Once an accident, twice a coincidence, or is it just stuff happening?
27 August 2013
Chance encounters, strokes of luck, the turn of a friendly card… Are these sorts of happenings, like say bumping into someone you haven’t seen, or heard of, in a decade in a country you’re visiting for the first time, really the long shots they seem to be?
An analysis then of chance, probability, and coincidence, such that it actually is:
The simple question might be “why do such unlikely coincidences occur in our lives?” But the real question is how to define the unlikely. You know that a situation is uncommon just from experience. But even the concept of “uncommon” assumes that like events in the category are common. How do we identify the other events to which we can compare this coincidence? If you can identify other events as likely, then you can calculate the mathematical probability of this particular event as exceptional.
Originally published Tuesday 27 August 2013, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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A guide to making a career out of looking busy in a job that is not a job
1 August 2013
Doing nothing is hard work. Constantly maintaining the pretence of looking busy is a full time job in itself, and for one American worker has virtually become a career.
Nine years later, someone calling himself the “forgotten employee”, still occupies, and is paid for, a role his employer apparently abolished very early into his tenure with the company.
So I arrived, acquired a large office in a remote corner of said facility, and continued with my march towards greatness. Then, something strange and wonderful happened. In outlook, an EMail appeared with my name in the “Courtesy Copy” field. Apparently, a new Vice President had decided to delegate the responsibilities that once were mine to another department. Immediately frightened for my job and my well being, I was tempted to scream out —yet, thankfully, I remained silent. I continued to come into the office on time every day, picked up the random pieces of my old job that were left scattered in the transition, and waited for the word. That, my friends, was 4 months ago to the day. After 30 days, I became convinced that I was a forgotten, non digestible entity in the corporate stomach. No man ever comes over to ask me for anything — although I am but a Manager, and Directors roam the hallways like rabid hyenas, I am much too senior to all of them for them to attempt an attack. Every once in a while, the phone will ring, and an old acquaintance will ask for help solving a problem — I gladly comply. Sometimes, I let the phone ring… but the voicemail light never comes on. They move on to the next target, under the false assumption that I am much too busy to be bothered.
I don’t know if this is for real, though I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it were, but there has to be a screenplay in it. The more you read, the better it gets.
(Some language possibly NSFW.)
Originally published Thursday 1 August 2013, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Give up and ghost the host, leave a party without saying bye
10 July 2013
When it comes time to leave a social gathering, sometimes people simply drift out the door without saying a word. It’s bad form for sure, but dispensing with what feels like contrived pre-departure small talk, might make for a more graceful exit. It turns out though the practice is quite widespread. So much so, it has been given a name, and has become known as “ghosting”:
Goodbyes are, by their very nature, at least a mild bummer. They represent the waning of an evening or event. By the time we get to them, we’re often tired, drunk or both. The short-timer just wants to go home to bed, while the night owl would prefer not to acknowledge the growing lateness of the hour. These sorts of goodbyes inevitably devolve into awkward small talk that lasts too long and then peters out. We vow vaguely to meet again, then linger for a moment, thinking of something else we might say before the whole exchange fizzles and we shuffle apart. Repeat this several times, at a social outing delightfully filled with your acquaintances, and it starts to sap a not inconsiderable portion of that delight.
Context is everything of course. We’re talking large events here, not small, intimate, dinner parties. That said, how many people here have first hand experience of this? Of ghosting? Yep, as suspected… I see more than a few of you nodding your heads.
Originally published Wednesday 10 July 2013.
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The Alcubierre Drive, a means of faster than light speed travel?
6 June 2013
Could NASA be developing a means of moving through space at speeds greater than light? Apparently so. The trick though to travel at speeds faster than light is to generate a space, rather than a craft, that exceeds light speed, and then slot a vessel into that space.
It’d be as if you were going down a water slide, or something, where the water is moving you, and you’re just along for the ride.
Traveling faster than light has always been attributed to science fiction, but that all changed when Harold White and his team at NASA started to work on and tweak the Alcubierre Drive. Special relativity may hold true, but to travel faster or at the speed of light we might not need a craft that can travel at that speed. The solution might be to place a craft within a space that is moving faster than the speed of light! Therefore the craft itself does not have to travel at the speed of light from it\’s own type of propulsion system.
Intriguing, if nothing else.
Originally published Thursday 6 June 2013, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Trailer for Before Midnight, by Richard Linklater, with Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
9 April 2013
Richard Linklater, director of Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie, collaborates once more with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke to make Before Midnight, the third title in the Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, series of films.
No word of an Australian release as yet (I heard 13 June whispered as a suggestion), but in the meantime check out the trailer. I can’t say what piqued my interest in these films since first seeing them on DVD eight or nine years ago. Eurorail maybe? Peneda-Gerês? County Bondi?
It looks like he missed the flight…
Originally published Tuesday 9 April 2013.
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Ethan Hawke, film, Julie Delpy, legacy, Richard Linklater, video
The island hut on the Drina River, an island paradise to call our own
18 March 2013
Photo by Tanja Mitrovic (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Forty-five years ago some people swimming in the Drina River, in western Serbia, decided that a small island in the middle of the river needed to offer more than merely somewhere to relax mid-swim. Eventually they went on to build a one room house on the rock-island.
Despite appearing to perch quite precariously on the island, the house is quite sturdy, and has withstood numerous severe storms and floods.
Originally published Wednesday 18 March 2013, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Single microbe theory, was it a bug that killed off the dinosaurs?
20 December 2012
The mass extinction that killed off ninety percent of animal, plant, and insect species on Earth around two-hundred-and-fifty-one million years ago, could be attributable to an ocean residing microbe called methanosarcina, thinks Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Daniel Rothman:
Called methanosarcina, this sea-dwelling microbe is responsible for most of the methane produced biologically even today. Rothman and his team discovered that methanosarcina developed the ability to produce methane 231 million years ago. While that ability came around too late to be single-handedly responsible for the link. However, mathanosarcina requires nickel in order to produce methane quickly. Nickel levels spiked almost 251 million years ago, likely because of a spike in Siberian lava from the volcanoes themselves. This indicates that methanosarcina was directly responsible for producing the methane that killed off an overwhelming majority of the Earth\’s species.
Bound to be hotly disputed but will surely make for a talking point or two over the year-end break.
Originally published Thursday 20 December 2012.
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Liberal Arts, a film by Josh Radnor, with Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Jenkins
10 December 2012
Say what you will about Liberal Arts degrees, ridiculed by some as glorified courses in general knowledge that effectively leave students without a real education, but like it or not, life, or the university of hard knocks, eventually makes degree holders out of us all. Even if our alma mater is one we never really graduate from.
This is something Jesse (Josh Radnor), discovers in Liberal Arts, trailer, also Radnor’s second directing effort following 2010’s Happythankyoumoreplease, when he returns to his former college for the retirement dinner of Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins), a professor he greatly respected during his days as an under-graduate.
Now 35, trapped in a job in New York that offers no fulfilment, and single again after another woman walked out on him, Jesse is delighted to be back on his leafy old stomping ground, at Ohio’s Kenyon College, once more. While dining later with friends of Peter’s, Jesse meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), a 19 year old sophomore at the university.
In the days and weeks that follow, Jesse and Zibby discover, despite their age difference, that they have numerous shared interests through the hand written letters they exchange after Jesse returns to New York. And while both realise that a romantic attraction is forming, Jesse is reluctant to be any more than a friend to Zibby.
It is the reticence to see Jesse and Zibby, who, when in her element, appears to be wiser to the world than her older would-be beau, form a serious relationship, that takes away much of the substance Liberal Arts could have had. The question is though, was this out of a fear of offending certain viewer sensibilities, or not?
Otherwise Radnor’s second feature, even if it gets a little muddled along the way, bestows something of a general knowledge education in itself, and of course more, even if it regards so-called May to December romances as unheard of. But you haven’t lived, or languished, unless you’ve studied the Liberal Arts, and dated beyond your years, and that much it gets right.
Originally published Monday 10 December 2012, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Face to Face, a film by Michael Rymer, with Matthew Newton and Luke Ford
12 September 2012
Face to Face (trailer), a drama, is the latest feature of Australian film director Michael Rymer (Perfume, Queen of the Damned), who also produced the Battlestar Galactica TV shows from 2003 to 2009. Face to Face is Rymer’s film adaptation of the play of the same name, written by Queensland based playwright David Williamson, in 2000.
Face to Face traces the proceedings of a community conference, a trial scheme that takes minor matters out of the court system, and brings together all who are party to a dispute. The process allows everyone to tell their side of the story, under the auspices of a moderator, who later drafts a resolution that binds on all involved.
Wayne (Luke Ford), a former employee of a Melbourne scaffolding company, is a hot headed young man who lost his job as result of violent outbursts and inappropriate conduct in the workplace. Luke finds himself before a community conference after ramming his ute into the car of ex-boss, Greg Baldoni (Vince Colosimo).
Wayne is supported by his mother Maureen (Lauren Clair), and best friend Barry (Josh Saks). Meanwhile Greg’s wife Claire (Sigrid Thornton), Julie (Laura Gordon) his secretary, Therese (Ra Chapman) the accountant, Richard (Chris Connelly) the foreman, and Hakim (Robert Rabiah) a worker, turn out for the company.
As the conference progresses though, Jack (Matthew Newton) who is moderating, often struggles to control tensions in the room. As the complicated series of events that led to Wayne’s outbursts work their way to the surface, tempers fray and emotions erupt, but it becomes clear there is far more to his actions than meet the eye.
For a drama that for the most part features ten people sitting in just one room for almost ninety minutes, Face to Face is utterly compelling. The key to this intrigue lies in both its strong characters, the ceaseless allure of gossip, together with the voyeuristic pleasure of witnessing people’s dirty laundry being aired in public.
In opening a can of worms that leaves just about everyone present embarrassed to a greater or lesser degree, Face to Face is a reminder that there are always two sides, maybe more, to every story. Robust performances, solid scripting, together with a deprecating humour, combine to create intense, gripping, fly on the wall style drama.
Originally published Wednesday 12 September 2012.
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Takeaway coffee cups that let you have your cake and eat it
30 July 2012
I’m all for reusable takeaway coffee cups, or keep cups, in principle, after all we should be trying to conserve resources whenever possible. Thing is I’m not always carrying mine — if I can even find it some days — so the question remains, how not to be too wasteful while still ordering take out coffee, or your beverage of choice?
Edible coffee cups however, as designed by Enrique Luis Sardi, and made from biscuit, or cookie mix, with a sugar icing lining that stops the coffee steeping away, may be the solution.
If these cups could also be made with other food stuffs, such as say banana or raisin bread, then we might be able to significantly cut back on single-use disposable cups.
Originally published Monday 30 July 2012.
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