’t gonna take that long. In the meantime, we are being prepared to accept it as being for our own good by bombarding us with excuses such as this.

The importance of the internet is phenomenal. The more I think about it, the more I realise how amazingly lucky we are to have this freedom in a time when, rare exceptions apart, there is no free media.

Here’s a fantastic interview with a wonderful man. And a hopeful view from another great person who has the courage to say what should be common sense.

As Rousseau would’ve said: “Vive l’internet!“.

Not so Cynical Torso (CPH, part 3)

I love speaking to the locals when travelling abroad. It’s very difficult to get a feel for a place in such a short time, but I’ve realised that doing things that they may do on a daily basis, is the best way. Who goes to bloody museums, but tourists? So, I went to the swimming pool a couple of times in Copenhagen, well, actually in Frederiksberg, which is a separate town with it’s own mayor, a town within a town.

The swimming lanes were very strangely arranged. Four lanes, two for men and two for women supposedly, and of the two that I could use, one was huge (in width) and the other very narrow. It turns out that the huge one is for the breaststroke and the narrow one for the crawl. I haven’t been to many pools in my life, but this strikes me as particularly stupid. I can imagine someone in a high position, who knows nothing about swimming, say maybe the son of the mayor of Frederiksberg who could also be the owner of the pool, thinking that it’s a good idea with a touch of brilliance, instead of the usual slow/medium/fast lanes separation, to go by width. Ridiculous and annoying, both in the narrow one, where I kept bumping into that floating separator, and the huge one, where all the very slow pensioners were and where people were overtaking each other all the time, thus defeating the purpose of having a large arm span to do your breaststroke in. I think I understand now what it was all about. The idiot who had the idea, couldn’t do the crawl and was spiteful towards people who can do it…

The steam room was great though, and so was the free shampoo/shower gel. And I spoke to one local, the pool attendant, who hails from Yorkshire, just outside Leeds. Funny accent…

The other great place to meet the locals is on public transport. On the way back from the pool, on the Thursday, I wanted to get back to the hotel quickly (it was a half hour walk) so decided to catch the bus for the first time in Copenhagen. There was an old lady at the stop. So sweet. I think I frightened her in the beginning (and in the end) but we ended up chatting a bit. She told me she was sorry she couldn’t speak more, because she’s ill and she made a motion with her hand over her scarf. So I said, “a cold?”, and she smiled and said, “no, much more serious than that”. I felt like a twat.

She told me that she likes to go out every day, even though it’s difficult for her. She asked me where I was from and when I said Greece, she looked at me and asked if I have brown eyes. I said no and she told me that she has brown eyes. She patted the edges of her white hair and said with a cheeky smile “I used to be a brunette, I’m Spanish” and broke out into a big smile. Oh, I said, do you speak Spanish? No, not at all, my ancestors came here 200 years or so ago and I don’t even know which part of Spain I’m from.

I sat just behind her on the bus, but she didn’t notice this and when I went to get off, I said, “goodbye”. She literally jumped out of her seat. It scared the shit out of her. I laughed and said sorry. She laughed as well. Old ladies are great.

I left my swimming gear hangin’ in the hotel room and took the train to Malmo. On the train I almost jumped out of the seat myself, startled. I had forgotten my passport. I hadn’t even thought about it. Here I was about to enter a different country and I had no form of identification. I hadn’t planned this day trip properly. I texted a friend of a friend from Crete, a Greek lady married to a Swede living near Malmo to see if they could give me some advice about where to go and what to see there. She never got back to me. I later found out that they were in Chania, Crete at the time. Luckily I arrived in Malmo and didn’t need an ID.

The first thing that struck me in Sweden was that the drivers were a bit “ruder”. Not so gentle and polite as in Denmark. And so were the cyclists. Oh, Copenhagen, how I miss thou… with your gentle tree lined avenues and well-behaved organised systems… The language to my untrained ears sounded slightly different. Whereas I was hearing French-sounding noises in Danish, I could hear Italian-sounding noises in Swedish. But that’s just because I don’t understand either, and am probably insulting all Danes and Swedes and French and Italians. Fuck’em.

Malmo’s a nice place. The weather was great. But I had stupidly forgotten to think about …currency. I really hadn’t thought this day trip out properly. You’re going to a different country, spiro. I didn’t have any currency, I didn’t know the exchange rate, I didn’t even know if they have the euro or something else in Sweden. So I went to the first cash point I found and decided to take the 2nd lowest option, which was 500 Kronor. And I ended up with more money than I needed, coz once I left the cash point I saw that an average meal is around 100 Kronor (~ £9). So, I went to the bookshop (which was great, though the staff were a bit snobbish) and bought myself a crime novel in English by a Swedish author, set in Göteborg and Copenhagen. So it all ties in nicely. Sweet.

The weather was great and I went to a nice big park, with lakes and sat in the sun a bit and then walked towards the twisted torso building. I just googled it and found this link, on Concrete Monthly – News from the cement and concrete industries. The sad thing is that they definitely get more hits than this blog does. Pfff… I also found out that Calatrava was the architect, the same one who designed the Olympic stadium in Athens for 2004. And so now I just remembered the comments that the Dalai Lama made about the Olympics in China having to go ahead and … respect the torch… and a whole load of bollocks. But I’m getting all worked up again…

The view of the bridge that links Denmark and Sweden is great from that area near the torso and there were alot of people sunbathing, taking photos, walking around. Very civilized and nice. The area looked a bit boring. A lot of construction work going on, what looked like apartments and offices. The building is fun. I liked it. Then I walked back into town and had a great steak meal. Sat in the sun in some central square, got hooked on the book, the steak was good and the vegetables and chips that came with it even better.

On the final day in Copenhagen, I was flying at 4 pm, so had a full morning to wander into parts I hadn’t been to before. I ended up in the National Gallery which I loved. Some modern stuff, not so good, alot of sculpture, some of it great, and some more classical stuff. I liked the depiction of Danish life from around 50-100 years ago. Some of the few religious paintings were interesting as well. The facial characterisitics of some of the saints and shit, were Nordic.

I’m thinking of registering the following term: cynomody, for cynical comedy. But after a week in gentle Denmark, I’m just not feeling cynical enough anymore. And next week I’ll be in Brazil where I’ll be samba-ing to a whole different tune.

Durham & Newcastle

Was in Durham all week attending the British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science. It was as exciting as it sounds.

Visited Newcastle for a day. The highlight of the week were the two mad Italian waitresses. Italian-1 was from Sardinia, I’m not sure about the 2nd one. Me: “Ah, you’re a Geordie as well, ey?”, Italian-2: “Aai, Geordissima!”.

I thought that was very funny. So is this, on the origin of China’s 2008 Olympics logo.

Came across this photo here, which is soooo Balkans! Greece of course.

Olympic torture… as it snows in April

…was in a typical English Victorian house with some rather strange people. I think I knew one of them from the neighbourhood and asked if it was alright to go out into the garden. Went out and it was a typical London Victorian garden, About 15-20 square metres. But it was a work of art. There were what appeared to be trees and grass and plants, all covered in a permanent snow like substance. At first I thought it was the real thing. But I touched it and it was just art. I commented to the unknown neighbour that I’m surprised they got planning permission for this. He said they hadn’t gotten any. I made a joke about some helicopter spotting it and…

… I woke up, quite early for a Sunday, around 7:30. When I looked outside it was snowing pra caralho. So much for global warming. And I thought of Prince’s Sometimes it snows in April. I like this line alot: Always cry 4 love, never cry 4 pain.

Prince was the first person, as far as I know, who wrote his lyrics as if he was texting, years before schoolkids were doing it. I stuck a video animation, with the song, on my vodpod. The animation’s not that great, but I love the song and hadn’t heard it for a long time.

Met a friend who got hold of some free tickets for an early morning showing of the Steve Buscemi film Lonesome Jim. It was good. Funny, lightweight, easy Sunday morning viewing. It was on at the ICA, near Trafalgar Square. By freeky coincidence, it ended at the exact time that the olympic torch was passing by that point. This means we were sort of stuck, because we wanted to head into Soho for some panini or other light lunch and so decided to wait until the runners and police had finished with their stupid little exhibition of pagan worship (Prometheus’s flame) disguised as evil consumerism (modern Olympic “games”).

Although I knew the Olympic flame was being paraded around London as a grand freemason symbol of corporate nonsense that it is, I had decided to not get involved. But to be honest I had forgotten about it when I set out to the cinema today in this beautiful snowy weather. When we were approaching Trafalgar Square and saw those Tibetan and Chinese flags waving in opposition, I was still unmoved. What really got me was when I saw all these normal looking people, chinese and westerners, waving their little Samsung flags! What’s happening here? I mean, nationalistic flag waving is bullshit enough, but now the sheep are waving company flags as well! It was shocking. My friend pointed out that the other side of the flag had the Olympic rings on it. It was nevertheless hilarious to see a bunch of people waving the flag of a mega corporation. It reminded me of “Manufactured Landscapes”, an excellent film that I watched recently with the same friend.

I’m not so sure anymore that the so-called Olympic spirit ever did exist. I’ve no doubt that nowadays it’s all about huge multinationals making more and more money while “athletes” are pumped full of chemicals to compete to see who is the fastest, strongest etc. I have the right to doubt that the games ever were noble. They sold it to us like this: the games would happen in ancient Greece and all wars would stop and athletes would compete, then they’d go back to whatever city-state-country they were from, and, the wars would recommence. What’s that all about then? Why not stop the wars altogether and write poetry instead?

We couldn’t go anywhere, so we had to wait for it to pass. We were up at the north part of the square, near the National Gallery. The small police presence was not disturbing yet, but then just before the torch arrived, there were a bunch of policemen on bicycles and some on foot. Then a London bus passed, full with runners wearing a blue tracksuit chavvy outfit and then I saw the torch coming. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a bunch of police started running after the torch. There was tension, confusion and maybe some of it intentional by the police and then the runner was redirected. We saw quite a few tibetan protestors being arrested. There were usually 3 to 5 police per protestor and they were dragging them away, through the corridor where the runners were supposed to be. Then alot of booing was being heard. Was it against the protestors, or the police? Then alot of “Free Tibet” shouts were heard and I lost it and was shouting it as well. One group of 4-5 police with a protestor were near me and they were shouting in his face “Shut up”, “Shut up”, although I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. I think what they meant was: “look, we don’t want to have to hurt you, but you leave us no choice because you are voicing your opinion”. It was pathetic.

I overheard one westerner say something that I agree with: “I’m not protesting against China, but against the whole Olympic games”. I think that although the Free Tibet protests are important and essential, they may be taking away from the other important issues surrounding the Olympics in general. This was done in previous Olympics, for example, and I think we’ll be seeing more and more similar protests around the world before this years spectacle, and I hope it includes internal (in China) protests, because I’m sure the effect on the average chinese person will be similar to that on the average Greek, who will be paying for the “games” in taxes for a long time to come. And why? Partly to have had the honour to pay for the building of stadiums which are now rotting unused.

So, I dedicate “Sometimes it snows in April” to the Tibetans and Chinese who are suffering and dying in any way related to the great Olympic spirit.