The Empire Strikes Bush

Evidently, I am not alone in noticing the anti-Bush political message of Star Wars III. Also, listen in to #22 of the Theory of Everything podcast - there's a funny narrative about a disappointed republican Yoda!

It is also interesting to read that the war on terror strategy is being reviewed just now. Against all odds, I hope that this review will not only take into consideration the terrorists' more diversified tactics, but also the increasing abuse of the war on terror label at both the domestic as well as the foreign policy level. Interesting to see for instance that in the context of the recent violent oppression of an Uzbek uprising, the much heralded freedom rhetoric took second stage to tactical considerations on said war.

Maybe it's time to end the war on terror (not lowering the level of attention, of course), or to define clearly delimited war objectives. Otherwise, the US might end up in a 1984 situation where an unspecified world war serves as background and pretext for the establishment of a totalitarian system. Mind you, we're certainly not there (yet?), but there are plenty of alarming signs.

On a lighter note, a minor blogical (nice word, that!) problem arose in the context of this post: If a small additional item regarding an earlier post comes up, should it be added as a postscriptum to the earlier post, or should a new post be created, linking back to the earlier one? I think the latter solution is the better one, so that's what I do.

Sanity quants

"However far you may travel in this world,
you will still occupy the same volume of space.
Traditional Ur-Bororo saying."

It's been in the making for quite a long time, but I finally finished The Quantity Theory of Insanity by Will Self. It is a bizarre book with an underpinning of radically absurd wit. Imagine a combination of The Sixth Sense, Six feet under and The Flying Circus and you get the beginning of it - literally (I am talking about the first story)! The book's format is a collection of six apparently unrelated short stories: The North London Book of the Dead, Ward 9, Understanding the Ur-Bororo, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Mono-Cellular and finally Waiting. But on closer inspection, you'll notice that each story is cleverly linked with others by means of some peripheral character. For a good review & summary, check this - I personally just loved the Ur-Bororo story. Oh, and Waiting with the permanent suspension between immanence & imminence!

Which leads me to a quick parenthetical note: I do not want to boast my vocabulary, but it doesn't happen often in non-technical literature that I have to use the dictionary. Not so in this case! Maybe that has something to do with the fact that Self occasionally uses technical jargon, particularly when the subject matter is anthropology, or psychiatry, as in the namesake story where he actually develops said quantity theory, complete with footnotes and bibliography ("Hurst, P., 'Nailbiting in Bournemouth versus Bed-Wetting in Poole: Action and Amelioration', Journal of Psychology, March, 1976") And it comes across incredibly ... credibly! It's just too bad that the frequently quoted British Journal of Ephemera (BJE) does not appear to exist in this world - I'd be an avid reader!

The quantity theory itself is obviously true (please abstain from applying Popper to this one): There is only a limited amount of sanity in any given social grouping. Hence a decay in the mental health of one member actually increases other members' sanity. Read it to believe it - and have a swell time in the process!!

P.S. The uncharacteristically high density of exclamation marks in this post correlates closely with how much I like the book.

Intelligent Life II

My prayers have indeed been heard - there is a second issue of Intelligent Life, and it is as good as the first one. Some pointers to items of interest:

The distinguished lady with a temporary budget shortage can actually borrow the handbag of her desire. So, how about that nice Ferragamo handbag with some usage marks, Frau Merkel?

The Economist is weighing in on the debate over premium chocolate, and it comes to a scandalous conclusion: the Belgian stuff (Marcolini) is best! Zürich's Teuscher comes 5th in 7! Fortunately, the comparison's rigour can be questioned - they only tried truffles, and they did it in a dinner party environment ... probably, those guys might have been better suited for the job!

Interesting piece about Rolex, allegedly the luxury timepiece of choice. Just not mine - I find those things disgustingly clunky! I'd rather go to that Vienna shop I discovered and get a pre-owned high-end Jaeger.

The article on podcasting mentions two interestings ones that I'll give a shot; Little Gray Books & Biddycast.

Tunes on tap makes the case for music utilities with a constant stream of music from central servers with artists paid per second of usage. Go with the flow - interesting!

Finally, we're told to forget the résumé because clever blogs are better suited for landing us that much sought after new job. Interesting indeed!

Overall, a worthwhile lifestyle magazine, for once! Just two shortcomings: The constant talk about $$$ (instead of £ or EUR) or NTSC doesn't exactly hint to the magazine's European origins, and this time round, they were a bit short on giving us weblinks - even in the online version! You can get it at your local (well stocked!) newsagent now.

P.S. Their online survey is rather tedious. When will surveyors realise that surveyees realise quite acutely that a 9 by 4 matrix question is actually equivalent to 36 questions and not just one?!

Artstübli

It's actually a bit too hot & stuffy out, so I am looking for a bit of refreshment in surfing. Here is a new, virtually glossy Swiss art & design magazine, artstübli. Fairly powerful visual language there and fun to leaf through, even though the computer to peruse it on may be a bit clunky for the coffee table ... do start it on Acrobat Reader 7, though - apparently, there is multimedia content available. I say apparently because it doesn't work on my Tiger / Acrobat 7 / QT 7 machine. But even so, have a gander, it's worth it!

Summertime!

Summer is definitely here, although technically, it may be a bit premature. Nice nonetheless! The temperature displayed on the weather widget is even a couple of degrees short! Yesterday night, I went to see Three Miles Off, a Basle jazz quartett with (among others) Oliver Friedli on the piano and Alex Hendriksen on the sax at the culturium. I saw it mentioned in the paper and was wondering what Alex was up to these days, or nights as is probably more appropriate for a jazz musician. Well, it was great fun! They are playing a lot of Oliver's own music, which is a good combination of progressive and cool (I am probably wrong there). I am certainly looking forward to their new CD which will be hitting the market on September 9. I would no doubt point you to their website as well, if they had one, but what I can do is link to Alex' future website, once his brother gets moving ...

Elementary, my dear Mrs. Watson!

There's a fun little story (German, available today only) about an exchange of letters to the Sydney Morning Herald. The actual trigger was the need to save water, which got those Aussie letter writers rolling: One suggested to have one's whisky straight only, while a certain Tony Watson said that henceforth, he would be taking showers only with his wife. This stoked the fantasy of people, of course, who wanted to join in - literally. Anyway, a couple of months later, there was another letter by Tony, announcing that it worked and his wife was pregnant. Another couple of months later, there was the announcement of the birth of their baby daughter Miranda. And now they're famous not only in Sydney, but also in Switzerland and in the blogosphere.

Koi29? Since we're at it, there's another fun article (which is not available online) about the somewhat unconventional use of French among young folk in the French speaking parts of Switzerland, which seems to arise out of the pervasive use of texting & blogs. There's a slang called Verlan, which is a permutation of l'envers (invers), and that's exactly what it means: words are turned upside down, c.f.: Vénèr is proper énervé, tof = foto, meuf = femme. Very drôle! Unsurprisingly, language purists (such as teachers) are throwing a fit! And the kids enjoy it, I am sure. But what's the meaning of that Koi29, you wonder? Well, it's Quoi de neuf? (what's new?)! Here's another one for you to work out on your own (a pint for the 1st correct answer): J'tapLDkej'pe ...

The economics of deception

Here is a very interesting & rather disturbing article on the pervasive behavioural pattern of lying. The article is disturbing because its main argument on why we keep doing it is simply this: Because it works.

Baghdad jobs

Andy is quoting a fun job vacancy ad on his blog. I think I can better that! From the current issue of The Economist:

Baghdad Baghdad Professional Services Company requires senior executive. Finance/legal/accountancy or other professional qualification, management experience and sense of adventure required. Middle East experience and/or Arabic preferred but not essential. Excellent compensation package available. Operations based in secured zone in Baghdad. Send C.V.'s to: reply1@economist.com.

Sense of adventure? It'd better be a good one!

CTU London

This site gives you a bit of a CTU feeling for the city of London, especially once the live feeds from the traffic jam cameras are on stream. Very smart! Until then, we'll have to make do with the real thing, episodes 4/23 & 24 ...

Technology theater

There's a couple of things that bug me about how our dear local theater treats technology as an afterthought, and I have to get that out now.

First, there's their newsletter that you can subscribe to. Great thing, that, very informative. But it contains a very strange tombola system for two tickets each week: It is not a random drawing from the replies they get, but rather, it is the first email they get that wins the prize. Evidently, they don't have a clue as to how email distribution works, otherwise they wouldn't pretend same chances for every participant. That's probably not even legal.

Far more serious however are the shortcomings of the online ticket ordering system. Theater Basel seems to be doing that through an unknown agent called eventris. According to their site, eventris receives a 10% commission on tickets ordered online. But the user gets a CHF 5 System Gebühr (sic!) slapped on his bill, without comment or explanation. What's more, tickets bought online cannot be refunded or exchanged, which is another disadvantage in comparison with the brick & mortar Billettkasse. And if all that hasn't discouraged you sufficiently yet, the ordering site looks and feels entirely unprofessional. So, evidently, the people responsible for this just couldn't care less and obviously do not want to have their b&m channel cannibalised while still wanting to keep up appearances of being in line with today's best practice.

Naturally, they are entirely incommunicado about all this ...