I prefer James Ellroy's version of events.

"There are obvious applications for data visualisation and music and graphic composition."

ahem...www.jazzmutant.com. I'll take one of these over an iPhone anyday.

Well in this specific instance "they" are the demonstrators Amis refers to in the interview. I wasn't referring to anyone here in case some of you took that personally.

By referring to the London bombings he gives a bit of context to his views..."On the other hand, no society on earth, no society imaginable, could frictionlessly absorb a day like 7 July."

Looks like the friction will continue for a while yet.

Span . Not trolling but I have no problem with bagging religion. Christianity, Islam, Scientologists, Mormons, Buddhists, etc, they're all equal and equally ridiculous to me. I have no problem with believers of the above expressing their views in whatever way floats their boat but no way do I respect those views. It just boils down to my invisible friend is better than your invisible friend.

Che, I don't think Amis views those people as "internal allies" (whatever that means). And I don't see him stating blind support for Israel in that article. I think Israel is fairly justified in its paranoia (but that does not excuse its 'drop bombs, apologise later' strategy at all).

My interpretation of the "what is this creedal wave" thing is that it equalled the perceived threat of fundamentalist Xtreme Islam. Pretty sure he wasn't referring to Christianity.

The point I think Amis was trying to make was that some people will ally themselves with the enemies of Bush and Blair, even if those enemies would be hostile to their values.

Martin Amis likes contoversy. It helps him sell more books.

I do agree that it is the actions of Bush and Blair that are radicalising Islam. And the media just loves to report the more outrageous statements from the likes of Anjem Choudary and others which gives the establishment more fuel for outrage.

"People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead."

Martin Amis being interviewed in the Independent

Sometimes your enemy's enemy is your enemy too.

I'm sorry, Bono, but I'm your friend and you need to hear this

To avoid getting the DVD player on your iMac locked to a particular region (which it'll do after you change it 5 times) use the VLC player instead...

www.videolan.org/vlc/

Works really well for OS X and Windows.

My music buying behaviour this year has been influenced quite a lot by emusic.com.

eMusic: Where Are the Copycats?

"people used to play their LPs on those stacker things quite happily"...true (and the stacker thing was great for 45s). I once had close to a religious experience listening to an old Sam and Dave record on an circa 60s sterogram. The (valve) distortion was a thing of beauty.

Agree with the frustration over getting obscure or not popular items from stores like RG. When I was still in NZ I ordered most of my vinyl from Forced Exposure. Even with the freight charges it was still cheaper and faster than getting it from a physical store. For digital downloads, I find Beatport hard to beat, 320 kbps MP3s with no DRM. Soulseek also rocks.

I just can't get excited about paying for low quality DRM files. I do love my new Mac and iPod tho (and no issues with PA on Safari so far)...and RB and crew...nice work re PA System...