Many of the rock musicians of my youth have not aged well. All sorts of things go wrong: they lose their vocals or other skills, they try to act young when they are clearly not, or they simply don’t look like rock stars anymore. Few have aged gracefully.

This weekend I came across a rare example of some rock stars that have aged well: Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. Here they are in 1976 performing Rhiannon (on the great Midnight Special):

And here, decades later, performing Landslide:

As they aged, the subject matter for the songs matured, at least for this song. The way they look is great, but it is toned down and fitting for their age. They are blessed still with great vocals (in her case) and great guitar hands (in his case), and if her voice is deeper, it is no less nuanced and expressive.

I love both these videos. I am impressed every time I watch a Midnight Special video. That show was well produced, and the musicians that appeared on it really brought it to the performance. Buckingham played great back then, too, and Nicks was on fire singing Rhiannon. As for Landslide, I like how she goes behind him for the guitar solo: that’s a nice piece of stagecraft. Both well done. Aging rock stars should take note.

Steven Pinker has been talking on the decline of violence in civilization for some time now (Steven Pinker on the myth of violence at TED). Now he has a new book out The Better Angels of Our Nature and the philosopher Peter Singer has a strong review of it. Singer makes the case for why you want to read it, and if you want to whet your appetite, watch the TED video linked above as well as read the review. Then get the book.

Subject matter aside, what I like about this is how approachable both these philosophers are. (Technically Pinker is a psychologist, but I’d argue that what he is doing is philosophizing.) You may not agree with their thinking and their arguments, but you can think about them. Their philosophy is a practical one. I’d like to see more philosophers being able to write and engage people like this.

Here is Gerhard Richter and here is Anselm Kiefer. Great footage of both of them in action, doing large scale works. Awesome.

Sara Bareilles – Vegas – YouTube

Nelly Furtado – I’m Like A Bird – YouTube

And Co-Evolution Quarterly. One of the thin, silver linings from the death of Steve Jobs is the increased awareness of the Whole Earth Catalog and associated publications. I was lucky enough to have a high school teacher that had been subscribing to these and who gave me alot of them. If you heard they were great, you heard right. For example, this issue here:

was jam-packed with challenging ideas about the body and what it means. It was like a lightening bolt hit me when I read it. Alot of the Whole Earth Review magazines were like that: you came away 10 times smarter for absorbing the ideas. Not surprisingly, two of the innovative thinkers of the 20th century, Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly (also of WiReD), were associated with these things.

The great news is that you can now download the PDF versions of these magazines (for example, Whole Earth Review Summer 1989 – Electronic Edition).

I cannot recommend this material highly enough. They’d be perfect for your ebook reader.

I have been following the doings of Steve Jobs and Apple since the early 80s, before the Macintosh, even. I can recall the ads for the Apple II computers, as well as the first Macintosh ads (I still have them, stored away). Between the time when he started Apple and when he was fired is what I remember as Steve Jobs v1.0. The Steve Jobs that came back to Apple was to me Steve Jobs v2.0. Same guy, but things changed with him and with the company he founded in the years he was away.

Unlike Jobs 2.0, I don’t recall the same adulation and love for the first Jobs. If anything, it was the other Apple employees that felt that love. Woz, who was so important in the early days. Techies loved Woz. He was a geek like them. The engineers who worked on the Mac, they were admired. Steve was seen as “and Steve”. Techies loved the other guys, not Steve. That changed over time, but back then, the actual Apple technical people were the guys who were loved. And computers were mostly about technical people back then.

I think that changed as computers, especially Apple computers, became less devices for geeks and more devices for everyone. People wanted to use computers, and they were buying them, but hated dealing with them. (Ask anyone who had to install device drivers on Windows 3.1 or later, when the phrase “plug and play” changed to “plug and pray”). Apple computers made that all go away. They made computers usable. Apple had always made computers desirable for what they could do. Making them usable and user friendly made them even more desirable.

Since the early days, Apple and Steve Jobs were always “the other guys”. They were not IBM. They were not Windows. Heck, they weren’t even the homebrew – CP/M guys. They didn’t wear suits. If the motto of IBM was “Think”, the motto of Apple was “Think Different”. But though they were different, they weren’t always the underdog. When the first Mac ads came out, Bill Gates was just another guy along with Mitch Kapor (remember him?) who was stuck in the middle of the multipage ad for the product, offering praise for how good it was. And when IBM first starting making PCs, Apple was still the leader in alot of ways. But that changed, and in many ways, I think that suited Steve Jobs better. After he left, Apple tried to “fit in”, while he never did. When he came back, he came back on his terms, and Apple and Jobs stood out.

Steve Jobs was always a detail oriented guy. I remember the story of how he criticized the early Apple engineers, saying the boot up time for the Mac was too slow. It is a little thing, but it matters. And that’s the thing about Jobs: while there was always Woz and Ive and Cook and others who did the work, it was Jobs that drove them on. That wasn’t always apparent with Steve 1.0. If anything, it felt like he was stealing the glory from other people. Over time, though, it didn’t seem that way to me anymore, and Jobs often mentioned the work of others later in life. He was the catalyst that made people greater than they would be otherwise.

No one mentions Steve Jobs and the reality distortion field much anymore, but perhaps that is the strength of Steve Jobs that he made people forget about that. But if you talked to early Apple employees and others, it used to be mentioned alot. It was still there, of course. Even I feel it when I watch him talk. He was a great communicator, and he could make people excited about things like no one else could. I think that is one of the reasons Apple users came to love him: he convinced them that they too were special for using Apple technology. By using Apple products, you were smarter, more sophisticated, discriminating; you were a person that appreciated the finer things in life. Of course people aren’t stupid or naive, but that feeling that Apple and Jobs make you feel for using their products never goes away. (Ask a Dell user if they feel that.)

I never bought a new Apple computer, even though I always admired them. For one thing, I could never justify the cost. For another, I never cared for the cachet that came with having one: if anything, that turned me off. I love jalopies, and I love computers that are jalopies. Apple computers were always the opposite of that. I liked tinkering with computers, and I liked the openness of computers. Apple was not about that and never was. Apple and Jobs said: trust us, we know better. They’ve been that way since the beginning. I liked computers that said: you want to change that, go ahead, feel free. I liked that freedom. I was never going to be an Apple user. I use Windows because it is convenient and Unix / Ubuntu because I love it and what it allows me to do.

One thing that Jobs did, which is something I admirable greatly about him as a CEO, is that he learned how to make his devices cheaper while having them still excel. The prices of peripheral stuff when it comes to Apple products is still too high, but the main devices, the iMacs and the iPods and the iPhones, all came in at a smart price point. I think this is something that Apple with Steve Jobs 1.0 didn’t know or didn’t care to do. (Think: Apple tax.) Maybe he thought that Apple should be expensive because expensive means better. Same with NeXT computers: they were the best, so of course they cost alot. Steve Jobs 2.0 didn’t operate that way. Instead, he (and Cook and others) designed it so that Apple products were not just the best, but the best priced as well. They have never lost sales or marketshare to price since then, I don’t think. If anything, they win on price. (Ask HP and their tablet folks).

I liked this photo of Jobs taken in 1982. He reminds me of alot of Silicon Valley start up types in this picture, but he wasn’t. Computer people/users used to be divided up into geeks and hippies. People still try to put him in the hippie camp, but what I liked about him was that he was bigger than that. He liked all kinds of things outside those two stereotypes, and he allowed people like myself and many others to like and enjoy computers without feeling like I had to be one of those things. If Apple was closed in alot of ways, how it was most open was how it encouraged the rest of us to use computers, regardless of our background. This is a great thing, and I think that Steve Jobs was responsible for that.

Whatever his detractors might say (and I expect they will crop up in the months to come), Steve Jobs was a great man. Not perfect, but great. You may even say “insanely great”. R.I.P.

(Photo by Diana Walker, linked to from Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011) « Iconic Photos.)

I finally went to see The Tree of Life tonight, and I loved it. However when I said that I was going, a number of people responded that they didn’t like it, and I can see why. I thought I would jot down some of the things I thought of as I watched it, in the hopes that it might make people revisit the film and appreciate it more.

My very first thought about it is was that this a religious film. Take the title of the film. There are two trees in the garden of Eden, one of which is the Tree of Life. (The other is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). After the title, the film starts with a passage from the Book of Job. So the film starts out religiously and continues on for the entire film.

Watching the film, I thought about the Tree of Life and how if you eat from it you will live forever (i.e. not die).  This and the notion of the Garden of Eden is significant to the story of the film.  (As for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that is the one with the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve eat, causing God to expel them from the Garden of Eden. After they are cast out, God specifically bars them from the eating from The Tree of Life lest they become like God).

I think the film has much in common with a poem, hymn or religious music. Certainly the beginning felt that way to me. While there is a strong narrative at times, in the early part of the film it is impressionistic (as some have said), and the film is close to a visual poem or hymn. If you watch Mallick like you would a traditional filmmaker, you might expect a stronger narrative overall. If you do, you may be frustrated or disappointed. Mallick doesn’t totally disregard narrative, but it is only part of what he uses to structure his film. Think about a poem or a musical composition. If you hear either of those two, you don’t think: what’s the story here? There may be one, but you realize that there are other ways to approach to work. The same is true of Mallick’s work. The narrative is just part, and not necessarily the most important part, of the film. If anything, you need to see the film, not follow the film. Mallick thinks hard about what he wants you to see. You have to see it. It’s not a simply a visual depiction of a story.

That doesn’t mean he just throws a bunch of gorgeous images on the screen. He is trying to communicate things visually: it just may not be fastened to a traditional narrative. Think of a great representational painting: you may see a story at first being told, but eventually you start looking at the painting itself and how it works as a painting. It helps to do that with Mallick’s films.

I think one of the key things to consider is that God is also a character in the film.  This character has a story to tell and he interacts with the other characters. That it is the God of Job is also significant. In the Book of Job, a number of things are addressed. One of them is that God is overwhelming great and that as humans our lives are specks in the eye of this God. When God is called to account by Job’s comforters, he blasts back that no person can call him to account, given what he can do. In this film, woven in amongst the story of Sean Penn’s character (Jack) is God’s own story. This God creates the universe, the Earth, and all that live on it. The same God destroys Earth at the end of the film. In between these times, he creates this planet that we live on, a planet teeming with life. This planet he creates is tens of  millions of years old, so old that many species come and go, including dinosaurs. (A little bit of a dig at fundamentalists there). The characters in the film live their lives for the short time that they are on Earth, but their time and their lives are just an incredibly small thing in terms of God. When I watched the film and thought of God as one of the characters with his (her?) own story to tell,  then scenes that otherwise seemed bewildering or out of place made more sense.

I think it is also significant that this God is the God of Job. While the the book of Job shows how we as humans are nothing in comparison with God, it also addresses the suffering of human beings. Like Job, the characters in this film suffer a great loss, and they struggle to live with this and deal with this. Like the Book of Job, the film does not downplay our suffering, but rather tries to put it in context, and by doing so, hopes to lessen our suffering even as it does not try to explain it away. To live is to suffer, but to live as if suffering is paramount is to miss out what life is all about. Our lives are great, Life is great, and all of this is great because God is great. This, to me, is what the film strives to communicate. It is not that our suffering does not matter: it is that our suffering is only a small part of the much greater picture.

God is everywhere in this film. In scenes with people, Mallick often shoots from un-human perspectives, at angles well above or well below them. It’s as if God might see things, not another person. Yet God is not the main character.  Jack is the main character, and many of the shots are filmed from his perspective. But alot of shots in this film seemed like God’s perspective to me. To drive this home, I especially thought this when Jack’s mother points to the sky and said that God is watching. It as if Mallick wanted to emphasize this additional character in the film.

Like any great filmmaker, Mallick can zoom in or zoom out. For the scenes with God, obviously he zooms out. For the scenes of family, he zooms in. The result of that is these wonderfully detailed stories of Jack and his brothers living their lives with their friends and their parents. I think this zooming in and out bothers people. Zoomed in, the lives of the family is comprehensible, at least the everyday parts. But the suffering that people experience is only comprehensible by zooming out. I think this is what Mallick is trying to do with these zoomed out scenes that seem to make no sense in comparison to the zoomed in scenes of the family. But all together it makes a great deal of sense.

There is a degree of symbolism to the film, though with any symbolism, it is easy to over interpret it. I think it is interesting that the past for Jack is full of nature and grasses and trees and garden. The past is the Garden of Eden. Indeed, the Garden and the grass is his father’s, just like the Garden of Eden is God’s. (God the Father, in Christian terms.)  In contrast, in his future life, Jack is cast out from that, and everything around him – the buildings, the beach, the desert like places – are devoid of greenery.

Regarding other potential symbols, I thought at times that his parents represented two sides of God. His mom is the loving side of God, while the father is the just and harsh God. Yet this is too simple, for Jack’s father is as much of a man as anything. He is full of pride and ambition, and he pays a price for it.  Still, a Christian might say that his father represents the God of the Old Testament, while his mother represents the God of the new Testament.

I thought this especially when it came to the end of the film. In the end, Jack seems to transcend to Heaven, and he meets his family there on the beach. His mother’s  last words are that she gave up her son, much as God says in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, Abraham offers up his son to God to show his love and devotion. In the New Testament, God returns the offering by giving his own son to show his love and devotion. And so the loss of a child, while terrible, becomes transformed into an act that is ultimately beneficial and that allows us to transcend suffering. I think Mallick wants to show us that this great love is necessary and  is what we want to strive for, and ultimately is the only way to overcome our suffering.

To sum this up, I think The Tree of Life is a deeply religious film, and watching it this way made it very accessible and understandable and enjoyable for me. I don’t pretend to know everything about the film. I believe I am only skimming the surface of what Terrance Mallick hoped to achieve, and even then, I may be getting things wrong. But that’s what I thought during and after the film. And it is why I loved it.

As an aside, I think it is incredible that two great religious films were made this year. The other great film is Of Gods and Men, which I wrote about here: Some random thoughts on the wonderful Des Hommes et Des Dieux (Of Gods and Men) | Smart People I Know. Also highly recommended.

If you want to know more about The Tree of Life, you can start at Wikipedia.

Thanks for reading this.

When I first saw this photo:

from the blog, curiosity counts,, I thought it was just a joke. But no! Here’s the link to where you can buy it from Amazon! Madness! 🙂

Well, you can see how they compare here, thanks to this nice chart from here: Tablets comparison | Pic | Gear

Now, coming up with good material for an eBook is not so easy, but if you want to know How To Make An eBook, then Smashing Magazine has lots of good information to get you going. If you’re worried you will need alot of technical ability, relax. As they say:

Making an eBook is easy, regardless of your coding experience. This is good, because 99.9% of your time should be spent on writing and getting your book out there, rather than on technology.

I highly recommend this Smashing Magazine article. It is packed with good information.

It’s odd: I was thinking about this on the weekend, how Margaret Thatcher inspired many things, from riots to…well, great songwriting. The NYTimes.com has this article covering the same thing here (The Iron Lady as Anti-Muse), including A Small Sampling of Anti-Thatcher Songwriting here.

Sadly, they miss one of the better ones by Sinead O’Connor. Here’s a great version of

P.S. One of the things that is amazing about O’Connor, among others, is how the camera can do a tight close up on her face and hold it for along time while she sings. She has a great face, and the emotion that she brings to her songs shines out while she sings them. It’s fantastic.

From this post, How many photos have ever been taken? | 1000memories comes this chart:

When I first saw that, I thought: that can’t be right. But the author of the post makes a strong case for it.

Staggering.

Here’s Mary Ellen Croteau and her Bottle Cap Portrait:

If you go over to Colossal, you can see more detail of the portrait (it’s ALOT of bottle caps), as well as get more background on it, and a link to her site as well.

My son is collecting bottle caps now, making this even more appealing to me.

Reading this, Chloë Schama Reviews Ashley Mears’s “Pricing Beauty” in The New Republic, I came across this:

The greater supply of models has prompted a contraction in rates—even for high-end work—to shockingly low levels. The average magazine shoot, for example, pays about $100 a day. For appearing on the cover of Vogue a model gets an additional $300. “Many magazines,” writes Mears, “pay nothing at all, though lunch and snacks are often provided.” (I’m guessing that most models don’t gain real compensation through snacking.) Payment for walking in a Fashion Week show in London (where rates, admittedly, are lower than in other cities) is $500. The median income across America in 2009 for a model was $27,330—income that includes no benefits.

It’s true that a rare group of models can make incredible amounts of money. But it seems for most, it is a glamourous but low paying job. In a way, it reminds me of professional sports. It too attracts a great supply of people, driving down the cost for most. The few that make it can make alot of money (just like super models), but there are many more in the minor leagues toiling away for little or nothing.

There’s nothing wrong with doing what you love, and if you love modeling or sports, then you should pursue it. But models, like athletes, should be aware that the chance of riches is very small.

When I saw this post (A Smarter Planet — New Touchscreen Thermostat for Smarter Homes) and realized that even thermostat are going touch screen:

Then I have to think that this is end of devices with buttons, knobs and switches. Or keypads, for that matter. There will likely be a few, but if a common device like a thermostat can have a touch screen, I think this will be the norm for everything very soon.

There’s a good article here on why the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, Can’t Make The House Work.

The article really shows the challenge American federal politicians have in promoting and passing legislation. Not only must any legislation get through both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but it must also get past the veto of the President. (Not to mention it must not be found unconstitutional by the various courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court.) I recommend the article highly.

There is another issue not touched on here. And that is that John Boehner the politician is boxed in. I think Boehner has to try to govern with not only the majority of the majority. He also has to heed  a minority of Republicans in the House that are associated with the Tea Party and whom act like they have a veto. I think that Boehner believes that if he does not acquiesce to them, then he will lose his job as Speaker to someone who will. The result is that he is a much weaker Speaker than any Speaker in along time. Weaker than Pelosi or Hastert, and certain weaker than DeLay or O’Neill. (Gingrich went from hero to zero after 1998 and wasn’t so much weak as dead after the revolt.) He barely can get enough votes at any given time to scrap together a majority and keep his job.

By the way, this shows too the complexity of governing in the United States. There are so many gates, both formal and informal. I think this is bewildering to most people. Indeed, alot of the time I see people complain, saying things like: “why doesn’t the President do something?”; and being totally ignorant of the fact that the President can’t even formally initiate any legislation. He can work with the House and the Senate to initiate something he approves of and would not veto, but it is up to them to do that. And it is up to the leaders in the House and the Senate to gauge whether or not they even want to take it up. If they don’t, the President can rail all he wants, but to no avail. (The president does have other means to effect change, and he has alot of power in foreign matters, but his power is limited in terms of setting domestic legislation.)

Americans, certainly American columnists, need to have a better awareness of how their system of government works. It’s not a dictatorship or a monarchy, and its doesn’t operate the way the governments of Britain or Canada operate. It’s a good form of government, albeit one not conducive to getting a lot done quickly and easily, unless in catastrophic times.

I was surprised reading this, A CUP OF JO: First day of fall, that the first day of fall is actually tomorrow, the 23rd. I thought it always fell on the 21st! According to this, the date moves around quite a bit. Usually Fall/Autumn starts on September 22, but in 2011, 2014 and 2015, it falls 🙂 on the 23rd.

Good to know.

 (Image linked to from A Cup of Jo.)

While new and exotic diseases are frightening, the ones to worry about are the ones we already well know, based on this article (Global health: Developing diseases | The Economist) and this chart:

I suspect as the developing world gets richer, mortality due to non-communicable diseases (NCD) will grow to become a greater cause of death. And yet this is a partially a good thing, because when it comes to NCDs, each of us can take action to delay or deflect or prevent some of them. Much more so than poor people in developing countries struggling with communicable diseases, I suspect.

(Found via Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Thanks!)

There’s a great story over at TPM Idea Lab about how an AIDS Puzzle Solved By Computer Gamers.  That may seem far fetched, but

As fanciful as it may sound at first, gamers on Foldit, a crowdsourced, online protein folding simulator from the University of Washington, actually managed to solve a longstanding problem in AIDS research that has vexed scientists for more than a decade. And they did so in about 10 days.

Three players in particular were able to build upon each other to establish the most accurate model to date of an elusive protease enzyme in the AIDS-like Mason-Pfizer monkey virus.

I think alot of credit has to go not only to the impressive gaming skills of the players, but the scientists that came up with the game. I would love to see more instances of this.

For more on the story, with links to those wanting more detail, click through to TPM.

Matt Yglesias has a good post over at ThinkProgress on Paul Volcker Denouncing the Return To Volcker-Era Inflation. It’s worth a read, but it misses the bigger picture. Indeed, if I were younger, like Yglesias, I would agree that an inflation rate of 3% is a good thing. It boosts the economy, decreases unemployment, and potentially lifts up your salary. But I am not younger, and furthermore, a big part of the world demographic is older than him or me (i.e., baby boomers) and they hate inflation. If you are a baby boomer, you likely have a limited income based on a pension or savings. You likely already have paid for your house and many of your other major expenditures. You are not all that worried about high unemployment because you are retired. What you are worried about is inflation. You want prices to be stable or even dip if possible. Any politician that supports a policy that drives up inflation is going to suffer. Add that to alot of central bankers that also hate inflation, and what you have is a formula for very low inflation for years, if not decades to come.

Inflationary spikes can come from other sources (e.g. fuel), but core inflation is going to stay low as long as you have a population dominated by older people.

Here’s inflation/CPI for the last 30 years in the US

Volcker and other central bankers in the West broke the back of inflation in the early 80s. Since then, demographics and shifts in manufacturing from the developed to the developing world (i.e. offshoring) have worked together to keep it down. In 20 years there will be a dying off of most of the baby boomers combined with wage increases in the developing world that will work together to drive up inflation. (Also, global warming will affect the CPI). But until then, inflation will stay low for some time to come.

As this article in The Economist shows, blogging and tweeting can get your in trouble with either the criminals or the state. And not just minor trouble: some people were tortured to death, while others were threatened with 30 years in jail.

You know what to do: click Play.

Chaka Khan & Mary J.blige ” Sweet Thing ” – YouTube

According to Buzzblog: the Blue Screen of Death gets a new look in Windows 8. It will look like this, apparently:

Where one time the BSoD assumed minimal screen quality and therefore came only in text form, Windows 8 must assume a screen resolution high enough to handle something “fancier”. Here’s hoping you won’t see too many of this screen (though I secretly enjoy seeing ad display systems sporting it whenever I am out and about in the city.)

For more on the history of the BSoD (which has been around since OS/2), click through to Buzzblog.

As a winter runner, I totally agree.

(Ok, I agree to around -25 degrees Celsius. :))

Image from http://www.polarnopyretusa.com/outerwear, linked here: OUTERWEAR.

Thanks to Cup of Jo for this.

There’s a good article here (Germany moves fast to ease ECB tension – The Globe and Mail) highlighting the dramatic story unfolding in European finance. Nothing comes across as straightforward. Juergen Stark was likely pushed or felt compelled to resign in order for the ECB to push forward with shoring up some of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). However, it also looks like one of those countries, Greece, is going to get pushed out of the Euro. The trick now will be if all this can calm down the bond markets and allow Spain and even Italy to recover. Otherwise it could be a catastrophe that damages the economies of a number of European countries and wipes out the the financial system there as it now exists.

I remember when the B-52s first came out: they were unique in some ways, yet they were this bizarre twisted version of the 50s nostalgia that the 70s was awash with. There was nothing like them before, and I’d say there hasn’t been anything like them since.

Surprisingly, this video of their act before their first album shows that they already had their act down cold before they became famous. They got better clothes and makeup, but their performances were already worked out.

There’s a number of videos of them at the Downtown Cafe in Atlanta in 1978. Here’s Dance This Mess Around:

But “52 Girls” and “Rock Lobster” is there as well.

As Yahoo! News reports, this photo was

Taken by NASA’s Cassini robotic orbiter, (and) the shot was captured from the dark side of Saturn as the Sun’s bright rays illuminated every piece of dust and debris circling the planet.

And the The Globe and Mail has an Q&A with him and it’s really good.

If you don’t know much about Lagerfeld, you might have this impression:

Some might expect Karl Lagerfeld, creative director for Chanel and Fendi, to be intimidating. The Paris-based designer, with his signature black gloves, skin-tight pants and sunglasses, is considered one of the most influential people in fashion as a designer, craftsman and general tastemaker

Instead, he’s more like this:

he laughs often during interviews, doesn’t take himself too seriously and jokes as he shows off his iPhone case, which features a sketch of himself on the back.

And now he has a new line out with Macy’s in the $50-$170 price range. You might think it’s just something he tossed off, but like everything he does, there is attention to detail. Speaking of detail, there is alot in the Globe’s interview. He continues to be impressive, not just for his fashion, but the effort and drive he continues to put into the high quality work that he does.

The Economist has a good rundown on what is happening with the book business these days. It starts off with this:

TO SEE how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous “BILLY” bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome—anything, that is, except books that are actually read.

From there it goes through all the changes going on, and how this is transforming the business. Well worth reading. I know here in Canada the big book seller Indigo has been transforming their stores and their business by moving away from books and selling more home furnishings. Just one more example of how things are playing out.

Here’s the synopsis of his new film:

PINA is a film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders. The feature-length dance film was shot in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and shows the exhilarating and inimitable art of the great German choreographer who died in the summer of 2009, inviting the viewer on a sensual, visually stunning journey of discovery into a new dimension: right onto the stage of the legendary ensemble and together with the dancers beyond the theater, into the city and the surrounding industrial landscape of Wuppertal – the place that was the home and center of Pina Bausch’s creative life for more than 35 years.

It’s 3D for grown-ups! Also, great dancing. You can see the trailer in 2D below:

I haven’t checked this book out yet, but right now, it’s free. If you suck at math, but you still want to help your child, you owe it to yourself to check this out: It’s Back to School for Everyone with “MATH FOR GROWNUPS” – get the ebook FREE today through 9/10! | Adams Media.

And hey, you likely suck at math alot less than you think. Ignore what people told you way back when.

I was annoyed when I first read this article by Beppi Crosariol (Surprise! One of Canada’s best wines is from Nova Scotia – The Globe and Mail). I normally like him, and I don’t think he is a snob, but what annoyed me was the tone of the article, as if to say “can you believe Nova Scotia of all places is making great wine”. Actually I can, and if you are someone who wants to find a place to start your own winery, you should be smart and consider buying land and starting in Nova Scotia. Here’s why:

1. Microclimates: I was not surprised to see that winery in question, Benjamin Bridge, is located in the Annapolis Valley. It may be a surprise to everyone mentioned in the article, but everyone from Nova Scotia knows that the Valley has always had a better climate than most of the province. Spring comes earlier and winter comes later. Temperature are generally milder. The growing conditions in other ways are good too: the Valley is known for it’s apple orchards and other farms. It’s no surprise grapes will grow well there too. But it’s not just in the Valley. Take a look at the map of Nova Scotia wine country. The wine regions are either inland or in the case of LaHave River Valley, tucked away in a cove. Those areas are sheltered from the harsher weather associated with being next to the North Atlantic. There are lots of locations like that in Nova Scotia. If someone were to look around, they could find many more, I’ll bet. You might not be able to do that in Cape Breton, but that’s ok: they are making award winning single malt scotch whisky there.
2. Latitude: southern Nova Scotia has a latitude of 45 degrees. So does northern Italy and southern France. Obviously there is more to winemaking than that, but it shows that Nova Scotia is not at the “Arctic Circle”.
3. Global warming: as a kid growing up in Cape Breton, I used to review the seed catalogs and was disappointed with how many seeds were not recommended for Cape Breton because of the climate. One of these was grapes.  Recently my dad has been growing healthy looking grapes in Cape Breton of all places. What this means to me is that winemakers should rethink what is possible to grow in Nova Scotia. Global warming is a fact. Wine making takes time. Winemakers that started now could take advantage of global warming to grow grapes that once might have been harder to grow in Nova Scotia. (Not to make light of global warming, but migration of crops will occur if warming persists.)
4. Tourists/markets: Tourists LOVE Nova Scotia. They come from all over the world, including the North Eastern parts of the U.S., which is a short distance away from Nova Scotia. A winemaker that wanted to build a nice winery in Nova Scotia would have absolutely no trouble attracting visitors and selling wine. Especially wine that went well with all the fine fresh fish that minutes away. As well, Nova Scotia is close to alot of east coast markets on the Eastern seaboard. Combined with the Halifax harbor, it is easy to reach customers in Europe as well. Not to mention other parts of Canada.
5. Lower costs: land and labour is relatively cheap in Nova Scotia. Setting up a winery in Nova Scotia would certainly be alot cheaper than setting up one on the west coast of the the United States. For a new winery, that means you have more money to invest in making a good product, as the folks from Benjamin Bridge did.
6. Ripe for changing: right now Nova Scotia uses alot of varietals associated with cool climates, like Vidal and Marechal Foch. They make good wines, but not the type of wine that sells for top dollar, to my knowledge. However, in the article, it is interesting to me that the winemaker grew pinot noir and chardonnay. I believe if he could, others could too. (See microclimates and global warming, above). Twenty years ago in Ontario everyone sold Marechal Foch: now it is very hard to find. A smart winemaker would fine a way to grow the top selling varietals in Nova Scotia, blend it with some of the hardier stuff, and be a success. Maybe take some of the vines from Northern Italy or other regions with similar climates and move them to Nova Scotia.

I expect there to be a boom in wine making in Nova Scotia in the next 10-20 years. It may be a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of wine places like Australia turn out, but it will be a dramatic increase from what Nova Scotia currently produces. And it will be great.

(Image above links to the Wines of Nova Scotia web site).

Actually, how to deal with the urge to procrastinate, is here: » Best Procrastination Tip Ever :zenhabits.

I think procrastination works at a subconscious level, and that is a hard thing to overcome. This tip helps. Highly recommended.

This video of two chatbots talking to each other has been getting alot of attention on the Internet, for good reason. See for yourself:

Kevin Kelly interviewed the creators of it and has more background on it here: The Technium: Theological Chatbots. Well worth reading.

Bonus! One of the better lines from the video is now on T-shirts! See here

So says  Parentcentral.ca. For those of you that don’t know:

For Happy Meals, U.S. customers can already choose between apples or fries. But only about 11 per cent of customers were ordering apples, the restaurant said.

So by the beginning of next year, McDonald’s will instead include a half-order of apples and a half-order of fries. Customers can get all fries or all apples if they ask.

This is an improvement, but I think a better option would be to include apples by default and only provide fries if the customer asks for them. Also, I would like to see McDonald’s making healthier meals for kids in general, and aim to have a certain percentage of the adult meals be healthy, too. I think the chain could do this and still be very successful.

Then head over to here: Amazon.com: Free – Songs: MP3 Downloads. Amazon has over 3000 songs that might cost you $1 elsewhere. Ahem. Why not get them for free and from a reputable location. 🙂  More good music than you can shake a stick at.