Eddies in the spacetime continuum

My son's school sent a note home reminding parents of upcoming holidays, and also advising that on November 2nd, "Time goes forward". Presumably this is for the benefit of people who worry about what happens to the spacetime continuum on the day that the clocks go back.

Another reason why obsessing about Star Trek is silly

Have you ever met one of those obsessive Star Trek fans that is really, deeply upset by continuity errors? Probably the funniest is listening to Trekkies complain about the change in appearance of the Klingons' foreheads between the original series and The Next Generation, and trying to come up with an "in universe" (as they say) explanation -- in other words, something better than "makeup techniques are better now and we have a larger budget" -- and debating endlessly about what is the "correct" explanation... as if things that haven't explicitly been depicted on screen "really happened" elsewhere in this fictional universe...

Although it's already pretty silly to care that much about a fictional universe, there's an even better reason to make fun of this obsession: if Star Trek technology existed, the universe actually could contain real "continuity errors". Not only does Star Trek's mythology encompass explicit time travel, faster-than-light travel (even if it's achieved by warping space) also implies time travel. With time travel possible, strict cause-and-effect is doomed -- history and your associated memory of it could actually contain discontinuities, paradoxes, and contradictions. Trek's many time travel stories certainly contain examples of individuals who are aware that time has changed to be inconsistent with their memories, as well as others who are not (often with no clear reason as to why some have memories and others don't...).

So the next time you get cornered by an obsessive Trekkie who wants your opinion on the critical Klingon Forehead question, just shrug and say "time travel".

The Three Economies

A serious one for a change. Chris Anderson of "Long Tail" fame has a post on his blog about how the world is diverging into two economies, which he succinctly labels Atoms (physical goods) and Bits (digital goods). This is an interesting idea but I think it misses a fundamental point. There are not TWO economies, but THREE: bits, atoms, and people.

Chris is, as ever, spot on about bits: the marginal costs of (re)production approach zero, and traditional economics no longer apply.

He is IMHO slightly wrong about atoms when he says that material goods tend to increase in price over time: in most material businesses, efficiencies go up with scale, marginal costs go down over time, and so do prices. Cars, air travel, you name it: mass production and process efficiencies push costs down. A TV costs the same in dollars that it did 40 years ago despite being vastly superior and despite (monetary) inflation. This is the lesson of 19th century industrialization and 20th century mass production.

HOWEVER the cost of atoms doesn't go down nearly as fast as the cost of bits, so by comparison atoms look increasingly expensive.

Thirdly, there is the economics of people: Business models where people are inherent to the value proposition (at least, for the immediate future). Musical performance, for example. The "care" part of healthcare. Education, especially higher education. Research. Skilled people scale even less well than material products. The costs of employing people for these jobs tends to stay the same over time (or rise), even as the Atoms and Bits that complement their tasks get cheaper, making the People costs an ever larger fraction of the total. Observers often complain that healthcare and college education costs consistently outpace inflation. Of course: it is because they are People businesses, so naturally their costs are going to rise relative to either Atoms or Bits.

This "Three Economies" model helps to understand the dislocations going on in some industries. Music is a great example. Before the 20th C it was essentially a People business: you paid to see people perform. Recording turned it into a People Plus Atoms business, and by the 1980s it was overwhelmingly Atoms: top bands often lost money touring, but did it to promote the sale of recordings. Then along comes the digital era, and now we are in the midst of a transition to a People Plus Bits business, where Pay For Performance once again dominates and recordings promote the performance rather than vice versa -- while backward-looking execs desperately cling to the People Plus Atoms model.

Least Necessary Remakes

Most movie remakes are second-rate exploitative pap produced by the creatively bankrupt, of course. In order to make my list, a movie has to be more (less?) than that. It's not enough to be incompetently executed, preferably on a budget hugely larger than the original, or devoid of redeeming artistic merit. To make this list, a remake has to somehow miss the most essential point of the appeal of the original.

Here we go:

Planet of the Apes: The most memorable and dramatic element of the 1968 original is the moment when Charlton Heston discovers what planet he is really on. Needing a new twist for the 2001 remake, director Tim Burton gave us an ending in which... nobody can figure out what the hell was supposed to have happened. Up next: Burton remakes Soylent Green. Heston has a non-speaking cameo as a dead body.

The Day of the Jackal/The Jackal: The 1973 original was a brilliant psychologically tense thriller in which the ruthlessly efficient assassin and doggedly determined detective converge in a nailbitingly tense finale. The 1997 remake gives us Bruce "One Note" Willis as an assassin whose combination of ludicrously over-complicated plans and incompetent execution makes him the least likely killer this side of Wile E. Coyote.

Deathrace 2000/Deathrace: The makers of the 1975 original took a cast comprising some of the least talented stock players of the day plus a threadbare budget and created a much-underestimated satire on the dehumanizing effects of violence as entertainment. The makers of the 2008 version gave us a forehead-slapping celebration of the same thing. Deathrace is like watching somebody else play a video game.

Rollerball: 1975 original, satire on celebrity culture. 2002 remake, celebration of same. See Deathrace above.

Psycho: The 1960 original retains the power to scare to this day, even for audiences familiar with its central plot twists. Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake replicates every move of the original, even intentionally including many of its continuity errors, yet somehow fails to deliver its tension. With what may well be the cardinal definition of the unnecessary remake, Van Sant proves that it's possible to play all of the notes and none of the music. This is the film-making equivalent of karaoke.

The Day the Earth Stood Still: Yes, I know the remake isn't even out yet, but the casting of Keanu Reeves as the alien Klaatu when his acting skills far better suit him to the role of the robot Gort is enough by itself to get it on this list. Add to that the fact that 1951 original is intractably rooted in the Cold War fear of mutual destruction. Lacking the threat of nuclear warfare as a compelling driver, in the remake the aliens are, reportedly, concerned about mankind's destruction of our own planet's environment. So in his departing speech Klaatu is going to threaten us with... what, exactly? If we continue to destroy our planet, his people will send Gort to... uh... destroy our planet?

The Zen of Game Shows

Stuck in a hotel room this week, I finally watched "Deal Or No Deal". At first I thought it was the dumbest thing I've ever seen on TV. Yes, I know, there are a lot of shows that are offensive, stupid, intelligence-insulting garbage. This is worse: it is a game show without a game. It's like the producers spent so much time on designing the set, "interviewing" the models, and hiring the "talent", they forgot to actually think how to play. If you've never watched the show -- something I highly recommend -- it consists of the host, Howie Mandel, basically asking contestants how much money they would like, while a bevy of models pose on a staircase smiling stiffly.

After a while though, I began to wonder if I'd missed something really subtle. (This tends to happen when I spend too much time alone in hotel rooms.) "Deal Or No Deal" might, in fact, be a TV game show distilled to its purest essence. It strips out all of the frippery and goes directly to the heart of what every viewer wants to see: how much money will the contestant win? It is so dumb it might actually be clever. It is the Zen of game shows.

Mind you, that epiphany still leaves one baffling question: what the hell is that thing on Howie Mandel's chin? It looks like he had one face lift too many, and his pubic hair ended up just underneath his lower lip. One word of advice, Howie: Brazilian.

An ad about nothing? Or early-onset dementia?

I finally caught the famous Microsoft/Seinfeld ad last night... and I'm baffled. What were they going for? I read a lot of comments on various boards and I'm even more baffled at the people saying the ad was "clever". Trust me on this: I'm clever, that ad was dumb.

And as for the people saying "It must have worked, we're talking about it aren't we?": the maxim that all publicity is good publicity was already stupid 50 years ago. Apparently some people didn't get the memo in Junior High -- you know, the one about the difference between laughing with you and laughing at you. But that's OK, they can ask Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan to explain it.

Frankly, I thought it was creepy. Bill came across like a confused old man who had wandered off at the mall and stumbled into a shoe store, with Seinfeld as the concerned son trying to persuade him to come home without causing a scene. Maybe Microsoft is launching a new SPOT-based device for tracking seniors?

Just me?

In a world gone sad...

"In a world gone mad, only one man can deliver the voiceover..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_LaFontaine

Don LaFontaine, the voiceover guy, is dead. I have nothing funny to say about such a cultural icon. He wasn't just a voiceover actor, he was a voiceover actor on the edge.

Somebody once said that when you die, you don't hear God's voice -- you hear God trying to do Don LaFontaine's voice. I picture Don right about now telling God, "No, no, no -- try it like this."