Dylan Ratigan and Steven Hawkin...phew!

That was a close....I flicked on MSNBC trying to catch up on a bit of news, and instead got blasted by Dylan Ratigan (the MSNBC Glen Beck wannabe) using confusing (and poor) analogies about banks and government bail outs. Anyhoo, so I was about to switch off and continue contemplating my naval when Rati shouted something about next up being Stephen Hawking warning about alien contact.

There was more than the usual hint of smug in his voice and so for a moment I thought it meant that I'd be witnessing the ignominy of Ratigan loudly debasing professor Hawking, unarguably one of humanity's greatest ever minds. I guess should’ve switched off then and there, my brain police were screaming at me to 'move along now, there’s nothing to see or learn here sir'. But, it was too late, my masochistic curiosity had been piqued; how would Rati's psuedo-intellect go about defaming a real thinker?

Alas, there was no need to worry, someone on the show had advised him not to question the professor, but simply pass on his observations.

The kafuffle was over an opinion the prof had offered in a new (Discovery Channel) show of his called Into The Universe. Apparently he'd suggested that it may not be the wisest thing for humanity to try and make contact with other intelligent alien civilizations, concluding that any we made contact with were likely to be nomadic and looking to colonize a planet. Therefore it was probably best to keep quiet in the first place.

Dylan played it safe by displaying a little of the skepticism of science that is expected of all God fearing Americans. He scoffed slightly as he pointed out the shocking findings of a formula called The Drake Equation, which scientists use to work out the probability of the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way...numbers were crunched and the formula spewed out the likely number of intelligent societies as...drum roll...wait for it...10,000!

Dylan's reaction was no different to the rest of the US media who found themselves caught between a number of contradictions. Sensitive to the fact that we don't live in the 1950s anymore, they were unsure whether to laugh off the suggestion of there being other intelligent life out there or, scoff at the professor for inferring that the US military couldn't handle them if they did exist.

It's a different world today and humankind has moved on, and there's something scary about Professor Hawking speaking matter-of-factly about the existence of aliens. Furthermore he wasn't on about friendly ET types, but the nasty Mars Attacks/War of the Worlds type.

Ten fucking thousand and that’s just in our little galaxy!

Academic's butt hole stuns Bogotá...years ago

Today I watched a Sundance documentary about Bogotá, famous for Pablo , cocaine, coffee and beautiful coffee colored women on coke. Anyway, the film follows Bogotá's transformation by an unlikely force - a politician.

Back in the mid-90s philosopher mathematician Antanas Mockus was the little known and less liked vice-chancellor of the Colombian National University in Bogotá. Antanas had been minding his own business doing the stuff that unpopular chancellors did when he was confronted by an angry mob of students fed up with his too clever by half, mathy, philosophicy ways. Unable to defend himself with fancy long words as someone had taken his microphone away, Antanas did what any cornered academic would...he mooned. Or, more specifically he turned around, dropped his pants, bent over, and very deliberately spread his cheeks flashing his arse to a stunned auditorium. Hours later the evening news had begun broadcasting his butt hole to a wider audience and within a matter of days the entire population of Columbia had become acquainted with his sphincter.

His bosses at the university weren't best pleased with his actions and despite protestations from his mother (whom Antanas still lived with) forced him to resign as vice chancellor.

So, without money, a job, or much prospect of finding one, the man notorious for flashing his butt at a bunch of students decided to run for election as Mayor of Bogotá and launched his campaign from the small apartment he shared with his mum. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the fair and open-minded people of Bogotá chose to give poor Antanas a second chance and consequently elected him to office.

Early 90s Bogotá was a place consumed with violence. Controlled by crooked cops and politicians on the take, the city had become grid locked with corruption, but Antanas had other ideas.

First, he took on the culture of violence head on by convincing people that it was better to be a ‘carrot’ than a coke baron, which makes complete sense to me. Then, he moved against the city’s traffic congestion by handing out ‘thumbs up’ J stickers to drivers that yielded at traffic lights, and ‘thumbs down’ L stickers to those that didn’t. Sure, some would say that Antanas was struggling to shake the teacher in him, but who wouldn’t want to have a thumbs up sticker, eh?

Next, in the flowery firing line were Bogotá’s traffic police who were renowned for taking on the spot bribes. Mayor Antanas approached the city council with an ingenious plan, he would fire the lot of them, and naturally only re-hire those who’d agree to enroll in mime classes….yes, mime classes….mime, as in that form of painted face entertainment considered by most to be even duller than clowning, and thought to have only one performer that French bloke (the late) Marcel Marceau. Still, Bogata’s council members could see its brilliance and wasted no time voting the Mayor’s plan into law.

Most cops simply couldn’t face explaining to their wives that the bribe money had dried up, and that they’d getting home later than usual because of night school. After years on the take in one of the toughest urban environments on earth their badass gun wielding husbands were gonna enroll at school to learn how to mime around make belief sheets of glass. Of course, with the vast majority of the force refusing to go along with the Mayor’s demands, Bogotá was left with no traffic department.

Now, most industrial cities would be brought to its knees if its entire traffic department quit, but the core of Mayor Antanas’ plan was to replace the fired cops with professional mime artists. Immediately the media and the people saw the simple genius of the plan - professional mime artists needed no training, so they were a silent force ready to roll. What’s more, the fact they needed no training meant the city would save shit loads of cash too.

Within days the new and newly trained old police were at work on the mean streets of Bogotá pretending to sit on seats that weren’t there.

Mayor Antanas had managed to transform Bogotá from a vibrant, dangerously exciting city full of life and death to a bourgeois academic’s idyll of quiet streets policed by silent mimes, with fucking loads of clean parks, and silent libraries full of books about pottery, civil engineering and Ghandi, and it all started with some do-gooder math teacher flashing his shitty crack…..unbelievable, but TRUE!

and here's Antanarse...


Filmed by Andreas Møl Dalsgaard Bogotá is part of The Danish Film Institute's Cities On Speed series.

Yeah well I'm back now....

So, I admit that was a long sabbatical, but after all the excitement of the election I felt I needed a rest, but I tell you 18 months of keeping schtum is plenty long enough, and it’s time to get that great big gob of mine yabbin' agin'.

Of course a lot has changed over the last 18 months or so...

and I’ll get into the meat and two veg of it over the coming weeks, and months. But, I thought I'd briefly touch on a couple of things I’ve found pretty dissapointing.

First, is the ‘win at all costs’ culture that's poisoned the Democratic Party, and what’s left of its base. Democrats seem to think that getting elected is what's important, and have forgotten what it is we’re supposed to do once that happens. Honestly, I feel like I was duped into helping elect fucking George 'H' Bush Mark II become president.

There’s a Pant’s diary I wrote a couple of days after BO’s election, which just about said it all for me. I’d become concerned over (then) Senator Obama’s vote on HR6304 (FISA) and I was reminded of the let down I felt after the Blair election 12 years earlier, the diary was to serve as a gentle warning that if something looked, smelt, and tasted like republican policy in all likelihood it was republican policy. The rah-rah-O-ba-ma brigade over at The Daily Kos took great umbrage at someone daring to suggest there may be similarities between the two, but I wonder how they feel today?

Second, is fucking Twitter, did we really need more stupid invading our consciousness? Don't we get enough of the inane ramblings of our fellow man? I mean do we really need to know what the fuck some idiot says they were doing five minutes before?

Twitter appeals to our very worst traits, and has given birth to a whole army of people who believe the rest of humanity will be better off for knowing what they’re doing. It appeals to the over inflated egos of everyone from frustrated housewives to their soap star politicians, all doing their best to fill that endless void of virtual space with snippets of themselves and their pointless existence.

I guess the launch of Myspace did something similar when it inspired anything with a heartbeat to form rock bands. It was as if users were in a fierce competition to form the most meaningless rock band in history. Now, Twitter is doing the same for….I really don’t know.

Perhaps the single most unpalatable moment for the burgeoning Twitter was during the very real, and now very forgotten Iranian people’s opposition to their election results. The world was forced to bear witness to a nation's dream of freedom being snuffed out 140 characters at a time.

Twitter acted as virtually the only media outlet for the opposition. But, within hours any genuine information from the ground was being drowned out by a chorus of disinformation perpetuated by Iranian government and advice on organizing urban revolts offered up by US based TWATs (I hope I have the correct term for Twitter users!) sat in their comfortable armchairs and reading from their copies of the Chuck Norris Xmas '92 Survival Handbook.