January 2010
36 posts
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ASCIImeo →
So cool! Turns any Vimeo video into ASCII. By Peter Nitsch.
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WatchJim Small recently accused me of being a “mountain botherer’. Pretty rich coming from a soccer-botherer. But, with this vid, I wear the appellation without regret. Somehow, a bunch of flatland Finns have developed an appreciation of ski art and a skill in the film arts that, in these 20 minutes, have coalesced into the sweetest poetic visual expression of snow sport that I have...
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Television Sewage Mule Whorehouse →
“Watching television is like seeing a sewage disposal truck with a talking mule at the wheel crash into a burning whorehouse. It’s harder on the spectators than on the casualties.”
The inestimable wisdom of Art Dudley in Stereophile
Having recently upgraded my 15 year old 14” Kambrook TV with a Freeview set, I have been scanning the digital airwaves for signs of human...
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Peter Lunn: "I was furious if I didn't fall" - The... →
Cool old age skier’s memories. A few extracts:
One communist demanded to know what skiing had to offer the British working man… [Skiing is] liberation from the prison of old age. Peter’s eyesight is not what it was, and he walks in careful little steps, but with skis on his feet he is a man unbound. I don’t think anyone has lived until they have been on skis....
Avatar - Green persuasion? →
Times article that was reprinted in The Press today.
The film is brilliant PR — smug and simplistic but effective and energising…. No wonder the American Right hates it, with one commentator calling it “a deep expression of anti-Americanism”. They understand that any nation that loves this movie will not want to continue pumping oil out of the Alaskan National Park…. Avatar isn’t Star...
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Avatar - Offensive stereotypes?
David Brooks in the New York Times neatly pinpoints and summarises all the concerns I have heard expressed about Avatar being based on offensive racial stereotyping. I think this argument is fundamentally flawed on two counts.
Firstly, the indigenous/native stereotypes being used in Avatar are being applied to an imaginary species on an imaginary planet. It would be fair to argue that the...
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Finally caught Avatar last night
Loved the reference to terrorists and the unambiguous very direct reference to the improvised Daisycutter bomb the imperialists used to toss out the back of a C130 Hercules onto Tora Bora during the Afghanistan invasion.
Yes, a simple much-told story full of cliches; that’s what a parable is. Yes, recycles many standard cinema themes and techniques; that’s what popular movies do. Very...
Eric Rohmer - RIP
Eric Rohmer has moved on. I loved this guy’s prosaic film style. Equally loved the reactions of fellow cinema-goers who, nonplussed at the end of a Rohmer movie filled with ordinary daily life, would exclaim a wasted 10 bucks. A couple of apposite quotes from the Wikipedia entry:
Rohmer’s films invariably concentrate on intelligent, articulate protagonists, who nevertheless...
Krugman: →
Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works. Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they’re down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and...
Hitler - A scapegoat. Stalin - I can empathise.... →
Stone announced yesterday that a 10-hour crash course in the history of the 20th century he is putting together for American TV is designed as an antidote to the inaccuracies and biases he believes exist in the conventional historical narrative dished out in American schools and mainstream media. The title alone gives an inkling of what lies ahead: Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America
War is sport →
US military is so overloaded with drone video data that they are turning to sports broadcasts for tips.
“Two young women, side by side, leaning over their pushchairs. As we approach, we...”
– Comment by Mr Bullfrog after the Guardian article Increasingly, the rarest experience in family life is undivided attention
Increasingly, the rarest experience in family life... →
Oops, looks like I have just failed at parenting: “…self-control, and deferred gratification – values which are profoundly counter-cultural and yet which psychologists argue are crucial life skills: you learn them if you are lucky enough to have parents who understand their importance and teach them by example.”
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Mia Pusch - NZ mourns you
Mia Pusch died on a New Zealand road on Tuesday 5 January. My thoughts are with Mia’s family, to whom I offer my most heartfelt condolences.
Killed in a collision with a truck and trailer just north of Bulls in the central North Island, Mia’s final blog entry bemoaned the attitudes and driving habits of New Zealand truck drivers.
Extract from NZ Herald article:
“When one is...
Parsley City
Wow, what a delight to see a huge patch of parsley planted in the central city. Serves the purpose of delivering bright green for the garden design outside Alice in Videoland and C1 Coffee cnr of High St & Tuam in Christchurch.
Go for a run in the pollen-filled westerly now or fire up the weedeater and wait for the cool southerly? What will the neighbours think if I start the weedeater at 9:30 on 2 January? What about my self-respect if I don’t do my early morning run as planned? What about the fact that it is no longer early morning? What about the views from the hills? It’s clear now, will the...
Telemark Truth →
The shocking truth is that telemark was within a whisker of being called christie. Imagine millions of beginners doing a stem-telemark while out in the backcountry the freeheelers are doing christying. The horror.
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