Good Reads

[Laurel]

wow. well obviously, not all architects are alike. nor are all architects good at their job.

it's true that we see things differently, but i can't help but disagree to certain points of this study. only the megalomaniacal 'starchitects' lose sight of the human element. the vast majority i've worked with are more concerned with the end users over the aesthetic. after all, happy clients make better referrals.

then again, 80% of the people have no sense of aesthetic taste

Often the clients are the worst enemies of good architecture, and if they aren't, City planners can be a real obstacle to innovation.

Yeah, it's a strange thing. No one ever tries to tell a mechanic how best to fix a car or a surgeon the safest way to remove a inflamed appendix, but every idiot thinks they know good design.

 

[Laurel]

A Libyan-American returns to make sense of the country after Gadhafi’s fall.

http://guernica.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Libya_MartyrsSquare.jpg

In my lap was a Beretta. I’d heard the ominous name before. Its black metal, its grooves, its markings looked too real. “Yes,” said the stoned revolutionary in front of me, leading us at 80 miles-an-hour down narrow city streets, inches away from other moving cars, “it’s loaded.” This kid was supposedly a cop, and he drove a bullet-proof, custom-made, black BMW that he took as booty from the ex-regime’s interior ministry during the revolution. The thing really flew. He asked me to take off my seat belt: it made me look like a foreigner at checkpoints.​

- read the full article My Uncle’s Paradise (from Guernica)​

 

[pete]

Yeah, it's a strange thing. No one ever tries to tell a mechanic how best to fix a car or a surgeon the safest way to remove a inflamed appendix, but every idiot thinks they know good design.

i feel pretty confident that i could remove an appendix

i would've made a wonderful civil war surgeon

 

[Laurel]

i feel pretty confident that i could remove an appendix

i would've made a wonderful civil war surgeon

You could? That's pretty gnarly. I think I could take out someone's appendix. Not sure what sort of shape the person would be in afterwards, though, if my cake-cutting skills are any indication.

 

[pete]

You could? That's pretty gnarly. I think I could take out someone's appendix. Not sure what sort of shape the person would be in afterwards, though, if my cake-cutting skills are any indication.

how hard can it be? you cut the skin, pull the ribcage apart, unscrew the appendix, then close it up.

boom!

 

[Balladeer08]

how hard can it be? you cut the skin, pull the ribcage apart, unscrew the appendix, then close it up.

boom!

Tune in again next week for another episode of "John Madden, Civil War Surgeon"

 

[islandman]

I wish this thread was a woman so that I could fuck the crap out of its literary goodness, and while basking in post-coital glow, have it read to me.

Since Laurel is the closest thing to the female version of this thread, Laurel, should you ever get a pass from Manu, let me know.

 

[Laurel]

how hard can it be? you cut the skin, pull the ribcage apart, unscrew the appendix, then close it up.

boom!

Yeah, but are appendixes/appendices/appendeecees "righty tighty, lefty loosey" or the opposite? I'd hate to think I'm unscrewing it when I'm really tightening it in.

I wish this thread was a woman so that I could fuck the crap out of its literary goodness, and while basking in post-coital glow, have it read to me.

Since Laurel is the closest thing to the female version of this thread, Laurel, should you ever get a pass from Manu, let me know.

If I have to serve as a proxy for this thread, so be it.

 

[Laurel]

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01771/berlin_1771668b.jpg

“Whatever we do,” he used to tell me, “we must stop the Germans reuniting.” He wanted to keep Germany divided in two manageable chunks — East and West. This man was no Colonel Blimp. He was no foaming xenophobe: on the contrary, he was President of the Commission of the European Court of Human Rights, and yet he believed, on the principle of induction, that Germany could not be trusted. They did it in 1914; they did it in 1939; and given the slightest chance, he believed, they would do it again.

Two decades after unification, we have taken advantage of cheap air travel to show the kids the capital of a united Germany — the heart of what is by far the most important economic power in Europe — and I have to say that my learned grandfather has been proved wrong. Everything tells me that his anxieties were baseless, and that the reunification of Germany has been one of the greatest success stories of modern geopolitics. I look around modern Berlin, and I don’t see Prussian revanchism. I see not the slightest sign of German militarism; I haven’t noticed anyone clicking their heels or restraining their arms from performing a Strangelovian fascist salute. I see a culture so generally cool and herbivorous that the bicycle is king. I see a paradise for cyclists, where the helmetless hordes weave and wobble over the wide and tree-lined roads, and a Mercedes supercar will wait deferentially for a family to wander past his purring snout. The most serious public order problem at the moment is the tendency of Berliners to pursue the logic of their Freikörpeskultur by actually fornicating in their many magnificent parks; and such is the climate of political correctness that they decided to means-test the fines. So if you are caught in flagrante in the bushes, and you have a job, you get fined 150 euros — but only 34 euros if you are unemployed. If that isn’t broad-mindedness, I don’t know what is.​

- read the full article Forget about trying to contain Germany – we should copy it (from The Telegraph)​

 

[girlsmiley]

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1402181.1374159108!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/00502858-jpg.jpg

For dutiful wives, getting undressed was easier said than done in the 1930s.
Roll your panty-hose down while sitting — don’t bunch — and keep your legs tightly crossed. Never pull your dress over your head — always unzip and shimmy out, then hang it up. And don't dare work on two sides at once.

That’s according to a baffling rulebook published decades ago by LIFE Magazine, a meticulous, step-by-step guide for women on how to take their clothes off in front of their husband.

The rules — complemented by instructional “do” and “don’t” photographs — were the foundation of the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing, a New York City business whose founder was known for putting on shows at “topnotch burlesque houses as Manhattan’s Apollo and Philadelphia’s Schubert,” according to the article, published Feb. 17, 1937

Read the full article Advice from the 1930s: How to undress for your husband, (from NY Daily News)​

Ha! A bunch of friends and I attended a burlesque class earlier this year. We had a blast. I learned a few new tricks.

 

[Laurel]

Cool stuff from one of my favorite Tumblrs

http://31.media.tumblr.com/f8b49439b5672f3c4c82599556262fdc/tumblr_mqg1vk52xB1rfwyd0o1_1280.jpg

I know you need caffeine sometimes but don’t even fucking think about reaching for a RedBull or 5-Hour Energy. I will slap that shit out of your hand so quick you won’t know whatthefuck happened. Energy drinks are toxic and fucking expensive. Money doesn’t grow on trees; coffee does. Don’t waste your time in a fucking line and spend your hard earned cash on something you can make while you’re sleeping. Cold brewed coffee is also way less acidic, making this easier on your stomach. SO GRAB A CUP OF THIS SIMPLE SHIT AND SEIZE THE GODDAMN DAY.​

- see the recipe at Thug Kitchen: EAT LIKE YOU GIVE A FUCK​

 

[Lorilei]

I Thug Kitchen.

 

[Laurel]

I Thug Kitchen.

Me too. Everyone should!

 

[Laurel]

This is an article on America, but I think the story is the same in many post-industrial societies right now: the approach of zero growth.

What if everything we’ve come to think of as American is predicated on a freak coincidence of economic history? And what if that coincidence has run its course?

http://images.nymag.com/news/features/growth130722_blip_560.jpg

Picture this, arranged along a time line.

For all of measurable human history up until the year 1750, nothing happened that mattered. This isn’t to say history was stagnant, or that life was only grim and blank, but the well-being of average people did not perceptibly improve. All of the wars, literature, love affairs, and religious schisms, the schemes for empire-making and ocean-crossing and simple profit and freedom, the entire human theater of ambition and deceit and redemption took place on a scale too small to register, too minor to much improve the lot of ordinary human beings. In England before the middle of the eighteenth century, where industrialization first began, the pace of progress was so slow that it took 350 years for a family to double its standard of living. In Sweden, during a similar 200-year period, there was essentially no improvement at all. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the state of technology and the luxury and quality of life afforded the average individual were little better than they had been two millennia earlier, in ancient Rome.

Then two things happened that did matter, and they were so grand that they dwarfed everything that had come before and encompassed most everything that has come since: the first industrial revolution, beginning in 1750 or so in the north of England, and the second industrial revolution, beginning around 1870 and created mostly in this country. That the second industrial revolution happened just as the first had begun to dissipate was an incredible stroke of good luck. It meant that during the whole modern era from 1750 onward—which contains, not coincidentally, the full life span of the United States—human well-being accelerated at a rate that could barely have been contemplated before. Instead of permanent stagnation, growth became so rapid and so seemingly automatic that by the fifties and sixties the average American would roughly double his or her parents’ standard of living. In the space of a single generation, for most everybody, life was getting twice as good.

At some point in the late sixties or early seventies, this great acceleration began to taper off. The shift was modest at first, and it was concealed in the hectic up-and-down of yearly data. But if you examine the growth data since the early seventies, and if you are mathematically astute enough to fit a curve to it, you can see a clear trend: The rate at which life is improving here, on the frontier of human well-being, has slowed.
...
There are many ways in which you can interpret this economic model, but the most lasting—the reason, perhaps, for the public notoriety it has brought its author—has little to do with economics at all. It is the suggestion that we have not understood how lucky we have been. The whole of American cultural memory, the period since World War II, has taken place within the greatest expansion of opportunity in the history of human civilization. Perhaps it isn’t that our success is a product of the way we structured our society. The shape of our society may be far more conditional, a consequence of our success. Embedded in Gordon’s data is an inquiry into entitlement: How much do we owe, culturally and politically, to this singular experience of economic growth, and what will happen if it goes away?​

- read the full article The Blip (New York Magazine)​

 

[Laurel]

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/files/2013/07/07_24_2013_alaska-fire.jpg​

The temperature in the Arctic is rising, the snow is melting, and the landscape is getting greener—that is, when it’s not on fire. In the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age, says a new study lead by Ryan Kelly, the severity of Arctic fires—the damage they do to the areas, particularly the soil, that they burn—is the highest it’s ever been. The closest match, the researchers say, was a 500-year stretch known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a period that ended around 750 years ago and was defined by warm, dry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere.

The modern boreal forest of Alaska, where the scientists did their study, took shape around 3,000 years ago. Along with the sharp increase in fire severity, the frequency of Arctic wild fires has been increasingly recently, too. Kelly and the others write that the frequency of fires is the highest it has been in this 3,000 year stretch.

- read the full article Arctic Forests Are On Fire Now More Than at Any Point in the Past 10,000 Years (from Smithsonian Magazine)​

 

[Laurel]

http://cdn.foodbeast.com.s3.amazonaws.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/kirin_frozen_close.jpg

Let me first escort the elephant out of the room in relation to ‘frozen beer’ and ‘frozen beer foam.’ For reasons unbeknownst to us, beer Slurpees do not exist in a widely available or commercial form. We wish it did, and we hoped this story would be our ornate, spiraled staircase to the heavens by showing us that the neglected purgatory between frozen-undrinkable beer, and a nice, frosty, cold one actually existed. It does not. BUT, Japanese-Beer Maker Kirin’s frozen beer foam could definitely be a solid first step in the right direction, and in the meantime serves a pretty damn good purpose: keeping your summer draft from getting warm.

And it comes out of a Margarita Machine. Doesn’t take like a margarita though. Doesn’t taste like much of anything really.​

- read the full article Dodger Stadium Serves Frozen Beer Foam – Keeps Drink Cold For 30 Minutes (from Foodbeast)​

 

[Laurel]

A little island birdie sent this very interesting article to me.

A new study suggests that there’s no such thing as a clinical addiction to sex.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/double_x/2013/07/130724_XX_SexAddiction.jpg.CROP.article568-large.jpg

Does sex addiction really exist? A new study published in last week’s journal of Socioaffective Neuroscience and Psychology suggests that maybe it doesn’t—bad news for celebrities like Tiger Woods and Russell Brand who have made it trendy in recent years to claim a clinical addiction to sex as an explanation for sexual misbehavior.

The study (which, amazingly, is the first of its kind) measured how the brains of people who struggle with sexually compulsive behavior respond to sexual images. If sex can be addictive in the clinical sense, scientists theorized, then the neural response of sex addicts to pornography should mimic the neural responses of drug or alcohol addicts to their drugs of choice. Instead, researchers found that hypersexual brains don’t react in the same way as other addicts’ brains—in fact, the neural responses to pornography only varied based on levels of sexual libido, rather than on measures of sexual compulsivity. People with higher libidos had more active brain reactions to the sexual images than people with lower libidos, but that was the only correlation. Degrees of sexual compulsivity did not predict brain response at all. If the results of this first study can be replicated, it would represent a major challenge to the notion that sex and pornography can be literally addictive.​

- read the full article Is Sex Addiction Real or Just an Excuse? (from Slate)​

 

[trysail]

The temperature in the Arctic is rising, the snow is melting, and the landscape is getting greener—that is, when it’s not on fire... The closest match, the researchers say, was a 500-year stretch known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a period that ended around 750 years ago and was defined by warm, dry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere...


Arctic Forests Are On Fire Now More Than at Any Point in the Past 10,000 Years (from Smithsonian Magazine)

Medieval Climate Anomaly ???

WTF ????


Up until last week, it was universally known as the Medieval Warm Period. And why the hell are these clowns calling it an anomaly? There were previous warm periods. There was the Roman Warm Period. Hell, the Medieval "Climate Anomaly" was followed by the Little Ice Age. Was that an anomaly?


Al Gore and the climate nutters have been shrieking and moaning and wailing and exaggerating for so long that they've come very close to wrecking what little credibility climatology still retains. I don't believe a word out of NPR, National Geographic, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra, WWF, Pew or PBS in this area. They've all but destroyed this corner of science.

 

[trysail]

...For all of measurable human history up until the year 1750, nothing happened that mattered. This isn’t to say history was stagnant, or that life was only grim and blank, but the well-being of average people did not perceptibly improve...

...Almost every town in France now has a museum of 'daily life' or of 'popular arts and traditions'. Most of them are stocked with artefacts that would otherwise have disappeared or turned into expensive accessories in homes and restaurants. The roughly decorated chests, the butter churns and baskets, the wooden tables with smooth, saucer shaped depressions into which the soup was poured, bear witness to the resilience of their owners. They have the dignity of objects that shared a human life. Each one contains the ghost of a gesture that was performed a million times. They make it easy to imagine a life of hard work and habit.

Naturally the artefacts are the best examples available: the hefty cradle, the expensive plough with metal parts and a manufacturer's name, the embroidered smock that was kept in a chest as part of someone's trouseau and never saw the pigsty or the field. As survivors, they tell a heartening tale of endurance. Other companions of daily life— the rotting bed, the treasured dung heap, the stench-laden fug of human and animal breath that could extinguish a burning candle— are impossible to display.

Sometimes, the person who was survived by her possessions appears in their midst and the purposeful display is belied by the photograph of a face scoured by hardship. The expression is often one of faint suspicion, dread or simply dull fatigue. It makes imagining the life that belonged to these objects seem a blundering intrusion. It seems to say that daily existence is harder to fathom than the obsolete tools and kitchen utensils, and that, if it could be recreated, the staple diet of a past life, with its habits, sensations and smells would have a stranger taste than the most exotic regional dish.

Written descriptions of daily life inevitably convey the same bright sense of purpose and progress. They pass through the years of lived experience like carefree travellers, telescoping the changes that only a long memory could have perceived. Occasionally, however, a simple fact has the same effect as the photograph in the museum. At the end of the eighteenth century, doctors from urban Alsace to rural Brittany found that high death rates were not caused primarily by famine and disease. The problem was that, as soon as they became ill, people took to their beds and hoped to die. In 1750, the Marquis d'Argenson noticed that the peasants who farmed his land in the Touraine were 'trying not to multiply': 'They wish only for death'. Even in times of plenty, old people who could no longer wield a spade or hold a needle were keen to die as soon as possible. 'Lasting too long' was one of the great fears of life. Invalids were habitually hated by their carers. It took a special government grant, instituted in 1850 in the Seine and Loiret départments, to persuade poor families to keep their ailing relatives at home instead of sending them to that bare waiting room of the graveyard, the municipal hospice.

When there was just enough food for the living, the mouth of a dying person was an obscenity. In the relatively harmonious household of the 1840s described by the peasant novelist Émile Guillaumin, the family members speculate openly in front of Émile's bed-ridden grandmother (who has not lost her hearing): 'I wish we knew how long it's going to last.' And another would reply, 'Not long, I hope.' As soon as the burden had expired, any water kept in pans or basins was thrown out (since the soul might have washed itself— or, if bound for Hell, tried to extinguish itself— as it left the house), and then life went on as before.

'Happy as a corpse' was a saying in the Alps. Visitors to the villages in the Savoy Alps, the central Pyrenees, Alsace and Lorraine, and parts of the Massif Central were often horrified to find silent populations of cretins with hideous thyroid deformities. (The link between goitre and lack of iodine in the water was not widely recognized until the early nineteenth century.) The Alpine explorer Saussure, who asked in vain for directions in a village in the Aosta Valley when most of the villagers were out in the fields, imagined that 'an evil spirit had turned the inhabitants of the unhappy village into dumb animals, leaving them with just enough human face to show that they had once been men.

The infirmity that seemed a curse to Saussure was a blessing to the natives. The birth of a cretinous baby was believed to bring good luck to the family. The idiot child would never have to work and would never have to leave home to earn money to pay the tax-collector. These hideous, blank creatures were already half-cured of life. Even the death of a normal child could be a consolation. If the baby had lived long enough to be baptized, or if a clever witch revived the corpse for an instant to sprinkle it with holy water, its soul would pray for the family in heaven...

...Categorical terms like 'peasants', 'artisans' and 'the poor' reduce the majority of the population to smudges in a crowd scene that no degree of magnification could resolve into a group of faces. They suggest a large and luckless contingent that filled in the background of important events and participated in the nation's historical development by suffering and engaging in a semblance of economic activity.

Even with a short term view, these categories turn out to be misleading. Rich people could fall into povery and peasants could be rich and powerful. Many peasants lived in towns and commuted to the fields. Many were also craftsmen, traders and local officials, just as many so-called aristocrats were semi-literate farmers. Statistics based on a mixture of surveys, censuses and guesswork give what seems a balanced view of the whole population. In 1789, three-quarters were described as 'agricultural'. A century later, the agricultural population had fallen to about 48 per cent, while 25 per cent worked in industry, 14 per cent in commerce and transport, 4 per cent in public services and administration and 3 per cent in the liberal professions, and 6 per cent were independently wealthy. But for reasons that will become clear, these figures always exaggerate the tidy divisions of the population and underestimate the number of people who tried to live off the land...

-Graham Robb
The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War.
New York and London, 2007.​

​

 

[oggbashan]

Graham Robb
The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War.
New York and London, 2007.

It wasn't surprising that the French referred to the English as Rosbifs - Roast Beefs. A typical 18th Century English agricultural family ate more red meat in a week than a comparable French family would eat in a couple of months.

The Poor Laws, established in the reign of Elizabeth 1, meant that the taxpayers of local communities (Parishes) had to support those unable to work, or unable to find work. Since the taxpayers of the Parish were also the landowners and employers of agricultural labourers it was in their interest to keep the poor in work and earning instead of becoming a burden on the Parish.

Some follies such as extensive brick walls around country estates were built when there was an agricultural depression. The walls were unnecessary. No one was going to attack the Squire's house. But building the wall meant work, and payment for unemployed agricultural workers, and no requirement for the Parish to support the family.

Unlike pre-Revolution France where the nobility were exempt from taxation and typically at Versailles, the English nobility and landowners lived at least part of the year within the community and paid their taxes. They knew their tenants and their dependants.

It wasn't until the late 18th and early 19th Centuries that poor English families began to suffer real hardship as they were dispossessed from the land and badly housed in cities. The Poor Laws began to break down under the pressure of population mobility. Who paid for the poor who had arrived in a City parish from elsewhere?

Who supported the fatherless children? In the rural community the fathers of most bastards were known and could be pursued by the law for child support. In the cities? Unless the mother declared the father's name, AND he accepted responsibility, the Parish bore the cost. Even if he did, he could change his name and get lost among the crowds. The Workhouse system was established to try to reduce the cost on the local taxpayers, and to make the Workhouse as unattractive a place as possible so that the poor would do almost anything to avoid the Workhouse.

But the Poor Laws and the Workhouse were there as saviours of last resort. They didn't exist in pre-Revolutionary France. Who cared if a few hundred French peasants died?

Unfortunately the same system did not apply in Ireland and landowners there could, and many did, behave as badly as the worst French nobleman.

 

[Laurel]

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/D/20130720_FBD002_0.jpg

These projects make life difficult for many criminals. But smart ones use the internet to make predictions of their own. Nearly 80% of previously arrested burglars surveyed in 2011 by Friedland, a security firm, said information drawn from social media helps thieves plan coups. Status updates and photographs generate handy lists of tempting properties with absent owners. It does not take a crystal ball to work out what comes next.​

- read the full article Don’t even think about it (from The Economist)​

 

[Laurel]

http://thescuttlefish.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/aldridge.jpg

Montauk, New York lobsterman John Aldridge was found alive and afloat Wednesday afternoon thanks to his rubber boots, which he turned upside down and placed underneath his arms to forge flotation devices in place of the life jacket he was not wearing.​

- read the full article Montauk Fisherman Found 43 Miles Offshore Using Rubber Boots as Life Vest (from The Scuttlefish)​

 

[oggbashan]

These projects make life difficult for many criminals. But smart ones use the internet to make predictions of their own. Nearly 80% of previously arrested burglars surveyed in 2011 by Friedland, a security firm, said information drawn from social media helps thieves plan coups. Status updates and photographs generate handy lists of tempting properties with absent owners. It does not take a crystal ball to work out what comes next.[/indent]

- read the full article Don’t even think about it (from The Economist)​

I live in Kent and am Chairman of a local group that works with Kent Police to reduce crime in our area.

But our worst problem is not crime itself, but the local community's perception of crime. We have a very low incidence of crime and most categories of crime are reducing year on year despite a barely visible Police presence.

Why 'barely visible'? Because they are elsewhere, in communities that have far more crime than we do. The police are using their resources where they have more impact.

But locals think we have far more crime than actually happens. We have so little that the release of one repeat offender from prison can cause a massive increase in the percentage of burglaries. If we had three in two months and he commits ten in a week, of course the percentage has risen dramatically - until he goes to court and prison, again. He gets caught because his methods are so predictable. But it takes time for him to be brought before a judge and in that time he will have committed many more burglaries.

Even while he is appearing at court during the day he might commit burglaries in the evenings, and his lawyers ask for all his offences 'to be taken into consideration' when he is sentenced. That wipes his slate clean - until he is out of prison again.​

 

[Laurel]

I live in Kent and am Chairman of a local group that works with Kent Police to reduce crime in our area.

But our worst problem is not crime itself, but the local community's perception of crime. We have a very low incidence of crime and most categories of crime are reducing year on year despite a barely visible Police presence.

Why 'barely visible'? Because they are elsewhere, in communities that have far more crime than we do. The police are using their resources where they have more impact.

But locals think we have far more crime than actually happens. We have so little that the release of one repeat offender from prison can cause a massive increase in the percentage of burglaries. If we had three in two months and he commits ten in a week, of course the percentage has risen dramatically - until he goes to court and prison, again. He gets caught because his methods are so predictable. But it takes time for him to be brought before a judge and in that time he will have committed many more burglaries.

Even while he is appearing at court during the day he might commit burglaries in the evenings, and his lawyers ask for all his offences 'to be taken into consideration' when he is sentenced. That wipes his slate clean - until he is out of prison again.

Really? That's awful.

 

[Laurel]

The singer and producer recall the acid house anthem that took them from illegal raves to stardom and a No 1 hit

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2013/3/11/1363019756051/Adamski-and-Seal-010.jpg

Seal, singer

I was living in a squat. Before that, it had been floors and sofas, but then I'd managed to finance my way travelling round Asia for a year, singing in blues bands, and it changed my perspective on what I wanted from life. I was financially unstable and figured that fame and money would be the answer to all my problems. I came back from my travels much more focused, and would sing at raves at the top of my voice – which is how I met Adam. We decided to work together on New Year's Eve 1989, when we were in a haze on the dancefloor.

When he played me the instrumental for Killer, I instinctively sang some verses I'd written over the funky introduction – but something was missing. I remember going home and hearing this squiggly keyboard line buried in the track, so I sang the "solitary brother" hookline over that. I remember calling Adam and saying: "You've got to let me sing this new bit."

The lyrics are about transcending whatever holds you back. That era was the most exciting time: they called it the Second Summer of Love. We'd just got a handle on the technology; we were coming out of a Thatcher-era depression; and of course there was this huge explosion in recreational pharmaceuticals. Everything just seemed to click. The "live your life the way you want to be" lyric spoke to a generation.​

- read the full article How we made Killer, by Seal and Adamski (from The Guardian)​