Author Archives: Stu

The Bats’ Release

That is to say there is a new release from New Zealand band The Bats which they launched last night at Al’s bar in Christchurch. More importantly, I was there. Yes, I’m in New Zealand and just attended my first ever gig outside Australia. It was fantastic to come over here and see one of the classic Flying Nun bands. I’d been pretty busy and, believe it or not, had not been thinking that much about music until early yesterday evening when I was at a conference dinner and the President of the New Zealand Maths Society got up to present some prizes and mentioned that he’d seen The Clean in the same room 26 years ago. At this I started to get pretty excited at the prospect of seeing The Bats (whose main songwriter was also a member of The Clean at times), and they didn’t dissapoint. Lots of classic guitar pop, including North By North, the intro of which was heard frequently on the ABC this year in promos for The Hollowmen. The new stuff sounded great as well, though I won’t be able to listen to the cd until I get access to a cd player.

Today is my last day in Christchurch, tomorrow I’ll be heading over the mountains on the Tranzalpine train, should be pretty spectacular (especially if the weather clears up a bit), and then on to (supposedly) sunny Nelson in a long day of travel (though not so long compared with the Adelaide-Toowoomba leg!). In Christchurch I’ve mostly been on the campus of the University of Canterbury, which is very nice. I have done a bit of sightseeing around town, in particular this afternoon I visited the Museum which was excellent. I also went up north to the Waipara Valley for some wine tasting.
Missing from my blogging is Brisbane, not that I didn’t enjoy it there, it’s just that I didn’t have email access (there must be an internet cafe somewhere but I didn’t find it). I’ll save writing about Brisbane now until I can get my photos up. Short version – more bats and lizards (or water dragons to be a bit more precise).

Release the Bats!

On arrival at the Japanese garden at the USQ campus in Toowoomba there were a huge number of bats flying overhead (I suspect the schoolkids nearby might have had something to do with it.) The photos below don’t really capture it properly, I’ve never seen so many bats at night, and this was in broad daylight.

Dalby

In Toowoomba I’m staying with my friends Taka & Megan. Next year Taka will start a job in Dalby so we went over there today to check it out and saw some of the local wildlife along the banks of Myall Creek (I’ve noticed that most of the things they call “creek” around here are bigger than what we call a river in SA, but then again, they did have a lot of rain recently).

Thanks to Taka for the photos.

Toowoomba

I’m on the road, first stop Toowoomba (unless you count brief stops at Blanchetown, Renmark, Mildura, Balranald, Neranderra, Parkes, Narrabri and Goondiwindi along the way). My second visit to Queensland, but given that the first was about 25 years ago I don’t remember it so well. Plenty more travelling to go in the next few weeks, I’ll post about it when I can.

Chaos, Solitons and Fractals

John Baez has an excellent post on the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. In particular he is interested in the curious fact that one of the editors has had an amazing 322 papers published in the journal. On closer examination Baez suggests that a number of these papers are essentially numerology hiding behind a bit of genuine maths and physics. Anyone with an interest in maths &/or physics should follow the link to read the details, but it is also of more general interest for anyone who has followed the controversy over the big scientific publishers, particularly the much criticised Elsevier.

Baez writes

Now, I get crud like this in my email every day.  I delete it without comment.  What makes this case different is that El Naschie gets to publish these papers in a superficially respectable journal that he actually edits.

The fact that Elsevier would let Naschie edit this journal and publish large numbers of papers like this in it shows that their system for monitoring the quality of their journals is broken.

The fact that this journal costs $4520 per year would be hilarious, except that libraries are actually buying it — at a reduced rate, bundled in with other Elsevier journals, but still!

It is worth following the long comments thread at the n-Category Café as various readers find unusual things in Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, including two near identical papers, a number of sockpuppets come to El Naschie’s defence, and readers puzzle over the details of his background and current affiliation. No doubt there is more to this story which is still to emerge.

See also Backreaction, The Quantum Pontiff and Ars Technica.

[gigs] One more chance to see Pimmon

Tonight Pimmon played a great set of abstract electronics at the Big Star Basement. That’s him below, with support Mourgos Grund second.

Pimmon plays again tomorrow at De La Catessen (just off Waymouth St near FAD) together with Richard Francis (NZ) plus locals Scott O’Hara & Kynan Lawlor, and Daniel Varicchio. Highly recommended.

In other gig news, the 2009 Womadelaide lineup has been annouced. Looks good for Afrobeat fans with both Tony Allen and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80. I don’t know too much else there but it’s always a good event (even when it’s in the middle of a ridiculous March heatwave as it was this year).
Unfortunately The Bug & Warrior Queen won’t be making it to Adelaide on their upcoming tour, they’re only playing Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The Melbourne show is on Jan 25, so an Aus day long weekend could be on the cards for fans from Adelaide though.

The Bug & Warrior Queen – Poison Dart

[youtube -aW7NFSGklM]

Also missing Adelaide is Dubstep producer Plastician who is only playing Sydney & Melbourne in mid December (he’s actually playing more NZ dates than Aus ones).
In February El-P is touring. No word yet on whether any other Def Jux artists will be joining him or if there’ll be an Adelaide show, all I know so far is Feb 26 at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne.
NOVEMBER

  • 24th – Pimmon, Richard Francis, Scott O’Hara & Kynan Lawlor, Daniel Varicchio at De La Catessen
  • 26th – Richard Francis at the Exeter Dining Room.
  • 28th – For anyone else who was impressed by God God Dammit Dammit supporting Ikochi at Urtext the other night, you can catch them again at the Ed Castle next weekend.

DECEMBER

  • 5th – Clockcleaner, Naked on the Vague, Hit the Jackpot, Swords, The Fkn Tutts at the Big Star Basement.
  • 7th – Mountain Goats with Hit the Jackpot at Fowlers.
  • 12th – No Through Road and Leader Cheetah at the Ed Castle.
  • 28th – Summer Break Festival at Bonython Park, acts include Benga, Skream and Public Enemy.

JANUARY

  • 9-10th All Tomorrow’s Parties at Mt Buller with the best damn lineup of any festival that Australia has seen, including Laughing Clowns, Saints, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Harmonia, M. Gira, The Necks, Robert Forster, Silver Apples, Spiritualized, The Dirty Three (playing Ocean Songs), Bill Callahan and many more.
  • 14th – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Thebarton Theatre.
  • 19th Cinematic Orchestra at Her Majesty’s Theatre.
  • 26th – Leonard Cohen with Paul Kelley & Augie March at Leconfield Coonawarra Winery & Vineyards.
  • 30th Big Day Out, at Wayville Showgrounds, with Neil Young, Arctic Monkeys, The Living End, The Prodigy, Sneaky Sound System, My Morning Jacket, Pendulum, Bullet for My Valentine, TV on the Radio, Simian Mobile Disco, The Ting Tings, Tiki Taane, Cut Copy, Cog, Birds of Tokyo, TZU, Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

FEBRUARY

  • 7th Laneway Festival. Stereolab, Daedelus, Fourtet, Pivot and many more. Lineup here.
  • 17th Chick Corea and John McLaughlin at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

MARCH

  • 6-8th Womadelaide.

On the Stereo

  • Ninetynine – Silo EP cdep (no label)
  • Ninetynine – 767 cd (Chapter / Endearing)
  • Sea Scouts – Beacon of Hope cd (Unstable Ape)
  • Land What Land – s/t cd (omiimii)
  • Josephine Foster – This Coming Gladness cd (Bo’Weavil)
  • Shirley Collins & Davy Graham – Folk Roots, New Routes cd (Fledg’ling)
  • John Fahey – Red Cross cd (Revenant)
  • Pivot – O Soundtrack My Heart cd (Warp)
  • Passage – The Forcefield Kids 2LP (Anticon)
  • Soundmurderer & SK-1 – s/t 2LP (Rewind)

John Howard on Fox News

Woke up this morning to hear ABC radio playing an interview John Howard did on Fox News. Can’t find a link for it right now (Update: footage and commentary at Larvatus Prodeo), but the gist of it was that we shouldn’t respond to the current financial crisis by putting constraints on capitalism because it was caused by government regulation in the first place. Sounds like he’s pushing the CRA talking-point – i.e. the attempt by market fundamentalists to cope with current events by blaiming it all on the Community Reinvestment Act. There is a great analysis of why this is a load of rubbish by Daniel Gross at Slate, who sums it up with

Lending money to poor people doesn’t make you poor. Lending money poorly to rich people does.

He also links to this post about it by Barry L. Ritholtz at The Big Picture which is well worth reading

There are too many people who are trying to duck responsibility for the current mess, and seeking to place blame elsewhere. I find this to be terribly important, as we seek to repair the damage amidst an economic crisis. Rather than objectively evaluate the present crisis in an attempt to craft an appropriate response, the partisan hacks are trying to obscure the causes of the current situation. Like burglars trying to destroy the surveillance tape, they are all too aware of their role in the present debacle.

Shame on them for their foolishness or cowardice.

So where is John Howard getting these ideas from? Perhaps this quote from the Slate article can tell us

These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and ignore the rest of the paper—economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice.

Not the first time I’ve heard something like this about the WSJ. This is what Tim Lambert at Deltoid had to say about them after knocking down one of their regular pieces of stupidity on global warming

Why does the Wall Street Journal combine superb news coverage with absurd nonsense on its editorial pages? My theory is that the editorial pages are just p0rn for right wingers. The readers need accurate information on the news pages for business decisions, but the editorial pages aren’t used that way, so are filled with fantasies to make the readers feel good.

They’re also into the DDT myth and denialism over the “Lancet Study”.

Pimmon to play in Adelaide

Just a quick update on upcoming gigs. Sydney electronic artist Pimmon is playing a couple of shows this month. On the 23rd of November he’s at the Exeter Big Star records (6pm, $5, all ages), and on the 24th he’ll be at Gallery De La Catessen. The second show is with Richard Francis from NZ, who also plays at the Exeter on the 26th.

Apparently Pimmon shows are pretty rare (I’ve never seen him before despite being interested in his music for many years).

You can read an interview with him here, or listen to some music on his myspace page.