Most importantly, I didn’t miss the two acts I was most excited to see: Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons.

Ms Marling was pretty electrifying as usual: her voice so pure and clear and never missing a note that the whole room seemed to hold its breath while she sang. Mumford & Sons were also feet-tappingly excellent.

Neither act won the prize, although it was interesting to hear how many of the nominees fell somewhere on the indie-folk spectrum. In contrast, the winners – the xx (which as the Guardian tells us, is strictly lower-case) – aren’t folky, but have a unique sort of spare, electronic sound.

The most exciting bits of the evening were hearing bands I didn’t know anything about and realising I liked them. One example was Foals singing Spanish Sahara, which has this insistent, growing beat and beauty that quickly becomes hypnotic.

I Am Kloot’s Northern Skies was sweet and listenable, and Becoming a Jackal by Villagers is a beguiling mix of melancholy and mischief. Corinne Bailey Rae was amazing to hear, because her voice was so malleable and she sang like a jazz queen, although when I later listened to parts of her album online, they seemed overproduced: live, her talent is far more stunning.

All in all it was a good night and I’ve since bought all the tracks above. To that extent I have fallen into the trap that is the true function of the Mercury Prize – to sell records by raising awareness – but that’s ok: my music collection is all the richer for it.

There were the stalwart inheritance tracks; the music that I work to; the music I go to sleep to when my brain’s still working. Let’s just say the churn rate was very low.

Imagine my surprise when one artist and his one and only album managed to supercede every other track on my ipod after just three months, taking not just the no.1 and no.2 and no.3 spot in the most listened to list, but every other spot until the album runs out.

If you know Bon Iver, and his 2008 solo debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, you may understand. It’s an incredibly beautiful album.  

It’s not brash or pushy. The first time you hear it, it doesn’t get you in a stranglehold; it’s more of a gradual, stealthy bewitching. By the third and fourth times you don’t really want to hear anything else. I didn’t consciously listen to the whole entire album on repeat hundreds of times, but that’s what must have happened.

The ‘Iver’ in Bon Iver is pronounced like the French ‘hiver’ for winter. His real name is Justin Vernon, and the story of For Emma – how it came about, from what pain and solitude it sprung – is beautiful and worthy of myth-making in its own right.

You can learn about it here, in a short, sweet video interview Vernon did with the Guardian, that includes an acoustic performance of one of the album’s best tracks.

You can also listen to track 3 on the album, Skinny Love, here.

The Guardian’s latest audio slideshow: a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the set design for A Streetcar Named Desire, which is currently playing at London’s Donmar, starring Rachel Weisz.  It’s informative, beautiful and brief enough to enjoy in a coffeebreak at work. Plug in your headphones and press play.

Sandel manages to make his analysis accessible while instructive; as one listener wrote on twitter: “Listening to podcasts of Sandel’s Reith lectures on way to work is like taking my brain to the gym”.

You can listen to all four of the lectures on the BBC iplayer.

Some highlights here:

For three decades, the governing philosophy of the United States and Britain was defined by the faith that markets are the primary instrument for achieving the public good. The financial crisis has put this faith in question.. The era of market triumphalism has come to an end. But we have yet to find our way to a new governing philosophy. Even President Obama has yet to articulate one…”

As a governing philosophy… the task of correcting market failures is too humble and too narrow. Democratic governance is radically devalued if reduced to the role of handmaiden to the market economy. Democracy is about more than fixing and tweaking and nudging incentives to make markets work better…”

The flight from moral judgement and moral argument in politics predates the era of market triumphalism. It found expression – on both sides of the Atlantic – beginning in the 1950s and 60s, partly as a reaction against fascist and communist ideologies, and partly as an attempt to spare politics from becoming embroiled in religious strife. And it also reflected a growing faith in economics as a value-neutral science.”

The UK has somehow made it into the final despite the appalling dullness of its entry, It’s My Time, sung by Jade Ewen. I wouldn’t bother clicking on the link if I were you. Much more entertaining is Norway’s entry, written and sung by a 23-year old called Alexander Rybak. It’s appropriately eurovision-awful but in the best way possible.

Mr Rybak, who looks roughly eleven years old, is like some kind of demonic violin-playing elf crossed with Dan Radcliffe. His lyrics are hilariously bad (“That was then, but then it’s true”) while his background dancers seem to be enacting a scissor-kicking mythical narrative that bears no relation to the song itself. The whole effect is curiously pleasurable.

Almost two years after Rodrigo Rosenberg died, the real, bizarre, and chilling truth about his death has come to light and been beautifully explained by David Grann in The New Yorker. You can read the article here.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Rodrigo Rosenberg was born in Guatemala in 1962. After completing an undergraduate degree at Rafael Landivar University, he studied international law at the University of Cambridge, and later took a masters in commercial law at Harvard.

In 1987, Rodrigo Rosenberg co-founded his own law firm, Rosenberg Marzano Marroquin-Pemueller & Asociados. He had four children. He was appointed Vice Dean of his old alma-mater, the Law School at Rafael Landivar.

Last Sunday, while Mr Rosenberg was cycling through Guatemala City, he was shot dead.

In the video Mr Rosenberg made predicting his own murder, he does not come across as a deluded conspiracy theorist. Dressed smartly, he enunciates clearly, explaining why he believes his impending death would be the work of the Guatemalan president, Alvaro Colom. The urgency of what he is saying is clear only in the way his lips purse when he finishes a sentence, in the careful calmness he keeps, as if understanding that anything too agitated would undermine his case.

According to the Wall St Journal, the video was made last Wednesday. You can watch it here:

While hundreds of Guatemalans took to the streets to call for Colom’s resignation after the video was shown on local television, the President held a press conference to vehemently deny the claims, saying:

The death of attorney Rosenberg has been used by political opportunists and traditional conspirators linked to organised crime to confuse public opinion and attack the top authorities.”

President Colom has requested that the FBI and the UN help investigate. Yesterday, the FBI arrived in Guatemala. A full English translation of Mr Rosenberg’s written message is available here.

* Listen on myspace to her current, beatific single Night Terror.

* More on Alas I Cannot Swim

* and an old review of Laura Marling in concert at the Union Chapel

Ok I might as well say it. I watched T4. Confession over.

Now, interested as I am in the issues behind gender inequality and female empowerment in the workplace, I was pretty intrigued by the lyrics of the ridiculously catchy When I Grow Up.

In contrast with their charming debut single, Don’cha, (“Don’cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me”), the Dolls’ new record is altogether more introspective.

Boys call you sexy (What’s up, sexy)
And you don’t care what they say
See, every time you turn around
They screamin’ your name
When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

[Verse 1]
Now I’ve got a confession
When I was young I wanted attention
And I promised myself that I’d do anything
Anything at all for the boys to notice me

[Bridge]
But I ain’t complaining
We all wanna be famous
So go ahead and say what you wanna say
You know what it’s like to be nameless
Want them to know what your name is
‘Cause see when I was younger I would say

[Chorus]
When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies
When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have Groupies*

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines
When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

[Hook x2]
But be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
But you just might get it
But You just might get it

[Verse 2]
They used to tell me I was silly
Until I popped up on the TV
I always wanted to be a superstar
And knew that singing songs would get me this far

[Bridge]
[Chorus]
[Verse]
I see them staring at me
Oh I’m a trendsetter
Yes this is true ’cause what I do, no one can do it better
You can talk about me
‘Cause I’m a hot topic
I see you watching me, watching me, and I know you want it
[Chorus]

* Groupies is pronounced ‘Boobies’

Aside from the ‘fresh and clean’ bit, which I suppose is quite good for promoting personal hygiene, I’ve got to say the overall message here is kind of depressing. The whole whether-it’s-meant-to-sound-like-boobies-when-they-sing-groupies is a separate debate that I’m not getting into – besides, lead boobie-pronouncer Nicole surely cleared it all up when she told Ellen DeGeneres “it’s open to interpretation and some of us want boobies”.

What bothers me more about the song is that it’s such a proud example of the pervasive raunch culture that encourages girls to disempower themselves, bump by sordid grind. Even Steve Jones was shocked at the girls’ risque moves on the T4 soundstage. “It’s amazing we’re allowed to show that at this time of the morning,” he laughed. The revelation for me (which I’m sure most of you already know) was that the Pussycat Dolls are not just any other super-branded girl band with a tidal wave of adolescent girls aping their every wriggle, but in fact a real x-rated burlesque troupe.

If the girls performed this song every night on a Sunset Strip stage, where they were originally resident in 1995, I couldn’t care less.The problem is, the PCD’s management want the Doll Domination to be total. And that means tapping one of the most lucrative market groups around: kids and teenagers. In fact in 2006, the toymaker Hasbro created a set of plastic dolls based on the band, to be marketed at 6 to 9 year old girls. Luckily the wave of protest that erupted persuaded Hasbro to cancel the Pussycat line before it reached stores.

That didn’t stop the PCD from expanding their merchandise. On stardoll.com, (a “virtual paperdoll community” with 21,200,240 members, most of whom are aged 7 – 17) you can dress up Melody, Nicole and co. in knee high leather boots, hot pants and a bra, though actually the PCD are the least fun paperdolls on the site since their wardrobes are limited by the fact that they’re the real thing – branded clothing – rather than fun fantasy outfits.

(NB. The admittedly very entertaining stardoll site does make a gesture at some kind of female empowerment, in the form of a page entitled ‘Role Models‘. Apparently, girls, our leading role models are Coco Chanel, Rosa Parks, Beatrix Potter, Forest Fairy (??), and Venus. That would be Venus, as in the mythical goddess of beauty. Great.)

It’s not that I think the Pussycats intend any harm with their fixed-smile fetishization of fame and mindless attention-seeking. Like Nicole says: “The Pussycat Dolls have no boundaries. We continue to stretch and find ourselves in every performance. We do what is truthful for each of us.” Bless. I’d be suprised if the Dolls even had the brains to think past their own shiny latex wardrobe. They’re dolls, right?  Here the group claims the ‘When I Grow Up’ song is meant to be a warning, though of what exactly?

I think people see us and think: ‘Wow, I want to do that. I want to be famous, I want to see the world, I want nice cars, I want groupies.’ But it’s not going to be an easy road getting there and it’s not as glamorous as it always seems.”

OK. So the warning is not that maybe there’s more to life than fame, but that getting there might be tricky?

The fact is that girls could really do with better role models than a group of strippers who glorify the single-minded pursuit of fame and boobies (or groupies, for that matter). 

One recent study found that 63 per cent of teenage girls aspired to be topless models rather than doctors or teachers, while 25 per cent considered lap dancing a “good career choice”. Unfortunately, as this former dancer testifies, it’s not. The Pussycat Dolls insist we’re all pussycat dolls-in-waiting, that – like they said in their TV show, The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll – “inside every woman is a pussycat doll”. Presumably with limitless potential to strip and grind and be watched, and thus have value, if only we believe in ourselves enough, right?

The weird thing is that if Pink were to sing ‘When I Grow Up’ it would be hilarious; a piercing satire of the objectification of women. As it is, it’s just really very sad.

Google = brain food? Photo by missha on creative commons

Everyone knows the staff perks at Google are good, but I thought they were basically about free smoothies and office pool tables. Turns out employees also get visits from leading authors, economists, philosophers, scientists and politicians – from Barack Obama to Noam Chomsky to Hans Blix.

Lucky for us, Google are all about sharing, right, so as long as you have the time (the talks generally last around an hour) you’re welcome to an intimate audience with the zeitgeist too, thanks to the democratic medium of youtube (where Google has its own AtGoogleTalks channel).

Thanks to a recommendation from Geoff Riley’s excellent economics blog, I recently watched Dan Ariely – author of “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” – speaking at Google about the behavioral economics theories that underpin his bestselling book. The video (below) is worth watching; very funny. Access to these guys… much more covetable than a smoothie.

Saw the girly electro punk band The RGB’s last night at Bardens and they were pretty ace.

Here’s a typically rubbish phone photo to whet your curiosity. If you look carefully you can see the frontwoman is wearing an ingenious LEOTARD.