Eastman Kodak, the company that brought photography to the masses, and instant development to the world with its Polaroid camera, has filed for Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
Chapter 11 is not equivalent to bankruptcy, but rather a petition to reorganize and restructure the firm. It expects to complete this during 2013. Since 2003, it has reduced its work force by 47,000, and closed 13 manufacturing plants as well as 130 processing labs. The idea was to abandon its traditional operations and move into the digital world.
So far it hasn't made the transition, although it has made a substantial amount of money (over $3 billion) licensing its digital patents to over 30 companies, including LG, Motorola and Nokia.
Despite this, Kodak itself has never quite made the transition into the world of digital photography. The bitter irony is that the digital camera was invented by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, in 1975. However, the company shelved it on the assumption that it would hurt its existing product line.
Some companies manage to avoid such a fate by rethinking their business. A classic example is Wells Fargo, originally a stagecoach company, but then redefined as a transportation firm.
The moral of the story is this: Obsolete yourself, or someone else will.
Arthur
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Radical Fashion Statement: The See-Through Burqa
A burqa (Arabic
pronunciation: [ˈbʊrqɑʕ]; also transliterated burkha, burka or burqua from Arabic: برقع burqu' or burqa' ) is an enveloping outergarment worn by women in some Islamic traditions to cover their bodies in public
places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering
(Arabic: jilbāb), plus the head-covering (Arabic: ḥijāb, taking the most
usual meaning), plus the face-veil
(Arabic: niqāb).
All over the world, opinions
are divided on the burqa. Is it a statement of the oppression of women within
Islamic societies, or a conscious and free choice made by intelligent women? Is
it a statement that men are pigs, doomed to see women (insofar as they can see
them) as sex objects? (In the last case, one might equally argue that men
should poke their eyes out, freeing women to wear what they please.)
I’ve been pondering these questions for a while now, and
researching the history of the burqa and its alleged connections with Islam. It turns out that the burqa predates Islam by
several centuries, and also that certain ultra-Orthodox Jews wear it. Incidentally,
the all-black equivalent is called ahaya
rather then burqa.
The next logical step, as a way of resolving these issues,
is the see-through burqa – a genuinely radical fashion statement. I have even
commissioned a local dress designer to make several versions, based on a
pattern for a traditional burqa. I dream of presenting a whole line of burqas
at a fashion show. The models will wear undergarments from Victoria’s Secret. I hope to be interviewed by Jeanne Becker on Fashion Television, right there with
Karl Lagerfeld and the rest.
For more information on the history of the burqa, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burqa.
Arthur
On Honour Killings
The trial of Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya, and their son Hamed is currently wrapping up in Kingston, Ontario. They are charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty in the deaths of the daughters of Shafia and Yahya’s daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous marriage. The four were found dead in a car that sank into a canal.
The crown alleges that the four, all of whom expressed the desire to leave the family home, were killed to protect family honour. Wiretaps presented at the trial show, the Crown argues, Shafia’s lingering anger over his daughters’ dating habits. In the wiretapped conversations Shafia calls them “whores”. Even one of the defence witnesses admitted that Honour is very important to Shafia.
The verdict should come in this week or next. But one thing about this trial struck me as at the least ironic, and even downright hypocritical: if indeed these were Honour killings, why not hold your head high and proudly admit it?
Arthur
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Wall Street Screws Greece
I want to introduce my best friend, partner and co-author, Peter Brawley. We have written several books together, on database/application development in Clipper and MySQL. Our web site is www.artfulsoftware.com. If you're interested in MySQL, please visit. There are free downloads there, as well as paid subscriptions.
Until I figure out how we can share this blog as co-authors, I'll follow this format: Peter will send me his contributions and I will post them, with a note that the posts are actually from him. Here is the first.
Wall Street screws Greece
Greeks work the second highest number of hours per week in the OECD, 42, right after South Korea. Germans work 6 fewer hours per week. Yet Greeks make an average of $1,000 a month, way less than the EU average. Even before its current economic disaster, average wages had sunk to 1984 levels. Greeks retire later than the European average. The average pension, $990, is less than you get in Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. 30% of Greek workers have no Social Security, compared to 5-10% in the rest of the EU.
So much for the myth of the lazy, profligate Greeks. But thanks to a cascade of problems from World War II through the Greek Junta to the EU deal and corrupt government finance, Greece hasn't enough money to pay off loans coming due in the next year. The EU and IMF propose to pay those debuts off in exchange for Greece savagely cutting government spending---jobs, incomes, healthcare, pensions and education---and for bond holders accepting new, lower-interest bonds in exchange for the old bonds.
So hedge funds are buying up the old bonds at steep discounts, refusing the EU new bond offers, hoping to force a financial collapse. How can they afford to do that, if Greece can't pay? They've insured the full values of the old bonds so they can collect a massive windfall by inducing a default.
Peter Brawley
Until I figure out how we can share this blog as co-authors, I'll follow this format: Peter will send me his contributions and I will post them, with a note that the posts are actually from him. Here is the first.
Wall Street screws Greece
Greeks work the second highest number of hours per week in the OECD, 42, right after South Korea. Germans work 6 fewer hours per week. Yet Greeks make an average of $1,000 a month, way less than the EU average. Even before its current economic disaster, average wages had sunk to 1984 levels. Greeks retire later than the European average. The average pension, $990, is less than you get in Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. 30% of Greek workers have no Social Security, compared to 5-10% in the rest of the EU.
So much for the myth of the lazy, profligate Greeks. But thanks to a cascade of problems from World War II through the Greek Junta to the EU deal and corrupt government finance, Greece hasn't enough money to pay off loans coming due in the next year. The EU and IMF propose to pay those debuts off in exchange for Greece savagely cutting government spending---jobs, incomes, healthcare, pensions and education---and for bond holders accepting new, lower-interest bonds in exchange for the old bonds.
So hedge funds are buying up the old bonds at steep discounts, refusing the EU new bond offers, hoping to force a financial collapse. How can they afford to do that, if Greece can't pay? They've insured the full values of the old bonds so they can collect a massive windfall by inducing a default.
Peter Brawley
Friday, 6 January 2012
Great Films
I thought that I should add to this blog a short list of films that I love. I studied film in university and have seen all the movies by all the directors studied (in that era) in film courses: Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and so on.
After that, I went on and found others that I loved: Nicholas Roeg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, and most of all, the Coen brothers. I confess a penchant for the underside of films, or perhaps in a better phrasing, films about the underside of life.
Here is a list of my favorite movies:
1. Miller's Crossing, by the Coen brothers; Chicago-Irish gangster story, starring Gabriel Byrne and Albert Finney and John Turturro and Marica Gay Harden. I have seen this film at least 40 times and can quote almost the entire script (I flub a line here and there).
2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Julian Schnabel; in my opinion the finest cinematic achievement to date, bar none. Shnabel made his name as a painter, and in this film it shows; the cinematography is ground-breaking; one needs only think of the scene when the eye is sewed shut, but there is a lot more to this film than that. It's a recursive excursion into the fact of having a stroke, and fighting one's way out of it, and it is nothing short of a masterpiece. The only reason I rank it number Two is because I haven't yet viewed it as many times as I have Miller's Crossing.
3. Pulp Fiction, by Quentin Tarantino; perhaps the most misunderstood film of its generation. I have read reviews that declare it to be "amoral" or "immoral" or "degenerate", and worse, but that is most emphatically not how I read it. From my take, Pulp Fiction is scene for scene a seriously moral film: every single scene turns on the morality of the immediate situation, from the opening discussion about "when a guy kisses your girlfriend's toes, is ge thinking about her toes? to the consequent response: is it morally appropriate to toss him from a fourth-floor window? We progress further into the plot and find our characters being raped in the basement belonging to one of a pair of seriously twisted men, after which they agree never to discuss this event. Then our characters find themselves confronting each other at a stop sign; and so on. Play this movie again and observe what goes on in each scene. Oh, I forgot to mention the restaurant robbery scene at the beginning of the film.
4. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and I don't mean the remake. Sir Alex delivered the goods in this one like no other can. He can act with the creases beneath his eyes. I don't know how it's possible, but he can convey the depths of sorrow and regret combined with commitment to a cause greater than oneself like no other can. I haven't yet seen the Gary Oldman version, but I think that he can turn on this part quite nicely. I admire his work from way back, Sid and Nancy, True Romance, etc., and I think that he can inject a new spin into George Smiley.
5. The Godfather I and II: these must be viewed back-to-back. If you've viewed them separately, you may not have noticed that the last frame in GF I is the first frame in GF II. They are of a piece, and that's the only way to view them. GF III is, while logically contiguous, no match for the previous two. GF I and II stand as the most significant achievements of American gangster cinema ever made.
6. Don't Look Now, directed by Nicholas Roeg, and starring Donald Sutherland and Theresa Russell. For personal reasons concerning an obsession I had with a particular woman, this film struck home in a deep way. In fact, I took said woman to see it with me, and it hit me so hard that it cured me of my obsession with said woman. If you've never been obsessed by a woman, then I don't know what you might think of it, but what I can say is this: Don't Look Now cured me, healed me, and I walked out of the theater cured and freed. And for that, I thank Nicholas Roeg forever.
That will do for now. I can describe a hundred other movies that have changed my view of the world, but this list will do for now.
I invite your contributions to this list of important and life-changing films.
After that, I went on and found others that I loved: Nicholas Roeg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, and most of all, the Coen brothers. I confess a penchant for the underside of films, or perhaps in a better phrasing, films about the underside of life.
Here is a list of my favorite movies:
1. Miller's Crossing, by the Coen brothers; Chicago-Irish gangster story, starring Gabriel Byrne and Albert Finney and John Turturro and Marica Gay Harden. I have seen this film at least 40 times and can quote almost the entire script (I flub a line here and there).
2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Julian Schnabel; in my opinion the finest cinematic achievement to date, bar none. Shnabel made his name as a painter, and in this film it shows; the cinematography is ground-breaking; one needs only think of the scene when the eye is sewed shut, but there is a lot more to this film than that. It's a recursive excursion into the fact of having a stroke, and fighting one's way out of it, and it is nothing short of a masterpiece. The only reason I rank it number Two is because I haven't yet viewed it as many times as I have Miller's Crossing.
3. Pulp Fiction, by Quentin Tarantino; perhaps the most misunderstood film of its generation. I have read reviews that declare it to be "amoral" or "immoral" or "degenerate", and worse, but that is most emphatically not how I read it. From my take, Pulp Fiction is scene for scene a seriously moral film: every single scene turns on the morality of the immediate situation, from the opening discussion about "when a guy kisses your girlfriend's toes, is ge thinking about her toes? to the consequent response: is it morally appropriate to toss him from a fourth-floor window? We progress further into the plot and find our characters being raped in the basement belonging to one of a pair of seriously twisted men, after which they agree never to discuss this event. Then our characters find themselves confronting each other at a stop sign; and so on. Play this movie again and observe what goes on in each scene. Oh, I forgot to mention the restaurant robbery scene at the beginning of the film.
4. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and I don't mean the remake. Sir Alex delivered the goods in this one like no other can. He can act with the creases beneath his eyes. I don't know how it's possible, but he can convey the depths of sorrow and regret combined with commitment to a cause greater than oneself like no other can. I haven't yet seen the Gary Oldman version, but I think that he can turn on this part quite nicely. I admire his work from way back, Sid and Nancy, True Romance, etc., and I think that he can inject a new spin into George Smiley.
5. The Godfather I and II: these must be viewed back-to-back. If you've viewed them separately, you may not have noticed that the last frame in GF I is the first frame in GF II. They are of a piece, and that's the only way to view them. GF III is, while logically contiguous, no match for the previous two. GF I and II stand as the most significant achievements of American gangster cinema ever made.
6. Don't Look Now, directed by Nicholas Roeg, and starring Donald Sutherland and Theresa Russell. For personal reasons concerning an obsession I had with a particular woman, this film struck home in a deep way. In fact, I took said woman to see it with me, and it hit me so hard that it cured me of my obsession with said woman. If you've never been obsessed by a woman, then I don't know what you might think of it, but what I can say is this: Don't Look Now cured me, healed me, and I walked out of the theater cured and freed. And for that, I thank Nicholas Roeg forever.
That will do for now. I can describe a hundred other movies that have changed my view of the world, but this list will do for now.
I invite your contributions to this list of important and life-changing films.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Why Can't a Cello Laugh?
The classic cliche in movies, when a sad scene's music is required, is "Bring up the cello!" This misguides the listening audience into believing that the only emotion a cello can express is "Triste" (sadness). I want to object to this and in a serious way.
A cello can be happy, and droll, and joyous, and even abstract (in the sense of Dvorak and other 20th Century composers), but this aspect of its emotional landscape is far too often overlooked.
Without meaning to decimate the incomes of various popular cellists whose income swells and depend upon this fallacious equation between sadness and cello, I want to protest against this. Cellos can laugh, and they ought to be allowed to! Anyone who doubts this need go no further than two works of Beethoven: Cello Sonata Op. 69 in A, No. 3, and the Archduke Trio (which, by the way, also includes some of the saddest music ever written (Part 3), but which culminates in a hilarious "F**k it, Life Goes On!" conclusion.
There are many other examples that illustrate that the cello can do more than pluck tears, but those will suffice for the moment.
A cello can be happy, and droll, and joyous, and even abstract (in the sense of Dvorak and other 20th Century composers), but this aspect of its emotional landscape is far too often overlooked.
Without meaning to decimate the incomes of various popular cellists whose income swells and depend upon this fallacious equation between sadness and cello, I want to protest against this. Cellos can laugh, and they ought to be allowed to! Anyone who doubts this need go no further than two works of Beethoven: Cello Sonata Op. 69 in A, No. 3, and the Archduke Trio (which, by the way, also includes some of the saddest music ever written (Part 3), but which culminates in a hilarious "F**k it, Life Goes On!" conclusion.
There are many other examples that illustrate that the cello can do more than pluck tears, but those will suffice for the moment.
Looking Through Cats' Eyes
It is well-known that cats' eyes are optimized for vertical as opposed to horizontal movement. Many species, not only cats, have eyes optimized for movement, and tend to neglect the stationary objects in their view.
This should not come as a surprise: it's vaguely equivalent to people residing near a slaughterhouse, who within days "learn" to ignore the awful smell, or people who live on a streetcar line, who "learn" to ignore the awful sounds of steel scraping upon steel; or let us go further, the people who inhabit a neighborhood populated by hookers, pimps, addicts and so on: we learn how to ignore this noise in favor of the signal, which in these various cases would mean "something unusual". I won't bother to venture what might be deemed unusual in these various avenues.
Back to cats' eyes: optimized for the vertical, able to detect the slightest movement in the horizontal plane, e.g. a mouse slinking down a baseboard. Cats are optimized for this behavior. Dogs on the other hand are optimized for different behaviors, as are whales, minnows, wolves, bears, etc.
The whole idea of, I'm not sure what to call it, but the idea is this: transplanting human intelligence if only for an hour or so, into the mind of another species, is a profound and intriguing question. The mind of a dog or cat, for example, is optimized first and foremost by the sense of smell, and secondarily by eyes.
I have been owned by about a dozen cats and a few dogs in my life, and have stories to tell about their behavior. Dogs are easier to explain; cats are far more difficult and complex, and dare I say it, profound. They have behaviors that are not at all easy to explain.
What I do know, strictly from my own experiments, supplemented by various wikiPedia entries, is that cats' eyes work very differently from humans' eyes. The former are vertically optimized, and work in serious conjunction with their sense of smell. By and large, humans do not work this way: we trust first and foremost our eyes, except when our olfactory senses override what is visible (e.g. I'm walking past a grow-op and I know that smell even though the door is closed). But 99% of the time it's the visual inputs that give it away. Second is the scent. Third is the sound. And finally, is the touch. That's the hierarchical order of the senses. I can't prove it with 10K subjects, but I know that it's true.
If we're ever going to implement tele-AI, all this needs to be considered. To become a virtual cat means to minimize the optical intake and maximize the olfactular intake, so that our perceptions of the world around us are dictated by scent, not by vision.
This is the problem! How to impersonate a shark, a whale, a skunk, a beaver, a bear.... How to realize their optics and the ratio of that input into the overall ratio of sensory inputs.
That's going to be difficult, but I am seriously into the desire to explore these avenues.
A.
This should not come as a surprise: it's vaguely equivalent to people residing near a slaughterhouse, who within days "learn" to ignore the awful smell, or people who live on a streetcar line, who "learn" to ignore the awful sounds of steel scraping upon steel; or let us go further, the people who inhabit a neighborhood populated by hookers, pimps, addicts and so on: we learn how to ignore this noise in favor of the signal, which in these various cases would mean "something unusual". I won't bother to venture what might be deemed unusual in these various avenues.
Back to cats' eyes: optimized for the vertical, able to detect the slightest movement in the horizontal plane, e.g. a mouse slinking down a baseboard. Cats are optimized for this behavior. Dogs on the other hand are optimized for different behaviors, as are whales, minnows, wolves, bears, etc.
The whole idea of, I'm not sure what to call it, but the idea is this: transplanting human intelligence if only for an hour or so, into the mind of another species, is a profound and intriguing question. The mind of a dog or cat, for example, is optimized first and foremost by the sense of smell, and secondarily by eyes.
I have been owned by about a dozen cats and a few dogs in my life, and have stories to tell about their behavior. Dogs are easier to explain; cats are far more difficult and complex, and dare I say it, profound. They have behaviors that are not at all easy to explain.
What I do know, strictly from my own experiments, supplemented by various wikiPedia entries, is that cats' eyes work very differently from humans' eyes. The former are vertically optimized, and work in serious conjunction with their sense of smell. By and large, humans do not work this way: we trust first and foremost our eyes, except when our olfactory senses override what is visible (e.g. I'm walking past a grow-op and I know that smell even though the door is closed). But 99% of the time it's the visual inputs that give it away. Second is the scent. Third is the sound. And finally, is the touch. That's the hierarchical order of the senses. I can't prove it with 10K subjects, but I know that it's true.
If we're ever going to implement tele-AI, all this needs to be considered. To become a virtual cat means to minimize the optical intake and maximize the olfactular intake, so that our perceptions of the world around us are dictated by scent, not by vision.
This is the problem! How to impersonate a shark, a whale, a skunk, a beaver, a bear.... How to realize their optics and the ratio of that input into the overall ratio of sensory inputs.
That's going to be difficult, but I am seriously into the desire to explore these avenues.
A.
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