Planet a.f.p.

I didn’t go to much at Adelaide’s annual Festival Fringe this year, but I went with friends to “Dave Bloustien’s Complete Western History of Philosophy” on Friday, and also with my father to Womadelaide on Saturday evening.

We enjoyed Bloustien’s philosophical stand-up comedy routine. My tickets hadn’t arrived in time, but I was able to get in by showing some ID to prove that I’d paid, so that was OK. It was a very small venue – roughly seventy seats by my estimate – and in that respect a complete contrast to a performance by one of the Big Stars of comedy (I have in mind a Jimeoin performance that I went to at a previous Fringe).

Bloustien began with some cultural observations as someone born in Adelaide but living in Sydney, then into some comments about what inspired him to choose philosophy as a theme for a comedy routine (including a hypothetical movie theatre conversation), then into some illustrations of how ideas can be more interesting and appealing than real things, and then into a mention or two of some historically significant philosophers.

According to Bloustien, the Egyptians experienced a few difficulties prior to the invention of the triangle because their pyramids kept falling down. The word “philosophy” is Greek, but to imagine that philosophy itself was invented by the Greeks is like supposing that nothing comparable to a texta predates the Australian origin of that (now generic) brand. The latter point lead Bloustien into a dismissive remark about Intelligent Design theorists, because the American equivalent of a texta is a Magic Marker, and Bloustien cast this as an example of the same “anything I don’t understand must be magic” mentality.

After finishing with the various schools of ancient Greece, Bloustien went on to mention later philosophers (poking particular fun at the 16th century Michel de Montaigne). He also commented on a number of topics beside philosophy, using philosophy more as a link between different topics rather than as the dominant topic. My only complaint is that I feel Bloustien finished on his weakest material (which, moreover, apparently came from a previous show). However, even if the performance lacked a climax, there were still plenty of good laughs on the journey.

As for Womadelaide, I decided this year to go just for one evening rather than for a whole day (or more). The way I make that decision each year is by looking on the Womadelaide website to find out who’s on, listening to audio samples where available, and making a shortlist of artists I particularly want to see. Then I look at the schedule to find out when I need to attend in order to see as many of those artists as possible.

This year there was an internationally renowned, unscheduled, artist performing at Womadelaide. Unfortunately, this artist was the rain. To the best of my knowledge, it has never rained at Womadelaide before, and the event is certainly not designed with bad weather in mind. The heavy rain stopped after a while, but the ground was soaked throughout.

I enjoyed performances by Lepisto & Lehti (recommended videos: here and here), and by Djan Djan (video here). I didn’t see everything that I’d intended to, though. The Biscuit Readings were being performed from a roving trolley according to the programme, but I missed that. I also missed out on a workshop by Calexico that I’d been looking forward to. An earlier event had been postponed due to the rain, and the Powers That Be decided that this took priority over Calexico’s workshop. This was not handled in a manner that impressed me.

For tea I had a hotdog with cheese, bacon and onion, and later I had some Greek honey puffs, a few of which I shared with people standing next to me at Djan Djan’s performance. I didn’t buy anything from the craft shops, though I did get myself a T-shirt. As for CDs, having missed out on Calexico’s workshop I bought a copy of Driving to Dust for $30. Verdict: I like it – and it adds to the diversity of my collection – but I don’t love it. The overall sound of the album is good, but the lyrics don’t generally make sense (I’d hoped that the workshop might give me some insights into this).

Having done my research beforehand, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from the musicians I was interested in. And the musicians definitely did not disappoint. However, given the bad weather and the beaurocratic handling of the challenges that weather presented, I have to say that this was the most disappointing Womadelaide I have yet attended.

I’m still working on my post about Womadelaide and the Festival Fringe. Meanwhile, here is another short collection of interesting things I’ve come across online recently.

• Via Language Log, a talking piano.
• A couple of upcoming books that are worth keeping an eye on. The book version of Mark Rosenfelder’s Language Construction Kit is imminent. Later in the year, Mike Brown’s How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming will no doubt be an entertaining read.
• In astronomy news, evidence that small asteroids are held together by Van der Waals forces. Also, a hole in the moon.

I’ve been watching the blog Universe, which has turned up at Scienceblogs recently. The jury’s out on whether I should add it to the sidebar, but it’s promising. Reminds me of an email conversation with a friend in which we speculated on what the RSS feed of the universe would look like. My friend suggested this:

• September 3, 2008, 11:23: Particle and anti particle created, annihilated
• September 3, 2008, 11:23: Particle and anti particle created, annihilated
• September 3, 2008, 11:23: Particle and anti particle created, annihilated