formby wrote:

Sammy Ambrose wrote:

4F Hepcat wrote:

Now then Sammy, I've read the book from cover to cover and I am now in a much better and qualified position than your goodself to comment on its worth, as you are sure "it's a crap book at the day."

Danny Lockwood is a distinguished journalist and qualified editor who writes a disturbing account of life on the front lines of multi-cultural Britian as played-out in his home town of Dewsbury. Instead of social cohesion, we find tit-for-tat violence and murder from both the indigenous white population and the second and new immigrants and refugees from Pakistan and Iraq. The heroin trade blights the community with additional fire-bombings, beatings and shootings related to this economic activity. Not to mention drug deaths. Elements of the Pakistan community are accused of subverting the democratic process with ballot fixing, intimidation and what one local Pakistan politician himself describes as "Paki politics." He also explains how the "ultimate" protest vote resulted in the election of BNP councillors and the strategy of those involved as wanting to give a bloody nose to the main stream parties.

This is an important book, as it brings an alternative view of the multi-cultural experiment and the risks that incompatible and alien elements of a culture transposed from its origins do not necessarily work and represent a threat to our freedom and democracy. Particularly worrying is that we have elections being won on the geo-political stage and ticket of Pakistan. Indeed, the murky dealings of Lord Ahmed and Baroness Wasi raise questions on the influence of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in our politics. This represents a larger threat and malign infuence to our society than a few racist thugs in the BNP and EDL for which our secret service will ensure are neutered and exposed at every opportunity.

As for this book being recommended on far right websites, I did some investigation yesterday, and I also found the works of Churchill and Claude Levi Strauss on one website. Evidently, Mr Lockwood is in good company.

I'll try and read it and get back to you on.

Now, now Sammy. Actually reading a book before you comment on it? This just won't do!. Just stick to basing your future book reviews on the quality of its title its easier.

I've always though that book called the Bible has a pretty crappy name. Is it any good...?

Lol.

On the Bible: A long time ago I encouraged my ten  year old daughter to attend Bible study classes with the justification that it's pretty hard to understand a lot of western cultural and literary references without a  decent knowledge of the Holy Book. She was not impressed: "They could have organized it better! You have read all over the place to find out about The Ten Commandments. It should have  a special chapter  entitled 'The Ten Commandments'! If we wrote stuff like that in school, we'd be in for it."

fxh wrote:

Although Live at Budokan seems to go off.

Awful album, one sorry Sunday morning in the bleak mid-Winter whilst nursing a Stella Artois eight pint hangover, my colleague in the stores at work decided that was the music for the day. And there we were cold, unloved, counting 6" flanges listening to Dylan.

Currently reading a little book by some MIT grad called "Did Adam And Eve Really Exist" nice little read.

Also been working through the Sherlock Holmes stories.

`Supplements exposed' - Dr Brian Clement

talks about how most synthetic vitamins either have coal tar, terpentine or petrochemicals in them, and so do the vitamins used to fortify our packaged foods. lt talks about how 92% nutritional supplements on the market are synthetic and unsuitable for health, and it talks about prestigeous landmark double blind studies that show synthetic vitamins cause more health problems in every case, and it talks about how BIG pharma are behind 85% of all nutritional chemical supplements. And it goes on and on....even talks about how fish oils are a con and contain lipid peroxide (cancer causing) and talks about how supplementing with synthetic vitamin A causes more cancer in smokers according to a double blind study of over 67,000 people. lt's a brilliant book.

btw: there is a closer link between dairy consumption and cancer than even smoking and lung cancer, no shit! The world's most comprehensive food study ever done by a highly respected researcher concluded that.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2012-06-23 09:56:08)

The_Shooman wrote:

btw: there is a closer link between dairy consumption and cancer than even smoking and lung cancer, no shit! The world's most comprehensive food study ever done by a highly respected researcher concluded that.

Chagas CE, Rogero MM, Martini LA.
Center for Nutrition Practice and Research, Department of Education, Institute of Biosciences, São Paulo State University, Botucau/Sp, Brazil. wrote:

Center for Nutrition Practice and Research, Department of Education, Institute of Biosciences, São Paulo State University, Botucau/Sp, Brazil.
Abstract

Milk and dairy products are widely recommended as part of a healthy diet. These products, however, can contain hormones such as insulin-like growth factor 1, and some studies have suggested that a high intake of milk and dairy products may increase the risk of cancer. This review examines recent studies on this topic, with the evidence suggesting that the recommended intake of milk and dairy products (3 servings/day) is safe and, importantly, does not seem to increase the risk of cancer. On the basis of the studies included in this review, cultured milk, yogurt, and low-fat dairy products should be preferred as the milk and dairy products of choice.

I suggest we all pop a pill to counteract the dodgy insulin like growth factor 1 raising potential of dairy. Simples!

My gymbuddy and –owner once reflected  that his attitude has gradually changed to a point where he refuses to discuss training and nutrition with someone sans Stryer or some of his ilk on the bookshelf. Increasingly I can see his point, Dunning/Kruger runs strong in some.

4F Hepcat wrote:

After Lockwood's book, I need something a little bit less depressing, or perhaps not: Paul Fussel's Bad or, The Dumbing of America. Just arrived by post.

Written more than 20 years ago, you wonder how grumpy his reflections would be nowadays. I read this book around 1996 during my America, Fuck Yeah period and dismissed most of it with a simple Well, it can´t be THAT bad. George Carlin would have been the perfect voice for an audiobook. Susan Jacoby´s Age of American Unreason has a more academic though not less witty point of view and she doesn’t let personal preferences water down her theses.

4F Hepcat wrote:

^It has actually dated badly or indeed BADLY, as the reflections seem in the most part obvious, contrite and over embellished. And that's from a European perspective, so perhaps we have become too similar in culture to the USA. It would be interesting to have read it in 1991 and compare the readings.

The chapters, well brief pages, on flying and education I have enjoyed, as they stand out as relevant to where we are today, in UK and Europe. Oddly, for a 1991 published book, it is extremely dated, I was surprised.

Tell us a bit more.

4F Hepcat wrote:

In essence, this captures what the book is all about: "For a thing to be really BAD, it must exhibit elements of the pretentiousness, the overwrought, or the fraudulent. Bathroom faucet handles that cut your fingers are bad. If gold plated, they are BAD. Dismal food is bad. Dismal food pretentiously served in a restaurant associated with the word gourmet is BAD."

...ah...!! So the book is BAD.

An interesting book on the British class system was written a few years back (98) by the historian David Cannadine

He also wrote a book on the British Empire called Ornamentalism, a play on the name of Said's book.

I know mi old mucka Comrade Ambrose would enjoy them. Something to get those Marxist nashers of his into in his dotage.

...and before you ask Comrade A. I don't do reviews.

Last edited by formby (2012-06-25 11:16:46)

Don Quixote.
Wanted to read it Spanish, which I still might do,
but I decided that it was time.

Japan and Self Existence - Mick Karn

Well, actually, I just finished reading it last night. Read it in 2 days.

A warm, honest, humane and humorous memoir of Karn's time in Japan (the band), and after.

Previous "best friend", David Sylvian, does not come out of this well.

Karn is painfully honest about his failed relationships with the women in his life.

There is a big , over-arching theme of  'loss' running through his story.

The corollary of this was the recurring bouts of deep depression, which never left him. Conversely, some of his bass playing was the most vibrant, vital, fresh and inspired you could ever wish to hear. Karn's self diagnosis is bi-polar disorder.


Some good and funny anecdotes about some of the characters and contemporary musicians and artists he knew and encountered.

It's a very straight forward, engaging and intimate, first hand account.

I downloaded it on iBooks ( 6 Pounds, I think)


I think Formby, or HepCat might enjoy this book.

jesmond wrote:

Japan and Self Existence - Mick Karn

Well, actually, I just finished reading it last night. Read it in 2 days.

A warm, honest, humane and humorous memoir of Karn's time in Japan (the band), and after.

Previous "best friend", David Sylvian, does not come out of this well.

Karn is painfully honest about his failed relationships with the women in his life.

There is a big , over-arching theme of  'loss' running through his story.

The corollary of this was the recurring bouts of deep depression, which never left him. Conversely, some of his bass playing was the most vibrant, vital, fresh and inspired you could ever wish to hear. Karn's self diagnosis is bi-polar disorder.


Some good and funny anecdotes about some of the characters and contemporary musicians and artists he knew and encountered.

It's a very straight forward, engaging and intimate, first hand account.

I downloaded it on iBooks ( 6 Pounds, I think)


I think Formby, or HepCat might enjoy this book.

Aye, that's a book that interests me - the era in music, the band, associates and their experience in Japan . The last interview I read with Sylvian he came out as weird, not weird in the David Bowie or Byrne sense, but hippy weird.

Finished reading Ian Kershaw's The End on how the Nazis held grip on defeated Germany in the last 18 months of WWII and ensured terror and destruction were inflicted on the German people unecessarily. The antics of Speer are interesting in attempting to preserve the industrial base and not destroy it as Hitler ordered. He alone, out of all of Hitler's henchmen, probably extended Germany's capacity to wage war longer than all else. An organisational genius seduced by evil.

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and The Sixties some good social commentry and the author, Ian MacDonald places The Beatles from 1967 onwards as some kind of rear guard action against the social fragmentation and the world of the New Right as we experience it today.

Don't agree with all that he writes, but I like this bit on conceptual art and the dying fall of Western art: "Shorn of their content, art, music, and literature degenerated by increasingly inconsequential stages from art about art, to jokes about art about art, and finally to jokes about art about art....The crucial thing that died with the rise of the instantaneous/simultaneous outlook was development: development of theme and idea, of feeling and thought, of story and character."

Just yesterday Andrew Ford - one of my favourite presenters, had a guest on his show and they spoke a little about this - and some of the complexities.

They didn't go as far as quoting the "dancing about architecture.." quote, but sensibly talked about if music/art should be explained and the emphasis on explanation and theory in some art.

I think it was this interview. If not then one of the other interviews yesterday.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro … ey/4210722

Andrew can talk knowledgeably about anything from the Ramones to Bob to the Ring Cycle to Cage to Adams. Hes written a good book on Van's music.

http://www.andrewford.net.au/