We Could Be Heroes

[tcpip]

Visited the David Bowie exhibition with Liz B., Karl B., and caseopaya on Sunday on a special event organised by the Australian Sex Party. Spent a fair bit of time chatting with Fiona Patten, the party's leader and member in the Victorian parliament. They've done very well over the past six years as a minor party and have managed to succeed well beyond their representation. The exhibition itself was quite a delight, with quite a collection of ephemera, clothing, music, and videos. As an example of the imperfections of memory, was reminded how abundantly political and very Australian the "Let's Dance" video clip was (for someone who has three copies of the album on vinyl, the lapse is quite impressive). Entry also included a free album, albeit tied to Google services.

Other heroes, which I have already mentioned in passing on FB, are the hero rats of APOPO who, in Mozambique, have finished their contribution of making that country land-mine free. For the civil union caseopaya and I had that as our charity of choice, so it is very pleasing to see their remarkable success. There is of course plenty more work for these small but mighty noses to do in the detection of land mines in other countries and early detection of tuberculosis. Journeyman Pictures has a great short documentary on their mine-clearing activities.

Spent last night with a small group having dinner with futurist Jamais Cascio, and quizzed him on a few matters of the matters of dangerous climatic changes, the possibility of geoengineering to resolve these problems, and the political impediments to such action. Also as an item of discussion that night was the heroic research success of NASA's media announcement of having found liquid water on mars. Yes, 'heroic research' - courageous, audacious, doughty. We need to see some more of that in this world.

Comments

[absinthangel.livejournal.com]

JELLUS! Would have loved to see the Bowie Exhibit! HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY WISHES to you too!!!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It was a great show, really enjoyed. Been listening to almost naught but Bowie the past few days as result.

BTW, my birthday is January 20... Some strange notification from LJ?

[delphipsmith]

I had never heard of "the hero rats of APOPO" until your post, so of course I googled them and wow, they are so cool! I may make them one of my Christmas charities this year. I always ask for charity contributions instead of giftses, and I usually pick one human, one animal, and one environmental so people have at least one they will be OK with :) The Hero Rats would be a great choice because they are human AND animal.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

> The Hero Rats would be a great choice because they are human AND animal.

They're a pretty impressive bunch. Glad to have made another convert to an excellent cause. These people (and their ratty friends) are magnificent.

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

You can still download the album, but I can't remember how. I went for A Reality Tour. I should press "unpause" on those mp3s...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I've made good use of youtube-dl in the past, I must experiment with Google music.

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

In this case, they provided a more official mechanism. Limited to two downloads only. Which for people with file servers and backup regimes, ought not be too much of a limitation. It's like they're a cloud company who have no idea how people use real computers.