So it matters what name you read first…. Just compare this image to the original.
Nina
Back in ’87 this was the tune for a Chanel No 5 ad, which in turn led to a rerelease of this tune from 1958 with a videoclip by Aardman animation. I remember there being a whole wave of ad-driven, nostalgia fueled hits for old soul/jazz singers around that time, what with the Levi 501 ads, Jive Bunny and not to mention the similar claymation videoclip for Jackie Wilson’s Reet Petite… But this is the one that stuck with me the most.
And this is what I came across on Youtube while looking for completely different things, a song I’d never heard or seen before, but from the same album as “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, Nina Simone’s debut album. Both songs are jazz standards, originally written for quite different singers, but which of course she completely makes her own. Especially that little bit of Bach iimprovisation on the piano in the middle of “Love Me or Leave Me” left my drymouthed, slackjawed the first time I heard it. I’m normally a rockist at heart and it’s easy to underestimate the power of a song like this, dominated by piano rather than by drums and guitar, but damn this grabs you by the throat.
Fscking T-Mobile
Broke my phone because it slid put off my pocket to the floor and under the stupidly designed railing on the floor beneath it. Had to call T-Mobile to get it fixed, zillions of phone menus later got some phone drone to take my details, which she did, but could she make an appointment to send me an envelope to send the phone to them?
Of course not. That was a different department. So now I have to be called back to make an appointment to get the envelope to send the phone to get it fixed… Why oh why can’t companies have flat help desks that can handle every kind of routine question rather than have us submit to their internal bureaucracy?
Libya — the case against intervention
Conor Foley argues why this time it’s different to support western intervention in Libya:
the case for or against a ‘humanitarian intervention’ rests on answering two broad questions: has the level of violence reached such a threshold that the use of counter-force is morally justifiable and is it a practical, strategic option that will actually make things better for the people concerned?
[…]
I do not know what the end game is. I accept that the campaign will result in people being killed by allied airstrikes and I presume that the intervening governments have selfish as well as altruistic motives for their actions. However, I think that the situation in Libya immediately prior to the intervention passed the threshold test that I set out above. I think that the UN is fulfilling its responsibility to protect the lives of civilians in this case.
My own view: never support a military action you are not in control off. Because whatever your motivations might be, you can never be sure they are shared by those actually waging the war. And while Conor might disdain the “search for the hidden ‘real reasons’ for military interventions”, motivations do matter. What is the intervention attempting to achieve? What are the countries participating prepare to do to reach this goal? How well does this goal match Conor’s own reasons for supporting the intervention? Can we be sure the desire to protect Libyan civilians — any Libyan civilians, even those supporting Khadaffi — is as great as the desire to get Khadaffi? Can we stop the intervention if it’s clear it makes things worse? Can you really trust countries that only months ago were eager to embrace Khadaffi, sell him weapons and buy his oil? What will happen if Khadaffi is killed or goes into exile? If the airstrikes don’t work, what then?
All questions we don’t have the answers to, nor have the power to decide upon ourselves and because we don’t, time and again we find that the wars we supported for the best of reasons actually make things worse. Never support military interventions you don’t have any control over.
Wonders of the Universe — meh
Professor Brian Cox (who looks too young to shave, let alone be a professor) is the BBC’s latest science superstar, having had a succesful series on The Wonders of the Solar System last year and following it up with The Wonders of the Universe this year. Engaging, charming and enthusiastic about science, astronomy and physics, he’s the ideal presenter for a programme that wants to introduce a broad range of viewers to what our universe looks like.
The only problem is that this is the umpteenth series attempting to do exactly that –other than some pretty pictures, there’s nothing new in this series that hasn’t been covered by other BBC astronomy series or that isn’t shown on any of the Discovery channels almost every day. The fact that it has to cram everything into four hour long episodes and is presented at that nice slow pace the BBC always insists on for “difficult” documentaries doesn’t help. Meanwhile a very similar documentary, Everything and Nothing, is being broadcast on BBC4, again on an introductionary level.
What I’m missing is the next step, a series of documentaries that delves deeper into these subjects, preferably a regular series ala Horizon that could built on these introductionary series and actually trust its audience to have a certain background level of knowledge, not needing to endlessly repeat the same basic facts over and over again. A series that can actually teach you something, rather than just entertain you with some pop science.