I feel this way nowadays - working on some stuff, and effectively offline/off-blogging as a result.
Feels good too - there is, and always has been, more to life than audit trails that need to be well, audited.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Use your illusion
Found via boingboing - focus on the cross in the center and the purple dots disappear - neat!
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Clipper in the Bay
We're going to California - love the Bay!
Technorati Tags: bay, flickr, sfo, san+francisco, california
Technorati Tags: bay, flickr, sfo, san+francisco, california
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Pleistocene Park USA
During the Pleistocene era - between 1.8 million to about 10,000 years ago - North America was home to a myriad of mega fauna.
Once, American cheetah (Acinonyx trumani) prowled the plains hunting pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) - an antelope-like animal found throughout the deserts of the American Southwest - and Camelops, an extinct camelid, browsed on arid land.
Some Cornell University researchers would like to recreate the magic by re-introducing modern relatives of these creatures such as tigers, lions and elephants to the American plains.
Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators," said lead author Josh Donlan, of Cornell University. "There are going to have to be some major attitude shifts. That includes realising predation is a natural role, and that people are going to have to take precautions."
This is presented as an alternative conservation strategy for the twenty-first century, but could very well introduce new variables into the American ecosystem leading to unintended consequences, for example, other species falling ill from new bacteria. Mutations among the introduced species are also likely. Given the feral animal population encroaching on urban areas, or perhaps it's the other way around, this may be a complex proposition. Hunters may be elated, though.
Bring it on - Pleistocene Park USA awaits!
Full text of Nature Magazine report on the re-wilding of America (subscription/purchase only, unfortunately)
Technorati Tags: conservation, animals, nature, wild, wild+animals, usa, america, tiger, lion, elephant
read more | digg story
Yahoo groups down
Looks like Yahoo Groups is having an outage - can't get to any of my groups.
Not sure if other parts of yahoo are out.
Earlier this year, some Yahoo groups were banned in India for allegedly carrying anti-India messages
Earlier today, a computer worm disrupted the networks of U.S media organizations today such as CNN, ABC, and the New York Times. This exploited the recently announced Windows PnP vulnerablity.
Not sure if this is related
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Hundreds Of Bomb Blasts In Bangladesh
Bangladesh was rocked with over 400 bomb blasts across the country. At least 115 people have been injured and at least two people killed. The Islamic militant group, Jamayetul Mujahedin, banned earlier this year by the government, has claimed responsibility.
The blasts took place across 58 of the country's 64 districts. Leaflets with verbiage like "Implement Islamic Rule in Bangladesh" and "Bush And Blair be warned and get out [Of Muslim countries]" were also recovered. The leaflets were written in Bengali and Arabic. Police said the bombs contained explosives packed in small containers and wrapped in tape, paper or sawdust-- instead of the nails or shrapnel that more deadly bombs contain. They were rigged with small battery-powered timers, and designed to cause more noise and panic than harm. A small boy was killed near Dhaka when he picked up a device. The blasts took place mainly at government offices, press clubs and courts across the country
The Bangladesh government has long insisted there was no threat from Islamic militancy in the country. The Bangladesh Government rejected a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report that had alleged that Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia's Government was "not doing enough" to prevent the country from becoming a "haven for Islamic terrorists" in South Asia. This belies that notion. (Awami League article on Growing Fanaticism and Extremism in Bangladesh). The current government is an alliance of parties, including a few Islamic fundamentalist groups, such as the Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ).
A couple of key groups in Bangladesh:
The Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), believed to be inter-related, both banned in February 2005, and currently claiming responsibility for these attacks. The operational chief is Siddiqur Rahman also known as Bangla Bhai (Bangla brother). The spiritual leader is Moulana Abdur Rahman. According to the group, it has 10,000 well-trained full-time cadres known as Ehsar, one hundred thousand part-time cadres known as Gayeri Ehsar and a large number of sympathisers. (More info on the JMB/JMJB and the apparent crackdown in Feb 2005, also the JMB/JMJB campaign against NGOs and humanitarian organizations in Bangladesh)
The Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI)(not yet banned) was established in 1992 reportedly with assistance from Osama bin Laden. The group is reportedly headed by Shawkat Osman alias Sheikh Farid. Imtiaz Quddus is the general secretary of the outfit. At one point in time the Harkat issued a slogan, Amra Sobai Hobo Taliban. Bangla Hobe Afghanistan (We will all become Taliban and we will turn Bangladesh into Afghanistan). The HuJI has an estimated membership of about 15,000. Several of these recruits were trained in the Kormi and Kasia areas of Bangladesh. Further, many hundred recruits were reportedly trained at various training camps in Afghanistan. The group is linked with the Taliban, the outlawed ULFA in Assam, India, and reportedly supported by Pakistan's ISI, as well as the Jaish-e-Mohammed. The HuJI is also linked to another Islamist extremist outfit, the Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF) that had claimed responsibility for the January 22, 2002-attack on the American Centre in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. (SAIR - South Asian Intelligence Review)
Intelligence analysts are seeing a resurgence in violent acts across the world, such as the assassination of the Sri Lankan foreign minister by the LTTE. This may partly be because of a failure by governments to effectively implement the UN Resolution 1373, passed after 9/11 relating to action against terrorism.
Also, purely for historical interest, the declaration of Jihad by the IIF in 1998, notably signed by "Fazlur Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh" as well as the usual suspects.
Info from someone in Bangladesh at the time
Technorati Tags: Bangladesh, Asia, bomb+blasts, terrorism, news, bombs, attacks
Le Reef
I took this picture at the wonderful Shedd Aquarium in Chicago
Technorati Tags: reef, flickr, shedd, aquarium, fishes, underwater, photos, photography
Technorati Tags: reef, flickr, shedd, aquarium, fishes, underwater, photos, photography
Monday, August 15, 2005
Have a good Monday!
One of my favorite short stories of all time is "Travels With My Cats" by Mike Reznick - it won the Hugo for best short story this year - please read and appreciate - the story and the picture.
Technorati Tags: cat, cats, sci-fi, scifi, sciencefiction, science+fiction, worldcon, interaction, flickr, photos
Technorati Tags: cat, cats, sci-fi, scifi, sciencefiction, science+fiction, worldcon, interaction, flickr, photos
England Draws Third Ashes Test Against Australia
England went to a draw with Australia in the Third Ashes test of the 62nd Ashes Series at the Old Trafford,Manchester. The teams are now 1-1 in the five games series. In a cricketing milestone, the Australian bowler Shane Warne reached 600 wickets, the first person to do so. By staying on the crease, Glenn Mcgrath and Brett Lee secured the razor-finish draw.
Australia were held up in the second innings by Ricky Ponting, who made a century when the team needed another 200 runs and had 5 wickets remaining. Queues formed all night outside the stadium for the final day of the match, and at least 10000 people were turned away, a jittery crowd to be sure. The bars will be filled tonight - some Mondays are less blue than others. Down under, editorialists, bloggers and armchair pundits will be honing their knives and rumors of rifts between Ponting and Warne will be floated - this despite their strong 76-run partnership in the second innings, at the close of the game.
In the first innings, England were all out for 444 on the morning of the second day. Australia struggled to pass their follow-on target, and rain consumed much of the third day, to finish their innings at 302. England came back with 280 runs and declared at the end of the 4th day with 280 for 6, leaving Australia with a target of 423 runs, a difficult one to meet. The fifth day had a dogged pursuit of wickets, with England taking out half the batting order by tea, three from Andrew Flintoff on his home ground. The game was up to Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, who had scored 91 runs in the first inning. The Test was down to the wire, and that is what one expects from the Ashes.
Ricky set up a 81-run partnership with Michael Clarke. England brought one one bowler after another, but failed to penetrate the steadfast defense. Michael's wicket fell while he was at 39, being replaced by Gillespie. Soon after, Gillespie's wicket dropped with a leg-before-wicket. Australia were now 265 for 7, with 3 wickets remaining and 158 runs needed.
Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne were at the crease. The pair played well together, but the run rate dropped after a few overs, and the two battled gamely on for an ever-more distant prize. Shane pulled up his socks and delivered a few boundaries. After a break for drinks, when there were 15 overs and 113 runs remaining, Ricky Ponting replied with a couple of boundaries of his own. The momentum was kept up for a few overs, and pulse rates surely quickened with the rising run rate. Ricky Ponting crossed the magical 150-run mark just before Shane Warne was caught in a stunning sequence of events. Warne nicked the ball, bowled by Andrew Flintoff. The ball flew to Strauss at second slip; he missed and the ball fell towards his knee; Geraint Jones dived to his right and caught the ricochet! That was a 76-run, 21-over partnership between two fine players.
Australia now needed 83 runs off the last nine overs of the day - a run rate of more than 9 runs an over (an over has 6 balls, for you ignorant heathens:) ) The runs came in dribbles, with a couple of maiden overs (no runs). Suddenly, Ricky Ponting was caught behind by the wicket-keeper while he was at 156 runs and there were just four overs to go. The crowd went ecstatic and roared. A statistician might be able to name a match where the tail end picked up the pace and won the match, but it was far from certain here. Glenn Mcgrath, despite a torn ligament, paired off with Lee for the final overs. They played it safe, although they got a boundary off each of the overs. This was sensible, for it meant the match ended in a draw, with both players not out.
The Australians were exultant, and the result can be safely attributed to Ricky Ponting's steering of the ship into it's safe berth with the draw, although that might not be quite as exciting as an actual victory.
Final scores:
England 444 & 280/6d
Australia 302 & 371/9
Shane Warne, one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the 20th Century, became the first bowler to take 600 wickets when he had Marcus Trescothick caught behind on the first day of the third Test at Old Trafford. At the beginning of his career, he bowled Mike Gatting out at the same stadium 12 years ago with his first ball in Test Cricket. As Wisden put it then,
The only caveat on making him one of the cricketers of the 20th century is that he may yet figure in deliberations for the 21st.
The Ashes are probably the most fiercely contested trophy in the history of cricket. The series is named after the trophy, which is a small terracotta urn said to contain the burnt bails from a game played in 1882 at The Oval. The series has seen many fine and tumultuous moments, such as the Bodyline series of 1933, which saw full-on-body bowling attacks from the English team to contain the cricketing prowess of Don Bradman.
The urn carries the poem,
When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.
The urn also features in "Life, the Universe and Everything" by Douglas Adams. Robots steal the urn because it contains the ashes of the Wooden Pillar of Nature and Spirituality, one of the components necessary to unlock the device imprisoning the inhabitants of the planet Krikkit whose ambition is to unleash death and destruction on the galaxy. The robots are armed with flat bats and red exploding balls.
Australia has won the Ashes 30 times and England 27. Australia has held the Ashes trophy since 1989, so this series has much riding on it. Bookmakers may rework the odds after today's game, but Australia is still the odds-on favorite.
The season has not been kind to the Australians, having lost to Bangladesh, the lowest-ranked team in international cricket, and numerous defeats to England in earlier league matches, and one-day games. The earlier games were of the new Twenty20 format, with two innings of twenty overs each, each game lasting about three hours.(Comparison between cricket and baseball - funny list of 10 ways watching cricket has changed)
Cricket, for much of the world, is a religion of sorts. Despite diplomatic outrages such as those induced by Bodyline, and match-fixing scandals, the game has the potential to be a peace-maker between conflicted nations, such as the recent entente cordiale between India and Pakistan, when India toured Pakistan.
The fourth match begins on the 25th at Trent Bridge. Much rides on this match, not least the pride of the Aussies.
Technorati Tags: cricket, Ashes, England, Australia, sport, sports, news
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Carnival Of The Capitalists is up
The latest round of the Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Weekend Pundit
Some notable posts: Andre Agassi's implementation of his No Child Left Behind policy, the best post on a plumbing diagram of the US Treasury, my own post on Oil Dependence, a discussion of why Oracle's move into Core Banking is a strategic decision, the Big Picture of Real Estate softening, the possible future of wikipedia, an interesting one on railroad firemen after the Age of Steam, and an excellent analogy between outsourcing and garages. I should also mention fellow blogcritic John Bambenek's post on loans to illegal aliens
Great reading - as always.
Technorati Tags: carnival, capitalism, economics, business, carnival+capitalists, blog, blogs
Mounting ISO files as Virtual Drives
A common challenge faced by most tech-savvy folks is handling ISO files. ISO is a format for binary images of CD-ROMs, normally the ISO 9660 file system. The traditional way to access their contents is to burn the ISO image to a CD.
A blogger was able to digg out a utility provided by Microsoft to mount ISO images to a virtual hard drive directory. This utility is absolutely unsupported by myself, Microsoft, or aliens on Vogon. Basically, an ISO-file becomes a drive letter in your 'My Computer'.
It requires you to copy a virtual device driver to your [windowssystem32drivers directory, and then mount the ISO image as a virtual drive using the Virtual CD Control Panel.
In case the file moves from the Microsoft site, I am providing a link to the "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP" utility - again, under no warranties, implicit or assumed.
Another tool that does more, and IS supported, is Daemon Tools
Technorati Tags: iso, microsoft, cd, cd-rom, technology, how-to, utility, tweak, virtual+drive
read more | digg story
Friday, August 12, 2005
An Analysis of Top Hollywood Film Revenues in Constant Dollars
The following is a preliminary analysis and some observations on revenues and viewership of the Top Hollywood films of all time.
This demonstrates that if one discounts inflation, most of the good films are all in the past.
The sources of data are IMDB.com, the MPAA and box-office archives.
Firstly, the current report from IMDB.com provides the list of all-time top grossing films in the United States, using box-office revenues.
The curremt top-ten are:
| Rank | Title | USA Box Office$ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Titanic | $600,779,824 |
| 2 | Star Wars | $460,935,665 |
| 3 | Shrek 2 | $436,471,036 |
| 4 | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial | $434,949,459 |
| 5 | Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace | $431,065,444 |
| 6 | Spider-Man | $403,706,375 |
| 7 | Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith | $377,864,535 |
| 8 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | $377,019,252 |
| 9 | Spider-Man 2 | $373,377,893 |
| 10 | The Passion of the Christ | $370,270,943 |
I applied a deflator to convert the top-grossing film revenues to constant 2005 dollars. I also retrieved a summary of historical ticket prices and converted this to constant dollars as well to use the same base.
The following are some interesting charts on the revenue generated by top-grossing films from 1937, the earliest data was available from IMDB.com:
Revenue in constant 2005 dollars per year generated by top grossing films
Trendline of revenue from top-grossing films
One notes that box-office revenues seem to be leveling off, despite spikes caused by the blockbusters of the last few years - mostly the fantasy trilogies.
Viewership for top-grossing films by year
One notes the peak in viewership for top-grossing films in 1939, and the significant drop since then, recently improved. One also notes that 2005 has not contributed much thus far, despite some huge block-busters being released.
The following demonstrates how the ranking of films changes when measured in constant dollars rather than current dollars.
Ranking by Const. dollar 2005 gross box-office revenue
Ranking by gross box-office revenue
For comparison, these are the Top Grossing films, by Constant 2005 dollars
| Rank in Const $ | Title | Const $ Revenue$ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gone with the Wind | $2,759,101,083 |
| 2 | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | $2,498,993,041 |
| 3 | Star Wars | $1,472,637,907 |
| 4 | Bambi | $1,223,775,595 |
| 5 | The Sound of Music | $1,001,314,638 |
| 6 | One Hundred and One Dalmatians | $987,096,774.2 |
| 7 | Jaws | $935,251,798.6 |
| 8 | The Exorcist | $889,413,043.5 |
| 9 | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial | $871,642,202.4 |
| 10 | The Jungle Book | $819,905,271.7 |
The preliminary conclusion one draws is that revenues generated from the biggest films are not providing much help in keeping revenues up. Also, viewership seems to be down for these films, probably because of home video sales for them.
The Star Wars films are especially interesting. When ranked by Constant 2005 dollar revenue, the ranking is:
The Excel file used to generate these reports is provided. The Source Data sheet has the data used. The Original Web Query Data sheet has a web query which is refreshable to allow up-to-date revenue data. You are welcome to continue to work the data.
Technorati Tags: hollywood, movies, films, film, box+office, business, economics, charts, analysis, top+movies, top+films
Thursday, August 11, 2005
British East India Company
While researching an article, I was browsing the wikipedia entry on the British East India Company. I was surprised to find the link to the dissolution of the company in 1874 under the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act went nowhere.
I have started editing the entry - my second original entry to wikipedia - and am looking for more information on the Act, ideally the full text. The current entry:
After the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, things went downhill for the British East India Company.
In 1858, by the Act for the Better Government of India, the Crown assumed all governmental responsibilities held by the company, and its 24,000-man military force was incorporated into the British army. The company was dissolved on January 1, 1874, when the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act came into effect.
Benjamin Disraeli was the Prime Minister of England at the time and Queen Victoria was the ruling monarch. Queen Victoria was the first monarch to use the title Empress of India from 1 January 1877
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Stock_Dividend_Redemption_Act"
I also came across this snippet of financial information on the performance of East India Stock, from the history of the City of London Livery Companies, or the Worshipful Company of Upholders
In 1868 the assets of the Company still comprised £5,850 East India Stock and £2,000 East India Debentures, and the actual net income amounted to £382 13s. 10d., a return of nearly 5 per cent. net, which compares very favourably with the present returns that are obtainable. Most of the income was being spent at that time, and the bills for the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate, amounted to no less than £225 in 1869. In 1882 the dividends from the East India Stock were reduced from 5 per cent. to 4 per cent., and in 1886 Corporation Duty made its first appearance.
During this time the income from the investments remained constant, but the expenditure was kept within limits, with the result that by 1889 there was a balance in hand of over £200. In that year the East India 4 per cent. Stock was redeemed, and the proceeds, or part thereof, amounting to £5,571 6s., were invested in £3,000 (nominal) Victoria Inscribed Stock and £2,000 South Australian Stock. In 1891 the balance of the redemption money was invested in £3I5 7s. 2¾ per cent. Consols.
It appears as if dividends reduced after the Crown took over the Company.
Technorati Tags: history, britain, india, east+india+company, raj, dividends, economics
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Booker Prize list announced
In one of the best years for writing for a while, the judges of the Man Booker Prize have announced a weighty, yet relatively short longlist of nominees for the Booker Prize 2005. It is choc-a-bloc with must-read books, including a few that are as-yet unpublished.
- The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
- Set in Malaysia, it tells the tale of a bold Malaysian businessman during World War II, in the form of a triptych- The Sea by John Banville
- A tale of coming-of-age, life's end, and other rites of passage at an Irish coastal town- Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
- A creative book, alternating the tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, and a mystery of sorts- A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
- A dark novel about Ireland and the Great War, vignettes of times forgotten and pains endured- Slow Man by JM Coetzee
- Out in September, this is a tale of meditation on what makes us human, on growing old and about Elizabeth Costello- In the Fold by Rachel Cusk
- A British comedy of manners and morals- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Deep insights into science, ethics, childhood and boarding schools- All For Love by Dan Jacobson
- A comic melodrama, if one could describe a book thus, set in the waning days of the Hapsburg Empire.- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
- Comic farce among Ukranian immigrants to England- Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
- A traveling psychic deconstructs middle-class England- Saturday by Ian McEwan
- A richly-layered post-9/11, post-Iraq war portrait of the way we are, and were.- The People’s Act of Love by James Meek
- It is strange that a book due in 2006 would be on this year's list, but critics are blown away by proof copies of this novel set in 1919 Siberia- Shalimar The Clown by Salman Rushdie
- The book I am most looking forward to, Salman takes up a tale set in the vales of Kashmir, the assassination of the American ambassador to India, clowns turned terrorists, and weaves in planes crashing into distant towers, Nazi France, and Shalimar's arrival in Los Angeles. His last book, Fury, was released on 9/11/2001, and was somewhat disappointing, seeming like mere navel-gazing [Editor:Take this to a review page]- The Accidental by Ali Smith
- Another 2006 imprint, it deals with an unexpected guest, and a child' vision of the world- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- Similar to Howard's End, and set in a world of wars, yet permeated with beauty, such as Rembrandt's paintings. Her last novel, White Teeth, was a blend of Bangladesh and Jamaica, this time she blends black and white, WASP and non-WASP.- This Thing Of Darkness by Harry Thompson
- A historical tale about the 19th century voyages of the Beagle, and Charles Darwin's relationship with Captain Fitzroy, by England's popular television producer- This Is The Country by William Wall
- Travels through Ireland, finding oneself. and the divide between the city and the country
A very globalized list, depicting the zeitgeist, showing the richness of writing from the Commonwealth, and disproving the much-rumored death of the novel, and representative to some extent of popular taste, at least in the reading public. Odds-on favorites for the shortlist, I believe, include the Rushdie, the Ishiguro, the McEwan, the Barnes and the Ali Smith, but judges have been capricious in the past, and could end up choosing a list that has a few young'uns. J K Rowling could not be reached for comment on her omission, the sixth in a row, though in unrelated news, she responded to some allegations and rumors through scraps thrown in her website's rubbish bin, categorizing the notes as,Starting to Smell | Excessive Additives | Recycled | Mouldy | Pure Garbage | Toxic
The prize is open to fiction writers from the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The shortlist will be announced on September 8, and the winner of the award will be announced at a ceremony at the Guildhall in London on October 10.
Technorati Tags: booker, books, prize, literature, rushdie, mcewan, 9/11, globalization, news, culture
Art prankster Banksy sprays Israeli wall
Secretive "guerrilla" artist Banksy has decorated Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side.
Banksy uses street art and graffiti to create a mode of expression in the urban environment, or vandalize it, directed at alternative politics. He also does paid work for advertising, thereby feeding the same system he claims to rebel against. He earlier 'hit' New York museums, as well as the Tate, with his work.
Stunning images - The revolution will not be terrorised, as he says on his site.
More Banksy pictures at flickr
and video footage here of Banksy from Channel 4
Attack in Pink Bow.
Originally uploaded by silverfox09.
Technorati Tags: banksy, graffti, art, israel, westbank, west+bank, cartoon
Oil Dependence - another three thousand years
From a leading news source,
President Bush unveiled an aggressive initiative Monday that would make the U.S. free of petroleum dependence by the year 4920, less than three millennia from now.
...
"It would be a shame if, by the 33rd century, these bills were still tied up in committee. I urge the 712th Congress to pass this legislation with minimal partisan gridlock," Bush said.
...
The proclamation comes on the heels of Bush's plans to pay off the national debt by the early 6300s, and win the war on terror by 7450.
The price of oil per gallon is now between $2.60 and $2.75, at least in my area. At this price, a systemic shock to the economic system as a result of increased transportation costs is only too likely.
My father used to talk about the 'vicious cycle of inflationary capitalism' - rail,steel,oil and coal - these are the trusses of the economy, and have a much greater impact on everyday life than, say, the price of bandwidth.
Traditionally, higher oil prices lead to reduced economic activity. It is commonly believed that economies of the 21st century are less energy-dependent than before, which is certainly true to an extent. At current dollars, it would take the price of oil to rise to about $70 a barrel to match the 1970s price levels, yet we have seen little slowdown thus far. Interestingly, the declining nature of real wages and the rise in real estate prices makes it all the more unusual to see a prolonged period without economic distortion, and subsequent social change.
The effect can be more subtle than that, though. If industries and companies find it hard to raise prices either because of political or lowest-bidder markets, where customers are price-sensitive and prone to shop around for the lowest bidder, rather than exhibit brand or market loyalty, they will respond by cutting back on purchases, which has a significant ripple effect. Interestingly, it is often seen that prices fall during times of high demand. This is primarily due to a desire to protect existing markets and retain customers. Consumers react to raised energy prices by reduced discretionary expenditure. Apart from voting with their pocketbooks, they tend to forfeit control of their economic situation to the state, believing it more able to address the macro problems.
In a globalized world, however, the state is put into a quandary of epic proportions. On one hand, it must satisfy the interests of its citizens and manage inflation. On the other, it must interact in the comity of nations, each aspiring to meet the same goals. With regards to oil management, they are unable to do much, given the monopolistic nature of the market. OPEC is the 'oil manager' of the world, and is concerned with protecting its own interests, given social and governmental upheaval in the Middle East, and the threat of new technologies that could further reduce oil dependence. It's customers are therefore unable to respond effectively to their constituents.
The price of oil is also commonly believed to be set by the market - thereby subject to price elasticity on the demand curve. This is believed to be the cause for the decline in the price of oil to $10 in 1998, driven by reduced demand after the Asian financial crisis. Unfortunately, a market is only as good as it's managers. OPEC has proven, time and again, to be essentially incapable of evaluating supply and demand. It tends to increase oil production just before a drop in demand, as in 1986 and 1997, and threaten the reverse when demand begins to rise.
The most probable scenario is a combination of political and market reactions. Price controls would not work, and local oil production may not deliver the goods, therefore, governments will attempt to adopt a 'preferred buyer' model, where they will trade access rights to markets in exchange for greater control over oil. Markets, especially transportation and automotive industries will gyrate, tending to consolidate and issue warnings of failure, before an innovative white knight appears on the scene, in the form of viable alternative technology, or 'new resources' - just as industrialization and the 'New World' served as drivers in earlier waves of human growth. It is likely Stackelberg Warfare will ensue between incumbent 'home' firms and new entrants. This will lead to unrestricted economic warfare, as well as actual, physical wars to secure access to engines of growth. This is one of the reasons the WTO restricts export subsidies, recognizing that subsidies are an attempt to shift profits that can trigger retaliation and a lose-lose situation.
Another effect, and one quite likely in this newly globalized world, will be a realignment of economic forces to regions with greater bargaining power and demographic forces. During the last globalization boom, from 1870 to 1914, large economic gaps developed between the European industrial core and countries around Asia. It is possible to see similar shifts this time around, although it is unclear in which direction will the forces of capital flow. It must be remembered that the last boom brought with it the sinister and yet dextrous forces of colonialism, war, civil war and social upheaval.
The availibility, or the lack of it, of oil has never been the issue. As Sheik Yamani, erstwhile Saudi oil minister said once, "The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil."
The oil age will end, in a few years or a few hundred - perhaps it might take as long as three millenia. 4920 AD sounds not too far off, really.
Technorati Tags: humor, oil,economics, onion
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Monday, August 08, 2005
Remakes we never want to see
From Emerald City, some remakes that would be counter-subversive, and boring:
- a remake of Dune in which all mention of Spice is removed to avoid encouraging drug use
- a remake of Barbarella in which our heroine is demurely dressed at all times and never so much as kisses anyone
- a remake of I Robot in which all of our metal friends are totally law-abiding
- a remake of Jurassic Park in which attempts to clone dinosaurs fail because those fossils were only God having a joke to test our faith
- a movie of V for Vendetta in which the hero helps the government fight terrorists - no, wait, isn’t that being done?
Some more:
- a remake of Harry Potter where all the kids are petulant brats
- a remake of the Godfather where the Corleones have the best pizza business in the five boroughs
- a remake of Lord of the Rings called "Lord of Bling Bling", where Frodo must destroy the One Ring of the Lord of Bling-Bling
- a remake of the Titanic where the ship is saved because the iceberg melts due to the Ozone Hole
- a remake of Finding Nemo where just as Marlin reaches Sydney, he is killed by an oil spill
- a remake of Catch 22, where just as Yossarian finally figures a way out, he is re-enelisted by the new Stop-Loss policy
Technorati Tags: remake, Hollywood, movies, humor, humour, parody
U.S. Kicked Out of Cricket Tournament
The United States was tossed out of an international cricket tournament after an election dispute left the Americans unable to decide on a team and was replaced with the Cayman Islands in the ICC Intercontinental Cup.
About 10,000 players -- primarily expatriates from south Asia and the Caribbean -- compete in weekend games in the United States. In the USA alone, there are more than 700 cricket teams. This makes the United States the ninth most active cricket-playing country in the world, ahead of all except the top-tier Test-playing countries. Over 1.3 million Americans watched pay-per-view coverage of the 2003 Cricket World Cup, paying three times as much per viewer than their counterparts elsewhere in the world(source:cricinfo.com).
The USACA was hit with an election dispute involving two factions earlier this year, which resulted in this action
This is unfortunate, because just a year back, the US Cricket scene was really good - the national side had won the Six Nations tournament in Sharjah and had qualified for a place in the Champions Trophy. Florida was being considered as a venue to host World Cup matches in 2007, with the West Indies hosting the World Cup.
Unfortunately, they lost - were thrashed - in the Champions Trophy in September 2004. Then, Project USA, the ICC's plan to promote cricket in the country didn't quite go well. The International Cricket Council wrote to the USA Cricket Association president that "We have never seen a sporting organisation that combines such great potential and such poor administration as USACA," stressing that much of the blame laid "with the current office bearers of USACA including yourself". This led to the cancellation of Project USA in March 2005, and then the dropping of Florida as a venue for the World Cup.
Internally, much infighting within the USACA led to the formation of a rival board and lawsuits. In short, the US Cricket scene was blown to smithereens. They were not allowed to attend the annual meeting of the ICC at Lord's in June, as well. This year, they have lost the ICC Trophy in Ireland, and now, been dismissed from the Intercontinental Trophy. They play perhaps the oldest team ever in international cricket. As cricinfo.com reported after the ICC trophy,
For the first time since they started playing international cricket, the USA team returned from an international tournament with a perfect zero. They lost every single match it played in the ICC Trophy in Ireland, from the warm-ups to their final defeat.
In other news, Major League Cricket seems to be doing well. They held an Under-19 National Open Tournament in Chicago in August, and will hold an inaugural Inter-State Cricket Cup for North America in November 2005. This will be held in Florida, and will be called the Clive Lloyd Cup, with 16 states and Canadian provinces participating. The former West Indian batsman, Desmond Haynes, has been appointed US National Coach, and will oversee the Inter-State Cricket Cup tournament as well as the future training of the select MLC US squads. They had to cancel the Under-15 tournament this year, however, citing logistical difficulties.
In other cricket news, the world is looking forward to the world is looking forward to the third of the 5-game the final game of the Ashes between England and Australia beginning on Thursday between England and Australia beginning on Thursday. The series is tied at 1-1 after a nail-biting a yesterday. Australia lost earlier to Bangladesh, and concerns are raised about the pre-eminence of the Numero Uno team in World Cricket. 
Also, India defeated the West Indies in the Indian Oil Tri-Series Cup and will face off against Sri Lanka
Comments at blogcritics.org
Technorati Tags: cricket, news, USA, America, ICC, World+Cup, sports
Doctor O, a notional comic of which I am the hero
That's Cory Doctorow there
Technorati Tags: flickr, cory, boingboing, worldcon, scifi, sci-fi, science+fiction
Technorati Tags: flickr, cory, boingboing, worldcon, scifi, sci-fi, science+fiction
The Tyranny of Digital Distance
A fine post via blogcritics on "The Tyranny of Digital Distance",
Think about what we might consider the tyranny of digital distance insomuch as the potential and, indeed, expectation of synchronous global culture (at least for English-speaking countries) leads to a constant state of delay and annoyance when the promise isn't met.
This is specifically with reference to Australia, but the even greater digital distance between the 'digital haves' and the 'digital have-nots' is staggering. The question 'What are these Internets you speak of?' would not be unusual for millions across the globe.
Specifically with regards to the correlation or synchronicity of global culture, the author makes some notable points in that unless the synchronicity is leveraged, it can mean a propensity to digital theft, and worse, an information/knowledge gap wherein the grand vision of technology as a unifying, healing force is foiled.
Technorati Tags: digital, digital+divide, technology, australia, globalization, culture
read more | digg story
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Bond composer to re-record theme
Composer Monty Norman is to re-record the James Bond theme with its original lyrics reinstated.
Norman first wrote the classic tune - initially called Bad Sign, Good Sign - for a musical version of VS Naipaul's novel A House for Mr Biswas.After he was hired to provide music for the first Bond film, Dr No, he reworked the song as a theme tune.
He receives royalties for the theme's usage in the subsequent Bond films as a result of a legal dispute between him and John Barry
The James Bond Theme from Dr. No by Monty Norman
Technorati Tags: bond, music, news, naipaul
read more | digg story
Hugo results
From the Emerald City zine blog, which itself deserves an award for the best Hugo reportage/collective news reporting, the Hugo awards, live-blogged,
- James White Award - Elizabeth Hopkinson
- John W Campbell Award - Elizabeth Bear - Best New Writer
- Fan Artist - Sue Mason
- Fanzine - Plokta
- Fan Writer - Dave Langford
- Web Site - Sci Fiction - Emerald City was nominated too
- Best Semiprozine - Ansible
- Best Professional Artist - Jim Burns
- Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form - Battlestar Galactica, “33? - there's one American award at least:)
- Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form - The Incredibles - hmmm, not too pleased about that one
- Best Related Book - The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
- Best Short Story - "Travels with my cats" - Mike Resnick - American, if it matters
- Best Novelette - "The Faery Handbag" - Kelly Link
- Best Novella - The Concrete Jungle - Charles Stross
- Best Novel - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - That's a great book there
Pretty nice that the three short awards are all available for free reading online - linked above
Next Year - Los Angeles
Technorati Tags: scifi, science+fiction, worldcon, hugo, hugos, awards, news
Breakfast in Fur
The wiki entry on Méret Oppenheim, the Surrealist needs some work
Technorati Tags: surrealism, art, dadaism, dada, moma
Technorati Tags: surrealism, art, dadaism, dada, moma
"Lucas Back In Anger"
A scene from a play at Interaction, this year's Worldcon in Glasgow
Technorati Tags: scifi, flickr, worldcon, interaction, starwars, star+wars, science+fiction
Technorati Tags: scifi, flickr, worldcon, interaction, starwars, star+wars, science+fiction
Brian Aldiss
Crop circles mystery solved.
Some interesting news on crop circles,
M Night Shyamalan had no comment
A group of researchers in Russia claim they have solved the mystery of crop circles, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reports. According to them, plants bend as a result of microwave emissions caused by lightning strikes.
....
Another argument backing up this theory is the fact that real crop circles are often accompanied by so called lichtenberg figures — narrow strips of bent grass, usually left by a lightning strike.
Technorati Tags: crop+circles, science, mystery
read more | digg story
Family Guy Movie set for September 27th Release!
Family Guy has proved successful even in its reincarnation on Fox. One can't really say the same about "American Dad, the other Seth Macfarlane animated show.
Now there's going to be a Family Guy film - w00t!
As Seth MacFarlane's animated series, Family Guy, pulls in solid ratings with its second go-round on FOX, the direct-to-video feature outing for Peter Griffin and his clan will finally make it to stores on Sept. 27.
....
Joining the voice cast for the film are Drew Barrymore, Ron Livingston and Beverly Hills 90210 alumni Jason Priestley, Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling.
IMDB has an entry for the Family Guy movie
Also, apparently a preview DVD leaked out early, some screenshots:
Technorati Tags: cartoon, family+guy
read more | digg story
Saturday, August 06, 2005
googlehack
These guys set up a DNS server at a LAN party to run their own www.google.com domain
Don't be evil:)
Don't be evil:)
Technorati Tagging your blog posts
Via A Consuming Experience,A painless means of adding tags to one's post - including multiple,multi-word tags - very useful for blogger or other blogging software that does not provide categorization.
There are a few ways you can easily create Technorati tags, such as by using a bookmarklet tag creator, or a Greasemonkey script for Firefox.
But they require manual tinkering after the event if you want to have tags which consist of several words (like "A Consuming Experience", which I use as a tag at the end of each of my posts). Now, there are ways to automatically output tags which consist of more than one word, by tweaks to those tag generators.
She provides a bookmarklet for Firefox users to easily generate tag code, which is pretty nifty.It includes meblogging tags, so change YOURNAME and YOURBLOGNAME, or remove them if you're not into explicit self-aggrandizement:
Also, Ted Ernst provides another bookmarklet that allows one to tag your posts to del.icio.us, rather than to technorati - apparently technorati will treat these as regular technorati tags - change his del.icio.us username to yours.
Technorati Tags: technorati, tags, tag, blogging, blog,
No Halo 2 for you, young man!
From the Internets, some news on China's long march to freedom:
Authorities unveiled new regulations that will prohibit minors under the age of 18 from playing violent online games that allow them to kill other players in what is known commonly as Player vs. Player (PvP) in the west, though Chinese authorities have termed it "Player Kills" (PK).
They plan to enforce this by having all MMORPG users authenticate their age by entering their personal identity number on their national ID card.
.....
In addition, Chinese authorities have also ordered online game operators to install timing mechanisms that will automatically log players off of online games once they have exceeded a set number of hours of continuous play, with Chinese gamers on average spending 10.9 hours a week playing online games.
In the wake of the GTA San Andreas controversy, one hopes this is not a trend across the world.
Big-Parent approaches to society have never ever worked in the long run, or even in the short term, methinks.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: China, MMORPG, internet, media, freedom, censorship
Firefox tuning and tweaks
A short yet simple guide to get maximum performance in Firefox.
The tweaks:
network.http.max-connections: 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server: 24
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: 12
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 6
network.http.pipelining: true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 8
network.http.proxy.pipelining: trueThe mozillazine firefox tuning guide is pretty detailed. Another guide is at tweakfactor. An extension I've not tried myself, helps tweak Firefox settings
I like the concept - I generally find Firefox slow and it takes up at least 60 MB of RAM, with millions of page faults. Still use it though - primarily, I think, because of the drag-and-drop opening of tabs.
For some reason I am unable to view quicktime videos properly within Firefox and have to switch to IE for any video-rich page. Any tips?
read more | digg story
Friday, August 05, 2005
Hugo Novel Nominees 2005
The Hugo nominees for 2005 have been announced, and as the BBC reports, the future of science fiction could be presaged by the fact that they are all British. According to the Beeb,
Mr Stross says that what an author writes is a reflection of his society, and currently US genre writers are mirroring the "deep trauma" that 9/11 wrought on America.
"What we write tends to reflect our perceptions of the world around us," he says, "and if it's an uncertain world full of shadows it's no surprise you get wish fulfilment or a bit downbeat."
So super-hero movies divide the world into black and white moralities and authors try to write alternative histories of key US events, such as the Civil War.
By contrast British genre writers are not looking back, they are eyeing the future with lip-smacking anticipation.
"We're a bit more upbeat and there's an openness about there being a future for us," says Mr Stross.
And they are better getting to grips with the ever-increasing pace of technological change, which makes prediction a trickier job than ever.
The nominees for best novel are,
Iain M Banks - The Algebraist
China Mieville - The Iron Council
Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Ian McDonald - River of Gods
My vote goes for Susanna Clarke.
The screenplay/dramatic presentation nominees are fun:
# Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Focus Features) Story by Charlie Kaufman & Michael Gondry & Pierre Bismuth; Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman; Directed by Michael Gondry.
# Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Warner Brothers) Written by Steve Kloves; Based on the novel by J.K. Rowling; Directed by Alfonso Cuarón.
# The Incredibles (Walt Disney Pictures / Pixar Animation Studios) Written & Directed by Brad Bird
# Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow (Paramount Pictures) Written & Directed by Kerry Conran
# Spider-Man 2 (Sony Pictures Entertainment / Columbia Pictures) Screen Story by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and Michael Chabon; Screenplay by Alvin Sargent; Based on the comic book by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko; Directed by Sam Raimi
A much tougher choice here - I vote for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
The winners will be announced at Interaction - the WorldCon at Glasgow, UK between 4th and 8th August, 2005 - like right now:)
Some highlights of the Hugo Convention schedule:
- The Plague After Next: How Are We Going to Die? - Greg Bear, et al
- Nitro Ice Cream - nitrogen-based ice cream
- Post Colonialism and Cargo Cults - Harry Turtledove, et al
- So, Private Spaceflight Is Here
- The Limits of Open-Source Knowledge
- The Past, Present and Future of Christian Fantasy
- Board Games for the 21st Century
- Privacy or Paranoia?
- Hans Christian Andersen & the Dark Side of Fairy Tale
- Asexuality is the New Gay, but Is that Also the Default of Science Fiction?
- The Pros and Cons of Blogging Science
- Clones, Children or Countless Lives - Cory Doctorow, et al
- Belly Dancing: Tribal Fusion Techniques
- Byzantium at our Borders in the 21st century: the Future of Europe.
- Harry Potter Has Put Children's Fantasy Back Fifty Years
- The Mason-Dixon Line Redrawn: America Divided?
- Sunday 20.00,Hugo Awards Ceremony
My clones shall report back to you soon.
XBox 360 Rumors
Apparently, there will two flavors of the XBox 360 - one at $299 and one at $399 - the $399 one will have all the goodies - harddrive, etc.
15 games and 1.6 million units will be launched
Source: ConsoleWars
Today Piper Jaffray research firm released some information on Microsoft’s next generation console Xbox 360. According to their research, the Xbox 360 will come in two flavors. One will be a value version that will be priced at $299. The other version will be priced at $399 and will include "additional hardware components (e.g., hard-drive option, extra controller, memory option) that core users will likely buy anyway." The research also confirms 15 titles available by launch with up to 40 titles by years end. At the moment there are over 160 Xbox 360 titles in development around the globe.
No Halo 3, though:(
Displaying del.icio.us bookmarks on blogger blogs
I've been trying to get my del.icio.us posts show up on my blog for a while - I'd found a couple of techniques for wordpress, movable type, etc., but nothing specifically for blogspot.
Well, a little research today has paid off well - there are now two tables in the left sidebar that display my recent del.icio.us posts - do tell me which one looks better.
The first uses the del.icio.us provided documentation and javascript - this is surprisingly configurable, even displaying the tags for each post pretty nicely. One is able to manage the display via css, as I have done, to align it to one's personal preference or template.
The second is via eLamb's site and shows how to take a del.icio.us RSS feed URL and parse it through one of the numerous RSS parsers on the web to generate javascript/html code that one can paste on one's site.
Get the Del.icio.us RSS URL of your choice (orange RSS button located in the bottom left corner). Copy and paste that code into the RSS Parser of your choice. List of RSS Parsers:
http://p3k.org/rss/?setup=true
http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/
http://www.rssgov.com/rssparsers.html
http://del.icio.us/tag/rss+parser
It will take the RSS and crank out HTML with content baked fresh daily as the del.icio.us tag is updated. With no further work on your part.
The output, the second table in my left sidebar isn't as nice, IMHO, as the first table and affords less control - but one could roll one's own layout too.
Also from eLamb, I've found this technique for adding nifty buttons to add a post to del.icio.us, digg, or slashdot
Next up: Provide a text box to allow readers to categorize a post and publish those tags to del.icio.us/technorati
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Blogcritics.org - 10,000,000 (That's Ten Million!) and some great posts
The spectacular and enriching experience that is blogcritics.org just celebrated a momentuous anniversary of sorts - 10,000,000 visitors - that's enough to start off a planet:)
I've personally benefited immensely from my association, and learnt from every visitor/blogcritic. It is an addictive experience to constantly refersh the site to track recent comments/posts. Contributions range across the sea of human knowledge.
On the occasion, perhaps it might be fun to compile a list of some of the best posts on Blogcritics from the beginning - I'm giving you a short list to get started, but please add posts you like (URLs/Titles or authors) below. Please try to make the links clickable, so you save the sterling editors some effort.
- Eric's live interview with RIAA pres Cary Sherman
- gypsyman's "A Culture of Idols"
- The Duke De Mondo's "Movie Face-Off's I Wanna See!"
- Dave Nalle's "Not Every War is Vietnam"
- Steve S' "If You Listen To Fools, The Mob Rules"
- Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti's "growing up in london during the race riots"
- Eric Berlin and the Duke have an IM conversation about "GoodFellas"
- The most commented post - "The Top 100 Guitarists According to Rolling Stone"
- My own "Terrorism and Its Enemies - An Alliance of Civilizations"
- HW Saxton's "I Was A Punk Before You Were A Punk Pt. 1"
- uao's "Artist Overview: Jefferson Airplane"
- swingingpuss' "For The Love of Books"
- Bennett Dawson's "The Moon, Mars, and Law Enforcement"
- Al Barger's "Shallow, selfish schmuck: Afterthoughts on Hunter S Thompson"
- Shark's "You're Right. I'm Wrong."
Picking just one post from the bc-pope is tough, check out his Complete Writings too.
...why is there truly a need for the RIAA any more, given the existance of technology that permits and encourages the bypassing of the "middleman" organizations in the first place? .....As for the need for RIAA (and presumably record companies), there will always be a need for record companies - because they are the venture capital companies of the music business.
....this is not a reflection of talent but rather power given to these people by us through their being a point of attraction. We have invested certain positions in society with power. Actors, rock stars, television personalities, business leaders and politicians are designated as important through our acquiescence. If we did not respond they would have no actual impact.
The late Jim Carruthers made some funny contributions in the comments.
We all know how fantastic Freddy Vs Jason was, and we all know how unspeakably cack Aliens Vs Predator was, but let's be honest here. If it boils down to it, which it inevitably will sooner or later, what we really wanna be seeing is this sorta shit right here
If our opposition to the expansion of communism and Soviet influence was mistaken, are our opposition to Islamic extremism and our War on Terror equally misguided?...
There is a consequence to us all, as long as moderate mainstream Christians allow this mentality and abuse of their principles to go unchecked, and it is compounded by allowing a President to so closely align his office with a particular religion.
It's hard to believe such things happen, but as I said, this was London in the seventies and they did happen, and not just to me. But this particular thing, did happen to me. I always said if I wrote about it, nobody would believe me, which was fine with me. I didn't matter what anyone believed because Christ knows, my mother and grandmother knew, as they came screaming around the corner with a belt and a broom in their hand because Stevie had seen the whole thing go down and ran home to get them and tell them that I was being beaten up.
Still waiting for the unedited version,
Duke: What’s really goin’ on, though, beyond the coolness and the slickness and the violence? I mean there could be an argument for "it's just an exercise in style and stylized mayhem"
Eric Berlin: Get this... you're rooting for a criminal... and you're crushed by his demolition
Duke: That's it, I think, too. Its got a tragedy, and its about corruption. talks about the corruption of the American dream and the like much better than Scarface
Eric Berlin: It's like an analogy for the American Dream really -- massive consumerism, how empty the Dream is... or something
Duke: Ha! Great minds think alike...
Eric Berlin: Yeah -- I agree, Scarface shoots for the moon but doesn't make it
Eric Berlin: Goodfellas gets it all -- hits its mark exactly
I still think the list sucks
The only thing that made my heart sing was seeing Robert Randolph on the list. But where is Phil Keaggy? John Petrucci? Oh well, who gives a crap what Rolling Stone thinks, anyway.
The global war, it has already been found, is not a single-focus war, with pure military objectives. It requires covert action, psy-war approaches and social engineering, similar to the multi-lateral, international "alliance of civilizations" that arose post-World War II, and which was fostered by the global terror of the War itself
A long time ago, back before The Ramones could count to 4, before the Black Flag so proudly waved, before The Clash had enough rope, before X marked the spot and before the Sex Pistols backfired punk was knocking at the door. Now in 2005 "Punk" is just another genre in your local music emporium. A product to be bought and sold at the local mall.
Great series, book-worthy
This is one of the funny tricks of the passage of time; the further removed from history, the more it changes. Back in 1967 only the squares called anything "Haight-Ashbury". There were lots of scenes happening, thousands of scenes; some overlapped, some were isolated, some blossomed, some mutated, some broke down
What goes on in a teenage girl's mind when confronted with romantic books?
Books are like genies that can make frogs from a well become the owners of the oceans within the confines of the heart, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors.
Books egged on my thirst for knowledge that was deliberately held back, they gave me the courage to stand by my beliefs, and helped me evolve into a person who believes that libraries and books are treasure troves that can counter the spread of religious or political intolerance.
It has been said that "Politics makes for strange bedfellows". This is true, but now it's personal.
My new bedfellows are making me feel like a whore.
To pick something from the acerbic Mr Barger is tricky - but worthy of reading
In the end, what was his profound insight as a writer? What new insight did he provide into human nature, or the nature of government and human relations? Other than (very good) cheap entertainment, what was his intellectual accomplishment?(Another non-controversial post from Al: "Vinegar Is Good Food -- No, Really!")
Another firebrand of sorts.
I'm really running outta gas on this liberal thing. When I write a post nowadays, I feel like a guy opening a Yarmulke Shop in downtown Berlin in 1933. When I satirize a conservative on Blogcritics, I feel like I'm performing a Bris ceremony in the Nuremberg town square.
I'm tired of being a "liberal progressive."
Special Mention: Chris Muir's strip - one example as well as our blogcritics' podcasts and interviews
Readers, writers, visitors - You're entitled to our opinion - and respect.
If you have a blog and would like to join blogcritics, you're most welcome.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
The Thin Man Films :The Thin Man
The series of six Thin Man films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy have been released as a box set on DVD. These comic mystery capers were influential in multiple forms - providing a radio play, a TV series, and numerous husband/wife detective pairs to the cultural landscape. It lost out at the Academy Awards, despite four nominations, being overshadowed by "It Happened One Night" in 1934
I was fortunate enough to catch a playbill of all six films on Turner Classic Movies recently, and thanks to my DVR, can now devour (and review) them to my heart's content. In classic TCM fashion, there are introductions with some interesting ancedotes about the films.
The first film, The Thin Man, is the only one based on the Dashiel Hammett book of the same name, the others merely borrowing the characters of Nick and Nora Drake, and the title for continuity. Nick Drake is more of a drinker than in the book, and less of a detective, except in the final denouement.
The character development is intense, and interspersed with dry humor, mostly between Nick and Nora. W S Van Dyke's direction is breathless and tight. coupled with stark cinematography by James Wong Howe. He uses techniques such as inter-cut scenes to introduce subtle hints, or perhaps Macguffins, while still keeping the main storyline moving forward. He shot the film in less than a month, and was a huge success.
Dashiel Hammett's own heavy drinking was doubtless an influence on the Nick Charles character, while Nora was based on Lillian Hellman, the acerbic playwright. The repartee between Nick and Nora, one of the best parts of the films seems true-to-life, and their dog, Asta, sparked a nationwide craze in wire terriers.
Another reason the films seem particularly relevant today is the subtle manner in which sexuality and alcoholism were allowed to permeate the atmosphere, while remaining stylish and eschewing explicit violence for the most part. The film was one of the first post-Code films (Although the code was formalized in 1930, it did not achieve it's force of boycott until June 1934), and had to adhere to the Hays Code(Complete text), while it was still able to pervert it in some ways - to our benefit as cineastes today. Cinema yearns to express the inner energies and urges that make life worthwile. The Code stifled those urges, and adept film-makers were forced to sublimate them into other structures within the film, the film's diegesis, as it were. Film audiences were shocked and alienated by the violence and sexuality of the gangster films of the early 1930s and expected a classiness from movie-watching, that the Thin Man films. among few others, succeeded in delivering, without losing their social heft or cinematic verity. (Minor trivia: The shady character, Chris Jorgenson, Mimi's husband, was renamed from the book character Rosebreen to avoid offending the head of the Hays Office, Joseph Breen)
Various elements combine to make this film, and the series, a timeless experience. While the solution is somewhat 'not allowed' in proper mystery writing, the seemingly accidental deductive reasoning of Nick makes the unraveling of the mystery a captivating experience.
Next up: "After The Thin Man" and how some sequels can surpass the original material.
Visual effect
That's an interesting effect - Photoshopped perhaps.
On second thoughts, I'm not sure I like those black splotches.
On second thoughts, I'm not sure I like those black splotches.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Flickr Interestingness
Flickr, of which I am a recent aficionado, has an innovative way of showing us what's cool, similar to del.icio.us' popular tag
The Interestingness tag shows photos, picked by some sort of algorithm, as in,
There are lots of things that make a photo 'interesting' (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr
The last 24 hours Interesting Flickr posts are worthy of note
Mind-meld
dry spells - what are those things?
Monday, August 01, 2005
Hell's Kitchen Winner
Loved the show - even if the finale had the characteristic bad editing and repetitive voice-overs after every break.
All the same, sumptuously produced, with the ultimate twist at the end:
So, the winner turned out to be.... after a hard fight....
Michael
Line of the day:
Ralph to Dewberry: "You are my Rock of Gibraltar"
Dewberry: "I'd rather be Brad Pitt's wife!"
(Ralph, aside: "He's got issues")
heh - and Ralph's got attitude
The twist: Gordon Ramsay offered Michael the choice to either run his own restaurant or to move to London and work with Ramsay in one of his restaurants as a chef, and build unparallelled experience.
He chose -
To move to London
WTG Michael!
Carnival Of The Capitalists up
The always interesting Carnival Of The Capitalists is up at the Entrepreneur's Life, and features my post on "Do We Need Newspapers Anymore?"
Interesting stuff out there - more insights seem produced per capita of bloggers than mainstream media, although evaluating the signal-to-noise ratio is fiendishly difficult.
Unleash The Fury - Yngwie Malmsteen
The master of speed, Paganini's heir, Yngwie Malmsteen has released a new album "Unleash The Fury". This blazing-fast compilation might sound familiar, yet it gives him ample space to unleash his skills on his signature scalloped fretboard, inspired by a 17th century lute design.
Some in the music community find his style repetitive or boring, but there are many others who swear by his work, and live, breathe and dream Malmsteen. His supporting musicians seem to fade in the background, making it hard for any but the most ardent fan to name them, or track their appearances across albums. He saw much success in the 1980s and 1990s, but more so in markets like Japan, where he is "Ichiban", or Number One.
He constantly features in those interminable 'greatest guitarists', but isn't given to much self-praise or publicity. Malmsteen's richly detailed website features the following response in the 'Ask Yngwie' section,
Question from Emmanuel Calvario: "Yngwie, I know that you know Michael Angelo was nominated as the no.1 shredder of all times. They say that you and Angelo both mastered sweep picking and economy picking. But they say that you haven't mastered playing a one note per string arpeggios. Is that true? For you, Yngwie, who's faster between you and Michael Angelo. Just a direct and sure answer from you, sir. Because for me, you the best guitarist in the world."
Answer from Yngwie: "I don't personally know Michael Angelo or his music, but regarding contests and who is faster or whatever. It doesn't interest me. Trying to determine who picks more notes per second is ridiculous. What is important is the quality of the music and how well it speaks to fans who love it."
His musical longevity is testimony to his talents and prowess, as well as his seminal influence on hordes of aspiring guitar maestros the world over. I remember reading in a fan-mag subscribed to by a friend, an avid Malmsteen fan, that when he was asked why he did not make any MTV videos, he scoffed at the trend, and noted that he would still be around, and rocking, when Nirvana were dead and gone.
Prophetic words - and now it behooves this review to examine the disc in question - "Unleash the Fury"
The Rising Force band has had keyboardist Derek Sherinian replaced by Joakim Svalberg. The other members are Dougie White on vocals and Patrik Johansson on drums.
The first song, "Locked And Loaded", like much of the vocal tracks, has a Judas Priest-style flavor, although evaluating the influence is tantamount to solving the chicken-and-egg problem. the song takes off after the first half, with Yngwie raising the pace and keeping it high.
"Revolution" is an unremarkable song, except of course, when Yngwie takes control at the end - nothing unusual though.
From the outset, "Cracking The Whip" is Yngwie-driven. The vocals, too, stand up to the frenzy in this track, sounding somewhat like "Breaking The Law", and following the same meter.
"Winds Of War (Invasion)" is my favorite song from this album. Beginning with an introspective, gentle tone, every member of the band comes together on this track, from the vocals to the keyboards to the drums, balanced perfectly by Yngwie, who seems to keep pace with the band, rather than the other way round.
"Crown Of Thorns" is a good metal track, and some interesting lyrics.
"Bogeyman" has a different flair to it, a richer sound at a lower octave. Dougie's voice, too, seems different and inspired.
"Beauty And A Beast" returns to familiar territory, with a frenetic guitar-controlled tempo. This song, perhaps, comes closest to his traditional 'dragons, swords and monsters' territory from previous albums.
"Fuguetta" is the first of two JS Bach-inspired pieces on the album. This one, nominally a fugue, is too short to set up and demonstrate the counterpoint necessary for a fugue. All the same, it allows us to experience a different side to Malmsteen, one more in touch with his classical training and passion. His earlier "Concerto" album will be re-released this fall with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.
"Cherokee Warrior" features Yngwie himself providing the vocals, with a richer and more effective voice, perhaps, than Dougie. Apparently Hendrix-inspired.
"Guardian Angel" is an instrumental piece, with poignant tones. The keyboard-work creates a kind of staccato effect, before Yngwie frames the center-piece in his usual style. Great practice piece for aspiring duos.
"Let The Good Times Roll" returns to speed-zone and will be a real hit on the concert circuit.
"Revelation (Drinking With The Devil)" is a track about Yngwie's grappling with his personal demons, drink and danger. "You always hypnotize/But now I realize/That I've been drinking with the Devil/When I must lift this curse/It went from bad to worse/My overflowing cup is filled again/(It's hard to tell you no)/.../(Why do you tempt me so?)"
"Magic And Mayhem" is just that, an instrumental solo composition.
"Exile" features a fast staccato opening before a powerful vocal-driven track, one of the few where Dougie truly shines.
"Hunt" is more of the same, with Dougie's voice totally drowned out by the maestro, good drums/bass work here.
"Russian Roulette" is a classic metal track, humorous lyrics.
"Unleash The Fury" has a different atmosphere and tone. Commencing with the tolling of bells, it layers a sitar track, played by Yngwie, onto his fast guitar-work. Great song.
The album wraps up with another Bach-inspired, all-too-short piece, "Paraphrase". This is an upbeat number, real fun.
In toto, Yngwie does what he is good at, and delivers an album aimed to please his fans and critics in mixed doses. He noted on the making of the album,
"With Unleash The Fury I was very, very meticulous and very, very particular about what I wanted. I was really involved with everything, including drums -- even when to use crash or ride cymbals. It was a bit like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this album."
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