2007 January « networks info space

Picture Illusions: Stalin (1915) looks like Borat (2006)

2007-January-13 at 10:43 am | In Blogroll | Leave a Comment

I was doing a little research on Stalin and went to Wikipedia (French). I started reading and came across a picture of Stalin in exile, in 1915, on which he looked just like Borat.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Castro, Pamela Anderson, Ken Davitian, Alexandra Paul

Directed by: Larry Charles

As Borat Sagdiyev, a visitor from Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen is a balls-out comic revolutionary, right up there with Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, Dr. Strangelove, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Cartman at exposing the ignorant, racist, misogynist, gay-bashing, Jew-hating, gun-loving, warmongering heart of America. Borat will make you laugh till it hurts, and you’ll still beg for more.

Back to interest and reason. Your “interest” is primarily governed mostly by emotions. And the two most easily tweaked, twisted and plain-old manipulated are of course: fear and greed. For sure: there are a handful of really worthwhile ideas turned into businesses and they may even do what a business is supposed to do to be called one: turn a profit. But most will fail having raised funds by appealing to sentiment—not reason.

Borat, subtitled Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, sneaks up on you. Or it will if you’re not part of the cult spawned when HBO premiered Cohen’s Da Ali G Show in 2003, and Americans first encountered the inspired British comic who hid behind a series of alter egos. His gangsta journalist Ali G tricked politicians (Newt Gingrich, Boutros Boutros-Ghali) and pundits (Gore Vidal, Andy Rooney) into embarrassing and revealing interviews. His Bruno, a gay fashion commentator with a Nazi fetish, claimed to be the voice of Austrian youth. And then there’s Borat, the smiling, shamelessly offensive TV reporter from Kazakhstan who takes pride that his sister is “the number-four prostitute in all of country” where a ritual — “the running of the Jew” — is celebrated every year (“There you go, kids, crush that Jew egg before it hatches”). Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country in the world, but Cohen is counting on the fact that most Americans know squat about it or him. For the record, Cohen, 35, is nothing like Borat, Bruno, Ali G or Jean Girard, the gay French Formula Un driver who kissed Will Ferrell full on the lips in Talladega Nights. Cohen is a Cambridge scholar from a middle-class and devout Jewish family. Their son, the second of three, wrote his history thesis on the role of Jews in the American civil-rights movement. Not since Little Red Riding Hood have the unsuspecting been duped so hilariously by a big, bad wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Borat is such a mind-blowing comedy classic in the making (seeing it once is just not enough) that Cohen’s cover will surely be blown after the movie opens. But during the time it took Cohen to put Borat’s journey on film with director Larry Charles (he debuted with Bob Dylan’s Masked and Anonymous, a title that would also fit snugly here), people lined up, signed releases and bought the scam: that Borat, with his pubic patch of a mustache, his unwashed gray suit, his butchered English and his blatant bigotry, really was a roving Kazakh citizen doing a documentary on American culture.

OK, not everyone bought it. The government of Kazakhstan was appalled at seeing its country depicted as a place where men treat women as slaves, screw their sisters and swill wine made from horse piss. No wonder the Kazakh scenes were shot in Romania. “Not too much rape — and humans only,” Borat helpfully tells a friend as he leaves his village for America, carrying “a vial of gypsy tears to prevent AIDS.” Cohen makes primo slapstick out of all the silliness, but it’s his merciless knack for Swiftian satire that gives Borat its remarkable staying power. There’s something cathartic about laughs that stick in your throat.

Don’t be fooled by how this demonically devious mockumentary looks (as wonderfully tacky as an $18 million budget will allow) or how it’s organized (clever masked as haphazard), the film doesn’t waste one of its eighty-nine minutes. The script that Cohen wrote with Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer tells us that Borat has a hidden agenda for coming to America. He’s seen Baywatch and wants to take the “virgin” Pamela Anderson as his bride. When Borat catches his fat producer Azamat (Ken Davitian) jerking off to photos of Pam, he engages the hairy beast in a naked ass-to-mouth wrestling match that could set back screen nudity for decades. If you don’t upchuck, the scene is uproarious and kicks off Borat’s journey across America in an ice-cream truck (don’t ask) to find his muse.

Will Borat get his “sexytime” with Pam and have his hoped-for “romantic explosion” on her stomach? I’ll never tell. And I don’t have to, because the core of this movie — its raison d’etre — is who and what Borat encounters along the way. No aspect of prejudice, hypocrisy, arrogance and stupidity is overlooked.

At a rodeo in Virginia, Borat is greeted with cheers when he tells the crowd, “We support your war of terror,” and then hypes them up more by longing for the day that “Premier George W. Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.”

With Revolver, the Beatles made the Great Leap Forward, reaching a previously unheard-of level of sophistication and fearless experimentation. Sgt. Pepper, in many ways, refines that breakthrough, as the Beatles consciously synthesized such disparate influences as psychedelia, art-song, classical music, rock & roll, and music hall, often in the course of one song. Not once does the diversity seem forced — the genius of the record is how the vaudevillian “When I’m 64″ seems like a logical extension of “Within You Without You” and how it provides a gateway to the chiming guitars of “Lovely Rita.” There’s no discounting the individual contributions of each member or their producer, George Martin, but the preponderance of whimsy and self-conscious art gives the impression that Paul McCartney is the leader of the Lonely Hearts Club Band. He dominates the album in terms of compositions, setting the tone for the album with his unabashed melodicism and deviously clever arrangements. In comparison, Lennon’s contributions seem fewer, and a couple of them are a little slight but his major statements are stunning. “With a Little Help From My Friends” is the ideal Ringo tune, a rolling, friendly pop song that hides genuine Lennon anguish, à la “Help!”; “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” remains one of the touchstones of British psychedelia; and he’s the mastermind behind the bulk of “A Day in the Life,” a haunting number that skillfully blends Lennon’s verse and chorus with McCartney’s bridge. It’s possible to argue that there are better Beatles albums, yet no album is as historically important as this. After Sgt. Pepper, there were no rules to follow — rock and pop bands could try anything, for better or worse. Ironically, few tried to achieve the sweeping, all-encompassing embrace of music as the Beatles did here. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide ~ listen

At a gun store he asks the owner for the best gun for killing Jews and is told that a 9mm or a 45 will do just fine. He settles for a live bear. Terrified at having to sleep overnight at the home of a kindly Jewish couple, Borat believes that two cockroaches crawling under the door are the Jews transformed. To make them go away, he throws money at them. And so it goes, with Borat’s antics extending to a frat-boy boozefest, a Pentecostal church rally, a classy dinner party down South in which he is taught the formal art of toilet training and a confab with feminists who seem startled by the well-known fact in Kazakhstan that the brain of a woman is the size of a squirrel’s. On the debit side, the attempt to snatch Anderson at a book-signing feels staged, as if the movie had suffered a brush with Hollywood. But the brush is quick and far from fatal. Cohen’s total immersion in his character is a wonder to behold. If Oscar voters have any sense, they recognize his performance for what it is: a tour de force that sets off comic and cosmic explosions in your head. You won’t know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five!

Indeed, the man who invented Borat is a masterful improviser, brilliant comedian, courageous political satirist, and genuinely experimental film artist. Borat makes you laugh but Baron Cohen forces you to think.

Protected: Program For Business

2007-January-12 at 12:13 pm | In co2 | Enter your password to view comments

2007 January 07 « networks info space

2007-January-11 at 10:07 am | In co2 | Leave a Comment

2007 January 07 « networks info space

[TUE 12 DEC 06] THE 300 MILLION
* THE 300 MILLION: According to an article in THE ECONOMIST (“Now We Are 300,000,000″, 14 October 2006), in 2006 the United States of America passed a milestone: the population officially reached the 300 million mark. The 200 million mark had been reached in 1967, and the 400 million mark is expected to be reached in 2043 or so. This is a remarkable rate of population growth for a wealthy country, making the USA the world’s third most populous country after China and India. In contrast, Japan and the EU are expected to lose millions over the next few decades.
These are all just estimates, with a lot of factors that can change the ultimate sums, such as immigration, new lifestyles, increase or decrease in lifespan. However, it is a well-established fact that the US birthrate is an average of 2.1 children per woman — only about the replacement rate, but along with robust immigration it means a booming population. Contrast this with the EU, where the fertility rate is 1.47, and where the population is expected to start falling in 2010. In Spain and Italy, it’s 1.28, and without immigration the populations of those countries will fall to half in 42 years.

Falling birthrates are generally seen as an indication of prosperity. In poor countries, families try to have more kids to provide extra hands for work, as well as providing an old-age safety net. In rich societies, children can be a very expensive proposition, and with women working more and more, child-rearing means losing a good part of family income while financial demands rise. Couples in rich countries end up balancing their desire for the good life with their desire for children.

So why the high US birthrate? It seems that one of the answers is that Americans are more devout than Europeans. There is a tendency overseas to view the US as something like the Western equivalent of Afghanistan, a hotbed of religious fundamentalism, but in reality American religious conservatism is not always extreme, and the vision of fundamentalist families with hot and cold running kids is, as a birthrate of 2.1 kids per woman shows, much more the exception than the rule. However, a comfortable association with a religious faith not only pushes family values but provides resources to help raise families.

There is also the fact that the equality of the sexes is good, if not perfect, in the USA; studies seem to show that more male-dominated societies like Japan, where child-rearing is shifted heavily to women, have lower birthrates. In addition, there’s more wide open spaces in the US for families to grow. The big urban centers are of course crowded and have high living costs, but there’s plenty of space left in the heartlands and the West.

The changes in population mean changes in demographics. Cities like Houston, Texas, were once white-dominated; now whites share power and influence with hispanics, blacks, and asians. Some non-white Houston residents don’t feel race is an issue there, one saying: “Everybody’s so busy making money they don’t have time to worry about race.” Others disagree to an extent, but most of the citizenry still feels the multiethnic nature of their city is a strength in an age of globalization. As goes Houston, so it seems will go the rest of the USA.

Population growth, in spite of the old fears of “population doomsday”, is seen generally as a good thing here. By 2050, there will be one retired European for every two Europeans in the workforce; in the US the ratio will be a more tolerable one to three. The attitude is that problems of growth are better than problems of decline. The US population boom may well make others nervous. The USA is now widely seen elsewhere as overbearing, though the Americans have been acquiring some humility the hard way, and the prospect of 400 million Americans is likely to cause some nervousness. But the more diverse and globalized America of 2043 may not be as big an irritant.

http://www.vectorsite.net/gblog.html

Part 7 of 10: Global Warming Myths Debunked!

2007-January-7 at 12:40 am | In Blogroll | Leave a Comment

Part 7 in a 10 part series of debunking some so called myths about global warming. Specifically the argument that CO2 is not a pollutant.
January 4, 2007 – 1
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63.htm
Copyright © 2007 Earth Policy Institute
planA
Fuel versus Food
DISTILLERY DEMAND FOR GRAIN TO FUEL CARS VASTLY UNDERSTATED
World May Be Facing Highest Grain Prices in History

Lester R. Brown

Investment in fuel ethanol distilleries has soared since the late-2005 oil price hikes, but data collection in this fast-changing sector has fallen behind. Because of inadequate data collection on the number of new plants under construction, the quantity of grain that will be needed for fuel ethanol distilleries has been vastly understated. Farmers, feeders, food processors, ethanol investors, and grain-importing countries are basing decisions on incomplete data.
This unprecedented diversion of the world’s leading grain crop to the production of fuel will affect food prices everywhere. As the world corn price rises, so too do those of wheat and rice, both because of consumer substitution among grains and because the crops compete for land. Both corn and wheat futures were already trading at 10-year highs in late 2006.
planB
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB/index.htm
“We are creating a bubble economy—an economy whose output is artificially inflated by drawing down the earth’s natural capital,” says Lester R. Brown in his new book, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

“Each year the bubble grows larger as our demands on the earth expand. The challenge for our generation is to deflate the global economic bubble before it bursts,” says Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.
“We are releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere faster than the earth can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect. Rising atmospheric CO2 levels promise a temperature rise during this century that could match that between the last Ice Age and the present,” notes Brown in Plan B, which was funded by the U.N. Population Fund.

Bubble economies are not new. American investors got an up-close view of one when the bubble in high-tech stocks burst in 2000 and the NASDAQ, an indicator of the value of these stocks, declined by some 75 percent. The Japanese had a similar experience in 1989 when the real estate bubble burst, depreciating stock and real estate assets by 60 percent. As a result of the bad-debt fallout and other effects of this collapse, the once dynamic Japanese economy has been dead in the water ever since.

The bursting of these two bubbles most directly affected people living in the industrial West and Japan. But if the bubble that is based on the overconsumption of the earth’s natural capital bursts, it will affect the entire world.

Water shortages, such as those in China, are becoming global, crossing national boundaries via the international grain trade. Countries facing water shortages often import water in the form of grain. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, this is the most efficient way to import water. Grain has become the currency with which countries balance their water books. Trading in grain futures is now in a sense trading in water futures.
“Plan A—business as usual—is not working. It is creating a bubble economy. Plan B describes how to deflate the economic bubble before it bursts,” says Brown. “This involves, for example, reducing the demand for water to the sustainable yield of aquifers by quickly raising water productivity and accelerating the shift to smaller families. With most of the nearly 3 billion people to be added by 2050 to be born in countries already facing water shortages, pressure on water supplies will mount. If population is not stabilized soon, the water situation in some countries could become unmanageable.”
Accelerating the shift to small families and population stability means providing women with reproductive health care, filling the family planning gap, and investing heavily in education to ensure that the U.N. goal of universal primary education by 2015 is reached. The more education women have, the more options they have and the fewer children they bear. We now have the wealth and knowledge to eradicate the poverty that fuels rapid population growth.
A simple measure, such as replacing old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs would enable the world to close hundreds of coal-fired power plants. Replacing nonrefillable beverage containers, such as aluminum cans, with refillable bottles can cut energy use by up to 90 percent. If all U.S. motorists shifted from their current vehicles with internal combustion engines to cars with hybrid engines, like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight, gasoline use could be cut in half. Cutting carbon emissions in half is less a matter of technology and more a matter of political leadership.
“Not only do we need to stabilize population, raise water productivity, and stabilize climate, but we need to do it at wartime speed. The key to quickly shifting from a carbon-based energy economy to a hydrogen-based one is to incorporate the costs of climate change, including crop-damaging temperatures, more destructive storms, and rising sea level, in the prices of fossil fuels. We need to get the market to tell the ecological truth.”
At average world grain consumption of just over 300 kilograms or one third of a ton per person per year, this would feed 480 million people. Stated otherwise, 480 million of the world’s 6 billion people are being fed with grain produced with the unsustainable use of water.

Overpumping is a new phenomenon, one largely confined to the last half century. Only since the development of powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps have we had the capacity to pull water out of aquifers faster than it is replaced by precipitation.

In addition to population growth, urbanization and industrialization also expand the demand for water. As developing country villagers, traditionally reliant on the village well, move to urban high-rise apartment buildings with indoor plumbing, their residential water use can easily triple. Industrialization takes even more water than urbanization.

As people move up the food chain, consuming more beef, pork, poultry, eggs, and dairy products, they use more grain.

Once a localized phenomenon, water scarcity is now crossing national borders via the international grain trade.

It is now often said that future wars in the region will more likely be fought over water than oil. Perhaps, but given the difficulty in winning a water war, the competition for water seems more likely to take place in world grain markets. The countries that will “win”in this competition will be those that are financially strongest, not those that are militarily strongest.

Tech Culture

2007-January-5 at 12:50 pm | In Blogroll | Leave a Comment

December 24
10 comments

A Community Christmas Album

A deliciously lush, free Christmas album to download.

December 22
38 comments

Beyond the Track-able Cellphone

Scary-good ideas from a reader.

December 21
48 comments

The Netiquette Diaries

Last week, I wrote in this weekly e-column that the nastiness online seems to be intensifying. If Digg, Slashdot and my own blog are any indication, there’s less and less meaningful discussion, and more and more jerkiness and backstabbing.
Over 450 of you posted or e-mailed your reactions—450 of the most intelligent, articulate comments ever typed. […]

December 21
8 comments

Photo shop CS3, Beta is Free

Hallelujah! Adobe has posted a free beta of the next Photo shop (due in the second quarter of 2007). You need a Photo shop CS2 serial number to make it work.
If nothing else, it means that people who use Intel-based Macs can now have a full-speed Photo shop again (because it’s a “Universal binary”), and people who use […]

December 19
76 comments

Myth-Busting, Part XXVII: Hospital Interference

Do cellphones really interfere with hospital equipment? Pogue asks his Expert Squads to debunk this one.

December 18, 2006, 8:01 pm

The Redmond Copying Machine?

My recent video, which tweaked Microsoft for crowing about its “innovation” in Windows Vista (without acknowledging its huge debt to Mac OS X), triggered plenty of reaction. It probably comes as no surprise that your comments quickly devolved into “which is better” bickering, which will probably never end.

Some of you claim, with much anger and swearing, that Apple steals from Microsoft just as much as the other way.

My response to one such response: “You’re right–very few things were actually invented wholesale by Apple. The mouse, menus, overlapping windows, the CD drive, Wi-Fi wireless, and so on–all of these things were developed elsewhere….

December 16, 2006, 5:18 pm

Set Sarcasm Detector to On

Oh, my lord. Oh, sweet mother of all that is holy.

I am actually getting hate mail in response to my Times video from last week , in which I spend a few minutes, DRIPPING with sarcasm, “proving” that Microsoft didn’t steal ideas in Windows Vista from Mac OS X.

I “prove” this by demonstrating (for example) how the new Sidebar is exactly identical to the Mac’s Dashboard, but isn’t really the same thing! Why? Because Microsoft calls its little mini-programs “gadgets,” which are obviously not the same thing as “widgets” (Apple’s term). And so on.

But a few people have already written me, saying, “You must be the dumbest man in America. You think that’s a DIFFERENCE? Who the @#*#*#** cares if they use a different term? It’s EXACTLY THE SAME THING!”

And here I though in the post-Letterman age, our irony detectors were finely honed…

December 11, 2006, 4:37 pm

The Airplane-Treadmill Conundrum

OK, this one’s driving me crazy. This brain-teaser is ripping around the Internet, plus I actually overheard it THREE TIMES in airport conversations on a recent trip to Canada.

Here’s how I found it presented at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=34 8452:

“Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyor belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels,

November 23, 2006, 3:32 pm

Waiting for Moderation

From today’s mailbag:

“David: I enjoy your blog a lot, and when it started, I agreed with your enthusiasm for the range of intelligent comments your posts attracted.

“I assume that now your blog gets greater traffic, since the number of comments has escalated also, often to the point where it becomes rather tedious to read through them all.

“Just today, I read your post about the mega pixel test you did for digital cameras, which as I write has attracted 200 comments, too many of which were “me too” remarks repeating points made by other comment posters (e.g. more mega pixels are good if you are cropping the photo heavily)–and several made by people who did not appear to have read your original post!

“I don’t like the idea of comments being heavily moderated, but could you perhaps put in a plea by the comments box, asking people, as a matter of courtesy to others, to read the previous comments before posting, to see if their point has been made already.

“I would just like the debate in your comments section to remain intelligent and sparky.”

November 6, 2006, 5:46 pm

Yet Another TV-Show Guest Search

And the last one for a long time, methinks.

Next week, we’re filming an episode of “It’s All Geek to Me” that’s all about rescuing old recordings: LPs, cassettes, data on floppy disks, scanning old photos, and so on.

We’re looking for a guest–in NY, CT, or NJ–who’s got some old home movies on FILM REELS who’d like them converted to a DVD, at our expense. We’re ESPECIALLY interested if there’s someone — a mother, grandfather, whatever — who hasn’t seen these videos in years, and might react positively when you surprise him or her with a sparkling-new DVD of them!

If you wouldn’t mind letting us interview you and then film the unveiling for the delighted older relative, then email me at pogue@nytimes.com!

Update: Thanks to all the volunteers–the position has now been filled!

November 1, 2006, 2:26 pm

A Faster Web–for Free

Is it just me, or are the freebies starting to blossom once again on the Web? Feels like it’s 1999 all over again.

I’ve got yet another great free one for you today, and it’s a doze. I read about it in PC World, and couldn’t believe it: a service that purports to speed up your broadband Internet connection. It’s called Open DNS.

Works great, at least for me. Once I plugged the Open DNS addresses into my router, the wait time for a complex Web page went from 3-4 seconds down to 1-2, on both my Macs and PC’s.

October 24, 2006, 4:12 pm

Dream Applications

If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. And sometimes, that involves writing the software.

This is the most interesting online contest I’ve seen (or judged) in a long time: MyDreamApp.com.

Macintosh-based dreamers were invited to submit their best ideas for a program that doesn’t yet exist. Round by round, viewers voted for their favorites. Celebrity judges weighed in, but the people were the only ones allowed to vote.

Now only a handful of entries are left—and they are REALLY wild and interesting ideas for programs. (My fave: Blossom.)

Voting is winding down. Everyone who votes gets free licenses for cool shareware programs; the last 24 finalists get iPods, Mac Minis or laptops; and the winner—of course—gets to see his fantasy program actually written and released to the world.

Now how ‘bout a similar contest for Windows fans?

October 21, 2006, 7:23 pm

Another Help-Wanted Ad for TV

Here’s another chance for Pogue readers to wind up on national TV…

I’m trying to help out some producers for an upcoming segment about technology. I mentioned to them the incredible luck I’ve had getting answers and volunteers by posting requests on this blog!

So here’s what they’re after:

“We’re looking for a first-time buyer of a flat-screen HDTV in late October / early November, who doesn’t mind having a TV crew in tow while they buy it and set it up. If that’s you… please contact jenandfrank555@yahoo.com. Thanks.”

I’ll let you and your agent take it from here.

Now, in fact, you can contribute your computer’s idle time to more pressing issues. “Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It’s safe, secure, and easy,” says the home page of BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing).

It *is* easy, and worthwhile. After all, how often do you get to feel good about doing something for your species–without actually having to do anything at all?