mergers of acquisitions

With South Florida cowering before tropical storm Noel (could they not have given it a more aggressive name?), I thought I ought to post some kind of valedictory message before I'm blown in to the mid-Atlantic. Now, the reason things on here have been a bit quiet is that I've been - brace yourselves - working hard, very hard, and so have all the other grads. This means that I've been spending enough time in front of computers already, and also that I've been doing very little fun to report about.

The hard work seems set to continue for at least the next fortnight, but I have a new and welcome distraction. I managed, finally, a couple of weeks ago, to get a second hand mixer and pair of decks for a decent price. [Warning: slightly geeky tech speak for next 50 wds). Technics 1200M3D, Allen and Heath Xone32. The decks are in sparkly condition, even the 45 adaptors are there. The mixer is a handsome beastie, and has a built-in filter unit - so I can add LFO wobble to anything insufficiently squelchy. Only complaint: would it have been so hard to put a sharp cut on the crossfader curve control, given that they've put one on at all? Makes scratching a little less easy than it might be.

Anyway, those secured, the next task was to get some records, and here's how I've done:

70-odd 7" singles by completely obscure American artists on utterly recherche labels. Bought for buttons from Ebay. Still going through them: about half country of various degrees of nuttiness, one quarter sixties-style surf-pop, and one quarter soul gems.

20 assorted jazz LPS. Ebay, again. who doesn't need 8 Herbie Hancock albums? How did I manage without? I bought 14 records from the same guy, again for buttons, and he kindly threw in six extra. I'm grateful for the Billy Cobham, and slightly scared of the John Klemmer. Never heard of him, but it looks awful. Mind, Joe Zawinul's hardly less alarming on the sleeve of 'Heavy Weather'.

The cherry-picked highlights of a massive collection I rifled through on Saturday. I answered a classified ad that mentioned a record collection for sale and a few artists from the mid-90s Rawkus golden age, secured the necessary lift, and on arrival, was greeted with 20 crates of vinyl. Deep breath, send my chauffeur to read a book in the car ('this could take me a while'), dive in. I was very restrained and selective, and resisted the temptation to get copies of things I already had in the UK, but still came away with two boxes, mostly of hip hop 12"s and LPs, a few other bits and pieces mixed in - couple of Portishead LPs, some Femi Kuti, and so on. The crates were a goldmine of hip hop from the mid 90s to the present, a mix of the indie and the commercial, and I got loads of good stuff, including some things I've tried in vain to track down ( in a slightly obsessive manner) in the past - like a 12" of the original version of 'Grindin'', rather than the easy-to-find-but-rubbish 12" with the Sean Paul remix. Yes, it was released back in the days when the coolest thing to do with your remix was to get SP to phone in 16 bars of priapic patois-lite.

So I'm now all set up to distract myself mixing all my new purchases into a tasty musical stew. Of course, all this is a bit stupid, for two reasons. First, the tentative offers I've had for DJ work have been for dubstep mixing; so really, my record budget should be going on dubstep records, not Kool Keith LPs. Second, a few years from now, I'm going to have to face a horrible decision: bankrupt myself shipping my US collection back to Britain, or wave goodbye to all my precious acquisitions? I'm dreading that day already.

photos

The Facebook links that previously appeared in this post were apparently misbehaving, so instead, I've spread my digital self a little more thinly and created a Flickr account. Go
see, if you' couldn't before. Even if you could, there are new pictures of lizards and rain.

I'll try to add photos fairly regularly. As a preview, here is a nice picture of the sky and some flags.

You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think

OK, so I've been here a couple of months now. I've seen some alligators, been on a beach, massively increased my chances of skin cancer - the list of Miami cliche activities is being ticked off. One cliche I hadn't investigated till this weekend, though, was the city's reputation as having less culture than the average Brie. It turns out to be half true, half not (take that, bivalent logicians).

A dig around the internet and the local listings mags reveals a few art galleries, theatres and the like, as you'd hope in a city of two million people. As with everything, access to most venues is a problem for anyone who doesn't drive, but on Friday, I managed to get to the Carnival Centre by public transport easily.

The Carnival Centre is an enormous performing arts complex North of downtown, in the middle of pretty much nothing -it's surrounded by building sites, and seems to be the vanguard of an attempt to reinvigorate the Omni district. In the best tradition of big public projects, the Centre was built at a cost hugely in excess of the original budget, and is currently facing big running cost overspends, exacerbated by smaller audiences than was expected. It seems they might not come even if you build it. So it was good to see the auditorium almost full for the Classical Theatre of Harlem 's production of Romeo and Juliet.

As you might guess from the name of the company, this was a version of the play set in modern times, with hiphop playing in the party scene, gunfights instead of swordsmanship, and so forth. The language was unchanged, apart from a few extra anachronistic exclamations (Nurse: 'scurvy knave!' Mercutio: 'ya mama!'). It worked fairly well, but ran foul on the problem that afflicts most productions of R&J; Romeo is such an idiot, such an unsympathetic dithering twit, that attempts to emphasise, say, the tragedy of the main story or the theme of warring families are stymied by his presence as the main catalyst for events. Another of those superficially heroic, but actually quite unpleasant, main characters Shakespeare did so well (cf Antonio in Merchant).

Saturday, and back relying on lifts, the Miami phil dept foreign legion (four of us) took a trip to the Bass Art Museum on South Beach. A relatively small museum with a much larger collection than in can show, and plans to expand, the Bass has three galleries for its collection and one for transient shows. The collection galleries do a lot with little space; in particular, the gallery of Renaissance and Baroque art gave an excellent overview of the period despite only displaying a handful of paintings. The touring exhibition this time was by a Cuban-American artist, and included an installation that was the first I've seen, I think, to include smells as part of the art.

On the way out, the volunteer (I think) at the entrance desk stopped us and gave us each a lovely book documenting a previous show at the museum, and chatted to us about the Miami art scene, giving us some tips about events, places to go and so on. This could have been kindness to foreigners, or it could have been a reward for (my) attentive listening on the way in to his tales of his trip to 'your wonderful country' and his adventures in 'Edinboro' and Parsons Green.

Or it could simply have been because, on a Saturday afternoon, we were four out of only six people to visit the gallery in an hour and a half. And that seems to be the true part of the Miami culture cliche; the infrastructure's there, but persuading the residents to partake is hard when there's all that tanning to do...

A few thousand words' worth

I've spent the last couple of days trying, and failing, to write something perceptive about McGinn's theory that consciousness is matter without committing the cardinal sin of calling the theory bunk. So I'm no mood to write much. Fortunately, I bought a camera last week, so I can show you some pictures instead. Unfortunately, it's been raining in Miami for much of the last week, so I can't show you any pictures of the city in refulgent splendour. If I take enough goodies, I'll perhaps start an online gallery of some kind. In the meantime:

Here's the view towards downtown from the university metro station....

Here's the view towards downtown from the philosophy department....

Here's a view of part of campus from the philosophy department...

And here's the view I've mostly been enjoying this week when not in the philosophy department.


If you click on the pictures, they go all bigger and stuff. If anyone has any particular things which they'd like to see, let me know. Or anything they'd like me to write about. Though bear in mind my mother reads this (hi Mum).

Might also be worth mentioning I'm now Skype-equipped. If you are, you should be able to find me if you can spell my surname, and then you can audit my accent for any americanisms.

Left leg out

My experience of the famed Miami nightlife has so far been limited to a couple of trips to South Beach in the company of some other grad students. We've gone to a few bars that were pretty grotty, kicked about the streets a bit, gone home. Nice enough, but given the place has a reputation for a thriving club culture, I was looking for a bit more.

So when I saw that Mala and Skream were playing at a SoBe venue, for free, on Friday I was determined to go. So determined that I was prepared to go alone, even if that did mean an hour- and a half journey each way on public transport that really does seem to like eight hours' sleep a night.

(Mala and Skream are dubstep DJs from the UK, big on the scene, usually you could expect to pay a tenner or so to see either play out).

In the end, I managed to recruit a couple of my fellow grads, which was a surprise - their tastes in music seem to run mostly to rock of various kinds. Also a relief, since it meant I had lifts there and back. Wasn't sure what they'd make of it, didn't really care that much.

So, a drive through the night to South Beach. SoBe, the southern portion of an island just off the mainland to which it's linked by several causeways, is more like movie Miami. It's full of bars, clubs, 'glamorous' people, and there is of course a beach. As the driver said as we headed through downtown's illuminated skyscrapers and on to one of the causeways, it's like you're going to a different city - a world apart from the sprawling, quiet suburbs.

My first thought on entering the bar was: wow, that's a lot of bassbins. Unfortunately, this was soon followed by: oh, they're washing machines. The place is called the Laundry Bar, and the gimmick is, it really does double as a laundrette. You can come along anytime it's open (day and night) with your dirties and clean them in the lovely hygienic bar atmosphere (Florida still allows smoking in clubs and so on).

The place is small, 150 capacity tops I'd say, and the PA wasn't, as it turned out, the most stomach-churningly bassy I'd ever heard. But it felt more like what I think of as good club/bar; less of the tacky decor, more of the tacky floor, dim lights, and people there for the music as much as anything else. Dubstep is a small scene in the UK, and here it's tiny - this was the first time, I think, that a 'name' DJ had played in Miami, and people had flown from Georgia and Texas, amongst other places, to be there.

So the crowd was pretty excitable, and when the warmups stopped and the main men started, they went for it in a way I've never seen at a UK dubstep night. The music lends itself to a slow, languid kind of dancing, but these people were going like it was fast fast jungle, hanging off the staircase near the DJ booth, whooping, cheering every tune they knew. The music helped that, I think - there was more variety of tempo than in most of the dubstep sets I've heard, plenty of tunes that really did double up the snares instead of just suggesting a faster speed via the hats. Lots of records I hadn't heard, lots of them really good, the sets were everything I'd hoped for.

And the people I'd dragged along enjoyed it too, it was completely new to them but I was surprised at how positive they were about it; dubstep maybe isn't the most amenable form of dance music if dance music isn't your thing. So we all left happy at about half three, with the party still going strong. I think I'll still need to broaden my social circle from the philosophy department if I want to do this kind of thing more regularly, but for now at least, I've finally managed to get to something good. Nice one.

Swamp things

It's been suggested to me that I'm not properly fulfilling my remit here. Never mind the academic stuff - what about the beaches? The rollerbladers? The vice? What about Disneyworld?

Well, all in time, apart from the last, but one's off the list now. Yesterday, I went to the Everglades, or a small part of it. The area designated as a national park is 2357 sq miles (the Lake District national park is 885 sq miles), so you can only take in a small part on a day trip. Of course, not that much of it is really accessible, being wild marshland, but anyway.

I went with a couple of philosophy grads and one of their friends, visiting from Estonia. The hour and a half drive from Miami impressed upon me just how flat Florida is (highest point: 345 feet). It reminded me of the Netherlands, or more precisely, those seventeenth century Dutch landscape paintings where the sky takes up three quarters of the canvas and accounts for most of the picture's expressive content and interest.

We stopped at Shark Valley visitor centre and hired bikes to take a 15-mile circuit along a wide asphalt road through part of the area called the Shark River Slough, or Sea of Grass. This is a formed by a vast, slow-moving flow of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the state to the south coast. The water spreads across and flows south down a flat limestone shelf about 40 miles wide, creating an enormous marshy plain. The swampy cliche of the Everglades is fulfilled in the south, but here and for much of the area, the landscape is covered by knee-high sawgrass (sedge) growing from the marsh, interspersed with 'hammocks', small raised areas of land on which scrubby clumps of trees grow. So as a landscape, it's open and fairly featureless.

The interest comes from spotting the beasties. There were plenty of beautiful flying insects, dragonflies and butterflies, an enormous variety of colours. There were several wading birds, herons and the like, and a wide -winged cormorant-like one that I later found out is called an anhinga. Floating in the thermals, we saw several raptors of some description, probably red-shouldered hawks, maybe ospreys. Also, a few turtles, swimming around in the water by the side of the track.

And, yes, alligators. Plenty of them, lying in the water about ten yards from us as we cycled by, the largest about seven feet long, the smallest a little six-inch baby that scurried off the road as we approached. They're obviously quite placid creatures, otherwise one wouldn't be allowed to get so close, but there's still an air of menace around them; that feeling that if they wanted to, they could have your leg for dinner.

We did the circuit in a couple of hours, finishing thoroughly soaked from the predictable 30C+ heat. We then went on a looping drive along a rough road that left the national park, but took us through a more wooded area of the Everglades. The dominant tree species was cypress - I think mangroves are more common in the south where the fresh water meets the salt. We saw, again, a couple of alligators, one slinking off the road in front of us, and a few racoons. At one point, we stopped and followed on foot a boardwalk about a mile into the woods, hoping to see some more big lizards, but got no reward except another couple of anhingas.

Still, some alligators is an improvement on my score of none till then, and it was good to get out of the city for a while. So, one item on the cliche list experienced and recorded. Next, Nick goes rollerblading. Maybe.

Arboriculture Florida

I was asked before I came here to report on the trees and the surgery thereof. It's taken me a while, because I wanted to find out a couple of names, and my enquiries along these lines amongst my peers met with flatly uninterested 'dunno's. It seems the only naturalism philosophy grads are interested in is the Quinean kind (philosophy joke. Sorry).

Well, anyway, I should say that I'm not really describing Florida's trees, just Miami's. Doubtless they're rather different in the north, and of course will be very different in the Everglades. So, suitably qualified, onwards...

Two things are immediately striking about Miami's trees. First, the ubiquity of palm trees and similar tropical species. You know dragon trees, those spindly little things kept as houseplants in the UK? There's one in my back garden with a trunk as thick as my, err, trunk. Second, there's a lot of them. The city being so sprawling, there's plenty of space for trees, so that if you're in a tall building, the place looks incredibly verdant.

Looking beyond the palms, a lot of the species are pretty similar to UK ones, although they're probably tropic-adapted subspecies. I've spotted oaks, beeches, and elms, for example. It'll be interesting to see how these deciduous ones behave in the autumn and winter. I suppose it's quite possible that these are imports - that the majority of the trees, like the majority of the population, aren't indigenous. This is certainly the case with the first of the two that have caught my eye most.

This is the royal poinciana (Delonix regia). There's a few of these on campus. Native to Madagascar, they're fairly low, with wide-spreading canopy. The attractive thing about them is the combination of their leaves, which are very like ferns, and their big clusters of small flowers, red or yellow usually.



The second one I particularly like is the banyan, or strangler fig. This really refers to a few similar fig species, two of which are native to South Florida. They germinate in cracks in the trunk of a host tree or some structure, and send roots groundwards. These roots are long red strands. When they touch the ground, the roots, err, root, and harden into trunks. Sometimes they're wrapped round the trunk of the host, sometimes they're free-standing. Eventually, the host tree/building is killed off, and the banyan is left alone, a network of trunks. These can grow really, really enormous...



As for surgery, the approved method with palms seems to be similar to how you look after yuccas or dragon trees; wait for the leaves to die, then strip them off. Either that, or just leave them alone and let them fall. There's huge dead palm leaves all over the place. With other trees, the Americans have apparently taken all the danger, fun and skill out of tree surgery by replacing climbing with sitting in a cherry-picker, like you use to change streetlight bulbs.

Well, that's trees. Maybe I'll do wildlife next, alligators have been spotted in the campus lake...