Every Breath You Take

Enjoy this spoof of the Police's Every Breath You Take, about new Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, sung by Cabe Franklin and produced by Michael O'Rorke of Columbia Business School's Follies.

Your Tube, Whose Dime?

From Your Tube, Whose Dime?:

Startup of the moment YouTube, which garnered 12.9 million unique visitors in March, doesn't care what viewers watch, as long as they keep tuning in. Making money is another matter: The site, which has raised $11.5 million in venture capital in the last year, didn't see a penny in revenue until March, when they cautiously began selling ads. Meanwhile the site's bandwidth costs, which increase every time a visitor clicks on a video, may be approaching $1 million a month — much of which goes to provider Limelight Networks.

The Truthiness Can Be Hard to Take

Stephen Colbert closed the White House Correspondents' Dinner with his usual biting routine in his usual bombastic right-wing persona — and neither the president nor the press core seemed to get it. (You, the heroes, get it.)

You absolutely must watch the video. I won't ruin the best bits for you.

Wallaby milk beats penicillin on bacteria

Wallaby milk beats penicillin on bacteria:

Scientists have found a chemical in wallaby milk which is 100 times more effective against bacteria, such as E coli, than the strongest forms of penicillin.

The molecule is called AGG01.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

A City Is Not A Tree

Of A City Is Not A Tree, Clay Shirky says:

It’s a moment of disorientation I’ve had a couple of times — you find a great piece of writing, and think “Wow, this is really going to change things!”, only to discover that it is in fact decades old. The clash of historical vertigo with Internet Now is both wonderful and daunting.

Christopher Alexander’s A City Is Not A Tree, from 1965, argues that a natural city is not a tree — in the set-theory sense, with clearly separated hierarchies — but a semilattice, and that artificial cities oversimplify the structure of natural cities to the point where they don't work anymore. For example:

Consider the separation of pedestrians from moving vehicles, a tree concept proposed by Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and many others. At a very crude level of thought this is obviously a good idea. Yet the urban taxi can function only because pedestrians and vehicles are not strictly separated. The cruising taxi needs a fast stream of traffic so that it can cover a large area to be sure of finding a passenger. The pedestrian needs to be able to hail the taxi from any point in the pedestrian world, and to be able to get out to any part of the pedestrian world to which he wants to go. The system which contains the taxicabs needs to overlap both the fast vehicular traffic system and the system of pedestrian circulation. In Manhattan pedestrians and vehicles do share certain parts of the city, and the necessary overlap is guaranteed.

Voices from the New American Schoolhouse

Voices from the New American Schoolhouse
"explores life outside the usual educational box":

Narrated exclusively by students, the film chronicles life and learning at the Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, MD which practices an undiluted form of freedom and democracy that turns mainstream education theory on its head. Filmmaker Danny Mydlack enjoyed unrestricted access over a two-year period to produce this candid and unblinking encounter with kid-powered learning.

Definitely watch the video. I half expect Billy Jack to protect these kids from close-minded townies. ("I'm gonna take this right foot, and I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face — and you wanna know something? There's not a damn thing you're gonna be able to do about it.")

(Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

Here's how the Fairhaven School describes itself:

Fairhaven students ages 5 through 19 and beyond are free to decide for themselves how to spend their days. Motivated by curiosity and the drive to become competent adults, they grow emotionally, creatively, and intellectually — through play, school governance, conversation, the arts, classes, computer activities, reading, and the exploration of nature. All kinds of learning, all types of intelligence are valued.

Fairhaven is a true democracy: a weekly School Meeting, made up of students and staff, votes on all aspects of the schools operation — from school rules to budgeting to staffing. Issues of justice are resolved by the Judicial Committee, on which everyone serves on a rotating basis. Students learn firsthand what it means to live in a working democracy, with the freedom and responsibility it entails.

Fairhaven School is modeled after the 35 year old Sudbury Valley School.

I also can't help but think of the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children from Bart the Genius — the first official episode of The Simpsons. ("Discover your desks, people.")

Energy Policy for Idiots

Arnold Kling's Energy Policy for Idiots is his attempt "to explain elementary economics to the most poorly-educated segment of our society, meaning people like Energy Secretary Bodman, Senator Bill Frist, Lou Dobbs, and Bill O'Reilly.":

Who would benefit from a short-term suspension of the 18.4-cent-per-gallon retail gasoline tax? Probably not the American consumer. The biggest beneficiary might be Iran.

Drivin' and Not Cryin'?

Drivin' and Not Cryin'? looks at what gas-scare stories don't say:

According to the Bureau of Economic Affairs (see chart here), American consumer spending on energy as a fraction of total personal consumption has declined considerably since 1980. Whereas 25 years ago, one in every ten consumer dollars was spent on energy, today it's one in every sixteen bucks. In other words, what it takes to heat and cool our homes and drive to and from our jobs and vacation destinations is relatively less costly than it once was.

This goes a long way to explaining why even while gas prices rise this summer, and while they will be higher than they were through the 1990s, people will still be driving more — it's much more of a value than it was a generation ago.

What's more, so-called energy intensity is declining rapidly. That means we produce more with less energy. According to Economy.com, "The U.S. economy has undergone major structural changes over the last two decades, becoming more energy efficient, thus reducing its overall dependence on energy... The energy intensity of the U.S. economy has declined by roughly 40% since the first oil crisis" (as of 2001). (See Economy.com graph here.)

Say It With Me: Supply and Demand

In Say It With Me: Supply and Demand, Charles Krauthammer descrbies "what the Bush search for price gougers and profiteers will find":

Demand is up. China has come from nowhere to pass Japan as the number No. 2 oil consumer in the world. China and India — between them home to eight times the U.S. population — are industrializing and gobbling huge amounts of energy.

American demand is up because we've lived in a fool's paradise since the mid-1980s. Until then, beginning with the oil shocks in 1973, Americans had changed appliances and cars and habits and achieved astonishing energy conservation. Energy use per dollar of gross domestic product was cut by 30 percent in little over a decade. Oil prices collapsed to about $10 a barrel.

Then amnesia set in, mile-per-gallon ratings disappeared from TV ads and we became "a country of a million Walter Mittys driving 75 mph in their gas-guzzling Bushwhack-Safari sport-utility roadsters with a moose head on the hood, a country whose crude oil production has dropped 32 percent in the last 25 years but which will not drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for fear of disturbing the mating habits of caribou."

I wrote that during the '96 witch hunt for price gougers. Nothing has changed. Except that since then, U.S. crude oil production has dropped an additional 12.3 percent. Which brings us to:

Supply is down. Start with supply disruptions in Nigeria, decreased production in Iraq, and the continuing loss of 5 percent of our national refining capacity because of damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Add to that the mischief of idiotic new regulations. Last year's energy bill mandates arbitrary increases in blended ethanol use that so exceed current ethanol production that it is causing gasoline shortages and therefore huge price spikes.

Why don't we import the missing ethanol? Brazil makes a ton of it, and very cheaply. Answer: the Iowa caucuses. Iowa grows corn and chooses presidents. So we have a ridiculously high 54-cent ethanol tariff and ethanol shortages.

Another regulation requires specific ("boutique") gasoline blends for different cities depending on their air quality. Nice idea. But it introduces debilitating rigidities into the gasoline supply system. If Los Angeles runs short, you cannot just move supply in from Denver. You get shortages and more price spikes.

And don't get me started on the missing supply of might-have-been American crude. Arctic and outer continental shelf oil that the politicians kill year after year would have provided us by now with a critical and totally secure supply cushion in times of tight markets.

A Solution at the Stroke of a Pen

Arnold Kling offers A Solution at the Stroke of a Pen:

Some problems are hard. Iran. Health care. Global warming. The proposed solutions to these problems typically are painful. People do not like painful solutions, and so little gets done. Perhaps this is for the best, given all of the uncertainties involved.

But there is one problem that is easy to solve. The specter of future entitlement shortfalls could be eliminated with the stroke of a pen.

The problem is that Social Security and Medicare payments are on course to rise to unprecedented levels as a percent of GDP.
[...]
The solution, as I have argued for several years, is to raise the age of government dependency for workers now in their 30's and 40's. This is a painless solution, because (a) it does not affect anyone who currently receives our is counting on government entitlements and (b) it does not really affect people now in their 30's and 40's.

For people in their 30's and 40's today, the age of government dependency is only a promise. As of now, projected entitlement benefits to young workers are only promises that, under conservative assumptions, the government will be unable to meet. If the assumptions pan out, then the actual benefits that young workers receive when they finally retire probably will have to be reduced. It seems to me that young workers are no worse off if their promised benefits are reduced now (by raising the age of government dependency) than if their actual benefits are reduced when they reach their late 60's. In fact, they probably are better off knowing the score now, when they can do something to accumulate personal retirement accounts, then thirty years from now, when it is too late.

Jane Jacobs (1916–2006)

Howard Husock writes an excellent retrospective on "New York’s indispensable urban iconoclast," Jane Jacobs (1916–2006):

The real Jane Jacobs not only enjoyed busy city blocks but deplored high levels of welfare spending that inhibit urban economies. The real Jane Jacobs not only enjoyed the great variety of small businesses which cities offer, but questioned the public operation of services such as transit that preempt the formation of private competitors.

Recent posts on Jane Jacobs:

Jane Jacobs R.I.P.
Urban thinker Jane Jacobs dies
It's the Cities, Stupid

Older posts on Jane Jacobs:

Jane Jacobs
Urban Iconoclast: Jane Jacobs Revisited
Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner
Jane Jacobs on Getting an Education

GyroBike

The idea behind the GyroBike is pretty obvious — once you've been told about it:

The Gyrobike™ employs spinning flywheel inside the front wheel that uses gyroscopic precession to provide a bike moving at 2.5 mph with the natural stability of a bike moving at 10 mph. This natural stability has been demonstrated to enhance the process of learning to ride a bike — something that training wheels have never been able to do.

Jon Favreau and John Carter

Jon Favreau (Swingers) was looking to direct a John Carter of Mars movie, but Paramount decided to shelve the whole thing:

Unfortunately, due to the 2008 Paramount production of Star Trek, it looks like Carter is not going to happen in the near future. I assure you that the script and artwork were very well received, but they've got a lot of "similar" stuff in the pipeline at the studio. I am trying to help position the film to get made and remain committed to seeing it through. That said, it's not going to happen this year.

Answer to AIDS Mystery Found Behind Bars

Answer to AIDS Mystery Found Behind Bars:

It is one of the most puzzling mysteries of the AIDS epidemic: Why did blacks, in little more than a dozen years, become nine times as likely as whites to contract a disease once associated almost exclusively with gay white men?

Two researchers say they found the answer in an unlikely place: prison.

TMI?

Other studies suggest that half of all prisoners engage in homosexual sex.

Jane Jacobs R.I.P.

In Jane Jacobs R.I.P., Michael Blowhard cites a number of tributes:

You've probably noticed that the great Jane Jacobs has died at the age of 89. The web is full of intelligent and appreciative tributes: A Google News search on her name will turn up a lot of them. An obit by the LA Times' Mary Rourke is a good starting point. Martin Knelman writes a touching character sketch. Interesting to learn in Counterpunch that Jacobs, a Canadian resident since the 1970s, favored the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada, and thought that the Euro was a dumb idea. Curbed is sweetly running a "the most Jane Jacobs block in New York City" contest. Gothamist supplies many links. I recently wrote a long intro to Jacobs and her work. Don't miss a couple of wonderful interviews: one from 2000 conducted by James Kunstler; and one from 2002, done by Blake Harris. A final question: Why on earth was she never awarded the Nobel Prize?

Also, the final chapter of her The Death and Life of Great American Cities is available on-line.

Lionsgate shrugging

Variety reports on Lionsgate shrugging:

Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to "Atlas Shrugged" from Howard and Karen Baldwin ("Ray"), who will produce with John Aglialoro.

As for stars, book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt.

Angelina Jolie is a Randroid? Who knew?

Video blogs, ready for prime time

David Kushner claims that Video blogs are ready for prime time:

Amanda Congdon, 24, is running through the wintry streets of Manhattan in a purple cape and leotard. This may not seem like a milestone in Internet history, but it is: The perky actress is starring in the first commercial to be aired in a brand-new medium - the video blog, or vlog. Her silly superheroics are worth $40,000.

Congdon is the host of Rocketboom, a satirical news show and the most popular vlog on the Net. Despite having no budget, Rocketboom has 250,000 visitors a day, and that number is rising fast. Now Congdon and producer Andrew Baron are taking a cue from the ad-driven revenue of top bloggers: "We want to make a business out of vlogging," Congdon says.

With the proliferation of devices like the video iPod, the vlog boom is on. As of March there were more than 6,500 vlogs, says directory Mefeedia.com, compared with fewer than 300 a year earlier. Apple's iTunes store has offered vlogs for download as video podcasts since October, giving sites like Rocketboom a potential audience of 40 million iPod users.

And there's good news for vloggers who want to monetize their fame: Advertisers are getting more comfortable with online video spots. In the United States, Internet video ads brought in $225 million in 2005 and are expected to break the $1 billion mark in 2008, according to eMarketer, a New York research firm. "Vlogs are very targetable," says eMarketer analyst David Hallerman. "They're small, but they have a niche audience."

They also operate with amazingly low overhead. Baron, a former professor at Parsons school of design in New York, found Congdon through an ad on Craigslist. Now they write, shoot, and edit five new shows a week, each shorter than five minutes, in Baron's apartment. Increasingly, they rely on a team of freelance correspondents — Rocketboom fans — from around the world. "The show is just whatever we find interesting," Congdon says.

Why the NFL Is Drafting Benchwarmers

Sam Walker explains Why the NFL Is Drafting Benchwarmers:

One problem facing NFL teams is that college players aren't as polished as they used to be. Recent NCAA reforms limiting football scholarships and tightening academic standards have reduced the size of the talent pool. College teams are now restricted to 20 hours of practice a week during the season and 15 days in the spring. Add in the growing number of players leaving early for the NFL, and college coaches say they don't have time to teach proper football technique, let alone install the kinds of complex schemes the pros use. "We have to acknowledge what we're dealing with," says Virginia head coach Al Groh.

Once these players get to the NFL, the learning curve is even steeper than before. Many NFL teams have switched to a 3-4 defensive alignment (three down linemen and four linebackers) that requires players with specific combinations of quickness, bulk and intelligence that most college systems don't cultivate. On offense, more college teams are using a scheme where a super-mobile quarterback takes snaps from the shotgun formation with as many as five receivers and creates chaos by improvising. Meanwhile, the NFL is more interested in tall stationary passers who can take snaps from center, drop back efficiently, read mismatches and deliver crisp passes with an efficient arm motion.

Subtle as they may seem, these discrepancies can make it tough for some campus stars to impress NFL scouts. One of this year's best examples is Louisville defensive end Elvis Dumervil. During the 2005 season he set an NCAA record with 10 forced fumbles and led the nation with 20 sacks — four more than his closest competitor. In addition to serving as team captain, he was an All-American who won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy for the nation's top defensive player and the Ted Hendricks Award as best defensive end.

To NFL scouts, however, Mr. Dumervil's most important characteristic is this: He's not quite six feet tall, which means he is three inches shorter than a typical NFL player at the position. As a result, more than a dozen college ends of lesser reputations could be taken ahead of him this weekend. "It's ridiculous," he says. "I've seen guys with three or four sacks rated higher than me because they're 6-foot-4." Throughout his career, he says, "I've always believed in performance over potential. The stats don't lie."

Life without numbers in a unique Amazon tribe

Life without numbers in a unique Amazon tribe describes how the "Piraha apparently can't learn to count and have no distinct words for colors":

1 + 1 = 2. Mathematics doesn't get any more basic than this, but even 1 + 1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon.

A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting.

Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time.

Their lack of enumeration skills is just one of the mental and cultural traits that has led scientists who have visited the 300 members of the tribe to describe the Piraha as "something from Mars."

Daniel Everett, an American linguistic anthropologist, has been studying and living with Piraha for 27 years.

Besides living a numberless life, he reports in a separate study prepared for publication, the Piraha are the only people known to have no distinct words for colours.

They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations. They don't sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day.

Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children, Prof. Everett reports.

They communicate almost as much by singing, whistling and humming as by normal speech.

They frequently change their names, because they believe spirits regularly take them over and intrinsically change who they are.

They do not believe that outsiders understand their language even after they have just carried on conversations with them.

They have no creation myths, tell no fictional stories and have no art. All of their pronouns appear to be borrowed from a neighbouring language.

Their lack of numbering terms and skills is highlighted in a report by Columbia University cognitive psychologist Peter Gordon that appears today in Science.

Explanations range from inbreeding, to a culture of isolation, to a simple lack of words for numbers.

From the Wikipedia:

• As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory.
• The language is claimed to have no relative clauses or grammatical recursion, but this is not clear. Its seven consonants and three vowels are the fewest known of any language.
• The culture has the simplest known kinship system, not tracking relations any more distant than biological siblings.
• The people do not count and the language does not have words for precise numbers. Despite efforts to teach them, researchers claim they seem incapable of learning numeracy.
• It is suspected that the language's entire pronoun set, which is the simplest of any known language, was recently borrowed from one of the Tupí-Guaraní languages, and that prior to that the language had no pronouns whatsoever. Many linguists, however, find this claim questionable, noting that there is no historical-comparative evidence indicating the non-existence of pronouns in a previous period of the history of Pirahã; also, the overall lack of Tupi-Guarani loanwords in areas of the lexicon more susceptible to borrowing (such as nouns referring to cultural items, for instance) makes this hypothesis even less plausible.
• There is a disputed theory that the language has no colour terminology. There are no unanalyzable root words for color; the color words recorded are all compounds like bi3i1sai3, "blood-like".
• They have very little artwork. The artwork that is present, mostly necklaces and drawn stick-figures, is crude and used primarily to ward off evil spirits.
• The Pirahã take short naps of 15 minutes to two hours through the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night. They often go hungry, not for want of food, but from a desire to be tigisái ("hard").
• The Pirahã have not related to researchers any fiction or mythology.

Reefer madness

In Reefer madness, the Economist explains that "marijuana is medically useful, whether politicians like it or not":

If cannabis were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia—many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility. Any suggestion that the plant might be medically useful is politically controversial, whatever the science says. It is in this context that, on April 20th, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

The Names of Alchemy

The Names of Alchemy — from before modern chemistry and Lavoisier's modern chemical nomenclature — obviously couldn't reference the various compounds' elemental components. You can't name something carbon dioxide until you know what carbon and oxygen are, and that carbon dioxide is composed of one atom of carbon combined with two atoms of oxygen.

Some examples:

the green lion (iron sulphate) — a typical term from alchemy, which was never concerned to make its recipes and references too clear.

spirit of salt (hydrochloric acid) — because it was made from salt.

butter of antimony (antimony trichloride) — because of its waxy quality.

flower of zinc (zinc oxide) — found as a deposit in zinc chimneys. "Flower" means "flour" here; the words are etymologically the same.

spirit of hartshorn (acqueous ammonia) — a perfectly straightforward name; it was distilled from harts' horns! The same substance derived from another and less attractive process was called volatile salt of urine. There was also salt of hartshorn (smelling salts) narcotic salt of vitriol (boric acid) — made from (green) vitriol, another name for iron sulphate, not to be confused with blue vitriol, or copper sulphate.

fixed air (carbon dioxide); it got that name because it's denser than regular air, so it settles to the bottom of your container and doesn't mix with other gases.

regulus of antimony — A regulus ('little king') was the heavy substance that sank to the bottom of your crucible. 'Antimony' then referred to kohl (antimony trisulphide), regulus of antimony thus referred to the pure metal isolated from kohl — what we now call antimony.

sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) — because it was made from camel dung from the Temple of Jupiter Ammon in Egypt.

bismuth glance (bismuth sulphide) — a glance was apparently a shiny substance.

acqua regia 'kingly water', a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids, which could dissolve gold lunar caustic, sticks of silver nitrate used in surgery; 'luna' was an old alchemical term for silver.

Happy days are here again — or are they?

Happy days are here again — or are they? claims that "Americans are fed up with George Bush's Republicans, but the Democrats look far from invincible."

The article cites Crashing the Gate, where Armstrong and Moulitsas complain that:

single-issue groups not only hurt the Democratic Party in its search for a common identity, but they help provide the Republicans with a treasure trove of attack opportunities. While the Democratic Party should be the party of people, it has become, with a lot of help from Republican framing, a party of “immoral” abortionists, “extremist” tree-huggers, “corrupt” labour officials, “greedy” trial lawyers, “predatory” homosexuals and “anti-white” minority activists. After all, these are the loudest and most influential voices in our party...so it's not a stretch for demagogic Republicans to paint Democrats as a loose collection of selfish people who are fanatical about their specific cause and have no larger concerns — for the economy, the military, or the country.

On the Democrat's strategy for "Real Security":

This document would be more convincing as a call to arms if it did not read like a string of phrases chosen for their popularity with focus-groups and then crammed into one sentence after another. For example: “To Ensure Unparalleled Military Strength and Honour our Troops, we will rebuild a state-of-the-art military by making the needed investments in equipment and manpower so that we can project power to protect America wherever and whenever necessary.”

Churchillian it may not be, but most of “Real Security” is sensible. The trouble is that its main hard proposals — kill Osama bin Laden, train more special forces, reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil and make 2006 “a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty” — sound awfully similar to Mr Bush's plans.

Where the details differ, the Democrats' suggestions are sometimes footling (create “a national tyre fuel-efficiency programme”) or daft (criminal penalties for energy companies that “price-gouge”). One throwaway commitment casually promises to reshape the world: the Democrats would “[e]liminate terrorist breeding-grounds by combating the economic, social and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive.”

Historian Paul Kramer revisits the Philippine-American War

Historian Paul Kramer revisits the Philippine-American War and finds some "eerie similarities" with the current war in Iraq:

• A conventional invasion and speedy victory followed by an unexpected, protracted nonconventional insurgency.
• Violations of human rights norms by the occupying Americans.
• Repeated claims that the war was justified by and fought on behalf of higher principles of "civilization" or "freedom."
• Declarations that the war was over in hopes of ending domestic controversy about it.
• The sense that it was America's right, duty and obligation to engage in nationbuilding and installing "democracy," of which the United States was considered an unblemished example.

Film of the book: top 50 adaptations revealed

The "experts" at The Guardian have revealed their list of the Top 50 Adaptations of books to film:

1. 1984
2. Alice in Wonderland
3. American Psycho
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's
5. Brighton Rock
6. Catch 22
7. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. Empire of the Sun
16. The English Patient
17. Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant's Woman
19. Get Shorty
20. The Godfather
21. Goldfinger
22. Goodfellas
23. Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. Jaws
26. The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. LA Confidential
29. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. Lolita
31. Lord of the Flies
32. The Maltese Falcon
33. Oliver Twist
34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
35. Orlando
36. The Outsiders
37. Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. The Remains of the Day
42. Schindler's Ark (aka Schindler's List)
43. Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
47. To Kill a Mockingbird
48. Trainspotting
49. The Vanishing
50. Watership Down

New way to treat obesity heralded

New way to treat obesity heralded:

Boosting oxyntomodulin limits appetite and raises activity levels at the same time — leading to speedy but healthy weight loss rates, a UK study suggests.

Caprica

The Sci-Fi Channel has announced a new spin-off series, Caprica:

From executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick ('Battlestar Galactica'), writer Remi Aubuchon ('24') and NBC Universal Television Studio, this new series is set over a half a century before the events that play out in 'Battlestar Galactica.' The people of the Twelve Colonies are at peace and living in a society not unlike our own, but where high-technology has changed the lives of virtually everyone for the better. But a startling breakthrough in robotics is about to occur, one that will bring to life the age-old dream of marrying artificial intelligence with a mechanical body to create the first living robot — a Cylon. Following the lives of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas (the family of William Adama, who will one day become the commander of the 'Battlestar Galactica') 'Caprica' weaves corporate intrigue, techno-action and sexual politics into television's first science fiction family saga.

If I may geek out for a moment: Frakkin' awesome!

Smith is Legend

I was a fan of the original Asimov I, Robot short-story collection, and I enjoyed the original Wild, Wild West TV show.

I also enjoyed Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.

Now Smith is Legend — and that's probably not a good thing:

Will Smith will star in I Am Legend, the long-gestating Warner Brothers adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic SF novel, to be directed by Constantine helmer Francis Lawrence, Variety reported. Smith has a pay-or-play deal to make Legend his next project, after he completes Tonight, He Comes at Sony.

Akiva Goldsman rewrote an original script by Mark Protosevich. An early 2007 start date is planned for the movie, which will be shot in New York.

The film moves the story from Los Angeles to a post-apocalyptic New York and will center on the last healthy man following the release of a virus that decimates the population. To survive, he must battle mutants that wreak havoc during the night.

Legend came closest to getting made back in 1997 with Ridley Scott directing Arnold Schwarzenegger. Warner applied the brakes because the budget hovered around $108 million, a figure considered high at the time. Michael Bay and Smith then aligned to have a go at the film in 2002, but the pairing didn't advance.

Matheson's book was the basis of previous movie adaptations, including the Vincent Price movie The Last Man on Earth and the Charlton Heston vehicle The Omega Man.

Sizing Up 'Slim' Shirts

The Wall Street Journal Sizes Up 'Slim' Shirts:

But slim fits — called everything from tailored to modern fits by manufacturers — aren't just for slim guys. Some are cut roomier on top to accommodate men who are muscular — or just bigger — in the chest. We compared 10 slim-fit shirts with 16-inch necks and found that chest measurements varied by as much as five inches. Some tapered from wide shoulders to narrow waists, while others had straighter, boxier cuts, including some with relatively wide waists. Some could be worn only by truly thin guys.

Their Best for Big Chest and Narrow Waist:

Arrow's fitted shirt, with a 49-inch chest, is the widest on top and among the narrowest at the waist, where it measures 42 inches.

For a 16-inch neck, a 49-inch chest is pretty big — but so is a 42-inch waist.

By ancient Greek ideals, a 16-inch neck would go with a 43-inch chest and a 30-inch waist.

My failed fling with a book packager

John Barlow, a relatively unknown author, describes his failed fling with a book packager:

Book packaging is not a new phenomenon. It involves getting a book concept together, thus saving the publisher the trouble of finding writers, illustrators, editors, etc. Then a finished concept is sold to a publisher as a fait accompli. 17th Street is currently the most successful packager in the world when it comes to teen literature and the targeting of "Generation Y." My (then) agent was understandably keen, explaining that this particular book packager was behind the hugely successful teen fiction series Sweet Valley High. Even through the telephone line I could sense that his eyes were slowly turning dollar-bill green at the prospect of working with 17th Street who, it seemed, were trying to move into midgrader lit in order to suck up some of the Harry Potter juice that was (and still is) sloshing around the publishing world.

It all goes terribly wrong, as you might imagine.

Is Marvel Ready for its Close-Up?

Is Marvel Ready for its Close-Up? Yes, it would appear:

In 1998, after years of mismanagement by financier Ronald Perelman had left the company bankrupt, toy executive Isaac Perlmutter bought Marvel and put Arad in charge of getting Hollywood to base blockbuster films on its characters. The results speak for themselves: Under Arad, the first seven Marvel-based films — from the low-budget vampire-hunting epic Blade to the first Spider-Man and X-Men movies — each hit No. 1 at the box office. All told, the 12 Marvel-character films made during Arad's tenure have grossed $3.6 billion worldwide. Profit has quadrupled in the past three years to $103 million in 2005, revenue has surged, and Marvel's stock, as low as $3 per share at the time of the 1998 acquisition, trades today at about $20.

Now Marvel wants to move from licensing its properties — for a low-risk 2 to 10 percent of profits — to producing its own movies:

Marvel has borrowed more than $500 million to finance its filmmaking and will have to absorb heavy losses basically on its own if any of its self-made films bomb. Under certain conditions, it could even lose control of the rights to its characters. But to Arad, 58, the risk is worth running, and the reason can be summed up by this fact: The two Spider-Man films have grossed nearly $1.6 billion at the box office; Marvel is estimated to have received just $75 million of that. "Nobody knows better than us how to make our characters come alive for audiences," Arad says. "We just want to get paid for it."

The Code that Killed the Golden Age

Once Upon a Dime reprints The Code that Killed the Golden Age of comics, which was self-imposed in response to Fredric Wertham's 1953 book, Seduction of the Innocent, a sensationalist attack on comics that claimed that Batman and Robin were “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together” and that Wonder Woman was a “lesbian counterpart of Batman”.

From General Standards Part A:

1. Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
2. No comics shall explicitly present the unique details and methods of a crime.
3. Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
4. If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
5. Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates the desire for emulation.
6. In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
7. Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gun play, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
8. No unique or unusual methods of concealing weapons shall be shown.
9. Instances of law enforcement officers dying as a result of a criminal's activities should be discouraged.
10. The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnapper. The criminal or the kidnapper must be punished in every case.
11. The letters of the word 'crime' on a comics magazine shall never be appreciably greater than the other words contained in the title. The word 'crime' shall never appear alone on a cover.
12. Restraint in the use of the word 'crime' in titles or subtitles shall be exercised.

Bush on Gas Prices: Who's He Kidding?

James K. Glassman asks, Who's He Kidding?:

Next, the President chided the companies that actually produce the energy. "We expect there to be strong re-investment [of] cash flows" in more energy production. Just what does he think these companies have been doing? Over the past 10 years, the large integrated oil companies have made capital expenditures roughly equal to their net earnings. In fact, between 1991 and 2005, ExxonMobil's cumulative capital and exploration expenditures (some $210 billion) actually exceeded the company's earnings. Chevron spent $11 billion last year alone.

Those expenditures involve enormous risk and long lead times. ExxonMobil, for example, spent 17 years and $3.5 billion on a deepwater development project in Angola. In 1988, when the company began its work, oil was about $15 a barrel.

But the oil price bounces up and down. Only a few years ago, it was less than $10 a barrel. It could be again. (In 2002, as the price of oil fell, Chevron's sales dropped by $5 billion and its earnings by nearly $3 billion — in one year!)

Or politicians could decide to tax away profits, or further favor uneconomic fuels.

Thousands of Foxes Are Living in London And Making a Mess

Coyotes are moving into American cities — including New York — and Thousands of Foxes Are Living in London And Making a Mess:

The fox has become a common feature of the city's landscape like the gray squirrel and the pigeon, both also considered by many to be urban pests.

There are an estimated 10,000 foxes living in the London area, some of them very near the financial district, Buckingham Palace, and No. 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's residence.

Opportunistic omnivores, foxes feed on pet rabbits and guinea pigs, as well as on worms, beetles, birds, rats and fruit. And they can get into spats with cats. Gardens are a particular problem.

Management à la Google

Management à la Google describes Google's "novel management system," which "seems to have been designed to guard against the risk factors that so often erode an organization's evolutionary potential":

Evolutionary risk factor #1: A narrow or orthodox business definition that limits the scope of innovation. Google's response: An expansive sense of purpose.

Evolutionary risk factor #2: A hierarchical organization that over-weights the views of those who have a stake in perpetuating the status quo. Google's response: An organization that is flat, transparent, and non-hierarchical.

Evolutionary risk factor #3: A tendency to overinvest in "what is" at the expense of "what could be." Google's response: A company-wide rule that allows developers to devote 20% of their time to any project they choose.

Evolutionary risk factor #4: Creeping mediocrity. Google's response: Keep the bozos out and reward people who make a difference.

Minding Our Manners

Theodore Dalrymple writes about Minding Our Manners:

The argument goes something like this: formality is etiquette, and etiquette is a manifestation of an unjust, class-ridden, patriarchal society. The rejection of etiquette and the formality it entails is therefore a sign that one is on the side of the angels, that is to say, of the egalitarians. Modern egalitarians, at least in Britain, do not content themselves with the kind of abstract or formal equality before the law that allows any amount of difference in wealth, status, taste, and sensibility; they demand some progress towards equalization of everything, including manners.

Of course, egalitarians are just as attached as everyone else to their own material possessions and wealth and have no real intention of forgoing them by radical redistribution, at any rate, of their own money and possessions. The struggle for equality—of the actual rather than the formal kind—has therefore to be transferred to fields in which it will cost the egalitarian nothing, or nothing material and financial.

What better way to prove your egalitarian credentials than by adopting the supposedly free and easy, utterly informal manners of those at the bottom of the social scale? The freer and easier the better, for such informality demonstrates another quality beloved of, and praised by, intellectuals: a superiority to the dictates of convention. Thus you can never be quite informal or unconventional enough.

The evolution of clots

Steve Jones explains the evolution of clots — after explaining why "intelligent design" is the "logic of ignorance":

The ID crew, to use Darwin's own phrase, "look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond [their] comprehension". The first Hawaiians to cast eyes on Europeans were so astonished by their great vessels that they thought their builders to be gods. The ID argument is just the same. It is the logic of ignorance, idleness and incuriosity: I am very smart, even I do not understand this, so why bother to explain it except by bringing in God (if necessary under an alias)?

How did clots evolve?

The clotting machinery is an icon of just how complex life may be. Designers love it: for to staunch the flow needs a cascade of a dozen or more enzymes that work like a row of toppling dominoes. Two interacting pathways meet at a crucial junction point.

One is set off by a change in acidity after a cut, while the other acts when it picks up chemical cues from damaged cells. An injury sets off a chain reaction until the job is done and, if any step goes wrong, the whole system collapses. How could such a complicated machine evolve from simple beginnings? What use is part of a clot?

Much better, in fact, than no clot at all. Plenty of animals manage with just a few parts of the machinery and DNA shows that — like the eye — the rickety apparatus that stops us from bleeding was assembled from random bits that just happened to be hanging around.

Humans as Prey

Humans as Prey disabuses us of the notion that humans are — and always have been — at the top of the food chain:

The list of our ancestors' fossils showing evidence of predation continues to grow. A 1.75-million-year-old hominid skull unearthed in the Republic of Georgia shows punctures from the fangs of a saber-toothed cat. Another skull, about 900,000 years old, found in Kenya, exhibits carnivore bite marks on the brow ridge. A six-million-year-old hominid, also found in Kenya, may well have been killed by a leopard. A fragment of a 1.6-million-year-old hominid skull was found in the den of an extinct hyena, in Spain. A cranium from 250,000 years ago, discovered in South Africa in 1935, has a depression on the forehead caused by a hyena's tooth. Those and other fossils provide rock-hard proof that a host of large, fierce animals preyed on human ancestors.

It is equally clear that, outside the West, no small amount of predation occurs today on modern humans. Although we are not likely to see these facts in American newspaper headlines, each year 3,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa are eaten by crocodiles, and 1,500 Tibetans are killed by bears about the size of grizzlies. In one Indian state between 1988 and 1998, over 200 people were attacked by leopards; 612 people were killed by tigers in the Sundarbans delta of India and Bangladesh between 1975 and 1985. The carnivore zoologist Hans Kruuk, of the University of Aberdeen, studied death records in Eastern Europe and concluded that wolf predation on humans is still a fact of life in the region, as it was until the 19th century in Western European countries like France and Holland.

Peace Corp.

As Peace Corp. notes, "private military companies say they've got what it takes to stop the carnage" at Darfur and around the world, "if only someone would hire them":

The industry also claims that it's far cheaper than its multilateral or military counterparts. ''We offer the ability to create a right-sized solution-which creates a cost savings right off the bat," says Taylor. By contrast, Brooks notes, ''NATO is insanely expensive; it's not a cost-effective organization. Neither is the [African Union]. Private companies would be much, much cheaper. When we compared their costs to most UN operations, we came up with 10 to 20 percent of what the UN would normally charge."

But while many would agree that there's an enormous need for the peacekeeping services that companies like Blackwater are willing and able to supply, that does not mean there's a market. ''The question isn't their operational ability," says David Isenberg, senior analyst at the British American Security Information Council, ''they've demonstrated an ability at least equivalent to a decently run UN operation. It's a question of political will."

The Franklin Expedition

The Franklin Expedition set off to the Arctic, to collect magnetic data, with a party of 128 men in May, 1845, in two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, with iron-reinforced bows and new-fangled steam-powered screw propellers. They never returned:

There are several things that contributed to the loss of the Franklin expedition. Franklin was of a breed of imperial officers who believed in the subjugation of nature by civilization. He and his men carried silver plates, crystal decanters, and many extraneous personal effects with them. They attempted to haul much of this heavy gear along with them even after abandoning the ships. They were unwilling or unable to learn survival techniques from the natives. Moreover, their expedition was a naval one, not equipped for hiking over land, so none of the sailors had thick boots or jackets. Their ships were locked in the ice for two winters running as a result of an unsually cold period that did not allow the icebound passages to melt in the summer of 1846. The party's morale and cohesion was damaged by psychological effects of lead poisoning from the solder that sealed their tinned food supply. This has been confirmed by lead found in both skeletal and soft tissue remains of expedition sailors conducted by Dr. Owen Beattie of the University of Alberta. They also were weakened by internal bleeding from scurvy after the first two years when the preventive lemon juice they carried lost its potency. The Inuit witnesses had reported that crew members exhibited the blackened mouth and bruised skin typical of that disease. There is evidence of cut marks found on bones from some of the crew, that suggests conditions were so dire that some resorted to cannibalism. In the end, it was likely a combination of poor planning, bad weather, poisoned food, and ultimately starvation that killed them.

Because the expedition was so well stocked — they had 8,000 tins of food — it was assumed that they could survive comfortably amidst the ice, and the large reward for their rescue was not offered for two years.

Illusionist Tricks Armed Robbers

I have to wonder whether this is true or not, but it is amusing. Illusionist Tricks Armed Robbers:

Copperfield says he turned his pockets inside out to reveal nothing in them, even though he was carrying his passport, wallet and cell phone.

African Cheetah Cub

Today's dose of cute comes from this African Cheetah Cub:

An orphaned eight-week-old African cheetah cub licks its lips inside its enclosure at the Wilson airport in Nairobi, Kenya April 23, 2006. The male cub was rescued by the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) wardens in Mandera district, 1500 km (932 miles) northeast of Nairobi, and is currently being held at the Nairobi animal orphanage.

There Is No Energy Crisis

Virginia Postrel says, There Is No Energy Crisis. Actually, she said it a decade ago:

In 1994 and '95, paper prices skyrocketed. The cost of magazine paper rose by about 10 percent a month, hardly the sort of hike you can simply pass on to subscribers. Most publishers, including REASON, dealt with the increase by printing fewer pages and adding fewer new subscribers than they'd planned. Newspapers were even harder hit: Escalating newsprint prices drove many to lay off hundreds of employees, raise prices, and, in some cases, go out of business. It was not a happy time in the publishing industry.

Yet as far as I know, no one in the Clinton administration ever called a press conference to address the "paper crisis." Congress never held hearings on the subject. CNN never led the evening news with tales of how paper buyers were struggling. Newt Gingrich never posed for photos in front of giant rolls of newsprint. Bob Dole never denounced the president for his lack of "leadership" on the matter.

And that's as it should be. There was no crisis, nothing requiring an emergency response from government. By historical standards, paper wasn't even that expensive; its price was just higher than expected, and rising rapidly. Government policy had exacerbated things--in this case, through recycling mandates that led paper companies to invest in converting, rather than expanding, capacity--but the main cause of the price jump was plain old ordinary tight supply hit by expanding demand. The higher prices gave both consumers and producers important information about the state of the market. In response, buyers bought less. Sellers started to produce more. And prices eventually crept down.

That's how prices work. They convey information. They give people feedback about what's happening in the world. They produce responses. They go up and down. And while sellers may experiment with different levels, always seeking the most profitable ones, no one in particular gets to decide where prices will end up. They are out of control.

Recently, we've had a "gas crisis." From February through the end of April, retail gasoline prices jumped about 12 percent nationally, 21 percent in California. What's interesting about the latest "gas crisis" is how, despite a brief flurry of media attention and political pontificating, it looks a lot more like the "paper crisis" than like the real gas crises of the 1970s. There are no long lines at the pump or threats of "odd-even" rationing based on your license plate number. You can fill your tank on Sunday, and every station has gas — for a price. The government interventions that distorted energy markets in the 1970s, and put drivers through hell, have disappeared.

This crisis isn't a crisis. It's just a price increase, the sort of signal consumers adjust to every day. No hysteria is called for.

Her recent epilogue:

Anyway, I thought we were supposed to be using less gasoline — to save the planet, annoy the Saudis, whatever. But I guess that was just talk.

Urban thinker Jane Jacobs dies

Urban thinker Jane Jacobs died today, at age 89.

Remembering Jane Jacobs presents an old CBS interview with her:

With her astute observations about the way we live, Jane Jacobs dynamically changed the urban landscape. The author, activist and theorist has passed away at the age of 89. Jacobs, a self-taught philosopher, challenged the establishment with her ideas about cities and the economy. In this CBC Television clip from 1969, Jacobs, a new immigrant to Canada, discusses Toronto's quirks and Montreal's creativity.

Infantry transformed by new tools, training

Sydney Freedberg opens Infantry transformed by new tools, training with a scenario from the 14-week course at Fort Benning's Infantry Training Brigade:

The Army drill sergeant rebuked a group of recruits who had fired their rifles too hastily in a mock ambush. "You know we've got civilians on the battlefield," said 1st Sgt. Dennis Williams. "Just because your buddy fires, doesn't mean you fire."

You've got to be aware of exactly what you're shooting at, Williams told the soldiers. Be aware of what you're not shooting at, too; don't focus on the first target that pops up and forget your flank. "Everybody wants to kill that same guy, but those guys over there," he said gesturing to the side, "would've wiped us all out!"

It's not all that different from youth soccer practice.

The infantry's changing:

Today, however, the soldiers at Fort Benning are visibly different from their predecessors of just three years ago. They wear Kevlar jackets reinforced with rigid breast and back plates, 16 pounds per man, the first mass-produced bulletproof armor in history and all but unknown in the U.S. military before the invasion of Iraq. The soldiers carry rifles with sophisticated optical sights, tools that, before the insurgency, were reserved for snipers and commandos. They practice treating casualties with a new first-aid kit — tourniquet, gloves, and an Israeli-developed pressure dressing — that was derived from last year's battlefield lessons.

And these are just the tools, the visible surfaces of far more fundamental changes in how human beings are being taught to fight.
[...]
"I didn't do half of this," said Lt. Col. Ricardo Mitchell after he and the recruits finished the exercise. Mitchell did his basic training in the peacetime Army of the 1980s. Today, as commander of one of Benning's training battalions, he said, "We are teaching things to privates comparable to what, five or six years ago, we were asking lieutenants to do."

I recommend reading the whole article.

The Future of Programming: An Interview with Paul Graham

In The Future of Programming: An Interview with Paul Graham, he gives his opinion on outsourcing — which is the same opinion I came to years ago:

In any case, I don't think outsourcing per se is much of a threat. I bet much of the time it's just a symptom of using a language that's not abstract enough. In effect you're using the programmers in India or wherever as human compilers.

Hybrid Cabs Take A Licking...But Their Meters Keep On Ticking

Hybrid vehicles make a lot of sense for taxi cabs, since they log a lot of miles in stop-and-go traffic. According to Hybrid Cabs Take A Licking...But Their Meters Keep On Ticking, "30 San Francisco Escape Hybrid taxis are beginning to hit the 100,000-mile milestone," and "owners and drivers report" a number of benefits:

Fuel savings between $20 and $31 over the traditional, full-size sedan cabs per 150- to 300-mile shifts. Air conditioning cost on hot days: $5 a shift, about half the sedan-version cost. Brakes are lasting twice as long. The reason: The electric engine acts as a second braking system, taking much of the load off the conventional friction brakes, says Tom Watson, Ford Hybrid Electric Vehicle Propulsion System engineering manager, Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Programs. Several water pumps blew at the 50,000-mile mark, a situation that’s been rectified, say Watson and San Francisco cab company owners. No legroom complaints from customers, who seem delighted by the novelty of the hybrid and by doing the right thing for the planet.

Women in Italy Like To Clean but Shun The Quick and Easy

Women in Italy Like To Clean but Shun The Quick and Easy:

Italian women keep some of the cleanest homes around.

They spend, on average, 21 hours a week on household chores other than cooking — compared with just four hours for Americans, according to Procter & Gamble Co. research. Italians wash kitchen and bathroom floors at least four times a week, Americans just once. Italians typically iron nearly all their wash, even socks and sheets. And they buy more cleaning supplies than women elsewhere do.

All that should make them the perfect customers for the manufacturers of cl