Predicting the Future

CPUs and GPUs in the next ten years

"Today’s CPUs have already reached higher heat density than a nuclear reactor, and maintaining Moore’s Law will be a considerable challenge once five nanometer gates are achieved.

The Itanium architecture was conceived two decades ago as insurance against that inevitable day...

Unfortunately, the compiler technology to pull this off did not even exist when Intel and HP began the project"

A gift from the past, part 1

For me, access to the internet around the early part of the decade made TV in general, and Cartoon Network in particular, one of those things that fell by the wayside. But just recently I found something that was not in my teenage subconsciousness: Justice League.

When confront with this artifact of a past era it is difficult to say what effect it would have had if I watched it back then, but I definitely appreciate watching the show now. Perhaps I am just becoming capable of appreciating these things.

The most surprising part is how much I enjoyed watching a series that is almost a decade old, and with decent - not great - animation. It wasn't a breakthrough in technique by any means, but the story telling is quite compelling.

When I think back on what meant so much to me as a child, as a teenager, and even as short a while back as one year ago, I can comfortably say I have come to ridicule many of them. This is somewhat of a reversal.

The series is well written with some surprising characters. In watching the Justice League I've gain a sense of appreciation for the American canonical superhero characters who always uphold the same ideals, and sometimes, fight the same supervillains. In the past I've mocked this aspect of DC comics as stagnant, preferring instead the more fast paced anime (perhaps I would not have appreciated this back then after all). But as time passed, many of these new animes felt hollow - because style is no substitue for substance. And plus, one can only withstand so much the confused philosophical meanderings and misogyny of their 'autuers'.

What came across as uplifting in Justice League is the exploration of themes such as love, redemption and renewal amidst the backdrop of characters that we thought we knew. And of some surreal existentialist themes...

(to be continued...)

France, or what's left of it, in Africa

Nodding and Winking

'...we maintain the fiction of our "presence" and endorse the course of events we no longer determine.'

A poet

Interview with Imtiaz Dharker

"And you are as God made you, beautiful
And you are as God made you, unexpected"

Post-colonialism in Dune

basti: It's interesting. I am half-watching the SciFi channel version of ‘Dune.’ There are certan elements they stress that the Lynch version does not.

Like, for example, they stress how kind the Atreides are to the natives. This is meant to be understood directly. Like, that they are generous, benevolent rulers. But I think there is a lot of room for a different interpretation. The movie's attempts to construct this interpretation are faulty - it's just not that well done.

So it's possible to look at this the other way. That these foreigners come in with all of these high-minded ideals about social equality and wontonly disrupt the native culture without any real care for its long-term health.

They show up, dismantle all of these old customs overnight, but there is no real, lasting attempts at building a better society. Just these token gestures.

This, I think, is interesting, because the original Dune does not take this approach at all. Only the 2000 version does, which seems very telling of the intended audience and the preconceptions of the writers. There is this additional burden for the writers to portray the colonial masters as benevolent, but it always takes this very apologetic stance. And the stance seems very hollow. Whereas Lynch seems to have had no need to address this at all.

Diary of an EVE Industrialist, Part 6

Just how unequal is EVE's hyper-capitalistic universe? Apparently, not so unequal than our own.

I remember a while a go, someone calculated the average income of a surface dweller in EVE based the on the price of a dinner meal in one of the official EVE chronicles. The figure came out to be 4 million ISK (Interstellar Kredits) per year.

Well, here are some back of the napkin calculations. To put the 'average' income into perspective, the income of a capsuler, an EVE pilot, is a good 20 million ISK, per hour. Let's take the U.S. as a basis of comparison. The average U.S. income is $33,000 per year. That means, for the U.S. to reach that level of wealth disparity, there needs to be people who are earning $165,000 per hour, or, $1,446,225,000 a year.

According to Forbes, there are 793 identified billionaires in the world with an average net worth of $3 billion each. The yearly income of a capsuler in EVE is half the networth of the average richest people on a 2009 basis.

Consider that the "lifespan" (average subscription month) in EVE is 8 month, the networth of the richest people in EVE are in the same range as the richest people on Earth. Since the average number of EVE capsuler residents is 50K (I use this because EVE recently reached this peak number, with room for future growth) against a background of untold billions on the surface of planets. I have to assume that ratio is not so different from 793 out of 7 billion people. Looking at it that way, the stratification of the richest people in EVE are similar to the wealth divide of this era.

They might as well call it...

There Will Be Time Enough for Love

Private, Public

One of my friends was annoyed by the inanity of some people's advice. Specifically, the advice to "just be yourself" that, although maybe sound at its core, comes across so facile as to be irresponsible. Obviously, people are themselves, and if they don't have a problem as they are then there would be no need for advice.

The problem is not so much with being yourself as with its presentation.

My friend illustrates this dilemma by the way of bringing up a person our age who told everyone how she felt as though she is a child of the 1950s, and watching shows like Mad Men fills her with a sense of nostalgia. Knowing me, my friend said I would have ridiculed her, on the ground that she romanticized the time period and so on, and it would have made me a misanthrope.

I can see both happening, one as the consequence of the other so I didn't disagree. But even our own actions are capable of betraying our underlying beliefs. My friend said what is readily lost in translation in my immediate reaction is my sense of wonder of the contemporary era, and my optimism in man's progress. Those would have been closer to my personality.

Our outward presentation is thought to be set in stone, immutable (but a devastating refutation to this thesis is that since this post's publication, I've edited it at least fifteen times). Often, a person must reconcile the past with the present. This is where we have problem with presenting ourselves. A moment in time against an eternity of changes.

I don't believe there is a simple advice to the issue of self presentation. And my friend said mastery of it is not where we begin, and perhaps not where we will ever reach. 12/29/2009

Seventeen Moments of Spring

Actor who immortalised Soviet spy Stirlitz dies at 81

Wheat

The production value of Chinese movies have gotten better. I Just watched Wheat, a rather pedestrian (it has been a disappointing year for Chinese cinema) historical drama. Of the few things that felt memorable was choreography of the environment, centering around a bend in the river as the day and weather changes. There is also a hint of trending toward realism in the way details are captured, and also understanding of the grimness of the historical subject. Could this mean the general taste, and therefore the psyche of the Chinese people are also changing? In encountering these small details, I only have an instinctual feeling.

Time will tell.

Lu Xun's outspoken grandson

Interview with Zhou Lingfei from Danwei on Vimeo.

In Dreadful Deeds Fearless

the original...

O Prince, O Chief of many throned Powers
That led the embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King,
And put to proof his supremecy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance or fate;

Now playing Solium Infernum

Catching up on reading

Who Benefits from Equality

Khrushchev and the birth of the modern media riot

1984 Miner's Strike

Gravity's Rainbow and more recent Pynchon stories

Zhivago's children

Marquez

Weber

Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Honor Killing

a perverse tribute to the social power of fantasy

The rules of the game

Chancery rules

To the layman, nevertheless, those are diplomatic niceties. The fundamental purpose of the book is serious: humans are a contentious and destructive species and so the opportunities for peaceful interaction must be maximized. Here is an essential aid to doing so at the highest levels of professional effectiveness.

The American Dream

11:47 AM basti: ...it's all about this transition to upper middle class success and this American dream of being successful and rich and having a great job but not having to ever think much about anything.

Tango

me: tango...

basti: you can't do it if you're american
sorry
too nouveau

me: what do you mean too nouveau?

basti: you need actual old world cred to pull it off
otherwise, it's just consumer choice and appropriation

me: ...what's the implication?

basti: It's a nasty one.

me: explain

basti: Authenticity.

me: so what do those of us who grew up in the intersection of cultures say to ourselves? at which point can we say we are 'authentic'?

basti: I don't know.

me: it's an important question no?
authenticity could be no more than a set of caricatures

basti: That's why I said it was a nasty implication.
I think the whole obsession with authenticity is self-delusion.

me: why is that?

basti: What does it really mean?

me: aside from the phenomenon that it is what seems to be most valued...

basti: It has illusory value.
And it's not something I put a lot of time or effort into worrying about.

The Frankfort Book Mess

... in Europe

The decision to name China as the guest country of the 2009 Book Fair made the clash of the economic-superpower-China and the repressive-Communist-regime China virtually inevitable. Both images are simplistic and little more than caricatures of the complexities embodied by contemporary China. It is discomforting to see, then, how easily an otherwise well-informed European public could be taken hostage by images so crude and superficial.

Informed observers, including those from the academic community, have tried for years to emphasize the diversity of contemporary China and the complexity of its cultural sphere, but as the tumultuous symposium shows, they seem to have made little headway in communicating this more nuanced understanding to the public at large, which all too readily looks at China through the lens of Stalinist Eastern Germany.

...the conceptualization of the event reads like a public demonstration of a European brand of tolerance and dialogue that never took place. A stage-managed confrontation of different opinions has little to do with the commitment to nuance and mutual respect that real dialogue requires.

The public is unlikely to be served any better unless decision makers such as those in charge of the Book Fair take into serious account the significant amount of expertise on China that is available in Europe, and develop a more nuanced understanding of China that goes beyond the economic-powerhouse and repressive-Communist-regime dichotomy.

Aganjú

Te esperei na lua crescer
Ví cadeira boa sentei
Espirrei na tua gripei
Por ficar ao léo resfriei

Você me agradou me acertou
Me miseravou, me aqueceu
Me rasgou a roupa e valeu
E jurou conversas de deus

Aganjú

Quem sabe a labuta quitar
Sabe o trabalho que dá
Batalhar o pão e trazer
Para a casa o sobreviver

Encontrei na rua a questão
Cem por cento a falta de chão
Vou rezar prá nunca perder
Essa estrutura que é você

Aganjú

The Two Gilbertos

Jun 24

5:55 PM
basti: Bebel Gilberto is pretty good.
I haven't listened to her stuff in a while.
But there is some nice vocalisation here.

me: you mean Astrud?

basti: No, Bebel
Astrud has much less polished vocalisation than Bebel.

me: yes, but it is intentional
English is not Astrud's native tongue

5:57 PM
basti:
I think that she just didn't undergo the same degree of formal training.
The result, of course, is spectacular.
But even in Portuguese, her vocalisation is less polished.

me: and you get all these terrible anime song tracks try to imitate her (Astrud's) style (a la "Fly Me to the Moon" of Evangelion horridness)

basti: Japanese pop music often has too much polish.
It is too formalised.
It lacks texture and genuineness.

But ‘Tanto Tempo’ and ‘Aganjú’ are very beautiful songs.
(‘Tanto Tempo’ benefits from the contribution of Amon Tobin.)

The Masters of Illusion

The great management consultancy swindle

It was 1988, and I was just finishing a D.Phil at Oxford University on the topic of "Nietzsche and German Idealism". The annual recruiting season had long since gone. My life savings had dwindled into three digits. It came to me in a pub, over a game of pool. I was losing badly to a pair of undergraduates who had recently received offers from a prestigious management consulting firm. They were about 22-years-old; I was going on 26. As I gazed at the pool balls ricocheting around the table, it hit me that, instead of spending the next year watching daytime TV, I too, could earn some ready cash by offering strategy tips to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

The more I thought about it, the grander it seemed. The next morning, I sent out 10 CVs. One ended up in the hands of the founding partner of a small and enlightened consultancy firm based in New York. I landed the job by providing a credible response to this question: How many pubs are there in Great Britain? The purpose of that question, I realised after the interview, was to see how easily I could talk about a subject of which I knew almost nothing, on the basis of facts that were almost entirely fictional. It was an excellent introduction to management consulting.

Drum playing robot

Something sublime

¡Ay! En Chiclana me crié;
que me busquen en Chiclana
si me llegara a perder.

Los arroyos y las fuentes
no quieren mezclar sus aguas
con mis lágrimas ardientes.

Si porque no tengo madre,
vienes a buscarme a casa,
anda y búscame en la calle.

Que me dijo mi madre
que no me fiara
ni de tus ojos, que miran traidores,
ni de tus palabras.

Something silly

A Recent History of...

CDOs

Fool’s Gold begins in a conference room in Nice in spring 2005. Tett admits that at that point she was baffled by the technical language – ‘Gaussian copula’, ‘attachment point’, ‘delta hedging’ – used by the participants. However, before joining the FT she had conducted fieldwork in Soviet Tajikistan for a PhD in social anthropology, and the ethnographer in her was now reawakened. The conference reminded her of a Tajik wedding. Those attending it were forging social links and celebrating a tacit world-view – in this case, one in which ‘it was perfectly valid to discuss money in abstract, mathematical, ultra-complex terms, without any reference to tangible human beings.’

"I don't know," she said rather artlessly, hinting at a personal depth that is perhaps too painful to understand.

Future Sublime

A Review of "To-Day and To-Morrow"

Most of the authors were British, but covered world civilization, culture and history, and world politics. They were largely experts in their fields, rather than men and women of letters. But in trying to visualize the future they found themselves writing fiction, and often science fiction, in the manner of H. G. Wells, to whom many of them inevitably refer. Their futurology thus represents another kind of interface between science and humanities, in that it can be seen as apply-inthe methods of speculative fiction to scientific or sociological fact.

A deeper look into Eileen Chang through Roland Soong

Ace British social parody

9/5/2009 I haven't been able to watch the youtube version since late August, BBC enforcing its copyright by pulling the video has put another hole in the cultural subconsciousness

Even more compound nouns

German language adds 5,000 words

Turkey admits to 'genocide'! The world dies of shock

Turkey admits to 'genocide'! The world dies of shock.

Turkey, the paragon of ethnic relations, finally opens to admissions of genocide... in another country.

As well.... Turkish TV shows coup d’etat in Honduras, including scenes of the Honduras military confronting Honduran protesters, as well as the Honduran president-in-exile’s airplane and its attempt to land in the capitol and pass them off completely as footage of race riots in China.

Tax Havens

Terribly funny

Then you have the ‘big four’ accountancy firms – KPMG, Ernst and Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte – whose expertise is indispensable for anyone hoping to diminish their tax exposure. Writing in an Irish magazine, a KPMG partner spelled out the mindset:

A worrying tendency seems to have emerged among external stakeholders to make ‘moral’ judgements about tax planning and to expect companies to manage their tax affairs in a ‘moral’ way . . . Let’s be clear about this. Tax is a cost to business. As with any other cost, the board members owe their shareholders a duty to manage that cost by the legal means afforded to them.

KPMG gave us a sense of its attitude to legality when it paid a fine of $456m in the US for ‘designing, marketing and implementing illegal tax shelters’. The big four have now set up a body to regulate themselves called the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Not only do the accountancy firms appoint representatives to the IASB’s committees, they actually fund it themselves – through a foundation registered in a tax haven.

Trine

Anyone want to play co-op?

Silent Hill Origins: O.R.T.

Dwarf Fortress

Doing some reading on the DX

Got my Kindle DX. The form fact is perfect, but it feels a bit heavy.

PDF support is a bit botched. You can't zoom in on the PDFs, only rotate them to enlarge the text.

A very neat touch. When the device goes to sleep/turned off, a screensaver goes up with a picture and name of a great author.

Written out of Revenge

Written out of Revenge

Civil war is an unpleasant business and the story that unfolds in the letters and diaries of Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, the Canadian diplomat with whom she was in love for more than thirty years, is not a happy one. This was not so much what the publishers are pleased to call on the dust jacket ‘the love affair of a lifetime’, more like a fight to the death. Not that theirs was a tempestuous relationship in the usual sense. There were occasional scenes and some quarrels, but not, apparently, many. The struggle was between two complex and internally divided natures at war with themselves as much as with each other and constrained by circumstances largely of their own making. After her death Ritchie destroyed his letters to Bowen and some of hers to him. We are left, therefore, with her remaining letters and his diaries: she talks to him and he talks to himself. Like two soliloquists just within earshot of one another they seem sometimes to fall into dialogue and at others to be taking part in completely different dramas.

Let's Talk about 6-4

The tide of cultural war must be turned and equilibrium must be re-established so that we can look at the present with a fresh set of eyes.

West miscasts Tiananmen protesters

To the extent that the protests were directed at abuses of an existing system by an emerging elite, they were motivated more by outrage at the betrayal of socialist ideals than by aspirations for a new system. The mood in the square was at least as much conservative as it was activist.

Such arguments may seem arcane two decades later. But, in my view, they are keenly relevant. The styling of Tiananmen as a pro-democracy movement helped to miscast the west’s narrative on China’s past and future.

Not Everything is About Democracy

The Banks

It's Finished

In September 2008, the Big Four bank Lloyds bought HBOS, after its boss, Victor Blank – this is the part you couldn’t make up – bumped into Gordon Brown at a drinks party and got him to give an assurance that a takeover would not be referred to the monopolies commission.

Most of us have had a few drinks at a party and done something embarrassing, usually along the lines of I’ve-always-fancied-you-isn’t-it-time-we-did-something-about-it, but let’s take comfort in the following truth: none of us has ever done anything as embarrassing as buying HBOS.

Summer 78 (instrumental)

Sloppy journalism

I Think You Forgot to Mention Tiananmen…

"So why did The Austrialian insist on peppering their story with a hearty dose of Tiananmen when it wasn’t necessary (the China Digital Times was able to report the same story without resorting to such misleading comparisons)? Well, Tiananmen attracts readers because it’s something they know, or think they know. It’s exciting, violent, and lets most Westerners bask in a glow of superiority, shaking their heads as they read and wondering when the Chinese people will “wake up” and overthrown the brutal CCP."

Rearrangement

The past two years have been good. Friends were made and regrets shared. Memories deconstructed and the truth of the moment recovered...

Much of how we think of ourselves depends on the mood that we are in, and what we choose to write depends a lot on who reads and who we wish would read what we write.

Recently I thought about how the blog needs to change, one thing that I wanted for sure is that some sort of maintenance. That particular thought didn't change much regardless of what and how I felt in the span of the past couple of months.

And so it has been done! the tags rearranged, the more egregiously bad grammar corrected. Posts that had lived beyond their purpose have been archived.

High finance in the Islamic world

Two in a series.

The Money that Prays
Islam and the Armies of Mammon

The Legacy of Kain

I just got around to reading Jenny Turner's humorous self-conscious reflection on Twilight. What happened all of a sudden to vampire protagonists who are bitter and selfish anti-heroes? In other words those who have style, and nothing like their ersatz contemporary brethren?

The archetypal vampire I had in mind is Kain in the first Blood Omen.



"And so I left, cold of heart and soul. Forced to the road and the long, bitter night."

http://www.nosgoth.net/Blood_Omen/dialogue/page1.htm

"Mais c'est étrange. Le soleil et la mort, voyagent ensemble..."

EVE Online - It Ends Here

The endless horizons and cold beauty of space.

Eileen Chang's fractured legacy

Might as well catch up on some reading since there is no work today.

Eileen Chang and Hu Lancheng

The question I had after reading the article is what are the agendas of contemporary non-mainland Chinese writers anyway? (Other than unconsciously going around parading fatalism as a 'universal insight')

Water in the car

There is water in my car... fantastic! I always wanted one of those flash floods...

"Red's Dream Guards" (《红》的梦卫兵) anyone?

Brand Fundamentalists and Rebels with a Parody

Gurkhas

11:30 PM

me: Gurkhas fight for the Crown dude, not the Légion Étrangère

basti: They fight for FFL, too. Though I'd rather fight for the crown than the republic, myself. I'd rather die for a man of divine patronage than some nasty politician. They are both going to send me into danger for some secretly selfish reason. I'd rather have the pretense of religion on my mind than a depressing realisation of democratic executive malfeasance. Thankfully, my birth nation has yet to reject its colonial past. But, unfortunately, the royalty are all completely useless.

While talking about destiny...

9:57 PM
V: a feeling of destiny is terrible
what a miserable existence

me: a life without purpose is miserable

V: sure
but these two do not span the space of all lives
there is a very healthy and pleasant middle ground between living under the burden of some oppressive, nationalistic destiny and living as an empty, nihilist

me: yes, I never said the destiny is oppressive

V: a lot of it seems to come out that way
like all these myths of japanese and korean exceptionalism
i think the west has a strong drive for positive self-improvement
i think this results in people living very contented and fulfilling lives

me: what is that drive?

V: i don't knko0w

me: many have said it originated from its religion

V: at some point, yes
But I don't think modern, American manifestations of organised religion have any aspect of real self-improvement.
Those movements have been poisoned by politics.
It's all a mess of identity and reactionism and political machinations.

me: so what is the wellspring of the west's contemporary culture?

V: Wasn't the Enlightenment particular in its appeal to more rational, humanistic modes?
Like, without some explicit religious motiviation.
I do not deny that religion can be a powerful force, and, as I said before, I really do enjoy stories about its transformative effects.
Like the Bible stories I have shared with you - I really get a lot of inspiration from some of these.

me: I've come to understand the enlightenment and liberal humanism as a gradual evolution of science, commerce, government, and philosophy when they are mobilized toward improving and extending human life
but much of that original impetus has vanished

V: I think that people in the US, for all of their angst, are often still many times better off than people elsewhere.
It was interesting, though - I was reading this blog of this TW girl I barely know, and it almost had developmental and social angst as an aesthetic.

me: pretty pedestrian these days

V: Yeah, but it's particular manifestation here was interesting.

V: The author was talking about this frustration in building herself into some idealisation of (Western) modernity, but my impression of her in person is that this was just purely an aesthetic.

It's true that we already see a lot of sad poets. But here, it was, like, extending this to less emotional and more ideological issues. Like, feminist angst as an aesthetic. Talking about wanting to be a professional woman and wanting to develop ones self along these related axis but as just a stance or appeal to some social expectation. As though these expressions were just appeasing some sense that that's what you're supposed to want and be like. But there is no real substance, much less follow-through, to either the expression or the social expectation.

It's like - all of these modernisation complaints we may level against TW - if these had then become incorporated into the TW psyche as self-excoriations, but merely as an affected aesthetic.

More Love, More Film Noir

Lifespan and social status

"We don't have to accept that there will always going to be social hierarchies and therefore there is always going to be status differences in health."

Putting the past behind

11:16 PM

basti: you also probably need to free yourself from your own history. Like that quote from the “18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.”

me: which says what?

basti: Die Tradition aller toten Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alb auf dem Gehirne der Lebenden. History of past generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living.

basti: I think your sense of history tortures you unnecessarily... I don't know why you let it, and I suspect much of this is a result of a poorer interpretation of history. But a constant retardant is this recognition of your past enthusiasm and ambition. When you were, like, five. And there are also probably many issues stemming from this idealisation of this time period.

basti: I barely remember anything of myself at that age. I do recall myself at older ages, and I think it's been mostly a progress of growth since then.

me: our experiences shape our character

basti: There are also biological differences. But, yes, of course. But I think modern culture is very optimistic. We hope that our experiences should not inhibit us from leading the fullest of lives. The individual has so much value.
We don't tend to repeat these old stories of the damaged and disposable victim.
(Except maybe, like, “Dexter.”) Certainly not the, ‘Oops! Five years old, and I just lost my ambition. Well, that's it for my life!’

basti: Maybe you're just spoilt.

me: possibly. what is the cure for that? aside from backbreaking manual labor

basti: I don't know what the cure for being spoilt is.

Computer upgrade March 2009

New specs:
Intel Core i7 920
Intel X25-M SSD
Intel BOXDX58SO Motherboard
6GB DDR3 SDRAM
Silverstone Element ST60EF
Prolimatech Megahalem Heatsink
Hiper Osiris mid-tower case
Raedon HD 4870 Vapor-X Cooling 2GB GDDR5

Old specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo e6600
Intel D975XBX
an assortment of HDs
4GB DDR2 RAM
SeaSonic S12-600
Zalman something heatsink
Antec Sonata mid-tower case

The old computer cost about $800 amortized over 2.5 years, not bad...

What hasn't changed?
Dell 2408 WFP (great ergonomics, DisplayPort)
8800GTS R.I.P. May 2009
Xi-Fi Pro soundcard
300GB VelociRaptor

Dustbin of history:
Graphics cards more than $350

False economies - choosing efficiency over power. Computing power drives the need for energy efficiency, not the other way around.

Rehman Baba

Why I’m not dying, Of the cruelty of this age

"Pakistan Taliban blew up the tomb of the revered 17th century Pashtun poet and Sufi saint Rehman Baba near Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province on March 5"

E.U. Wasting Away in Hooverville

Czech PM attacks Obama spending

And Others in the U.S. Wasting Away in Hooverville

Debunking third-world myths

...with the best stats you've ever seen

This is the way the Internet ends: not with a bang, but DPI - Ars Technica

This is the way the Internet ends: not with a bang, but DPI - Ars Technica

Economic Destiny of Nations

A Summary of Japan's post-war growth and decline, cumulating in its lost decade:

"A steady-state capitalism in which markets, technology and productivity all stagnate is hard to imagine – although present-day Japan may be coming close. But frontiers, or business opportunities, come in many forms that are often hard to spot ahead of one’s rivals. Nevertheless, Ikeda, a former financial bureaucrat, saw open frontiers beckoning to Japan from all points of the social and political compass when he announced his income-doubling scheme in 1960, by which year Japan had moved from the ravages of its own futile wars to the sunlit security of being the key Cold War ally of the US, the world’s richest and most powerful nation....

The frontiers beckoning so invitingly to the Japanese of the 1960s are now either closed, closing, or in question."

Apocrypha

Empty Streets

More Blues

Peking Opera Blues 刀马旦

Classic

Quite a treat if you like the HK style of comedy, which is slapstick and absurd. I love it.

HK TV dramas 1

Never thought one day I would start pimping for HK serial dramas. But A Step Into the Past is funny enough to merit an entry. What? are you expecting a synopsis or something? That would defeat the whole purpose.

My overall critique of HK dramas in general is the film stock used. Given the amount of attention and details going into costumes, filming the series with a stock that preserve the colors would add much to the production values. Although I could see how more vibrant colors would detract from the historic aspect of dramas in general. Both are artistic directions that I'm ambivalent about.

Reason and Imagination

"The leading group of 1930s poets, other perhaps than Empson, admired technology (all those pylons in poems), but, unlike the Romantics, seem to have had no sense of living in an era of scientific wonders."

The interwar years in general, Needham in particular and China peripherally.

Hobsbawm's description of the 1930s era inadvertently describes a feeling that I can't quite put my finger on, and that is whether Chinese language and culture is a determinism, and of science in particular.

If we look, even now, majority of (public) Chinese intellectuals (as measured in the audibility of their opinions and ability to stir debate) are not engaged in the sciences but in the arts. This is the Chinese version of the gap between reason and imagination that Hobsbawm writes of interwar Cambridge. Except in China's case, the gulf has yet to be bridged...

Progress

Summary of the progress of internet and freedom of speech in China

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The guilt of being fantastic

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3:38 AM basti:
I just woke up with this story idea: the guilt of being fantastic..

I was thinking about political frustration on the part of the liberal mass in this country and how their attempts at political expression are subordinate to their party's tendency to political expedience. For example, opposition to the Middle East conflict. A very large number of voters oppose it on moral, ideological grounds, and they see that they have only a single political choice in the system, no other. But the political situation limits the ability of this party to provide substantive objections. The best the party can do is object on empirical rather than theoretical grounds that mismanagement and inefficiency are the problem; nothing about moral violations.

Well the story idea is something about the guilt of someone who is fantastic. What if the conflict had been executed fantastically but with great tragedy morally? A cynical observer of American politics would suggest that opposition to the conflict would then be marginalized. What if this person in the story is a personification of this… someone who is so fantastic at everything he does that he begins to lose track of substantive ideological objection, because it stops having practical meaning to him.

And maybe the guilt from this…

We want our independence... and a U.S. passport too!

In December 2006, Lin hired Charles Camp to represent this case in the US legal system. Lin cited the fact that Japan merely gave up its power over Taiwan and the Pescadores after surrendering in World War II and that it did not return Taiwan’s sovereignty rights to China. He also said that the San Francisco Peace Treaty did not deal with the sovereignty issues of Taiwan and the Pescadores, adding that the US was still Taiwan’s principal occupying power.


And God Bless the United States of America!


Full disclosure: I am a U.S. citizen.

Dream sequence

in episode 3...

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was published in January 31, 1999. It is the only game to have invoke in me both a sense of introspection and an awareness of the sweep of time. It is less of a game than a novel and a movie combined. From the lights of its compelling narrative I saw the glimmer of an inspiring future. From the moment of the landing on Planet to The End of the Singular Sentience Era, humanity's strive and progress rages unabated. On this 10th anniversary of publication, I salute you SMAC!

Wireless, future

me: wireless is going to be one of the emerging economic frontiers, I'm excited about its prospects

basti: Yeah, I've seen this inductive power things before.
It will definitely be a luxury, but I am not sure it's such an innovation.

me: it will be a boon in manufacturing, electronics and drive new consumer demand

basti: You still have to make a physical connection - it's just a qualification on what kind of connection that is.

me: yes, there only needs to be one physical connection now as oppose to say, twelve

basti: No, there are still twelve physical connections.

me: how?

basti: Well, compare wireless power to wireless networking.
Wireless networking is much more of an innovation (when it was invented, like, a billion years ago) because it means that whether two devices in a communications network can connect is no longer a function of their locations. There is no need for a physical connection at all. I can put my laptop or cordless phone at any (x,y,z) point in this entire house and still be chatting with you. Inductive power doesn't really work like that. I can't take my laptop out onto the patio and have it powered there. I need to stick it on charging surface. So, while I no longer have to fumble around with cords and the very precise physical action of connecting the male power adapter to my laptop's female AC input, I still have some restrictions on where I can place my laptop if I want it charged.
I'm trading a precise action of "male->female connector" for a less precise action of "place on mat." But I'm still stuck to that mat. Whether I receive power is still a function of the location of my laptop - it's just not nearly as constrained as before. Do you see what I mean?

me: yes

basti: I'm just moving up in the classes of connectors from the simpler "male-female" style to a much more flexible "contact point" style. This can provide a lot of luxury, but it's not terrible groundbreaking.

me: sure, and it will drive innovations in industrial design. That is why I'm optimistic about its economic impacts

basti: Yeah, definitely. But you do realise this is nothing in comparison to what we would see with consumer-grade true wireless power. That would truly be monumental.
The effects might seem kind of minor, but, man, that coupled with cheap energy, and we'd really be living in the future.

me: we will also be dosed with electromagnetic radiation

basti: Yes, but we already are. EM radiation sounds scary, 'cause it has the word radiation in it, but the term radiation in this sense does not mean alpha or gamma decay; it refers to the dispersal mechanism. It "radiates." Sitting in a room with a lightbulb on exposes us to electromagnetic radiation. As does going out in the sun.
However, one is far more damaging than the other, which suggestions that the problem isn't just that it's EM radiation, but that there is some qualifying aspect to it. e.g., UV rays and radicalising, &c. Anyway, I have no idea how consumer-grade wireless power would even work.

me: anyways, wouldn't it give great satisfaction to be working on those technologies that would bring society into the future? Instead of analyzing human's pettiness, endlessly

basti: Is that really what we do?

me: yes, and in doing so we try to free ourselves of this pettiness

basti: Yeah, that's good. Better than some damn boring power engineering crap.
I prefer the analytical path, really. What would you suggest?

me: whichever that makes the more money and gives more spare time

basti: ha, sinecure

me: honestly, something that would be continuously challenging. I imagine the power engineers would be like "Ok, what now?" after they introduce wireless power

basti: Well, it would be a long, long path to just that. Like, I could just as well become a doctor with the intent of curing cancer.

From the people who brought you the Minotaur China Shop.

Blush.

Some thoughts

11:00 AM basti: haha
This is almost dramatic.
Like, there is so much pessimism about the future of the nation, with this being held up as a chance for a return to past greatness.
But it doesn't even try.
And it's obviously trying to try.

A Song of Ice and Fire in a Chinese Wiki

冰与火之歌

　　《冰与火之歌》系列
　　共七部：
　　第一部《权力的游戏》（A Game Of Thrones）　
　　第二部《列王的纷争》（A Clash Of Kings）
　　第三部《冰雨的风暴》（A Storm Of Swords）
　　第四部《群鸦的盛宴》（A Feast Of Crows）
　　第五部《魔龙的狂舞》（Dance with Dragons)
　　第六部《凛冬的寒风》（The Wind of Winter）
　　第七部《春晓的梦想》（A Dream of Spring）(原先为 A Time for Wolves「奔狼的年代」)

　　作者已经完成并出版的为前四部，其中前四部已经由重庆出版社引进发行，翻译用心，质量非常优秀。
外传 《邓肯与伊戈》 系列
《雇用骑士》（The Hedge Knight）
《效忠剑士》（The Sworn Sword）

Translation on the titles have minor variations. 《权力的游戏》 is "A Game of Power" and 《冰雨的风暴》 is literally "A Storm of Icy Rain".

My take on the variations: the term 'power' is more salient to a Chinese audience. Struggle for the throne (singular) in Chinese historiography often meant a rebellion caused by grass roots discontent, natural disasters befalling the populace that nevertheless is perceived as a supernatural portent for dynastic change. Although the world of Westeros is on the verge of a supernatural cataclysm, it is not enough of a smoking gun for the events in the world of Ice and Fire. Hence, the story does not quite fit in the Chinese literary memory as something of a struggle for the 'throne'.

"Icy Rain"? or sleet? No idea.

"A Clash Of Kings" - see the Warring States, the Three Kingdoms, the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In short, yes, it is in the Chinese literary memory and hence would cause no dissonance.

Do you know your Middle Chinese? 你知道你的中古汉语吗？

lessons

After some intensive training this Du Fu poem should prove to be no problem, right? right?!

Anyone want to go to México?

"Anyone want to go to México?"

Grapefruit. The rush of relief that drug war violence didn't spill over from the Rio Grande. God Bless America.

Managed to pick 23 tons of grapefruit and citrus with 40 people in one day. Few people hauled off about 20 pounds of souvenir but I only felt like bringing one citrus back. And on the way to boarding a female flight attendant said that it looked lonely.


Citrus, poignantly alone

Looking forward to 2009

2008 has been an interesting year. Just the other day, I was debating whether to turn up the thermostat. Then I realized natural gas prices has fallen 25% (now it's more like 40%). Majority of the power plants, as they were, use turbine engines that burn natural gas, which means the price of natural gas directly translates into the price of electricity. So I turned the temperature up a comfortable margin (enough so that I won't have to leave my desktop on at night as a radiator).

Cost of living is going down, which means more discretionary income. Auto-makers are going bankrupt, which means 2009 is going to be a good year for buying a car as car companies try to offload their inventories, or other methods of augmenting their cash-flow (as long as their suppliers don't collapse before they do). Yes! 2009 is a year for shopping! Now just patiently waiting for the stock market to hit its trough and load up as it rebound...

Here are my moments of clarity for 2008:

Books:
Garner's Modern American Usage

Blogs:
ESWN

Literature:
The London Review of Books

Movie:
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

Language Police:
"Recital is the unsophisticated assassination of poetry."

Now Watching

彼氏彼女の事情



YOU MAY DREAM 追いかけて　素直なこの気持ち
伝えられたなら 真っ白な恋は翼になる
天使のゆびきり　叶うように

目の前を過ぎる横顔　ときめきが踊り始める
話す声　耳を傾け　またひとつあなたを知った
ほんの少し勇気だして　その瞳を見つめたい

YOU MAY DREAM 追いかけて　素直なこの気持ち
伝えられたなら 真っ白な恋は翼になる
天使のゆびきり　叶うように

Episodes 1 to 4: good
Episodes 5+: rather pointless
Episode 19: all right, so I kept watching. But the premise of post 4 episodes are stretched and good intentions forced. If I didn't know the propensity of GAINAX to run out of money, I would have said the animations in this episode were especially charming.

Politics and Economics

Can you recognize the following quote:

"...when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.."

If you can then congratulations! You have at least an awareness of the historical friction between democracy and capitalism in the United States.

What strikes me is that contemporary Chinese intellectuals lacks a particular vigor in applying the analysis of the country's current constitution and its founding intentions in formulating political theory for the state. Unless these analysis are hidden in the archives of the Central Party School somewhere, which still doesn't do anyone much good. Perhaps, reconciling the country's founding intentions with law (the constitution and institution) could go some way in easing the mental indigestion of Chinese intellectuals, who are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by advocating wholesale adoption of western institutions. And doing it with such disregards for the complexity and historic scope of China's problems that would make any disingenuous supporters of democracy in China proud.

The current problem that needs to be examined in China is, can the free market and authoritarianism co-exist?

P.S. the quote is from the dissenting opinion of Oliver Wendel Holmes in Abrams v. U.S., 1919. The interesting thing about this opinion is that Holmes in a previous decision sided with the right of the state to interfere in economic matters. Yet here he limits the state's interference in speech. This paradox between democracy and capitalism is the defining issue of American politics.

A more salient contemporary example is how the energy industry have such a strong influence on American domestic and foreign policy. Often these interests are out of step with public opinion in issues such as global warming and American intervention abroad.

Medieval credit crunch

King Edward I

"It seems that money has disappeared" said the Ricciardi, just like a modern banker complaining that everyone has stopped lending.

Lightless Day

This photo came out quite different. It was actually taken on the flight today at mid-day but the shadows caused by the intense sunlight must have occult the lens area, making it look like dusk instead.

Anyways, so I woke up at 11 and decided I was in no mood to drive. Book a flight 2 hours before departure, then threw a bunch of clothes and my EEE 901 in a bag. Three hours later, I am sitting at home in Dallas typing away. Maybe I can finally get some reading and writing done during these few days. My mind is more at ease now.

Flying is much better than the mind numbing experience of driving, and having to wait for hours on end during holiday traffic. I Need to do this more often.

Self-Deceptions of Empire by David Bromwich

All of the good that a nation can do by violence is contingent; the evil is real and palpable.

Spreading Democracy by Eric J. Hobsbawm

Although great power action may have morally or politically desirable consequences, identifying with it is perilous because the logic and methods of state action are not those of universal rights. All established states put their own interests first.

Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic Church

"In this Christmas BMJ paper, researcher Gareth Payne and his two colleagues from Cardiff investigate whether there is any substance to the intriguing urban legend that has arisen in Wales in recent times: "Every time Wales win the rugby grand slam, a Pope dies, except for 1978 when Wales were really good, and two Popes died." Wales won the Grand Slam in 2008 - so should Pope Benedict XVI be worried? "

On Vampires

I don't care much for the genre normally, but I like the gothic technological dystopia in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.



G.R.R.M.'s Fevered Dream is also excellent, although it is quite revisionist as I understand it.

Weekly Readings

What Girls Want

Lydia Lopokova

“Why does she want the red shoes? She wants to be special and she wants to be looked at. In Hans Christian Andersen’s famous tale, Karen, a peasant girl, goes barefoot in summer and in winter wears wooden clogs that rub her feet raw, but the mirror tells her she’s lovely and she thinks that wearing the red shoes will make her feel like a princess. Like selfish Heidi and tomboy Katy, Karen is a mid-19th century girl crippled by egotism. The shoes force her to dance non-stop and to display herself ‘wherever proud and vain children live’. Though it seems simply a punitive response to female narcissism, this is a Christian morality tale intended to warn against the sin of self-love. Karen is cast out of her community and her church; she has her feet hacked off, and the story ends with her repentance. What we remember, though, is not the final image of her blissful reunion with God but the red shoes, with the little feet still in them, going on dancing. Shoes were a homely and powerful symbol of status for Andersen, the son of a cobbler, a lonely, ungainly outsider. He was greedy for fame yet tormented by guilt at his success; ‘The Red Shoes’ inflicts a cruel comeuppance on exhibitionists and social climbers like himself.”


A Chance to Join the World

How to Start a Hedge Fund

Let me know if you need further advice. My rates are competitive.

Diary - Keith Gessen

On the other hand I discovered Russian (language) rap.

Further, if the target audience of your diatribe is Russian, do your cussing in Serbo-Croatian. It is close enough that they understand the necessary elements.

Film Noir

The ending

The Shield

Started The Shield marathon on Thanksgiving, on season 7 now. The Shield is pretty good for a plot driven drama, meaning person A going to places X,Y,Z, do things B,C, and D, then goes home. However, I still like thematically driven series like The Wire better, where every action aims to build a narrative, i.e. the criminalization and oppression of the economically deprived, betrayal of political promise that traps everyone in a vicious cycle, etc...

The balancing of plot and theme is difficult, The Shield does an o.k. job. Other crime related drama, for example a movie like American Gangster, is ultimately disappointing because it strives to build a narrative, but then gets stuck trying to entertain the big screen audience with bland plot base drama. Exceptionally few shows have managed to pull off both simultaneously. I'm not sure where The Shield lies on this spectrum; it has a strong conceptual element to it, yet it is always hidden in the background.

12/06 finished the series.

11:06 PM me: the popularity of the Vic character, and the setup of Aceveda as his opposite half indicates that you have the tolerance for corruption part switched. Generally, people are sympathetic to a face (i.e. Vic.), but when corruption goes up a level, responsibility is abstracted from the person responsible (aceveda) to the system, then it becomes tyranny

11:07 PM basti: Yes, but not exactly.
I am not sympathetic to their actions
I can just empathise with their plights
I can want Vic to go to gaol, but still feel sorry for him as a person

11:08 PM me: then you just have abstracted a human being on a personal level
basti: No, not really
This kind of sympathy is independent of their actions

11:09 PM For example, I have little sympathy for the criminals on the show.
Their portrayal is very one dimensional
They are objects to be hated
But I like the show, because I find the characters, who are not good people, to be sympathetic in how they are humanised

11:10 PM I mean, at the end of `Revenge of the Sith,' do you feel badly for Darth Vader?
He has become completely alienated from his family.
He has killed his wife, and he will never meet his children.
me: I didn't care, he was a bad actor
basti: He has been seduced to evil, and his best friend has tried to kill him.
EXACTLY
Bad actor and bad characte.r

11:11 PM Really, really bad actor and bad character.
But Vic isn't like this.
me: I see...
basti: Chiklis is a much, much better actor
But also, his character is humanised and three dimensional
I can have this kind of ambivalence toward him

11:12 PM I can have this combination of disgust for his corruption but sympathy for his fate
He's humanised, and humans are built to empathise
This is also a strength of the portrayal of the criminally destitute in `The Wire'

11:15 PM I mean, Bubbles is not the heroic type
He is a drug addict and a petty criminal
But his situation is sufficiently humanised that we can feel sympathetic for him
Even if many of his problems are of his own creation...

11:17 PM Or look at Shane
Shane is racialist and brutal
He kills Lem
But he is, in many ways, more sympathetic than Vic as his life falls apart in the aftermath

Walking in a garden, waking from a... oh wait

"It is unlikely that the financial meltdown of 2008 will function as a blessing in disguise, the awakening from a dream, the sobering reminder that we live in the reality of global capitalism. It all depends on how it will be symbolised, on what ideological interpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of the crisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for a ‘discursive’ ideological competition. In Germany in the late 1920s, Hitler won the competition to determine which narrative would explain the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the way out of it; in France in 1940 Maréchal Pétain’s narrative won in the contest to find the reasons for the French defeat. Consequently, to put it in old-fashioned Marxist terms, the main task of the ruling ideology in the present crisis is to impose a narrative that will not put the blame for the meltdown on the global capitalist system as such, but on its deviations – lax regulation, the corruption of big financial institutions etc."

Slavoj Žižek - Use Your Illusions

A little more than 3 years ago I sat down to reread George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (which is now being piloted as a HBO series in Nove. 2008) and came across this familiar passage: He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life....

With the reread came the rehabilitation of this blog, separated from the first iteration by more of a motivation to catalog the better things I read. I was, and am content to a degree, to let the blog become a giant bookmark of sorts. As long as I am reading, this blog will not run out of content.

Lilium

Blast from the past, circa 2006

http://wbc889.blogspot.com/2006/04/elfen-lied-and-gustav-klimt-elfen-lied.html

I don't want to set the world on fire

Disappointing game, this is the only good song out of the minuscule, and ultimately mediocre soundtrack.

Things wrong with the game
1) bland palette
2) slow level progression makes the player feel a lack of progress
3) 3rd person view not playable (therefore you never see your armor)
4) you can't drive fusion cars

Was there any doubt?

So where was I last night and and what was I doing when it happened?

I was talking with a Brit, a Canadian, and a Dutch on ventrillo just before the victory speech. Managed to catch it live online. The speech has everything covered, I wonder what would he say for the inaugural address? Although he was right to cover everything since the symbolic value of this victory cannot be understated.

Children

Old trance songs, memorable after all these years.

Winter is Coming

It feels like winter already. Got up in the morning, walked outside, and it was freezing.

Openings

Reading people's blogs

I must say I am confused, but no more than usual.

You seem very upset. One might even call you angry. Did you accidentally the cherry?

Carry on.

Syndicate, the ****space of New Eden

Syndicate, a NPC nullsec region of EVE, politically chaotic and infested with pirates. Rewards from bounties off NPCs are below average, and with various political power blocs unable to claim sovereignty, it is known to many as the armpit of EVE.

Gundam 00 Season 2: Where Originality Ends, and the Mask Wearing Begins

R.I.P season 1, one of the more creative fictions in the Gundam universe. Now it is time to trot out the pastiches and the stock cryptic self seriousness.

Openings and Closings