Sent to you by D via Google Reader:
via "Les Confessions" by dante.fs@gmail.com on 26/12/06
I came quite close to completing one of those quiz circular things, but I thought that a different format would give far more opportunity to make click-clack sounds on the keyboard, which is obviously what I live for.And so here are my thoughts on the world's 2006 (rather than my own 2006).
World Events
Without looking, it is telling (and somewhat depressing) that I cannot remember much of what happened this year. Not that I've forgotten the events entirely, but this year seems to blend in with 2005, as if 2006 lacked its own distinctive taste. Indeed, I think that's probably the theme of the year. It might be because (as of now) I'm living where I was 12 months ago, doing the same job, and most other things are broadly the same in my life, so it's quite easy to mix the two together.
Beyond mere personal bias it probably does seem fair that most of the trends evident in 2006 were also evident (even if they didn't begin) in 2005.
After refreshing my memory there does seem to have been some consistent headings under which to mentally log most of the affairs.
- Environmental, energy and resource issues seemed to become important again.
- The Middle East continued to be the focus of world affairs.
- In the United States, the neo-conservative right seemed to falter.
- The Chinese continued whatever the hell it is they're doing.
- British and European politics remained utterly hopeless.
Ignoring the last point (which is more a "lack of theme" than anything else) the remaining points seem at least partially interlinked.
On environmental / resource politics, I'd like to give a brief story some of you may be familiar with.
In 1980 the economist Julian Simon bet environmentalist Paul Ehrlich that from 1980 to 1990 the cost of five key resources (copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten) would fall. Ehrlich would hypothetically stake $200 on each resource, recording how much he got of each. When 1990 arrived, prices were adjusted for inflation and depending if prices rose or fell one would pay the other.
The economist easily won the bet - the original $1,000 investment had lost a staggering $576 of its value. To take one example - $200 had bought 195lbs of copper which by 1990 had dropped 18% in value.
The wager is reasonably famous in economics circles and I remember my free market environmentalist professor finding the whole thing very amusing. Indeed, he thought it said a great deal about economics and the environment.
And in a way, it did. For a start, it tells us that environmentalists probably shouldn't bet economists on performance of financial markets. What it also tells us is that doom and gloom predictions on how resources are about to run out are rarely likely to be straight-forward, especially when you're considering commodity prices which are affected by a dozen factors other than the amount of copper left in the ground.
The reason I mention this incident was because this year the following three things happened.
- In April 2006, Copper reached a new high. Paul Ehrlich's 195lbs of copper (bought for $200 in 1980, about $460 in today's money) was now worth $614 dollars.
- The US Cent and certain types of British pennies became worth less in face value than the materials (copper, zinc) contained within them.
- People stopped dumping cars on our estates.
The first two are fairly self-explanatory but the third deserves a comment. When I started in my current employment a major problem was dumped cars. People who could not obtain money for their vehicles via scrap were being forced to pay to dispose of their cars and so were leaving them in areas where local authorities or other agencies would be forced to remove them.
The problem has now largely stopped. I can't remember when someone first mentioned this to me, probably in 2005, but it was something along the lines of: "Nah, we don't get any problems with that anymore, the fucking gyppos take 'em to the scrap yards now - they can get money for them now the thieving bastards."
Casual racism aside, this seemed an interesting development. Of course pundits were full of heard chatter that commodity prices were increasing due to Chinese industrial expansion but by and large my life does not heavily involve commodity markets anyway. But this was a real-world affect : the explosive growth of cities like Shanghai was indirectly leading to less dumped cars on peripheral estates in Orpington, Kent over five thousand miles away.
Of course the lord giveth, the lord taketh away. Abandoned vehicles are no longer a problem but copper (and other materials) have become so valuable that people are breaking into our empty properties and stealing copper pipes and hot water cylinders at an alarming rate (causing subsequent leaks and floods).
There have also been reports of people angle-grinding entire railings off, large stainless steel gates being carried away and even fire fighting equipment stolen for it's scrap metal value. What previously would not have been worth the effort is apparently now economically rational behaviour.
I mention all this copper stuff because it highlights one of the recent shifts in economics and politics. I remember as recently as 2000 people on television saying we had reached some sort of Zen post-material economy where everyone would work in tech and we didn't need to worry about mining anymore. True, most people thought that was bollocks even then, but while prices remained low no-one worried about it.
Now things have changed. While I certainly wouldn't rush to make any wagers on future commodity prices it seems likely prices will slowly creep up. The obvious example being energy.
While not as dramatically as with some metals, energy drifted upwards in 2005, a trend not really reversed this year. Indeed, in January 2006 one of the first stories was Russia increasing their gas prices to Ukraine (much to the outrage of various politicians who suddenly realised they were at least partially dependent on Russia). Coincidentally, 12 months on, today there is a story of how Georgia has just agreed to pay increased gas prices to Russia.
True, prices in Europe have improved recently, but much of that seems to have arisen due to an unseasonably warm winter which future years may not bless us with.
Energy prices are not just affected by demand but are more sensitive to instability (which obviously could affect supply). And in the major oil producing regions of the world this has not been the most stable year in history.
In Latin America, Molares fulfilled his promise to nationalise Bolivia's natural gas fields and in neighbouring Venezuala recently Chavez has won yet another mandate for oil-funded populism (much to the chagrin of the United States, no doubt). In Russia there have been steady moves towards increased national- control of resources (witness Russia's recent snub to Shell). In all three of these cases the theme is that supplier has much more scope over political measures like this than ever before. True, a lot of this depends on the overall demand for oil or natural gas (and therefore state of the world economy) but at least part of the reason is the state of the major energy producing region on Earth - the Persian Gulf.
Most obviously, there was Iraq. It's been apparent for a long time now, but by mid 2006 it seemed totally undeniable that the situation is nothing but a mess. It maybe that the United States eventually achieves it's long-term goals in Iraq (which might include splitting the country into two or three parts) but any possibility of "winning" the propaganda war has been lost.
Evidence of this is widely available but you know things are bad when even network TV shows like Family Guy, American Dad and the Simpsons all feel safe to openly criticise the war (albeit fairly tamely).
Overall though, little new seemed to occur in the Middle East. Iran continued with it's nuclear program and basically told the world they'd better get used to it, Hamas won an election which rattled the Israeli's and the US but doesn't seem to have gone anywhere so far and somehow, beyond all odds, Ariel Sharon (who fell into a coma on January 4th 2006 you might remember) is STILL not dead.
True, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death (and he lost his appeal today apparently) but instead of it taking place in the background of a stable and prosperous economy, it's taking place in a country where only yesterday British troops attacked a police station with a thousand troops.
Certainly, from the point of view of the American right the sentencing of Saddam seems to be too little too late. They, more than anyone else, seem to have been the losers in American politics of last year. The perception of a quagmire in Iraq and the reality of higher gas prices meant that the Republicans faced some losses to the Democrats in November and Rumsfeld (who had earlier in the year lost a Supreme Court case over Guantanamo) lost his job. Left-liberal satirists now feel comfortable writing ironic articles about how neo-cons were probably part of a Trotskyite plot to destroy American imperialism from the inside.
Of course, the left in America is still as anaemic as ever and can report almost zero advancement for the nth year in a row. The only positive development I can think of, which took place outside of the traditional left, occurred around the recent mobilisations in the Latino community - the peak of which involved demonstrations of more than a million people on immigrant rights.
The only other political development I can think of which came out of America in 2006 relates back to the environment. It was the release of 'An Inconvenient Truth' the movie featuring one-time Futurama guest star and former-vice president Al Gore.
Speaking generally, when thinking of the acclaim that both Clinton and Gore seem to have faced since leaving office I am reminded of the old joke about Gorbachev and the Communist Party : "He did something they never managed in 80 years : he made them look good".
Clinton I'm told apparently has some sort of Jedi-mind trick / Robe of +10 Charisma which explains some of the love he receives, but with Gore, the only rational explanation is that he and Bill were followed by Dick Cheney and GWB. I suppose if Gore didn't shoot anyone in the face he's already one-up on his successor.
Anyway, on the movie, I'm not 100% sure of what sort of reception the movie has faced internationally, but everything I've heard has been positive (I've not seen it yet so can't comment). Roger Ebert said :
"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.Which sums up some of the hyperbole I've heard about the movie.
The reaction in the UK seems to have been similarly positive and papers like the Independent have reached a chorus of mutual orgasm on the subject. Indeed, it fitted in with their general theme this year which seemed to be "Make every single front cover either about Iraq or the environment".
Which brings us neatly to British politics generally.
Including the Independent, the papers managed to cover six basic stories this year, if one excludes sports, PR hype and celebrity gossip (which now accounts for 98% of all articles). The six stories were thus :
- The government is shit.
- Crime is out of control.
- We don't like immigrants.
- We don't like Muslims even if they're not immigrants.
- Iraq. Oh dear.
- The Environment. Oh dear.
I am happy to say I do not buy a daily paper but from my sampling of papers found on the train every single story fits into one of those categories. The first is a non-story as the government are always shit, and crime does not seem to be fundamentally different from every other year (coverage occasionally get's more or less inflammatory and/or racist but that's about it). Iraq & the environment I've already covered.
What of the other stories? The immigrant story is interesting because I have almost no left-wing defence of immigrants (or immigration generally). The argument seems to be exclusively between Daily Mail readers and business people. What most people involved in such debate don't seem to grasp is that no matter how angry they get, while business supports further immigration, immigration will continue. This fairly obvious fact seems to have eluded most commentators though and as such, very little political movement has taken place there, despite many thousands of column inches on the subject.
General feelings of Islamaphobia seem to have continued although in the lack of a terrorist attack (so far) it's died down a bit recently. Wherever possible our execrable papers do their best to stoke the fires, recently mentioning that a suspect who may have shot a police officer escaped by dressing up in a veil to go through Heathrow airport. It than transpired that story may not have been true or something along those lines, but it makes you think doesn't it?
Helpfully someone from the Church of England recently said security forces should have the power to forcibly remove Islamic women's veils. As someone who has lived in a multi-cultural area all of my life I am certainly glad that people are finally taking on the menace that veiled Muslim women represent. For too long we, the silent majority, have suffered at the hands of this terrible clique who terrorise the average citizen. I mean, how many times have you got on the bus and there's a Muslim woman in a veil with a can of tenants larger in hand, threatening passengers and abusing the driver? How many times have you got on the bus and a group of Muslim women in veils have been loudly playing music to the irritation of all other passengers? How many times have a group of veiled women, coming back from a football match made your journey hell?
I could go on. You get the point.
Technology
Continuing my overall theme of this being "2005 Part II", I can't actually think of much that really happened in 2006 worth commenting on with regards tech. Speaking personally I'm using the same operating system, the same webmail service, the same forums and the same general technologies that I was using a year or more ago.
The top twenty of so websites I visit (in terms of frequency) probably only has one new entry (a private torrent site) and that certainly pre-dates 2005.
From the industry generally, the biggest tech stories of the year were probably :
- Google buying YouTube
- Nintendo releasing the Wii
- Sony releasing the PS3
- Microsoft releasing IE7 and Vista (sort of)
- Dell / Sony laptop batteries proving to be some kind of ordnance.
I am far from overwhelmed by any of these developments (although I've not used Vista or the PS3 yet) and the Google purchase was a business story more than anything else which represented no new technical innovation.
Still, it was nice that "user generated content" was in much of the media (so much so that Time's 'Person of the Year' was a mirror to represent the contribution we had all made...awwwww). There has been some drunken excitement about the future of media, but I'm pretty sure they're just reproducing copy from eight year old copies of Wired. What very few people seem to be openly saying is that if technology continues there's a good chances a lot of the media whores and their bosses will be out of a job within a decade or so.
Turning to gaming, I'm still not convinced by the Wii, the PS3 completely fails to interest me and more concretely the only game I played fully through this year was Capcom's Dead Rising on the 360. Which admittedly was rather fun.
Overall there was little that was revolutionary. iPods and other gadgets got smaller, internet connections got faster, cameras were more common (but still not very good) on phones and PDAs, wireless connections were more ubiquitous (although often unreliable), spam increased and the government continued to spunk money away on terrible IT projects. On the whole things moved in the right direction though, just not very fast.
Films and TV
I'm not going to bother talking about music here, because I rarely listen to new albums, so it's much more of a personal experience than a reflection on the industry. But TV's and movies are different. I see lots of new movies.
Or so I thought. Upon reflection though, I have actually watched precious little this year in terms of new releases. I didn't watch Clerks 2. I didn't watch Superman. I did watch X Men 3 but I kind of wish I didn't. I watched Ultraviolet and laughed at how poor it was. I kind of watched Underworld : Evolution but was too high to pay attention to what was happening.
Three movies I recall as not being particularly bad : Children of Men (which was genuinely good), The Prestige (which was quite fun although not as clever as it thought it was) and Right At Your Door (which was OK).
If that represents the entire output of Hollywood then it doesn't say much. True, I could watch the movies I missed (including Inconvenient Truth) but I've no real desire to either.
I give this rather gloomy appraisal to contrast with a couple of examples from television. You see, American television has been, for a few years now the superior of American movies and this year was no exception.
This is not to say that American TV isn't often terrible (King of Queens, Everyone Loves Raymond, How I Met Your Mother being three examples which spring to mind albeit all following the sitcom format) and is probably on the whole abysmal. Most of the people I know who have visited the United States in the last few years have said actually watching American TV is truly horrific. So many advertisements with so many terrible programs filling the schedules.
And I've no doubt they're right. But we're not interested in averages here. We're interested in the best. In 1977 produced Annie Hall, Eraserhead and Star Wars IV : A New Hope. Who cares if they also produced in the same year Smokey and the Bandit and the Exorcist II. We can forgive them for the latter, given the former.
The three TV shows I want to mention are Lost, Battlestar Galactica and Heroes.
Lost has received considerable criticism as time has gone on because, let's face it, it's complete nonsense and is the dramatic equivalent of a huge prick tease. But both those characteristics are fundamental to the show and while it has things which are hugely infuriating (characters who refuse to ask/tell each other anything and their story direction with some of the characters being two examples) I still very much enjoy it. Or at least, I very much look forward to watching it, which is the point. True, at times I want someone to pick up an axe and start giving out some justice, but even failing this it's easy to see it's superbly made (watching it on the HD projector is just a 40 minute tourist advert for Hawaii) reasonably well acted with at least some thought gone into writing when compared to the average procedural. It's possible it will disappear up it's own arse or have to finish suddenly when facing a drop in ratings but until then I'm very much glad it's on.
Battlestar Galactica I'm sure I've mentioned before, but is basically Star Trek done right. With reasonably modest production values and only about four recognisable actors (two of which are genre show mainstays Dean 'Al' Stockwell and Lucy 'Xena' Lawless for god's sake) it's at times the best drama show on TV. It's a sci-fi show which isn't always about changing the polarity of the deflector dish but how human beings would cope in strange and severe conditions. The show has received some rather irrational criticisms from some (e.g. semi-unhinged cancer survivor Dirk 'Face' Benedict who played Starbuck in the original) regarding the weakness of the male characters and the overall cynicism and anti-Americanism of the show which I'd reject fairly strongly. Obviously the show isn't so cringingly gung-ho as the original BSG but that's almost certainly a good thing, and outside of a few suicide bombing references the show is very much about portraying the humans as America as far as I can tell.
Finally, a new show this year was Heroes. I don't want to go on about this too long, it's relatively new, only eleven episodes in and there's plenty of time for them to ruin it. So far, it's brilliant. Yes, it's massively derivative (if you can watch a single episode without spotting at least ten sci-fi/comic book references per episodes then you're no geek) to the point where I'm wondering at times if they're paying royalties to anyone. But who cares?
The most direct thing I can say on Heroes is merely a suggestion you watch the first three or four episodes if you've not already. Then go watch X-Men 3 (very broadly they're similar in meta-story) and the latter (despite having a massive budget and some excellent actors) merely looks embarrassingly shallow compared to the former.
Which is why TV is increasingly superior to movies for action / drama. There are many hours in which to grow accustomed to characters and establish back stories. You grow to feel for the characters. There is just a wider canvas to work with.
OK, I'm done for now. Maybe before the New Year I'll say something about how I felt this year. If not, then enjoy New Year's Eve, whatever you do. I will most probably be at Slimes, just for a change.
Love,
D
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to "Les Confessions" using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favourite sites
No comments:
Post a Comment