ADDITIONAL CLUES

A rather painful listen, but the video below could have been included in Part B above.

The answer to number 4 should be obvious now. And if number 4 and the Dalai Lama are interchangeable, the answer to number 3 may also be clear to some members.


Bon Jovi - Please Come Home for Christmas (1994)
- uploaded by skappyj


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In case nobody responds correctly beforehand, the answers will be posted in 22 hours — at around 18:00 UK time on Thursday 6 August.

Let's try

Peaches - Fuck the Pain Away ---> Blondie ---> call me (in the ost of american gigolo) ---> Richard Gere ---> Dalai Lama / Cindy Crawford

Wow! Thanks!

Hope those who watched it found the Jocko Willink clip in Part A to be of interest.



The question for this competition relates to Parts B, C and D:

There is one individual who is tied to all three parts. Name that person, and briefly explain their connection to each of B, C and D.


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In case nobody responds correctly beforehand, answers will be posted in 24 hours — at around 22:00 UK time on Friday 7 August.


[Separately, forgot to mention that answers to the previous competition (on the Jonathan Haidt chat with Joe Rogan) will be posted at around 20:00 UK time on Friday 7 August, unless an eligible member responds correctly beforehand.]

Thanks a lot for the second chance.

I will be back :-)

I think that the link between Joe Strummer and Elvis Presley's song Blue Moon is the movie Mystery Train.

This movie, by one of my favorite directors Jim Jarmusch*, consists of three stories. In each story you can hear the song Blue Moon by Elvis playing on the radio**. In the third and last story of the movie, which is called 'Lost in Space', Joe Strummer stars as Johnny but he is also known as Elvis.

And of course is Mystery Train not only the name of the movie but also the name of a song by Elvis.

*With Coffee and Cigarettes being my favorite Jarmusch movie

**Funny fact: the radio presentor's voice is that of Tom Waits

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Your question about Pike and Adjani is a bit difficult. But I will give it a try.

I believe you might be referring to the facts that:

- Pike and Adjani are both moviestars and Blek le Rat and Banksy are both street artists.
- Adjani and Blek started in the seventies, Pike and Banksy in the nineties of the last century.
- Adjani and Blek le Rat are from France and Pike and Banksy are from the UK.
- Both Pike and Adjani played in a music video, with the clip starring Pike was inspired by the movie Possesion starring Adjani and Blek le Rat's works inspired Banksy.

You win, kjg, both the competition and bonus question prize. Congratulations.


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REFERENCE ANSWERS


The individual who is tied in some way to Parts B, C and D is Joe Strummer.


Part B: Elvis Presley - Blue Moon (1954)

In Jim Jarmusch's 1989 film Mystery Train, the three distinct stories that make up the narrative are linked by a portion of Presley's version of "Blue Moon" (as heard on a radio broadcast) and a subsequent offscreen gunshot, which are heard once during each story, revealing that the three stories occur simultaneously in real time.*

Joe Strummer is one of the actors in Mystery Train — playing the character Johnny, who's also referred to as "Elvis".

The video provided for Blue Moon is merely a still of the cover of the album, Elvis Presley — the design of which was homaged by The Clash with 1979's London Calling. By way of side note, the latter album also features a photo of a pissed-off Paul Simonon, taken by Pennie Smith*.


Separately, the indirect clue provided yesterday was a clip from the 1990 film, I Hired a Contract Killer. It was directed by Aki Kaurismäki, who is often referred to as the Finnish Jim Jarmusch. Joe Strummer makes an appearance in that film as well:


Joe Strummer - Burning Lights (I Hired A Contract Killer - 1990)
- uploaded by zilogbass




Part C: The Pogues - Summer in Siam (1990)

The single Summer in Siam by The Pogues is from their 1990 album, Hell's Ditch — which was produced by Joe Strummer.

A separate minor connection is the video having been directed by Don Letts, who first came to prominence as the videographer for The Clash.

Strummer also played live with The Pogues, as a temporary replacement for injured guitarist Philip Chevron*, and later as singer for part of 1991 after Shane MacGowan was fired.



Part D: Massive Attack, Young Fathers - Voodoo In My Blood (2016)

This superb video directed by Ringan Ledwidge was filmed in the (now closed) Joe Strummer Subway in West London — a location where Strummer used to busk before becoming a founding member of The Clash.


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BONUS REFERENCE ANSWERS


Voodoo In My Blood is a clear homage to scenes in Possession (1981) by Andrzej Zulawski, and Phantasm (1979) by Don Coscarelli.*

That first film stars the French actress Isabelle Adjani.


The analogy I'd make between Rosamund Pike vs Isabelle Adjani on the one hand, and Banksy vs Blek le Rat on the other, relates to:

(i) nationality;

(ii) dates / chronology; and

(iii) regarding the issue of precedent, there arguably being a pupil-surpassing-the-master type of scenario.

In the case of Adjani, to my mind she over-egged the pudding with her performance, making it less convincing than Pike's — although a not-insignificant part of the impact for both will be down to directing, cinematography, and editing.


Voodoo In My Blood (2016) / Possession (1981)
- uploaded by TheClebes

Congratulations, JockoLad.

All the more so, given that some two hours of your time were required. I hope you feel the investment was worthwhile and not wasted.



REFERENCE ANSWERS


1.  Microaggression reporting systems

A microaggression reporting system has a good intention behind it. There are cases of professors who make ethnic jokes. [...] There are legitimate complaints and the faculty do... there should be some accountability, some responsibility. So there's a good intention behind it. But it's usually based on no empirical evidence.

And because it's based on pressure applied to a bureaucracy — not by a committee thinking, "Hmm, how can we improve the climate for everyone?" [...] — there's not thought put into, "What would happen if we give the students an East German-style anonymous reporting system, and so everybody's on notice that they can be reported at any point? What might happen to the social dynamics?"

Like, nobody thought that through. So the net effect again is the spectacular collapse of trust on campus.


2.  If you see the world as dangerous and threatening and you raise your kids accordingly, you're going to raise emotionally-stunted kids who are at much higher risk of depression, anxiety and suicide.


3.

(a) Author: John Stuart Mill

(b) Book title: On Liberty

(c) Subject matter of Chapter 2 (Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion): Arguments in favour of free speech.

Chapter 2 of On Liberty is the best set of arguments ever made for free speech, for why it is that we need to let people talk and challenge and criticise. Even if we think they're wrong, we get smarter from having to rebut them. Whereas if we shut them down, if we have blasphemy laws, we get dumber because we never actually face tests of what we believe.


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This was a key competition, to the point where my plan was to continue extending the deadline for responding to the questions until an eligible member finally won.

The conversation between Joe Rogan and Jonathan Haidt offers a foundation and building block for a few of my future competitions — which may be more challenging to people's beliefs. And so it had a purpose beyond itself, which was to serve as a psychological primer for part of what's to come.

That podcast covered, touched upon or alluded to many issues of concern to me:

(i) the need for a certain amount of hardship, stress and challenge in order to develop basic human abilities, i.e. how overprotecting children interferes with their development and the expansion of their abilities;

(ii) the alarming fragility of Gen Z, their lack of resilience and mental health issues;

(iii) intensified attacks in recent years on free speech, including via cancel culture and no-platforming;

(iv) the pernicious phenomena of call-out and pile-on cultures, especially on social media (and quite often with anonymous accounts);

(v) self-censorship or cowed silence by right-minded, rational individuals, and the hesitation or fear many of us have about sticking our heads above the parapet;

(vi) a general dearth of courage in our public discourse;

(vii) rising political polarisation (accompanied by increased radicalisation, black-and-white thinking, and feelings-based catastrophising) combined with the present scarcity of vocal, influential centrists;

(viii) good education requiring that we be capable of looking at our complicated world through multiple perspectives;

(ix) our loss of tolerance towards those with different political viewpoints, including our unwillingness (or complete inability) to engage in civilised discussion with them; and

(x) the need for critics who keep testing our opinions, allowing us in the process to remain thoughtful and less dogmatic — by forcing us to justify our positions, to present arguments instead of resorting to mere assertions or slurs.


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Music, cinema and other pop-culture-related competitions are fine. They can be good fun, even pushing participants to do their research and have a proper think. But these are also of secondary importance. They're mainly entertainment, thrown into the mix for lightness — to keep things fresh and hopefully engaging, by varying the tone of my posts.

The higher competitions for me are those relating to ideas, especially potentially awkward ones. In this respect, I'll repeat* a quote by Sam Harris (from one of his 'Ask Me Anything' sessions, podcast #24) which has stayed with me for years:

I find it thrilling when someone raises a point that I find I'm uncomfortable with, and I'm being led helplessly in the direction of something that I find destabilising to my cherished opinions. And I can't see any errors being made, and yet I don't like where I am being taken. I find that absolutely thrilling. I find those moments some of the best moments in intellectual life.


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JockoLad — Since my future competitions were going to be postponed until somebody eventually won this one, your efforts here broke that deadlock.

As an expression of gratitude, there follows a bonus question. If you choose to answer it, and do so correctly by 20:00 UK time on Monday, 10 August, you'll secure an undisclosed extra prize.


Between 0:00–30:00 in the podcast, while discussing what started happening at some universities in 2014, Jonathan Haidt states:

There's data from the Pew surveys. They've been measuring attitudes of Americans since the 80s or 90s. But they've been publishing this series on polarisation in which they show that in the 90s, if you knew somebody's attitude on gun control, that would only predict their attitude on abortion a certain per cent. And a lot of people on the Left, let's say, would hold six of the ten leftist attitudes. And same on the Right. But gradually, by the time you get to around 2010, it's like if you know one attitude, you know them all. [...]

So we evolved to do 'Us versus Them'. [...] If it's us, America, versus them, communist Russia or Nazi Germany, well then we all come together, and that's great for social cohesion and trust. But as that fades away, and as 'Us versus Them' became increasingly Left versus Right, and as we lost the liberal Republicans and the conservative Democrats — those used to exist until the 80s or 90s — [...] now, if you only hold your team's position on six out of ten items, you're a traitor. And so you better get with the programme.

And so the pressures for conformity, the pressures to agree with your team on everything have been steadily rising. And that means there's no __________. And we can't do higher education without __________. We can't do college without free thinking and the ability to say, "Well, you know what, wait a second. Maybe they do have a point on this thing."

And that's one of the reasons why it looks so weird from the outside, and why it's getting so unpleasant from the inside.


Removed twice from the above excerpt is a single word that connotes subtlety. It is a term and notion whose importance I am very militant about when exchanging ideas and opinions.

What is this word?

Nuance. He uses it a fair bit throughout the discussion.

Enjoyed listening to it all and it was my first experience of a Joe Rogan podcast. Off the back of it I have purchased Haidt’s book, Happiness Hypothesis, and look forward to reading it in the coming weeks. I will also likely read ‘On Liberty‘ at some point also.

The albums shown as still images for the above videos can be divided into three pairs, with the cover design for the second album of each pair being a playful homage to the first.

However, Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney does more than reference the design of an earlier album. Its main photo also reveals other record covers in the background. I was able to identify three of them.


1.  Name at least two of these album titles and the relevant artist(s).

2.  For each album cited, post a music video to a song that features on it.


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In case nobody responds correctly beforehand, answers will be posted in 24 hours — at around 20:00 UK time on Wednesday 12 August.

Black sabbath Vol 4



Dance Craze best of british ska live




To link it back to the world of art, Wesley Magoogan, saxophonist supreme from the Beat is the dad of artist Lester Magoogan - www.lestermagoogan.co.uk/

Well done, That Print Guy. Congratulations to you.

And commiserations to Schrödinger's Chat.



REFERENCE ANSWERS


This competition was about musical artists paying visual tribute to other artists.

Answering the questions may have required some resourcefulness. If the video image lacked sufficient clarity, then a Google search was needed for a higher-res photo of the Sleater-Kinney album (to the extent members didn't own a copy).

Sleater-Kinney's Twitter account was helpful in this respect:

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The three albums I spotted:


1.  Black Sabbath - Vol. 4 (1972)*




Black Sabbath - Tomorrow's Dream (1972)
- uploaded by Black Sabbath




2.  Dance Craze (1981)*, the live compilation and soundtrack for the 1981 American documentary of the same name, about the British ska revival / 2 Tone music genre — featuring performances by Bad Manners, The Beat, The Bodysnatchers, Madness, The Selecter, and The Specials.




[NB: Specific knowledge wasn't necessary here. For anyone familiar with the genre, the record cover alone made clear it was ska-related. The album then shows up in the top results of a Google Images search for "ska album".]


Madness - Night Boat to Cairo (live, 1980)
- uploaded by SivarRude




3.  John Lennon and Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy (1980)*




John Lennon - Watching the Wheels (1980)
- uploaded by johnlennon


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Side note: Fans of Sleater-Kinney will know that Carrie Brownstein is also an actress, comedian, writer and director — starring with Fred Armisen in Portlandia.

Cheers for posting. Wasn't aware that a less-cropped main image was used for the album's reissue.


Sorry — I don't recognise the cover just above the Black Sabbath record.

What looks like a vest also made me think of Leonard Cohen, but my Google search was unsuccessful.