Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi simply can’t help himself when it comes to beautiful women. On this occasion, the subject of his all too obvious glancing is the newly-crowned Miss Italy Miriam Leone.

Many of his supporters certainly do forgive him, with the exception of his long suffering wife, Veronica:

Mr Berlusconi was appearing on the current affairs show, Porta a Porta, and found himself discussing the issues of the day with Miss Leone, a 23-year-old student who possesses a pair of enviably long legs.

But his admiring glance is likely to provoke the ire of Veronica, Mr Berlusconi’s long-suffering wife of more than 20 years.

She took the unusual step of contacting Left-leaning newspaper La Repubblica following reports that the politician had approached several women at a party and told them: “If I wasn’t married, I would marry you straight away.”

In her letter, she wrote: “These were declarations that I see as damaging to my dignity and cannot be treated as just joke. That is why I am asking for a public apology as I have not receievd one in private.”

Berlusconi isn’t apologetic:

Earlier this year, the politician caused a storm when he claimed that his left-wing counterparts had no beautiful women in their ranks.

“The left has no taste, not even when it comes to women,” he said.

GZA rocks the crowd at the Fillmore in New York City, September 12, 2008

The juggernaut known as capitalism becomes a steamroller when combined with the corporate entertainment history. All forms of artistic expression that break the barrier between the unknown and the popular are quickly co-opted by the industry, packaged, marketed, and force-fed to the willing masses.

Hip Hop hasn’t escaped this truism. Born in the South Bronx, the DJ and rapper formed two of the four parts of the hip hop culture rising at the time (the other two being breakdancing and graffiti). Similar to punk and to rock’n'roll in the 1950s, hip hop was rebellion in musical form. From the deconstruction of the popular music of the day in which singing was overdubbed and manipulated, and instruments were numerous and played with by sound producers, hip hop stripped it bare by having a DJ with a turntable and an MC with a mic.

The golden age of hip hop was in the late 1980s with acts like Run DMC, Eric B. and Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, and EPMD. The rhymes and production grew increasingly sophisticated as the time progressed while the themes revolved around MC battles, parties, and black nationalism. The arrival of gangsta rap say the focus shift to the West Coast as hip hop was embraced by the larger white audience. The subject matter grew grittier as it shifted towards violence and gang culture.

The pendulum swung back in 1993 with the seminal release of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) by the Wu-Tang Clan. Seen as a response to the domination of the West Coast and gangsta rap, the Wu-Tang release saw New York reclaim its title as hip hop’s ground zero through the progression of the genre found on the album. The tone was darker, more streetwise, often more vulgar, yet the rhymes were tighter and the production darker and more advanced thanks to the skills of the Wu-Tang’s RZA. New York was back in the pilot’s seat.

Liquid Swords (1995)

The domination of New York was secured with the release in 1995 of Liquid Swords by GZA and produced by the RZA. The beats pounded harder, the music was darker, and the rhymes couldn’t have been tighter. The GZA’s material floated around drug deals gone sour, mafioso lifestyles, and of course their Ku-Fung muse. What separates GZA from the later MCs in regards to his subject matter is that he keeps a detachment from the subject while still being the subject. He doesn’t flaunt the wealth as has become staple these days, nor does he engage in the crude, as would West Coast MCs. His product was tight, and matched up hit for hit, beat for beat with the RZA’s production to produce the perfect hip hop album. Liquid Swords serves as a bookend for the Golden Age of Hip Hop as only months later the corporate vampires began to promote bling culture, thus fusing together hip hop with crass materialism throughout co-option and ending any real rebelliousness in the genre itself. Liquid Swords served as the high water mark for hip hop.

It’s little wonder then that Liquid Swords has seen a resurgence in popularity. Disgusted with the dumbed-down hip hop lite feted by the masses, hip hop purists have reoriented themselves to the GZA, undoubtedly the Wu-Tang’s purist. The GZA staged a revival of Liquid Swords this past Friday at the Fillmore in New York City. Much how rockers grew annoying with the hair metal explosion of the 1980s and turned the clock back to the punk of the UK and the West Coast, hip hop purists are rejecting the corporatist drivel being pumped out at them today. Whether they’ll be successful in rerouting the course of hip hop remains to be seen.

While we ponder that, let’s have a listen to the GZA’s “4th Chamber” from Liquid Swords put to a clip of a film by Jean Luc-Godard. Hip hop purism meets film purism……

As a demonstration of his lyrical prowess, take a look at only the first few lines of “Hell’s Wind staff/Killah Hills 10304″:

Restaurants on a stake-out
So order the food to take out
Chaos, outside a spark steakhouse
Maintain the power, I feel the deal’s gone sour
Nigga Mr. Wedding, late a fuckin half hour
And his man who bought land from Tony Starks
While he was contractin bricklayin jobs in city parks
he’s a loan shark, bitches raise a grand to a finger
In a garment that’s stretched, got it sewn like Singer
Cause all that talk blasphemy this kid after me
for the heist, in a Burlington Coat Factory

In only several lines, he manages to reference the John Gotti-led hit on Gambino Family boss Paul Castellano, the construction levy in Manhattan put out by Sammy Gravano, and the Genovese Family’s tight grip over the Garment District. So many key references in only a few phrases delivered like quick jabs on target every time. Let’s hope that the GZA’s revival of Liquid Swords pays dividends for the genre as a whole.

A “sexual revolution” has found fertile soil in post-Pinochet Chile (image courtesy of Tomas Munita)

Long the bastion of conservative social mores, Chile is undergoing a rapid transformation that is being spearheaded by its youth as they engage in a sexual revolution reminiscent of the USA during the 1960s. Viewing themselves as “the children of democracy and not dictatorship”, Chilean teenagers are taking advantage of the freedoms accorded them in the post-Pinochet era. Alexei Barrionuevo explains:

“Chile’s youth are clearly having sex earlier and testing the borderlines with their sexual conduct,” said Dr. Ramiro Molina, director of the University of Chile’s Center for Adolescent Reproductive Medicine and Development.

The sexual awakening is happening through a booming industry for 18-and-under parties, an explosion of Internet connectivity and through Web sites like Fotolog, where young people trade suggestive photos of each other and organize weekend parties, some of which have drawn more than 4,500 teenagers. The online networks have emboldened teenagers to express themselves in ways that were never customary in Chile’s conservative society.

“We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of democracy,” said Michele Bravo, 17, at a recent afternoon party. “There is much more of a rebellious spirit among young people today. There is much more freedom to explore everything.”

Politics is tied into the personal here as the old dictatorship crumbled and along with it Chile’s social conservatism. When borders are opened up it only becomes natural to see what is on the other side. The “grass is greener over there” syndrome becomes a prevalent view as individuals take part in these new freedoms previously denied them by rigid social mores. But to what end? America’s experiment with “free love” saw the rise of STDs, teen pregnancies, rising divorce rates, and broken families. Sexual liberation also brought what some consider to be a “slave to the libido” mentality and the rise of raunch culture. Explorations of new freedoms don’t necessarily denote a victory of sorts as the American example attests to. Hopefully Chile can cope with this new openness without the social ramifications felt elsewhere by those who engaged in the same “revolution”.

Wadda you mean ‘il weekend’? Basta! It’s fine settimana!

The pervasiveness of the English language in our world today can be attributed to many factors, history, economy, and culture foremost amongst them. Counting close to two billion speakers, it’s easy to say that English is a global language and in many parts of the world is the lingua franca even if it’s not native language.

English shapes and forms the new trends in other languages thanks to this massive presence. One need only think of the English term “football” (soccer in North America) to see how the language has influenced other languages. The Spanish refer to the game as “futbol” and Serbs simply spell it “fudbal”. English loan words then undergo a process of adaptation to best suit the native language.

The French refer to the mixing of English and French as “Franglais” which quite often is seen as a degeneration of the native tongue. So much so is Franglais seen as a threat that the French government finances the Académie française to ensure the French nature of the French language.

As French culture has come under increasing pressure with the widespread availability of English media, the Académie has tried to prevent the anglicisation of the French language. For example, the Académie has recommended, with mixed success, that some loanwords from English (such as walkman, software and email) be avoided, in favour of words derived from French (baladeur, logiciel, and courriel respectively). Moreover, the Académie has worked to modernise French orthography.

The French have been at the forefront of the resistance to anglicisation and now have gained a new ally in Italy. The Società Dante Alighieri is taking a note from their French counterparts and is actively calling for resistance to the anglicisation of the Italian language. Phrases like “il weekend”, “lo stress”, and “le leadership” pepper the modern Italian language to the consternation of linguistic purists and nationalists who seek to ensure the Italian nature of the language. Some feel that this loan words are a product of globalisation and others suggest that dropping foreign words into a conversation implies sophistication and intelligence. Here are two sides to the debate:

“I don’t think it matters if we use English words,” said Alessandra, 25, a secretary in a Rome travel agency. “It’s part of globalisation. Often it’s faster – like using ‘il weekend’ instead of ‘fine settimana’.”
But her boss, Maria, disagreed. “People think it’s chic to use English words but I don’t like it at all. I want to speak either Italian or English, not an Esperanto mix of the two. It’s important to keep language clean.”

Preserving one’s cultural heritage in an era of rapid communication and globalisation is a worthy affair. After all, how interesting would an Italian-less Italy be? So cancel ‘il weekend’ and bring back ‘fine settimana’!

Miss Venezuela, Dayana Mendoza

For news junkies, say the word Venezuela, and one will automatically think of two things: its assertive leader Hugo Chavez who is the bane of the USA in Latin America (a role he has taken over from Fidel Castro) and of course, oil. The latter serves as Venezuela’s main industry and main source of revenue as well as contention with the outside world. Yet there is another natural resource that Venezuela has been blessed with: beauty, and more specifically beautiful women for beauty pageants.

Rory Carroll of the UK Guardian takes a look at Venezuela’s beauty industry in: No place for runners-up in land of oil and beauty. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Many ordinary Venezuelans, male and female, proudly assert that this is a land blessed with two things: oil and beautiful women. There are thousands of local beauty contests held annually in schools and villages and banks offer loans for nose jobs.

President Hugo Chávez has railed against widespread cosmetic surgery – girls as young as 15 request breast enlargements as birthday presents – and has tried to steer the country in a more socialist and less materialistic direction.

But not even the commandante criticises the pageants.

The survey shows that heavy metal fans are also very creative and at ease with themselves, but not are not very outgoing or hard-working

Growing up in the early 80s out in suburbia, the musical divide was a simple one: you either listened to hard rock/heavy metal of the Led Zeppelin/Rolling Stones/Def Leppard/Judas Priest variety, or you listened to New Wave coming out of the UK best represented by bands such as Depeche Mode and The Smiths. Alongside the debates that raged about the musical qualities of each came subtle (or blunt) jabs at what each others’ tastes meant about the person themselves.

For instance, the prevalence of black leather and lumberjack coat attire plus feathered hair gave fans of heavy metal a “dirty” appearance. The trite lyricism of hard rock allowed its fans to be mocked for their intelligence or lack thereof. The glam look of New Wave acts naturally led to those in the opposing camps to question the sexuality of their fans.

Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh conducted an extensive study of 36,000 music fans to research what their musical tastes say about their personalities. Here are some of the thumbnail results:

Indie: Devotees have low self-esteem and are not very hard-working, kind or generous. However, they are creative.

Rock ‘n’ Roll: Fans have high self-esteem and are very creative, hard-working and at ease with themselves, but not very kind or generous.

Blues: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease with themselves.

Classical: Classical music lovers have high self-esteem, are creative and at ease with themselves, but not outgoing.

Heavy metal: Very creative and at ease with themselves, but not very outgoing or hard-working.

Reggae: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, kind, generous and at ease with themselves, but not very hard-working.

Country & Western: Very hard-working and outgoing.

Dance: Creative and outgoing but not kind or generous.

Rap: High self-esteem, outgoing.

Rendering of a futuristic San Francisco run by geothermal power by IwamotoScott Architecture

City planning is as old as cities themselves, although the last one hundred and fifty years have seen the city replace the countryside as the primary residence of people. The population explosion that has come about since the Industrial Revolution and is continuing throughout the developing world has put strains on our cities whether socially, environmentally, economically, etc.

City planners have long had a thankless job as few have ever been historically feted yet most are lamented in one way or another. Some cities work; others fail. Some cities become a world unto themselves such as New York or Paris. Others become wastelands such as Gary, Indiana or Middlesbrough, UK.

So what makes a perfect city? Dejan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum of London, tells us the attributes that a perfect city must have:

The perfect city simply doesn’t exist: it would have an underground railway as organised as Tokyo’s, with a bus service as inspiring as the vaporetti of Venice. It would have a setting as beautiful as Stockholm’s. It would have New York’s museums and its 24-hour culture, with Berlin’s cheap, high-ceilinged apartments, and Hong Kong’s energy. It would have London’s tolerance of utterly different ways of life, coexisting side by side. It would have the street life of Naples, and the street cleaning of Zurich.

The following is what would in my opinion make for a perfect city:

Geography

The perfect city would be set along a coastline, whether lakefront or oceanfront with sandy beaches allowing for development of a multi-use waterfront that’s accessible from the inner core. The city would have both flat land and hills and would have a mountain or two nearby at least 3,000 metres high, allowing for a long skiing/snowboarding season. Naturally location is all about luck, so we’ll have to work with what we’ve got.

People

The residents of the perfect city should be individuals who take pride in their city and want to be there. Of course there’ll be different classes of people, but the vanguard should be what social scientist Richard Florida refers to as the “creative class”. This class propels the city forward in several directions so that it doesn’t stagnate nor rest on its laurels.

The city should have some diversity to give it an international flavour. This isn’t only reflected in various ethnic restaurants, but in culture, design, attitudes, and social settings.

Transportation and City Layout

The grid pattern of cities in the New World is conducive to vehicular transportation but takes away from the character of a city. The patterns found in Europe are much better in allowing a city to have its own unique image and quirks: from tightly-nestled streets to a concentric pattern in the downtown core. A perfect city should have at least one focal point if not several or dozens of focal points where streets meet in a piazza that allows for a common social setting for city residents. These common areas would be off-limits to all vehicles save for mopeds and bicycles to encourage pedestrian traffic and social interaction. Piazzas should also have outdoor malls, ranging from fruit markets to clothing stores that allow for cheap space rental to encourage small local businesses.

Mass Transit must be a priority in a perfect city. Pedestrian lanes, bicycle lanes, subway lines, trams and trolleys all must serve those living in the city and those who visit or work in the city. Streets should be routed according to what type of traffic is vital and what is unnecessary. A perfect city would require an international airport and light rail access to it from the downtown core.

The city neighbourhoods should speak to one another but without all blending into one giant mass. Retaining their own unique qualities should be a goal, but without cutting them off from neighbourhoods next door.

Environment

A perfect city has to be environmentally conscious. It’s an oft-mentioned cliche but it is a worthy goal since health effects from pollution can strain a health system. Mass transit should be encouraged to lessen the dependency on automobiles, yet the source of power for mass transit should be a clean and efficient one.

Culture and Aesthetic

A perfect city would have to be a cultural centre. A city cannot thrive on business alone and be a perfect city. The burgh needs a balance of business and leisure activities. The city would be proactive in its approach to the arts, allowing for festivals to dominate certain parts of the city at certain times of the year. An opera house would be vital, as would concert venues both indoor and outside. A theatre district would allow for an artists’ colony to spring up and in which a theatre school can reside thanks to the partnership of local council and theatre owners. The downtown core musn’t become a dead zone in the evening and on weekends, which is why a cafe strip (or several) should be designated and an entertainment district created for clubs. All of these should be near locations for easy transit to neighbourhoods nearby or further away. Museums and art galleries are a must, and local artists should as often as possible play alongside featured artists from the rest of the world.

The perfect city must have a unique aesthetic look. The natural surroundings can only be changed slightly leaving buildings the objects of artistic expression. The perfect city shouldn’t shy away from taking risks in architectural design and shouldn’t fear controversy in its approach to its own look.

A city should be open to people spending time in its environment and not inside dwellings. Parks, recreation centres, roller-blading lanes should all have a part of a well-functioning city.

The city should be hooked up to the internet. Individuals should be able to tap into the internet from any location in the city thanks to wifi systems put in place by the city.

Conclusion

“Balance” is often a cliche, but a perfect city would require one. A balance between work and leisure, between automobile and mass transit, between familiarity and uniqueness. In the end, a perfect city should be where a person feels most at home and wants to be their home for their future lives.

iPod – its presence is ubiquitous

I don’t have an iPod. There, I said. In fact, I refuse to buy an iPod. If I wish to listen to music, I have a stereo and I have my laptop at home, plus I have a stereo system in my car should I wish to listen to music while driving.

During the day in the city, I’ll see hundreds of people going every which way with iPods attached to their bodies and heads. Whether they’re walking to the subway or working out in the gym, these people are detached from the mass around them. It’s precisely this detachment from the reality in their midst that I can’t appreciate. When I’m walking around, I enjoy not just the sights but also the sounds of the city around me. Each and ever sense combines to give me a better understanding of my surroundings. Wearing an iPod cuts me off not only from my surroundings, but it also cuts me off from the people and the community as a whole. Wearing an iPod also tells others that you are in your own space and wish not to be bothered. It’s difficult to call it elitist since it is an incredibly popular technology, but the iPod can be deemed a rejection of the immediate world around you as you seek to control your sensory perception by listening to a pre-arranged soundtrack.

Rob Clowes of Spiked Online elaborates on how the iPod separates an individual from their surroundings in his review of Michael Bull’s Sound Moves: IPod Culture and Urban Experience entitled: The Dialectic of wearing an iPod. I’ve provided several excellent excerpts.

Bull has it that the iPod is the signal artefact of our own age and notes that the progression from ‘Gothic Cathedral to Citroën DS to the Apple iPod represents a Western narrative of increasing mobility and privatisation’. However, Bull’s book is really more of a critique than a paean, for Bull’s aim is not so much to analyse the device itself as to explore its use and integration in our culture. Through the iPod, he writes a narrative of the creation of a new sort of self, which has withdrawn from much of urban life into what he calls ‘mediated urban isolation’.

Central to Bull’s argument – although rather implicit – is the idea that the contemporary self is structured around the use of certain mobile technologies, most notably the iPod, but also mobile phones and GPS devices. In common with some contemporary cognitive theorists (1), he sees these devices as reshaping our cognitive landscapes.

and:

The first step of the dialectic is that the iPod as technology reflects the relationship of contemporary subjectivity to urban space – which is primarily to reject it. In Bull’s account, it is the already ‘chilly semiotic space’ of the contemporary urban environment which the iPod user seeks to overwrite with his own portable envelope or ‘cocoon’ of sound.

However, as the subject comes to depend on the iPod to supply the right sort of accompaniment for his experience of the world, he increasingly withdraws from the urban landscape as a scene of interactions with others. Rather, the urban landscape becomes ‘privatised’ by being subsumed into his own private, experiential universe. This is said to be signalled by the white earpieces which are at once a fashion accessory and a sign that the user is content with his own company. But this retreat itself has consequences. In a sort of feedback relation, the iPod user retreats into a privatised sound world and comes, partially, to vacate urban space even as he inhabits it, replacing the outside world with one that is the product of his own, fevered imaginations.

finally:

Urban life is thus becoming increasingly phantasmagoric and spectatorial; a place not to interact with others but to experience one’s own private movie that is conjured up by a readymade sound world. ‘Readymade’ is important here because, as Bull frequently emphasises, the private sound world of the iPod user is not of his own making but rather relies on the products of the culture industry. Urbanites are increasingly shut into their own private sound worlds, which are constructed to project their own private experience on to the cityscape that simply becomes so much scenery for their private movies. At the same time, the shared space and conviviality of city life is eclipsed.

read the full review here

Teo Paul Of Union on Ossington Avenue

As Toronto’s Entertainment District is under siege from local government and condo developers who greedily eye the large buildings in the area, and as King West becomes boring, while West Queen West loses its cache, the Ossington strip has become the new hotspot for the bohemian, avant-garde, and the hipster.

One of those making Ossington their home base is chef Teo Paul who will soon be opening the restaurant Union on this strip. He currently has a blog entitled Opening Soon that appears in Toronto Life magazine. He details the struggles of opening his joint and the joys that come with it. It’s worth more than a glance :)

Not all children can be A students

When countries are measured for “standard of life”, education is consistently one of the main criteria used in establishing the rating. Specifically, the per capita number of people with higher education is used to determine how educated a population is. One of the main tenets of our liberal, egalitarian order is that everyone is entitled to an education to at least a high school graduation level and often even further thanks to government programs and loans.

American children are taught growing up that they can be anything, even President of the United States. Nothing is further from the case. Not all children are created equal as even children understand. Some naturally excel at sports, others at music. Yet for some reason American education policy refuses to accept the reality that some children are simply better at the core subjects in school than others and wishes to paper over these obvious differences. The classic example of this hubris is the No Child Left Behind Act co-authored by Democratic Rep. George Miller of California and Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Charles Murray takes issue with this rejection of reality in: The Bell Curve Tolls For Thee. Here’s an excerpt:

In all areas of academic ability, half of the children are below average. This fact has implications for education and public policy, and yet it’s something most politicians and public intellectuals would rather not talk about. It amounts to educational romanticism. At its heart is a glib presumption that every child can be anything he or she wants to be if only the schools do their job properly. No one really believes it, but we approach education’s problems as if we did. We are phobic about saying out loud that children differ in their ability to learn the things schools teach. Not only do we hate to say it, we get angry with people who do.

click here to read the rest of the article