Am I correct in reading this map to say that South Carolina and half of North Carolina are Steelers fans? What's up with that? Do you see any other oddities?
... Different languages have different ways of talking about the future.
Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their
speakers to refer to the future explicitly. Every time English-speakers
talk about the future, they have to use future markers such as “will” or
“going to.” In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German,
future markers are not obligatory. The future is often talked about
similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood
from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar
might say “Wo qu ting jiangzuo,” which translates to “I go listen
seminar.” Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers
that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as
Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate
impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers. ...
“Capitalism has a purpose beyond just making money. I think the critics of capitalism have got it in this very small box. That it’s all about money. It’s based in being greedy, selfish and exploitative. And yet, I haven’t found it to be that way. Most of the hundreds of entrepreneurs I know and have met did not start their business primarily out of a desire to make money. Not that there’s anything wrong with making money. My body cannot function unless it produces red-blood cells. No red-blood cells and I’m a dead man. But that’s not the purpose of my life.
Similarly, a business cannot exist unless it produces a profit . . . but that’s not the only reason it exists.”
When I was writing a review of Dwight Lee's and Richard McKenzie's excellent book, Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life,
I called Dwight to ask a question and we got talking about Rule #5: Get
Married and Stay Married. Dwight pointed out that if you follow the
other 7 rules but don't get married or stay married, you have a
substantial probability of building a fortune and a satisfying life.
But, he said, if you don't get married and stay married, you tend not to
follow at least some of the other 7 rules.
While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder.
... A useful debate about the morality of capitalism must get beyond libertarian nostrums that greed is good, what’s mine is mine and whatever the market produces is fair. It should also acknowledge that there is no moral imperative to redistribute income and opportunity until everyone has secured a berth in a middle class free from economic worries. If our moral obligation is to provide everyone with a reasonable shot at economic success within a market system that, by its nature, thrives on unequal outcomes, then we ought to ask not just whether government is doing too much or too little, but whether it is doing the right things.
Instead, Dr. Butzer argues that Sargon's conquest itself caused
the collapse of trade by destroying cities and disrupting what had
till then been "an inter-networked world-economy, once extending
from the Aegean to the Indus Valley." In other words, as with the
end of the Roman empire, the collapse of trade caused the collapse
of civilization more than the other way around.
A new find suggests farmers in Bible lands built channels for irrigation long before historians thought they did, allowing for cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley.
... “Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different,” said University of Missouri biologist David Geary in their statement. “For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls’ and boys’ reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls’ higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs.”
Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the work by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. ...
... Two rival reform movements arose to restore the integrity of
Catholicism. Those in the first movement, the Donatists, believed the
church needed to purify itself and return to its core identity. ...
... In the fourth century, another revival movement arose, embraced by
Augustine, who was Bishop of Hippo. The problem with the Donatists,
Augustine argued, is that they are too static. They try to seal off an
ark to ride out the storm, but they end up sealing themselves in. They
cut themselves off from new circumstances and growth.
Augustine, as his magisterial biographer Peter Brown puts it, “was
deeply preoccupied by the idea of the basic unity of the human race.” He
reacted against any effort to divide people between those within the
church and those permanently outside. ....
16. A great piece by someone who considers them unaffiliated with any religion. Every Christian and congregation needs to reflect on the insignificance of the church in this writers life. His tribe is growing: The significant insignificance of religion
While you're filling out your expertly analyzed bracket, you might want to take a look at how March Madness fandom is spread across the country with this map from Facebook (via Gizmodo).
Michael Bailey of Facebook's Data Science team analyzed the way "likes"
are spread through teams and conferences, across the country—in similar
fashion to this Super Bowl map.
Here, for instance, Facebook looks at the conference divide. Bailey
points out in his analysis how the ACC fan base is spread across the
country, despite pockets of dominance for other conferences....
1. The United States had its financial bubble. Europe is having one too. Is China next? If it is, it could reshape the global economy and radically reshape Chinese government. Here is an interesting piece about China's real estate bubble.
... I like the idea of a breaking the Industrial Revolution into stages,
but I would define them in more fundamental terms. The first Industrial
Revolution was the harnessing of large-scale man-made power, which began
with the steam engine. The internal combustion engine, electric power,
and other sources of energy are just further refinements of this basic
idea. The second Industrial Revolution would be the development of
interchangeable parts and the assembly line, which made possible
inexpensive mass production with relatively unskilled labor. The Third
Industrial Revolution would not be computers, the Internet, or mobile
phones, because up to now these have not been industrial tools;
they have been used for moving information, not for making things.
Instead, the rise of computers and the Internet is just a warm-up for
the real Third Industrial Revolution, which is the full integration of information technology with industrial production.
The effect of the Third Industrial Revolution will be to collapse the
distance between the design of a product and its physical manufacture,
in much the same way that the Internet has eliminated the distance
between the origination of a new idea and its communication to an
audience. ...
... Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays
off in a big “whoosh,” but it takes many decades, depending on where
you draw the starting line of course. A look at the early 19th century
is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today. But
it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity
over the longer run.
5. What are the contours of income inequality in the United States? This 40 minute video by Emmanuel Saez offers some important insights.
6. Futurist Ray Kurzweil is a little too sensationalist for my taste but this vid offers interesting food for thought about nanotechnology and the future sports. We will even be able to have meaningful sports competition?
The recovered wealth - most of it from higher stock prices - has been
flowing mainly to richer Americans. By contrast, middle class wealth is
mostly in the form of home equity, which has risen much less.
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is
only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering
departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that
their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their
uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in
redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other
uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold
uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the
entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of
blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being
a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of
security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance
that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this
red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining
redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single
population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for
workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show
surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University
and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example,
computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers
at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has
increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note.
Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans,
like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile
production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and
white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s
insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass
unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine
tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a
skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of
workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where
labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The
relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they
choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value.
Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more
out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which
translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism.
These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results
of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed
securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of
creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is
the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net
new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth.
Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is
antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth,
growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and
growth.
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand,
whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs
or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are
trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or
the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the
battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert
engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and
in very little time? ...
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D
printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change
and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the
ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire
to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of
photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely
difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or
need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or
the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the
processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic
instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial
or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure,
mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale
quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the
digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year
for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought
recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5
billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at
its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the
record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday
by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide
significant encouragement.
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research,
it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects
the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format:
fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and
retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study
habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will
certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the
particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the
United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29
identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older
than 50.
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16.Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion while liberals, and praticularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!
"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've
identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall
flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those
elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic
plan."
"In this way a conception of subsidiarity “from below” is focused on the location of sovereignty from the “bottom up” rather than on the delegation of authority from the “top down.” We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity “from above” and “from below” that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of “sphere sovereignty” in the late nineteenth century and beyond."
"Pally’s essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have “left the right.” But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’ve left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."
"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.
But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."
10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)
From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.
Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.
12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before
"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."
15. Okay purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers will no longer be able to fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?
1. Too often Westerners perceive African economy as a monolithic basket case. There are actually many regions of that are very hopeful. Ozwald Boateng explains Why entrepreneurs are back in Africa
3. Lots of recent talk about whether or not e-books will ever actually totally supplant hard copy books. This week Mashable explores Why Are People Still Buying CDs? (And people are still buying them.)
7. I almost didn't link this article because I could swear I've linked it before. Why Does Deja Vu Happen?
8. Several months ago I saw a speech expert interviewed has offered voice training to a number of famous figures. One was Margaret Thatcher. They showed her speaking in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, after receiving voice training. A big piece of the change was lessening the modulation in tone and pitch, which tends to vary more widely with female voices. The changes were intended to make her sound more authoritative, which both men and women, unjustified as it may be, more often associate with male vocal traits. But apparently, the thing that really triggers gender detection in our language is the way we use S's. Change Your Perceived Gender by Pronouncing S's Differently
"... Although the number of evangelical churches in the United States
declined for many years, the trend reversed in 2006, with more new
churches opening each year since, according to the Leadership Network’s
most recent surveys. This wave of “church planting” has been highest
among nondenominational pastors, free to experiment outside traditional
hierarchies.
“I hear a lot of pastors say, ‘I’m not just trying to be creative and
avant-garde, I think this is maybe the last chance for me,’ ” said Doug Pagitt, the founder of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.
Mr. Pagitt has written several books on church innovations, many of which were first developed in the “emergent” church movement of the last decade or among “missional” churches whose practices focus on life outside the church.
Many of their innovations are being adopted by an increasing number of pastors in the mainstream.
... But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.
Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.
The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.
Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk. ...
"...Launched in July, the Seattle-based Egraphs' business model is simple, but pretty clever. Fans can peruse the company website to see if their favorite athlete has partnered up with Egraphs. Each player's section has a number of professionally shot action photographs included, typically priced between $25 and $50. The fan pays and sends the athlete a message through the website, including some personal details or memories.
The athlete then receives that message on his custom iPad app, using the the information provided to write a personalized note and electronic autograph on the selected photo. The photo is then sent electronically to the fan, who can save it digitally, share it on social media or order a physical print. Revenue is split between company and athlete. ..."
8. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, legalizing abortion across the country. Time magazine has a feature article about the Pro-Choice movement this week that suggests 1973 may have been the high-water mark for the movement. Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall. Here is a short clip summarizing their take.
"...Academic Publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent Slate piece, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they'll never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to prop up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over flimsy copyright claims. ..."
12. Baseball Pitchers like Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and now, R. A. Dickey did their magic throwing a knuckleball. Pitchers who master usually do very well and it puts less stress on the arm. So why don't more pitchers throw it? Why the Knuckleball Isn’t Thrown by More Pitchers in Major League Baseball
3. Four Harvard and MIT grads are experimenting with direct aid to the poor. "GiveDirectly, the brainchild of four Harvard and MIT graduate students, is so simple, it's genius. Give poor Kenyan families $1,000 -- and let them do whatever they want with it." Can 4 Economists Build the Most Economically Efficient Charity Ever?
"... Despite
its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for
rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and
conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has
sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of
the health service.
Their success is envied by the centre right
in Britain. Despite predictions of doom, Sweden's economy continues to
grow and its pro-business coalition has remained in power since 2006.
The last election was the first time since the war that a centre-right
government had been re-elected after serving a full term.
As the
state has been shrunk, the private sector has moved in. Göran Dahlgren, a
former head civil servant at the Swedish department of health and a
visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, says that "almost all
welfare services are now owned by private equity firms". ..."
"... We
have reached a point in our economy where it is becoming increasingly
clear that businesses are being measured not just for their profit, but
also for their impact. And I’m not just talking about writing a check or
funding a charity; I’m referring to business models for which community
involvement and inspirational brand building are the profit centers.
(Think Warby Parker, TOMS, and startups such as SOMA.) I recently went
to a conference where the founders of a startup posited a powerful idea:
the future of marketing is philanthropy. But I think the even bigger
idea is the future of business is morality. My grandfather saw this
early on.
At a time when the moral framework of America appears
to be fractured – or at the very least confused – businesses are in the
propitious position to espouse cultural standards that can help restore
values that our youth can use to build the next generation of positive
enterprise. In fact, whether businesses succeed in creating and
promoting positive cultures might determine whether they stay in
business at all. The future of business is morality, and the future is
now.
Whether it’s the job of the corporation or not to set the
moral tone for society, the expectation is trending towards companies
setting the right example for others to follow. With the sharp rise in
entrepreneurship, young companies have the opportunity to establish
strong cultures early on and share them with their communities. Money
must have a moral center, and from greater consciousness in business,
greater profit will follow. ..."
"New data show an increasing contribution of mental and behavioral disorders to deterioration in the health-related quality of life among teens in the U.S. and Canada over the past two decades, and increases elsewhere around the globe."
More people moved out of California in 2011 than moved in, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling that the Democrat-run state’s economic woes continue to drive residents away.
Most statisticians attribute California’s net loss of 100,000 people last year to its high cost of living, increased population density and troubling unemployment rate.
The widening middle class in Mexico is also encouraging some immigrants to remain in that country instead of moving to California.
Texas — home to lower taxes, less regulation and what the Manhattan Institute calls a “labor pool with the right skills at the right price” — is one of the most attractive destinations for companies departing from California, according to the Census Bureau. ...
"The country reported 85 executions in 2000 but only 43 in 2012, according to a new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Plus, far fewer people are being sentenced to death row in the first place. The year 2000 saw 224 new inmates sentenced to death, while 2012 saw only 78, according to the report."
15. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic had a great piece Why 'If We Can Just Save One Child ...' Is a Bad Argument, referring to a statement President Obama made at Newtown, CT. When we deal with complex topics like gun control, we are always
talking about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more
than 30,000 lives. The were 32,367 traffic fatalities last
year. Let's set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. Nearly all those lives would be saved. Should we do this "if we can save just
one more life"? I, like Friedersforf, am not advocating any particular
policy. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of making statements like this, as politicians often do.
"I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a
result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that
served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive.
The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they
splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old
evangelicalism whimper and wane."
He speaks of an Evangelical "collapse" having happened. That may be a bit premature but I think his articulation of trends is right.
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1. Pray for Egypt Today!
More than 50 million Egyptians are voting today on a constitution that would be a giant step backward for Egypt and much of the Middle East, marginalizing women and religious minorities. A nation that has historically been a voice of moderation, the largest Muslim nation in the region, will likely move toward becoming an Islamist state. Remember to pray for Egypt. (See the Economist'sThe Founding Brothers)
2. Our prayers are with families of the victims at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.
Traffic deaths in the USA continued their historic decline last year,
falling to the lowest level since 1949, the government announced
Monday.
A total of 32,367 motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians died in 2011,
a 1.9% decrease from 2010. Last year’s toll represents a 26% decline
from 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
said. ...
... The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as
well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The
state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white
students.
“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have
any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health
commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in
the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011....
....The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. ...
... The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain.
The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it
sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only
twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the
researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response
whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who
had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her
leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells. ...
....In 2011, 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported to the CDC.
The rate of cases per 100,000 people increased 8%, to 457.6 in 2011 from
423.6 in 2010.
The CDC reported 321,849 gonorrhea infections. The
rate increased 4% to 104.2 cases per 100,000 in 2011 from 100.2 in
2010. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease,
a major cause of infertility in women.
Last year, 13,970 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported. The rate of 4.5 cases per 100,000 was unchanged from 2010. ...
7. You may be bilingual but can you write in two languages, one with each hand, at the same time?!
10. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones speculates on why liberals have more exaggerated perceptions of political differences. We Are More Alike Than We Think
11. A surprising "right to work" bill was signed into law in Michigan, of all places. That has spurred a lot of debate about unions and the right to work. Michael Kinsley wrote a thoughtful piece opposing RTW, The Liberal Case Against Right-to-Work Laws. David Henderson has piece in support of RTW, The Economics of "Right to Work".
12. Slate has a piece about The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement.
Keith Kloor opines on the division between mondernist environmentalists
(or eco-pragmatists) and conservation traditionalists.
...
Modernist greens don't dispute the ecological tumult associated with the
Anthropocene. But this is the world as it is, they say, so we might as
well reconcile the needs of people with the needs of nature. To this
end, Kareiva advises conservationists to craft "a new vision of a planet
in which nature—forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient
ecosystems—exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes."
This
shift in thinking is already under way. For example, ecologists
increasingly appreciate (and study) the diversity of species and
importance of ecosystem services in cities, giving rise to the
discipline of urban ecology. That was unthinkable at the dawn of the
modern environmental movement 50 years ago, when greens loathed cities
as the antithesis of wilderness. ...
13. One of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I remember from my
childhood was when this woman ends up trapped in a department store at
night. The mannequins begin calling to her. She discovers she is actually a mannequin who
has over stayed her time out in the world and it is time for the next
mannequin to spend some time outside the store. This story confirms my worst nightmares: In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You
15. One of the biggest concerns about fracking technology is the enormous amount of water it uses. A company has figured out how to recycle water so that far less water is used in the fracking process. Solving fracking's biggest problem
... 3D printing represents the latest version of what industry experts call
"additive manufacturing" — a way to turn practically any computer
designs into real objects by building them up layer-by-layer using
plastics, metals or other materials. The technology could end up
affecting every major industry — aerospace, defense, medicine, transportation, food, fashion — and have an even bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing than the robot revolution. ...
20. Michael Cheshire has a great piece in Leadership Journal on "What I learned about grace and redemption through my friendship with a Christian pariah." Going To Hell with Ted Haggard
".... A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the
Denver area with a close atheist friend. He's a great guy and a very
deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the
wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted's fall. He pointed his
finger at the HD and said, "That is the reason I will not become a
Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that's what
keeps me away."
It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen
to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to
Ted's hypocrisy. "Hey man, not all of us do things like that," I
responded. He laughed and said, "Michael, you just proved my point. See,
that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and
forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys
can't forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you
talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say
he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I
stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy
failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to
him." Then he uttered words that left me reeling: "You Christians eat
your own. Always have. Always will."
He was running late for a meeting and had to take off. I, however, could
barely move. I studied the TV and read the caption as a well-known
religious leader kept shoveling dirt on a man who had admitted he was
unclean. And at that moment, my heart started to change. I began to
distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to
understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I
brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very
mention of Haggard's name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions
were visceral."
21. Leonardo Bonucci got a yellow card for faking collision during a
soccer game. It should have been a red card. No one deserves to be a professional soccer player with acting skills
this bad!
Here are the links. BTW, if you haven't already, you can "like" the Kruse Kronicle Facebook page and see daily links in your Facebook feed.
1. When I was a kid, I used to watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom on Saturdays. That was the beginning of my life-long appreciation for big cats. One of the organizations we support is the Turperntine Creek Wildlife Refuge for big cats in Arkansas. Check out this Nat Geo super slo-mo video of a running cheetah. Be sure to go to minute 5:00, and see him from the front. His head barely moves. Just amazing!
7. If you are a man, getting along with the in-laws means you have 20% higher chance of not getting divorced. If you are a woman, getting along well the in-laws makes you 20% more likely to get divorced. Getting Along With The In-Laws Makes Women More Likely To Divorce
"The Supreme Court announced Friday it would review a case testing whether human genes may be patented, in a dispute weighing patents associated with human genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer. A 2009 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union claimed among other things the First Amendment is at stake because the patents are so broad they bar scientists from examining and comparing the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes at the center of the dispute. In short, the patents issued more than a decade ago cover any new scientific methods of looking at these human genes that might be developed by others."
I am guessing there are some bioethics questions to consider here as well. ;-)
15. 4.5 billion years of the earth's evolution in as if it happened in 24 hours.
"The Pew Research Center announced Nov. 29 that the U.S.
birth rate fell to its lowest level since at least 1920, when reliable
record-keeping began. That was true—but not news. The National Center
for Health Statistics reported that way back on Oct. 3.
What was
news was Pew’s analysis of the government data, which showed that the
birth rate decline was greatest among immigrant women. “We were the
first to point that out,” Gretchen Livingston, the lead author of Pew’s
report, said in an interview. ..."
... New research shows that Catholics now report the lowest proportion of
"strongly affiliated" followers among major American religious
traditions, while the data indicates that evangelicals are increasingly
devout and committed to their faith.
According to Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, in the 1970s there was only a five-point difference
between how strongly Catholics and evangelicals felt about their
religion.
By 2010, he said, that "intensity gap" had grown to around 20 points,
with some 56 percent of evangelicals describing themselves as "strongly
affiliated" with their religion compared with 35 percent of Catholics.
Even mainline Protestants reported a higher level of religious intensity
than Catholics, at 39 percent. ..."
"Indeed, for America’s Amish, much is changing. The Amish are, by one measure, the fastest-growing faith community in the US. Yet as their numbers grow, the land available to support the agrarian lifestyle that underpins their faith is shrinking, gobbled up by the encroachment of exurban mansions and their multidoor garages.
The result is, in some ways, a gradual redefinition of what it means to be Amish. Some in the younger generation are looking for new ways to make a living on smaller and smaller slices of land. Others are looking beyond the Amish heartland of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, seeking more space in states such as Texas, Maine, and Montana."
21. Finally, one of the things I found interesting about the presidential election was Team Romney's seeming confidence they were winning. I think every candidate who is losing often tries to spin things positively until the very end but I had the sense that Team Romney wasn't faking it. They believed they were winning. I think post-election analysis is revealing that was true. From The New RepbulicThe Internal Polls That Made Mitt Romney Think He'd Win
3. "British people - and many others across the world - have been brought up on the idea of three square meals a day as a normal eating pattern, but it wasn't always that way." Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Have we always eaten them?
7. "It's a common grumble that politicians' lifestyles are far removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay. Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay." Jose Mujica: The world's 'poorest' president
8. You may have heard that there was a presidential election last week. Here is a map showing how the counties voted, with red being the most intensely Republican and blue being the most Democrat. (Source: The Real Reason Cities Lean Democratic)
9. Speaking of the election, there has been a lot written about how the GOP will need to change if they want to win national elections. As a right-leaning guy, I thought this article in Slate, The New Grand Old Party, and this one by Bobby Jindal, How Republicans can win future elections, were among the best.
13. Nanotechnology just keeps getting more amazing. "The latest invention from Stanford University’s Department of Electrical
Engineering sounds like something a superhero would have. A
self-repairing plastic-metal material has been developed by a team of
professors, researchers and graduate students." New Self-Repairing Material Invented at Stanford
15. Speaking of 3D-Printing, how big a deal is it? "Chris Anderson has exited one of the top jobs in publishing -
Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine - to pursue the life of an
entrepreneur, making a big bet that 3D printers represent a massive new
phase of the industrial revolution." Chris Anderson: Why I left Wired - 3D Printing Will Be Bigger Than The Web
"A
flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a
place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time,
then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and
artistic expression. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications,
social media, or viral emails." [Wikipedia accessed 11.12.12]
How do you define a church?"
Elite soccer players are smarter than you are, and the sharpest of them score more often than dimmer teammates.
Top-tier players think more clearly, quickly and flexibly than non-players, and there is a correlation between cognitive ability and the number of goals and assists a soccer player scores, Swedish researchers found. The study, published in the journal PLoS One, says measuring cognitive skill could predict a player’s potential.
“Our data suggest that measures of executive functions with validated neuropsychological tests may establish if a player has the capacity to reach top levels in soccer,” the researchers wrote. “Thus, the present study may change the way ball-sports are viewed and analyzed and how new talents are recruited.” ...
... Petrovic and his colleagues used standardized tests to analyze the executive functions of 31 male and 26 female soccer players over the course of five months in 2007. The players were drawn from six teams in Sweden’s elite Allsvenskan league and five teams in next-tier Division 1. Players from both groups performed far better than non-players, with Allsvenskan footballers ranked among the top 5 percent of the general population. The Allsvenskans also outscored their Division 1 counterparts.
The research then moved to the pitch as the scientists followed several players between 2008 and 2010 to record the number of goals and assists they made. Here, too, the smartest players performed best, even after accounting for age and position. ...
It would be interesting to know of other elite atheletes in other sports have similar cognitive advantages. I had a roomate in graduate school who was getting his Phd. in Psychology. I remember him showing me a study about perception of field and ground among American football players. One of the key issues there was that pro running backs had a keen ability to see the spaces between players versus seeing the players themselves.
Could any real country have an economy like Panem’s? Actually, yes.
At first glance, the economic landscape depicted in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling Hunger Games trilogy doesn’t make much sense. Despite its post-apocalyptic condition, the fictional nation of Panem is quite technologically advanced. It has high-speed trains, hovercrafts, extraordinary genetic engineering capabilities, and the ability to create extremely advanced weapons. And yet Panem is also a society of tremendous economic inequality, with clear examples of absolute economic deprivation and even famine.
Economic theory teaches us that over the long term, prosperity is driven by two factors—capital accumulation and the “Solow residual” of technology—and that of the two elements the technology is more important. Perhaps the best example comes to us from the experience of Germany and Japan around World War II. These were, before the war began, prosperous, technologically advanced societies rich in industrial capital. They had the capacity, in other words, to build the tanks and bombs and aircraft carriers one would need to mount a successful effort at global conquest. But during the course of the war, the capital stock of both countries was run down to almost nothing by massive Allied bombing. In the very short-term, this impoverished both countries, but they bounced back remarkably quickly. Knowing how to build a prosperous society, in other words, was more important than actually having the physical stuff.
So how can Panem, more than 70 years after the conclusion of its last major battle, be so poor and yet so rich in knowledge?...
... District 12 is a quintessential extractive economy. It’s oriented around a coal mine, the kind of facility where unskilled labor can be highly productive in light of the value of the underlying commodity. In a free society, market competition for labor and union organizing would drive wages up. But instead the Capitol imposes a single purchaser of mine labor and offers subsistence wages. Emigration to other districts in search of better opportunities is banned, as is exploitation of the apparently bountiful resources of the surrounding forest. With the mass of Seam workers unable to earn a decent wage, even relatively privileged townsfolk have modest living standards. If mineworkers earned more money, the Mellark family bakery would have more customers and more incentive to invest in expanded operations. A growing service economy would grow up around the mine. But the extractive institutions keep the entire District in a state of poverty, despite the availability of advanced technology in the Capitol.
Similar conditions would apply to the plantation agriculture we briefly see portrayed in District 8, and presumably other commodity-oriented Districts such as 7 (lumber), 10 (livestock), and 9 (grain). On the other hand, Collins wisely avoids going into detail about what life is supposed to be like in Districts specializing in luxury goods or electronics. It’s difficult to have a thriving economy in electronics production without a competitive market featuring multiple buyers and multiple sellers.
Absent market competition, personal computers never would have disrupted the mainframe market and the iPhone and Android never would have revolutionized telecommunications. Entrenched monopolists have no interest in developing new technologies that shake things up. It’s difficult to get real innovation-oriented competitive markets without secure property rights, and exceedingly difficult to have secure property rights without some diffusion of political power. That needn’t mean real democratic equality—a standard the United States and Europe didn’t meet until relatively recently—but it does mean fairly broad power-sharing, as the U.S. has had from the beginning.
But Collins is right in line with the most depressing conclusion offered by Acemoglu and Robinson, namely that once extractive institutions are established they’re hard to get rid of. Africa’s modern states, they note, were created by European colonialists who set out to create extractive institutions to exploit the local population. The injustice of the situation led eventually to African mass resistance and the overthrow of colonial rule. But in almost every case, the new elite simply started running the same extractive institutions for their own benefit. The real battle turned out to have been over who ran the machinery of extraction, not its existence. And this, precisely, is the moral of Collins’ trilogy. [Spoiler alert: Ignore rest of this story if you haven’t finished the trilogy.] To defeat the Capitol’s authoritarian power requires the construction of a tightly regimented, extremely disciplined society in District 13. That District’s leaders are able to mobilize mass discontent with the Capitol into a rebellion, but this leads not to the destruction of the system but its decapitation. Despite the sincere best efforts of ordinary people to better their circumstances, the deep logic of extractive institutions is difficult to overcome, whether in contemporary Nigeria or in Panem.
... From a map like this, a player can quickly learn both where he should try to shoot during a game (the red spots) and where he should shoot during practice (the blue spots). A coach, meanwhile, could layer the equivalent map for each one of his players on top of one another and find in the visual data inspiration for new plays that lead each man to one of his sweet spots. And for the mere fan, such maps can not only lead to a greater understanding of the game, but also provide at least a hint of the aesthetic pleasure that makes basketball enjoyable in the first place. As Michael Scott might say, win-win-win.
... Drama / Comedy vs. Adventure / Fantasy: Why the Ancient Greeks had it all wrong
Storytelling has not changed throughout history. The same types of stories affect audiences the same way since stories were first told. The earliest known “genres” were tragedy and comedy and they are still seen as the bedrock of theater today. The same is true for movies. The following bar chart shows the distribution of genres as cited by movies over our data set.
Drama and comedy are about 50% of all movies made. If we add romance they are 60% of cited genres. This is understandable given the history of theater. However the profitability (or revenue potential) of those genres is not as strong as Action, Adventure and Fantasy. The following chart shows the same count of genre citation but only for movies grossing over $200 million (which we chose to call “blockbusters”).
Action, adventure and fantasy handily beat Comedy and even SciFi beats drama. Romance, musicals and and mystery genres typically associated with female audiences are very rarely successful as blockbusters. The overall data is shown in the following table. The rows represent gross revenues and the columns genres cited ranked in order of frequency. One can easily observe the density of low earning drama and comedy (grey colored) vs. the more lucrative instances of fantasy and adventure. These male-dominated genres have consistent success into middle, high and very high revenue tiers. ...
... The reason for this blockbuster attention to action and adventure is probably the prevailing theater-going audience demographic: adolescent males. The industry still produces the classic genres but less profitably than what the current targeted markets.
Indeed, these genres were very uncommon in eras predating the late 1970s. More “adult-oriented” movies like romance (Gone with the Wind), musicals (The Sound of Music) and epic movies (Ben Hur, The Ten Comandments) were common in the “golden age” of Hollywood. As we’ll see in the next section, the age of the audience is a now driving more than just genre selection. ...
Check out the whole article. It's an interesting window into the movie industry.
Nine of the 10 films Hitchcock directed in the 1920s are getting a full restoration. Henry K Miller enters the dusty world of the archivists and learns about the race to save the silents.
The audience at the Capitol cinema in London during the middle week of April 1926 witnessed an unusually bold declaration of authorship. The opening moments of The Pleasure Garden, touted in the fan magazines as the debut of "the youngest director in the world", contained, under the "directed by" credit, the slanted and underlined signature of the 26-year-old Alfred J Hitchcock. What followed was also – as it would become clear over the decades – signature Hitchcock film-making. The film's first scene gives us a voyeur's-eye-view of a dancer's legs; and then makes us share the voyeur's unease as the look is returned. The Spectator's influential critic Iris Barry scented the "new blood" desperately needed by the ailing British film industry, writing that Hitchcock had "astonished everyone with his freshness and power".
Despite the plaudits, and despite Hitchcock's self-confidence, there was no inkling that his films would be seen in five years' time, let alone 85. Three million Britons went to the pictures every night, and the turnover was fast. Most movies played for half a week before being replaced, with a favoured few lingering in circulation a little longer. Survival was a matter of luck and the market. But next year, if all goes to plan, nine of the 10 films Hitchcock directed during the 1920s will be seen as no one has seen them since their first release, restored thanks to the BFI National Archive's Rescue the Hitchcock 9 project.
Publicly launched a year ago, and yoked to 2012's Cultural Olympiad, the biggest single undertaking in the archive's history is global in scope, but has its nerve-centre on the edge of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, in what used to be – and from the road still resembles – a farm. Home to vast air-locked, low-temperature film vaults, and to the personal papers of the likes of Michael Powell and David Lean, "Berko" is a hive of white-coated, clean-handed, obsessive activity.
Now the largest film archive in Europe, it was among the very first. The National Film Library, as the archive was originally called, was launched in July 1935, a few weeks after the release of The 39 Steps. A lowly department of the young and deeply troubled British Film Institute, it started out, in the words of its first curator Ernest Lindgren, 24 years old when he took on the role, with "no films, no equipment, and no money". Most of the silent heritage had been destroyed since the coming of talkies at the end of the 1920s, and so the library comprised, said Lindgren, "scraps of flotsam and jetsam, the wreckage of a vast output of film, which purely by chance have survived the destructive storm of time". ...
The namesake character in “Doctor Who” can travel through time and space, but he cannot outrun the Internet.
When new episodes of that long-running BBC science-fiction drama were broadcast in Britain last year, executives at the BBC America cable channel observed a major spike in illegal file sharing of the show in the United States. Some stateside fans, it seemed, were unwilling to wait the two weeks between the British and American premieres. Many other “Who” fans who did wait were frustrated by online spoilers on blogs and Twitter.
The BBC’s solution is to compress time and space. Taking a page from the same-day worldwide premieres of blockbuster films, the new season of “Doctor Who” will start on Saturday not just in Britain, but in the United States and Canada too.
“Frankly, there are compelling reasons to do it more quickly,” said Perry Simon, the general manager for channels at BBC Worldwide America, citing an opportunity to make the telecasts feel like worldwide events for fans. But the main reason relates to online piracy.
“The moment it airs in the U.K., it’s open season for pirates around the world,” Mr. Simon said. “It’s the dark side of living in a global media village.” ...
Yet another interesting impact of globalization and the internet. I watched the season premiere on Saturday.
I've been DVRing some episodes on BBC America for later in the week. I'll need something to watch while all the William and Kate nonsense is going on. ;-)
... When this year's Grammy winners accept their awards on Sunday night, God is likely to be thanked and praised more than a few times. It's a longstanding showbiz tradition, after all, prevalent at the Oscars, the Emmys and even the AVN Awards for adult movies. Until I began interviewing many of the winners of these awards two decades ago, I thought this was a sign of humility and gratitude (or at least an affectation of them). But the truth is more interesting than that.
Before they were famous, many of the biggest pop stars in the world believed that God wanted them to be famous, that this was his plan for them, just as it was his plan for the rest of us not to be famous. Conversely, many equally talented but slightly less famous musicians I've interviewed felt their success was accidental or undeserved—and soon after fell out of the limelight.
As I compiled and analyzed these interviews for my new book, I reached a surprising conclusion: Believing that God wants you to be famous actually improves your chances of being famous. Of course, from the standpoint of traditional theology, even in the Calvinistic world of predestination, God is much more concerned with the fate of an individual's soul than his or her secular success, and one's destiny is unknowable. So what's helping these stars is not so much religion as belief—specifically, the belief that God favors their own personal, temporal success over that of almost everyone else. ...
... This hardly proves that there is a God guiding the destiny of these stars. But it does suggest that unshakable confidence and a powerful sense of purpose are good predictors of success. Look at Justin Bieber, who released a single two months ago titled "Pray" and seemed untouched when getting booed recently by fans at a New York Knicks game. Or consider the derision heaped on Ms. Aguilera for botching the national anthem at the Super Bowl. If an unknown singer had made the same mistake, most people would have felt sorry for her.
But the more successful you get, the faster, louder and more savage the criticism becomes. To deal with the psychological burden of becoming a household name and the attacks that come with it, it helps to be thick-skinned. It helps even more to have a sense of divine mission and to feel that, when everyone else seems to be against you, God is walking at your side. Most stars who feel even a sliver of doubt about being in the spotlight will buckle under the constant pressure. Fearing criticism or failure, they become risk-averse and pass up opportunities.
The hip-hop mogul Diddy, for example, has been in and out of courtrooms over the years, facing charges for assault, gun possession and bribery—yet he continually bounces back with a new name and a new career. When I asked him if he ever felt fear, he replied, "My faith is in God. Like, look who I'm rolling with. Look who my gang really is. My gang is God. Come on, now, I don't have fear."
The meek may indeed inherit the Earth, but until then, stars who are presumptuous enough to see themselves as God's chosen ones are likely to dominate the pop charts, award shows and sports championships. Talent counts for a lot, but so too does the motivating power of divine conviction.
Forty-one years ago this month, Len Dawnson led the Chiefs to their first and only Super Bowl Championship in Super Bowl IV. For forty years the Chiefs have been wandering in the football wilderness. But to make matters worse, the chiefs have had chances to return to the big show six times over the last seventeen years. The last time the Chiefs won a playoff game was against the Oilers in a divisional playoff game on January 16, 1994, under the leadership of Joe Montana. They lost the next week to the Bills in the conference championship game.
Since then, the Chiefs have made it to the playoffs five times, only to lose the opening game: '95, '96, '97, '04, and '07. Probably the most painful loss was the '96 playoffs when the Chiefs had home field advantage throughout the playoffs. The divisional game was against the Colts on a bitterly cold day. They lost 10-7 in a game where Lin Elliot missed three field goals and three of Bono's fourteen complete passes were to the defense. (For a complete recounting of Chief's misery, see blogger Benjamin Herrold's post.) No team has lost seven consecutive playoff games.
So Chief's fans come to this weekend in hopes of deliverance from their wilderness wanderings and ending their string of playoff futility. In honor of the event, I thouht I would offer a Chief's playoff carol for the hometown faithful.
O come, O come, Matt Cassel
O come, O come, Matt Cassel And put an end to our losing spell We wait in chilly Arrowhead here Until the Chiefs of old reappear Go Chiefs! Go Chiefs! Matt Cassel Shall come to us, and end our losing spell.
O come, Thou Coach Todd Haley, free Chiefs fans from hapless tyranny From football Hell Thy faithful save Put opponents hopes in the grave Go Chiefs! Go Chiefs! Matt Cassel Shall come to us, and end our losing spell.
O come, Chiefs players, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here Disperse the gloomy clouds of night And winless shadows put to flight. Go Chiefs! Go Chiefs! Matt Cassel Shall come to us, and end our losing spell.
That said, I confess I really feel a bit like Mircacle Max in The Princess Bride, sending off Wesley and friends to storm the Castle.
Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Major League Baseball will continue talks next month on a plan that would pit the World Series winner against Japan’s champion.
Jim Small, MLB’s vice president for Asia, said at a media conference in Tokyo yesterday that MLB officials will meet with counterparts from Nippon Professional Baseball in January for a fourth round of discussions.
Any title series schedule would be complicated by cold weather, MLB free agency and competition from other sports for air time, Small said.
“When you really get into the details of it, it’s a difficult thing to see happening, but we continue to do it,” he said. “Not all those things are insurmountable, but they do create some issues.”
A matchup this year immediately after the World Series would have pitted teams from the milder climates of San Francisco and Chiba, east of Tokyo. ...
Oh my! This is going to send the purists over the edge.
... It was a different kind of religious message than Colbert typically delivers on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” where he often pokes fun at religion—even his own Catholic Church—in pursuit of a laugh.
Yet it was the kind of serious faith that some of his fellow Catholics say makes him a serious, covert and potent evangelist for their faith.
“Anytime you talk about Jesus or Christianity respectfully the way he does, it is evangelization,” said Jim Martin, the associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, who has appeared on Colbert’s show four times.
“He is preaching the gospel, but I think he is doing it in a very post-modern way.” ...
... Colbert has said that he attends church, observes Lent and teaches Sunday school. “I love my church, and I’m a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals, who were very devout,” he told Time Out magazine. “I was raised to believe that you could question the church and still be a Catholic.”
His on-air persona is a bloviating holier-than-thou conservative whose orthodox Catholicism is part of what makes him funny. On air, Colbert has chided the pope as an “ecu-menace” for his outreach to other faiths, referred to non-Catholics as “heathens and the excommunicated” and calls those who believe in evolution “monkey men.”
Diane Houdek has tracked Colbert’s on-air references to Catholicism on her blog, Catholic Colbert. When he recites the Nicene Creed or Bible verses from memory, as he did in 2006, it shows how foundational his faith is, she said.
“He is moving in an extremely secular world—it is hard to get a lot more secular than Comedy Central,” Houdek said. “Yet I feel he is able to witness to his faith in a very subtle way, a very quiet way to an audience that has maybe never encountered this before.” ...
And of course it is Colbert who gave us the wonderful term "truthiness."
Tonight is the season premiere of NCIS. When we left NCIS in May, the leader of Reynosa drug cartel was plotting to kill everyone Gibbs cares about. Despite the intervening four months, I suspect she still is. The last episode ended with her walking into the store in Stillwell, PA, owned by Papa Walton ... errr, I mean .... Gibbs' dad ... who, curiously, is also agent Booth's dad on Bones. How many families did that guy have? But I digress. What will happen to Gibbs and the crew? Will any cast members get nixed and replaced?
I will be at a meeting during the airing. I'm recording it to watch later in the evening. So nobody spoil the ending until after about 9:30 central time.
In 1997, Brazilian soccer player Roberto Carlos scored on a free kick
that first went right, then curved sharply to leftwards in what looked
like a physics-defying fluke. We've finally discovered the physics
equation that shows it was no fluke.
The amazing goal, which
left French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez too stunned to react, was scored
during a friendly match in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup. A group of
French scientists, perhaps desperate to prove that at least the laws of
physics aren't actively rooting against their national team, were able
to figure out the trajectory of the ball and, with it, an equation to
describe its unusual path.
It all comes down to the fact that, when a sphere spins, its
trajectory is a spiral. Usually, gravity and the relatively short
distance the ball travels covers up this spiral trajectory, but Carlos
was 115 feet away and kicked the ball hard enough to reveal its true
spiral-like path. As you can see in the diagram up top, the ball would
have kept spiraling if gravity (and the netting) hadn't gotten in the
way.
This means that anyone can perfect this spiral trajectory if they're
able to hit the ball far enough and with sufficient force, which might
explain why Carlos has pulled off this supposed once-in-a-lifetime fluke
so often.
In the first video, it looks to me like the ball barely makes more than one revolution before getting to the goal. It looks sort of like a knuckle ball.
I played fullback in college. (I call it playing. Others refer to it as my foray into comedy.) My friend Dave had a banana kick that was wicked. (You more or less
slice through the ball using the outside edge of your foot causing the
ball to slice away from that foot. You use the inside to go slice the
other way.) It always amazed me what some of the strikers could do with a ball, particularly on set plays.
NEW YORK -- Aug. 4 has been good to Alex Rodriguez.
Three years to the day after Rodriguez hit his 500th home run, he became the seventh player in Major League history to hit 600 homers in his career with a first-inning blast off Blue Jays starter Shaun Marcum.
Rodriguez's landmark long ball came on a 2-0 delivery from Marcum with two outs and Derek Jeter on first. The shot into the netting over Monument Park was Rodriguez's 17th of the season, his 255th career home run as a member of the Yankees, his second career off Marcum in 18 at-bats and his 51st career blast against Toronto. It gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead. ...
I think it's important to remember that Hitchcock's popularity took a nosedive before he had a revival. The same can be said with other directors and artists.
No, and Americans -- especially conservatives -- should embrace soccer as a democratic and meritocratic game. ...
... At a deeper level, many Americans – especially conservatives – resent having soccer foisted upon them. Glenn Beck rants, “We don’t want the Word Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.” The late Jack Kemp even opposed a congressional resolution supporting US efforts to host the 1994 World Cup, stating, “a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist [sport].”
But soccer has plenty to offer Americans of all political stripes. For one, when you take in a soccer match, though goals may be scarce, you’ll be watching 90 minutes of almost nonstop action (not commercials!).
Let’s compare that with America’s favorite spectator sport, professional football. According to a Wall Street Journal study, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL games is less than 11 minutes. The remainder of the 174 minutes that make-up a typical broadcast are filled with images of players huddling and milling around, images of coaches and referees and, of course, commercials. ...
... For conservative hold-outs, soccer may be the most capitalist game going. In most American sports leagues, failure is rewarded as the worst teams get the best shots at the top draft picks, and most leagues have revenue sharing and salary caps to spread the wealth around.
In contrast, the free market reins in most European soccer leagues. Teams that finish last must move to a lower division the following year, while the best of the lower divisions move up. It’s the ultimate meritocracy. ...
... America’s ambivalence toward soccer probably has less to do with politics or lack of scoring than with our already saturated sports market. But we are a sports-loving nation. And as our exposure to soccer continues, I believe we’ll find room for one more sport to love.
We have now finished the knockout round of the World Cup and are ready for the quarter-finals. Prior to the knockout round I made the following prediction:
Final Four: Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Spain.
While the United States may often be described as a sports-crazed nation, Americans were one of the least enthusiastic publics about the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Only 27% of Americans said they were excited (11% were very excited) about the soccer tournament in this year's Pew Global Attitudes survey, which was completed well before the beginning of tournament play. Nearly seven-in-ten said they were not too or not at all excited about what is possibly the world's largest sporting event. Among the 22 nations surveyed, the World Cup was overwhelmingly popular in South Korea (79% were excited about the competition), Nigeria (79%), Kenya (71%), Indonesia (71%) and Brazil (70%). Surprisingly, the tournament was not as highly anticipated in soccer-powerhouse nations in Europe such as Britain (43% excited), Spain (41%) and France (33%). Excitement had little to do with expectations about winning and losing. For starters, despite their anticipatory excitement, neither Kenya nor Indonesia was able to field a team in this year's tournament, and only 11% of South Koreans believed their nation would win the World Cup (by comparison, 43% said Brazil would win). In contrast, a majority in Spain (58%) expected their country to triumph in the World Cup, but an equal 58% were not excited by the prospect of the games. Brazil was the only country surveyed where both a large majority was excited about the World Cup and also expected a victory for the home country (75%).
Although it can’t fix the World Cup’s officiating mistakes, a company called Audioanamix has devised a solution to another gripe dogging the tournament by silencing the buzzing drone of the vuvuzela horns commonly played by fans at African soccer matches. Audionamix is providing the drone relief to French pay television broadcaster Current+, and says it will do the same for any other broadcaster who wants it over the next month or so of World Cup matches.
Like many innovations, Audionamix Vuvuzela Remover was invented to solve a problem for its inventor. Olivier Attia, the CEO of the Paris-based Audionamix, said his crew didn’t like the way the vuvuzela overwhelmed other crowd noise — the oohs, aahs and coordinated songs that usually permeate soccer matches.
Lucky for them, the company makes software for separating source audio into distinct elements to help integrate music into film scores (somewhat similarly to the Melodyne Direct Note Access ).
“We were watching the WorldCup with the rest of the world, and found our enjoyment of the experience hindered by the loud drone created by the blowing of thousands of the vuvuzelas,” said Attia in a statement. “Our Audionamix engineers immediately went into to the lab and emerged 48 hours later with a solution that removes the higher frequencies created by the festive instrument.”
As the demonstration to the right shows, Vuvuzela Remover can strip just about every auditory trace of the controversial plastic horns, which produce a low B-flat tone at about 230 KHz with minor variations that occasionally make one stand out from the others. We have verified in the past that computers are capable of teasing out elements from within an audio recording based on pitch and other sonic elements. This technology is real.
For those who wish to remove the sound on their own, one do-it-yourself solution involves running software on a normal computer that removes the vuvuzela’s frequencies using EQ. Another technique involves removing the offending frequencies using the EQ in a stereo system. But Audionamix claims its broadcaster-ready software works better than EQ, and backs up that claim with the above demonstration. ...
I really hat vuvuzelas. I vote for using the sound improving technology.
The festivities start with South Africa versus Mexico at 10:00 a.m. Eastern tomorrow. I think the first USA game is versus England on Saturday at 2:3o Eastern. Definitely pulling for the USA and cheering for my sentimental favorite, Denmark. Who do you think will win it all?
Also found this commercial. Took me a second to get it but I love it.
Stephen Strasburg struck out 14 batters in his first game, took three shaving cream pies to the face, donned a silver Elvis wig - then compared it all to getting married.
What could he possibly do for an encore?
Baseball's newest wunderkind went beyond the hype - and anyone's reasonable expectations - with an electric and unprecedented major league debut Tuesday night in the Washington Nationals' 5-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
"I've been catching a lot of guys," said likely Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez, patting Strasburg on the left shoulder, "but this kid is unbelievable." ...
Detroit's Armando Galarraga illustrated that pitchers don't throw perfect games but that perfect games are played. Everyone, not just the pitcher, has to be unblemished. Unfortunately, umpire Jim Joyce made one mistake and history was snuffed out.
Click here to see the play that cost Galarraga black ink in the record book.
Joyce took responsibility for the gaffe.
"I just cost the kid a perfect game," said Joyce , who personally apologized to the pitcher. "I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw until I sawthe replay. It was the biggest call of my career."
The blown call is going to increase the pressure on baseball to use more instant replay and this may be the tipping point on that technology.
The world cup starts a week from tomorrow. I played soccer in college and loved it. I've been warming up my vocal chords for rousing choruses of "Ole."
I'd love to get out and kick the ball around like I used to. Unfortunately, my eyesight is not what is once was (neither is the rest of me for that matter.) I suspect if I allowed my soccer instincts to emerge I could end up like this poor guy.
Financial wizards at J.P. Morgan have used 'Quant Models' to determine that serial underperformers England will win World Cup 2010, taking out Spain in the final match. Could it be?
Move over, Brazil.
Step aside, Italy.
England will win World Cup 2010.
IN PICTURES: Ready for the World Cup
Stop snickering, you. The financial wizards at J.P. Morgan have used "Quant Models" to determine that the Three Lions will sink their teeth into Spain in the World Cup final. The world will hear them roar.
J.P. Morgan describes Quant Models as "mathematical methods built to efficiently screen and identify stocks" and says it has applied that method to soccer data such as FIFA rankings and historical match scores to come up with its result.
Still, England?
Although every Englishman seems to fancy the national team's chances in every World Cup, few outside Old Blighty see them as favorites when the cup rolls around every four years. ...
Keep in mind this prediction was brought to you be the same people who presided over the 2008 finance collapse. :-)
The Bourne trilogy is probably my favorite movie trilogy. Last week I watched all three episodes. It has always struck me that there is something deeply theological embedded in this action packed drama. Others have written about this well. Watching them again last week I saw still more theological overtones. Here are some thoughts.
Watery Depths
The series both begins and ends with a lifeless body in the water. In the opening scene, looking from below, we see Jason Bourne (a.k.a for David Webb) floating lifeless on the face of the dark and deep ocean, … complete with driving rain, turbulent waves, and lightning flashes. At the end of the movie, looking from below again, we see his lifeless body submerged in the dark and deep waters of the East River with light shinning in from above. In both cases we are left to ponder what will happen to this lifeless form. When Marie, Jason’s girlfriend, dies in the second movie, the jeep goes off the bridge and into the river. Jason tries to revive Marie underwater but she
is swallowed up by the deep. Much like ancient cultures, the watery depths seem to be symbolic of chaos and death. Chaos and evil seem to be everywhere about Jason, threatening to swallow him up.
Water Baptism
Two other important scenes involve water. In the first movie, Marie gets sucked into Jason’s world of intrigue. As Marie begins her life on the run, she cuts and dyes her hair. The movie shows her with head under the running water. When she lifts her head she is a new person with a new mission. In the third movie, Jason’s helper Nicky, also gets caught up in the web of intrigue and must go on the run. She also cuts and dyes her hair. Once she covers her hair with running water, emerging with a new identity and with a new mission.
But there is one more important use of water. At the end of the last movie we learn that Jason had signed up to be the first in an elite group of black operations agents. He joined out of patriotism for his country. But in pursuit of that worthwhile mission he submitted to being brainwashed. He learned to kill without reflection on his actions. The method of brainwashing focused on water-boarding with David Webb repeatedly being submerged until his will was broken and he emerged as Jason Bourne. There are repeated flashbacks to the water-boarding.
Identity
At the end of Bourne's training, the program mastermind, Dr. Hirsch, orders Webb to shoot and kill a hooded man across the room. Bourne knows nothing about the man. Webb wrestles over the decision before finally executing the man. Hirsch says Bourne's training is complete. We see that his identity has changed. David Webb is dead. He has now been baptized as Jason Bourne. In essence, the serpent tempted him with being superhuman while in fact making him a subhuman killing machine … an impersonal government “asset.”
We eventually learn the reason Bourne was found floating in the ocean by a fishing trawler at the beginning of the first movie. Bourne had stowed away on the Yacht of an African leader to assassinate him. Having approached his target from behind while he is sleeping on the couch, Bourne realizes that the man’s little girl is playing in his lap. Apparently, despite his training, there was something in Bourne that would not let him kill under these circumstances. His hesitation does him in. Bourne is shot as he leaps off the Yacht and that is what leads to his unconscious body floating on the water where the first movie picks up the story. We learn that there is a seed of good left from David Webb and it is in conflict with Jason Bourne. Our amnesiac protagonist must piece back together who he is.
The first movie begins with Jason unable to remember anything. He has completely lost his past and with no past there is no identity. He desperately wants to find out who he is. Yet at each step along his journey he becomes more and more troubled by what he learns.
Redemption
As the story progresses we see Bourne seeking to understand the evil that has consumed his life. First he seeks to escape the evil, hoping the evil doers will leave him alone. But his connection with the evil is too much. It ends up killing his lover and destroying the new life he has tried to build. He determines that he must put an end to the evil and goes actively in pursuit of its destruction.
But it isn’t a reckless war of revenge. As he figures out more of what he has done, he repents and seeks to make amends for the evil he has done and who he has become. Toward the end of the third movie, Bourne spares the life of an assassin ... an “asset” like himself ... sent to kill him. At the end of the movie, on the rooftop of the Treadstone training facility, the asset has Bourne in the cross-hairs once again. The grace the asset received from Bourne causes him to ask Bourne why earlier he didn’t take the shot and kill him. Bourne asks the asset if he even knows why he is there to kill him. “Look at us. Look at what they make you give,” Bourne says. After a pause, Bourne turns and leaps off the building into the East River. The assassin lowers his weapon and allows Bourne to jump, even as Noah Vosen, the operations chief takes a shot. But apparently, through grace, the spell has been broken for this "asset."
It is also a part of the story that Jason is not alone in his quest for truth and righteousness. Characters like Nicky Parsons and Pamela Landy grasp the nature of the quest and come to his assistance. His pursuit of what is right draws others into the pursuit of what is good as well. By doing what is right he makes it possible for others to make their contributions toward what is right. Confronting Self and Rebaptism
But the critical scene is the scene just prior to the rooftop encounter. Jason has found and trapped Dr. Hirsch in the training facility. Hirsch reminds Bourne of all the details of how he became Jason Bourne. He explains that Treadstone did nothing to him that he didn’t sign up for. He patiently explains that it was David Webb who made the decision to become Jason Bourne … implying that Treadstone had no culpability. He freely chose to become Jason Bourne. How could he fault Hirsch and Treadstone for his decision?
Hirsch asks Bourne if remembers and Bourne says he now remembers everything. He then declares that his is no longer Jason Bourne. But rather than executing Hirsch and making a hero out of Hirsch, Bourne will let judgment take its own course.
A pursuit then ensues by agents that leads to the rooftop conversation I already mentioned. Bourne leaps ten stories into the East River. Then there is a scene where the camera angle is looking up through the waters at a motionless body with a light shinning from above. The movie shows a clip of Pamela Landy giving testimony about the corrupt Treadstone and Blackbrier programs at a congressional hearing. The movie then shows Nicky Parsons at a café watching a newscast about the unraveling of the covert programs. The movie keeps cutting back the lifeless body submerged in the water. At the end of the news report Nicky is watching, the reporter says that a man name David Webb, a.k.a., Jason Bourne, was responsible for unraveling the program, but was shot and fell from a roof into the East River. After three days, no body was found. Then a knowing grin comes across Nicky’s face. The camera cuts back to our lifeless body. It suddenly comes alive and David Webb makes his way to the surface. The movie ends.
He went into the water as Jason Bourne who had renounced his identity. He emerged as a new David Webb. He had been baptised anew. He had become unBorune to be reborn.
Final Thoughts
So what to make of the religious imagery? It occurs to me that there is no savior in the story. Our maybe the savior is ourselves. Salvation comes from understanding your own history and owning it. It comes from embracing what you “know” to be right … how ever that “knowing” is achieved … and being faithful to that truth.
But if there is no savior there is certainly a Satan. We are all vulnerable to being seduced by powerful ideologies and their metanarratives that pragmatically dehumanize people in order to perpetuate themselves. Repenting from those ideologies … and the machinery that supports them … is formidable but possible. Others are on the journey as well and we will find each other if we have the courage to fight for the truth against all odds.
In many ways, the Bourne trilogy strikes me as postmodern parable about salvation that draws heavily on Christian ideas of identity, sin, repentance, justice, baptism and rebirth. What do you think?
If you want to view the last five minutes of the movie, I've got a clip at YouTube that begins during Bourne remembering when he made his decision to become Jason Bourne. He has just killed the unidentified hooded man. Click here.
For fans of NCAA basketball, it has been an upset-filled March Madness. But there are no surprises in household viewing patterns among the top markets tracked by Nielsen. More than a quarter of households in the Louisville, KY, market tuned into watch the University of Kentucky defeat Cornell on March 25. The Louisville market is once again the highest-rated DMA for NCAA tournament games, averaging a 16.6 household rating through the first two rounds. While Louisville is a mid-sized market with no pro sports teams, it dominates NCAA viewership and is at the heart of a “basketball belt,” an enthusiastic cluster of markets from Raleigh to Oklahoma City that boast nine of the top 10 DMAs in tournament viewing.
Louisville also has the highest average viewership for the NCAA championship game the past 10 years. Historically, viewership hasn’t wavered despite the fact that neither the University of Louisville nor the University of Kentucky have sent teams to the championship game since 1998. ...
... Further analysis shows that Louisville is more than just a college basketball town. When compared to the rest of the U.S., the “Derby City,” is roughly three times more likely to watch horse racing’s Triple Crown (including the Kentucky Derby, obviously) and is twice as likely to view the Indy 500 and Daytona 500. ...
The UNI purple Panthers finally did what purple KSU Wildcats couldn't do in three tries this year. My in-laws live just outside Waterloo - Cedar Falls. I know there is celebrating happening there. Congrats to the Panthers!
... It should be a great game either way, maybe one of the best in the 113-year history of the Sunflower Showdown.
The buildup was the same for their last meeting on Jan. 30, when Kansas pulled out a taut, 81-79 overtime win in a well-played game at rowdy Bramlage Coliseum.
The stakes will be even higher this time at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence.
Kansas (27-2, 13-1) is ranked second and Kansas State (24-4, 11-3) is No. 5, marking the first time since 1958 — when coach Tex Winter led the Wildcats and Wilt Chamberlain played center for the Jayhawks — the teams are both in the top 5. ... [Picture Source]
Okay folks ... here is the story. KU's Allen Fieldhouse is the Kansas version of the imperial death star. Wildcats are the jedi seeking to bring balance to the force and end the long night of tyranny. Tonight the jedi wild kitties enter the Allen death star to do battle against Darth Self and his imperial Jayhawk stormtroopers. May the force be with you, young Wildcats.
Unlike
the male-favored Super Bowl, the TV audience for the Winter Olympics is
predominantly female, according to The Nielsen Company.
Through
February 21, 2010, an estimated 56% of Olympic viewers are female,
while 44% are male. Super Bowl viewership earlier this month was almost
the exact opposite, with its audience composed of 54% males and 46%
females.
Older, White Viewers Watch Olympics
Olympics ratings are clearly highest among older viewers. Ratings
among teenagers are 57% lower than the national average for this year’s
primetime Olympics broadcasts. Ratings among the 18-49 group are 20%
lower than the national average, while ratings among those 55 and older
are 82% higher.
Olympics viewing among ethnic minorities is considerably lower than
it is for the population as a whole. Ratings among Hispanic and
African-American viewers are each 74% below the national average. Asian
ratings are 15% below the national average.
The Olympics are more widely viewed in the West Central region of
the United States than any other part of the country. Ratings in this
area are 24% higher than the national average. Viewership is lowest in
the Southwest, where ratings are 28% lower than the national average.
Households that view in High Definition are more likely to watch
the Olympics. About 55% of Olympic viewers are in HD-capable/receivable
homes. Viewing in these homes is 14% higher. DVR households have
similar viewership tendencies. About 41% of Olympic viewers are in DVR
homes and have ratings 12% higher than the national average. ...
This evening is the 30th Anniversary of the U. S. Olympic hockey team defeating the U. S. S. R. in the Olympics. This is one of those events that is seared into my brain. Many sports experts consider this the most stunning sports event of the 20th Century. The average age of the team was 21 ... I turned 21 a month later. The sight of these nobodies taking down a virtual sports machine was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. As the movie "Miracle" relates so well, the larger social context of what was happening in the world greatly accentuated the event. Watching them come from behind to defeat Finland for the gold was the icing on the cake. What are your memories of the miracle on Ice?
With the exception of one noticeable error (no professional players were allowed to play in the Olympics until the 1980s) the clip below is a nice tribute.
I suspect by now you've seen this clip of the basketball coach sinking a half court shot blindfolded. This happened at Olathe Northwest High School. I went to high school at Olathe North (then the only high school) and Olathe Northwest is across the street from where my parents worship. (Olathe is a Kansas City suburb.) Kinda cool to see a local event go viral.