Three things in my lifetime

The (really remarkable) Leila pinged me on this. As well as Mark and Sutha and since it’s been spreading. I’m a day late but here it goes.

What are the three things I would like to see happen in my life?:

  1. A global government body that is respected, effective, and accountable. Not to mention recent wars and invasions, I think a lot challenge with sustainability and negative side effects globalization can be traced to a failure of international law and governance. It’s too easy for anyone to foist one’s externalities on to other peoples. There’s a point in here too about the inevitably declining relevance of the nation state, and the rise of extra-nationalist tribe, whether they be corporate, eastern standard, or ideological. But I don’t know the answer to that yet. A global public sector that both enabled and held accountable these groups might be a good start though.

    (as an aside, I remember feeling it strange that I was ineligible to vote in the last American presidential election. As a Canadian – and global citizen, clearly I had a stake in the voting outcome of, arguably, the highest office in the world. Heck, for some odd reason, even the Iraqi’s weren’t offered any electoral college votes…)

  2. Cures for cancer. The truth is we are getting closer. I’m even young enough that, with luck, should they found the right cures just in time and in the right order, my generation could theoretically live almost indefinitely. Perhaps even long enough to see number 1 come true.
  3. Communication at the speed of thought. This one’s more selfish. As a past sufferer of repetitive strain injury I can’t help but wish for a better way to communicate with my machine than these tired arms. To jack in as it were. Sadly though there are enough very good bio/neurological reasons to make this scenario sufficiently unlikely. But think what we could do with it?

Okay, it’s my turn, I’m going to ping Francesca who is in Johannesburg today, Tara who tells me she is starting a church (!), and what the heck, the inimitable Scoble (who I hope might remember me from lift06?) to see if we can draw in a broader audience to this meme.

I believe
they all
will have
something interesting to add.

Tag! you’re it.

Posted in Archive, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The best new music you won’t hear on the radio

I wrote earlier about distribution being King when it comes to media. So here is my attempt, quixotic though it may be to try and see what one little blog can try and do to stem the tide against the dreadfulness of mainstream music. Here it is, my compilation of the best damn rockandroll songs of the year so far.

Background: Back in January, as every year, I put together my annual best of the year in indie music list. However, rather than distribute by CD I thought this year I just post the mix as one big file to this then nacent website and send out the “secret link” to a dozen or so close friends… Well, surprised be me, checking on my web stats the other day I noticed that file has now been downloaded over 500 times. Damn, maybe there’s hope. So I resolved from now on, every time a make a compilation (every few month or so), I’ll post it up as a podcast format and publish the link on my site. (ps if you want a link to the bestof05 collection just send me an email)

Okay, here is the track listing if you are trying to follow along. (I’ll also post this to a separate page on my site later for safekeeping)

Artist Song Time Available
Joel Plaskett A Million Dollars 0:00
Saturday Looks Good To Me Disaster 3:30
Mates Of State Punchlines 7:00
Love Is All Make Out Fall Out Make Up 10:45
Islands Rough Gem 13:30
Band Of Horses The Funeral 17:00
Amy Millan Bruised Ghosts 22:15 ACstore
Neko Case A Widow’s Toast 24:15
Cat Power The Greatest 25:45
Howe Gelb But I Did Not 29:00
Final Fantasy This lamb sells condos 33:15
Meligrove Band Our Love Will Make The World Go Round 37:45

(and I know, there’s probably a few important bands I’ve missed, they’ll just have to catch up in the summer mix)

Link to the podcast (in itunes click Advanced–>”subscribe to podcast” then paste in this url): https://www.thomaspurves.com/music/feed.xml

Or if you’d rather go low-tech download the mix as one big mp3 file and burn it to CD or something.

enjoy!

[note many of these songs are available (and I bought from) eMusic. recommended]

Posted in Archive, music, podcast, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Democamp 5.0

Bryce and chris democamp50

Attended democamp number 5 last night. Another great event that somehow put itself together last (kudos to camp councelor David and and all those who helped out). Wow, some impressive technology demo’d last night including blogmatrix and DableDB. Even with democamps running every 4 weeks, this town is not running out of technology to show off.

more photos here. None of me though so far 🙁 guess I’m not as photogenic as these characters. (Bryce and Chris Nolan btw)

Posted in Archive, Uncategorized | 1 Comment