Welcome to the monkey house

Soros' point of view

2009-04-18T15:41:00.004+01:00

Recently, I got accross through a friend a very interesting article from George Soros' webpage. It deals with the causes of the financial crisis. Here I present some extracts from it together with some comments.

The article is very interesting and touches to start with with the reason for the crisis that we have all heard already:

"The misconception is derived from the prevailing theory of financial markets, which, as mentioned earlier, holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations are random and can be attributed to external causes. This theory has been used to justify the belief that the pursuit of self-interest should be given free rein and markets should be deregulated. I call that belief market fundamentalism and claim that it employs false logic. Just because regulations and all other forms of governmental interventions have proven to be faulty, it does not follow that markets are perfect."

We tend to believe that if regulators let the system be, it must be ok, but as Soros says,

"It is important to recognize that regulators base their decisions on a distorted view of reality just as much as market participants-perhaps even more so because regulators are not only human but also bureaucratic and subject to political influences"

The point I wanted to stress, though, is the effect that has had on the crisis the absolute ignorance of banks when it came to calculate the risks of some of the products they sell:

"Financial engineering involved the creation of increasingly sophisticated instruments, or derivatives, for leveraging credit and "managing" risk in order to increase potential profit. An alphabet soup of synthetic financial instruments was concocted: CDOs, CDO squareds, CDSs, ABXs, CMBXs, etc. This engineering reached such heights of complexity that the regulators could no longer calculate the risks and came to rely on the risk management models of the financial institutions themselves."

Anyone working in investment banks can tell you that the fact that regulators trusted the risk models from the banks is the real problem. Some of the risk models that banks had (have!) for credit products are a joke. You get 20-year-olds managing millions in risk they don't even understand. It all boils down, I must say, to very simplistic models in the first place (quants!). It is the need to produce new models as fast as you can that leads to innacuracies. Again, the hurry coming from the ever present greed.

About this problem of all-too-complex products, Soros says

"Sophisticated financial engineering of the kind I have mentioned can render the calculation of margin and capital requirements extremely difficult if not impossible. In order to activate such requirements, financial engineering must also be regulated and new products must be registered and approved by the appropriate authorities before they can be used."

But the problem is, in my opinion, that you can never be sure that the regulator knows what he is doing! How do we know that they understand the products. I believe there should be a limit in the leverage products can offer (leverage = potential gains vs initial investment), because the higher the leverage, the higher the inherent risk and potential damage. Actually, Soros points this out as well at the end:

"Since the risk management models used until now ignored the uncertainties inherent in reflexivity, limits on credit and leverage will have to be set substantially lower than those that were tolerated in the recent past."

Of course, that would make banks less profitable and, therefore, limit the speed to which management can get rich, which is a good thing. However, that's certainly not the panacea we are looking for, and one feels that something of a greater magnitude is necessary. A full change in the financial systems, which may be even too much to take for the leaders of our world, including Mr Obama.

The trader's point of view

2009-04-15T21:21:00.007+01:00

Following on my last post on the G20 protests, I thought it would be fair enough to give a chance to a trader's opinion on the whole economic world crisis. I had at work a very interesting conversation with some of my trader colleagues. When I asked them if they still believed that a pure, crude, free non-intervention capitalist market is the way to go they did not hesitate for a moment: yes.

I raised my eyebrow. 'Really?', I asked. They were outraged by how the governments are not only not taking more responsibility for what has happened, but also actually blaming the greed of the bankers for it. As they put it, this is a very naive way of shifting the anger of the public toward them (us, should I say).

For them, the reasons for this crisis is clear: the non-inclusion of the house prices in the inflation index, the CPI (Consumer Price Index). Let me explain: the only tool for intervention that governments have to control the markets and the overall economy are the interest rates. The interest rates are the rates that banks need to pay to borrow money from the Bank of England overnight to cover their daily mismatches. Banks borrow money from each other as well, at a rate that is slightly higher than the interest rate set by the BoE (for the added risk that banks can potentially default). Ultimately, the interest rates will determine (in a normal market) the mortgage rates citizens pay to the banks when they buy a house.

The other thing to understand is which rules does the BoE follow to change the interest rates. The main aim of the BoE is to maintain inflation under control, so prices are stable. The inflation is measured with the CPI, which is a basket of prices of several products, such as food, transport, fuel... Indeed, in the BoE website, we can read the quote The Bank sets interest rates to keep inflation low, issues banknotes and works to maintain a stable financial system.

So, in a nutshell, the BoE looks at inflation and changes rates accordingly, determining how much do we pay for our mortgages and, therefore, controlling how much money we have at the end of the month to spend in other things (clothes, food, shoes, holidays...). The less money we have, the less we spend, stopping prices from increasing. And vice versa. So if inflation increases, the BoE increases rates, and vice versa.

Now, once we understand that, does it make sense to anyone that house prices are not included in the CPI? Think about it: for years, the CPI index was under perfect control, while house prices were increasing at alarming rates (15%-20% a year for the past 5 years or so). Narrowmindedly, the BoE found no reason to increase rates because the CPI was within target, while the housing bubble was growing. Even if rates were not quite low, people found it easy to get massive mortgages, without stopping to think that they were paying stupidly high prices for their houses. Banks were happy to give money away because as long as house prices were going up, they would make a profit from reposessions as well.

And we all know the rest of the story: when the bubble burst, everybody was caught in underpants, and now the BoE rushes to lower rates (we are at 0.5% now) to get us to spend again. The point of my colleagues was that had the house prices been in the CPI calculation, inflation would have raised above target as soon as house prices would have started to go up, triggering the BoE's reaction of increasing rates much earlier and potentially stopping the housing bubble that eventually started it all in the US.

This is not to say that free capitalism is still the way to go, certainly not in my opinion. I believe that in the same sense that we have laws to control other human impulses, we should try and do our best to control greed, because it damages society ultimately. But it does tells us that most of us don't know near as much as we should before drawing hasty conclusions condemning bankers as full responsible for this situation.

I believe it is positive and legitimate to go and protest against capitalism as we know it (indeed, other socioeconomical systems are possible), but it may not be a bad idea to get out there again asking for a fair inclusion of house prices into the CPI: it is simply reasonable.

G20: put people first!

2009-03-29T16:00:00.005+01:00

Hi y'all, it's been a while.

Anyway, we were yesterday raising our voices to tell all sorts of things to the G20 heroes: climate change, financial crisis, job losses... the list was quite long actually. The point was to try to show the discontent over the whole world-wide situation. As for me, I finally found the banner that said exactly what I wanted to say:

Capitalism isn't working

If you still do not believe this, have another look. Resources are limited, put it in your head. Aiming at a 6% yearly growth is a death sentence for the planet and us eventually. Let's take it easy shall we? Start all over, and just LIVE. We are not saying that it is easy to find a better economic system, but at least there are some proposals out there already worth having a look. A good summary of the economic systems can be found here. The most innovative (and never tried!) systems include Participatory economics and or Economic democracy.

So much to say for a cloudy Saturday morning. But it's the echo that counts, let's make it resonate.

The LHC rap

2008-09-22T19:15:00.004+01:00

Now this is cool:

Physics is cool ;)

I'm cool: no you're not.

2008-09-14T23:15:00.008+01:00

What can I say, before we had hippies, punks, grunge, although it felt as if they had something else than the clothes... nowadays, everybody is full of s**t, if you pardon my French. Even when I was at uni we had a name for them, "pijipis". Fuck, I may have actually been one myself. As I see it, yougsters today are full of nothing but themselves.

The fucking truth

Might be because it's Sunday night. To those ofended, get on with it.

Quote: John Fante

2008-08-18T22:31:00.004+01:00

Oh for a Mexican girl! I used to think of her all the time, my Mexican girl. I didn't have one, but the streets were full of them, the Plaza and Chinatown were afire with them, and in my fashion they were mine, this one and that one, and some day when another cheque came it would be a fact. Meanwhile it was free and they were Aztec princessesand Mayan princesses, the peon girls in the Grand Central Market, in the Church of Our Lady, and I even went to Mass to look at them. That was sacrilegious conduct but it was better than not going to Mass at all, so that when I wrote home to Colorado to my mother I could write with truth. Dear Mother: I went to Mass last Sunday.

...

'Arturo', she said. 'Why do we fight all the time?'
I didn't know. I said something about temperaments, but she shook her head and crossed her knees, and a sense of her fine thighs being lifted lay heavily in my mind, thick suffocating sensation, warm lush desire to take them in my hands. Every move she made, the soft turn of her neck, the large breasts swelling under the smock, her fine hands upon the bed, the fingers spread out, these things disturbed me, a sweet painful heaviness dragging me into stupor. Then the sound of her voice, restrained, hinting of mockery, a voice that talked to my blood and bones.

Ask the dust, 1939

Rastafaris

2008-06-21T22:30:00.009+01:00

The Rastafari movement was born in Jamaica in 1930 when news of the crowning of Ras Tafari (Haile Selassie) as King of Ethiopia, attracted the attention of various Jamaicans who had been to some extent influenced by Marcus Garvey. Haile Selassie is known to be Jah because of his direct ascendancy to King Menelik, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and King David and because of his inherited title, King of Kings, Lord of Lord, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, which identifies him as the living Jah whose coming was foretold in the Bible, Psalm 68.4, Revelation 5:2-5, 19:16, 22:16.

Various persons connected Garvey's prophecies of the crowning of a black king who would deliver black people from their oppressors, with certain biblical passages that confirmed to them that Selassie was indeed the Messiah.

Rastafari is not dreadlocks and a joint. It is a way of life that is not dependent on feigned social freedoms. Rastafari prefers to opt instead for something less material and more meaningful-truths and rights. In other words... being in the world but not of it.

Herb, Marijuana, Collie or Ganja are considered a Sacrament to Rastafarians and is used to act as a channel to a calm and conscious temporal spirit much as Christians and Jews use red wine. Rastas believe that this use of Ganja was granted to them by the words of Jesus in the fields of Zion, "God gives man all green herbs, trees and plants bearing fruit with seeds". This he did while standing in a field of Cannabis. Genesis Book 1 verses 11,12,29. Rastas also believe that smoking Ganjas will allow them to use positive common consciousness.

The Rastafari wear dreadlocks as an expression of inner spirituality. For them, the term "dread" refers to a "fear of the Lord", expressed in part as alienation from the perceived decadence and other evils of contemporary society and a return to the Covenant with the Almighty, Jah Rastafari.

Quote: Fernando Pessoa

2008-06-21T16:04:00.003+01:00

Habíamos acabado de cenar. A mi lado, mi amigo el banquero, gran comerciante y notable estraperlista, fumaba como quien no piensa. La conversación, que había ido languideciendo, yacía muerta ante nosotros. Intenté reanimarla al tuntún, con algo que recordé de pronto. Me volví hacia él, sonriendo.

- Por cierto: hace poco alguien me dijo que en tiempos usted fue anarquista...

- Lo fui y lo soy. A ese respecto no he cambiado. Soy anarquista.

...

Por anarquismo entiendo aquella doctrina social extrema que proclama que no ha de haber entre los hombres mas diferencias o desigualdades que las puramente naturales, y que no han de pesar sobre los hombres penas y males distintos a aquellos que Naturaleza reparte...

La abolición, pues, de todas las castas, de la aristocracia, del dinero, de todas las convenciones sociales que promueven la desigualdad. La abolición, también, de todas las desigualdades sociales que se oponen a la Naturaleza: las patrias, las religiones, el matrimonio...

...

- Intenté dilucidar cuál era la primera, la más importante de las ficciones sociales. Sería esa la que debería, antes que ninguna otra, intentar subyugar, intentar reducir a la inactividad. La más importante, al menos en nuestro tiempo, es el dinero. ¿Cómo subyugar al dinero, o más precisamente, a la fuerza, la tiranía del dinero?...

...Lo más simple era apartarme de la esfera de su influencia, es decir, de la civilización; irme al campo a comer raíces y beber agua de los manantiales, andar desnudo y vivir como un animal. Pero eso, aunque no entrañase la menor dificultad, no era combatir las ficciones sociales; ni siquiera era combatir: era huir... ¿Cómo subyugar al dinero combatiéndolo?... Sólo de un modo - adquiriéndolo, adquiriéndolo en cantidad suficiente como para no sufrir su influencia; y cuanto mayor fuera la cantidad en que lo adquiriese, más libre estaría de su influencia...

O banqueiro anarquista, 1922.
Merci Raul.

Esbjorn Svensson died this weekend

2008-06-16T20:55:00.005+01:00

Yes, he died while diving, while enjoying himself... What a loss. As in many other corners of the Internet, I wanted to dedicate tonight my corner to this great man, this talented genius, that made so many lives sound much better.

We still have a gem to discover. The last work of E.S.T. will be released this year, Lencocyte. Such a shame no more will come.

To you, Esbjorn, rest in peace.

Radiohead in BCN

2008-06-15T19:40:00.012+01:00

I went with my brother Joan to Barcelona to see Radiohead in concert at Fórum (12-6-08). The event was called the DayDream festival, but to be honest it was just a mascarade to have a massive Radiohead bash: all the bands performing were even friends of the band (Liars), admired by the band (Faust, Modeselektor) or playing covers of the band (Enemc).

It was my 4rth Radiohead concert, my second one in Spain and the third one I watched with my good friend Albert. The night was promising: the sea, the weather, the people and the expectations, which never quite high enough for a band of this caliber, of this god-like stature. I was in for a dream-like ride, and oh dear I had one.

There were many highlights during the concert: the opening 15 Step, Bodysnatchers (so powerful), Airbag of course, The National Anthem as usual... Faust Arp was beautiful, with only Thom and Johnny on stage, already a favourite. If I had to choose the top 3 moments of the concert, those would be Optimistic (since I had never seen it live and absolutely love it), Videotape (in an almost completely different version from the CD, with all the members of the band involved in it) and, on the top spot, the opening of the second encore, the beautifully weird You and Whose Army?, a favourite of mine, with Johnny and Thom appearing both on the backstage screen from a cam over the piano, with Thom giving us his craziest looks.

For many reasons, I believe this was the best Radiohead concert I've been to. Never heard Thom's voice so strong, so convincing, to fragile when intended, so beautifully diverse. Joan mentioned to me surprised how they sound 'as in the CD'. Nope. They sound better. Bad bands never sound quite as in the CD. Great bands improve their recordings. Each song had a new twist, a new arrangement. Johnny would try a new riff, Thom a new voice line, Phil some new rhythm. Altogether, they owned the night and I found myself in a musical orgy, surrounded my thousands but alone with my pleasure, probably helped by Moroccan wonders. No wonder they are the best band in the world. Nobody gets even close to this.

I recorded a couple of videos during the concert. I post here two of them, quite large fragments of Pyramid song and of Paranoid Android. The track list included most of the new songs from In Rainbows (how I like Arpeggi/weird fishes and Jigsaw!), and some b-sides. They were all great. I just can't quite resist the classics. Enjoy.

Quote: Luke Rhinehart

2008-06-14T16:50:00.009+01:00

'What is the dice man, Luke?' Lil repeated. She hadn't moved since entering the room. I saw Arlene start and felt her eyes upon me as I turned back to Lil.

'The Dice man,' I said slowly, 'is an experiment in changing the personality, in destroying the personality.'

'Is interesting,' Dr Krum said.

'Go on,' Lil said.

'To destroy the single dominant personality one must be capable of developing many personalities; one must become multiple.'

'You're stalling,' Lil said. 'What is the dice man?'

'The Dice Man (...) is a creature whose actions are decided from day to day by the roll of dice, the dice choosing from among options created by the man.'

. . .

The dice in position before him, he knelt silently for two minutes and prayed. He then picked up the two dice and began shaking them gaily in the bowl of his hands.

Tremble in my hands, O Die,
As I so shake in yours.

And holding the dice above his head he intoned aloud:

'Great bleak Blocks of God, descend, quiver, create,
Into your hands I commit my soul.'

The dice fell: a one and a two - three. He was to leave his wife and children forever.

The dice man, 1971

Leuven & Freyr with Raul

2008-05-27T20:54:00.006+01:00

I'm just back from a little trip with my friend Raul, where we intended to party a lot and climb a lot as well, two things that do not combine fantasticly but that, somehow, we always manage to blend quite nicely.

It was fantastic to walk the streets of Leuven again, get lost in the middle of the afternoon, sip a beer in Giraf watching time flow and bikes pass, just feeling a bit of bitterness now that Pata Negra has been closed for good. Leuven is changing and so is everything else: so is Eva, and Tom, and Nikos and Ellen, and Toni and his brother and their Pronto, my Pronto. And so am I.

Changing or not, Leuven goes with me everywhere: a piece of Leuven will be within me forever.

Big b-day!

2008-05-02T00:05:00.003+01:00

To all those of you that spent my birthday at home with us, a big THANK YOU!! That was a party I won't forget. I can't wait to meet you all again!

Massive kisses to you all.

Too young to be old, too old to be young

2008-04-13T21:02:00.004+01:00

Yes, it's finally come. My 30th b-day. And what am I gonna do about it? Well, pretty much what everybody does: gather as many friends as I can around me and have a crazy night to remember, and celebrate that life is good (not to be taken lightly ;).

Wanna join? Love y'all, my friends.

Quote: Philip K. Dick (2)

2008-03-30T23:48:00.007+01:00

The Nexus-6. He had now come up against it. Rachael, he realized; she must be a Nexus-6. I'm seeing one of them for the first time. And they damn near did it; they came awfully damn close to undermining the Voigt-Kampff scale, the only method we have for detecting them. The Rosen Association does a good job-makes a good try, anyhow-at protecting its products.

And I have to face six more of them, he reflected. Before I'm finished.

He would earn the bounty money. Every cent.

Assuming he made it through alive.

Do androids dream of electric sheep?, 1966

I love house, too

2008-03-16T16:43:00.004Z

A bit house for the crowd:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/9024235ab1af11/

Track list:

1.- K7 - make up your mind
2.- madonna - jump
3.- svek - hold still remix
4.- rinocerose - la guitaristic house organisation
5.- bare essentials - weekenderstyle
6.- buddha bar - the novel sound
7.- svek - gamla stan
8.- blue six - music and wine

enjoy!

la iaia

2008-03-16T12:13:00.003Z

Aquest és el meu petit homenatge a la meva iaia Remei, que morí a Barcelona el passat 11 de marc. No hi ha hagut mai iaia tan riallera, llesta, aguda i amb tant sentit de l´humor. Tan moderna, tan estimada, tan gran persona. Han estat tants estius, tants Nadals, tantes tardes... T´he estimat de debó, sempre viuràs en mi.

I love techno

2008-03-09T22:46:00.004Z

This is a little mix I assembled with my beloved Hercules MK2 console, my favorite toy:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/8700733fb43912/

Track list:

1.- tiga - you gonna want me
2.- john dahlback - it feels so good
3.- random factor - after the tone
4.- royksopp - what else is there (trentemoller remix)
5.- mike ink - rose
6.- oxia - domino
7.- leger & lake - aqualight
8.- mateo murphy - crockett's theme
9.- ellen alien - blaue iwen

hope u enjoy it.

El debatillo democratiquillo

2008-02-25T23:09:00.015Z

Zapatero flojo. Sí, flojo, siempre parece que se va a quedar sin palabras. Pero es que el PP, con Rajoy o sin él, me sigue dando tanto miedo como hace 4 años... O casi más, porque Aznar era más facha, pero Rajoy más tonto...

Por eso, y porque es de cajón, votaré catalán, como voto siempre que me desencanto. Al menos para mí es fácil. Cuanto mayor me hago más me doy cuenta de que o nos entendemos y nos damos cuenta de que este país cagón esta lleno de naciones, o aquí no quedará de pie ni el apuntador, porque para chulo un español.

Duran i Lleida, ajuda´ns i escombra cap a casa. Visca Catalunya i l'Espanya federal.

Photo store: and you thought you had a bad haircut...

2008-02-25T22:15:00.003Z

Have a look at Baby Huey:

Music store: Oi va voi

2008-02-02T10:32:00.000Z

This British band is another member of the breed of bands that blend music, in the deepest sense of the word. Those that live comfortably in the border of styles and cultures. In this case, Yiddish music is assembled to pop-rock-electronic music to obtain a surprisingly positive and uplifting result and, in the process, the most advanced expression of klezmer music today. Their music is an rich wrap of traditional sounds (lots of violin, clarinet, old men hebrew voices...) around a modern layer of contemporary sounds (great bass and electronics). At times you seem to be in an Armenian wedding and then you are transported to a London club. And it works.

Oi va voi have three studio albums, and all of them worth a listen. Probably, their best known song is Refugee, a gripping and tearing song about forced emigration. Not to miss either is the instrumental 7 brothers, a perfect example of what these guys are about. And they are meant to be great life, too. Give them a try!

This is the video for the song Yesterday's mistakes, from their second album. Enjoy.

Quote: Arthur C. Clarke

2008-02-02T09:29:00.000Z

The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer, the brain and nervous system of the ship.

Hal (for Heuristic programmed ALgorithmic computer, no less) was a masterwork of the third computer breakthrough. These seemed to occur at intervals of twenty years, and the thought that another one was now imminent already worried a great many people...

Whether HAL could actually think was a question which had been settled by the British mathematician Alan Turing back in the 1940s. Turing had pointed out that, if one could carry out a prolonged conversation with a machine - whether by typewriter or microphone was immaterial - without being able to distinguish between its replies and those by a man might give, then the machine was thinking, by any sensible definition of the word. Hal could pass the Turing test with ease...

And then, if there was no reply from Earth, HAL would take what measures he deemed necessary to safeguard the hsip and to continue the mission - whose real purpose he alone knew, and which his human colleagues could never have guessed.

Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

Music store: The Dears

2008-01-27T14:16:00.000Z

Ewa and me saw this band in London, on the South Bank Center, in a events that commemorated the 10th anniversary of some discographyic company. The Dears were not even the headliners (Midlake were, that was the day I discovered them; check the music store archive to read about them). I learnt about their existence through Radiohead... yes, yet again. Tom Yorke gathered a list of his favorite songs from 2007, and among them was a song from The Dears. I downloaded the songs, thinking (quite rightly, I must say) that if I like A and A likes B, I will like B as well. And how right I was.

I remember that the guy presenting them complained about the critics, which would define The Dears as bad copies of a whole list of other well-known bands, and he argued that critics that can only describe a band by comparing them to others should get out of the way and do something else. He had a point really. It is true that you cannot avoid hearing influences in their music (Radiohead themselves, The Smiths, Doves...), but it's unfair not to acknowledge the arrogance and lack of fear of these guys when it comes to music: the use of a myriad of instruments, the musical landscapes, the way they can express all sorts of feelings with their songs... they have been defined at times as pretentious. I don't get why. Some of their songs are indeed grandiloquent, but they work. Hell they do. This is, to conclude, very good pop rock. Some of the best around. Together with Arcade Fire, these guys have placed Montreal in the musical maps. Big time.

With songs such as Find the way to our Freedom, Expect the worst 'cos she's a Tourist, Hate then Love, I feel deep, Never destroy Us, No hope before Destruction... this band has all the tickets to become either a cult band or a mass success... not sure what would be better. I just happen to be very happy to have discovered them.

Here's the video to the melancholic You and I are a Gang of Losers:

Quote: Philip K. Dick

2008-01-21T20:00:00.000Z

Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening to everybody he knew, decided finally to off himself. There was no problem, in the circles where he hung out, in putting an end to yourself: you just bought into a large quantity of reds and took them with some cheap wine, late at night, with the phone off the hook so no one would interrupt you...

At the last moment (as end time closed in on him) he changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to drink the reds down with a connoisseur wine... so he set off on one last drive and bought a bottle of 1971 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon...

Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few glasses of it... tried to think of something meaningful but could not... and then, with a glass of the Cavernet Sauvignon, gulped down all the reds at once.

After that, the deed being done, he lay back... and waited. However, he had been burned. The capsules were not barbiturates, as represented. They were some kind of kinky psychedelics, of a type he had never dropped before, probably a misture, and new on the market. Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate. Well, he thought philosophically, this is the story of my life. Always ripped off. He had to face the fact - considering how many of the capsules he had swallowed - that he was in for some trip.

The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed looking down at him disapprovingly... "You're going to read me my sins", Charles Freck said. The creature nodded and unsealed the scroll. Freck said, lying helpless on his bed, "and it's going to take a hundred thousand hours." Fixing its many compound eyes on him, the creature from between dimensions said, "...Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end."...

Ten thousand years later they had reached the sixth grade. The year he had discovered masturbation. He shut his eyes, but the could still see the multi-eyed, eight-foot-high being with its endless scroll reading on and on...

Charles Freck thought, at least I got a good wine.

A scanner darkly, 1977

The man with a higher IQ than Einstein

2008-01-19T12:10:00.000Z

...Fischer was also the (then) highest-rated player in history according to the Elo rating system... Because of his accomplishments up to this point in his life as a pioneer of professional chess, the select list of people who have beaten Bobby Fischer in chess, the fame he brought to himself and the game in the 1970's, and the epoch of IBM Deep Blue in the last 1990's (after which those few who ever had a higher rating than Fischer's peak can now be defeated by a machine), some reference works and some of his biographers rate him as the greatest player that ever lived...

...Fischer was also an expert at solving the fifteen puzzle, which he completed in under 25 seconds multiple times. He was also an expert at playing pinball machines and early video games such as Space Invaders...

R.I.P.

Pen art

2008-01-15T23:57:00.000Z

Yes, he does it with a pen...

www.juanfranciscocasas.com

Photo store: Saverne, France

2008-01-13T22:26:00.000Z

Back in April 2004, on a climbing trip to France, me and Tijl.

Quote: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2008-01-10T23:01:00.000Z

...Aside from the misperception of one's performance, there is a social treadmill effect: you get rich, move to rich neighbourhoods, the become poor again. To that add the psychological treadmill effect; you get used to wealth and revert to a set point of satisfaction. This problem of some people never really getting to feel satisfied by wealth (beyond a given point) has been the subject of technical discussions on happiness...

...I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in accumulating money... we should remember that becoming rich is a purely selfish act, not a social one. The virtue of capitalism is that society can take advantage of people's greed rather than their benevolence, but there's no need to, in addition, extol such greed as a moral (or intellectual) accomplishment...

Fooled by Randomness, 2004

Music store: David Bowie

2008-01-07T23:00:00.000Z

Natural from Brixton, England, David Bowie is a rare animal in the music industry. Again, this is a musician that produced most of his best work in the seventies. I am a big fan of the 70's... and of the 90's, not so much of the 80's (except for some people that made it a less boring time to live in, such as New Order, The Smiths or The Cure, to name a few). And David Bowie has that sort of magic, gloaming quality that somebody that grew up musically in the 90's such as myself attaches to the 70's, that romanticism long gone, that extreme concept of freedom.

Because that's the taste of his music, it has that kind of timeless odd beauty. And it does feel like flying to a different planet, where many little David Bowies wonder around, whistling hyper-dimensional melodies. Funny creature the man.

I was thinking for a while about which songs to post here. The amount of great numbers is vast: Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, Life on Mars, Under Pressure (yes, it's not a Queen's song), I'm Afraid Of Americans, Little Wonder... I finally decided to go for two surreal gems, delicious pieces of music, from 1971 and 1980 respectively. Enjoy Changes (with the great line ...time may change me, but I can't trace time...) and Ashes to Ashes (absolute madness!):

I couldn't resist...

2008-01-04T19:43:00.000Z

Get ready for this hilarious video about Belgians (in Spanish):

Quote: Charles Bukowski

2008-01-02T22:00:00.000Z

...I got lost somehow, began staring at her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck...

...So there I was, back at the office the next day. I was feeling unfulfilled and, frankly, rather crappy about everything. I wasn't going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of us weren't even doing little things. We were vegetables. I was one of those. I don't know what kind of vegetable I was. I felt like a turnip. I lit a cigar, inhaled, and pretended that I knew what the hell...

Pulp, 1994

Happy new year!!

2008-01-01T23:00:00.000Z

Shall you have a marvelous 2008.

2007: albums of the year

2007-12-28T20:00:00.000Z

Obviously, this is MY list, completely subjective and with no intentions of being exhaustive. I've certainly not picked up all releases from 2007, but quite a few anyway. Artists such as Radiohead, Björk, The Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Travis, Interpol, Groove Armada, Kings of Leon, Air... released works in 2007. It was a good year I should say!

However, for me it has not been difficult to choose the best three albums of the year. These are

1.- In Rainbows - Radiohead.
2.- Neon Bible - The Arcade Fire.
3.- Boxer - The National.
4.- Our Love to Admire - Interpol
5.- Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys
6.- We Are the Night - The Chemical Brothers
7.- Soundboy Rock - Groove Armada
8.- The boy With No Name - Travis
9.- Volta - Bjork

Apologies for the lack of exhaustiveness, this is a home-made list ;). Some potential candidates to the list are the albums by The Good the Bad and the Queen, Air or LCD Soundsystem, but I just didn't have the time to check them out! Your job...

A sad day on planet Earth

2007-12-27T20:50:00.001Z

It's a sad day because today Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan, after an electoral meeting during the campaign for the elections on Jan 8th. Somebody shot her in the head and then immolated himself to kill 14 other people.

Above her particular death and the situation in Pakistan, it is a sad day because she was a symbol. She symbolized democracy, somebody that was brave enough to come back to a country that needed her help to establish a democracy, well aware that half of the population wanted her dead. And nevertheless she went there, selflessly, for her people.

So today democracy died a bit. They say that when we are young we tend to be optimistic about humanity, and believe that time will (must) bring always better times, but that we become increasingly pessimistic and cynic with age. The way I see it, the argument is absolutely correct, and the time it takes us to lose that optimism depends on the resistance our souls have against events such as that of today, and how many of these events we have to go through... myself, I'm close to defeat.

Fare well, Benazir. Fare well, Optimism.

Boys just wanna have fun!

2007-12-20T22:46:00.000Z

The same way as Cindy Lauper's friends. And we all know that one of the legal ways to have fun is to get drunk. And since it's legal, when a public personality gets drunk, rather than disapproval he's just gonna get our sympathy, because he was just doing a legal thing... I just happen to think that legality is a funny thing in the way it determines a non-small part of our lives and social behaviour. Have a look at these legally happy fellows...

Music store: Sébastien Tellier

2007-12-19T17:47:00.000Z

So here I bring you another French electronic musician, as if we didn't have enough already. Well, what can I say, I never get enough of them! Sébastien Tellier is another very fine artist. Parisian, he moved with the right people from the beginning, recording with Air's record label and being produced by the master of the universe, Daft Punk.

He claims to have as aim the composition of erotic music, sexual melodies and rhythms. Well, my friend, you are most welcome. To be fair and honest, what I should do is to start from the beginning and speak about the father of all these kids, Serge Gainsbourg, but this will be another time, this was never meant to be chronologically coherent...

This is one of his songs, La Ritournelle. It is, to date, his most famous song and, not surprisingly, his most commercial one. He acknowledge how much this song changed his life by saying “now I’m living in a new apartment, I have a new girlfriend and a really beautiful sofa” . Indeed, after this release he went from an almost unknown musician to French stardom. Enjoy:

Amsterdam

2007-12-18T18:13:00.000Z

Amsterdam is one of those (very few) places that are, in some way, stuck very deep inside of me. Most of all, I guess it simply represents a part of my life (those crazy hasty years) that is now gone but still glows vividly in my memory. But also because it's such a gorgeous city.

I spent the last weekend with the boys over there for old and new time's sake. It was fantastic to see them all there, to walk in the freezing cold, to share a warm chocomelk... but most of all to wonder around once again, as if with no destination, walking the city, laughing, getting over the hangover together, smoking some and, what is best, speaking more about the future than about the past, even when there's so much past in us.

The suspects couldn't be a more talented bunch: David, Joan (my brother!), Edu, Albert, Rubèn, Daniele and the marvelous hosts Manu and Raül. This one is for you, my dear friends. You all fit in my heart.

The jerboa

2007-12-18T18:09:00.000Z

Have a look at this little fella...

Photo store: Forum, Barcelona

2007-12-03T00:03:00.000Z

Ara que a barna s'està tornant tothom boig amb el puto transport public...

Amunt el graffiti artístic!

Music store: E.S.T.

2007-12-02T23:08:00.000Z

Ok, we're back in business, let's see how long it lasts. It is about time I present you e.s.t., or the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. These Swedish guys are an interesting hybrid in the music world. Officially they are a standard jazz trio, but that's only the very surface. Deep down their music, they use electronic landscapes in their compositions, as well as explore countless ways to use their instruments (piano, drums and bass).

We saw them at the Barbican in London a few months back, and it was impressive. It was not a pure improvisational performance, that's not what they do. There was not an absolute lack of improvisation, but these guys know what they want to get from each piece. The freedom has its bounds. It was amazing to see Esbjörn Svensson, the leader, play the piano in ways we had never seen before, specially when he plays with one hand while twitching the strings in the piano belly with the other, to give a kind of magical and metallic effect.

I remember we bought a DVD of a live performance and then we queued up to get it signed by them. I remember telling Esbjörn "you guys are genius" while he looked at me, and the fact is that he could look more human. Talent is so charming and unfair.

The bottom line is that you got to check these guys out. If you don't die for jazz but like alternative rock musical landscapes and instrument experiments, specially with a piano, you'll like this. Really. And they are a dream when playing live.

It's difficult to select some songs from their extensive discography, since each CD is like a different journey, but if I had to, I'd go for Eight hundred street by feet, The well-wisher or this delicious A picture of Doris travelling with Boris:

Photo store: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kandy, Sri Lanka

2007-11-19T20:29:00.000Z

Hello there! We just got back from our honey moon in Sri Lanka! I can only say good things about this country, it's been an amazing experience. Lots of culture and great nature. Here's one pic from the trip, a perfect wallpaper!

Some of the things we have learnt during our trip:

Buddhism is not a religion, it's a philosophy.
Buddha was born prince Siddharta on the border between India and Nepal, in the 5th century BC. Before him, 27 other men reached enlightenment (Nirvana), but he was the first one to preach his knowledge.
There's a civil war going on in Sri Lanka, lasting over 20 years now, between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority.
Green tea and black tea come from the same plant. Black tea is dried, green tea is steamed.
Elephants have a similar life expectancy as humans.
Red bananas improve your sexual life.

Photo store: Camino de Santiago, Logroño

2007-10-31T23:31:00.000Z

Saliendo de Logroño, vista hacia el oeste, y de repente, al vover la vista...

B sos.

Theremin

2007-10-27T00:32:00.000+01:00

Check what I found. The theremin is an musical instrument invented by the Russian inventor Léon Theremin in 1919, and it is unique in that it was the first musical instrument designed to be played without being touched. It generally consists of two pitch and one volume radio frequency oscillators and two metal antennas. With one hand you control the volume, with the other the pitch! Apparently it's very easy to learn but extremely difficult to master. This is one example, by master Masami Takeuchi:

I love the world because it's full of such amazing little surprises, every day. Today's surprise: the theremin.

Wedding: the videos

2007-10-23T23:43:00.000+01:00

Adding the videos from our wedding:

Here we are leaving the church after the wedding... fast:

And this is when we arrived to the hotel for the dinner:

This is our first dance (where you admire our wide range of movements... ;)

Some more dancing...

... and a bit more...

... and even more!...

This is the throwing of the bouquet:

... and when I throw my tie:

Finally, this is when the cousins of Ewa throw us (!) in the air:

Ciao belli.

Chris Jordan

2007-10-21T22:56:00.000+01:00

A very interesting photographer. His most famous series are about the massive consumism of American population. Here goes an example. This photograph depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes:

Partial zoom:

Detail:

More of his work here:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Shame on you, Kaczynski

2007-10-21T20:16:00.000+01:00

The Kaczynski brothers, perfectly aware of the lack of support they have among the mainly young Polish population in the U.K., have made it really hard for them to vote in the parliamentary elections that took place today in decent conditions.

The Polish consulate in London was the place where all the voters in southern England with surnames starting with the letters L to Z had to go to exercise their right to vote. It seems incredible and ridiculous to do such a thing given the amount of Polish people living in England (a great number of them in London): around 1 million Polish live, work and pay taxes in the U.K. In Mielec, a 60000-inhabitant Polish town, there were today 30 election polls. Today, in the whole U.K., just 20.

The results, therefore, did not surprise anyone. Queues were embarrassing. There is no excuse to such lack of organization from a government which claims to rule a democratic country. Absolute premeditation was in the mind of all of those waiting for hours in the cold to be able to vote, specially when the English government had offered help to the Polish authorities to open more election polls, help which was refused on the grounds of lack of time to prepare.

Overall, me and my Polish wife, Ewa, spent 3 hours since we arrived until we left the consulate. Finally leaving by 5pm, and seeing that the queue was then even longer than when we had arrived at 2pm, we wondered how many people would not make it in time, since the polls were closing at 8pm. What happened today actually broke the civil rights and was anti-constitutional: every Polish citizen has the right to exercise their right to vote in equal grounds. And this did not happen today. Not only were many people late to vote due to the queuing, but many others did not stand the wait and decided to go back home given the situation, which is certainly beneficial to Kaczinski's interest.

The ones that decided to stay and vote took it, at least, with humor and patience. Polish people do not complain when it comes to their governments, used as they are to these sort of situations. As Ewa was telling me, Poland is the country of queues. Let us hope that their effort today was worth it, and that today's negligence could not stop the necessary political change in Poland. They deserve it.

Photo store: Oude Markt, Leuven

2007-10-17T22:30:00.000+01:00

Éstas por los viejos tiempos (for old time's sake)...

Music store: Nick Drake

2007-10-14T00:34:00.000+01:00

Nick Drake, another genius. Unknown for most of us, specially outside of the UK. This guy released 3 LPs, in the seventies. He committed suicide when we was 26 years old... god. Deep depression, alienation, solitude. Who knows, he could not bear it anymore.

At least we have his music. And hell it's worth it. His guitar chords, his string works, were extremely innovative in music. Even more astonishing is the fact that he did not learn to play the guitar anywhere, he learn it by himself, in his bedroom, mostly during the night.

His three LPs, Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970) and Pink Moon (1972) are all mind blowing. Detached lyrics, aching melancholy, make this the perfect music for when you are feeling miserable, by his songs, apart from sad, are immensely beautiful and dreamy. Definitely not to be missed. Some of his best pieces are Day Is Done, Pink Moon and the colossal River Man and Things Behind the Sun.

This is one of his saddest songs, Place To Be, with lines like "I'm darker that the deepest sea". I hope you are in a good mood:

And to finish, River Man, with its compelling strings and sense of alienation ("Betty said she prayed today for the sky to blow away"). Nitenite:

Photo store: mar de algodón

2007-10-13T00:31:00.000+01:00

Despega el avión, está nublado. El aparato asciende, se mete entre las nubes. Y de repente emerge a la superficie, para descubrirte el espectáculo, el mar de algodón. El sol en su paraíso privado, su escondite secreto. Siempre me he preguntado que habrían escrito los grandes poetas del pasado sobre tal escena, las olas de vapor, la luz pura y helada, el sol armado, limpio, los montes de agua.

Volando de Bruselas a Barcelona:

Photo store: Panteon, Roma

2007-10-11T22:20:00.000+01:00

Easter '07, we went to the old city, marvelously hosted by Daniele's family. Roma, lovely nights, and that nice feeling of being at home.

In Rainbows: my personal review

2007-10-10T22:52:00.000+01:00

Wow, this is a good CD. I just heard it a couple of times, but this is good. Maybe not as innovative as OK Computer or Kid/A, but reaches heights in beauty, cohesion and completion as a work of art. The string accompaniments by Johnny are fantastic, and the voice of Thom Yorke is again incredible, giving infinitely refined textures to all the songs, which again do not follow the typical structure, but always start somewhere and end up somewhere completely different. Here is a song-by-song review:

01.- 15 steps: already a favourite. The initial mess is meant to wake you up. Thom starts complaining about something when Johnny comes in to bring the melody, and the Thom follows with a beautiful voice melody on top. And then the glorious bass enters. And so the songs starts growing on you, and you feel better and better, feeling even like dancing. The kids shout, and all is joy. Then, towards the end, dreamy guitar sounds, together with a gorgeous bass again, take you around the universe and back. Love the distortion in the guitar towards the end. A highlight.

02.- Bodysnatchers: dirty sounds to start this fast, energetic song. It grows on you. It has some National Anthem hidden in it in the synth landscapes. Thom performs angrily to follow the drums, in speed. At the end, the airy guitar and the voice of Thom begging let loose and we reach the climax, among incredible chords. before the song dies not without putting up a good fight.

03.- Nude: as romantic as Radiohead ever got. The guitar is a pleasure throughout, so delicate. And the voice of Thom, always remarkable. The melody, though, lacks simplicity, directness, and it feels more like a succession of grand chords. Beautiful as it is, it will need several more listens to grasp it as a whole. The last voice crescendo is a moment to remember.

04.- Weird fishes / Arpeggi: it starts a bit like Song 2 of Blur, but it suddenly becomes so melancholic that it hurts. The guitar melody is just overwhelming, and Thom makes it feel so hopeless. The drums help you keep up the pace, while you just want to cry. And then everything stops and some hope arises. Weird fishes starts. And the song enters then an alarm stage, with Thom singing at low pitch, while the guitar is begging for escape with Thom, slightly reminding Knives out. Amazing ending.

05.- All I need: first time I heard this one I was not entirely convinced by the sound they've chosen for the melody notes, as I had only heard it with grand piano. But after a couple of times, it starts to work out fine with me. The tickling bells are a nice contrast to the sound that seems to get closer to a plain piano as the song advances. When the drums let loose, the crescendo is like a warm embrace, and then Thom wraps it up with his crescendos. Sweet.

06.- Faust Arp: this is a clear homage to Beatles. Even the initial One, two, three, four reminds us of Taxman. The rest of the songs has some Blackbird and some Dear Prudence in it, even in the length of the song. To me, another highlight in the album. The combination of acoustic guitar and strings works just great. I may be stretching it, but I hear some Nick Drake there too.

07.- Reckoner: this song has been there forever, although I didn't know it too much. The echo throughout the song give it a dreamy touch, which Thom helps as well with his whining. As always, the piano brings completeness to the composition. When it all stops and the voices come in, we can intuit 2+2=5 just before the you have not been paying attention part. But the song soon deviates from there to finish up quite poppily, with some more string work from Johnny. Is it me or I hear the same sound effects as in Pull pull revolving doors?. Not the strongest song in the album.

08.- House of cards: moody song, with a nice'n'slow pace, to lay back and enjoy. Echoing here and there help that effect. It is possibly the song in which Thom voice leads the most, above all other instruments. Everything else seems to float around it to keep it warm, but it's Thom who brings the action. Not a personal favourite, but very enjoyable.

09.- Jigsaw falling into place: this is a completely new song for me, and I love it. Starts fast and you feel like jumping on a running train. The voice goes up and down as in a roller coaster. Then, Thom starts singing a bit a la Edge in Numb, in contrast with the melodic background vocals. Guitar interlude and Thom gets crazy, jumps on the chair and starts shouting as the guitar brings some help. Nice familiar Radiohead structure. And the the guitar draws again a beautiful melody, together with the strings, while Thom says goodbye to the song.

10.- Videotape: as many other people, I've not been pleasantly surprised by this version of the song, as I considered the live version far far better, with the guitar crescendo and decrescendo, while Thom's voice wonders around. But again, what do I know what Thom and Co had in mind here. It is true, however, that this version is appealing on its own. The naked piano in the beginning gets you real deep, and the percussion work is, well, puzzling, until Phil comes in and makes a bit of sense with the cymbal. I'm still trying to figure out the background nonesense with the repetitive drum. As a reference, I attach here the live version:

Music store: Sufjan Stevens

2007-10-09T21:59:00.000+01:00

Sufjan Stevens is another gem. This guy got very famous with the release of his cd Illinois, 2005, voted best album of the year by many many critics.

He's an artist with a style of his own, very original. His songs tend to grow steadily to end up in an aphoteosis of mostly wind and percussion instruments, ressembling a full orchestra at times. This, together with choir voices, may sound pretentious, but after listening to some of his songs, one ends up understanding that he just can't help the grandiosity. Actually, the choirs and the abundance of sounds and instruments potentiates the lyricism and religiosity of his music.

He is a talented multi-instrumentalist. His lyrics are very spiritual most of the times, revolving around US landscapes, religion and human relationaships. What is more important, some of his melodies can give you the goose skin, that beautiful they are. And that's not common.

Some of his best songs include Casimir Pulaski Day, Come on! Feel the Illinoise, The Henney Buggy Band, John Wayne Garcy Jr and The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake. This is Concerning the UFO sighting near highland:

And this is Chicago, his most famous song, soundtrack in the movie Little Miss Sunshine:

Music store: Polly Jean Harvey

2007-10-09T20:57:00.001+01:00

I've decided to talk about PJ Harvey because she just released a new cd, White Chalk. She is a rock star, the old way. An interesting member of stardom. She became famous with her LP Dry, released when she was 22. Some of her hits include Dress, Sheela-Na-Gig, To bring you my love, Down by the water, Send his love to me, Big exit, Good Fortune, The mess we're in (featuring Thom Yorke from Radiohead), This is love...

Polly Jean sings as a hurt cat. I don't mean she whines ans shrieks annoyingly. What I mean is that she's a wild sexy pussycat with a mini-skirt and a microphone, crying for love and understanding, most of the time. Don't expect many layers in her music, she's kinda raw. And powerful. And energetic, uncontrollable, untamed. Although not always: her last but one LP, Uh huh her, was close to crap. Almost everyone agreed on that one. The good news is that her latest cd, White Chalk, has generated all but unanimity. She has raised the pitch of her voice, changed the guitar for the piano, and sings her new songs quietly, as if in a long, peaceful hangover. Being very different from her previous cds, this is the kind of album that some consider her best and most intimate while others are left wondering what the hell is wrong with her. But that's good, see, because unanimity rarely means genius and more often than not means boring, lame. This cd shows that Polly Jean is changing, like the sea, the landscapes, like each of us. And that, for her music, can only be healthy.

Here goes my favourite PJ's song, Down by the water (don't miss the guy playing the guitar with a knife):

Pictures of people going nuts

2007-10-09T19:24:00.000+01:00

So more pictures from the weeding party have reached me... wow. I promise to post all of them in Picasa once I gather pictures from more people, but here's an advance. This pictures are from my cousin, Santi (thanks!). In the first one, Manu appears to be in a very nice dream, although probably he did not know where he was dancing with Gosia or with a telephone post. In the second picture, well, what can I say, love is in the air ;). The third is... Ruben in its pure essence.

Love you all!!

Music store: Joy Division

2007-10-07T19:08:00.000+01:00

We just came back from the cinema, went to watch Control. It's a biopic of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, the late 70's band from Manchester that did so much for the Manchester scene in that period (together with bands like the Happy Mondays). The poor guy was so messed up that committed suicide at the age of 23. A pity really. The movie is pretty good, although you are left a little bit confused at the end as to why he committed suicide, since the only problem he had was that he didn't love his wife anymore, not the most uncommon of problems. The movie does not explore the effects of his epileptic condition and the medication he needed to take on his mental health and ultimate suicide. However it went, he killed both himself and Joy Division on the 18th of May, 1980.

Let this be a little homage to the band, creators of raw and simple musical landscapes to surround Ian's deep, emotional poems. This is Transmission, one of their most famous songs. A pure gem. Don't miss the geeky dance of Mr. Curtis, for which he's famous:

But not everything is sadness and mourning. From the ashes of Joy Division another band was born: New Order. But that's a different story...

Photo store: Brandenburger Tor

2007-10-07T13:44:00.000+01:00

Ewa and me were in Berlin in August 2006 visiting my friend Rubèn and his girlfriend Friederike. Impressive as it is, the history behind the Brandemburg Gate makes it even more so.

Pi

2007-10-07T12:28:00.000+01:00

Wisława Szymborska is a Polish poetess. She was awarded the Nobel prize in 1996. She's great because she writes accessible poetry, not the type that some pseudo-intellectual poets write, as if you needed an IQ of 314 to understand what the hell they are talking about. Her poetry is beautiful and moving, cheerful and entertaining.

One of her poems deals with the number pi. Ain't that nice. This is an extract, in Spanish:

¨El admirable número pi
tres coma uno cuatro uno.
Las cifras que siguen son también preliminares
cinco nueve dos porque jamás acaba.
No puede acabarlo seis cinco tres cinco la mirada,
ocho nueve ni el cálculo
siete nueve ni la imaginación, ...¨

Having studied some math myself and being able to appreciate the inherent beauty in mathematics, I thought I´d add here my own and very personal mathematical poem of pi. Here it goes:

Radio Paradise

2007-10-07T11:02:00.000+01:00

I've added a link to Radio Paradise, the coolest radio station on the Internet. They are listener-supported, which means that they do not broadcast any sort of advertisement or commercials, but rather leave it up to the listeners to donate some money to keep it going. The songs they play have been uploaded by users and, what is better even, songs only jump to the playlist after having been voted by the users in a provisional playlist. Basically, only the stuff most people like make it to the air. It's pretty cool. Here's the logo-link

The station was created by Bill and Rebecca in California, form their own garage. I hope you like it. It's great when you don't know what to listen to, and you discover lots of new stuff here. Enjoy.

Music store: Radiohead

2007-10-07T01:12:00.001+01:00

And since R A D I O H E A D is by far my favourite band, it has to be added into the Music store straight away. Nobody out there is doing anything close to these guys, no one.

These guys are genius. Their ability to explore new melodies, the insatiable will to learn about new instruments and techniques, their pursuit of naked musical beauty... make them special. No other band, except the Beatles (to whom Radiohead owe so much) have felt to uncomfortable with their own success and have tried so hard to escape from commercial comfort findi

ng in their way new sounds of unexpected quality and artistic talent. And what the hell, no other band has made me feel like these guys have, and that's enough for me. From the lightest melodies (No surprises, Nice dream, Like spinning plates) to the angriest guitar riffs (Just, Myxomatosis, the colossal Paranoid android), Radiohead can take you emotionally around the world in a few songs, leaving you not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

Other Radiohead hits include Planet Telex, Fake plastic trees, Airbag, Karma police, Subterranean homesick alien, The national anthem, How to disappear completely (know as Yorke's favourite Radiohead song), Morning bell, Pyramid song, Optimistic, 2+2=5, Sail to the moon... the list is long. As you may know, they've just released their 7th PL, In Rainbows. Life could not be better.

It has been difficult for me to choose songs to post here, but to keep it low I've chosen two of the most inspiring, compelling songs these guys have composed. That anyone have composed for that matter: the live performances of Pyramid song (with Colin in the contrabass and three ondes martenot!) and Everything in it's right place. Enjoy.

Music store: Midlake

2007-10-07T00:44:00.001+01:00

With the same idea in mind as with the Photo store, in the Music store I will add music that I like, bands that somehow bring something new to music from my very personal point of view. Surely, this won't include only new bands. I start to get tired to listen to new stuff, plus there's so much old good music out there. Basically, anything that made my life better will be here.

The first Music store post goes for Midlake, a band from Texas whose music is so light and fragile that leaves you almost untouched, but caresses you with pure beauty. Check this out from the latest CD, The trials of Van Occupanther. This is called Roscoe:

Their first LP, Bamman and Silvercork, is less commercial and more experimental, showing the true talent in these guys for a debug album. The psychedelic sounds and delicate melodies take you somewhere new in music, reminiscent sometimes of Radiohead (the lead voice has been quoted as Thom Yorke on Valium) or Pink Floid. Either way, there's something making these guys special, the infinite looseness of their songs, the feeling of detachment, the apparent lack of hope and energy that hides, actually, a whole new world of musical textures.

Some of their best songs are The jungler, Kingfish pies, Roscoe, Head home or We gathered in spring.

Photo store: Ewa in Varadero

2007-10-07T00:30:00.001+01:00

I intend to add here pictures that I find compelling, beautiful, pictures I took. Some of them may have been modified using Photoshop, hopefully giving some improvement. Hope you like them. This is the first one, Ewa in Varadero, Cuba, october 2006.

We got married

2007-10-06T23:20:00.001+01:00

A week ago Ewa and me got married! It was in Krakow, and it was just great. We came back on Tuesday and hadn't have the time to reflect on it or write about it. There's so much to explain that I won't even start. Those of you who were there know how great it was, of special. Thanks all of you for being there! Love you all. This is us cutting the cake:

David explains in a few words how it was (as long as he can remember):

david's memories from the wedding

He also posted a nice video. It's when we come into the hotel for the dinner and we follow the Polish tradition of eating the bread and salt offered by the parents. After that, we throw our glasses above our heads in signal of good luck. I love that part:

Hopefully I'll be adding more impressions, pictures and memories here, in time.

In Rainbows

2007-10-06T22:52:00.001+01:00

Only they could do it. Genious. Fuck the middleman:

inrainbows

Long live R A D I O H E A D. Here is a nice advance. This song, Down is the new Up, is not available in the download, but will appear in the box set:

Grandfalloons everywhere

2007-10-06T22:07:00.001+01:00

In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut hilariously invents and describes a religion, Bokononism. This religion exists on an island of the Caribbean, and it is based on The Books of Bokonon. The first sentence in the book is genius, as a satire of religion: "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies".

One of the most important concepts in this religion is the karass, described by Bokonon in this way: "If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons, that person may be a member of your karass". For true love, Vonnegut describes an special karass, made up of only two people: a duprass. I like the idea of a karass: we all meet those people, once in a while, with which we feel a strange connection, a deep link, even if we only meet for an evening, for a week, for an hour, members of our particular karass, which then disappear in time as lightly as they came by.

But an even more revealing concept within Bokononism is that of Granfalloons: "it is a false karass, a seeming team that is meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done. Other examples of grandfalloons are the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, The General Electric Company, the International Order of Old Fellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere.". So a Grandfalloon is a group of people that believe that they belong to something, while this something is just not there, it's an illusion. As I was saying, Grandfalloons everywhere.

Book store: Kurt Vonnegut

2007-09-24T23:10:00.000+01:00

I may as well start with Vonnegut himself, since he's given me the name to the blog. What a man. Shoulda been a Nobel laureate no doubt. However, he was probably too funny for the Swedish academics. Damned, he makes me laugh.

I discovered him through Ewa. She had read this book, Slaughterhouse n5, and recommended it to me. I had given a try to Catch-22, but had to drop it as the English in it wasn't that straightforward for me. Plus it has a million characters, so it's hard to follow unless you give it a good hour a day or so. Anyways. Took the book she mentioned, by some Vonnegut, and started it. I was glued: the story of an American soldier in WW2, captured by the Germans and confined in a slaughterhouse in Dresden, where he witnessed the Allie bombardment over the city, the deadliest event of the whole war. Of any war for that matter.

After that book, others came: Cat's cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Timequake... always full of imagination and the most acid humor. Don't miss him. You shouldn't. He writes fast, with short sentences, but is able to say so much with so little words. It is hard though after reading him or the likes of Bukowski or Kerouac to try to read some more heavier stuff, because most of other books tend to be slower, and may become boring. This happened to me, when I tried to pick Celine, and had to take a deep breath before going back to Vonnegut. I'm pretty addicted.

Unfortunately, Vonnegut passed away in 2007. I had just met him and he left us. Let this be a little homage to the man and a farewell, in his own words: God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

Welcome to my monkey house

2007-09-23T22:01:00.000+01:00

Hello. This is my first post in my brand new blog. It's nice to start new things. You have these expectations, these ideas, tones of them. Dunno, just brainstorming here, but plan to have music thought, literature (quite excited about it) and lots of pics. Hopefully, one day. But, the hell, I'll probably end up just writing every once in a while. Whatever, right? At the end this is just to get some stuff out of my system, or just express an opinion or a thought, even if there's no one out there minimally interested.

This is MY space. No technology blog, no sports blog, no cars, no fashion, no nothing. Jordi. Let's see what comes off it. Welcome to the Monkey House is the title of one of Kurt Vonnegut's books. I love the guy. This one is a collection of some of his short stories. They don't have a particular topic. They are just a truly funny mesh. Another mesh is what it's intended here.

So then again: hello.