Author Archives: Stu

The Now Show

The Now Show is back on, in fact it has been for a while but I only just noticed. It’s a BBC radio comedy that looks at current affairs, I highly recommend it. The latest episode is available to listen to on the website. This week’s episode includes Marcus Brigstocke’s comments on the Ofcom response to the complaint against The Great Global Warming Swindle. The first time I listened to the Now Show was for Brigstocke’s comments on TGGWS when it originally aired, and also on the film maker’s charming emails. Of course this is also a good time to remember the weirdness of the ABC’s forum on the program being hijacked by the CEC to push their conspiracy theories as can be seen on You Tube

The Earth is being invaded … again

Tonight I watched Dr Who for the first time in a few weeks. The return of Martha was interesting, nice to see some more aliens brought back from the old series (though didn’t the Sontarans used to be bigger?) and the clone in the green goo was done well … but is it just me or are all of the alien invasion episodes getting a bit samey?

Also they backed themselves into a corner a bit by having these massive plots involving the whole world in danger pretty early on in the new series so they are stuck with nowhere to go if they want to up the ante. It seems to be that in the old series quite often these alien invasion plots were thwarted before anyone much had a chance to notice, except perhaps in one particular location, but in the new series every one seems to bring yet another global emergency – after numerous incidents like this it begins to lose it’s impact a bit.

Published by , in TV.

Le Tour comes to an end for another year

Tonight is the last stage in this year’s Tour de France. Unfortunately Cadel Evans was not able to get back into the yellow jersey yesterday, so barring any unfortunate accidents the winner will be Spain’s Carlos Sastre. There is obviously a lot of disappointment here in Australia over Cadel not winning, but it’s fair to say that it is a well deserved win for Sastre. His team, CSC, have been well ahead of the others. Some people are lamenting that Silence-Lotto were not able to provide better support for Evans, but it is really that CSC were the odd one out in being so good. Many other riders who will finish near the top of the GC like Menchov and Vandevelde were also largely on their own. It wasn’t just that CSC had just a great group of riders, but they played it perfectly as far as tactics go. They really showed the extent to which it is a team sport, and brought back memories of Team Discovery Channel supporting Lance Armstrong.

I’ve seen a few comments around the place, which I also saw when Evans went into the last stage in second place last year, to the effect that Evans should forget about tradition and race for the win. While it is something of a tradition to take it easy on the last day, as the riders celebrate just making it to the end (and make sure that they do indeed get all the way to the end), it is not as if he is giving up a chance to win just to be polite. In reality there is no real opportunity to succeed in a breakaway on a flat stage if there is a team that doesn’t want you to. There is no way CSC would let Evans get anywhere off the front.

The TV coverage has just started up so time to enjoy the great views as the tour moves into Paris.

[gigs]

A couple of interesting additions to the gig guide this week. On Wednesday night The Sea Thieves play in the Big Star.

Also in a couple of weeks one of the big names in dubstep, Loefah, plays at the Rhino Room – and it’s Free!

JULY

  • 30th The Sea Thieves in the Big Star basement.
  • 31st The Breeders at Fowlers.

AUGUST

  • 4th Devo at Thebby Theatre.
  • 6th Robert Forster at the Gov.
  • 7th Loefah at Rhino Room.
  • 9th There is a performance of the Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaboration Sketches of Spain at Elder Hall, Adelaide Uni.
  • 15th Ed Kuepper & the Kowalski Collective at the Gov
  • 31st Dave Graney and Henry Wagons at the Ed Castle.

SEPTEMBER

  • 6th Holly Throsby at Jive.
  • 27th Parklife Festival with Diplo, Dizzee Rascal, Blackalicious and lots more.
  • 29th Black Francis at HQ.

OCTOBER

  • 10th The New Pornographers at the Gov.

On the Stereo

  • Swans – Public Castration is a Good Idea cd (Thirsty Ear)
  • Ben Frost – Theory of Machines cd (Bedroom Community)
  • Various – Maryanne Hobbs: Evangeline cd (Planet Mu)
  • Flying Lotus – Los Angeles cd (Warp)
  • Stereolab – Peng! cd (Too Pure)
  • The Breeders – Live in Stockholm cd (Breeders Digest)
  • Ninetynine – The Process cd (Unstable Ape)
  • Guy Blackman – Adult Baby cd (Unstable Ape)
  • Underground Lovers – Rushall Station cd (Mainstream)
  • Smog – A River Ain’t Too Much to Love cd (Drag City)

[gigs] Ed Kuepper returns to Adelaide

A couple of new announcements today, Ed Kuepper is finally coming to Adelaide for his first full show since releasing the brilliant Jean Lee & The Yellow Dog. He’ll be bringing the Kowalski Collective (Jeffrey Wegener & Peter Oxley) with him as well. Kuepper has just finished a tour of Europe supporting Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Even though he hasn’t been to Adelaide for a while I did catch him in Sydney at the end of last year and in Melbourne for the Don’t Look Back series, and I can’t recommend this highly enough, don’t miss out.

Also only just announced, the New Pornographers are going to play at the Gov in October.

JULY

  • 9th Baseball, Snowman and Hit the Jackpot at Jive.
  • 11th Hit the Jackpot launch their new cd at the Jade Monkey with Skeletons, Les Goolies and Shame Spiral.
  • 20th The Sea Thieves play with Mr Wednesday at the Grace Emily.
  • 31st The Breeders at Fowlers.

AUGUST

  • 4th Devo at Thebby Theatre.
  • 6th Robert Forster at the Gov.
  • 15th Ed Kuepper & the Kowalski Collective at the Gov

SEPTEMBER

  • 6th Holly Throsby at Jive.
  • 27th Parklife Festival with Diplo, Dizzee Rascal, Blackalicious and lots more.

OCTOBER

  • 10th The New Pornographers at the Gov.

On the Stereo

  • Ed Kuepper & the Kowalski Collective – Jean Lee & the Yellow Dog 2cd (Hot)
  • JPS Experience – Precious 7″ (Flying Nun)
  • Davy Graham – Folk, Blues & Beyond cd (Fledg’ling)
  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! cd (Mute)
  • Blectum from Blechdom – The Messy Jesse Fiesta cd (Deluxe)
  • Blevin Blectum – Talon Slalom cd (Deluxe)
  • Plaid – P-Brane EP (Warp)
  • Various – Box of Dub 3LP (Soul Jazz)
  • Kode 9 and the Spaceape – Dubstep Allstars Vol.3 cd (Tempa)
  • MF Doom – mm… Food cd (Rhymesayers)

[gigs]

JULY

  • 5th Rafael Toral at the Jade Monkey
  • 9th Baseball, Snowman and Hit the Jackpot at Jive.
  • 11th Hit the Jackpot launch their new cd at the Jade Monkey with Skeletons, Les Goolies and Shame Spiral.
  • 20th The Sea Thieves play with Mr Wednesday at the Grace Emily.
  • 31st The Breeders at Fowlers.

AUGUST

  • 4th Devo at Thebby Theatre.
  • 6th Robert Forster at the Gov.

On the Stereo

  • Silver Jews – Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea cd (Spunk / Drag City)
  • Sun Ra – Lanquidity cd (Evidence)
  • Ornette Coleman – New York is Now cd (Blue Note)
  • John Coltrane – Olé Coltrane cd (Atlantic)
  • Albert Ayler – Spiritual Unity cd (ESP)
  • Vandermark 5 – Acoustic Machine cd (Atavistic)
  • Various – An England Story 2cd (Soul Jazz)
  • Nurse With Wound – Homotopy to Marie cd (United Jnana)
  • Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band – 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons cd (Constellation)
  • Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden cd

Can our airports cope?

Yesterday in the Oz: Airport Overload as passenger numbers set to double.

I was quite surprised at this, particularly in the context of the week’s other airport related news –
there have been instances of airlines cutting back services, and talk of discount airlines going bust, if fuel prices stay high. For anyone familiar with peak oil then the expectation is that fuel prices will be getting quite a bit higher yet and we won’t be seeing big increases in air passengers. On top of this, if serious steps are made to deal with global warming then we can expect it to raise the price of flights as well to reflect their true to cost in terms of environmental impact.

I found the report referred to in the article here, and see that they do take these factors into account in Chapter 5 – Sensitivity Analysis. Here they consider two scenarios as alternatives to their main forecast, one with cheaper flights and one with more expensive flights, and find that the effect on the overall passenger numbers is not huge. This is, admittedly, not my area of expertise but I do have some problems with it. The “peak oil” scenario has a 50% increase in fuel price. This seems very conservative for a peak oil scenario, particularly in the light of recent trends in the oil price. It appears that this scenario involves only changing the cost of airfares in the model. Other effects, as we have seen this week, are that airlines may cut back the number of flights as some become uneconomical. Also, especially in Australia, there are not that many players involved. If some go bust, then the lack of competition has further effects on prices beyond simply the price of oil. Perhaps even more importantly, under a peak oil scenario it is not just the cost of flights that is effected. The cost of pretty much everything goes up. When, as is already starting to happen now, people have to use up more of their income on things like travelling to work, and food, then it can be expected that they have less to spend on luxuries like flights.

So basically, I have no problem with the model predicting a response to a 50% increase in airfare but I think that the future is rather more uncertain than that.
On a related note, check out ABARE’s encounter with Senator Christine Milne in Senate Estimates recently. Make sure you read the linked transcript, it is quite an eye-opener. Their “peak oil scenario” is that it might happen in 30 years and will have no effect on oil prices in the near future.