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