Culture – Page 17 – Spinor Info

HD stupidity

Mar 212009

I am watching a documentary on BBC World.

BBC World is available here on basic analog cable, which is the only kind of cable I am interested in having in the house. (Mainly, I am put off digital cable because of the need for separate set-top boxes, but DRM also doesn’t help, not to mention the nasty habit of the box to wake up in the middle of the night to perform an OS upgrade, clearly demonstrating that I am not in control of equipment that is in my house.)

However, BBC World is, it appears, a high definition (HD) broadcast, so on analog cable it appears with a black stripe on the top and the bottom of the picture.

This particular documentary, however, was apparently shot in standard definition. So BBC World chose one of three options, each less than perfect: instead of cropping the picture at the top and the bottom, or introducing black stripes on the left and right, they decided to stretch the picture horizontally. Why so many people prefer a distorted picture over black stripes, I have no idea.

But this means that on my standard analog cable, I get a standard definition show that appears at less than standard resolution, vertically compressed, distorted, with unnecessary black stripes at the top and the bottom. Isn’t HD just glorious?

HD madness

Fortunately, as I tend to watch TV on my computer, I always have the option of stretching the video window vertically and get a picture with the correct aspect ratio. This option is not necessarily available on ordinary televisions.

Behind this ridiculousness is the insane decision to change not just the resolution but the aspect ratio of HD broadcasts. Why, you might ask? Very simple. If the aspect ratios were the same, most people could not tell the difference between standard definition and HD even when the broadcast was true HD, which often is not the case (older shows, and even some newer shows, are shot in standard definition.) So how do you convince people to buy HD anyway? By making it apparent that they have a “better” television set because it is wider.

And this has been done before. Back in the 1950s, when movie studios were seriously worried about the competition of television, they changed the aspect ratio of Hollywood movies, intentionally making them incompatible with the standard 4:3 aspect ratio of NTSC/PAL television. What is amazing is how well they managed to convince the public that a wider picture is better, providing yet another example of just how easy it is to manipulate people.

Battlestar Galactica

Television No Responses »

Mar 212009

I’m done watching the very final episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Wow. Now this is what science fiction television is supposed to be like. When I saw the pilot movie back in 2003, I simply wondered, how on Earth they could possibly make something this gripping out of the “re-imagining” of a cheesy early-80s space opera? But they did… and the show never wavered in quality. I am sad that it’s over, but I respect their decision to finish the show the right way.

Phony outrage

Economy, Media, Politics No Responses »

Mar 172009

This phony, populist outrage over the AIG bonuses is really becoming ridiculous. They make it sound as if AIG’s top executives just took the bailout money as bonuses and ran with it. But that’s nonsense. First of all, the bonuses in question amount to barely 0.1% of the bailout that AIG received. Second, there are managers and there are managers… the ones getting these bonuses, are they the top level managers responsible for AIG’s demise, or are they the managers running, say, a successful branch office of AIG insurance?

Of course answering these questions might require some investigative journalism, some thinking, some hard explaining… not the kind of stuff the soundbyte journalism of the cable news universe likes. Glad I am not going to be home tonight, as I will not even accidentally watch the populist tripe of Lou Dobbs on CNN as he, no doubt, will take his turn at expressing outrage. Now if instead of spewing indignation, he actually took the trouble of locating a typical AIG executive who received a bonus and sat him or her down for a meaningful interview… of course I am quite willing to bet that this is not going to happen, not on CNN nor anywhere else… with the possible exception being BBC News.

The stuff sci-fi fans like

Film, Pop culture No Responses »

Mar 152009

I’m watching a horrible movie (“Recon 2020“) and in an attempt to find out what it is about, I happened upon a Web page where I read this:

“Action packed lots and lots of monster killing. You know all the stuff sci-fi fans love.”

No. That’s not what sci-fi fans like. Or, at least, that’s not what this here sci-fi fan likes.

I grew up on the sci-fi of the likes of Asimov, Clarke, the Strugatsky brothers, Lem, or for that matter, Verne and Wells. Science fiction that contemplated the future of humanity, the role of science and technology, our destiny, the dangers we face, our chance of survival, our responsibilities. THAT’s what science fiction means to me. I don’t mind action and monsters, if well done it can even be fun, but no action or monster killing can make up for the absence of a credible plot and a meaningful story.

Philip José Farmer

Books No Responses »

Mar 022009

I just saw the news… Philip José Farmer, one of the giants of science fiction, died at the age of 91. May he rest in peace.

The Sylvia Plath effect

Books No Responses »

Mar 022009

I’ve been reading Wikipedia about the so-called Sylvia Plath effect. It takes a bit of explaining.

I just finished reading Escape from Hell, the sequel to Larry Niven’s and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno, itself a superb book, a modern rewrite of Dante’s hell. In this sequel, the principal companion of the protagonist is a woman named Sylvia Plath.

I must say I never heard of Sylvia Plath until this book. I knew nothing about her tragically short life nor about her death by suicide, a month before I was born in 1963. But that’s not why I was learning about her from Wikipedia this evening.

I finished Escape from Hell last night, less than 24 hours ago. Tonight, my wife and I watched the latest episode of The Simpsons. At the end of this (otherwise better than average) episode, there is a brief shot of Lisa holding a book in her hand. It’s the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.

One recurring theme in Inferno and Escape from Hell is that the protagonist meets just too many people he encountered in his earthly life for it to be a coincidence. I call such coincidences my Victrola moments… Many years ago, I played a Monty Python computer game which featured a Victrola, a word I never heard previously, but within 24 hours, I heard it in a completely different context. There were a few more instances like this in my life. Now, I can add Sylvia Plath to the list.

And the Oscars remind me of…

Film, Society No Responses »

Feb 232009

I don’t usually write about things such as the Oscars, as the topic leaves me supremely uninterested. However, it is hard to avoid it if you watch, listen to, or read the news. And I suddenly realized something, one of the reasons why I consider awards like the Oscars so irrelevant.

I probably wasn’t even in grade school yet (my guess is that it was the summer of 1968 and my family was watching the Mexico City Olympics) when I observed that there really are two types of sports. The results of sprinters, jumpers or weightlifters are measured by an objective standard: the reading from a scale, a ruler, or the face of a clock. But others, like gymnasts, are judged entirely differently: by a panel of experts who make subjective judgments of their performance. The ranking of a weightlifter doesn’t depend on which scale was used, as all are calibrated to the same standard; the ranking of a gymnast, on the other hand, depends heavily on the constitution of the panel of judges supervising the competition.

But what bothered me most is not that these differences exist, but that the world of adults did not seem to take notice. Grownups all talked about the Olympic gold of a weightlifter the same way as they did about the gold of a gymnast, as if there was no difference.

My disconnect with the world of grownups began around this time, I think. And, as my misgivings about the Oscars demonstrate, it has not ended.

Still mourning the CBC

Radio No Responses »

Feb 172009

I’ve been listening to a Hungarian public radio station, Radio Bartok, much of the day today. There was some serious classical music there, and by serious, I mean something other than what you would expect to hear from the Boston Pops. There was an arts news broadcast. There was a classic radio play (Ferenc Karinthy’s “Steinway Grand“, a hilarious “play in one act”). In short, there was culture.

Culture that used to be there on CBC Radio 2, too. Until it was at first slowly eroded, and then completely destroyed last fall.

I used to be proud of CBC Radio 2. Whenever I traveled, in the US or in Europe, I always proudly spoke of the quality of our public broadcaster. Alas, those days are gone. Now, I am just ashamed.

And annoyed. Annoyed because neither the CBC’s masters nor its critics really “get it”. The former demonstrated their utter contempt toward their listeners when they attempted to placate them with Internet-only playlists that have no hosts and no commentary, nothing that would give them life. The latter, by bemoaning the fate of classical music on the CBC, not realizing that a lot more was at stake; indeed, that many of the old programs that we mourn were not exclusively classical either, but had a well-balanced mix of music of all genres, so long as it was music worth playing, that is, to a civilized, educated audience.

No digital dark ages?

Books, Internet, Physics, Society, Technology No Responses »

Jan 272009

I’ve read a lot about the coming “digital dark age”, when much of the written record produced by our digital society will no longer be readable due to changing data formats, obsolete hardware, or deteriorating media.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the opposite is happening. Material that is worth preserving may in fact be more likely to survive, simply because it’ll exist in so many copies.

For instance, I was recently citing two books in a paper: one by d’Alembert, written in 1743, and another by Mach, from 1883. Is it pretentious to cite books that you cannot find at any library within a 500-mile radius?

Not anymore, thanks, in this case, to Google Books:

Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert: Traité de dynamique
Ernst Mach: Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung

And now, extra copies of these books exist on my server, as I downloaded and I am preserving the PDFs. Others may do the same, and the books may survive so long as computers exist, as copies are being made and reproduced all the time.

Sometimes, it’s really nice to live in the digital world.

John Moffat is not crazy

Books, Physics No Responses »

Jan 182009

“John Moffat is not crazy.” These are the opening words of Dan Falk’s new review of John’s book, Reinventing Gravity, which (the review, that is) appeared in the Globe and Mail today. It is an excellent review, and it was a pleasure to see that the sales rank of John’s book immediately went up on amazon.ca. As to the opening sentence… does that mean that I am not crazy either, having worked with John on his gravity theory?

The Piano Tuner

Books No Responses »

Jan 062009

The Piano Tuner

Years ago I went to a bookstore at Zurich’s international airport and picked up a book to read on the flight, Daniel Mason‘s The Piano Tuner. I began reading then, but I kind of drifted away, never finishing it, putting it aside after I got back home, I never even got halfway. The book was sitting, forgotten, on top of an ever growing pile next to my bed.

Until last week, that is, when I picked it up again. I had to start from the beginning, as I didn’t remember much, just the uniqueness of the story and its atmosphere. This time around, it didn’t take long to get to the last page… despite the 19th century feel and pace, it turned out to be a page-turner after all.

And an unlikely story it is, set in Victorian England, telling the tale of a shy, self-absorbed London piano tuner who gets the most unusual commission of his lifetime: a request by Her Majesty’s War Office to travel to the remotest parts of Burma in order to tune and repair an Erard grand piano.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who was mesmerized by Mason’s story. Now I hear that a movie is in the works. Not bad for the first novel of a medical student!

About leap years

Computers, Music, Technology No Responses »

Jan 012009

A full nine years after the Y2K bug was to end civilization as we know it, it appears that Microsoft has yet to discover leap years. It seems that many of their Zune music players died a premature death yesterday (though they’re expected to come back to life today) because they were not prepared to deal with years that are 366 days in length.

Not only is this a remarkable case of sloppy programming and quality control, it also highlights why devices with digital rights management are such a bad idea. They’re designed not to serve you, the person who owns the devices and pays for the content played on it, but to serve third party content providers who view you as the enemy. And you actually pay good money for such garbage?

This is why I have yet to purchase an iPod, Zune, or indeed, any other device or software that is designed to police my non-existent file sharing habits.

The ratings are in…

Radio No Responses »

Dec 292008

… and CBC Radio 2 is not faring well. After the cultural vandalism by its bureaucrats last September, the ratings of Radio 2 here in Ottawa are down by a full one third compared to the same period last year: in 2007, the market share of CBOQ was 5%, now it’s down to 3.3%.

The theory behind the revamping of Radio 2 was that by going for the lowest common denominator, pop music, Radio 2 will attract a bigger audience and will better represent Canada overall. What was forgotten was that it is not the mandate of a public broadcaster to be popular… commercial radio already does that. The public broadcaster should be the guardian of high culture (and if that sounds elitist, maybe it should be) not a promoter of pop culture.

The ratings prove my point.

Ratings of CBC RAdio 2 in Ottawa

By the way, some people argue that it’s wrong to promote music written by middle aged white men. (Not that the CBC was exclusively about music written by middle aged white men. I learned a lot about jazz, Canadian folk, South American music, African music, and more on the “old” CBC.) Anyhow, when I hear that argument, I feel the urge to respond by asking, are you also upset that science classes teach the physics or math of middle aged white men? That engineering schools teach the engineering of middle aged white men? For better or for worse, much of our world’s science and technology was developed by Europeans, and until recently European civilization was very male-oriented (some argue it still is.) This doesn’t change the validity of, say, Boltzmann’s thermodynamics, Einstein’s gravity, or Feynman’s QED. Why should it be different when it comes to music? Is the music of Beethoven less valuable because there weren’t that many symphonic orchestras in the 19th century (or even today) in sub-Saharan Africa? I don’t think so. In any case, if we think that an area of science or culture is dominated by middle aged white men, the correct solution is not to banish their contributions, but to make sure that they become accessible to others… which is precisely what the CBC is no longer doing. Now that’s real “elitism” in the most pejorative sense of the word.

Google News in Hungary

Internet, Media No Responses »

Dec 262008

At last, Google News is now available in Hungarian.

CNN and math literacy

Health, Mathematics, Pop culture, Television No Responses »

Dec 222008

This is not what I usually expect to see when I glance at CNN:

CNN and integrals

It almost makes me believe that we live in a mathematically literate society. If only!

The topic, by the way, was a British Medical Journal paper on brain damage caused by a dancing style called headbanging. I must say, even though I grew up during the disco era, I never much liked dancing. But, for what it’s worth, I not only know how to do integrals, I actually enjoy doing them…

Christmas songs

Economy, Politics, Television No Responses »

Dec 222008

The other day, David Letterman had a segment called The Ten Most Hated Christmas Songs. They were well known Christmas tunes with twisted lyrics. All of them were funny, but two I found especially memorable. The first said,

“Joy to the world, George Bush is done.”

The second one was really creepy:

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
“Nineteen-twenty-nine…”

Indeed.

Good-bye, Nurse Chapel

MUD, Television No Responses »

Dec 192008

Sad news today: at the age of 76, Majel Roddenberry, aka. Nurse Christine Chapel from Star Trek and Lwaxana Troi from Star Trek: TNG, has passed away today. My she rest in peace.

Her husband, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, passed away over 17 years ago, on October 24, 1991. That date is memorable to me for another reason: it was on the morning of that day that I became a wizard of Richard Bartle’s classic multiplayer computer game, MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), aka British Legends, a game that I have ported to modern 32-bit platforms nearly a decade later and that I have been hosting ever since.

Slacking off under KONTROLL

Film, Transportation No Responses »

Dec 062008

I was slacking off this morning (it’s a Saturday, after all) and I decided to watch a DVD that has been lying around my desk for months. It’s an award-winning Hungarian movie, KONTROLL. No, it has nothing to do with Maxwell Smart’s CONTROL, fighting the evil agents of KAOS. KONTROLL, a movie about the lives of ticket inspectors, train conductors, a serial killer, and other strange characters, is set in its entirety in the Budapest subway system. A subway system that becomes a world by itself, with no daylight, no sunshine, and no contact with the outside world other than through the anonymous masses of subway passengers. I read wonderful things about this movie (it has won a respectable number of international awards) and all I can say is that its reputation is well deserved. Wow! I was in the second grade when the first modern subway line opened in Budapest (the city has a single underground line that is much older, built in 1896, but the first line of the new modern subway system was opened in 1970) and the subway has been part of my daily life until I left Hungary in 1986. Still, I don’t think that after watching this movie I’ll ever be able to look at those subways quite the same way as before.

OPEC and last year’s Christmas tree

Economy, Media No Responses »

Nov 292008

I am sure this is a fine CBC journalist and her report about OPEC was interesting, but I do wonder: why did she have a dead Christmas tree (looks like leftover from last year) to her left in the background?

OPEC and last year's Christmas tree

This war is brought to you live by…

Media, Politics No Responses »

Nov 272008

Watching the pictures from Mumbai, I cannot help but wonder: when WW3 inevitably arrives, will we also be seeing live pictures and breathless news media coverage as major cities around the world turn into radioactive mushroom clouds and millions of lives are reduced to ash and smoke? Will there be a new Wikipedia article about the nuking of London, Paris, and New York City moments after they occurred, just as there is already an extensive article in Wikipedia on the 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks?

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