Thursday, August 25, 2011

Afropolitan / African anthem

music

Mr. Skills aka JJC is the musician behind one of my favourite beats: We Are Africans.
Last year I showed you the ORIGINAL, the Africa Unite Remix, and the Naija (Nigerian) remix featuring DaGrin and others.
That is THE anthem y'all and now there are even more remixes.

Let's travel...
to Sierra Leone for the Salone version:

and to Zimbabwe for the Southern African beat:

There is a 9ja Street mix, a more local version of the Naija remix:

I also found some techno and acoustic versions on youtube.
Awoo!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Doing the writer thing

music

I just got a pair of poems accepted by an online magazine. Like the hype over getting a scientific paper published, pretty much nobody is going to read it.
I mean, with creative writing your chances of getting read are actually (much) better.
But still I'm so excited!!! I'm getting published (check itch in a few days.)

I wish academics were not so stuck, and I'm proud of myself for being unstuck: getting a bite of these worlds.

A video on academic culture:
It tells basically that superstition (the idea that learned people are witches or devilish) killed Baghdad science. Amazing.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

Academy

music

2008 - I drew this layout for an academy. It would be a child's garden...a really swanky village for three types of geeks: Olympiad Prep - Math, other Science, Chess; Sports - Tennis, Football (especially female), synchro; Verbal - Journalism, Languages, Theater.


Then I started a blog and webpage (now empty) for it, and also had extended planning chats (password protected) with a couple of friends: one friend is an engineering prof who runs a very simple charity/scholarship program, the other a wise and fun UN worker/administrator. I should go and read the chats now, we had lots of cool ideas.

2011 - Still a lot to do before this is real. Maybe 10 years from now. Maybe 5. I guess I'll need a little money.

Pay attention to the buildings, all the styles, from all the places I love: Sana'ani earth-brick towers, Spanish balconies on The Mallorca, East Asian roofs on The Kyoto, a Vegas-inspired theater, and I love the solar-panel-as-pattern on the icy-blue igloo. Tiger Woods is in the picture too.

This is synchronized swimming

NOTES:

- I love music, but there's no music on the list. Oh well. I must have felt unqualified to include it.

- Interesting that I loved (or valued) journalism long before I worked with journalists.