Daily archives: April 25, 2006

Finest* Goths

This entry was posted in Manchester Skate on by

News worth going out and burning down a Tesco over.

Planning permission has been granted on the building that houses Jillys/ Rockworld that could see it becoming yet another bloody supermarket.

One of the commenters on the LiveJournal thread dug up some online information about the application–

Change of use of ground floor and basement nightclub to offices, retail unit for use as Class A1 (shop) or Class A2 (financial and professional services), B1 (business) and car parking for 28 cars

Others are certain it’s just a ploy to increase the value of the property and that there is no way a landmark like Jilly’s is going away. I’d like to believe that as awell, but I’m not so confident. The applicants, Bruntwood, seem to be all about turning a profit making the city centre a nice safe place for bland people to live and that’s a prime piece of Oxford Road for a developer.

I can imagine getting the planning permission was quite easy as well. There’s a part of Manchester council that doesn’t like youth and alternative culture. These are the people who last year drove skate boarders from an open, busy area where they could mingle safely with their non-plank pushing friends by threatening to fine them a grand if they didn’t start using a dark and isolated cage under the Mancunian Way. No matter that there’s already a Sainsburys less than two hundred yards away, these people would happily see a Mancunian icon shut down if they could replace it with the sort of cookie cutter capitalism they can more easily understand.

I shall see if I can find out more about this in the next few days and report back.

Jillys official site.

Previously-

Spinneyworld on Jilly’s

Psychodiscography, including Music Box and Rockworld

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Green roofs growing

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The area of green roofing in North America grew 72% between 2004 and 2005, and by over 80% in the United States, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities has announced. North American green roof infrastructure implementation increased from 1.3 million square feet in 2004 to 2.5 million square feet in 2005.

The 4th Annual Green Roof Conference, Awards and Trade Show takes place in Boston, MA, on May 11-12, 2006.

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You can work for fun (from home)

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People who run their own businesses have such flexibility and independence that they enjoy far greater job satisfaction, experts claim. The income may be sporadic and the hours sometimes long, but it’s things like the feeling of control that work for them.

Just as soon as I hit on something that’ll allow me to work from home that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

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Top of the Not-Pops

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The 25 worst things to happen to popular music, allegedly.

6. Light air craft: Responsible for the early retirement of Patsy Cline, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Denver, Ricky Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and – on the day the music died – Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. There’s a good reason the tour bus is still so popular.

3. Ecstasy: Guilty of convincing a generation of young adults to cram into filthy warehouses, wave glow-sticks and bounce along to the same monotonous groove for hours on end.

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Is Aunt Irma visiting?

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Men can get aggressive every month, particularly toward rugged, fertile looking chaps.

Rob Burriss, a biologist at the University of Liverpool, who led the study, said the behaviour reflected that of other primates: “Groups of animals, such as chimpanzees, can live quite happily together, but when a female is ready to mate the two dominant males within the group become rivals and fight for her attention.”

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Heavensent 1.6

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The waves didn’t break upon the shore. Indeed, the island seemed to be lifted and propelled along by the rollers. Gim planted his feet as far apart as possible, side on to the tide. “This foot’s rising, only slightly, but… And there, it’s under me….. And now this foot. The whole island moves as the wave goes by.”

“That’s a relief. There’s only a small rise above sea level, I thought we were going to flood at high tide.” Sheel ran a hand through the green slime that passed for soil, studied the substance, then shook it off. “Where’s Bobb?”

“He went to the North shore, thought he’d seen something to build with.”

Bobb returned some time later. The setting sun cast a long shadow. “I thought you said he had gone North?”

“He did.”

“So why’s he coming back from the West?”

“Could have done a part circuit.”

“Or our island’s rotating in the current.”

Bobb set down a sack. “There was a camp of some sort back there. I think I have enough stuff to make a solar still. What have you found out?”

Gim took the sack and emptied it. He started sorting through the contents. “Our island’s not very solidly planted.”

“Did you notice the way it moved with the waves?” Sheel asked.

“Yeah. It’s more pronounced toward the edges.”

“Well, I started scooping away at the surface, think it’s algae of some sort. I found a way through the roots of that,” she pointed at the island’s one and only tree, centrally located, “and got so deep,” halfway up her upper arm, “before breaking through to water.”

Gim had assembled a frame for the solar still from the remnants of a parasol. He had shaped the wires to rest on the edge of a large basin, so the vapour rising from a cup of salt water in the middle could condense and run down purified. “There was some rope in that sack. If one of us ties it around our waist we can go over the edge and explore what is under our island.” He had found a smaller cup and was using this to bring water up from Sheel’s hole. It was thick with algae, and there was the occasional tiny fish. Gim strained it through the canvas of the sack before feeding the still. “In the morning, I think.”

Heavensent 1.7
Heavensent 1.5
Heavensent 1.1

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Click and evolve

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Sometimes the House of Lords throws out speeches so interesting and radical, that you simply cannot imagine them being made in the Commons. One such came this week from the neuro-biologist Susan Greenfield. She asked a question that affects all of us, yet which I have never heard discussed by mainstream politicians: is technology changing our brains?

The context is the clicking, bleeping, flashing world of screens. There has been a change in our environment that is so all-embracing and in a way so banal that we barely notice it. In just a couple of decades, we have slipped away from a culture based essentially on words to one based essentially on images, or pictures. This is probably one of the great shifts in the story of modern humans but we take it almost for granted.

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