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Just a quick note, halfway thru my Swiss workshop, my presentation is early tomorrow afternoon here in Basel, so need to get all my ducks in a row by then, looking good. Enjoying myself as much as possible, there is a Van Gogh exhibition of around 40 works here that I hope to take in tomorrow night. I really should as the Magritte exhibit I saw in Montreal was memorable for life, as the Maxfield Parrish 3x in San Diego, this would surely be. Then I have a late night Friday train to Brussels where I meet up with Bart on Saturday morning/afternoon. Will stay with him till Tuesday/Wednesday when I leave for Belfast. It’s going fast!!! Peace, out.

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Well, the time has come for me to return to Europe. As mentioned in a previous post I had applied to a workshop in Switzerland, and my abstract was accepted for presentation. Very exciting, a week-long summer school at the University of Basel in my specialty area of media research: ICONS!!! The program looks fantastic and the university is being very generous, so this is a Godsend.

And, while I was slightly distressed at the Society for Terrorist Research holding their conference after my classes started this year, rendering me incapable of joining them for a third year in a row, their timing actually fit in beautifully with the Swiss workshop, following just a few days after but in Northern Ireland. And they also accepted my research for presentation which is just terrific, as I met with these psychologists last year in Zakopane Poland and the year before in Madrid. It’s a great network.

So my two personal academic development opportunities are back to back international events instead of domestic this year, though I do have a weekend in late October set aside for a conference in DC. Actually I’m a slow starter early on in a semester, like to gradually ‘set the stage’ for my students with discussion and critical thinking exercises, so they aren’t going to miss much, but still, they are in good hands with a course lecturer while I’m away.

Looking forward to seeing Tilman again in Zurich, he is in a post or two on this blog, his pic is up. And hoping to see my friend Bart in Brussels for the weekend before I need to be in Belfast. Expect some pix from Rob Pappas’ Nikon D200 posted here under the countries on the left for Europe/Asia 09 once I build those pages and take some pix .

Peace, out. S

Well, this CD cover leaves something to be desired, not sure if I will ever feel the inclination to follow along with this ET knockoff that has apparently enamored Moby. But for the music….

This recording is said to have been made in Moby’s home studio. It kinda sounds like it. Known for his techno beat and lush cinematic soundscapes – I will be forced to refer to his Play CD incessantly here, unfortunately – Moby has yet to outdo himself, though that is surely not his intention with the much more personal “Wait For Me.”

I have listened to this CD about four times now, and, while I am not disappointed, I will say that I have to start by stressing that Moby is a master at sampling and remixing. So, expect a lot of familiar connections here. As a matter of fact, except for what one might consider a change of direction or shift in genre, albeit from techno to glorified muzak, there is not much new here in the realm of creativity. Yet Moby’s redeeming quality is that he loads his CDs with a lot of tracks, so on Wait For Me, as soon as you realize you are not impressed with one song, you are swept into another, then another, and another.
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