Cute Imperial March

The Matrix Effect

Ah, the early'90's: I was so innocent I barely knew which demographic I was.

Scott Brow in
Wired 2009/09/11 article "Geeky Friday

There is also an old saying that you should never examine too closely how sausages or laws are made. At the end of The Matrix, Neo can only see perceive the programming but not the our constructed reality.  Media training is good but it also robs you of the pleasure of pure consumerism / fandom.

The Financial Industry Lives Off the Stupid

There is an old joke where a prospective brokerage client is shown the impressive yachts owned by the partners. This leads the prospective brokerage client to ask where are clients' yachts. In the context of this strip Hardcastle is a stodgy and generally unsuccessful metal bashing company oop north.

Zombie Dancer

The Least Scary Scene in Dexter

That's either a saint or the most boring action figure I have ever seen.

Dexter
being confronted with Harrison's nanny Catholicism,
Dexter S05e05

One Magic Minivan

The Renault Espace has been sold in Belgium for about 25 years. Renault recent campaign Renault Espace the for suggests that this one minivan is responsible for taller people, larger families and the complete elimination of canine abandonment.

(from Ads of the World)

The Hierarchy of Viewers

Welcome precious prime time viewers, valued internet down loaders and scary digital pirates.

Professor Frink
segmenting the audience on Treehouse of Horror 2010

Is that an Alien in his gut?

Where Polar Bears Come Fromm

Many people looks at myths as explanations for how things have happened. However in my view myths are less explanation than explanation within in a world view, culture and religion. They more stories that stress the importance of a culture's world view, gods and heroes, than flat and culture free science and history. The story of creation is more a story of why "the heavens and the earth" were created, Genesis (1.1), then an explanation of how.

This short flash animation, Drunk Science, explains where polar bears come from.

The Expendables - semi-live blogging

When I first saw ads for The Expendables I was impressed. Line up of cool, super cool action stars. Except that for Stallone, a sad, cowardly, pathetic, draft dodger. Which is ironic since he has based his career, in part, on John Rambo. I am sorry I just hate Stallone, not the least for his horrible portrayal of Judge Dredd.

first action sequence
saving prisoners from the scum of Somalia

What do you know, a greedy pirate.

Lee Christmas (Jason Stratham)

My opinion is that we should go back to tradition, ancient, of punitive raids. Every time Somali pirates raid a pirate castle should be destroyed , That is any nice piece property in Somalia that probably home to a pirate king. No reasoned argument will ever convince them to stop being pirates. In Beirut in the '80's a Soviet was kidnapped. The Soviets promptly went and snatched a relative of some prominent terrorist/jihadi/scum of the earth. They then sent back to the prominent terrorist/jihadi/scum of the earth the relative in bits and pieces. Soviets were off limits from then on.

I got 30 minutes into the film and I couldn't watch anymore. Goddamn you Stallone, destroyer of films.

Changing Definitions of Young & Middle Aged

Jill Clayburgh died today. One of her most notable roles was that of recent divorcee in the movie An Unmarried Women. In that movie was coming out of marriage after being married for 16 years. The character marries out high school, has children at least some of whom get to high school by the time marriage breaks up. In the 19th century most marriages ended after 25 years, people would die. She was 34 when the movie was made in 1978. Now the age of first marriages for upper middle class couples is the middle thirties. Take look at the wedding announcements at the NY Times.

The Expendables Mashup With So Many CGI Toons

Two Cars Too Close Tonight

Downtown Toronto @ Bay & Charles
Friday 05/11/10

Is a Universe Without Rambo That Bleak

Posted by wearedamob in the AH.com thread, US Victory in Vietnam 1972: What Does 2010 Look Like? He follows this up with:

Yup, the future would be a bleak, dark world without Rambo.

But a world without chicken hawks like Sylvester Stallone, George W Bush, Tom Clancy and other sleazy cowards would be a more positive place. For more details and to nominate go to NH Gazette's Chickenhawk Hall of Shame.

The Vacancy Rate by Building and Floor on Bay St

Above is a graphic from an article on the towers in the Toronto financial district, Toronto’s aging office towers losing tenants to new eco-friendly offerings. As many have pointed out before commercial real estate is a trailing economic indicator. The tallest buildings are finished in economic downturns, see Empire State Building. The signature building, the namesake building is often built when a company peaks and begins its decline, see Pan Am and Sears or even fictional Sterling Cooper. Office buildings occupancy rates peak just before a downturn. Vacancy rates then increase as new buildings are finished and businesses reduce their leased space. Then as economic conditions improve office space is taken up until vacancy rates hit new lows. The fact, according to this article, that vacancy rates are still increasing is not a good sign.

This is with our economic system however at other times and places property developers have less constraints placed on them. According Simon Johnson the 3rd world suffers from "financial oligarchy". Only the connected in these societiesget funding/credit. The result is an orgy of overbuilding that exaggerates the boom/bust cycle in commercial real estate as building are built on spec, see Dubai, Texas in the '80s, The SE Asia crash in the '90s.

Years ago I got into an empty, never being occupied, floor at the south end of Eaton's Centre. It was eerie, an eerie aerie, with only the sound of the Peruvian flutes coming from the street below.

Breaking into the Board Game Market and the Reluctance to Learn New Rules

I play different board games with two very different groups of players. I play games like Apples to Apples to Apples or Scrabble with groups of people who only want play games they already know and/or easy to play. With hard core gamers I play much more complicated games. I have played roleplaying games each of which consists of volumes of rules. I have played Avalon Hill games including Advanced Squadleader, ASL "rulebook" is a thick binder with space for future rule expansions. I have played home brew games, variants and beta tests.

That being said there are the hard core gamers might spend more time and money. However there are many people who play games, family games, party games. In the The Globe & Mail's ROB article about a company trying to break into the board game market, How Spin Master learned to play with the giants, there is this explanation of this phenomenon.

“Consumers feel comfortable when they know the rules from a game of the past[and] don’t have to read the rule book.

Trivia Question #1

UPDATE 11/2/2010
answers

What are the only 4 countries in the world with more than 2 timezones? And for bonus points can you name which of these four:

• Is in a different hemisphere? - Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere
  
• Has a different official language? - Russia, Russian
• Was not attacked in WWII? - Canada
  
• Was not a monarchy in August 1914? - USA
  

Remember there is a different answer for each question.

Geography Trivia #3

What is city is home to the greatest number of Saskatchewanians.

(Scroll down and highlight to see


Calgary

Source:
Globe & Mail Tuesday, Nov. 02, 2010,
Saskatchewan goes fishing in Calgary’s labour pool

"...Calgary, which is brimming with Saskatchewan émigrés – as many as 250,000, according to some estimates. If that number is even remotely accurate, greater Calgary would rival Regina (population 200,000) and Saskatoon (250,000) as a home for Saskatchewanians."

Star Wars in 8Bit

This ad is part of a campaign for a Russian movie theatre chain. The use of 8Bit graphics is supposed to make movie fans of a certain think that every thing is improved and technology makes movies better. I thinks the ads are counterproductive. It will make people nostalgic about the great games and great movies in years past. Today there is real crap that is much more technically sophisticated than the kind of fun stuff that entertained us in the past.

This ad depicts a scene from 8Bit Star Wars. I would watch an 8Bit Star Wars. When George Lucas made the secound trilogy, or first inn the timeline, he focusedn more on the movie technology than the actual movie. What distracts filmmakers with a wealth of new technology is the fixation on The medium is the message but sometiimes the message is the message.

(from Ads of the World) <>

USS Enterprise Owner's Workshop Manual

Haynes, American trade/brand name Chilton, is a company that produces detailed technical manuals for just about all makes and models of cars, trucks and motorcycles. The above, the USS Enterprise Owner's Workshop Manual, has a cutaway diagram of the USS Enterprise A. Every Starfleet engineer will wnat one.

You Really Can See Russia From Alaska

This is picture from the top of Little Diomede, Alaska, looking across to Big Diomede, Siberia. They really are that close. The real quote of Sarah Palin: "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska"? This quote was exaggerated by Tina Fey into "I can see Russia from my house". You can look from the Alaskan Island to the coast of mainland Siberia and from the Siberian island to the coast of mainland Alaska.

You can think dumb Sarah Palin for many reasons but not for this one.

I got to use a new measuring tool on Google Maps.

Oil Depletion in Los Angeles

From the LA Almanac is this charts of the Great Oil Fields of LA County. The first you notice is the last field to be discovered was about 80 years ago. Second is that the oil is gone, mostly gone, with the remaining wells dribbling oil at much less than gusher strength. There are some myopic sorts in the US who believe that the solution for their energy independence is "drill, baby drill". Will it is true that private mineral claim/public royalty systems lead to active prospecting than the statist economic systems that prevail in OPEC. All that means is that resources are found faster not that there are more resources to find.

Also check out this chart of declining oil production in LA.

Briefcase Gun

The Shipping News - Past & Present

The image above is a detail from a Globe & Mail ROB graphic, The Global Shipping News. Three years ago this blog has an entry on Windjammer and East Indiaman Shipping Lanes. The link was from a economic history blog. That map was created by going through ship logs to find relative positions of a couple hundred ships from the 17th to 19th centuries. There is a new crowd source project, Old Weather, out there to look in the same logs, types of logs, to gets weather readings that can be graphed in time and space. This project is also looking at a different collection of ships than the Windjammer one. Old Weather is getting people to transcribe logs from Royal Navy ships from the late 19th and early 20th century. The other project had looked at English, French and Dutch in both commercial and government hands.

Corrupt Atlantic City Cop: Boardwalk Empire

Doesn't wearing a Sam Browne make the sheriff in Boardwalk Empire look like a certain corporal.

The Last Classic Mafia Widow Tells What

While watching Boardwalk Empire S01E03 I was alerted to the existence of Al Capone wife, Mae Capone, an Irish lass, she lived to 1986, Al Capone's widow was around in the '80s.

No TV specials ever.

Meditation On Coolness

There is seems be some sort power that allows cool people to imbue things with cool. Things become cool because the Cool Ones do it, own it, wear it, smoke it. But this is not permanent condition. Uncool people can also destroy cool. It is how things fall out of fashion. The uncool get a hold of it, the it, whatever it that cool did, owned, wore, smoked. At that point it, the it, is uncool. The cool have moved on or the embrace of the cool it by the uncool has transformed it into kitsch. People can not become cool by imitating the cool. Maybe advertising should remember that.

Here is TV Tropes examination of cool.

New Sears Campaign Makes Zombies Boring

Zombies and zombiism is normally such a fun and twisted corner of pop culture. They're kinda of cool. Sure, usually, well usually if the stars align. The above is taken from Sears.com, which in the run up to Halloween is targeting the zombie demographic.

Galaxy Zoo

Galaxy Zoo is crowd sourced project to classify galaxies. In the talk given by Chris Lintott, one the Galaxy Zookeepers explains the image above, watch on Big Ideas, listen on Big Ideas, explains the need for us to help astronomers. The problem is that our technology allows us to many, many, many more galaxy than in the past when galaxy photos could be published, on in thin books,

Zombie Stickers for Halloween

Here are these cool stickers.from the website for a new zombie novel, Rise Again. Here is the full sized PDF for the above. Be the first zombie on the block.

It is interesting how zombism has grown so much in popularity over the past decades.

It's Hard To Be Irish

As far as I'm concerned they can take St Patrick's day and sell it for scrap.

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson

Dad says because you hate being Irish

Elias "Eli" Thompson

I love being Irish. What I hate is the yearly display of crying, arguing and public drunkenness that goes with it.

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson

Centuries of loss. We're a sorrowful people.

Elias "Eli" Thompson

Maybe it will snow.

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson

Boardwalk Empire S01e05

Optimism

That is a problem for future Homer. Man I don't envy that guy.

Homer Simpson, Simpson S22E03

Initation to CSI

I think every new hire should experience an autopsy their first night.

Jim Brass CSI S01E01

Nuit Blanche 2010

The Balloon Art of Menace


The Street Level, (truck sized) Light-Brite


The Hanging Suit (body?) in in Gym with the video screens of Chandeliers


The Shadow Box of Parkdale



The Giant Metal Pine Cone


The Burning Giant Metal Pine Cone


The Swinging Fender (Audience Participation encouraged)

Philosophers

He thought. Fucking Aristotle.

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson
dealing with dumb underlings,
Boardwalk Empire S01e03

What's "motherfucker mean?

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson

I suppose its a schwarzer word.

Chauffeur

Boardwalk Empire S01e03

Funerals to Serial Killers

So this how normal people do it.
No hefty bags
No diesel fumes

Dexter, Dexter S05E01

Dead Thoughts

Nothing like walking up on a crime scene. I'm going to miss that when I retire.

Sgt Jesse Longford
Detroit 187 S01E01

Some other thoughts on Detroit 187

• Language and odd American TV laws: I have been watching so many cable show lately that actual bleeping of "bad" words is more than a little juvenile. It is difficult for a crime drama to avoid the F word because ill bred criminals swear. The Law & Orders do so with middle class preps. The CSIs do so by focusing on the messy aftermath of death and the nerdy lab geeks. At this point it hard to take seriously a non-cable drama from the US.
  
• CNN effect: Each murder is given a cute name. Locations and characters are named. Subtitles have often been described as being too onerous for average movie goers however descriptive captions can work as a dramatic device.
• Isolating with technology: Fitch, the Michael Imperioli character, mainly talks with his partner by cellphone.
• Detroit the New Beirut: the show is filmed on location in such a way to make Detroit both empty and decaying, the end result of bad government, incompetent capitalism, population decline and malign neglect.
• The Ironic Death, retirony, look it up on TV Tropes.
  

City of Narrowing Horizons

Detroit Michigan
Birthplace of Motown
And once the heart of the automobile industry
Now It has one of the highest murder rates in the country
For The Men and Women
Of Detroit's Homicide unit
Every Life Counts
Every Murder tells a story

Intro to Detroit 187 S01E01

Quotes from Terriers S01E02

As a rule I don't like getting my ass kicked for free.

Hank Dolworth
expressing the motto for all unlicensed PIs,
bounty hunters and other semi-professional semi-legitimate
law enforcement hangersons.

This thing itches

Britt Pollack

That because it belongs to a rich person

Hank Dolworth

Walking around at the nice part of track
in borrowed clothes from a friendly drycleaner

Terriers S01E02

A Different Space Race

Board Walk Empire: 1st Impressions

Opening Credits: someone is channeling Magritte.

The evil organization The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the one group more responsible for more organized crime in the 20's then any other.

"And he he took the loaves and fishes, looked at his disciples and said: fuck it we're going into the whisky business."

L. McCoy front line bootlegger
mangling Matthew15:36
in Boardwalk Empire S01E01

"You know who dies for their country, fucking rubes that's who."

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, Patriot

False Comeback to all Dissidents

You could have lived a perfectly normal life if you were just willing to live a perfectly normal life.

Q to Dissident Q Star Trek Voyager

Odd Definition of Loyalty / Treason Among America's "Civil Rights Community"

I was listening to NPR when the when the subject of Ernest Withers, a photographer who helped the police with their inquiries, came up. Julian Bond has these varied reactions on today's Talk of the Nation.

When I first heard about this, of course I was horrified. I spent my younger years in a political culture that thought informers were the lowest form of life, and to hear that this man who is so respected for his photography...

...So he was so well-known and so honored. This is a blot on his reputation if true. And I have no doubt it's true.

There is a world of difference between helping an arm of your government for a couple of years and being a communist in the time of Stalin. Paul Robeson was life long communist. The Wikipedia page on Robeson and Communism has this chilling passage.

Historical Context

Robeson adored Stalin, even though Stalin had countless people murdered, including some who Robeson had considered friends. That's the context. The end.

War By Youth

Most armies most of the time grow old in peace and young in war.

Sport as Life

Most players don't get the perfect ending. They spend their last couple of years hurt, injured.

Former pro prospect
now gigolo Ray Decker
Hung S02E08

Sport is like life, tragedy.

Don't Bother The Angry

screen capture from Men in Black II

Steam Punk Photography

slashdot's recent poll, My Camera is..., is a little dismissive about non pixel based photography.

Thought Free Job

As you like remind me all the time, I'm not paid to think.

Britt Pollack

Terriers S01E01

Expanding Your Vocabulary Causes Questions

Since when did you get so jaundiced?

Hank Dolworth.

Since when did you start using the words jaundice?

Britt Pollack

Terriers S01E01

Man's Best Friend

Hey, hey, what are doing with him.

Britt Pollack.

I need a partner who can keep up mentally

Hank Dolworth.

Unlicensed private investigators talking
about an abducted dog on Terriers S01E01

Gold Rush Town

A gold rush ghost town is a place that was drunk for 5 years a century long hangover ago.

Character in a recent dream

Haikuized

Gold rush ghost town a
Place 5 years drunk, a century
Long hangover Ago

Character in a recent dream

The Kitchen as Workshop

The Tool Cabinet

The Work Bench

This is from a German kitchen equipment company bulthaup (sic). On Dwell, a design blog, one of their kitchens is referred as costing as much as a small house. Still it is in interesting concept may be picked up by others in the future.

Freight Elevator To a View

"Family" Television

"I think God gives us children so death won't be quite a disappointment."

Evelyn Harper, Two and a Half Men S03E07

"I'm a Doctor, not..." Blog Fodder

On Memory Alpha is an article on I'm a doctor, not a.... This video is an edited together sequence of this same catch used over and over again. This is an appropriate video from some one called SuperTrekNerd.

Patents, Copyrights and Technological Stagnation

Here, James Watt: Monopolist, is an interesting account of James Watt's legal fight to prevent the use and technological advancement of steam engines. It is on a website devoted to the "Austrian School" of economics. It points out that a patent give to James Watt leading to him focusing more on remunerative patent lawsuits that actual construction and sale of steam engines.

The article was cited in a discussion on slashdot on the British intending to focus more selling music then pointless legal wrangling, UK Music Industry Calls For Truce With Technology.

Law Enforcement Catch and Release

From Texas there is a story of immigration enforcement (ICE) being loath to arrest employers, Audits: ICE isn't cracking down on illegal immigrant employers. This is odd because the Americans already have that deal corporations who re-offend as corporations with more one employee in more than office committing the same range of crimes. The companies could be charged under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Unfortunately this law is primarily applied against criminal owned corporations instead of also criminal corporations. There seems to be a difficulty in recognizing corrupt organizations when they're not racketeer influenced.

This piece of news reinforces my belief that illegal immigration is a subsidy for bad employers. That there are also criminal employers who skate by makes them worse not better.

As an aside in The Sopranos the character Dr Melfi commented she thought RICO was a real person from the way Tony was constantly complaining about it/him.