Media I'm Consuming

Music

• The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart. Bass like The Cure, indie guitars, melodic vocals, driving drums. Nice.
  
• The Dears
• The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
• Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters. Great funk & jazz
• Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
• Beck - Guero
• Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
• Tegan and Sara - So Jealous
• Jets Overhead - Bridges (sampler)
  

Gig
Steve Earle & Patti Smith - Meltdown. One of the best shows I've ever experienced. Steve Earle is a brilliant singer/songwriter. Patti Smith and her band blew me away.

Film
Crash. Got me thinkin'. So much racism, not enough integration. Us and Them.

DVD
Long Way Round - Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman

Book
My Life, Bill Clinton
Sad Songs and Other Things That Count, Magnus Nelson (manuscript)

Courses
MA Social Enterprise - LJMU
Recording Techniques & Sound Engineering - Morley College

Social Justice
Saw the film Hotel Rwanda recently. I knew a bit about the violence happening in Rwanda. Art has inspired me to take action. I'm going to join Amnesty International because I believe in social justice.

Fantasy Football
I've joined Yahoo's Fantasy Football League with a team I call Bad is Good. I figure if my team is bad, that's ok. If my team is good, that's ok too. I've chosen the level of competitiveness as 'casual' and letting the computer handle the draft for me. The whole idea is to keep me in the football loop and get me back up to speed with what's going on in the NFL after nearly 3 years away from the U. S. of A.

California Friends Visit Catford - Summer 2005

Allie & Rob in London

Genio on the train

















Nicole & Ardis on the floor in Catford


John was here too - but no picture...yet

The Arrogance of Power

Senator J. William Fulbright wrote a book in 1966 called The Arrogance of Power about American foreign policy in Vietnam. At the time he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In a section of the autobiography, My Life, Bill Clinton wrote about the central argument of Fulbright's book:

Fulbright's essential argument was that great nations get into trouble and can go into long-term decline when they are "arrogant" in the use of their power, trying to do things they shouldn't do in places they shouldn't be. He was suspicious of any foreign policy rooted in missionary zeal, which he felt would cause us to drift into commitments "which though generous and benevolent in content, are so far reaching as to exceed even America's great capacitities." He also thought that when we brought our power to bear in the service of an abstract concept, like anti-communism, without understanding local history, culture, and politics we could do more harm than good.

Fulbright's ideas hit the mark regarding policy in Vietnam in the 60's and appears to define America's current policy in Iraq...

MA Social Enterprise

Looks like I'll apply to Liverpool John Moores University for the MA Social Enterprise program. I went up to Liverpool on Friday and visited Bob Doherty, who runs the program, to check out the school and discuss details. At the end of the day, I headed back to London believing this is a very good step for me and my career. Assuming I'm accepted, I'll commute from London to Liverpool and back every Wednesday. It's 2.5 hours each way and I'm seeing it as an opportunity to study. To be honest, I'm pretty excited about it.

Here's a link to check out the program:
http://cwis.livjm.ac.uk/MGT/social_enterprise/welcome.html

Here's a link to check out Liverpool:
http://www.liverpool08.com/AboutLiverpool/index.asp

Bye for now,
Jason