Mercy

Thank you, first, to the reader who wrote to say we spiced his juice. It spiced my guilt-juice for not having posted in a while, so here's some thingummies currently doing the rounds at Mercy Towers.

(P.S. Guilt-juice sounds like a synonym for the product of a shameful wank, I realise, but that's not what I meant.)

1. Slow Magic
Mercy main man Nathan Jones kicked off his poetry residency at Liverpool's bluecoat gallery with a neat exercise reminiscent of fridge magnet poetry. A user-friendly start to his year-long tenure, you can see the results here.

2. Stewart Brand

Controversial thinker whose soon-to-be-released book, Whole Earth Discipline, puts forward the idea that we 'are as gods, and have to get good at it'.

Currently floating my boat is his talk about nuclear power, slums, geoengineering and GM crops, given as part of the TEDGlobal conference.

Have a good rummage round that site while you're at it - it features fascinating lectures on art, politics, architecture and international development, and (and!) Gordon Brown telling a quite a good joke about Ronald Reagan.

3. Skinny Water

Do you believe in universal balance? For every Ted.Com scaling the heights of human achievement, for example, there must be an equal and opposite force of downright idiocy to prevent the cosmos from collapsing, irreversibly, in on itself. Introducing, then, Bio-Synergy Limited of Nutford Place, London, who have recently invented this.
Yes - 'low-calorie water'. Somebody, kill me now.

4. And lastly...

A lighters in the air indie anthem if we ever heard one, the new single by our partners in crime, Wave Machines, is out on August 31st. Listen and enjoy, then book tickets for their autumn tour, coming to a venue near you, right away!