The most unobtrusive sound man I’ve ever worked with.
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Striking gold!
I had dinner in Bafta on Tuesday night. This is what greets one on the way up to the club.
Quote of the day
“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.”
[Source]
ASUS (contd)
The little ASUS sub-notebook continues to amaze me. Tonight I just plugged my 3G HSDPA modem into one of the USB ports. The machine instantly detected the model and I just followed the instructions in the Network dialog box and, bingo! — I was on the Net. This is the way Linux machines ought to be. In fact, it was easier to set up for the modem than was the MacBook Pro.
Diamonds are for now
Shot on the walkway atop Tower Bridge.
The Consultation
Observed in a London hotel last night.
Jane Fonda’s rude word shocks US
What a weird country is the US. Many of its conservative citizens think nothing of launching a war that kills maybe half a million Iraqis but are profoundly scandalised when an actress uses plain language on television.
Middle America is none to pleased with veteran thespiatrix [sic] Jane Fonda who yesterday entertained viewers of NBC’s Today show with “a four-letter word for female genitalia”.
Host Meredith Vieira had asked Fonda about her appearence in stage play The Vagina Monologues, which contains a section entitled “Cunt”. In her answer, the actress referred to the segment by name, and the rest is history.
Vieira offered a swift on-screen apology, saying: “You know, before we go to break, in our last half-hour we were talking about The Vagina Monologues and Jane Fonda inadvertently said a word from the play that you don’t say on television. It was a slip, and obviously she apologises, and so do we. We would do nothing to offend the audience, so please accept that apology.”
No wonder they tried to keep Ulysses out.
Look before you censor
There’s been a sudden surge of interest in the activities of a hitherto-unknown Cayman Islands bank named Julius Baer ever since the bank persuaded a dozy judge to shut down the Wikileaks whistleblowing site. Bob Cringeley has some interesting things to say about the debacle.
Personally, I don’t think Baer was overly concerned the world would know its Cayman branch (allegedly) exists to launder money and avoid taxes. I think the bank didn’t want its rich, extremely powerful, allegedly money laundering/tax evading clientele to be exposed. Bad for business, you know.
But the bank’s solution is so mind-bogglingly stupid, you have to wonder if these guys need help getting their pants on each morning.
First, this is exactly the kind of story bloggers and Net-centric journos crave. Big nasty corporation stomps all over plucky public-serving underdog. Who can resist that plot line?
Second, the equation Bank Julius Baer = Money Laundering is now firmly cemented in the minds of everyone who has encountered this story, regardless of whether it’s true.
Trois: The documents in question, which might have been quickly forgotten alongside the 1.2 million others on the site, are now hotter than the Paris Hilton sex video. Dozens of mirror sites have sprung up, and Cryptome.org and PirateBay have squirreled away copies of the docs for any interested parties.
Oh, and by the way, the judge’s order failed to shut down the site. The IP numbers (88.80.13.160) still work, as do its Belgian and Christmas Island domains. Or they would, only last time I checked the sites were overwhelmed with traffic from people with a sudden keen interest in Cayman Islands banking…
Lessig ’08
Larry’s thinking about running for Congress.
The luck of the French
A cri de coeur from the Washington Post.
If I have to get old, I want to do it in Paris.
It’s not because of the dank weather, the constant personal snubs or a fetish for unpasteurized cheese. It’s because, quite frankly, I’d like to keep having sex.
In the United States, my odds would be grim. Through our 40s, we American women manage to arrange romps on a fairly regular basis. But the latest national statistics show that by our 50s, a third of us haven’t had sex in the last year. By our 60s, nearly half have gone sexless in the previous year. Once we hit our 70s, most of us might as well hang up an “out of business” sign. (Needless to say, men fare much better.)
So much for the gym-bodied baby boomers who promised to make 60 the new 40, using Botox as an aphrodisiac. Among today’s 50-plus women, the problem of sexlessness is as bad or worse than it was for older women two decades ago.
But not in France. Frenchwomen simply don’t suffer from the same dramatic, post-40s slide into sexual obsolescence. Just 15 percent of Frenchwomen in their 50s and 27 percent in their 60s haven’t had any sex in the past year, according to a 2004 national survey by France’s Regional Health Observatory. Another national survey being released next month will report that cohabiting Frenchwomen over 50 are having more sex now than they did in the early 1990s.
Try not to hate them: Frenchwomen don’t get fat, and they do get lucky.