The unusual geographic effect of the rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia has revealed to scientists that modern farming practices - apparently - lead to less rainfall on the farmed side of the fence. Maybe we have more to do with the drought than we’d like to accept?

This man was not in the dream

So I went to the place for accessing records. It was a large brown office building in the centre of a big city. The foyer was very luxuriant, with a high ceiling, chandalier, and antique wooden floorboards. I waited a while, along with a range of wealthy businessmen. While I was waiting, a television showed the morning news, which featured a government announcement. The government described how they were going to restructure the taxation system, because they need to make it “more flexible”. I knew that the government in this city were notoriously corrupt, so I took this as nothing more than an excuse to do something scandalous.

Eventually a female attendant unlocked and opened one of the doors leading out of the foyer, letting people pass through into the night-records area. The wealthy businessmen all went through first, and I walked through a little behind them. The attendant stopped me and said, “If you are interested in teaching work, you need to be able to prove that you are at least 18 years old.” She then turned her back on me, and continued into a comfortable waiting room where the wealthy men were gathered.

I was very annoyed by this, being discriminated against due to my clothing and appearance, for what seemed like it should really be an open public service. In anger, I suddenly ran at the woman, to scare her. At the last moment I ran around her, grabbed a an expensive-looking and ugly brass ornament from a side-table, then turned and ran back out along the corridor. The ornament was an angular, abstract shape, vaguely reminiscent of both a Möbius strip and the notoriously messy logo for the 2012 London Olympics. But it was made of solid, precious metal, and seemed to be a sort of antique.

Fleeing the scene, in a few moments I reached the end of the corridor, where the doorway led back into the high-ceilinged foyer. To try to prevent my escape, one of the staff had lent a fine old double-bass precariously in the doorway. The assumption was that I would stop, or at least pause, not wanting to damage the instrument. But instead I barged right through it, throwing it to the floor of the foyer. A single security guard had been waiting near the door leading out into the street. He was already moving towards me. As he approached, I gave the double-bass a solid kick, so that it skidded across the floor towards him. This was enough to distract him, as he knelt down in concern for the instrument. I ran past him and into the street.

I started running along the pavement to my left. It was a covered pavement, arcaded with columns. There were shops and other entrances all the way along. Within a few metres, another man stood in my way. He had seen that I had just come running out of the prestigious brown building, and he wanted to ask me about what sort of tupperware they had inside. I pushed him out of the way, and pointed at the ground, shouting untruthfully: “there’s tupperware on the ground!”

I ran on, and fearing pursuit from the security forces, I took a sudden turn up a concrete ramp, leading into a building that looked something like a car-park. By now my moment of rebellion back in the night-records building had caused a sort of general panic. The brown building itself was on fire, and young people in the street had a wild, incendiary look in their eyes. I came upon a young man at the top of the concrete ramp - he was surrounded by piles of large black rubbish bags. He was grabbing these bags and hurling them around, in a rage, ecstatic at his own destructive power. One of the black bags landed near me, and I picked it up and threw it back at him, hard, knocking him into one of the piles of rubbish.

Still I ran on, going up a few stories, then out onto an open walkway with a view across to another building nearby. Another angry young man was on the edge of this building - in fact he was hanging of the edge by his hands, enjoying the danger. I leapt across the gap and thudded into him, pushing him back inside the building, and leaving myself now hanging from the concrete edge. The street was very far below, an unsurvivable drop. There wasn’t really anywhere I could go. I realised that I could, perhaps, swing my body forwards and grab onto another concrete pilon using my feet and legs. But I knew that I wouldn’t then be able to hang from my legs - they wouldn’t be strong enough. But I also realised that I didn’t care: I’d ruined everything now, and there was nowhere left to go. So I swung my body forwards, grabbing the other surface with my legs, and letting the top edge go with my hands. For just a moment I hung there by my legs, then I dropped, falling backwards through the air.

It was a long way down, and for a second or two I felt the wind rushing past my back. I was tense all over, fear physically gripping my body, waiting to die. I breathed in sharply to brace myself against the impact, but then when my lungs filled, my body stopped falling, and was suspended, perfectly still, lying on my back in mid-air.

You can download any of their mixtapes online, and I love them all - but maybe try 8, 9 or 13 as a starting point. Number 11 is also a big favourite for me - but it’s loaded with pretty heavy dub that will be too much for some.

Anyways, I was listening to a Riot Control mix the other day when I started to get the feeling that the gritty urban soul track I was listening to actually seemed to be about free market economics. Perhaps, more specifically, it is in fact a plea for a monetarist approach.

I checked it out, and yep, he’s singing what I thought he was singing. The track is “Let the Dollar Circulate“, by Billy Paul.

This track came out in 1975, at the depths of a US recession. So maybe it’s just swung round, through the great cycles of history, to fresh relevance. I’m not sure if Burt Fox had all this in mind when he pulled this old record out for Riot Control 13.

Well, apparently the answer is: 1 in 12.5 million people.

North Wall Arts Centre, Sat November 1st 2008

Matthew Sharp is a critically acclaimed cellist who has performed with the likes of the Royal and London Philharmonic orchestras. According to convention, Sharp should content himself with straight recitals like any other virtuoso, classically-trained musician. But he is not bound by convention, and this is not a conventional show.

Read on…

Unconfirmed Reports officially endorses Obama for President. If nothing else, he deserves some solace since his granny died.

The 10-year price-to-earnings ratio tells an incredibly consistent story over the last century. It has averaged about 16 over that time. There have been long periods when it stayed above 16 and even shot above 20, like the 1920s, 1960s and recent years. As recently as last October, when other measures suggested the market was reasonably valued, the Graham-Dodd version of the ratio was a disturbing 27. But periods in which the ratio has jumped above 20 have always been followed by steep declines and at least a decade of poor returns.

By 1932, the ratio had fallen to 6. In 1982, it was only 7. Then, of course, the market began to self-correct in the other direction, and stocks took off.

Toad and Frog

Cold, frosty people as well. Decent, hygienic people.

Flurries of marijuana smoke mixed with heavy gusts of snow as I squinted my way through the streets of Amsterdam this afternoon. The outstanding tolerance of other peoples’ tastes here makes me feel like humans are not so bad after all. At the Rijksmuseum, I saw two self-portraits of Rembrandt, one at age 21, one at 55. I could see the same person in both faces, and he looked like a nice guy.

The point is not that marijuana is good. The point is letting rational grown-ups (even me!) run their lives for themselves, make their own personal decisions.

If the past few centuries have seen a pattern of incremental liberalisation and personal choice in law and social convention, then that would arguably put Amsterdam somewhere ahead of the rest of the world in the trajectory of human evolution. This theory may also be supported by noting that Amsterdam was one of the first places to develop modern finance and capitalist economics, from the fourteenth century onwards. In 1602, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange was the first place in the world to issue stocks and bonds. Soon after Gutenberg invented the printing press, Amsterdam became one of the major centres for producing books, since it was far more free from censorship compared to the rest of Europe.

Amsterdam’s early growth as a centre of commerce is inseparable from its religious tolerance, at a time when this was quite exceptional in Europe. The same tolerance now attracts tourism, which can be pretty ugly in the red light district - but all the same, I relish being able to walk down the street smoking a joint, without having to worry about who I might “offend”.