Trudging through 5cm of snow to feed the ducks was a major workout today! Still, got some good pics!

Winter has arrived in jolly old Blighty! The lake has frozen over (a thin layer, but I’ve never seen a frozen lake before, as far as I can remember). It must have been cold out… Snow expected later! Here are my photos of the dodgy ducks (well, geese, mostly). You can click on the slideshow to see a full-size version (and download any pics if you like).

Here in Britain, we are always told how well-off we are, and what a wealthy country we live in, and perhaps when you look at the general statistics, it may even be true, on average. But averages can be very misleading. In this well-off country, most of the wealth is owned by a tiny minority of people. The rest of us are just fighting over the scraps, and are not well-off at all. Sure, we have some advantages, like some welfare state, lots of gadgets we can’t afford in the shops, and so on, but can we afford to pay the bills? Nope. Can the country afford facilities like good education, healthcare, libraries and so on? Less so than in the past, is my impression.

An average house in this country costs £160,000 (€192,000) and the median wage is about £26,000, (€32,000) or 1/6th of the price of the house.

We think of the Southern European countries as being relatively poor (an out-of-date idea, but it is common here). Let’s see what they are like in these terms. Gross averages are hard to find online for some of these, but here’s what I’ve been able to dig up, based on a (small) 60sq.m property as a cheapish rough guide.

Bulgaria - average house price is under €50,000, average income €2,200 (22:1)

Greece - average city centre house price €296,000, average wage €8,400 (35:1)

Italy - houses €420,000, wages €30,000 (14:1)

Spain - houses €240,000, wages €24,000 (10:1)

On the same basis as these, though, a 60sq.m UK house would be €900,000, representing a ratio of 4.6:1 compared with the average wage. OK… well, on the basis of those figures, houses in the UK are actually relatively affordable for the natives. On the other hand, some of those European houses are far more affordable for a Brit than for the natives…

In which case… it’s time to move! And get some darned sunshine for a change.

What is the big deal with all these QR codes (Quick Response codes) I keep seeing on posters? They are a kind of barcode, but why are they only machine-readable? Why can’t they be made human readable so we can see what they mean? Here’s one I made earlier, readable by a special app on your phone, tablet or whatever.

Lovely. But why isn’t it human-readable? My theory is that it activates the curiosity factor. Only by following the link and getting your gadget to read it can you find out what it is all about… If you knew already what the QR code said, you probably wouldn’t bother to scan it.

Just an amusing look at London from jolly old Russia… Welcome Baby Eng-a-land!

Ri featuring XLDeluxe - Russkiy London [3m 21s]

The huge file-sharing site www.megaupload.com has been shut down by the Feds. Even though it operates from Hong Kong and top staff work in New Zealand, the US authorities argue that they ran 525 servers in Virginia, they made money in US$ and knowingly hosted pirated US material, and furthermore paid out money to US citizens, so they are doing (illegal) business in the US and are subject to US jurisdiction. The owner and top management have been arrested and charged with racketeering and copyright infringement. A news article about the megaupload seizure on NDTV says that the Justice Department’s website was taken down in revenge by hackers (hacking group Anonymous has claimed credit).

It seems owner Kim Dotcom and his top staff had a rather lavish lifestyle, with umpteen Mercedes’, Lamborginis and so on, including one with the number plate “GUILTY". Hmm…

Well, of course it is right that lawbreakers are arrested, but on the other hand, the Internet model involves a very heavy reliance on the free distribution of information. Much of that information (movies, images, and so on) actually belongs to copyright holders… And outside the Internet it is hardly possible to acquire anything for free these days: we even pay for our daily brainwashing sessions in front of the TV, for the most part (those of us who still watch it occasionally, anyway). Will big business end up taking all of everybody’s money off them?

Five years ago the Kodak stock price was trading just below $30 a share. Today it is just 55c and the company has filed for bankruptcy protection in the USA. It now has 18 months to turn the business around or die.

Why is this? Well, they make cameras and film… but the market for film has been disappearing rapidly since digital photography began to take off. Certainly, not many digital cameras can rival the picture quality of a good film photo, not least because 35mm film is the equivalent of 25 megapixels which few digital cameras have. Also, there is probably some truth to the impression people have that analogue is somehow richer in tone than digital. This is much like the way that transistor-based radios never sounded as good as the old valve-driven sets of yesteryear - that and the fact that they stopped building them in wooden cabinets, perhaps. Plastic is versatile, but just not the same.

So who needs film? Professional photographers, certainly, and a few other artists perhaps. You and me? The mobile phone or a cheap digital camera is probably good enough for most. A few will want a better digital camera, certainly: the pictures you can take with a good camera certainly can show the difference.

And who needs to wait a week or two to see the results of our snaps anyway? Now I can upload a picture to Facebook directly from my phone the instant I’ve taken it, if the signal can get through - this is ideal for crappy party shots and the like, after all.

So Kodak certainly has their work cut out if they want to survive. They do printers as well, which they promote as having cheaper ink than their rivals, which is true - but the print quality is not yet up to standard. If they can get that sorted out as well in the next 18 months, there may be a future for them yet.

Have you ever wondered how to fake French? I mean, if you don’t know the language but are stuck with a load of French people, what do you do? After a few “Haw haw he haw, des oignons,” they are going to get a bit suspicious.

Well, this short tutorial explains it all.

I don’t know who webbilling.com are, but there are a remarkable number of stories online about how they seem to con or scam people into paying false bills, or even, as in the case of my wife, make a direct debit to her bank account (without permission). How can that happen? The bank has given no explanation. You can read the full story of this attempted theft by webbilling.com on her blog, along with how to deal with it.

Well, what a film! Like most of Terry Gilliam’s other films, for example Time Bandits, Imaginarium takes place in a world that is something like the real world, but a real world in which, just around the corner somewhere, there is a doorway to an entirely different reality. In this case, the doorway is a large mirror-frame with a couple of sheets of reflective plastic giving the appearance of a mirror, except it is possible to plunge through, pushing between the two sheets, and enter the world of the plunger’s imagination… I’m going to refer to this device as a mirror from now on, to keep it short!

Well, the world entered is not exactly the world of the plunger’s imagination: it is mediated by Doctor Parnassus, an ancient monk now living the life of a fairground attraction. Customers are invited to take the plunge and see what they find. As he describes it, he is a facilitator, allowing people to see dreamlike imaginary worlds. The worlds they see are not entirely free-form. Instead, what they see is based upon their fantasies: greedy people see get-rich-quick schemes, romantic people see flowery worlds, and so on. But it is not so simple. They also are presented with choices, and the what they choose determines whether they (or their souls) become the Devil’s property or are freed. When they choose the lazy, the easiest options, they are doomed. For really bad people it appears to be possible to be doomed anyway, in fact, as the character Tony is smart enough to choose the harder way but still doesn’t get away with things. But then, perhaps he didn’t actually choose the harder way, as he was being chased by a mob at the time…

So the film is a metaphor for the way we live our lives. As it is in the Imaginarium, where most plungers (as I’m going to call them) didn’t really understand the choices they were making and the consequences that would flow from those choices, so it is in real life too, where most of us fail to notice how much of what happens in our lives flows from the largely unconscious choices we have previously made: the easy, the lazy, the simple choices, tend to lead to a downward spiral of more and more hassle. Just one more doughnut won’t hurt… And, as in real life too, most people are really not interested in taking the plunge and possibly improving their lives. Most people are more interested in getting drunk down at the pub, or shopping, or money, or basically anything other than improving themselves. The difficulty Doctor Parnassus has in finding souls to save mirrors the blind way most of humanity seems to live.

Well, I haven’t said much about the story-line of the film, and perhaps I don’t really need to. It is a fairy-tale of sorts, with Doctor Parnassus and the Devil being the main protagonists. They both seem to me to represent forces of Nature rather than being actual humans. The Devil in particular, a quirky fellow with a New York accent, a black suit, bowler hat, and a liking for cigarillos, does not choose the most evil path all the time. Instead, he plays very strictly by the rules, only accepting souls that have freely chosen their doom. He reflects very nicely the ultimate neutrality of the Universe: we choose, we get the consequences. There is no favouritism. In real life there can be luck, perhaps. Doctor Parnassus doesn’t believe in coincidence though, so perhaps in the fantasy world, luck doesn’t count: the world reflects the plunger’s nature 100%. In real life, perhaps, the ratio is more like 80:20 - it is possible to be dealt a very bad hand of cards, after all, and some people seem to have all the luck. But mostly, real life is more of a mixture. Even so, our choices do make a difference some of the time, and I suppose the film is emphasising it. I don’t think I need to say much about the acting either: I have no complaints.
So, do I like this film? Of course I do. If you hate thoughtful, quirky, metaphorical, fantastical and fun films, give this one a miss. Me, I give it 9 out of 10.

I have posted a new web page detailing some of my experiences at Fellowship Films Ltd Organicc (with two c’s), the Southern Foundation for the Advancement of Art and Education, and elsewhere, involving a person called Mike Davies, of Southampton. I’m posting it on the basis that prospective investors ought to be able to find out who they are dealing with: it is an aid to due diligence. Click this link to go there:

Mike Davies

I’ve just posted this teaser for a movie being promoted by Amarine Films, called The Devil In The Fog - based on Leon Garfield’s best-selling children’s story Devil-In-The-Fog.

There’s not really a lot I can say about it, as you’ll see if you watch the teaser!

It is getting increasingly rare to find genuine science-fiction movies these days: most turn out to be action-thrillers in a sci-fi setting instead. However Director Duncan Jones’ “Moon” (2009) turns out to be the real hardcore stuff, for once. It reminded me both of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Oddyssey” and Douglas Trumbull’s “Silent Running”.
Why? Because it depicts a lone astronaut, Sam Bell, admirably played by Sam Rockwell, manning a moonbase and troubleshooting things when the automated mining machines break down. He is assisted by a robot, Gerty, whose voice (Kevin Spacey) is remarkably similar to that of the dangerous computer HAL in 2001. I couldn’t help but be suspicious of Gerty as a result, and it turns out I was both correct and incorrect… Spacey’s Gerty had me wondering throughout the whole movie.

Moon (2009) Trailer

Because of the setting, actor Sam Rockwell has to carry the entire movie, and he succeeds brilliantly. Other actors appear in video messages and the like, but for the most part, it is just him, on his own, 250,000 miles from Earth and looking forward to getting home at the end of his three-year contract. And going a little space-crazy… or is he?

With only two weeks to go, he takes a buggy out of the base to fix a mining machine that has gone wrong, but gets involved in a collision and ends up trapped in the buggy. He falls unconscious.

And wakes up back in the moonbase. Gerty is reviving him… but now there are two of him…

From there, things start to get complicated… so I’ll leave the spoilers out: you can watch the movie.

What is the film about, exactly? True science-fiction is basically subversive, in that it looks at features present in society and projects them into a future world to see what is wrong (or right) with them. In this case, the film is looking at corporate greed and (without mentioning it) the legislation that currently makes it compulsory for companies to look after the bottom line ahead of all other values, such as, when this goes too far, human life. As with many movies these days, the company regards Sam as expendable, but the multi-layered depth of that expendability in this case comes as a big shock as the plot slowly unfolds. Having said that, there is some hope at the end: it isn’t all bad news. I like happy endings, although the other sort tend to have more impact, I’ll admit. The ending of this film is mixed, which is perhaps more realistic.

This is a slow-moving, cerebral movie. If you want action, look elsewhere. If you want 93 minutes of proper sci-fi, however, this is the place to look. The film had a low budget of just US$5,000,000 and just about broke even at the box office due to lack of proper distribution by Sony. Probably, it will more than double this with DVD sales and syndications. I hope so. Action movies are good fun, of course, but a bit of thinking now and then is good for you. I’ll give this movie 7/10, knocking a bit off as it is, yes, a little slow, but I didn’t get bored or tired watching it. Far from it.

I see the Amarine Films Group are looking for new indy film producers again (or is that indie film producers?). Amarine produce films, TV shows, and arrange packaging for independent producers looking to promote their ideas to investors. Amarine can provide investment for film and TV productions through private equity.

Creative Director Ilyas Kaduji has a considerable background creating CGI effects for various Hollywood blockbusters, and CEO Katya Baker has been in the TV business for years as well, although I don’t know all the details.

Here is Ilyas’ CGI showreel [9m 32s].

Director and writer Christopher Nolan came up with a great idea for this sci-fi movie. It is set in a world in which espionage is done by slipping into people’s dreams and influencing their subconscious minds directly (a bit like advertising, some cynics might say). A good idea, and quite a watchable film, but what could have been a great movie ends up being only OK. The execution suffers from the same weaknesses Christopher Nolan has displayed in other films of his, for example The Dark Knight.

st of all, it suffers from too much realism. Most of it is supposed to be happening in people’s dreams, yet apart from the odd bit where the ground heaves up (which was also entirely incidental to the plot and not repeated after the one occasion it happens), the dream worlds are almost entirely anything but surrealistic. They could be happening outside your front door right now. Surely people’s dreams (going by my crazy night-creations, anyway) should be quite fantastic, fluid and with a weird logic all their own, such as the magical worlds depicted so brilliantly in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? But no, these could be any city, anywhere, complete with all the hassle, clutter and obstacles of everyday life. The Director did the same thing in The Dark Knight, imagining Gotham City using modern-day Chicago: a complely ordinary, even boring, setting. Compare this with Tim Burton’s vision of Gotham in his movies and you will see what I mean.

re were problems with consistency too, especially as DiCaprio’s character Cobb kept breaking his own rules. The usual Hollywood rebel character maybe? No, I think it’s just an excuse for bad writing. Sure, in real life, rules have to be bent now and then if things are to get done, but it becomes a bit tiresome when the heroes always do it, and when it is logically unnecessary anyway.

Philosophically speaking, the film is asking the age-old question: how do you know if you are awake right now, or if you are dreaming this life? Well, one clue I have given above is that real dreams are more chaotic and less mundane than everyday life, but that doesn’t apply in this film, of course.  In the film, the characters carry a ‘totem’ - an object that they know and understand very well, so they can watch its behaviour closely and determine if it is behaving properly or not and thereby tell if they are dreaming or not. In Cobb’s case, it is a little spinning top. As it turns out, this is his dead wife’s totem, in fact, and that has implications for the meaning of the very last scene in the film, which I will not spoil by telling you about it here. But you will have to have your head working when you watch it as you can easily miss what it implies…

Cobb’s wife is dead because she killed herself, convinced that this was indeed a dream world. In the film, killing yourself is the only way to make yourself wake up, so she did. Cobb is guilty about this as he planted the idea in her subconscious mind that she needed to wake up from a previous dream life they had shared for many years - only the idea persisted into this life. As a result she becomes something of a villain in the dreams of whoever’s mind he infiltrates, because his own subconscious guilt projects her into the other person’s dreams along with whatever Cobb is trying to do consciously there. These ideas are all very interesting and are pursued pretty plainly in the plot.

There is rather a lot of verbal explanation of what is going on (rather than showing things visually), but with such a complex plot involving dreams within dreams, perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing. It was in fact quite hard to follow the nesting dreams and action, but if you’re paying attention, I think it all hangs together in the end. Some of the fight scenes were a bit hard to follow too, as I couldn’t make out who was who some of the time - the camera didn’t show people’s faces long enough for me to keep track of them as they booted each other about the rooms, especially as most characters were wearing pretty dull business suits. It was clear who won in the end, of course.

Ellen Page did a good job as a university student co-opted onto the team to be Cobb’s dream architect (designing the dreams before they plunge into them), and DiCaprio himself seemed convincing enough in his role given the flatness of the writing. I don’t really have any complaints about the other actors either; their characters were a bit under-explored, perhaps. But then, the film was long enough already, at 2 hours 12 minutes (on the DVD version that I have). I have not watched the special features yet, so can’t tell you about them, but I do plan to watch the one about dream research, at least.

Overall, this film is a good idea for a sci-fi movie, and is thankfully more complex than the usual Hollywood so-called sci-fi (but really action) movie as well. Indeed, in my mind, it actually does qualify as real sci-fi for once: the technology is crucial to the story and it is not just about some hero or bad guy with a grudge, for a change (even the Star Trek (2009) movie came down to this, unfortunately). The execution is a bit flat, but the film remains watchable. I give it 6/10: worth watching but don’t expect too much.

The UK newspapers are reporting that the Nationwide Building Society says that average house prices rose by 1.1% in 2011. Or, should I say, mis-reporting? Because not one that I have checked has mentioned that inflation is around 5% (officially, and unofficially probably significantly higher). That means, of course, that a 1% rise is in fact a 4% fall in “real terms". Only London beat the inflation rate with a real increase of about 0.4% (reported by the news media as a rise of 5.4%).

Here are sample reports from the Daily Telegraph, This Is Money, the Daily Express ("Shock Rise in House Prices", no less), a relatively interesting article from the BBC (which still fails to mention inflation, however), and so on.

Here is the Nationwide’s Quarterly House Prices Report for December 2011. If you look at the graph entitled “Long term real house price trend” you will see clearly, looking at the red line ("Real House Price") that the line is descending. Indeed prices are also declining relative to earnings (the graph to the right), surprisingly. And they need to, of course. In London a house is still over 9 times average annual wages. In the rest of the country they are about 4.7 times, which is still too much. A stable figure is 3 to 3.5 times one person’s wage. If the average wage is, say, £25,000, a house should be around £75,000. Both partners in a household shouldn’t have to work, in fact: if you go back a couple of generations this was the normal situation. These days, even a joint wage of £50,000 isn’t enough to get a house for most people as the average house price is well above £150,000.

Here is a 15-part breathtakingly fast-paced critique of “Creationist Science". So many people, especially in the USA but in certain communities here in the UK and elsewhere just have no idea how solid the proof for Darwin’s “theory” of evolution by natural selection actually is. This 150-minute long video spells it out. It goes at a cracking pace, and I found myself stopping it every now and then to check the references given (all those I checked, checked out OK).

The video also shows up some of the wilful liars out there. Even if you believe in God, you may need to ask yourself if God would want you to believe things that are demonstrably false. Is God a God of truth, or of lies? After all, who is it that is known as the Prince of Lies? So… who exactly are you worshipping if you prefer to stick to lies rather than truth? Amazingly many of the people quoted in this video state clearly that they would rather believe known untruths!

Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

The Chancellor of the Exchequer gave his Autumn Statement yesterday, involving much fiscal tightening as the economic situation has deteriorated since the budget in March. His statement was informed by the November report of the Office for Budget Responsibility, (OBR), which is basically pretty grim reading as far as I can tell (I’ve not had the time to read it all but have skimmed it pretty deeply).

It was reported in much of the media that the OBR has cut back its growth forecasts for the economy, and indeed they have, but the worst of it doesn’t seem to have appeared in many places, although I saw it online in a Daily Telegraph blog by Jeremy Warner. Because of the Depression, the economy will be 13% smaller by 2016 than was expected in 2008, and “not much bigger than it was in 2007.” Public sector job losses are expected to double up to 710,000. Disposable incomes will shrink some 2.3% this year and shrink again next year, at least. World output fell 1% in September. And most telling of all, standards of living are not expected to rise for up to 14 years! I suppose that means up to 2025. That sounds like a Great Depression to me!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this last prediction in the report, but I guess I can take his word for it, for now. It seems plausable given the depth of the Depression around here.

But… in any case, there’s more. In their opening paragraphs, the OBR say,

We stress-test our fiscal forecasts and judgements using sensitivity and scenario analysis. The central economic and fiscal forecasts assume that the euro area finds a way through its current crisis, but a more disorderly outcome is clearly a significant downside risk. This risk cannot be quantified in a meaningful way, as there are numerous different ways in which such an outcome could unfold. Suffice to say, the probability of an outcome much worse than our central forecast is greater than the probability of an outcome much better than our central forecast.

In other words, if the Euro crisis deepens, so does our economic gloom. And the odds are in favour of this happening.

So what is the government, and indeed what are foreign governments talking about doing to fix all this? Well, who knows? It’s all hot air anyway since nobody knows the answers to economic problems. In general they are talking about how quickly they can return the economy to “growth". Our economy is forecast (now) to grow by 0.7% next year (GDP, 2012). As an aside, remember that inflation is around 5% so really that “growth” is minus 4.3%. So, let’s talk about real growth for a minute…

Achieving real growth is probably the wrong target to be aiming at, in my thinking. By the time this forecast reaches its end-game, in 2016-2017, we will be in a position to know with reasonable certainty whether the world has reached the peak oil point: that is, whether in fact we are starting to run out of oil, noticeably, because production can no longer be increased and will be beginning a long-term decline.

This, and the global warming problem, point the finger firmly towards a different target. We should be trying, not to grow, but to develop sustainable economies. Our standards of living can still improve without growth. Improvements in technology can achieve this, and so can improvements in government, indeed. Economic growth is a shibboleth that is destroying the world we depend upon and it is not necessary. It is also something of an illusion as our constantly depreciating fiat currencies confuse the issue of when we have growth and when we have inflation anyway, and the system encourages decidedly unsustainable debt bubbles as we must all surely realise by now.

Link: http://t.co/4LTitkfu

We modern people perhaps have a tendency to think of Stone-Age humans as ‘primitive’. Yet it turns out, they were not so different from the modern-day person at all.

For example, we now know that Stone-Age humans could build sea-faring boats, fashion hooks out of bone and fishing line out of sinew, and sail the ocean catching tuna.

Similarly, the modern-day chav can go to the local super-duper-market, and say, “Awright m8, weres da fish?”

Scientist Enrico Fermi speculated in the 1960's that if alien intelligence was as common as their calculations suggested, then the aliens really should be here already. There are so many stars out there (some 100,000,000,000 in our galaxy alone, one of as many galaxies) that it seems almost inconceivable that we should be alone.

The space telescope Kepler is finding lots of planets too. So... Where are the aliens? I have revised my Area 51 web page to take the new figures into account and made some guesses as to what the new numbers should be, and it doesn't look good. I come to the conclusion that we can expect only one contactable civilization per 200,000 galaxies. Read that page and the Area 52 page for the full details. :'(