Friday, July 27, 2007

sherrybaby


I have just watched this excellent film starring my current favorite young actress, Maggie Gyllenhaal. A harsh, raw, yet touching story about an ex-con, recovering addict, and single mom, struggling with life.

Deep, dense characters living less-than-ordinary lives, and a direct, camcorder-like photography immerse the viewer in the world of working-class suburban America. A world in which nobody's perfect, everyone acknowledges it; a world in which waking up and going through the days seem an uphill task in itself.

Hats off to Maggie's intense acting, and to the fitting soundtrack of Dana Fuchs's acoustic songs - that, like the movie, swings from hope to depression and then back to hope. Like most of people's lives, by the way.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Win-win

Changing a bit from my usual sources - now this is from the NY Times.

And changing a bit from my usual themes as well - this is about technology. Something really cool that might just be about to kick in.

I tried to summarize the article but (1) got no time for that right now (2) it's really well written and I think it's worth to go through it. Just as it was when I pasted the Gore Vidal interview months ago.

July 5, 2007
IPhone-Free Cellphone News
By DAVID POGUE

Man, oh man. How’d you like to have been a PR person making a cellphone announcement last week, just as the iPhone storm struck? You’d have had all the impact of a gnat in a hurricane.

But hard to believe though it may be, T-Mobile did make an announcement last week. And even harder to believe, its new product may be as game-changing as Apple’s.

It’s called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it’s absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare.

Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)

O.K., but how often are you in a Wi-Fi hot spot? With this plan, about 14 hours a day. T-Mobile gives you a wireless router (transmitter) for your house — also free, after a $50 rebate. Connect it to your high-speed Internet modem, and in about a minute, you’ve got a wireless home network. Your computer can use it to surf the Web wirelessly — and now all of your home phone calls are free.

You know how people never seem to have good phone reception in their homes? How they have to huddle next to a window to make calls? That’s all over now. The free router is like a little T-Mobile cell tower right in your house.

Truth is, the HotSpot @Home phones work with any Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) router, including one you may already have. But T-Mobile’s routers, manufactured by D-Link and Linksys, have three advantages.

First, you turn on the router’s encryption — to keep neighbors off your network — by pressing one button, rather than having to fool with passwords. Second, these routers give priority to calls, so that computer downloads won’t degrade your call quality. Third, T-Mobile’s routers greatly extend the phone’s battery life. The routers say, in gadgetese, “I’m here for you, any time,” just once, rather than requiring the phone to issue little Wi-Fi “Are you there?” pings every couple of minutes.

T-Mobile was already a price leader in the cellphone game. But the HotSpot @Home program can be extremely economical, in four ways.

SAVING NO. 1 It’s not just your calls at home that are free; you may also get free calls at your office, friends’ houses, library, coffee shops and so on — wherever Wi-Fi is available. You can access both unprotected and password-protected Wi-Fi networks (you just enter the password on the phone’s keypad).

The phone has a built-in Search for Networks feature. Once you select a wireless network, the phone memorizes it. The next time you’re in that hot spot, you’re connected silently and automatically.

There’s one big limitation to all this freeness: these phones can’t get onto any hot spot that require you to log in on a Web page (to enter a credit card number, for example). Unfortunately, this restriction rules out most airports and many hotel rooms.

There’s one exception — or, rather, 8,500 of them: T-Mobile’s archipelago of hot spots at Starbucks, Borders and other public places. In these places you encounter neither the fee nor the Web-page sign-in that you would encounter if you were using a laptop; the words “T-Mobile Hot Spot” simply appear at the top of your screen, and you can start making free calls.

The cool part is that, depending on how many calls you can make in hot spots, the Wi-Fi feature might permit you to choose a much less expensive calling plan. If you’re a heavy talker, you might switch, for example, from T-Mobile’s $100 plan (2,500 minutes) to its $40 plan (1,000 minutes). Even factoring in the $10 HotSpot @Home fee, you’d still save $600 a year.

SAVING NO. 2 T-Mobile’s billing system isn’t smart enough to notice handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. So each call is billed according to where it begins. You can start a call at home, get in your car, drive away and talk for free until the battery’s dead.

The opposite is also true, however; if you begin a call on T-Mobile’s cell network and later enter a Wi-Fi hot spot, the call continues to eat up minutes. If HotSpot @Home catches on, therefore, the airwaves will reverberate with people coming home and saying, “Hey, can I call you right back?”

SAVING NO. 3 When you’re in a hot spot, T-Mobile has no idea where you are in the world. You could be in Des Moines, Denmark or Djibouti. So this is a big one for travelers: When you’re in a hot spot overseas, all calls to United States numbers are free.

SAVING NO. 4 T-Mobile’s hope is that you’ll cancel your home phone line altogether. You’ll be all cellphone, all the time. And why not, since you’ll now get great cell reception at home and have only one phone number and voicemail? Ka-ching: there’s an additional $500 a year saved.

Have T-Mobile’s accountants gone quietly mad? Why would they give away the farm like this?

Because T-Mobile benefits, too. Let’s face it: T-Mobile’s cellular network is not on par with, say, Verizon’s. But improving its network means spending millions of dollars on new cell towers. It’s far less expensive just to hand out free home routers.

Furthermore, every call you make via Wi-Fi is one less call clogging T-Mobile’s cellular network, further reducing the company’s need to spend on network upgrades.

In principle, then, HotSpot @Home is a revolutionary, rule-changing, everybody-wins concept. But before you go canceling lines and changing calling plans, consider a few small flaws.

At the moment, you have a choice of only two phones: the Nokia 6086 and Samsung t409. Both of these are small basic flip phones (both $50 after rebate and with two-year commitment). They sound terrific; over Wi-Fi, in fact, they produce the best-sounding cellphone calls you’ve ever made. But the screens are small and coarse, and the features limited. Fortunately, T-Mobile intends to bring the HotSpot @Home feature to many other phones in the coming months.

The Wi-Fi sucks power, too; these phones get 6.5 hours of talk time on the cell network, but only 4 hours over Wi-Fi.

Finally, T-Mobile eventually intends to price the service at $20 a month, or $30 for family plans. Only people who sign up during the introductory period (now through an unspecified end date) will be offered the $10 price, or $20 for families.

Even at the higher price, you could still come out ahead. With HotSpot @Home, T-Mobile has taken a tremendous step into the future. Most phone companies cower in fear when you mention voice calls over the Internet (Skype, Vonage and so on). After all, if the Internet makes the price approach zero, who will pay for phone service?

But T-Mobile has found a way to embrace and exploit this technology to everyone’s benefit. The result is a smartly implemented, technologically polished, incredibly inexpensive way to make over your phone lifestyle.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

Monday, July 23, 2007

Lamentable

I echo Jon's words below. Suffering is already so intense and we still have to cope with this absurd handling of the situation.

Disaster wrapped up in farce
ft.com, Jul 23 2007
Jonathan Wheatley


It is hard to decide which of the government’s actions following the worst disaster in Brazilian aviation history most typified the inadequacy of its response to a crisis that has lasted for at least ten months.

Was it the failure of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to appear in public until three days after the accident, or to issue any statement at all within the first four hours (his message of condolence arriving after, for example, that of president Néstor Kirchner of Argentina)? São Paulo state governor José Serra went to the scene immediately, following the rescue work and talking to the press. Surely, Mr Lula da Silva should have done the same.

Was it the repeated denial of responsibility by Walter Pires, the minister of defence who is in charge of civil aviation, who should have departed after last September’s mid-air collision between a Gol Boeing 737 and an executive jet in which 154 people died, but who has been kept in the job?

Was it the sight of leaders of Anac, the civil aviation regulator, being given medals for services to air travel by vice president José Alencar three days after the accident, instead of the reprimands or dismissals they deserve?

Or was it the spectacle of Marco Aurelio Garcia, the president’s special advisor, caught on camera celebrating the television news of a possible mechanical fault in the crashed aircraft, that potentially deflected some of the responsibility away from the government?

Whatever the true cause of the accident, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Aircraft have been slipping around on the runways at São Paulo’s city centre airport for months, before and after they underwent repairs this year. The dissatisfaction of air traffic controllers with their equipment and their military commanders is notorious. While passenger terminals have been smartened up around the country, passenger safety has been neglected. The desperate need in Brazil for more effective government has never been clearer.

Jonathan Wheatley is a FT correspondent in São Paulo

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Mourn


I never felt like crying before over a public accident.
Not for Darfur.
Not for Gaza.
Not for Iraq.
Not when reading about the near destruction of Flandres in World War I. The same Flanders that hosted me no nicely for the past 2 months.

But I must confess I cried when I read about the accident in Congonhas.

A flight I've taken so many times.

People whose routines look so much like mine.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Un pesto

I watched the Copa América final in an Irish Pub in Belgium, together with a couple of Argentine friends, some local Brazilians I met on the spot, and the (Belgian) waiter of a restaurant I like, who has lived in Niteroi and claims to support Botafogo. He was by a lot far the noisiest chap in the pub, screaming heavily-accented "Só dá Brasil", "É nóis" and a number of "Juiz ladrão" at each small foul at Brazil's half (we made many).

I could write and write about the game - the grittiness of Josue, the precision of Julio Baptista's passing and finishing, and Dunga's brilliant substitution putting Daniel Alves on - but I'll resort to pasting selected comments from Rob Smyth's live coverage of the game at Guardian Unlimited. Enjoy.

1 min Off we go. It's ridiculously hot - about 100 degrees, with the game kicking off at 1705 local time. It'll probably be a more languorous game as a result, which will certainly suit Seba: he has an excuse not to do running!

GOAL! Brazil 1 Argentina 0 (Baptista 4) Julio Baptista has just scored an absolute belter. He ran onto a long, diagonal pass to the left corner of the box from Elano, fronted up the last man Ayala, pushed the ball inside and then just screamed it across goal and into the top corner. Not bad for a fat lad. A superb goal and, yet again, Argentina have to come from behind.

9 min Riquelme hits the post. That was sublime football: Messi got to the byline on the left, drilled it flat to the far post to Veron, who headed it down really smartly for Riquelme, 12 yards out, to spank it on the bounce with his left foot. Doni was well beaten by it smacked off the face of his right-hand post.

20 min A laughably overambitious glory pass from Veron, slashing it right to left, goes straight into Doni's arms. That's £28.1m, right there.

24 min Brazil have been the better side - much more authoritative - and they're having a fairly decent spell of possession at the moment. Tevez still hasn't kicked the ball. "Argentina really do look like the fakers they have been excepting the Maradona years since Passarella hung up his boots," said Gary Naylor. "Had Titus Bramble showed The Beast the only place he could score, we would all point and laugh, but because it's Ayala, we all shake our heads, unable to comprehend. Veron and Riquelme? To select one might be unfortunate - to select two smacks of carelessness." All fair points. A proper journalist would have told you that Ayala's defending on the goal was really poor. I'm not, and didn't.

39 min Veron simply doesn't bother to track the left-back Gilberto, who bursts into the box and drives it low across the face, forcing Heinze to sidefoot it wide of his own post.

GOAL! Brazil 2 Argentina 0 (Ayala og 40) Well. Well. Well. A really slick move led to Alves being released on the right, and he curved in a lovely cross between keeper and defenders at which Ayala, not knowing who was behind him, had no choice but to throw himself. But he was stretching desperately and all he could do was ram it past Abbondanzieri at the near post. It wasn't Ayala's fault really - he had to play it - but it's left Argentina up a creek with no paddle salesmen in sight.

44 min Argentina's burgeoning frustration manifests itself in a deserved booking for Mascherano for beheading some Brazilian. Then, seconds later, he hacks down another Brazilian, a foul for which he might conceivably have received a second yellow.

Half-time chit-chat "Is it time to re-assess Argentina's World Cup 2006?" says Gary Naylor. "They were a bit fortunate to beat Cote D'Ivoire 2-1; then beat an uninterested, disintegrating Serbia and Montenegro, a side who tackled as though playing a testimonial; then drew 0-0 with Holland. Into the knock-out phase, and a very fortunate 2-1 extra time win over Mexico, before going out to Germany on penalties (abjectly). The heirs of unlucky losers Holland 74 or Brazil 82 - don't make me laugh!"

52 min What Brazil have done very well today is the Makelele foul - enough to disrupt a dangerous mate, made to look sufficiently clumsy and innocent to preclude a booking - and there's another on Messi.

56 min Two Makelele fouls on Riquelme fouls in the space of a minute have Riquelme waving imaginary cards at the referee. Brazil's tactic hasn't been edifying but it's so very effective.

57 min Argentina are gone. I hadn't really put 2+2 together before but, as was pointed out in the first half, this golden generation, while blessed with wonderful talent, are damned by the fact that they are almighty bottlers.

58 min Veron makes the first tackle of his career, which so shocks Alex that he squares up to him. Veron flounces a bit and then retreats.

59 min The first substitution: the splendid Pablo Aimar is on for Cambiasso, so now we have three midfield playmakers to go with Brazil's three watercarriers.

More praise for the God-like Juan Veron "Is Veron a Zelig-like figure, always lurking around great events, but not actually part of them?" says Gary Naylor. "I've never - repeat never - seen him have a good game or even look like a footballer." Now that's unfair. He was brilliant against Maccabi Haifa in 2002.

GOAL! Brazil 3 Argentina 0 (Alves 69) Brazil seal the Copa America with a superb goal. Vagner Love led a counter-attack, running at the defence 30 yards out, and slid a perfectly weighted ball inside the left-back (who was actually Riquelme) for Alves to drive it superbly across goal and into the far side-netting. It was a wonderful pass, and a splendid, precise finish from a difficult angle.

75 min Argentina really have been feeble. They make Graeme Hick and Thierry Henry seem like rough-track warriors. Tevez, who has been dreadful, is booked for a petulant hack. Even Messi has gone missing since they went 2-0 down. "Doesn't this Brazil team look so much better without past-it prima-donnas Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos?" says Gary Naylor. "This lot plus Kaka would be an impressive outfit."

78 min Riquelme, an exquisite footballer but a total bottler, thrashes one miles over from 25 yards.

86 min Argentina are so shellshocked that they can't even summon the freedom of the damned, and Brazil continue to repel them with ease. "Is Gary Naylor suggesting that Ronaldinho is nothing without the passes he gets from Deco and that most teams have worked this out?" says Alec Cochrane. "Whereas Kaka forced into widening his game by playing in a defensive league has now surpassed the buck toothed one? Including winning his team a European Cup almost singlehandedly?" That's not fair: Bolo Zenden played a bloody big part in Milan's European Cup win.

Full time: Argentina 0 Brazil 3 Congratulations to Brazil and especially their coach Dunga, who completely outsmarted his opposite number Coco Basile. Brazil were the better side from the moment Julio Baptista welted a screamer in the fourth minutes, and they richly deserve their victory against lily-livered opponents who paid the price for being a ramshackle shower of dreamers. Thanks for your emails. It's been extemporaneous.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Eulogy to Fopp

I just read that Fopp music store has gone bankrupt and closed down.

No wonder - they sold CDs and books at bargain prices. My friend Martin introduced me to it, taking me for a stroll at the Tottenham Court Road branch in London last year. I left it with a £5 double Fela Kuti CD (excellent) and a £6 three-disc box set with Van Morrison's first three albums, arguably two of my best purchases last year. Oh and a £3 book, The Undercover Economist, which I didn't bother finishing.

They claim tastes are changing and people don't buy CDs anymore. Too bad - I still prefer albums to isolated songs. I like to listen to them from beginning to end, trying to figure what message the artist wanted to convey. I admit I did a lot of downloading from Bit Torrent and the like, but recently I've been much more keen on walking into a store, browsing around, testing, and leaving with a disc. You can't top that - the means are as pleasant as the ends.

Anyway, farewell to Fopp. All that's left is Virgin and HMV. And Fnac. God bless us.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Shame on us

Just read these at the FT. Seriously, you guys at the Congress, it's getting ridiculous.

I highlighted the most outrageous bits.


Calheiros affair a scandal too far
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 5 2007 00:37 | Last updated: July 5 2007 00:37

The saga of Renan Calheiros, the president of Brazil’s Senate, has stretched the credulity of ordinary Brazilians already inured to scandal in politics.

By the senator’s own admission, an employee of a construction company carrying out large public works dependent on budget amendments under Mr Calheiros’s control, every month for two years delivered cash payments of about R$12,000 ($6,284, €4,616, £3,116) to a former journalist with whom the long-married senator was having an affair and by whom he has a three-year-old daughter.

Mr Calheiros says that makes him guilty of nothing. To prove his innocence he says the money was his. The paperwork he produced to substantiate this claim was shown to be false by high-profile television reports: people to whom he claimed to have sold high-priced cattle, for example, denied ever dealing with him.

Yet Mr Calheiros continues to defend himself, describing press reports as attacks on the Senate.



Brazilian Senate president under pressure to quit
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 4 2007 19:33 | Last updated: July 4 2007 19:33


(...)


[The case] marks the continuation of an almost unbroken string of corruption allegations that have dogged Mr Lula da Silva’s administration since May 2005. When the scandals first erupted, they caused serious damage to Mr Lula da Silva’s popularity ratings. But recent polls suggest voters no longer associate the president with corruption, or expect nothing better of their politicians.

Mr [Fernando] Gabeira said the result was a culture of lawlessness. “People don’t believe in citizenship, in the collective life. They just seek individual advantage. Corruption undermines capitalism because it destroys trust.”

“For those with access to good lawyers, impunity is almost guaranteed,” said Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, a former senior security official. “But in poor areas, the police arrive with guns blazing and the population is caught in the crossfire.”

Politicians are especially privileged. Once elected, deputies and senators may only be tried by the Supreme Court, which has never convicted a single one. An estimated 30 per cent of those in Congress have criminal proceedings open against them; many seek office to avoid prosecution.

(...)


Leading politicians have appeared content to see the likes of Mr Calheiros enjoy their impunity. Mr Lula da Silva was recently seen slapping him on the back.

More extraordinary was a declaration of support from Tarso Genro, a close presidential aide and former champion of probity. “For the good of the country and of our institutions I want Renan to be innocent,” he said. “This is what all of us and all the Brazilian people want.”


DO WE WANT RENAN TO BE INNOCENT?????? GIVE US A BREAK.