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All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:26:14 GMT Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:26:14 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Dave Simpson on Sheffield's pop pioneers Human League, Heaven 17 and ABC http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/dave-simpson-on-sheffield-s-pop-pioneers-human-league-20081156532.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/dave-simpson-on-sheffield-s-pop-pioneers-human-league-20081156532.htm Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:17:19 GMT It's late 1979 and the Human League are pioneering Britain's synthesiser pop revolution. The previous week, at a gig at the Nashville Rooms in London, David Bowie had bounded into their dressing room to proclaim them "the future of rock'n'roll", a comment picked up by NME. However, that doesn't count for much by the time the tour reaches the band's hometown, Sheffield. In the middle of the gig, singer Philip Oakey is pouring his heart and soul into a futuristic, electronic version of the Walker Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, when an unfamiliar figure joins him on stage."This bloke came up and tapped Philip on the shoulder," remembers Martyn Ware, who played synthesiser for the Human League before leaving to co-found Heaven 17. "He said, 'Excuse me. Can you get off now? We've got a beer race on.'"Oakey winces at the memory. "I was very angry and everyone was trying to calm me down," he sighs, in his famous deadpan baritone. "I was going, 'This is wrong! Let me finish the song!'""What people forget is that the other band who Bowie said were the future of rock'n'roll were Legend," deadpans Oakey, remembering a metal band who "had an album cover bearing vinyl shoes and must have seemed very modern".Legend didn't become legends, but the music made by the Human League, Heaven 17 and fellow Sheffield electronic soulsters ABC - a triumvirate now touring together for the first time - has become pivotal to the way pop sounds today. Originally, their ambition was to destroy rock music altogether: "We hated anything that wasn't modernist," says ABC's Martin Fry. "It was like Cavaliers and Roundheads. Total warfare!" Instead, their work from the late 70s and early 80s resonates across modern pop, from Ladytron to Warp Records, from Xenomania to hip-hop. These days, a meeting with Sheffield's electronic titans is peppered with camaraderie and self-deprecating northern banter. That wasn't the case back when the Human League's Don't You Want Me sold 1m copies and the bands were jostling for pop supremacy. At that point, the Human League were so paranoid about being copied that they wouldn't give anybody tapes of what they were doing. History records Cabaret Voltaire as Sheffield's first electronic group, but they weren't the first Steel City act to use a synthesiser. That honour goes to an early-1970s band called Musical Vomit. Featuring computer operators Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh (who would later found the Human League), Heaven 17 singer Glenn Gregory and actor Ian Reddington (Coronation Street's hapless drummer, Vernon), they were unlikely pioneers. "It was like A Clockwork Orange crossed with Alice Cooper," says Gregory. "There was vomit from the stage and 'legs' being chopped off." As for the synth, it was wooden. "It had a joystick, which we loved because it was very Brian Eno," sniggers Ware. "But it only made two noises." The curious thing about Sheffield is that, unlike in Britain's other major cities - especially Manchester - its hip crowd didn't embrace punk. The most creative musicians in the city were exploring the possibilities of electronic music. "Sheffield was a hard place," recalls Gregory. "Everyone else was into heavy rock. It didn't accept punk other than as a trigger for innovation." Oakey - who says he hadn't heard of Cabaret Voltaire until he joined the Human League - recalls Kraftwerk's appearance at Sheffield University in 1976 as being "as seismic as the Sex Pistols. Everybody loved it." Crucially, the Human League didn't copy Kraftwerk's dry, robotic music; they added emotion and humanity to create what Ware describes as "synthetic soul". In an early interview, Oakey declared their ambition was to become "an international version of Abba". Aligning oneself against rock meant looking different, too. Ware remembers meeting his fellow synth player Adrian Wright, who was wearing "white jeans, a green jacket and silver platform boots". But when the band went out to the Crazy Daisy nightclub, their attire was even more unusual. One night, Marsh turned up wearing chains and a baked bean tin as a bracelet. "This guy looked at him and said, 'What the fuck's that?'" remembers Ware (soberly dressed these days). "The guy took [the beans tin] off, threw it on the floor and stamped on it, saying, 'Now what are you gonna do?'" Ware considers Marsh's reply - "Open another one" - worthy of the subsequent beating. That fate somehow eluded Oakey, despite his famous lopsided haircut, although singer Susan Sulley does remember one audience member trying to set fire to his trousers.But there was a point to even the most outlandish fashion statements. Oakey's magnificent barnet - which led to him being called "Phil Funnywig" by NME - got the Human League's music noticed. "I always wanted a distinctive hairstyle, like Bowie or Marc Bolan," says the 53-year-old. "I copied it from a girl on the bus." ABC's Martin Fry - a Mancunian Roxy glam rocker turned Sheffield-based electronic kid - remembers the "shock" of first encountering the Human League. "The reaction from the audience was uneasy: 'Where's the drummer?!' This was before hip-hop, and that sort of shock isn't around now."Record labels didn't know what to make of the Sheffield scene, but the Human League were given a chance by Virgin, which was still flush with money from the success of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. The groups felt as if they were taking on the entire musical establishment. Their nemesis was the Musician's Union, which saw synthesisers and drum machines as a threat to the livelihood of thousands of percussionists. It started a "Keep Music Live" campaign, to which the Human League responded with an on-stage skull and the slogan "Keep Music Dead". There were other problems. Early synthesisers were problematic, and although musicians first picked them up in part out of laziness - "We didn't want to spend months with the Duane Eddy songbook, learning to play guitar," admits Oakey - they found themselves programming their equipment for months. (At one point the Human League took photographs of the machines' settings so they could get the same effects the following week.) Nevertheless, the Sheffield sound was extraordinarily influential even then. Oakey insists that Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark copied the Human League's stage equipment, although he concedes that their debut, Electricity, was a "brilliant single". Others were catching up, too, and synth music started to generate hits, while the first two Human League albums - 1979's Reproduction and 1980's Travelogue - barely troubled the charts. When Gary Numan hit No 1 with Are 'Friends' Electric?, Oakey was mortified.Something had to give, and the Human League broke into two, with Ware and Marsh leaving to pursue new projects.Even today, the members find it awkward to discuss what exactly precipitated their acrimonious split. Oakey suggests he and Ware were simply too forceful as characters to be in the same band. Ware suspects that their manager, Bob Last, had spotted Oakey's potential as a "pop star with massive earning potential" and engineered him away from arty stuff. Ware and Marsh set up the British Electric Foundation - a "futuristic production concept" whose most lasting legacy was to relaunch Tina Turner - before bringing in Gregory to become Heaven 17. Oakey, meanwhile, was drowning his sorrows at the Crazy Daisy, where he spotted two teenage girls dancing and asked them to join the band for a gig in Doncaster.At first, the new members didn't seem to be adding much. "We just hummed along and did some dancing," says Sulley. "And occasionally got so drunk we fell off stage," adds Joanne Catherall. In Germany, they faced burning union flags and cans pelted by people who "expected a band of boys". However, when the new-look Human League released their 1981 masterpiece, Dare, the pair became part of electronic pop history - glamorous girls-next-door who paved the way for everyone from the Spice Girls to Girls Aloud. "But we were never stylised," says Sulley. "We did look like we'd walked out of Sheffield. It gave hope to people, because if we could do it, anyone could."In the 80s, the Sheffield sound went overground. As the Human League's Don't You Want Me squared up to Heaven 17's (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and Temptation, ABC released their masterwork, 1982's The Lexicon of Love, which blended electronics, orchestrated soul and a gold lamé jacket. For Oakey, it was a vindication of what he had been trying to achieve for years. "People who had laughed in our faces three years earlier were suddenly saying, 'Your records are great,'" he remembers. "And things like, 'It doesn't matter if it's a synthesiser, it sounds like a bass.'" Suddenly, even rock bands were using synthesisers, while there were, ironically, howls of outrage when the Human League played guitars for their 1984 single The Lebanon. "We shouldn't have done it," says Oakey. Sulley is more circumspect: "We wanted something different."Today, the records made in Sheffield in the late 1970s and 80s are in the rare position of being loved by housewives, electronic boffins and hip-hop purists alike, and still sound ultramodern. The battlegrounds on which the Steel City contingent fought for pop's future - the Limit Club and Crazy Daisy - have long been demolished, but the stance of their patrons remains unwavering."I still hate rock music," says Oakey, defiantly. "I think it's adolescent, easy, power-chord nonsense." Meanwhile, a blue plaque at Sheffield University honours the site of the Human League's first gig. Appropriately, it has become a computer department.? The Steel City tour begins at Glasgow Academy on November 30.Pop and rockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Guardian.Co.Uk Dave Simpson on Sheffield's pop pioneers Human League, Heaven 17 and ABC {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - It's late 1979 and the Human League are pioneering Britain's synthesiser pop revolution. The previous week, at a gig at the Nashville Rooms in London, David Bowie had bounded into their dressing room to proclaim them "the future of rock'n'roll", a comment picked up by NME. However, that doesn't count for much by the time the tour reaches the band's hometown, Sheffield. In the middle of the gig, singer Philip Oakey is pouring his heart and soul into a futuristic, electronic version of the Walker Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, when an unfamiliar figure joins him on stage."This bloke came up and tapped Philip on the shoulder," remembers Martyn Ware, who played synthesiser for the Human League before leaving to co-found Heaven 17. "He said, 'Excuse me. Can you get off now? We've got a beer race on.'"Oakey winces at the memory. "I was very angry and everyone was trying to calm me down," he sighs, in his famous deadpan baritone. "I was going, 'This is wrong! Let me finish the song!'""What people forget is that the other band who Bowie said were the future of rock'n'roll were Legend," deadpans Oakey, remembering a metal band who "had an album cover bearing vinyl shoes and must have seemed very modern".Legend didn't become legends, but the music made by the Human League, Heaven 17 and fellow Sheffield electronic soulsters ABC - a triumvirate now touring together for the first time - has become pivotal to the way pop sounds today. Originally, their ambition was to destroy rock music altogether: "We hated anything that wasn't modernist," says ABC's Martin Fry. "It was like Cavaliers and Roundheads. Total warfare!" Instead, their work from the late 70s and early 80s resonates across modern pop, from Ladytron to Warp Records, from Xenomania to hip-hop. These days, a meeting with Sheffield's electronic titans is peppered with camaraderie and self-deprecating northern banter. That wasn't the case back when the Human League's Don't You Want Me sold 1m copies and the bands were jostling for pop supremacy. At that point, the Human League were so paranoid about being copied that they wouldn't give anybody tapes of what they were doing. History records Cabaret Voltaire as Sheffield's first electronic group, but they weren't the first Steel City act to use a synthesiser. That honour goes to an early-1970s band called Musical Vomit. Featuring computer operators Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh (who would later found the Human League), Heaven 17 singer Glenn Gregory and actor Ian Reddington (Coronation Street's hapless drummer, Vernon), they were unlikely pioneers. "It was like A Clockwork Orange crossed with Alice Cooper," says Gregory. "There was vomit from the stage and 'legs' being chopped off." As for the synth, it was wooden. "It had a joystick, which we loved because it was very Brian Eno," sniggers Ware. "But it only made two noises." The curious thing about Sheffield is that, unlike in Britain's other major cities - especially Manchester - its hip crowd didn't embrace punk. The most creative musicians in the city were exploring the possibilities of electronic music. "Sheffield was a hard place," recalls Gregory. "Everyone else was into heavy rock. It didn't accept punk other than as a trigger for innovation." Oakey - who says he hadn't heard of Cabaret Voltaire until he joined the Human League - recalls Kraftwerk's appearance at Sheffield University in 1976 as being "as seismic as the Sex Pistols. Everybody loved it." Crucially, the Human League didn't copy Kraftwerk's dry, robotic music; they added emotion and humanity to create what Ware describes as "synthetic soul". In an early interview, Oakey declared their ambition was to become "an international version of Abba". Aligning oneself against rock meant looking different, too. Ware remembers meeting his fellow synth player Adrian Wright, who was wearing "white jeans, a green jacket and silver platform boots". But when the band went out to the Crazy Daisy nightclub, their attire was even more unusual. One night, Marsh turned up wearing chains and a baked bean tin as a bracelet. "This guy looked at him and said, 'What the fuck's that?'" remembers Ware (soberly dressed these days). "The guy took [the beans tin] off, threw it on the floor and stamped on it, saying, 'Now what are you gonna do?'" Ware considers Marsh's reply - "Open another one" - worthy of the subsequent beating. That fate somehow eluded Oakey, despite his famous lopsided haircut, although singer Susan Sulley does remember one audience member trying to set fire to his trousers.But there was a point to even the most outlandish fashion statements. Oakey's magnificent barnet - which led to him being called "Phil Funnywig" by NME - got the Human League's music noticed. "I always wanted a distinctive hairstyle, like Bowie or Marc Bolan," says the 53-year-old. "I copied it from a girl on the bus." ABC's Martin Fry - a Mancunian Roxy glam rocker turned Sheffield-based electronic kid - remembers the "shock" of first encountering the Human League. "The reaction from the audience was uneasy: 'Where's the drummer?!' This was before hip-hop, and that sort of shock isn't around now."Record labels didn't know what to make of the Sheffield scene, but the Human League were given a chance by Virgin, which was still flush with money from the success of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. The groups felt as if they were taking on the entire musical establishment. Their nemesis was the Musician's Union, which saw synthesisers and drum machines as a threat to the livelihood of thousands of percussionists. It started a "Keep Music Live" campaign, to which the Human League responded with an on-stage skull and the slogan "Keep Music Dead". There were other problems. Early synthesisers were problematic, and although musicians first picked them up in part out of laziness - "We didn't want to spend months with the Duane Eddy songbook, learning to play guitar," admits Oakey - they found themselves programming their equipment for months. (At one point the Human League took photographs of the machines' settings so they could get the same effects the following week.) Nevertheless, the Sheffield sound was extraordinarily influential even then. Oakey insists that Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark copied the Human League's stage equipment, although he concedes that their debut, Electricity, was a "brilliant single". Others were catching up, too, and synth music started to generate hits, while the first two Human League albums - 1979's Reproduction and 1980's Travelogue - barely troubled the charts. When Gary Numan hit No 1 with Are 'Friends' Electric?, Oakey was mortified.Something had to give, and the Human League broke into two, with Ware and Marsh leaving to pursue new projects.Even today, the members find it awkward to discuss what exactly precipitated their acrimonious split. Oakey suggests he and Ware were simply too forceful as characters to be in the same band. Ware suspects that their manager, Bob Last, had spotted Oakey's potential as a "pop star with massive earning potential" and engineered him away from arty stuff. Ware and Marsh set up the British Electric Foundation - a "futuristic production concept" whose most lasting legacy was to relaunch Tina Turner - before bringing in Gregory to become Heaven 17. Oakey, meanwhile, was drowning his sorrows at the Crazy Daisy, where he spotted two teenage girls dancing and asked them to join the band for a gig in Doncaster.At first, the new members didn't seem to be adding much. "We just hummed along and did some dancing," says Sulley. "And occasionally got so drunk we fell off stage," adds Joanne Catherall. In Germany, they faced burning union flags and cans pelted by people who "expected a band of boys". However, when the new-look Human League released their 1981 masterpiece, Dare, the pair became part of electronic pop history - glamorous girls-next-door who paved the way for everyone from the Spice Girls to Girls Aloud. "But we were never stylised," says Sulley. "We did look like we'd walked out of Sheffield. It gave hope to people, because if we could do it, anyone could."In the 80s, the Sheffield sound went overground. As the Human League's Don't You Want Me squared up to Heaven 17's (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and Temptation, ABC released their masterwork, 1982's The Lexicon of Love, which blended electronics, orchestrated soul and a gold lamé jacket. For Oakey, it was a vindication of what he had been trying to achieve for years. "People who had laughed in our faces three years earlier were suddenly saying, 'Your records are great,'" he remembers. "And things like, 'It doesn't matter if it's a synthesiser, it sounds like a bass.'" Suddenly, even rock bands were using synthesisers, while there were, ironically, howls of outrage when the Human League played guitars for their 1984 single The Lebanon. "We shouldn't have done it," says Oakey. Sulley is more circumspect: "We wanted something different."Today, the records made in Sheffield in the late 1970s and 80s are in the rare position of being loved by housewives, electronic boffins and hip-hop purists alike, and still sound ultramodern. The battlegrounds on which the Steel City contingent fought for pop's future - the Limit Club and Crazy Daisy - have long been demolished, but the stance of their patrons remains unwavering."I still hate rock music," says Oakey, defiantly. "I think it's adolescent, easy, power-chord nonsense." Meanwhile, a blue plaque at Sheffield University honours the site of the Human League's first gig. Appropriately, it has become a computer department.? The Steel City tour begins at Glasgow Academy on November 30.Pop and rockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Dave Simpson on Sheffield's pop pioneers Human League, Heaven 17 and ABC | Music | The Guardian {...} Sheffield's pop pioneers sparked a musical revolution. Dave Simpson hears how it all happened from members of the Human League, Heaven 17 and ABC {...}
Published: November 28, 2008, 12:17 am - Indexed: November 28, 2008, 10:04 am - Page Size: 95KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Is 41 too late to become a father? http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/is-41-too-late-to-become-a-father-20081185716.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/is-41-too-late-to-become-a-father-20081185716.htm Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:05:16 GMT Last night I ate a large bowl of beetroot from my garden. This morning my urine is the colour of rosé wine and I'm worried that my semen might have taken on a similar hue. The colour of my semen is a concern because someone will be studying it in a short while. I'm considering this while sitting in the top floor 'specimen room' of the London Fertility Centre on Harley Street. Later on, when I mention where I've been to friends and colleagues they seem really interested in the interior design details of a room set aside for masturbation. So if you're planning one, here's some decorating tips. The room is on the second floor and it has two notices on its door: one saying 'Quiet Please' (in case passers-by are inclined to cheer or clap, I guess) and a sliding sign with 'Vacant/Occupied' options - I've opted for 'occupied' although I'm not, so far. Inside, the room is about 6ft x 12ft and painted in various pale non-colours. It is equipped with an ensuite shower, light-green vinyl-covered daybed and a fudge-coloured bathroom suite (including bidet). There is a sash window - which isn't overlooked. The atmosphere is more Carry On than Casualty. On one side of the sink there is a small empty plastic beaker (with my name on it). On the other a DVD player, screen and a remote. I consider all the hands that have touched the remote. Using one of the many tissues provided I pick it up and inspect it; it appears to be clean. The television doesn't show any of the normal channels.I'm here because I'm concerned about my sperm. Not that they might be beetroot coloured, but rather that they might not be fit for purpose. That they might not be as athletic, plentiful and perfectly formed as they need to be. I'm 41 and childless, and although I'm not involved in a 'trying-for-a-baby'-type scenario I've been reading the papers and the news for fortysomething men and their sperm isn't great.'Scientists warn that biological clock affects male fertility' warned the Guardian in July - well, scientists are always saying stuff aren't they? 'Risk of miscarriage soars once the father reaches 35' (Daily Mail) - that sounds worrying. 'Blokes going infertile aged 35' (Sun). Must have sex, pronto! The papers were all reporting in their own particular ways on the research of Dr Stephanie Belloc from the Eylau Centre for Assisted Reproduction in Paris. Dr Belloc had studied the records of 12,000 couples who visited her clinic and separated out the influence of the mother's and father's ages on the chances of conception and miscarriage. Belloc and her team found that women whose partners were 35 or older had more miscarriages than those who were with younger men, regardless of their own age. The risk of miscarriage was on average 16.7 per cent when the men were aged 30-34, but it doubled to 33 per cent in men over 40. Moreover, her research showed that men's ages also affected pregnancy rates, which were lower in the over-40s. As the Mirror summed it up, 'Over-35? You're a dad loss.'I can remember ridiculing my own father for being 40, so how did I end up childless at 41? To start with I went to university and became middle-class. It seems only people from council estates and people who own estates have kids young these days. The middle classes are too busy in their twenties establishing careers, climbing the property ladder and going on snowboarding holidays.Although lack of one doesn't stop some people, I feel you need to be in a reasonably stable relationship before having kids - and I haven't been in one of those of late. But of late, many of my peers are reproducing, some are already on to their third. Even the ones who had drug problems are conceiving and, meanwhile, gay friends are cutting breeding deals with lesbians. I wonder if time is running out.It's an easy thought to have because I can't act on it, but sometimes I think I should have had some children in my twenties. I had more energy and didn't have many material comforts to give up or much of a lifestyle to compromise. I'd be packing them off to university around now, thumbing sports car brochures and thinking about buying a peach farm in Spain. Frankly, I can't remember that much of my twenties, so maybe it would have put this decade of void to good use. I don't recall any of my peers having kids; maybe it was a hangover from the Aids era - people seemed pretty conscientious about birth control, there were no 'accidents'. So now, at 41, I wonder if I've skipped the whole kids thing. I seem to be developing the hobbies and pastimes of a senior citizen - golf, growing beetroot, buffing my classic car. But the reality is I've got 19 years until I qualify for my bus pass - which is just enough time to raise at least one human being. So should I be worried about or believe in the 'male biological clock'?Back in 2001, Professor Dolores Malaspina, of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, concluded that men aged 50 or over are three times more likely to father a child with schizophrenia compared with men of 25 or under. Four years later, epidemiologist Jorn Olsen at the University of California, Los Angeles, found a fourfold rise in Down's syndrome among babies born to men aged 50 and older. And in 2006 scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found that children born to fathers aged 40 and over were nearly six times more likely to suffer from autism than those with a father under 30. Meanwhile, other researchers have suggested patterns between older fathers and increased chances of bipolar disorder, dwarfism and Apert syndrome - whose unlucky sufferers have a malformed skull and webbed hands and feet, among other disfigurements. A report in 2006 even suggested 'a modest effect of advanced paternal age on the Apgar score'. And after finding out what an Apgar score is I now know this to be less than good. The evidence appeared to be stacking up.Yet are these findings as scary as they sound? Dr Belloc's sample was made up entirely of couples presenting for infertility treatment. 'It is not evident that we can extrapolate these conclusions to a fertile population,' she tells me. And many of the incidences in the other studies are minute; so a fivefold increase is still only a five-times-minute chance of some disorder or other. Moreover, these studies only show patterns, rather than direct causal links - finding a direct link would probably require examining DNA at a detail beyond most researchers' budgets or ability. Some commentators have speculated that if a man first becomes a father in his forties or fifties that may indicate he has had trouble forming relationships earlier in his life, which may mean in a mild, undiagnosed kind of way he's a carrier of problems like bipolar disorder or autism which have a genetic element - so his paternal age is irrelevant to the outcome.Which isn't exactly comforting, but it suggests the 'male biological clock' doesn't tick as loudly as the headlines suggest. For Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at Sheffield University, the clock is nothing more than ageing. As you grow older, you lose a bit of hair and experience the odd 'senior moment', so you shouldn't be surprised if your sperm isn't as sprightly as it used to be. 'In terms of numbers it's the same, but what tends to happen is that the sperm isn't as good.' If their biological clock is ticking, men are pretty deaf to it. The age of fatherhood is creeping up: the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the average age of married fathers rose from 29.1 in 1971 to 34.1 in 2003 - getting close to the 35-year point where some of the problems are alleged to kick in. I ask Dr Pacey if this is a worrying trend. 'The problem is couples are waiting until they are older. To wait until the woman is approaching 40 is the wrong time to be starting, and that will be exasperated by any problem that he has due to ageing.' Dr Pacey's advice to me is not to hang about: 'You will be more successful having a child naturally at an earlier age; it will be cheaper for you and it will be much more fun than waiting until you're well into your forties, going to an infertility clinic and having it done artificially. What we're finding are lots of people attending infertility clinics in their forties who would have succeeded in getting pregnant at 25. Rather than waiting for technology to sort it out, if you are in a position to have children early, then go ahead and do it.'What Dr Pacey and others are quick to point out is that there's definitely a female biological clock. Women are born with a finite number of eggs and at some point they will run out. According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), a woman is half as fertile at 35 as she is at 25, and half as fertile again at 40.You might be thinking, 'Why is he bothering to spell that out, everyone knows that?' Well, before researching this piece I was only vaguely aware of those blunt facts, but, more surprisingly, when chatting to single and married thirtysomething childless women about this article they start saying things like: 'My gran had my mother at 45,' 'What about Madonna?' or, most biologically incorrect: 'I'm not ready yet.' They seemed about as informed as I was. 'With the Madonnas and all the rest who seem to have children quite naturally, no one mentions IVF or egg donors, and celebrity miscarriages don't make the pages of Heat,' says Dr Pacey. 'This silence reinforces the myth that these miracle births happen, when often there's a medical intervention.' And IVF isn't a safety net: according to the HFEA, IVF has only a 12 per cent success rate for a 40-year-old woman. And it will cost you: the NHS, on the advice of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), doesn't fund IVF for women over 40 because of the low success rate. The average cost of a cycle is £4,000-£8,000. Is it chauvinistic to question the sense of delaying having kids for the sake of a career if you're going to spend most of the extra income on fertility treatment?However it's not only career building that is nudging the maternal age up; those commitment-phobic, nappy-changing-averse partners make a contribution, too - people like me. One could argue that this male biological clock business is providing men with another excuse to avoid having kids - we move from 'I'm not ready yet' to 'It's too dangerous now' in the time it takes to power up a Nintendo Wii. Or maybe you could blame the introduction of Viagra - which has engendered the idea that men can stay virile forever, so why rush? - as most men think the difference between virility and fertility is latex thin. But if you're looking for something that's really obscuring the hands of the male biological clock, look to famous people. When it comes to fertility, biology tells us one thing, but celebrities tell us another: ie, no matter how superannuated you are, getting your girlfriend up the duff is child's play. Middle-aged famous fellas love a baby shower. Dr Pacey isn't impressed: 'The John Humphrys thing does distort the picture. There'll be lots of men who will read this piece and say, "I was 50 and I had a child," and it's really difficult to argue against that because they do, but statistically you are less likely to succeed and more likely to have problems. For the individual who has been successful it will seem stupid that I'm saying that, but for every 50-year-old father there'll be 10 times more thinking, "I had a lot of problems."'Even if you, your sperm and your wife from a younger generation manage to buck the stats, there are other non-bio reasons against fathering kids late. Most obviously you might die before they graduate - if you're 65 now, on average you'll die at 82 - although for how much longer you will be capable of having a kick-about, helping them with their homework or visiting the lavatory without their assistance isn't recorded. And while it's embarrassing to be mistaken occasionally for their grandfather, it's thoughtless not to meet your grandchildren.Am I being too hard on the older dad? I call Charlie Lewis, professor of family and developmental psychology at Lancaster University. Should we give middle-aged men the snip? 'Some men claim to be better fathers when older, but I don't see this in the majority of men. I find them saying, "I'm clapped out, I've done my bit at work, I've provided a house and comfortable living, now let me vegetate." They think it's their right to sit in front of the telly and not take part in any interaction. It's almost autistic. Older fathers tend to do less of the stereotypical activities than younger fathers do, less childcare and less kicking footballs - for fear of snapping a tendon. They think, "I'm much too old for this."'Surprisingly, Lewis is more relaxed about the dying thing. 'I don't want to put fathers down, but if you look at the majority of evidence on loss, it does point to losing a mother before 11 being more predictive of later social/psycho disorders than losing a father. These effects are most often caused by the child absorbing the surviving partner's grief. So if the mother can manage the grieving process, the predictable death of an older father needn't be a life-changing trauma.'Dads dead or alive, we should be more concerned about the kids, says Lewis. 'You do get studies that say old dads feel closer to their kids, but I'm not aware that kids feel closer to their older fathers.'I wonder if I would become one of these dead-beat, distant dads. I like to think not. I don't quite understand how that could happen. What kind of an individual would tune into a Top Gear repeat rather than read to their child or even relieve them of a shitty nappy? Maybe I'm being naive. I talk to some dad friends.Gary, 45, first became a father when he was 23, but then remarried and had three more children, the oldest of whom is five. Would he like to compare and contrast? 'Obviously becoming a father young was a bit of a shock, it made me grow up quickly. I'm not sure at that age if you're responsible enough to look after yourself let alone a little child.' So how is it second time around: does older dad mean better dad? 'When my second wife first wanted children I did have slight panic attacks, because I had this memory of it being a total whirlwind, but this time it's completely different, it doesn't seem half as stressful as when I was in my twenties.' Gary says this isn't just because he's been a parent before - 'No, it's mainly because I'm more grown-up, more patient, more financially settled. I'm far more chilled out this time around.' So you'd advise an older option? 'It's better to have children at a later date, but myself, I'm worried about getting older. First time round I was one of the youngest parents in the playground; now I'm one of the oldest. My youngest is 10 months, so I'll be at retirement or grandfather age in her late teens. You hope to be running around in the park, doing those things that children want you to do and provide as parents. Hopefully I'll be one of those who manages it, but I will have to wait and see.'The energy issue: I've heard this raised before. People talk about the nuclear-like amounts of energy you need to bring up a child, but I suspect it's similar to the stamina needed to squire a girlfriend half your age. Because down-ageing your just-broody girlfriends each time they start describing a new frock as 'a bit maternity' is really the only alternative to producing offspring.Jonathan, 49, had two sons when he was 23 and 27. He says the early months were 'terrifying', and both he and his girlfriend had to abandon their career plans: 'Our embryonic lives together as a couple were entirely transformed into a fully fledged proper adult relationship. And we didn't have much money - I even used to scavenge skips for firewood.' But for all the foraging the relatively small age difference means he's closer to his kids. 'We can go to the cinema together, appreciate some of the same music, go out for a beer, they call me by my first name.' He got divorced and, a couple of years ago, he remarried. He isn't keen to become a father again: 'I'm interested in the relationship with my wife rather than with anyone else. The relationship I have with my children is established, I like the marriage and lifestyle we have, and because of my previous experience I can see how that could be compromised.' What is his advice for someone like me, thinking of becoming a father in my forties? 'I think, you're not going to get a lot of sleep. And by the time you're my age, when you take your kids to a restaurant they'll be running around banging their heads, stealing food, whereas I'll be discussing the amount of oak in the Sauvignon with mine. I'd think about that quite carefully.'So that's what I should have done. Bred early. Guess there's no point in crying over spilled, er, milk.The trouble with this when-to-procreate business is it's personal. Apologies, it's not much of an insight but everyone is different. They earn lots of money, earn not much money, like kids, don't like kids, have live-in help, are still looking for The One, are given a babies-or-else ultimatum by their partners, had a shit childhood themselves, don't feel the need to have babies to preserve their relationship, are worried they'll pass on a condition, feel they've established their career, don't want a career, haven't been to Patagonia yet - the list of caveats and factors that make it the 'right time' for someone is as long as the waiting list for a Doctor Who Dalek Electronic Voice Changer Helmet.So, to borrow a phrase from a Dragon: 'Let me tell you where I am.' For me, I think 45 is the cut-off. For biological reasons - you can't donate sperm past 45 - there must be something in those scary reports. And financially, I'd like to retire on time, if indeed I'm lucky enough to still have a career by then. Which doesn't give me much time, I guess, to meet someone, fall in love, imagine being with this person for the foreseeable future - if that's not over-romantic, delusional, too-much-like-a-John-Cusack-movie. But I'm getting ahead of myself: maybe I'm firing blanks anyhow.For the 20-minute wait while my sperm is being tested, I chat to Dr Magdy Asaad, clinical director, in his office about the problems with semen. Mine is being tested for volume, viscosity, concentration, mobility, morphology and antibodies. Dr Asaad uses the gold standard WHO criteria which are surprisingly generous - only 50 per cent of your sperm needs to move, for instance, and you're allowed up to 80 per cent with an abnormal form, such as funny-shaped heads or two tails, 'because 20 per cent of 20m is considered enough, it's a lot of sperm,' Dr Asaad chuckles.I'm curious: do anxious men often pop in on their own for a lunchtime sperm test, check everything is wriggling right? 'It's not common, but when men present on their own, it's normally a problem with their ability to have an erection or ejaculation.'Well as you can tell I have no problems in that area, I say.'But some men don't like to give a sample,' he continues. 'They find all kinds of excuses: maybe they are worried it will not be good, or that it's an artificial thing, to press a button [is he talking about the remote control?]. I don't know how it was for you, I'm not asking. Sometimes a gentleman will have difficulty preparing manually.' Unbelievable.The walls and desk of the doctor's office are smothered with framed photographs of beaming parents with their children - patients he's helped to fashion a bundle of joy for over the years. In your experience, I ask Dr Asaad, when is a good age for procreation? 'You're mature enough by your late twenties, early thirties, responsible enough, you probably have a job, a partner. I don't think it's a very serious problem waiting to 40-45, but beyond that you have to think about time with the child.'With that, Dr Asaad prints off a piece of A4 containing all my sperm's vital statistics. 'It's a good sample,' he says, 'so you're all right.' I'll spare you the details.On one hand this is a relief, but on the other it means I've no alibi, no excuses, I'm ready to breed. All I need now is a woman.Paternity frights: ten bus-pass fathersJulio Iglesias Sr, a dad at 89Nobody could accuse the gynaecologist father of Julio and grandfather of Enrique, and who was head of a Madrid family-planning unit, of not taking his work home with him. After having two children with his first wife, he remarried and, at 89, when his wife was 40, produced another son. Barely out of the maternity ward, Ronna signed up for IVF and within a few months was pregnant again. Tragically, filling a test-tube turned out to be the former Franco supporter's last significant act: two months later he was muerto. His daughter Ruth was born posthumously seven months later in July 2006. Dad-speak: 'At my age, a child is marvellous. I felt just like Abraham. It was an act of generosity towards her [Ronna]. I leave her part of my blood, of my life.'Saul Bellow, a dad at 84The Nobel Prize-winning novelist had four children: three sons with his first three wives, and a daughter, Naomi-Rose, with his 41-year-old fifth wife. He died when she was five, in 2005. Writing two months after his death, one of his sons, Adam, whose mother Bellow left when he was two, recalled 'a fond but highly attenuated bond with a frequently distracted, often absent and much older father.'Dad-speak: 'Well, my wife won't be lonely when I die. She'll have somebody'Anthony Quinn, a dad at 81The star of more than 100 movies, including Zorba the Greek and The Guns of Navarone, enjoyed procreating. He had five children with his first wife Katherine, the daughter of Cecil B DeMille, three with the second, then at the age of 81, he got his 29-year-old secretary pregnant, married her and had two children. The double Oscar-winner also squeezed in three more children with women he wasn't married to before he died in 2001. Dad-speak: [of his penultimate child] 'She's beautiful, she looks like me'Rupert Murdoch, a dad at 72The Australian-American global media mogul (real first name Keith) has been married three times. He produced one child with the first and three (Elizabeth, James and Lachlan) during a 31-year marriage to the second. Seventeen days after the $1.2bn divorce, the Dirty Digger married former photographic model Deng Wendi (she transposed her names post nuptials), a 30-year-old executive at his Asian Star TV channel. They have two children, the most recent in July 2003. Dad-speak: 'All my children will be treated equally'Des O'Connor, a dad at 72The former Countdown host has been married four times and has four grown-up daughters. His current wife, the 37-years-younger singer/dancer Jodie, who he met in 1990, when they were doing panto together, provided him with a son in September 2004. Dad-speak: 'When the baby was born the odd comment was made about my age, but I plan to play football with Adam'Luciano Pavarotti, a dad at 67The well-upholstered tenor had three daughters with his first wife, who he stayed with for 35 years. Then, in 1996, he left her for his secretary, Nicoletta - 36 years his junior. In 2003 she gave birth to twins, another daughter and a son; tragically, the latter was stillborn. 'The King of the High Cs' died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer just before his youngest daughter's fifth birthday. Dad-speak: 'I never imagined that at this time of life I would have another child. But I met Nicoletta, and she is young'Warren Beatty, a dad at 62After years of womanising (Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Isabelle Adjani, Vivien Leigh, Cher, Madonna, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Britt Ekland, Diane Keaton, Mary Tyler Moore, Janice Dickinson and Faye Dunaway to name a few) he plumped for Annette Bening. They've had four kids, the latest of whom was born in 2000. I think we can assume fatherhood has mellowed Warren. Dad-speak: 'We're fortunate to have a big house'Rod Stewart, a dad at 60The rooster-haired senior citizen has been breeding for 41 years. He's had seven children by five different women, although modest Rod often downgrades to six offspring, passing over his first, who was put up for adoption: 'You can count her if you want. I try not to,' he once said. Penny Lancaster provided him with his sixth/seventh, Alastair, in 2005. According to his brother Don, Rod prefers to leave Alastair's nappy-changing and feeding to the hired help. Unperturbed, 37-year-old Penny has dropped heavy hints she'd like a second with the 63-year-old Celtic fan.Dad-speak: 'I didn't see my oldest kids a lot as they were growing up. I don't feel any guilt, but maybe having a family is something Rachel and Alana and I should have thought about more before we had children'Michael Douglas, a dad at 58The Basic Instinct star had a son, Cameron, with Diandra Luker, his wife of 23 years. She divorced him in 2000. Later that year he ran into Catherine Zeta Jones and seduced her with the admirably direct and honest line: 'I'd like to father your children.' True to his word he hasn't let the 25-year age gap stop him from impregnating her twice, when he was 55 and 58.Dad-speak: 'It's not that I didn't enjoy it the first time, but I just didn't have the time. I'm not the only father who has felt guilty about the lack of time spent with his kids. So now I have a situation where I can savour it with my younger children. And you can see the effect of hanging out with them for three years and the security they have. And for me, it's a ball. Movie roles come and go and it's a finite period of time. This is sort of eternal'John Humphrys, a dad at 56The Welsh son of a hairdresser and French polisher has been married twice. The first wife provided the Mastermind host with two children, now both grown up. He remarried in 1987 and, after a reverse vasectomy, the Today programme interrogator became a proud father to a son, Owen. Dad speak: 'I thought I might resent this little kid for buggering up my life, as it were. The opposite has happened to me because of him. He's the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me'FamilyHealth & wellbeingHealthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Guardian.Co.Uk Is 41 too late to become a father? {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - Last night I ate a large bowl of beetroot from my garden. This morning my urine is the colour of rosé wine and I'm worried that my semen might have taken on a similar hue. The colour of my semen is a concern because someone will be studying it in a short while. I'm considering this while sitting in the top floor 'specimen room' of the London Fertility Centre on Harley Street. Later on, when I mention where I've been to friends and colleagues they seem really interested in the interior design details of a room set aside for masturbation. So if you're planning one, here's some decorating tips. The room is on the second floor and it has two notices on its door: one saying 'Quiet Please' (in case passers-by are inclined to cheer or clap, I guess) and a sliding sign with 'Vacant/Occupied' options - I've opted for 'occupied' although I'm not, so far. Inside, the room is about 6ft x 12ft and painted in various pale non-colours. It is equipped with an ensuite shower, light-green vinyl-covered daybed and a fudge-coloured bathroom suite (including bidet). There is a sash window - which isn't overlooked. The atmosphere is more Carry On than Casualty. On one side of the sink there is a small empty plastic beaker (with my name on it). On the other a DVD player, screen and a remote. I consider all the hands that have touched the remote. Using one of the many tissues provided I pick it up and inspect it; it appears to be clean. The television doesn't show any of the normal channels.I'm here because I'm concerned about my sperm. Not that they might be beetroot coloured, but rather that they might not be fit for purpose. That they might not be as athletic, plentiful and perfectly formed as they need to be. I'm 41 and childless, and although I'm not involved in a 'trying-for-a-baby'-type scenario I've been reading the papers and the news for fortysomething men and their sperm isn't great.'Scientists warn that biological clock affects male fertility' warned the Guardian in July - well, scientists are always saying stuff aren't they? 'Risk of miscarriage soars once the father reaches 35' (Daily Mail) - that sounds worrying. 'Blokes going infertile aged 35' (Sun). Must have sex, pronto! The papers were all reporting in their own particular ways on the research of Dr Stephanie Belloc from the Eylau Centre for Assisted Reproduction in Paris. Dr Belloc had studied the records of 12,000 couples who visited her clinic and separated out the influence of the mother's and father's ages on the chances of conception and miscarriage. Belloc and her team found that women whose partners were 35 or older had more miscarriages than those who were with younger men, regardless of their own age. The risk of miscarriage was on average 16.7 per cent when the men were aged 30-34, but it doubled to 33 per cent in men over 40. Moreover, her research showed that men's ages also affected pregnancy rates, which were lower in the over-40s. As the Mirror summed it up, 'Over-35? You're a dad loss.'I can remember ridiculing my own father for being 40, so how did I end up childless at 41? To start with I went to university and became middle-class. It seems only people from council estates and people who own estates have kids young these days. The middle classes are too busy in their twenties establishing careers, climbing the property ladder and going on snowboarding holidays.Although lack of one doesn't stop some people, I feel you need to be in a reasonably stable relationship before having kids - and I haven't been in one of those of late. But of late, many of my peers are reproducing, some are already on to their third. Even the ones who had drug problems are conceiving and, meanwhile, gay friends are cutting breeding deals with lesbians. I wonder if time is running out.It's an easy thought to have because I can't act on it, but sometimes I think I should have had some children in my twenties. I had more energy and didn't have many material comforts to give up or much of a lifestyle to compromise. I'd be packing them off to university around now, thumbing sports car brochures and thinking about buying a peach farm in Spain. Frankly, I can't remember that much of my twenties, so maybe it would have put this decade of void to good use. I don't recall any of my peers having kids; maybe it was a hangover from the Aids era - people seemed pretty conscientious about birth control, there were no 'accidents'. So now, at 41, I wonder if I've skipped the whole kids thing. I seem to be developing the hobbies and pastimes of a senior citizen - golf, growing beetroot, buffing my classic car. But the reality is I've got 19 years until I qualify for my bus pass - which is just enough time to raise at least one human being. So should I be worried about or believe in the 'male biological clock'?Back in 2001, Professor Dolores Malaspina, of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, concluded that men aged 50 or over are three times more likely to father a child with schizophrenia compared with men of 25 or under. Four years later, epidemiologist Jorn Olsen at the University of California, Los Angeles, found a fourfold rise in Down's syndrome among babies born to men aged 50 and older. And in 2006 scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found that children born to fathers aged 40 and over were nearly six times more likely to suffer from autism than those with a father under 30. Meanwhile, other researchers have suggested patterns between older fathers and increased chances of bipolar disorder, dwarfism and Apert syndrome - whose unlucky sufferers have a malformed skull and webbed hands and feet, among other disfigurements. A report in 2006 even suggested 'a modest effect of advanced paternal age on the Apgar score'. And after finding out what an Apgar score is I now know this to be less than good. The evidence appeared to be stacking up.Yet are these findings as scary as they sound? Dr Belloc's sample was made up entirely of couples presenting for infertility treatment. 'It is not evident that we can extrapolate these conclusions to a fertile population,' she tells me. And many of the incidences in the other studies are minute; so a fivefold increase is still only a five-times-minute chance of some disorder or other. Moreover, these studies only show patterns, rather than direct causal links - finding a direct link would probably require examining DNA at a detail beyond most researchers' budgets or ability. Some commentators have speculated that if a man first becomes a father in his forties or fifties that may indicate he has had trouble forming relationships earlier in his life, which may mean in a mild, undiagnosed kind of way he's a carrier of problems like bipolar disorder or autism which have a genetic element - so his paternal age is irrelevant to the outcome.Which isn't exactly comforting, but it suggests the 'male biological clock' doesn't tick as loudly as the headlines suggest. For Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at Sheffield University, the clock is nothing more than ageing. As you grow older, you lose a bit of hair and experience the odd 'senior moment', so you shouldn't be surprised if your sperm isn't as sprightly as it used to be. 'In terms of numbers it's the same, but what tends to happen is that the sperm isn't as good.' If their biological clock is ticking, men are pretty deaf to it. The age of fatherhood is creeping up: the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the average age of married fathers rose from 29.1 in 1971 to 34.1 in 2003 - getting close to the 35-year point where some of the problems are alleged to kick in. I ask Dr Pacey if this is a worrying trend. 'The problem is couples are waiting until they are older. To wait until the woman is approaching 40 is the wrong time to be starting, and that will be exasperated by any problem that he has due to ageing.' Dr Pacey's advice to me is not to hang about: 'You will be more successful having a child naturally at an earlier age; it will be cheaper for you and it will be much more fun than waiting until you're well into your forties, going to an infertility clinic and having it done artificially. What we're finding are lots of people attending infertility clinics in their forties who would have succeeded in getting pregnant at 25. Rather than waiting for technology to sort it out, if you are in a position to have children early, then go ahead and do it.'What Dr Pacey and others are quick to point out is that there's definitely a female biological clock. Women are born with a finite number of eggs and at some point they will run out. According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), a woman is half as fertile at 35 as she is at 25, and half as fertile again at 40.You might be thinking, 'Why is he bothering to spell that out, everyone knows that?' Well, before researching this piece I was only vaguely aware of those blunt facts, but, more surprisingly, when chatting to single and married thirtysomething childless women about this article they start saying things like: 'My gran had my mother at 45,' 'What about Madonna?' or, most biologically incorrect: 'I'm not ready yet.' They seemed about as informed as I was. 'With the Madonnas and all the rest who seem to have children quite naturally, no one mentions IVF or egg donors, and celebrity miscarriages don't make the pages of Heat,' says Dr Pacey. 'This silence reinforces the myth that these miracle births happen, when often there's a medical intervention.' And IVF isn't a safety net: according to the HFEA, IVF has only a 12 per cent success rate for a 40-year-old woman. And it will cost you: the NHS, on the advice of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), doesn't fund IVF for women over 40 because of the low success rate. The average cost of a cycle is £4,000-£8,000. Is it chauvinistic to question the sense of delaying having kids for the sake of a career if you're going to spend most of the extra income on fertility treatment?However it's not only career building that is nudging the maternal age up; those commitment-phobic, nappy-changing-averse partners make a contribution, too - people like me. One could argue that this male biological clock business is providing men with another excuse to avoid having kids - we move from 'I'm not ready yet' to 'It's too dangerous now' in the time it takes to power up a Nintendo Wii. Or maybe you could blame the introduction of Viagra - which has engendered the idea that men can stay virile forever, so why rush? - as most men think the difference between virility and fertility is latex thin. But if you're looking for something that's really obscuring the hands of the male biological clock, look to famous people. When it comes to fertility, biology tells us one thing, but celebrities tell us another: ie, no matter how superannuated you are, getting your girlfriend up the duff is child's play. Middle-aged famous fellas love a baby shower. Dr Pacey isn't impressed: 'The John Humphrys thing does distort the picture. There'll be lots of men who will read this piece and say, "I was 50 and I had a child," and it's really difficult to argue against that because they do, but statistically you are less likely to succeed and more likely to have problems. For the individual who has been successful it will seem stupid that I'm saying that, but for every 50-year-old father there'll be 10 times more thinking, "I had a lot of problems."'Even if you, your sperm and your wife from a younger generation manage to buck the stats, there are other non-bio reasons against fathering kids late. Most obviously you might die before they graduate - if you're 65 now, on average you'll die at 82 - although for how much longer you will be capable of having a kick-about, helping them with their homework or visiting the lavatory without their assistance isn't recorded. And while it's embarrassing to be mistaken occasionally for their grandfather, it's thoughtless not to meet your grandchildren.Am I being too hard on the older dad? I call Charlie Lewis, professor of family and developmental psychology at Lancaster University. Should we give middle-aged men the snip? 'Some men claim to be better fathers when older, but I don't see this in the majority of men. I find them saying, "I'm clapped out, I've done my bit at work, I've provided a house and comfortable living, now let me vegetate." They think it's their right to sit in front of the telly and not take part in any interaction. It's almost autistic. Older fathers tend to do less of the stereotypical activities than younger fathers do, less childcare and less kicking footballs - for fear of snapping a tendon. They think, "I'm much too old for this."'Surprisingly, Lewis is more relaxed about the dying thing. 'I don't want to put fathers down, but if you look at the majority of evidence on loss, it does point to losing a mother before 11 being more predictive of later social/psycho disorders than losing a father. These effects are most often caused by the child absorbing the surviving partner's grief. So if the mother can manage the grieving process, the predictable death of an older father needn't be a life-changing trauma.'Dads dead or alive, we should be more concerned about the kids, says Lewis. 'You do get studies that say old dads feel closer to their kids, but I'm not aware that kids feel closer to their older fathers.'I wonder if I would become one of these dead-beat, distant dads. I like to think not. I don't quite understand how that could happen. What kind of an individual would tune into a Top Gear repeat rather than read to their child or even relieve them of a shitty nappy? Maybe I'm being naive. I talk to some dad friends.Gary, 45, first became a father when he was 23, but then remarried and had three more children, the oldest of whom is five. Would he like to compare and contrast? 'Obviously becoming a father young was a bit of a shock, it made me grow up quickly. I'm not sure at that age if you're responsible enough to look after yourself let alone a little child.' So how is it second time around: does older dad mean better dad? 'When my second wife first wanted children I did have slight panic attacks, because I had this memory of it being a total whirlwind, but this time it's completely different, it doesn't seem half as stressful as when I was in my twenties.' Gary says this isn't just because he's been a parent before - 'No, it's mainly because I'm more grown-up, more patient, more financially settled. I'm far more chilled out this time around.' So you'd advise an older option? 'It's better to have children at a later date, but myself, I'm worried about getting older. First time round I was one of the youngest parents in the playground; now I'm one of the oldest. My youngest is 10 months, so I'll be at retirement or grandfather age in her late teens. You hope to be running around in the park, doing those things that children want you to do and provide as parents. Hopefully I'll be one of those who manages it, but I will have to wait and see.'The energy issue: I've heard this raised before. People talk about the nuclear-like amounts of energy you need to bring up a child, but I suspect it's similar to the stamina needed to squire a girlfriend half your age. Because down-ageing your just-broody girlfriends each time they start describing a new frock as 'a bit maternity' is really the only alternative to producing offspring.Jonathan, 49, had two sons when he was 23 and 27. He says the early months were 'terrifying', and both he and his girlfriend had to abandon their career plans: 'Our embryonic lives together as a couple were entirely transformed into a fully fledged proper adult relationship. And we didn't have much money - I even used to scavenge skips for firewood.' But for all the foraging the relatively small age difference means he's closer to his kids. 'We can go to the cinema together, appreciate some of the same music, go out for a beer, they call me by my first name.' He got divorced and, a couple of years ago, he remarried. He isn't keen to become a father again: 'I'm interested in the relationship with my wife rather than with anyone else. The relationship I have with my children is established, I like the marriage and lifestyle we have, and because of my previous experience I can see how that could be compromised.' What is his advice for someone like me, thinking of becoming a father in my forties? 'I think, you're not going to get a lot of sleep. And by the time you're my age, when you take your kids to a restaurant they'll be running around banging their heads, stealing food, whereas I'll be discussing the amount of oak in the Sauvignon with mine. I'd think about that quite carefully.'So that's what I should have done. Bred early. Guess there's no point in crying over spilled, er, milk.The trouble with this when-to-procreate business is it's personal. Apologies, it's not much of an insight but everyone is different. They earn lots of money, earn not much money, like kids, don't like kids, have live-in help, are still looking for The One, are given a babies-or-else ultimatum by their partners, had a shit childhood themselves, don't feel the need to have babies to preserve their relationship, are worried they'll pass on a condition, feel they've established their career, don't want a career, haven't been to Patagonia yet - the list of caveats and factors that make it the 'right time' for someone is as long as the waiting list for a Doctor Who Dalek Electronic Voice Changer Helmet.So, to borrow a phrase from a Dragon: 'Let me tell you where I am.' For me, I think 45 is the cut-off. For biological reasons - you can't donate sperm past 45 - there must be something in those scary reports. And financially, I'd like to retire on time, if indeed I'm lucky enough to still have a career by then. Which doesn't give me much time, I guess, to meet someone, fall in love, imagine being with this person for the foreseeable future - if that's not over-romantic, delusional, too-much-like-a-John-Cusack-movie. But I'm getting ahead of myself: maybe I'm firing blanks anyhow.For the 20-minute wait while my sperm is being tested, I chat to Dr Magdy Asaad, clinical director, in his office about the problems with semen. Mine is being tested for volume, viscosity, concentration, mobility, morphology and antibodies. Dr Asaad uses the gold standard WHO criteria which are surprisingly generous - only 50 per cent of your sperm needs to move, for instance, and you're allowed up to 80 per cent with an abnormal form, such as funny-shaped heads or two tails, 'because 20 per cent of 20m is considered enough, it's a lot of sperm,' Dr Asaad chuckles.I'm curious: do anxious men often pop in on their own for a lunchtime sperm test, check everything is wriggling right? 'It's not common, but when men present on their own, it's normally a problem with their ability to have an erection or ejaculation.'Well as you can tell I have no problems in that area, I say.'But some men don't like to give a sample,' he continues. 'They find all kinds of excuses: maybe they are worried it will not be good, or that it's an artificial thing, to press a button [is he talking about the remote control?]. I don't know how it was for you, I'm not asking. Sometimes a gentleman will have difficulty preparing manually.' Unbelievable.The walls and desk of the doctor's office are smothered with framed photographs of beaming parents with their children - patients he's helped to fashion a bundle of joy for over the years. In your experience, I ask Dr Asaad, when is a good age for procreation? 'You're mature enough by your late twenties, early thirties, responsible enough, you probably have a job, a partner. I don't think it's a very serious problem waiting to 40-45, but beyond that you have to think about time with the child.'With that, Dr Asaad prints off a piece of A4 containing all my sperm's vital statistics. 'It's a good sample,' he says, 'so you're all right.' I'll spare you the details.On one hand this is a relief, but on the other it means I've no alibi, no excuses, I'm ready to breed. All I need now is a woman.Paternity frights: ten bus-pass fathersJulio Iglesias Sr, a dad at 89Nobody could accuse the gynaecologist father of Julio and grandfather of Enrique, and who was head of a Madrid family-planning unit, of not taking his work home with him. After having two children with his first wife, he remarried and, at 89, when his wife was 40, produced another son. Barely out of the maternity ward, Ronna signed up for IVF and within a few months was pregnant again. Tragically, filling a test-tube turned out to be the former Franco supporter's last significant act: two months later he was muerto. His daughter Ruth was born posthumously seven months later in July 2006. Dad-speak: 'At my age, a child is marvellous. I felt just like Abraham. It was an act of generosity towards her [Ronna]. I leave her part of my blood, of my life.'Saul Bellow, a dad at 84The Nobel Prize-winning novelist had four children: three sons with his first three wives, and a daughter, Naomi-Rose, with his 41-year-old fifth wife. He died when she was five, in 2005. Writing two months after his death, one of his sons, Adam, whose mother Bellow left when he was two, recalled 'a fond but highly attenuated bond with a frequently distracted, often absent and much older father.'Dad-speak: 'Well, my wife won't be lonely when I die. She'll have somebody'Anthony Quinn, a dad at 81The star of more than 100 movies, including Zorba the Greek and The Guns of Navarone, enjoyed procreating. He had five children with his first wife Katherine, the daughter of Cecil B DeMille, three with the second, then at the age of 81, he got his 29-year-old secretary pregnant, married her and had two children. The double Oscar-winner also squeezed in three more children with women he wasn't married to before he died in 2001. Dad-speak: [of his penultimate child] 'She's beautiful, she looks like me'Rupert Murdoch, a dad at 72The Australian-American global media mogul (real first name Keith) has been married three times. He produced one child with the first and three (Elizabeth, James and Lachlan) during a 31-year marriage to the second. Seventeen days after the $1.2bn divorce, the Dirty Digger married former photographic model Deng Wendi (she transposed her names post nuptials), a 30-year-old executive at his Asian Star TV channel. They have two children, the most recent in July 2003. Dad-speak: 'All my children will be treated equally'Des O'Connor, a dad at 72The former Countdown host has been married four times and has four grown-up daughters. His current wife, the 37-years-younger singer/dancer Jodie, who he met in 1990, when they were doing panto together, provided him with a son in September 2004. Dad-speak: 'When the baby was born the odd comment was made about my age, but I plan to play football with Adam'Luciano Pavarotti, a dad at 67The well-upholstered tenor had three daughters with his first wife, who he stayed with for 35 years. Then, in 1996, he left her for his secretary, Nicoletta - 36 years his junior. In 2003 she gave birth to twins, another daughter and a son; tragically, the latter was stillborn. 'The King of the High Cs' died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer just before his youngest daughter's fifth birthday. Dad-speak: 'I never imagined that at this time of life I would have another child. But I met Nicoletta, and she is young'Warren Beatty, a dad at 62After years of womanising (Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Isabelle Adjani, Vivien Leigh, Cher, Madonna, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Britt Ekland, Diane Keaton, Mary Tyler Moore, Janice Dickinson and Faye Dunaway to name a few) he plumped for Annette Bening. They've had four kids, the latest of whom was born in 2000. I think we can assume fatherhood has mellowed Warren. Dad-speak: 'We're fortunate to have a big house'Rod Stewart, a dad at 60The rooster-haired senior citizen has been breeding for 41 years. He's had seven children by five different women, although modest Rod often downgrades to six offspring, passing over his first, who was put up for adoption: 'You can count her if you want. I try not to,' he once said. Penny Lancaster provided him with his sixth/seventh, Alastair, in 2005. According to his brother Don, Rod prefers to leave Alastair's nappy-changing and feeding to the hired help. Unperturbed, 37-year-old Penny has dropped heavy hints she'd like a second with the 63-year-old Celtic fan.Dad-speak: 'I didn't see my oldest kids a lot as they were growing up. I don't feel any guilt, but maybe having a family is something Rachel and Alana and I should have thought about more before we had children'Michael Douglas, a dad at 58The Basic Instinct star had a son, Cameron, with Diandra Luker, his wife of 23 years. She divorced him in 2000. Later that year he ran into Catherine Zeta Jones and seduced her with the admirably direct and honest line: 'I'd like to father your children.' True to his word he hasn't let the 25-year age gap stop him from impregnating her twice, when he was 55 and 58.Dad-speak: 'It's not that I didn't enjoy it the first time, but I just didn't have the time. I'm not the only father who has felt guilty about the lack of time spent with his kids. So now I have a situation where I can savour it with my younger children. And you can see the effect of hanging out with them for three years and the security they have. And for me, it's a ball. Movie roles come and go and it's a finite period of time. This is sort of eternal'John Humphrys, a dad at 56The Welsh son of a hairdresser and French polisher has been married twice. The first wife provided the Mastermind host with two children, now both grown up. He remarried in 1987 and, after a reverse vasectomy, the Today programme interrogator became a proud father to a son, Owen. Dad speak: 'I thought I might resent this little kid for buggering up my life, as it were. The opposite has happened to me because of him. He's the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me'FamilyHealth & wellbeingHealthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Is 41 too late to become a father? | Life and style | The Observer {...} The latest science claims older dads can cause autism, schizophrenia and Down's Syndrome - and their fertility fades with age. Ian Tucker consults his biological clock {...}
Published: November 16, 2008, 12:05 am - Indexed: November 16, 2008, 12:14 pm - Page Size: 123KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Today at Boing Boing Gadgets http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/today-at-boing-boing-gadgets-2008108429.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/today-at-boing-boing-gadgets-2008108429.htm Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:57:53 GMT Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, there was a Spy Calculator; a wooden safe like something from Myst; a giant ball made of vinyl records; a rugged handheld computer from Motorola; and a bizarre marble-spitting automaton. John saw a toilet in the shape of a pipe; an ingenious Russian iPhone scam; and what can only be described as a Tamagotchi with a glory hole. He has a tank with a gothic church on top of it. Poor-quality photos revealed what might well be the new MacBrick Pro, the RAZR maintained its lead as most popular cellphone over you-know-what; and the Welsh police are tasing sheep. Baastards! Rob donned a Pac Man Hoodie; rode a plush robot dinosaur; spotted a $550 wooden USB thumbdrive; and heard a Fisher Price doll assert that Islam is the Light. We covered a lot of BlackBerry Storm stuff, but most fun was an apparently-official ad with the iPhone's operating system pasted in. Speaking of iThings, Woz says the iPod's time will be up sooner than we know it. There was an unpleasant epilator; a novelty teapot in the shape of an alien spaceship; a zombie apocalypse in Lego; and a MAME cocktail cabinet made of an old iMac. Game on!... Boingboing.Net Today at Boing Boing Gadgets {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, there was a Spy Calculator; a wooden safe like something from Myst; a giant ball made of vinyl records; a rugged handheld computer from Motorola; and a bizarre marble-spitting automaton. John saw a toilet in the shape of a pipe; an ingenious Russian iPhone scam; and what can only be described as a Tamagotchi with a glory hole. He has a tank with a gothic church on top of it. Poor-quality photos revealed what might well be the new MacBrick Pro, the RAZR maintained its lead as most popular cellphone over you-know-what; and the Welsh police are tasing sheep. Baastards! Rob donned a Pac Man Hoodie; rode a plush robot dinosaur; spotted a $550 wooden USB thumbdrive; and heard a Fisher Price doll assert that Islam is the Light. We covered a lot of BlackBerry Storm stuff, but most fun was an apparently-official ad with the iPhone's operating system pasted in. Speaking of iThings, Woz says the iPod's time will be up sooner than we know it. There was an unpleasant epilator; a novelty teapot in the shape of an alien spaceship; a zombie apocalypse in Lego; and a MAME cocktail cabinet made of an old iMac. Game on!...
Today at Boing Boing Gadgets - Boing Boing {...}
Published: October 9, 2008, 4:57 am - Indexed: October 10, 2008, 10:44 am - Page Size: 33KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk {INTERNET > V} - The 2008 Music List http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/on-the-web/weblogs/personal/v/the-2008-music-list-2008126982.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/on-the-web/weblogs/personal/v/the-2008-music-list-2008126982.htm Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:08:07 GMT I enjoy listening to music immensely. I used to fancy myself a collector, and having a Tower Records employee for a roommate didn’t really help that situation. When I happened to travel to other towns I would lookup the used music shops and spends more time than I really should have flipping through CDs and vinyl. There was a brief period of time when I thought I could make a nice chunk of change going around buying up rarities and selling them online. This was, of course, before the days of eBay, Amazon, and every other interweb outlet for used music. To further carbon date myself, CDNow still existed and had a telnet interface. Normally this is when I would yell at the kids to get off my internet and then regale them with stories about how we used to have modems and resumable downloads with Z-Term. But, I digress…as I am want to do. My intake of new music has certainly slowed down. As with all people growing older, I attribute this to the crop of bands “today” being mostly crap. Luckily for me, this is a timeless truth. So now even when I venture into the realm of “new” music, it almost has to pass a litmus test of sounding vaguely like a band that I already like. As a for instance, Joy Division leads me to Interpol, which in turns leads me to the Editors. Unfortunately, none of these bands had an album release in 2008 (Joy Division “Best Of” doesn’t count, Interpol’s Our Love to Admire and Editors’ An End Has A Start were both 2007). The good news is that technology is getting close to that point where it almost seems like magic. I use the soundamus service to find new releases based on music that I already like. It takes the bands that I’ve told last.fm that I like/listen to and runs that through Amazon to give me a calendar of releases that I’m probably going to be interested in, be it bands I already listen to or ones that Amazon thinks I’ll like. This is incredibly cool, even when it only tells me about bands I already like (see: Oasis, James, Flogging Molly, The Killers, etc.) The following list are the albums that I bought in 2008. Yes, I know that 2008 isn’t over yet, but my soundamus calendar tells me that there aren’t any interesting releases (not counting singles or EPs) coming out in December. This isn’t a review and they aren’t ranked, although I hope to write more about the music of 2008 that I really liked next month. The band links are to last.fm pages and the album links are to Amazon MP3, with the lone exception of Chinese Democracy. Bloc Party - Intimacy Bomb The Bass - Future Chaos The Charlatans - You Cross My Path Flogging Molly - Float Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy (iTunes) James - Hey Ma Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads Keane - Perfect Symmetry The Killers - Day & Age KMFDM - Brimborium The Kooks - Konk Ladytron - Velocifero Meat Beat Manifesto - Autoimmune Moby - Last Night Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV Nine Inch Nails - The Slip Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul Ok Go & Bonerama - You’re Not ALone The Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing TV On The Radio - Dear Science Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend The Verve - Forth We Are Scientists - Brain Thrust Mastery Weezer - Weezer (Red Album) So, there it is. Patandkat.Com The 2008 Music List {new window}   Www.Patandkat.Com - I enjoy listening to music immensely. I used to fancy myself a collector, and having a Tower Records employee for a roommate didn’t really help that situation. When I happened to travel to other towns I would lookup the used music shops and spends more time than I really should have flipping through CDs and vinyl. There was a brief period of time when I thought I could make a nice chunk of change going around buying up rarities and selling them online. This was, of course, before the days of eBay, Amazon, and every other interweb outlet for used music. To further carbon date myself, CDNow still existed and had a telnet interface. Normally this is when I would yell at the kids to get off my internet and then regale them with stories about how we used to have modems and resumable downloads with Z-Term. But, I digress…as I am want to do. My intake of new music has certainly slowed down. As with all people growing older, I attribute this to the crop of bands “today” being mostly crap. Luckily for me, this is a timeless truth. So now even when I venture into the realm of “new” music, it almost has to pass a litmus test of sounding vaguely like a band that I already like. As a for instance, Joy Division leads me to Interpol, which in turns leads me to the Editors. Unfortunately, none of these bands had an album release in 2008 (Joy Division “Best Of” doesn’t count, Interpol’s Our Love to Admire and Editors’ An End Has A Start were both 2007). The good news is that technology is getting close to that point where it almost seems like magic. I use the soundamus service to find new releases based on music that I already like. It takes the bands that I’ve told last.fm that I like/listen to and runs that through Amazon to give me a calendar of releases that I’m probably going to be interested in, be it bands I already listen to or ones that Amazon thinks I’ll like. This is incredibly cool, even when it only tells me about bands I already like (see: Oasis, James, Flogging Molly, The Killers, etc.) The following list are the albums that I bought in 2008. Yes, I know that 2008 isn’t over yet, but my soundamus calendar tells me that there aren’t any interesting releases (not counting singles or EPs) coming out in December. This isn’t a review and they aren’t ranked, although I hope to write more about the music of 2008 that I really liked next month. The band links are to last.fm pages and the album links are to Amazon MP3, with the lone exception of Chinese Democracy. Bloc Party - Intimacy Bomb The Bass - Future Chaos The Charlatans - You Cross My Path Flogging Molly - Float Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy (iTunes) James - Hey Ma Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads Keane - Perfect Symmetry The Killers - Day & Age KMFDM - Brimborium The Kooks - Konk Ladytron - Velocifero Meat Beat Manifesto - Autoimmune Moby - Last Night Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV Nine Inch Nails - The Slip Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul Ok Go & Bonerama - You’re Not ALone The Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing TV On The Radio - Dear Science Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend The Verve - Forth We Are Scientists - Brain Thrust Mastery Weezer - Weezer (Red Album) So, there it is.
The 2008 Music List - Vertical Hold {...}
Indexed: December 1, 2008, 9:08 am - Page Size: 15KB
Category: Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Personal > V

]]> Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Personal > V {INTERNET > V} - The 2008 Music List http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/on-the-web/weblogs/personal/v/the-2008-music-list-20081197535.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/on-the-web/weblogs/personal/v/the-2008-music-list-20081197535.htm Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:34:38 GMT I enjoy listening to music immensely. I used to fancy myself a collector, and having a Tower Records employee for a roommate didn’t really help that situation. When I happened to travel to other towns I would lookup the used music shops and spends more time than I really should have flipping through CDs and vinyl. There was a brief period of time when I thought I could make a nice chunk of change going around buying up rarities and selling them online. This was, of course, before the days of eBay, Amazon, and every other interweb outlet for used music. To further carbon date myself, CDNow still existed and had a telnet interface. Normally this is when I would yell at the kids to get off my internet and then regale them with stories about how we used to have modems and resumable downloads with Z-Term. But, I digress…as I am want to do. My intake of new music has certainly slowed down. As with all people growing older, I attribute this to the crop of bands “today” being mostly crap. Luckily for me, this is a timeless truth. So now even when I venture into the realm of “new” music, it almost has to pass a litmus test of sounding vaguely like a band that I already like. As a for instance, Joy Division leads me to Interpol, which in turns leads me to the Editors. Unfortunately, none of these bands had an album release in 2008 (Joy Division “Best Of” doesn’t count, Interpol’s Our Love to Admire and Editors’ An End Has A Start were both 2007). The good news is that technology is getting close to that point where it almost seems like magic. I use the soundamus service to find new releases based on music that I already like. It takes the bands that I’ve told last.fm that I like/listen to and runs that through Amazon to give me a calendar of releases that I’m probably going to be interested in, be it bands I already listen to or ones that Amazon thinks I’ll like. This is incredibly cool, even when it only tells me about bands I already like (see: Oasis, James, Flogging Molly, The Killers, etc.) The following list are the albums that I bought in 2008. Yes, I know that 2008 isn’t over yet, but my soundamus calendar tells me that there aren’t any interesting releases (not counting singles or EPs) coming out in December. This isn’t a review and they aren’t ranked, although I hope to write more about the music of 2008 that I really liked next month. The band links are to last.fm pages and the album links are to Amazon MP3, with the lone exception of Chinese Democracy. Bloc Party - Intimacy Bomb The Bass - Future Chaos The Charlatans - You Cross My Path Flogging Molly - Float Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy (iTunes) James - Hey Ma Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads Keane - Perfect Symmetry The Killers - Day & Age KMFDM - Brimborium The Kooks - Konk Ladytron - Velocifero Meat Beat Manifesto - Autoimmune Moby - Last Night Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV Nine Inch Nails - The Slip Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul Ok Go & Bonerama - You’re Not ALone The Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing TV On The Radio - Dear Science Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend The Verve - Forth We Are Scientists - Brain Thrust Mastery Weezer - Weezer (Red Album) So, there it is. Patandkat.Com The 2008 Music List {new window}   Www.Patandkat.Com - I enjoy listening to music immensely. I used to fancy myself a collector, and having a Tower Records employee for a roommate didn’t really help that situation. When I happened to travel to other towns I would lookup the used music shops and spends more time than I really should have flipping through CDs and vinyl. There was a brief period of time when I thought I could make a nice chunk of change going around buying up rarities and selling them online. This was, of course, before the days of eBay, Amazon, and every other interweb outlet for used music. To further carbon date myself, CDNow still existed and had a telnet interface. Normally this is when I would yell at the kids to get off my internet and then regale them with stories about how we used to have modems and resumable downloads with Z-Term. But, I digress…as I am want to do. My intake of new music has certainly slowed down. As with all people growing older, I attribute this to the crop of bands “today” being mostly crap. Luckily for me, this is a timeless truth. So now even when I venture into the realm of “new” music, it almost has to pass a litmus test of sounding vaguely like a band that I already like. As a for instance, Joy Division leads me to Interpol, which in turns leads me to the Editors. Unfortunately, none of these bands had an album release in 2008 (Joy Division “Best Of” doesn’t count, Interpol’s Our Love to Admire and Editors’ An End Has A Start were both 2007). The good news is that technology is getting close to that point where it almost seems like magic. I use the soundamus service to find new releases based on music that I already like. It takes the bands that I’ve told last.fm that I like/listen to and runs that through Amazon to give me a calendar of releases that I’m probably going to be interested in, be it bands I already listen to or ones that Amazon thinks I’ll like. This is incredibly cool, even when it only tells me about bands I already like (see: Oasis, James, Flogging Molly, The Killers, etc.) The following list are the albums that I bought in 2008. Yes, I know that 2008 isn’t over yet, but my soundamus calendar tells me that there aren’t any interesting releases (not counting singles or EPs) coming out in December. This isn’t a review and they aren’t ranked, although I hope to write more about the music of 2008 that I really liked next month. The band links are to last.fm pages and the album links are to Amazon MP3, with the lone exception of Chinese Democracy. Bloc Party - Intimacy Bomb The Bass - Future Chaos The Charlatans - You Cross My Path Flogging Molly - Float Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy (iTunes) James - Hey Ma Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads Keane - Perfect Symmetry The Killers - Day & Age KMFDM - Brimborium The Kooks - Konk Ladytron - Velocifero Meat Beat Manifesto - Autoimmune Moby - Last Night Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV Nine Inch Nails - The Slip Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul Ok Go & Bonerama - You’re Not ALone The Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing TV On The Radio - Dear Science Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend The Verve - Forth We Are Scientists - Brain Thrust Mastery Weezer - Weezer (Red Album) So, there it is.
The 2008 Music List - Vertical Hold {...}
Indexed: November 29, 2008, 10:34 am - Page Size: 15KB
Category: Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Personal > V

]]> Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Personal > V {NORTH AMERICA > RENTALS} - Historic St. Vincent Hill Cottage 1 block from the Water (vallejo / benicia) $1195 2bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/historic-st-vincent-hill-cottage-1-block-from-the-20081130240.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/historic-st-vincent-hill-cottage-1-block-from-the-20081130240.htm Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:49:04 GMT $1195 / 2br - Historic St. Vincent Hill Cottage 1 block from the Water and dog friendly! (vallejo / benicia)Location: St. Vincent HillWow! Actually on the National Registrar as a contributor to the Historic, St. Vincent Hill Neighborhood in Vallejo. This cute as a button cottage sits behind another historic property that is being rehabbed and is just one block to the waterfront and a few more to the Ferry terminal that serves San Francisco. The yard has no landscaping to speak of but hey, the dog can't damage it! It is fully fenced and dog friendly. The house has many historic details most impressionable are the soaring ceilings and the mostly double hung windows, all with window coverings, with cool historic, wavy glass to better enjoy the stunning view of the municipal yacht harbor and the bridge to Mare Island. The floors are warm, original doug fir that have been lovingly restored. The bathroom is Martha Stewart chic with 1" white hex floors, fresca green subway tiles, a pedestal sink and molded milk glass for the main light fixture. The kitchen has mostly stainless steel appliances but the dishwasher door has a screw loose for the handy or forgiving renter. It also has inside washer and dryer but the dryer needs a new belt? again for the handy or forgiving renter. The vinyl floor in the kitchen is torn up from my puppy so I won't fault you yours - it comes with a kitchen rug. The two bedrooms are seperated by an opening that would otherwise have pocket doors so the house is best suited as a one bedroom with an office/den/dining room (see photo). Two chandeliers already installed and on dimmers, third available. I saved the creme de la creme for last - main bedroom which is HUGE features a custom California Closet for the clothes horse down to details like velvet lined locking jewelry drawers. Do not wait - every time I've rented this house, there is a line. The exterior needs paint a la shabby chic and will not be addressed until next year - do not ask. Also, I will consider a $100/month discount if you are a skilled landscaper or exterior painter. There is a landscape plan available and owner will pay for materials - the plan is still dog friendly. Yard is shared with a two year-old shiba inu pup.InformationContact InformationAnne Catherine Bowcutt707-980-7650PricingRent: $1,195 per monthAvailable Date: Mon Dec 01, 2008Deposit: 1500Included Utilities: garbage & waterProperty LocationOhio @ TrinityVallejo, CA 94590FeaturesBedrooms: 2Bathrooms: 1Parking Spaces: streetYear Built: 1898Subdivision: St. Vincent HillLot Size: 7000+Square Footage: 1000 approximateAgent Name: Anne Catherine BowcuttAttributesAppliancesRange/OvenFull RefrigeratorWasher/DryerDishwasherInterior AmenitiesHardwood FloorsSecurity SystemExterior AmenitiesFenced YardPowered by vFlyer.com EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITYVFLYER ID: 2069831Photo GalleryPowered by vFlyer.com EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITYVFLYER ID: 2069831All information in this site is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and is subject to change Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Historic St. Vincent Hill Cottage 1 block from the Water (vallejo / benicia) $1195 2bd {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - $1195 / 2br - Historic St. Vincent Hill Cottage 1 block from the Water and dog friendly! (vallejo / benicia)Location: St. Vincent HillWow! Actually on the National Registrar as a contributor to the Historic, St. Vincent Hill Neighborhood in Vallejo. This cute as a button cottage sits behind another historic property that is being rehabbed and is just one block to the waterfront and a few more to the Ferry terminal that serves San Francisco. The yard has no landscaping to speak of but hey, the dog can't damage it! It is fully fenced and dog friendly. The house has many historic details most impressionable are the soaring ceilings and the mostly double hung windows, all with window coverings, with cool historic, wavy glass to better enjoy the stunning view of the municipal yacht harbor and the bridge to Mare Island. The floors are warm, original doug fir that have been lovingly restored. The bathroom is Martha Stewart chic with 1" white hex floors, fresca green subway tiles, a pedestal sink and molded milk glass for the main light fixture. The kitchen has mostly stainless steel appliances but the dishwasher door has a screw loose for the handy or forgiving renter. It also has inside washer and dryer but the dryer needs a new belt? again for the handy or forgiving renter. The vinyl floor in the kitchen is torn up from my puppy so I won't fault you yours - it comes with a kitchen rug. The two bedrooms are seperated by an opening that would otherwise have pocket doors so the house is best suited as a one bedroom with an office/den/dining room (see photo). Two chandeliers already installed and on dimmers, third available. I saved the creme de la creme for last - main bedroom which is HUGE features a custom California Closet for the clothes horse down to details like velvet lined locking jewelry drawers. Do not wait - every time I've rented this house, there is a line. The exterior needs paint a la shabby chic and will not be addressed until next year - do not ask. Also, I will consider a $100/month discount if you are a skilled landscaper or exterior painter. There is a landscape plan available and owner will pay for materials - the plan is still dog friendly. Yard is shared with a two year-old shiba inu pup.InformationContact InformationAnne Catherine Bowcutt707-980-7650PricingRent: $1,195 per monthAvailable Date: Mon Dec 01, 2008Deposit: 1500Included Utilities: garbage & waterProperty LocationOhio @ TrinityVallejo, CA 94590FeaturesBedrooms: 2Bathrooms: 1Parking Spaces: streetYear Built: 1898Subdivision: St. Vincent HillLot Size: 7000+Square Footage: 1000 approximateAgent Name: Anne Catherine BowcuttAttributesAppliancesRange/OvenFull RefrigeratorWasher/DryerDishwasherInterior AmenitiesHardwood FloorsSecurity SystemExterior AmenitiesFenced YardPowered by vFlyer.com EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITYVFLYER ID: 2069831Photo GalleryPowered by vFlyer.com EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITYVFLYER ID: 2069831All information in this site is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and is subject to change
Historic St. Vincent Hill Cottage 1 block from the Water {...}
Published: November 29, 2008, 7:49 am - Indexed: November 29, 2008, 9:52 am - Page Size: 17KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals {SUBCULTURES > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Playlist: Colbert's War on the War on Christmas, Natural Disaster RSS, Left4Dead Zombie-Palooza http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/subcultures/geeks-and-nerds/news-and-media/playlist-colbert-s-war-on-the-war-on-christmas-natural-20081149920.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/subcultures/geeks-and-nerds/news-and-media/playlist-colbert-s-war-on-the-war-on-christmas-natural-20081149920.htm Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT : A Colbert ChristmasNation, we offer a tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert for declaring war on the war on Christmas. Our hero is trapped in his mountain cabin by a bear (what else?), unable to get to New York to film A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!, so the musical special comes to him. The self-styled broadcasting legend nails duets with dope-smoking wise man Willie Nelson, Hanukkah evangelist Jon Stewart, authorized prayer technician Feist, and Dickensian busker Elvis Costello. Don't miss the stocking stuffers: a video Advent calendar and book-burning Yule log. Take that, "Happy Holidays.": Hurricanes in the Caribbean, earthquakes in Asia, wildfires in California — Mother Nature's can of whup-ass is set to stun, and it's hard to keep track of where her blows are landing. Which is why this comprehensive natural disaster RSS feed from the New Zealand Herald is such a welcome port in the storm. An exhaustive stream of global devastation is the perfect way to sate our rubbernecking receptors.: Now playing at the new California Academy of Sciences Morrison Planetarium, Fragile Planet provides a fresh perspective on our place in space. Starting in San Francisco and pulling back to the edges of the universe, narrator Sigourney Weaver shows us other worlds that are likely to support life. Exquisitely visualized by vets of ILM, Pixar, and Lucasfilm, the show is jacked into a NASA database, and its universe will be updated whenever a new planet is discovered.: Nonprofit group the Moth revitalizes the oral tradition with true stories told live—no notes allowed. Featuring fave authors like Neil Gaiman and unexpected confessors like ex-pickpocket O. T. Powell, the tales can be harrowing or humorous but always deliver satisfying epiphanies. Our own: What makes a good yarn is not necessarily the story but the storyteller.: Tired of loading podcasts onto your iPod before a trip? Try Lexy. The easy-to-use service sends news and entertainment "quikcasts" to your cell phone. Sign up for free at Lexy.com to build a playlist; use the Share voice command to shoot a clip to a friend. Highlights include NPR's Story of the Day, NASA Feature Stories, Slashdot Review, and, of course, Wired's weekly quikcast.: More art than advertisement, this Web video, directed by Acne Film for Chicago-based designer toy store Rotofugi, is a gem. In this quirky and magical piece, vinyl VIPs like Qee (designed by David Horvath), Gloomy Bear (Chax), and Smiling Malfi (Friends With You) flaunt their treasured "mint, in box" Homo sapiens. It was never released as an actual ad, but you can check it out at Acne.: Finally, a game that breathes new life into the festering cadaver that is the zombie-horror genre. The latest from Valve pits four scrappy humans against hundreds of hyperaggressive corpses. It demands teamwork and coordination and delivers thrills on par with 28 Days Later. Blasting through a zombie horde is pure awesome concentrate, but one killer game mode lets players enlist in the army of the undead. Mmmm, brains.: It's porn for LucasArts junkies. From the lenticular cover (Darth Vader morphs into Monkey Island's Guybrush Threepwood) to a collection of never-before-published Star Wars game logos, this fine-art-style book is manna for fans of the famous game developer. Flip through design documents from the early '80s, study storyboards and scripts for Star Wars: Rebel Assault 2, and preview concept art for the upcoming Indiana Jones game without leaving your basement lair. Power-up: The forward is by George himself.: Each fall, the American Photography organization compiles the year's most powerful editorial images into a single exquisite volume. With brilliant work by the likes of James Nachtwey, Brent Stirton, and Plamen Petkov (right), this one's no exception, but it's also a most stylishly produced visual time capsule. And we're not just saying that because it was designed by Wired creative director Scott Dadich. We really are into naked ladies and fruit.* * Other things we really are into: the nickname Captain Chaos, puerile Yule log jokes, hot rocket scientists.: The real reason "Live Your Life" is the freshest jam off rapper T.I.'s Paper Trails isn't because of Rihanna's vocals or T.I.'s flow—it's the "Numa Numa" sample. Yep, the 2004 video virus of a pudgy 18-year-old lip-syncing to Moldovan boy band O-Zone has reinfected pop culture. No worries, though—this strain is benign. Ditching the original's Euro-rave vibe, producer Just Blaze tweaked the "mai ai hee" refrain into a midtempo "hey, oh!" party anthem we've had on repeat for weeks. Wired.Com Playlist: Colbert's War on the War on Christmas, Natural Disaster RSS, Left4Dead Zombie-Palooza {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - : A Colbert ChristmasNation, we offer a tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert for declaring war on the war on Christmas. Our hero is trapped in his mountain cabin by a bear (what else?), unable to get to New York to film A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!, so the musical special comes to him. The self-styled broadcasting legend nails duets with dope-smoking wise man Willie Nelson, Hanukkah evangelist Jon Stewart, authorized prayer technician Feist, and Dickensian busker Elvis Costello. Don't miss the stocking stuffers: a video Advent calendar and book-burning Yule log. Take that, "Happy Holidays.": Hurricanes in the Caribbean, earthquakes in Asia, wildfires in California — Mother Nature's can of whup-ass is set to stun, and it's hard to keep track of where her blows are landing. Which is why this comprehensive natural disaster RSS feed from the New Zealand Herald is such a welcome port in the storm. An exhaustive stream of global devastation is the perfect way to sate our rubbernecking receptors.: Now playing at the new California Academy of Sciences Morrison Planetarium, Fragile Planet provides a fresh perspective on our place in space. Starting in San Francisco and pulling back to the edges of the universe, narrator Sigourney Weaver shows us other worlds that are likely to support life. Exquisitely visualized by vets of ILM, Pixar, and Lucasfilm, the show is jacked into a NASA database, and its universe will be updated whenever a new planet is discovered.: Nonprofit group the Moth revitalizes the oral tradition with true stories told live—no notes allowed. Featuring fave authors like Neil Gaiman and unexpected confessors like ex-pickpocket O. T. Powell, the tales can be harrowing or humorous but always deliver satisfying epiphanies. Our own: What makes a good yarn is not necessarily the story but the storyteller.: Tired of loading podcasts onto your iPod before a trip? Try Lexy. The easy-to-use service sends news and entertainment "quikcasts" to your cell phone. Sign up for free at Lexy.com to build a playlist; use the Share voice command to shoot a clip to a friend. Highlights include NPR's Story of the Day, NASA Feature Stories, Slashdot Review, and, of course, Wired's weekly quikcast.: More art than advertisement, this Web video, directed by Acne Film for Chicago-based designer toy store Rotofugi, is a gem. In this quirky and magical piece, vinyl VIPs like Qee (designed by David Horvath), Gloomy Bear (Chax), and Smiling Malfi (Friends With You) flaunt their treasured "mint, in box" Homo sapiens. It was never released as an actual ad, but you can check it out at Acne.: Finally, a game that breathes new life into the festering cadaver that is the zombie-horror genre. The latest from Valve pits four scrappy humans against hundreds of hyperaggressive corpses. It demands teamwork and coordination and delivers thrills on par with 28 Days Later. Blasting through a zombie horde is pure awesome concentrate, but one killer game mode lets players enlist in the army of the undead. Mmmm, brains.: It's porn for LucasArts junkies. From the lenticular cover (Darth Vader morphs into Monkey Island's Guybrush Threepwood) to a collection of never-before-published Star Wars game logos, this fine-art-style book is manna for fans of the famous game developer. Flip through design documents from the early '80s, study storyboards and scripts for Star Wars: Rebel Assault 2, and preview concept art for the upcoming Indiana Jones game without leaving your basement lair. Power-up: The forward is by George himself.: Each fall, the American Photography organization compiles the year's most powerful editorial images into a single exquisite volume. With brilliant work by the likes of James Nachtwey, Brent Stirton, and Plamen Petkov (right), this one's no exception, but it's also a most stylishly produced visual time capsule. And we're not just saying that because it was designed by Wired creative director Scott Dadich. We really are into naked ladies and fruit.* * Other things we really are into: the nickname Captain Chaos, puerile Yule log jokes, hot rocket scientists.: The real reason "Live Your Life" is the freshest jam off rapper T.I.'s Paper Trails isn't because of Rihanna's vocals or T.I.'s flow—it's the "Numa Numa" sample. Yep, the 2004 video virus of a pudgy 18-year-old lip-syncing to Moldovan boy band O-Zone has reinfected pop culture. No worries, though—this strain is benign. Ditching the original's Euro-rave vibe, producer Just Blaze tweaked the "mai ai hee" refrain into a midtempo "hey, oh!" party anthem we've had on repeat for weeks.
See the latest multimedia and applications including videos, animations, podcasts, photos, and slideshows on Wired.com {...}
Published: November 26, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: November 27, 2008, 9:57 am - Page Size: 37KB
Category: Society > Subcultures > Geeks and Nerds > News and Media

]]> Society > Subcultures > Geeks and Nerds > News and Media {NORTH AMERICA > RENTALS} - Convenient to shopping, two bedroom 2 bath private deck (san jose east) $595 2bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/convenient-to-shopping-two-bedroom-2-bath-private-20081196621.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/convenient-to-shopping-two-bedroom-2-bath-private-20081196621.htm Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:25:21 GMT We have a two bedroom, two bath home available with a view and private deck. It has hardwood floors, new paint, new dishwasher, new refrigerator, new stove, new carpets in bedroom, new vinyl flooring in kitchen and bath, garbage disposal and is clean and well maintained. The kitchen is quite large and there is lovely hardwood floor dining area. The building is located convenient to all shopping, dining and transportation.On site- laundry, gated garage and intercom system for controlled access. House Features:* Hardwood Floors throughout the Living Area* Carpet in bedrooms* Large Windows* Granite counter top* Crown moulding* Dishwasher* Refrigerator* Shower w/Tub in one bath , shower in other* Walk through wardrobe area* Intercom System for Controlled Access Lease Terms: One Year or Month to MonthRent: $595.00Security Deposit: $200 plus $100 for pets.500+ credit preferred. rica Candid Camera Cosmetics Film Hidden camera Infarto Internet Movie Database Jackass (TV show) January 1 /) and sets up his flunky Tom with a prostitute Kitty Duval The bar is also frequented by a number of colorful characters including a frenetic young man in love an old man who looks like Kit Carson and an affluent society coupleThe Labour Party retained control of Wolverhampton City Council despite polling a lower percentage of votes (40 21%) than the Conservative Party (44 61%)in the US in 1991 with this song as a bonus track The UK and Japanese CD3 singles (1987 and 1990 respectively) include the song again as the B-side for The Seven Seas of Rhye Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Convenient to shopping, two bedroom 2 bath private deck (san jose east) $595 2bd {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - We have a two bedroom, two bath home available with a view and private deck. It has hardwood floors, new paint, new dishwasher, new refrigerator, new stove, new carpets in bedroom, new vinyl flooring in kitchen and bath, garbage disposal and is clean and well maintained. The kitchen is quite large and there is lovely hardwood floor dining area. The building is located convenient to all shopping, dining and transportation.On site- laundry, gated garage and intercom system for controlled access. House Features:* Hardwood Floors throughout the Living Area* Carpet in bedrooms* Large Windows* Granite counter top* Crown moulding* Dishwasher* Refrigerator* Shower w/Tub in one bath , shower in other* Walk through wardrobe area* Intercom System for Controlled Access Lease Terms: One Year or Month to MonthRent: $595.00Security Deposit: $200 plus $100 for pets.500+ credit preferred. rica Candid Camera Cosmetics Film Hidden camera Infarto Internet Movie Database Jackass (TV show) January 1 /) and sets up his flunky Tom with a prostitute Kitty Duval The bar is also frequented by a number of colorful characters including a frenetic young man in love an old man who looks like Kit Carson and an affluent society coupleThe Labour Party retained control of Wolverhampton City Council despite polling a lower percentage of votes (40 21%) than the Conservative Party (44 61%)in the US in 1991 with this song as a bonus track The UK and Japanese CD3 singles (1987 and 1990 respectively) include the song again as the B-side for The Seven Seas of Rhye
Convenient to shopping, two bedroom 2 bath private deck {...}
Published: November 18, 2008, 8:25 am - Indexed: November 18, 2008, 8:54 am - Page Size: 6KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California >