Sexy Sirens Sell Songs

Whatever happened to talent being enough to get to the top? I am talking here about female singers, who appear to be little more than strippers these days. Now I know that sounds like some old reactionary, raging against a world from which he increasingly feels estranged, and on some subjects that accusation may have an element of truth, but I feel that I can safely refute such a charge in this argument.

Let us go back to the 1950's when the top female singers included Doris Day, Judy Garland, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday.

Doris Day  -  Rosemary Clooney

or the 1960's when the top female singers included Lulu, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Jackie Trent and others.

Petula Clark - Dusty Springfield

Similarly in the 1970's Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Tina Turner, and Kate Bush were the chanteuse's of the decade ....

Kate Bush - Donna Summer

Now the one thing they had in common was that their voices sold the songs, not their bodies .... oh sure, they would occasionally appear in 'risqué' publicity photos, such as these below, but they were hardly anything you couldn't show your mother, or their mothers.

Doris Day - Rosemary Clooney - Risqué But Not Rude

But suddenly things started to change through the late 1980's and into the 1990's .... sex had always sold records but never more than the lyrics or tunes, partly because records always sold more by radio than TV ..... but the charge towards nudity as the seller was really led by the rise of MTV video's. The high princess of this change was Kylie Minogue, a pop pixie from Australia who had been around for a while, but when she released the video for the single "Spinning Around" in September 2000, it became her first number one in the United Kingdom in ten years, and largely because the accompanying video featured her in very revealing gold hot pants.

Kylie Minougue - Hot Pants

This success was apparently duly noted by record producers around the globe and more of this kind of flesh flashing video was marketed by female singers .... but more importantly a legion of young wannabe girl singers, growing up in the first decade of the century learnt that what sold records was skin. Kylie herself incorporated what she described as 'Burlesque' into her videos and stage act, and broke into the US club charts with the single "Can't Get You Out of My Head", which was her biggest ever hit, reaching number one in more than forty countries, and which featured as near nudity as could be achieved ..... without quite crossing the line.

Kylie Minougue - Risqué

This mega success seemed to cross some sort of Rubicon for both the video producers and the female singers of the last decade, because we now have seen a procession of singers such as Lil Kim, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and now Miley Cyrus (a right little twerker), who seem to be in a competition to be the first to cross the final red line, and promote a record single with a nude video of themselves ..... so much so, that there have been increasingly vocal calls to get music videos age rated before their release, with an 18+ rating for many of the girl singers. Needless to say, the music business is trying desperately to prevent this, because it would probably remove half their female acts from the young teen market.

Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus - Risque or Porn?

In the last twenty years or so, we have descended a long way on the path that has led to women selling their bodies for money on TV videos, using the excuse of a record single as the raison d'être, and so far the bottom of the barrel doesn't seem to have been scraped.

I Drink Therefore I Am

The meaning of life is an issue that many have pondered over the centuries ....

 

Meaning Of Life - The Eternal Question

 

.... few have found a solution that applies to us all, although many have claimed to. Before Monotheism, it was the philosophers of every culture who would consider this question - amongst the Greeks it was questions such as:

• "Why are we here?",
• "What is life all about?", and
• "What is the purpose of existence?"

All these have been asked asked by philosophers such as Plato, and Aristotle, through to Epicurus. In the more modern era, giants such as Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Arthur Schopenhauer, and John Stuart Mill have all asked the questions.

 

Nuclear Clock Tick Tocks

With the news that not only did Saudi Arabia (the cockpit of Wahabism and the home of the 9/11 planners and bombers), pay for the Pakistani Nuclear weapon making program, but also has first call on such weapons should it feel the need to 'instantly acquire them', the world has stepped just a bit closer to 'Armageddon'.

Nuclear Clock Ticking Closer To Armageddon

 
The Saudis already have the delivery system in the form of the dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles bought from China in a deal in the 1980's, and for which rail track launchers have been deployed.

Once again, the US, which has close ties with the Saudi regime, is unable to put down a firm marker to stop any such transfer of nuclear weaponry (even when the Saudi's have signed the non proliferation treaty), and without doubt, Saudi Arabia will acquire the weapons (probably when Iran, the other financier of world terror, acquires them next year or the year after), and then Israel will be placed on the horns of a dilemma.

Do they stick or twist, because without any doubt, the these weapons will point not only at Iran, but at Israel, who will also face the same threat from the Iranian weapons pointed at both them and Saudi Arabia.

Whose finger will be on the buttons will be anyone's guesses - The 89 yr old Saudi King (or his likely equally elderly successor), the Supremely elderly Ayatollah in Iran, or the democratically accountable leader of a fragile coalition in Israel - all seem shaky choices for the fate of humanity to hang its hopes on should there be 'Cuba Crisis' moment.
     
Lets not beat about the bush here, two of these states are extreme theological regimes, who think nothing of killing opposition both internally or externally, and who export terror worldwide, and both of whom would also like to see Israel wiped from the map .... not a happy set of circumstances in which for nuclear proliferation to be taking place.            

Penny For Your Thoughts

When people lose trust in the money they are given by their banks, its usually the beginning of the end in some regard ..... for example the hyper inflation of the German Deutschmark in the 1920's was one of the aids to the election of the Nazi Party.

So one has to wonder what the news that Kenyan bank ATM's are accused of dispensing fake notes could mean. The reports state that the money being dispensed by the ATM's is then being declared as 'fake' by shops, and the very same banks that dispensed the notes outside.

Fake Money Not Easy To Spot

Of course the banks have denied the accusations, and the 'Kenyan Bankers Association' tweeted: "We are not aware that it is an industry-wide issue; it appears as five isolated cases." But this denial has been ridiculed by all and sundry, including 'The Consumer Federation of Kenya', and more rumours are swirling around following a financial crime survey in Kenya by Deloitte's, which suggested that most of the money the banks lose to theft, is in fact the result of collusions between bank staff and outsiders.

'The Nation' newspaper, has suggested that genuine notes are being replaced with counterfeits when the security agents hired by banks refill the ATM machines, and a senior official of the consumer federation, reacting to the spread of these stories, demanded that banks do more to safeguard customers.

We at PC Towers, will be watching this story with interest, because it has the potential to destabilise East Africa, if the notion that the money is not real, spreads .....

Do Robot's Dream Of Suicide?

An interesting, if small story caught my eye. There are some wags who believe that we have had the first ever recorded robotic suicide ....

Crime Scene or Grave Plot?

The prompt for this story is that a robotic cleaner (one of those round ones that circle the floor) was found burned out .... nothing unusual in that one might think, maybe a burnt fuse. But the story has some unusual aspects that raised it to a story that was reported around the world.