July 30, 2008
Unnecessary Knowledge
Toplist of Unnecessary Knowledge factoids. I like this one:
In “Silence of the Lambs”, Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) never blinks.
Hoop Dreams
Today's entry in Hulu's Days of Summer is Hoop Dreams. Before there was the panoramic American epic The Wire, there was Steve James documentary about Chicago inner city high school basketball players Arthur Agee and William Gates. It is one of my five favorite documentaries of all time, and the first one that enlarged my view of what a documentary could be. Watching it will make you guilty for what earns the title "reality TV" today.
The scene from He Got Game where Denzel and Ray Allen face off? It's got nothing on the scene in Hoop Dreams when Arthur plays his father Bo one-on-one.
Today, Arthur Agee has a foundation, while William Gates is a pastor in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood of Chicago. Both have experienced tragedy. Arthur's father Bo was killed in 2004 after having seemingly turned his life around. William's brother Curtis was murdered in 2001.
I remember them as I saw them in Hoop Dreams, and I find it hard to imagine how, given the circumstances, any of us could have turned out any better.
July 29, 2008
"La Vida No Loca"
Well-written review of "Coldplay's expanding gas" by Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker this week.
Is Coldplay warm milk or just quietly dependable? Don’t ask Martin, who has transformed the English art of diffidence into a masochistic religion: “We owe them a career, really,” he has said of Radiohead. He has also said, “Like millions of people in the world, I can’t listen to Coldplay.” He’s half right about Radiohead—Coldplay exhibits a taste for melancholy and smeared, stretched-out sounds that leads straight back to Thom Yorke and his friends. The main antecedent is U2, who invented the form that Coldplay works within: rock that respects the sea change of punk but still wants to be as chest-thumping and anthemic as the music of the seventies stadium gods. Translated, this means short pop songs that somehow summon utterly titanic emotions and require you to skip around in triumphant circles and pump your fist, even if it is not entirely clear what you are singing about.
And later:
The title track of “Viva la Vida”—also known as the “iPod song,” because it is used in an Apple ad—is easily the best thing about the album. Don’t go to the lyrics for any cues; it is entirely obscure why such a jaunty, upbeat song would be referencing “Roman cavalry choirs” or revolutionaries or St. Peter. Martin is the king? Was the king? Whatevs. Coldplay knows how to build a song that draws you in with easy, karaoke-ready moves. I spent a weekend hearing an eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old sing the song (fighting about the lyrics, and sometimes rewriting them), and I never tired of the melody. After that, though, you are on your own. There are Eno touches that catch the ear: the chattering strings and bell-like keyboards that close out “Death and All His Friends,” or the timbre of the instrumental “Life in Technicolor,” which sounds like it’s emanating from the end of a long metal tube. “Technicolor” is one of the album’s few concise, concentrated pieces of writing; the rest sounds both incomplete and puffed up, like scraps of previous records scrambled and rearranged. This upending of their style isn’t even radical enough to be bad. “Viva la Vida” is an album that keeps going out of focus, a series of disconnected pieces that is impossible to hold on to. And why are they wearing all those vaguely military jackets? What’s with Liberty leading the people on the cover? They must know that beyond the cozy confines of London there are a couple of major conflicts going on. It does not feel like the moment, especially for such a vague band, to be playing with any symbols of war.
MLB spam
MLB.tv is a cool product, but MLB.com does some things that really peeve me.
First of all, I received this random e-mail from MLB.com the other day.
In what way does my subscribing to MLB TV mean I want to receive Staples ads from MLB? I don't remember giving them my consent to sell my e-mail address off that way. And what's the relation of office products to major league baseball? Really not cool.
Spam e-mail is not as bad as spam snail mail, but one law I'd love to see passed for real world junk mail, like the three million credit card offers I'm sent each day, is a requirement that on each piece of snail mail the company from which the spammer purchased your name must be listed. Something like: "This junk mail is being sent to you because Bank of America sold your personal information to us."
Strike two against MLB.com? After upgrading to MLB TV Premium today, the last step in their shopping pipeline was this page:
Plenty of sites try to insert an extra step at the end of the checkout process to upsell you, but MLB not only does this but lightens the offer rejection button so it looks like it's inactive or not clickable, even though it is. Not only is that a usability no-no, but it is just evil.
It reminds me of the old Real Networks hidden links for the free version of their player. You'd have to wade through page after page of offers for the paid version of their RealPlayer until you could locate the obscure link for the free player download. Years later, that terrible and short-sighted decision associates their brand with evil in my mind, even though they now offer a really great product in Rhapsody.
July 28, 2008
Fear, God, and State
Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias writes about a fascinating article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
A stunning hypothesis from the latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
"High levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and ... increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God and defense of the overarching socio-political system. A 4th experiment showed ... a challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. ... A cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control."
It seems we hope a stronger and more benevolent God or State will protect us when feel less able to protect ourselves. I'd guess similar effects hold for medicine and media - we believe in doc effectiveness more when we fear out of control of our health, and we believe in media accuracy more when we rely more on their info to protect us. Can we find data on which beliefs tend to be more biased: confidence in authorities when we feel out of control, or less confidence in authorities when we feel more in control?
Robot Chicken: Star Wars
All four chapters of Robot Chicken: Star Wars are online at Adult Swim. For all Star Wars fans, this is essential viewing. You will laugh. You will cry (from laughing so much). And it is better than Cats.
Did you hear me? Essential viewing. Go now. Leave. Go watch it.
Now at Hulu: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
UPDATE: Joss Whedon wrote a short intro for Dr. Horrible. It's up at the Hulu blog. Meeting Joss and now having him use Hulu in a sentence caused me to wet myself. Since those events occurred on two different occasions, that's two pairs of pants I've ruined.
***
Just launched to Hulu: Joss Whedon's musical tragicomedy, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion.
Joss and his brother Jed wrote all the music, and it's good, which won't be surprising to Whedon fans familiar with the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Once More, With Feeling".
Here's one of the musical numbers, "Freeze Ray", one of my favorites from the, what should we call it, web original musical? Weborigical?
Here are all three acts of Dr. Horrible, tied together into one video.
Objectified
The next documentary from the Gary Hustwit, the man behind Helvetica, is Objectified, about industrial design. Scheduled to come out in 2009, the doc features an impressive cast of designers and design experts:
Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Chris Bangle (BMW Group, Munich)
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (Paris)
Andrew Blauvelt (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
Anthony Dunne (London)
Naoto Fukasawa (Tokyo)
IDEO (Palo Alto)
Jonathan Ive (Apple, California)
Hella Jongerius (Rotterdam)
Marc Newson (London/Paris)
Fiona Raby (London)
Dieter Rams (Kronberg, Germany)
Karim Rashid (New York)
Alice Rawsthorn (International Herald Tribune)
Rob Walker (New York Times Magazine)
July 27, 2008
Nibblets
Facebook's profile updates are rendered in an odd tense, in a very Facebook-centric view of the world. You change your profile to married, and instead of writing, "Scott changed his relationship status to married" it reads "Scott is now married." Never mind that he may have been married for years; in the Facebook world, nothing is so until you declare it so in your profile.
What happens if you change your sex? "Fred is no longer male"? Your birthday? "Susan is no longer born July 7, 1978"?
I am going to change my relationship status to king so it reads "Eugene is now king."
***
As of Friday morning rehab, I am sans crutches. This is a big moment for me, and an even bigger moment for my armpits.
***
To the person who came to my website via the Google search "eugene wei the dark knight" yesterday: yes, I am Batman.
***
Speaking of Batman and my crutches, I didn't buy Harvey Dent's conversion in The Dark Knight. But I can empathize with the personality-transforming power of physical injuries or deformities. Having one bad leg, not being able to exercise, has definitely made me grumpier these past two or three months.
I walk by a homeless guy, and I flip a coin. Heads, I give the guy the coin. Tails, I kick him with my walking boot.
No, not really. But not being able to run or work off occasional frustration has left me snippier. I'm like Harvey Two-Leg.
***
Lebron vs. Yao Ming in the Coke ad "Unity" from Smith&Foulkes for W+K Portland.
***
One of the restaurants I wish I ate at before moving from NYC is Blue Hill at Stone Barns. This glowing review with its gorgeous photos is like a megaphone for that regret.
***
Cleverly written commercials for dandruff shampoo that could be done by any one who knows After Effects.
***
Why read The Watchmen, which has spiked in popularity now that the non-geek masses have seen The Watchmen trailer playing before The Dark Knight? Bryan Caplan says: "The Watchmen is the Best... Utilitarian Parable... Ever."
I've never thought of it that way, but having read that graphic novel probably five times in my life, I'd have to say it makes sense.
***
"Tarantino's Mind" (short film)
July 26, 2008
Steve Jobs calls Joe Nocera
Rising the charts at the NYTimes most blogged articles is "Apple's Culture of Secrecy" by Joe Nocera.
On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.
Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.
You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.
This week's New Yorker
Strong issue of The New Yorker this week. Having to fly a bit this week, I had time to read it nearly cover to cover.
Two articles which are not online but are quite good: "All the Answers" by Charles Van Doren, who was played in Quiz Show by Ralph Fiennes. After the scandal, what happened to Van Doren? In his own words.
The other, my favorite article in the issue, is a Gladwell-esque Annals of Science article titled "The Eureka Hunt: Where in our brains do insights come from?" and written by Jonah Lehrer. Though it's not online, it is here in PDF form (thanks Kottke), and I will post a few excerpts here:
The insight process, as sketched by Jung-Beeman and Kounios, is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focussed, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight. "The relaxation phase is crucial," Jung-Beeman said. "That's why so many insights happen during warm showers." Another ideal moment for insights, according to the scientists, is the early morning, right after we wake up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganized, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas. The right hemisphere is also unusually active. Jung-Beeman said, "The problem, though, is that we're always so rushed. We've got to get the kids ready for school, so we leap out of bed and never give ourselves a chance to think." He recommends that, if we're stuck on a dificult problem, it's better to set the alarm clock a few minutes early so that we have time to lie in bed and ruminate. We do some of our best thinking when we're still half asleep.
As Jung-Beeman and Kounios see it, the insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation--the brain must be focused on the task at hand--transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections. We must concentrate, but we must concentrate on letting the mind wander.
Further on:
One of the surprising lessons of this research is that trying to force an insight can actually prevent the insight. While it's commonly assmed that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to focus, minimize distractions, and pay attention only to the relevant details, this clenched state of mind may inhibit the sort of creative connections that lead to sudden breakthroughs. We suppress the very type of brain activity that we should be encouraging.
Some anecdotes:
In his 1908 essay "Mathematical Creation," Poincaré insisted that the best way to think about complex problems is to immerse yourself in the problem until you hit an impasse. Then, when it seems that "nothing good is accomplished," you should find a way to distract yourself, preferably by going on a "walk or a journey." The answer will arrive when you least expect it. Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, preferred the relaxed atmosphere of a topless bar, where he would sip 7 UP, "watch the entertainment," and, if inspiration struck, scribble equations on cocktail napkins.
Two articles which are online which are worth reading are Evan Osnos's article on young Chinese nationalists who reject the West, and David Samuels article "Dr. Kush" on the medical-marijuana economy.
19 years after the events in Tiananmen Square, this is not where we would have expected a sizeable portion of the youth of China to arrive ideologically. They don't necessarily support the Chinese government, but they reject Western democracy, also. Here is the video cited at the start of the article, one that represents many of the feelings of this group.
Whatever you think of its ideas, it's hard to deny that it's a fascinating example of user-generated propaganda, and maybe the famous video ever made with Windows MovieMaker (if you count its views on Sina.
Mike Peed reviews Adour, a new NYC restaurant by one of the famous chefs of our time, Alain Ducasse.
There are people, a dwindling lot, who are secure in their mortgages and to whom the spectre of five-dollar-a-gallon gas presents more a challenge than a threat. These people eat at Adour.
And of course, there is Anthony Lane's review of Mamma Mia! which, to this male, is likely more entertaining than the movie iself.
And why is it called Bluetooth anyway?
The director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute warns his staff to limit cell phone use to minimize cancer risk. While no studies have detected a link, that does not necessarily prove that there isn't a link. It reminds me of the Bill James article "Underestimating the Fog" (PDF) in which he noted that just because past studies haven't detected clutch hitting doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Cell phones and bluetooth headsets emit non-ionizing, microwave radiation. That much we know. Do they increase your risk for brain cancer? To conduct a study of that magnitude would take years and years and cost millions of dollars. It's unlikely anyone will fund a study like that.
So we're all part of a real world experiment. Here's how I see it playing out. Some people will get brain cancer 20 years from now from high cell phone use, and they will bring massive lawsuits against the cell phone companies. But one special person will gain superpowers from all that radiation, a sort of slow burn Bruce Banner. But this hero's powers will only be active in large metropolitan areas, will wane when going through tunnels or riding in elevators, and will come with some inexplicable state and local taxes.
One risk from bluetooth headsets that has been confirmed: wearing one will make you look like an idiot.
Related:
iPhone 2.0: the hangover
Versus all previous phones, my first generation iPhone was like a supermodel. Now, with the update to 2.0 version of iPhone software, which offers many, but not all, of the benefits of the 3G model, the downsides to dating a supermodel have taken center stage: the petulance, the tantrums, the inability to get ready on time (speaking metaphorically, of course, as my experience with supermodels has been limited).
No one should review a tech product without using it for some period of time, and having used my first generation iPhone with the 2.0 software for a few weeks now, I'm not so sure that the benefits have outweighed the setbacks, a tough thing for an early adopter to admit. I have a high tolerance for the frustration of life on the cutting edge, but in this case it feels like two steps forward, two steps back.
I've experienced many of the problems reported by other 1st-gen and 3G owners after having updated to the 2.0 software. Most noticeable and galling is interface lag. In a touchscreen device, this is deadly, because you tap again and again in frustration, thinking the device is frozen, and then you hit the home button, but when the device finally catches up it issues all your commands in sequence and bounces you out of the application you were in because you hit the home button.
Many more random crashes? Yep, those too.
Over at Signal vs. Noise, David lists a lot of the gremlins that are plaguing the 3G. I wonder if some if this isn't related to memory leak in some of the new applications. What's ironic is that when I jailbroke my iPhone previously and installed some unapproved apps the iPhone still seemed snappy and responsive. Not that I've installed "officially approved" applications built with the iPhone SDK, the phone seems sluggish and unstable.
Another things that bugs me: when any of the apps update, they get bumped to the last page of your home screen, rather than staying in the same place. Imagine if every time one of your Mac applications was updated, it shifted in your dock to the far right. I don't think I'm unique in relying heavily on spatial memory, so this is a bad thing.
Though I had fun installing and trying a ton of applications when the store first opened, none have altered my life. Some, like Facebook or Google, are ones that don't offer much more than what their mobile Safari interfaces do. Others are useful, like Pandora, or fun, like Enigmo, but they are vampires on battery life.
iLounge has a good, comprehensive review of the new iPhone 3G, and they give it a B. Their summary of its pros and cons:
Pros: A faster and more capable version of last year’s breakthrough mobile phone, preserving the world’s best cell phone operating system, a strong combination of voice and data communication features, and iPod-class audio, video, and photo functionality, while adding impressive third-party software expandability and features for business users. Offers enhanced compatibility with international telephone networks, including high-speed towers, as well as keyboard and language support for users in most of the world’s countries. Now includes GPS for limited purposes, and superior sound quality, particularly through its redesigned headphone port.
Cons: Overall cost of ownership is higher than prior model, despite regressing from last year’s stunning design, screen quality, and pack-ins. Battery life for key phone and data features is significantly worse than before, such that users will likely require inconvenient mid-day recharging. Service contracts require additional payment for 3G data services, despite inconsistent or unavailable regional coverage and performance; callers reported certain in-call sound inconsistencies. New model further decreases compatibility with past iPod accessories, including popular ones, while both camera and screen now have noticeable color tints. Defects and battery replacement will likely require Apple Store or other warranty attention during period of use; purchasing and activation can range from simple to confusing or nightmarish depending on your local service provider.
One benefit of the apps is that U.S. users can send free SMS Messages via the AIM app. It's a bit of a hassle, you have to text to a person's phone number, and years of carrying a cell phone means I don't recognize as many phone numbers as I once did, but paying $5 to send 200 text messages is one of those great telecom scams that so endear them to users.
The one positive to come out of this, if there is one, is that I'm glad I didn't wait out in line for a 3G. Supposedly the iPhone 2.1 software update is around the corner, and hopefully that solves some or many of these issues. If not, perhaps it's not the 3G but the real 3rd generation iPhone that I need to wait for.
July 23, 2008
49
Paul Westerberg has released a 49 minute, one-track album titled 49:00. The best thing is that the DRM-free MP3 is available at Amazon.com for the princely sum of $0.49. I was going to think of 49 reasons you should buy this, but you won't need them if, like me, you used to cruise around in your parents car in high school listening to Replacements albums on cassette tape and hoping you could date Winona Ryder.
July 22, 2008
Watchmen comics set in motion
Watchmen comics set in motion: chapter one now available for free at the Apple store.
July 21, 2008
Doveman covers Footloose
Doveman covers the Footloose album for his friend Gabriel as a memorial to Gabriel's half-sister Jenny who died as a teenager in the 1980's.
When I was very young, my half-sister Jenny died tragically. She was a teenager, and it was the 80's. She left behind a wardrobe of brightly colored clothes, rainbow stickers, life-size paintings, doodles on lined paper, and hundreds of tapes. These constitute most of my memories of her. It's sad for me to look at these things, and usually I don't. But a couple of summers ago I found a tape of hers with a startling cover photograph - this was Footloose. I couldn't stop listening: it was a portrait of 80's love, desire, pain, freedom, and frenzy; of being a teenager in a time of change. By listening, I could step into Jenny's shoes, see things from her vantage point. I could be emancipated by rock and roll and walkmen, just as she had been. We could listen together.
I asked my friend Thomas to cover the album, which, sheltered as he is, he had never heard before. I was clear that I wanted to him to cover the whole album - the point wasn't to rework any one song, but to re-imagine the picture they made together. With a new Footloose we could reply to the past, tell our own story about being young. This is what he made.
-- Gabriel Greenberg
A cease-and-desist letter from a music label means you can just stream the album from that link above or from imeem, but there's a rar of mp3s at this link.
Wachovia savings commercial
Hazel directed, Raza co-directed and animated, and Chris shot this entry for a Wachovia TV commercial contest around savings (all classmates of mine from film school). Check it out and vote.
July 20, 2008
That intersection
No spoilers. In The Dark Knight, there's one scene in which some vehicles go from traveling above ground in Chicago to a down ramp that takes them to the underground street levels in the loop. If you've seen the movie you'll probably know which scene.
I stood out there a few years ago and took a long exposure picture of that ramp down to lower Wacker Street. I recognized it in the movie because of the Lyric Opera sign.
July 18, 2008
Fullscreen
DVDs that fill a 4x3 tv are called fullscreen. But since more and more homes have 16x9, that title doesn't make sense anymore. Fullscreen DVDs don't "fill" the screen of your fancy plasma tv. Yet DVDs still come out now dubbed fullscreen.
A better title would be 4x3, with a little boxy graphic to illustrate the aspect ratio, though the video snob in me is tempted to dub them "not widescreen" or "visually truncated."
The Dark Knight
Really, really good, which is a relief, because I haven't seen a summer blockbuster that I've enjoyed in a long, long time. It has an operatic grandeur, aided again by the Wagnerian themes of the score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Much better than Batman Begins, which I wasn't as crazy about in execution as everyone else was (though the concept of a darker, more realistic telling of the story was great).
See it in IMAX. Seeing it at a regular theater you will get a pan-and-scan version of about 30 minutes of the movie. It won't be bad, but if every there was a movie you had to see in its native format, on the bigger-than-big screen, this is it. You won't be able to replicate this in any home theater. The cuts between the 35mm shots and the 70mm IMAX shots are near seamless, and you barely notice them (they're easier to spot when going from IMAX to 35mm than vice versa.
Largo
Los Angeles gets its fair share of crap, and I'm as guilty as anyone. Elsewhere, people complain about the weather. Here, people complain about the traffic, the strip malls, and, well, the traffic.
But today I want to focus on one of LA's treasures. Betina asked me in the afternoon if I wanted to go with her and Justing to Largo, a movie-theater-converted-to-music-hall in Hollywood, to hear Fiona Apple. I haven't heard her sing live since a concert at the Paramount back in Seattle many years ago, but I've always enjoyed her voice, that deep and smoky megaphone.
Largo is a cozy little theater tucked on the not-so-cozy mega street of La Cienega, a long stone's throw from the Beverly Center shopping mall. Such are the geographical realities of LA.
It turns out the headliner this night was the Watkins family, consisting of sister-brother duo Sara and Sean Watkins, of Nickel Creek fame (Nickel Creek's self-titled Alison-Krauss-produced debut album is a great place to start if you want to grok them; of the 267 customer reviews on Amazon it has 213 5-star ratings).
But during their long show, they were accompanied by one guest musician after another. Dan Wilson, former leader of Semisonic and recent Grammy nominee, came out for a few tunes. Then Fiona Apple strolled out, with that introverted, nervous body language, until she opens her mouth and that powerhouse of a voice takes over the room. She is our nation's little waif, our little Edith Piaf.
Then Fiona left and Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket fan took his place. I haven't seen Phillips since a concert at Stanford back when I was an undergrad. I'm glad he still looks reasonably young, or I would have felt even older than normal.
And then Dan Wilson came back, and who did he bring on stage for a duet than John C. Reilly, of, well, Talladega Nights fame. Reilly, besides being one of the few people I know who carries his middle initial almost like an honorific, can actually hit his notes.
Great music all night long in the larger but still intimate of two performance spaces at the Largo, and yet there were empty seats in what was an arthouse movie theater sized hall, with tickets only costing $25 each. How that place does not sell out every night is a great mystery to me.
Just the previous night, I was out with some coworkers, and we were comparing LA to Seattle and NYC, and we discussed how one problem with LA seemed to be the lack of a public place you felt you could call your own. Largo feels like such a spot, and I could see myself becoming a regular.
In contrast, I went with some coworkers to The Forum in Inglewood on Monday night to see Coldplay, and that venue is one of the fugliest buildings I've been in. It's like an oversized high school gym, and picturing the Lakers playing there after seeing them at Staples Center is difficult to fathom. Since Coldplay's debut, I've liked each successive album less, and their last album had me swearing them off, but their newest album caught my ear's interest again.
The show was good, but not great. They did not bring a full musical outfit, so on string sections of songs like "Viva La Vida" they just piped in the missing backing instruments which is always disappointing. I also didn't love all the arrangements. But Chris Martin seems like one of the nicer guys in rock, and they have a long list of big anthems to call upon.
The handicapped parking at the Forum filled up, so I had to walk what felt like two miles from the stadium back to the car in the parking lot. I felt like Jude Law in Cold Mountain. When I got home and took off my walking boot, I found a big bloody spot on the back of my sock, recalling Curt Schilling's famous bloody sock. I'm going to frame it as a memento of my heroic effort on that night.
Watchmen, the trailer, and The Dark Knight, part IMAX
Premiering with The Dark Knight tomorrow is the Watchmen teaser trailer. You can see it in all the usual Quicktime resolutions at Apple, or you can look at this teeny embed version:
Instead of "visionary director" it should read "visual director".
I'm seeing The Dark Knight at an IMAX theater tomorrow morning, bright and early. In the past, seeing feature films at an IMAX theater has been more of a novelty as those movies were shot on 35mm and transferred to a 70mm IMAX negative. But parts of The Dark Knight were actually shot natively on IMAX this time, a first for a Hollywood feature.
The filmmakers received permission to shoot a number of action sequences in Imax; these would include the opening sequence, which depicts a huge bank heist, and the climactic closing scenes. By the time production started, four major action sequences were planned for Imax, but “Chris and I knew that if we had the money and the cameras, and if it made sense, we would add other scenes,” says Pfister. “For instance, we quickly decided to shoot all the aerial work in Imax because of what we’d gain in resolution.” In the end, 15-20 percent of the movie — roughly 30 minutes of screen time — was originated in Imax.
In Imax presentations of The Dark Knight, shots filmed in Imax will fill the screen, and material shot in 35mm anamorphic will appear in the center of the frame. (Hard cuts are planned between the two types of images.) For standard 35mm presentations, a 2.40:1 image will be extracted from the Imax footage; Nolan and editor Lee Smith could choose which portion of the frame to extract, depending on the shot. “Even in the 2.40:1 presentations, the Imax sequences will be sharper and clearer, with improved contrast and no trace of grain,” says Pfister.
July 17, 2008
Alternative WKW cuts
Wong Kar-Wai has revisited Ashes of Time and produced Ashes of Time Redux. Sony Picture Classics is releasing it in September. It's the only WKW movie I haven't seen yet, and I'm excited to see a version, either version, on a big screen.
On a related note, David Bordwell compares the current cut of Days of Being Wild with an obscure, alternate cut he was lucky enough to screen. There are some spoilers for those who haven't seen the alternate cut, but since it doesn't sound like there are any plans to release this as a redux version, maybe they don't qualify as spoilers. I would give a whole lot to get my hands on this mythical alternate cut as Days of Being Wild is one of my favorite WKW movies. Bordwell tries to decode that last scene from the original cut, the famous appearance of Tony Leung in that one long handheld shot, but doesn't come to any definitive conclusions, even with the new sequencing in the alternate cut..
Pop under poop
IMDb.com opens pop-unders that get past Firefox's pop-up window blocker. Pop-unders are generally galling, like stepping into dog poop while strolling along the web, but now that most browsers come up with pop-up blockers, when a pop-under does slip through it feels even worse, like someone exerted extra effort to circumvent our no solicitation sign to sling that dog poop at you.
July 16, 2008
Purchased song sync via the iPhone
Important science
Scientific American interviews an expert in kinesiology and neuroscience to ask if someone could really be Batman. The conclusion was that it might be possible, but only for a short while before your body broke down.
Was this really a deep question people needed scientific verification for?
July 14, 2008
PDN Photo Annual 2008
The PDN Photo Annual is always worth flipping through for some photographic inspiration.
July 13, 2008
Brand Tags
I've meant for some time to link to Brand Tags, a site which asks users to help attach tag clouds to brand names. Users are served a series of brands and asked to enter the first word that comes to mind. The site then collects all the data and displays the results as a tag cloud. You could waste a good hour or two on the site seeing what people think of certain brands (and I have).
It's striking how similarly many people think of some brands, and even more striking to see how the advertising can affect some brands. When served Skyy Vodka, the first word that came to mind was "blue" as I could picture their ads in my head, with large bodies of water, the tall, blue glass bottle. I clicked through to see what other people had tagged the brand, and the largest tag above the fold was indeed "blue".
How successful are some branding campaigns? BMW has managed to attach "ultimate driving machine" to its brand. But the NBA, which has switched from "It's fantastic" to "where __ happens", hasn't really ingrained either in users' minds. The top tag for the NBA seems to be "Michael Jordan" which something about the league's struggles to establish its own identity since his Airness retired.
Here are some other brands and popular tags for them:
American Apparel: hipster, porn, cool, sex, nothing, boring, cheap, clothes
Amazon: awesome, books, buy, cheap, convenient, easy, everything, fast, great, shopping, useful, smile
New Yorker: cartoons, elite, elitist, intellectual, intelligent, magazine, old, pretentious, snob, snooty, sophisticated, stuffy
Microsoft: apple, awesome, bad, big, brother, bill, boring, buggy, computers, crap, crash, evil, empire, gates, huge, lame, monopoly, office, old, pc, shit, software, sucks, windows
Apple: amazing, apple, computers, arrogant, awesome, beautiful, best, bite, clean, computer, cool, creative, cult, design, elegant, elitist, expensive, gay, good, hip, innovation, ipod, love, overpriced, pretentious, simple, sleek, steve jobs, style, trendy, white
Segway: cool, dorky, dumb, expensive, fast, fun, gay, lame, lazy, nerd, scooter, silly, stupid, useless
Techcrunch: ?, arrington, blog, boring, cereal, computer, geek, huh?, nerd, news, no idea, nothing, tech, technology, no idea, what?, who?
Target: affordable, arrow, awesome, better than walmart, bullseye, clean, clothes, cool, design, dog, everything, fun, hip, shopping, store, value
Wal Mart: american, asda, bad, big, cheap, china, crap, everything, evil, exploitation, huge, low prices, redneck, shit, shop, shopping, store, supermarket, white trash
The site also stages brand battles, pitting brands against each other. Here's the leaderboard. Pixar, Adidas, Ferrari, Google, and M&Ms are the top 5. I was glad to see Maxtor at 651, near the bottom. I've had two of their hard drives fail on me in my G5 desktop, and I'll never touch another one of their drives again.
Rock Band 2
A pic of a premium drum kit that will be available for Rock Band 2.
$299, so not exactly a mass market product. Here's a pic of the new Rock Band 2 wireless guitar, from a Kotaku article with some more details about what's new in Rock Band 2:
"The Last Lace-Up"
Image by Kelly Shimoda for the NYTimes for an article on 66 year old Empire Roller Skating Center in Crown Heights, which closed last year.
Tiny Tim
Tom Verducci with a great article on the mechanics of San Francisco Giant starter Tim Lincecum. He is fun to watch pitch. The article is painful to read for a Cubs fan, however, as it includes many cautionary tales that feature the North siders as the punchline.
For example, it includes the first dissenting opinion I've read about Mark Prior's mechanics.
Mark Prior is a classic example of a high-performing pitcher who was permitted to break down because of poor mechanics. Ironically, Prior was often hailed for his "flawless" mechanics when the Cubs drafted the righthander out of USC with the No. 2 pick in 2001, though that assessment seems to have been influenced by scouts' preference for his 6' 5", 225-pound body type. Studied closely, his mechanics included two severe red flags: 1) Prior lifted his throwing elbow higher than his shoulder before reaching the loaded position, increasing the stress on his elbow and shoulder; and 2) unlike Lincecum's dynamic late torso rotation, Prior rotated his hips and torso before getting to the loaded position. With the letters of Prior's jersey already facing the target, his arm could not simply "go along for the ride" -- the ride was over, so his arm had to generate all of its own power.
Prior went 41-23 over his first four seasons in the big leagues. During that time, in 2003, when Prior was on his way to a career-high 18 wins, [former Mets pitching coach Rick] Peterson gave a presentation to the Oakland scouting department about "certain red flags in a delivery that we can't do much about" as the A's prepared for the draft. The idea was to avoid sinking large signing bonuses into players with a high potential to break down. (Late picks, because of their lower cost, don't carry the same concern.)
One of Oakland's scouts, responding to Peterson's red-flag warnings, said, "Hey, that's what Prior does. Are you saying that we shouldn't draft a player like that?"
Replied Peterson, "No, not exactly. He's one of the best pitchers in the league right now, but what I am saying is, If he doesn't have maximum [shoulder] rotation, it will lead to injury. It's like slamming the brakes over and over. The brake pads are going to wear out until it's metal on metal."
Prior has suffered a series of shoulder injuries that have limited him to one win and nine starts in the three seasons since. Still only 27, he is out for the season -- again -- after surgery to repair a tear in his right shoulder. "Prior is almost all upper body," Chris Lincecum says. "You could cut his legs off and he would throw just as hard. I don't like to put my finger on players, but I've been doing this a long time. I've said, 'He's going to blow his elbow out' or 'His back will go out.' Sure enough, it happens, including Dice-K [Daisuke Matsuzaka], Jake Peavy, Prior. . . . I have a hard time enjoying the game. I'm sitting there criticizing the pitcher. It hurts to watch pitchers. Seventy percent of the pros have poor mechanics."
As the owner of a Mark Prior Cubs jersey, I'm still wistful for what could have been. It scares me to think that the Oakland A's were willing to trade Rich Harden to the Cubs given how much they rely on Rick Peterson's counsel. Is Harden simply the second coming of Prior, immensely talented, doomed to physical breakdown?
Prior isn't the only example of a Cubs high draft pick whose body broke down.
Bobby Brownlie was supposed to be Tim Lincecum. A 6-foot righthander from Rutgers who hit 97 mph on the gun, Brownlie was regarded as one of the top pitchers in the 2002 draft. Peterson was working as the A's pitching coach at the time. Just before the draft, Oakland G.M. Billy Beane gave Peterson videotapes of some 20 pitchers the A's were considering as draft picks and told him to break down each pitcher not by stuff and performance but by the biomechanics of their deliveries.
The previous winter Peterson had met Brownlie at a banquet and told him, "Hey, I hear you're great. Congratulations, I hear you're going to be a [first round] pick." But when he watched Brownlie on the tape Beane had given him, Peterson says, "I'm literally sick to my stomach. I'm going, 'This is so sad.' "
A few days later, when Beane asked Peterson what he thought of Brownlie, the pitching coach replied, "He has certain characteristics in his delivery that will lead to shoulder problems."
The Cubs took Brownlie with the 21st pick -- bypassing future big leaguers Matt Cain, Joe Blanton, Jon Lester and Jonathon Broxton -- and lavished him with a $2.5 million signing bonus. Within three years Brownlie could not throw any harder than the mid-80s, and minor league hitters were crushing his pitches. Chicago released him in March 2007. Brownlie spent much of last year playing independent league baseball and is now pitching for the Washington Nationals' Double A Harrisburg affiliate. In May '07 Brownlie told SNY.tv, "The major question about me is why my velocity has dipped in the past couple of years. . . . There's really no answer to it; we don't know what's going on."
The last poke in the eye to Cubs fans: Lincecum was drafted by the Cubs in the 48th round after his last season of high school baseball, when he was named Washington's 2003 Gatorade High School Player of the Year. He turned them down.
July 11, 2008
iPhone 2.0
MacRumors noted that the iPhone 2.0 firmware leaked early this morning. I grabbed it and decided, even if it wasn't official, that it was probably the same as the final release given that it was the day prior to the iPhone 3G's release.
While I waited for the somewhat large download (~250MB) and during the lengthy install process, I grabbed a bunch of apps from the iTunes app store. It was like Christmas.
I'm going to play with these new apps for a while before upgrading to the iPhone 3G. As most of the early reviewers have noted, most of the upgrades this day can be had by iPhone 2G users simply through the software update. GPS and 3G certainly would make many of the apps more snappy and useful in more places--ensuring many of my apps run more quickly more places will be the primary reason I upgrade--but given how much time I spend at the office or at home right now (I can get Wi-Fi in both places), I'm able to get a feel for all these apps and hang on to my cheaper phone plan for the time being. Even though I'm in a new walking boot as of noon today, I wouldn't enjoy standing in it for hours fighting others to get one of the first batch of 3G iPhones.
The first app I paid for is one of my favorite so far: MLB.com's At Bat ($4.99). It allows you to get video highlights from MLB games, even games in progress. On Wi-Fi, the landscape full-screen video quality is very good. It's a fantasy baseball/reality baseball fan's dream come true. Finally we've realized the full potential of mobile video for MLB fans. I only wish that box scores were part of the application; it currently redirects to MLB's WAP site to see that info which seems odd.
Some applications don't seem like huge improvements over their Mobile Safari renditions, but many are huge improvements over their current mobile browser versions. Many new apps take advantage of iPhone's ability to approximate your physical location, one of the great and hitherto unrealized potential benefits of mobile phone computing. Some apps recommend restaurants and other services in the area, while others promise to notify you of where your fellow iPhone-wielding friends are. Tracking/stalking your friends will be so much easier if they're fellow iPhone users.
When you think of the range of data and functionality an app can take advantage of: your address book, your physical location at that moment, the iPhone camera, the Quicktime video player, your calendar, the Accelerometer, multi-touch, the speakers, the microphone, among others, I'm certain we haven't yet seen the mindblowing application that I know is waiting to be written. It's ironic that you can write many apps for my iPhone that you couldn't write for my Macbook Pro.
Beyond MLB.tv's At Bat, other apps I dig so far include Shazam, which, once fired up, can tell you what a song is when you let your iPhone listen to it; the award-winning Twitterific, which seems like the last Twitter client I'll ever need; Urbanspoon, the part slot machine part Magic 8-Ball app that lets you shake your iPhone to get a random restaurant suggestion nearby you, and Exposure, a Flickr photo application that has a Near Me button that shows you photos taken near your physical location.
In the course of this day, I went from one-legged to one-and-a-half legged (the damn hard cast is off, and in its place a soft boot, though I'm not yet ready to ditch the crutches), and it feels like my iPhone took a similar leap in functionality. MobileMe indeed.
July 9, 2008
Oh Jesse
That Jesse Jackson clip in which he attacks Barack Obama while waiting to go on air for an interview on Fox News.
I see this and think: nuts is a swear word?
Nuts.
July 8, 2008
Camus: "[the] one truly serious philosophical problem"
Illuminating article on suicide in this week's NYTimes Magazine. The key insight is that many suicides can be prevented by making it harder to carry out: make the act itself more work and the impulse towards suicide will often just pass. I'll just excerpt large portions as it speaks for itself.
To turn the equation around: if the impulsive suicide attempter tends to reach for whatever means are easy or quick, is it possible that the availability of means can actually spur the act? In looking at suicide’s close cousin, murder, the answer seems obvious. If a man shoots his wife amid a heated argument, we recognize the crucial role played by the gun’s availability. We don’t automatically think, Well, if the gun hadn’t been there, he surely would have strangled her. When it comes to suicide, however, most of us make no such allowance. The very fact that someone kills himself we regard as proof of intent — and of mental illness; the actual method used, we assume, is of minor importance.
But is it?
As it turns out, one of the most remarkable discoveries about suicide and how to reduce it occurred utterly by chance. It came about not through some breakthrough in pharmacology or the treatment of mental illness but rather through an energy-conversion scheme carried out in Britain in the 1960s and ’70s. Among those familiar with the account, it is often referred to simply as “the British coal-gas story.”
For generations, the people of Britain heated their homes and fueled their stoves with coal gas. While plentiful and cheap, coal-derived gas could also be deadly; in its unburned form, it released very high levels of carbon monoxide, and an open valve or a leak in a closed space could induce asphyxiation in a matter of minutes. This extreme toxicity also made it a preferred method of suicide. “Sticking one’s head in the oven” became so common in Britain that by the late 1950s it accounted for some 2,500 suicides a year, almost half the nation’s total.
Those numbers began dropping over the next decade as the British government embarked on a program to phase out coal gas in favor of the much cleaner natural gas. By the early 1970s, the amount of carbon monoxide running through domestic gas lines had been reduced to nearly zero. During those same years, Britain’s national suicide rate dropped by nearly a third, and it has remained close to that reduced level ever since.
More evidence.
In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 — an astonishing 515 individuals in all — he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently “completed.” His report, “Where Are They Now?” remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.
“That’s still a lot higher than the general population, of course,” Seiden, 75, explained to me over lunch in a busy restaurant in downtown San Franciso. “But to me, the more significant fact is that 90 percent of them got past it. They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives.”
In Seiden’s view, a crucial factor in this boils down to the issue of time. In the case of people who attempt suicide impulsively, cutting off or slowing down their means to act allows time for the impulse to pass — perhaps even blocks the impulse from being triggered to begin with. What is remarkable, though, is that it appears that the same holds true for the nonimpulsive, with people who may have been contemplating the act for days or weeks.
“At the risk of stating the obvious,” Seiden said, “people who attempt suicide aren’t thinking clearly. They might have a Plan A, but there’s no Plan B. They get fixated. They don’t say, ‘Well, I can’t jump, so now I’m going to go shoot myself.’ And that fixation extends to whatever method they’ve chosen. They decide they’re going to jump off a particular spot on a particular bridge, or maybe they decide that when they get there, but if they discover the bridge is closed for renovations or the railing is higher than they thought, most of them don’t look around for another place to do it. They just retreat.”
One of the twisted features of this phenomenon:
Animating their efforts is one of the most peculiar — in fact, downright perverse — aspects to the premeditation-versus-passion dichotomy in suicide. Put simply, those methods that require forethought or exertion on the actor’s part (taking an overdose of pills, say, or cutting your wrists), and thus most strongly suggest premeditation, happen to be the methods with the least chance of “success.” Conversely, those methods that require the least effort or planning (shooting yourself, jumping from a precipice) happen to be the deadliest. The natural inference, then, is that the person who best fits the classic definition of “being suicidal” might actually be safer than one acting in the heat of the moment — at least 40 times safer in the case of someone opting for an overdose of pills over shooting himself.
As illogical as this might seem, it is a phenomenon confirmed by research. According to statistics collected by the Injury Control Research Center on nearly 4,000 suicides across the United States, those who had killed themselves with firearms — by far the most lethal common method of suicide — had a markedly lower history of depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, previous suicide attempts or drug or alcohol abuse than those who died by the least lethal methods. On the flip side, those who ranked the highest for at-risk factors tended to choose those methods with low “success” rates.
“We’re always going to have suicide,” Hemenway said, “and there’s probably not that much to be done for the ones who are determined, who succeed on their 4th or 5th or 25th try. The ones we have a good chance of saving are those who, right now, succeed on their first attempt because of the lethal methods they’ve chosen.”
Inevitably, this approach means focusing on the most common method of suicide in the United States: firearms. Even though guns account for less than 1 percent of all American suicide attempts, their extreme fatality rate — anywhere from 85 percent and 92 percent, depending on how the statistics are compiled — means that they account for 54 percent of all completions. In 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, that translated into about 17,000 deaths. Public-health officials like Hemenway can point to a mountain of research going back 40 years that shows that the incidence of firearm suicide runs in close parallel with the prevalence of firearms in a community.
The article concludes:
In September 2000, Kevin Hines, a 19-year-old college student suffering from bipolar disorder, leapt from the Golden Gate. Along with Ken Baldwin, he is one of only 29 known survivors of the fall. Today Hines controls his bipolar disorder with medication and a strictly controlled regimen of diet and exercise and sleep, even while maintaining a frenetic schedule. Having recently married, he is frequently on the road lecturing for a suicide-prevention network while simultaneously working toward a psychology degree. One of his most intense ambitions, though, is to finally see a suicide barrier erected on the Golden Gate.
“I’ll tell you what I can’t get out of my head,” he told me in his San Francisco living room. “It’s watching my hands come off that railing and thinking to myself, My God, what have I just done? Because I know that almost everyone else who’s gone off that bridge, they had that exact same thought at that moment. All of a sudden, they didn’t want to die, but it was too late. Somehow I made it; they didn’t; and now I feel it’s my responsibility to speak for them.”
After having read this article and watched The Bridge (the documentary that captured footage of jumpers off of the Golden Gate Bridge and went back to interview friends and relatives to try an understand what led the person to that point), I wonder why they don't put up some wire fence over the railing at the Golden Gate Bridge to make it harder to climb up and over.
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency
Heh.
Mad Men
Watching Mad Men gives me an irresistible urge to smoke herbal cigarettes (yes, that's what they're smoking instead of actual cigarettes, something I learned from the recent NYTimes Magazine profile).
The show is packed with smart, if stylized, dialogue. I wonder if ad agency employees watch the show with the same concealed pride with which invesmtent bankers watch American Psycho.
July 5, 2008
It really does go to 11
On this, day 1 of the 2008 Tour de France, I was going through my inbox and found an e-mail from Campagnolo pimping their new groupsets with 11 speeds, up from 10.
I had a bit of the Tour on in the background while cleaning the apartment this morning (picture me hopping around on one leg, sweating in the afternoon sun, trying to work a broom and dustpan with my arms; yes, it's not exactly Melanie Griffith vacuuming in the nude in Working Girl). I'll always associate cycling with my comeback from my ACL tear and a low point in my life, the year of 1998. I have not ridden much in LA. The aggressive drivers in LA are not just annoying but a real danger, and I haven't found many paths I enjoy riding near where I live.
But today, struggling to do household chores with my cast on, I caught a brief montage of highlights from the stage--riders jumping out of their saddle to sprint for intermediate stage points, quick attacks among the early breakaway group on mild climbs, the peloton ripping through the French countryside--and I was filled with a harsh longing to be on my bike, legs in motion. These days I dream of being able to walk, like a bald man dreaming of hair.
I've always ridden Campy on my road bike (speaking of Nikon and Canon, the same binary choice of gear religion exists in road cycling between Campagnolo and Shimano), and just seeing the carbon fibre components of their new gruppos is like a visual cue turning on some Pavlovian instinct inside me. If I could fit my left foot, cast and all, into my road cycling shoes, I'd go out right now, in the night, and ride.
Nikon vs Canon
James Duncan Davidson writes about Nikon's comeback versus Canon in the battle for digital SLR market supremacy. The first salvos were Nikon's release of the D3 and D300, and now it's the D700. And sometime later this year, perhaps the D3X. Meanwhile, after years of seemingly being always a step ahead of Nikon, Canon is suffering a tough year.
The truth is that for the average photographer who has committed to either Nikon or Canon, switching is possible but a hassle, especially with a significant lens investment. You can sell your lenses and camera body on eBay and cross brand lines, but for most people the hassle of doing so and learning new controls would be prohibitive. And on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't really matter.
The biggest advance with the new Nikon FX sensor SLRs is the low-light performance. Not having to use a flash except for fill is life-changing.
Connor attacks
With my Achilles on the mend, my nephew Connor is racing me to be the first to walk.
July 3, 2008
Rock Band 2
Rock Band 2 is coming in September, exclusively on the XBox 360, then on to other platforms later in the year. More music, new peripherals, new online modes, but backwards compatibility for DLC and previous instruments.
Exclusive on the XBox 360 at launch? I guess that's just too bad for me and my PS3 version of the game.
July 2, 2008
Jay-Z's "Wonderwall" into "99 Problems"
Noel Gallagher thought it was "wrong" that they added hip-hop to Glastonbury. Jay-Z, said hip-hop addition, responded by punching him in the face.
No, just kidding, he just decided to cover Oasis during his act.
iPhone pricing
I thought the new lower prices for the iPhone 3G would apply to new subscribers, but apparently only previous iPhone owners and those who have been with AT&T long enough to have paid of subsidized phones will qualify. All others will have to pay $399 and $499 for the 8GB and 16GB models.
Which tempers my outlook for sales to new customers. I thought the half price would apply to new customers as well, and everywhere you see ads for the new iPhone they tout "Twice as fast. Half the price.*"
The asterisk turned out to be bigger than anticipated. On a positive note, maybe it means shorter lines on July 11 for those who'll be standing out there, being filmed and photographed by local press and people uploading pics and video to Flickr and YouTube.
UPDATE: Oops, as Andy notes, the full price of $399/$499 is just for AT&T customers who don't already have a 2G iPhone and who haven't finished their current contract. Which makes sense since some of the subsidy for the phone is in the 2 year contract that most cellular companies offer. The new iPhone 3G has a subsidy built into the monthly rates, which is why it will be cheaper to buy up front. But this means that if you buy an iPhone 3G, if a new model comes out and you have not completed your 2-year contract, you won't get the subsidized price on that new model.
Times really are tough
I didn't realize how bad the economy really was.
July 1, 2008
Quantum of Solace
The trailer for the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace (sounds like a spa treatment), is up at 007.com.
Casino Royale
UPDATE: You can watch the trailer in HD at Moviefone. It's very confusing, finding out which sites have which trailers for which movies in HD.