Djd Set: Devil City Swing, Sunday Night

Devil City Swing has got to be one of my favourite exchanges. So I was thrilled to be playing a set there. My set was Sunday night at the last venue (The Grand Poobah). We were late getting into the venue so I couldn't have music playing when people arrived. The first couple of songs were essentially the sound check as the system was set up. As it was the last night I knew that folk would be sitting, chatting and drinking (though clearly not enough as the venue didn't go through till as late as they could have) as well as dancing so I tried to play tunes that would work for both listening and dancing.

Godwin's Law

Christopher Monckton. Godwin's Law.

That is all.

I would like to go to one of his talks, but only if the venue is licensed so I can play the fallacy drinking game. I'd probably wind up with alcohol poisoning though.

Links of the week

Late last week the winners of the Seattle Vintage Jazz Dance third annual Swing/Jazz Dance Music Video Contest were announced. The first place winner is fantastic:

I've already written about the 'working families' phenomenon. Now the Sydney Morning Herald's economics editor, Ross Gittins, explores how poverty (lack of income) is just one of the features that creates social disadvantage.

Sue Hoffman on The Drum argues that temporary protection visas actually increased boat arrivals, particularly of women and children.

With the final election results in and Antony Green back in the country he's posted a bunch of statistics on his blog.

And Ben Goldacre in The Guardian notes "how often children are able to spot bullshit, and how often adults want to shut them up".

Links of the week

This week Ross Garnaut released an update to his climate change review. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing there's an excellent summary (and he pulls no punches on what the coalition should be doing) on The Drum.

Someone has made me a search engine. (Alright - it's for all nerdy types out there but it is way cool)

Massimo Pigliucci on Rationallyspeaking.org asks some questions about the US Prison system and why we lock people up. This is despite violent crime in the US going down - which could have interesting causes as Kevin Drum writes on Mother Jones. Do we need to be asking the same questions in Australia? There are currently about 30,000 people in Australian gaols. That's only 0.1% of the population but the number of people in gaol is growing at almost double the speed of population growth, even though in Australia violent crime is also down.

I often forget living in the city with its bright lights and pollution how beautiful the nights sky can be. As an example I've come across this video of time lapse photography at the Very Large Telescope in Chile. It's pretty amazing. Check out Phil Plait's blog for some commentary.

And if you've ever wandered what it would be like to be on a starship tumbling through space you can stop - because we are, as this edited version shows wonderfully.

Why I like Lindy Hop

Today would have been Frankie Manning's birthday. For those that don't know, Frankie was one of the key inventors of the Lindy Hop (he invented the air step and choreographed the famous Hellzapoppin' routine) and the key figures of the revival. He was still dancing at 94. Check out this short documentary "Never Stop Swinging" for more. Frankie continues to be an inspiration to lindy hoppers everywhere.