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Skip this one unless you are really into Ted talks and/or Elizabeth Gilbert. Or maybe just skip to the last minute for her inspirational idea.

Elizabeth recounts the Greek idea that genius is not something we are, it’s something we have; it’s something that acts through us. She suggests that genius is something like Doby the house elf who lives in the wall and leaps out every now and then to infuse our work with brilliance…or not.

Watch the video or scroll down for the spoiler. Your choice.

Spoiler alert:

If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cock-eyed genius assigned to your case, decides to let some kind of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts…then…¡Olé!

And if not… do your dance anyhow…then ¡Olé! to you nonetheless.

Ah heck. Go watch the video. It was good. she earned her ¡Olé!

WARNING: Don’t watch this if you are offended by cartoon penises. Definitely not safe for work.

My daughter’s favourite philosophy problem…

If you don’t watch bloggingheads.tv you really are missing out.

The basic format is the familiar, two people with opposing views debate but the genius of bloggingheads.tv is that the debaters try to seek common ground rather than score weak, partisan points or to shout each other down.

bloggingheads.tv/ posts several debates a week and, while many are lame, there are some real gems.

Today’s gem has Brink Lindsey (libertarian) and David Frum (conservative republican) discussing the reasons for the recent decline in conservative fortunes.

They cover all the usual ground (a dumbing-down populism, George Bush, Hannity& Limbaugh, tension between libertarians and social conservatives etc etc) but, about 24 minutes in, they rustle up a nice hypothesis that I find quite compelling. It goes something like this…

In the 60s and 70s, it seemed like traditional values were under assault from liberal ideas like feminism, welfare, homosexuality, multiculturalism, secularism etc etc etc. As a result, divorce, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, crime, teenage promiscuity and other social ills were spiralling out of control and America was headed to hell in a liberal hand basket.

Perhaps appropriately, conservatives organized around preventing this terrifying decline but…and here’s the punchline…

Among the people most likely to be liberal - affluent, college-educated people - the decline never happened! Among liberals, all those indicators of traditional conservative values - divorce, traditional families, illegitimacy, stay-at-home mums, crime, under-age sex, drug use, hard work and ambition - have steadily improved over the last 30 years.

The red states and the less affluent (less liberal) communities have not fared so well but the conservative movement still ascribes to theories of cause and effect that are thirty years out of date.

Not noticing that liberal values have not led to a collapse in traditional values, conservatives have redoubled their fight against what they wrongly perceive as the causes of social problems in their communities.

In a confusion of baby and bathwater, conservatives are still attempting to throw out the wrong thing.

Brink Lindsey is one of the pioneers of liberaltarianism - the idea that libertarians have more common ground with liberals than with conservatives. Since almost everyone I know describes themself as either liberal or libertarian and based on this exchange, I think there is something in it.

Dear All the Single Ladies (all the single ladies),

The effect that your - and Beyoncé’s - anthem has on you is mesmerizing.

With just the merest first few bars you become united in solidarity with your sisters everywhere. If you could harness just a little of the song’s awesome potency you would become the greatest political power the world has ever seen.

If you learned the dance moves too, you would rule the world.

Yours in admiration,

The Ragged Clown

We arrived early enough for a beer and the biggest pizza ever shared by two and, once we had our nasty little tickets in our sweaty hands, we ambled up to the stage and picked out a comfortable spot about 5 people back from the rail and started gently bobbing to the crazy, improvised sounds from Pedro’s music contraption - a mashup of MIA, samba beats and the sound track of a horror movie by Salvador Dali - animated by Chairman Mao’s sexiest concubine. Boiler suits were never so hot.

Gradually, the beats got louder…and… closer!?

It was Stomp Meets Cirque Du Soleil and GB’s warmup band were performing in the middle of the crowd. Their throbbing conga line encircled and eventually pushed us aside, performing most of their set practically standing on our toes.

After a few false alarms, the teeming multitude which is Gogol Bordello swarmed onto a stage barely able to contain them. I haven’t pogoed for twenty years but tonight I had no choice but to bounce along with the rest.

In just a handful of measures, my fellow pogo-ers - a mixed bunch of young couples, college girls and a few other oldies - had been displaced by hordes of violent youth and suddenly it was Thermopylae and we were the Spartans fighting for our very survival.

By now, I was 30 feet back from the stage and being battered from every direction. Frenzy doesn’t begin to describe the sensation until the enemy added a new direction of battering when a very large man landed on my head - the crowd surfing had begun!

The surfers - more Gimli at Helm’s Deep than Brian Wilson at Malibu - continued their crazy violence throughout the show but that first surfer, in a wild swipe, grabbed at the crowd taking my glasses and bandana in one greedy handful [note to self. wear contact lenses next time.] My bandana was lost but I grabbed my twisted spectacles back and stuffed them into my pocket.

Two tracks in and I was starting to doubt my stamina. I didn’t expect to last the night but my jostling neighbours jostled me back up to the front and I enjoyed the rest of the concert in relative calm just two bodies back from the rail and just four feet from Eugene and his band of manic troubadours.

Gogol Bordello are the band that Peter Greenaway and Monty Python might’ve conjured up after an acid flashback. Dexy’s Midnight Runners meets The Pogues meets Guernica. Even their ballads are played with an intensity more appropriate on a battlefield.

Despite a couple of weeks of cramming on Rhapsody, I only know a handful of their songs but every track was an old favourite tonight. I screamed the obscenities along with the rest of them.

The highlight of course was Start Wearing Purple and this video barely captures the insanity. Like Dumbo’s dream, like Pooh’s Heffalumps and Woozles, like Dali’s telescopic elephant legs, like Lear’s Jumblies, the song conjures up juggling midgets and bearded circus ladies and organ grinders on meth.

Start wearing purple wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits they will all vanish
I promise, it’s just a matter of time…

In a couple of short weeks, I am off to sunny Spain.

I can’t wait.