Friday Downstreams (Climate Chaos)

The weather is weird. With 15 days until Christmas we barely have snow on the ground and today was 6 degrees plus Celsius. Usually at this time of year we are touching on minus 10 and the snow is 30 centimeters deep. The weather (it makes me tired) along with lack of content and being busy (a pedagogy course this week plus numerous seminars, meetings, some teaching) has delayed and made this weeks downstream media a small offering. But there have been a few interesting pieces cross my path this weird week.

Sex Pistols / Madonna "Ray Of Gob" Mash Up
One of the best mash-ups I have every seen. Even Madonna likes it apparently.

Tune Square
Welcome to TuneSquare Beta 1.1 - The wide-open place for you to discover new and exciting music from great unsigned and independent acts.

Games and Civic Engagement: Podcast Now Available
The MIT Communications Forum and the Center for Future Civic Media recently hosted an event exploring video games and civic engagement, featuring NPR technology correspondent Mario Armstrong and Ian Bogost, assistant professor at Georgia Tech and author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video games.

Sjökexets mixar (Seabiscuit's Mixes)
Tobbe ”Sjökexet” Carlsson is a DJ and mash-up artist who works at Swedish national radio. They host his impressive collection of mash-ups and presumably pay the licensing for them. Must cost a bit....

Antipodean Underground
I have featured sites from AU before but this week I Googled the name and realised there was a forum as well as a blog. If you are at all interested in less commercial music from the furthest reaches of earth then this site it worth a look. Lots of downloads from the grimy backwoods of Oz and kiwi land.

The Great Plague
Documentary examining the Great Plague of 1665, one of the darkest moments in Britain's history, when over one-fifth of London's population of 500,000 perished in a matter of months. Much is known of the disaster from the perspective of the largely well-to-do contemporary chroniclers, but this film tells the story from the perspective of the poor through the account of a local councillor who lived a stone's throw from Fleet Street. Shown as part of the Plague, Fire, War and Treason: A Century of Troubles season.

In the programme, Dr Champion charts what happened in the months of the Great Plague of 1665, linking film sequences that dramatise life in one London street, Cock & Key Alley, within the City walls. During that time, the authorities virtually abandoned London. The Privy Council fled to the provinces and issued orders from a safe distance. Around 100,000 people died of the 'plague' across the City and suburbs. The parishes, which were responsible for the day-to-day running of London, were left to keep order and provide what care and protection they could. Neighbours in the alley took on new roles as the parish paid them to enforce plague orders. The widow Rebecca Andrews fell sick and was shut into her house along with the orphan she cared for. The blacksmith fitted the locks and another neighbour stood on guard outside. When the gravedigger was infected, his family were shut in with him, but later his son was released to carry on the family trade of burying the dead.