Month: January 2011

Linky Linky

Okay, so it’s clear this year is going to be a bit demented, yes even more than usual. Bloggery might keep on going. It does keep me sane some weeks. Linky will hopefully keep rolling on too, even though linky without the rest of the blog feels uneven. But, there are interesting things out there, and it’s just gone Friday, so.

Keith Ng explains the anti-wisdom behind the NZ govt announcement to sell state assets.

Alternate universe movie posters. Some of these I’ve seen before, many are new to me. Awesome.

Infographic on whether sequels are better or worse than originals.

Red Letter Media’s glorious analysis of why the Star Wars prequels failed as films has reached Revenge of the Sith. Watch it. It is a long watch, yes, but you can consider it a particularly enjoyable form of penance. (See also this lengthy (written) rebuttal to RLM’s first review – which seems to miss forest for trees, but YMMV)

Aliens invade postcards

The Dim-Post somehow almost makes me want to watch Jersey Shore

Here’s what’s really going on at microlending website Kiva – they reveal stuff worth knowing if you’re into this kind of “CauseWired” (ahem) net-enabled activism.

Batman vs the internet

Lovely appreciation of sci-fi corridors

And finally, aaaah nightmare

World Avoidance

Having a baby in the house is endlessly involving, and it’s a convenient excuse not to think about (and blog about) all the nonsense out there.

Like the NZ government announcing it’s gonna sell off big chunks of state assets that make reliable income for the state, simultaneously throwing away future money for a mere handful now, and pushing national infrastructure towards an unprotected environment.

Like the UK discovering that Clegg’s choice (of the shark’s eyes monster) has proved more destructive to the nation than anyone could have dreamed, as he and the Lib Dems enable an eager dismantling of the public infrastructure.

Like the US descent into broken politics continuing at rapid pace as the response to horrific politically-rationalised violence has been even more incitement to violence by political voices.

Like the fact that increased environmental disruptions are costing the world huge sums, and global warming predicted this and predicts even more to come, but climate change response is off the agenda completely after the embarrassment that was Copenhagen.

So I’m not going to think about any of that stuff. I choose to live in a bubble a little bit longer. I’ll play The Game with myself, and hopefully I won’t lose too often. My tiny little girl giving smiles? That’s all the reality I want to think about right now.

The Examiner

W-town’s got some new independent media: The Examiner launched yesterday. The mission is to “look deeper and think harder” which, in an era of frankly embarrassing daily newspapers, sounds worthwhile to me. It’s “peer-edited” and they’re encouraging participation from anyone nearby.

Sounds like a great Wgtn-focused companion to Scoop’s lively Werewolf monthly. Also, another good example of traditional media channels being challenged from the grassroots. Help it find its audience and take a look!

(Of course, this being W-town, two of the three launch articles interview friends of mine, and I know half of the listed contributors as well. Wellington isn’t small exactly, but it sure is densely interconnected.)

Bar graph fail

On Twitter, Jack said this:

Good summary of o’seas film production funding. We aren’t giving them money, we’re giving some of their money back. http://bit.ly/hRPBVf

The link goes to an article by Chaz Harris called Taxpayers don’t pay for movie grants!

This piece insults the “journalism” behind articles like this one from the Sunday Star Times:
Taxpayers fork out big bucks to movie studios

I read that SST article while in holidayland, and while it was rubbish in all the ways Chaz mentions, it was accompanied by a big infographic that amazed me so much I carried it home with me to blog. (Yes, I have a problem. Shush.)

This is the infographic (click to enlargenise):

Have a close look at those horizontal bars. You’ll note that the orange bar denotes “estimated NZ production expenditure” and the red bar “estimated grant”, both in millions of dollars.

Look closer at those numbers, and how they relate to the lengths of the bars. Pick an obvious one, at the top of the second column: Avatar. See how the red bar is half as long as the orange bar? See how the numbers for each are ~72 and ~11?

The proportions are out of whack throughout – the red bars are all about three times as large as they should be. The reds and the oranges are all in scale to other bars of the same colour, but the reds and oranges don’t scale to each other, even though weighting the red against the orange is the whole purpose of the graphic.

This image is credited to this guy, but I am loath to land him with all responsibility. This is an editing fuxxup. Very annoying, particularly because there’s already a lot of nonsense being bandied about on the topic. At the very least get your bloody bar graphs right. They’re not that complicated, really.

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Just back from the beach. Maybe someone already wrote about this. If they did I missed it because I was at the beach. It was good. This post excepted, I’m still on holiday from blogging this week. I haven’t even finished going through Jenni’s guest Friday Linky from two weeks ago or re-read the mall ninja stuff from Pearce’s guest the week before. I recommend both sets of linky to those who missed them due to holiday action.

(If anyone wants to volunteer to pull together a last-minute linky for Friday, give me a shout…)