''INTRODUCING THE INTELLIGENT LIFE PLAYLIST''

Tim de Lisle, deputy editor of Intelligent Life magazine and rock critic of the Mail on Sunday, introduces a mix of this year's best songs, for downloading--and one golden oldie in memory of Marc Bolan, who died 30 years ago this month ...

As we relaunch Intelligent Life as a quarterly magazine instead of an annual, we're adding several new features, including a playlist. I’m the magazine’s deputy editor, and I moonlight as a rock critic for the Mail on Sunday (or is the other way round?), so the task of choosing a dozen songs fell to me.

The thinking behind the playlist is this. We suspect most of our readers have iPods, and nearly all of them have long since loaded up their old favourites, but perhaps not so many know where to go to find good new music. In Britain, where we are based, there is a shortage of intelligent, grown-up radio stations. And although there’s an infinite supply of new music out here on the web, it can be hard to know where to begin.

So here's my opening offer: I've chosen 11 songs from this year, plus one golden oldie. The singers range from chart-toppers to relative unknowns. The one firm rule was that the songs had to be good--tuneful, soulful and thoughtful, the kind of songs that become part of the fabric of your life. Of course that’s in the ear of the beholder, but music isn’t a private language and usually if one person likes something, a few others will too.

Plenty of music magazines now come with a free CD, but the price you pay is that the songs you get are the ones the record companies (as well as the magazine) want you to get. This selection is completely independent. I drew up the list, wrote the blurbs, and then handed it to a helpful man at Apple UK, who put it up as an iMix on the British version of iTunes, so readers in Britain can buy the whole lot at one fell swoop. If you’re not in Britain, you can always listen to the 30-second free sample, or go to the singers’myspace pages. Let us know what you think.

''THE CAR IN FRONT MAY SOON BE A HONDA''

oyota seized a decisive lead in green motoring a decade ago with its Prius hybrid. Now Honda is chasing the post-petrol market by offering not only hydrogen-powered cars, but home power-stations to go with them. By Nick Valery ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, September 2007

IN ITS BID TO wrestle away Toyota's halo, Honda is testing a flashy family saloon code-named FCX--the third in a series of hydrogen-powered electric cars Honda has been quietly developing since 1989. The FCX is not the first electric vehicle to hit the road with a hydrogen fuel-cell under the hood: in a recent test on public roads General Motors showed that its Chevrolet Sequel could travel 300 miles on a single tank of hydrogen.

But compared to the FCX, the rest are experimental mules. Honda proposes a roomy family saloon with all creature comforts that breezes along with a hum, accelerates briskly to 100mph, rounds bends with barely a hint of roll, and goes 270 miles on each tank of fuel. As far as everyday motoring is concerned, no compromises have been made to accommodate the vehicle's radical innards.

The FCX gets the equivalent of 75 mpg--three times the 24 mpg achieved in the city by the relatively frugal Honda Accord. In performance terms, the two cars are pretty much the same, except that the FCX's greater low-end torque makes it a lot quicker off the mark.

The FCX is also vastly cleaner. Because a fuel cell works like a car battery in reverse--combining hydrogen from the tank with oxygen from the air to produce electricity--there is no combustion processes and therefore no greenhouse gases from the car itself. The only waste coming out of the FCX's tailpipe is water vapour.

Carmakers everywhere see the fuel cell as the ultimate replacement for the internal combustion engine. But they've been idling along on the assumption that the changeover won't happen until 2020 at the earliest--after a decade spent building the infrastructure for making hydrogen widely available to the public. Right now there are only 60 or so hydrogen stations in the whole of America (50 of those in California) compared with 160,000 petrol stations.

Why has Honda turned up the heat? For one simple reason: it is not waiting for the hydrogen infrastructure to get built, but intends developing a network of refueling stations of its own instead. And it plans to put them, not on petrol station forecourts, but in motorists' own homes.

Honda's plan for marketing the FCX presumes that motorists will buy or lease the home-brew equipment to make their own hydrogen from natural gas. The Home Energy Station uses the natural gas supply to produce hot water and heat for the home as well as hydrogen for the fuel-cell car. If the domestic power supply goes on the blink, a built-in inverter can take juice from the car's fuel cell to produce alternating current for running the home.

California's authorities love the idea. They want to see clean co-generation in the home and energy efficient cars on the road; and they hope FCX owners will be tempted to leave their fuel-cell vehicles running in the garage rather than taking them for a spin. By selling their surplus electricity back to the grid, FCX owners could help local utilities meet their peak demands and avoid California's dreaded summer brownouts.

''Calvin''

''MANHATTAN MEMES ON CAMERA''

This Season: Cintra Wilson applauds a new documentary about a fashion photographer with an incorruptible eye... 

One of Manhattan’s most distinctive landmarks is not a building, but a white-haired octogenarian in a bright blue smock, perched on a three-speed bike on an uptown corner, taking photographs of the sidewalk fashion parade. For more than half a century, the photographer-writer Bill Cunningham (above) has been documenting the evolution of style across the spectrum of society, whether it’s diamond-heavy Fifth Avenue matrons or art-school Aphrodites rising from the subway. His New York Times columns, “On the Street” and “Evening Hours”, are considered the gold standard of fashion journalism.

“We all get dressed for Bill,” declares Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, in “Bill Cunningham New York”, a documentary that has been collecting international accolades. La Wintour barely exaggerates: Cunningham’s incorruptible eye has long been the de facto conscience of the fashion world. His camera disdains boring, derivative fashions—regardless of which celebrity might be wearing them— in favour of capturing viral fashion memes during the brief, mysterious lifespans in which they articulate some new flash of exuberance in the sartorial spirit.

Richard Press’s documentary shines a light into both Cunningham’s monkish existence and his singular artistic mind. “If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do,” he says, with a rebellious grin. His journalism supports an apparently frugal lifestyle, and he turns down any gig or gift that might smack of payola—he won’t even eat or drink at the events he covers. His extravagances, he says, are editorial freedom and objectivity.

Cunningham’s lifelong obsession with seeking beauty is inspiring: he finds it every day, on sidewalks and catwalks. “Fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life,” he says. “You can’t do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilisation.” This unpretentious, clear-eyed film captures an artist of humility dissolving seamlessly into his subject—a moth, in love, becoming fire.

''Crumb''

''Peanuts''

''Quadrinhos!!!''