Ron Moore

Moving from depressing and superficial analysis of the modern international relations to something much more fun. Ron Moore of DS9 and the very good Battlestar Galactica now has a blog. What a champ.

Lawfare is the best neologism of 2004

Lawfare is the best neologism of 2004. It just encapsulates everything that is wrong with the modern corporate state: an unholy trinity of the state, corporations and the law.

The curious thing is that the term was originally coined as a criticism of the International Court of Justice's decision regarding the Israeli 'fence'. I do agree that seeking an 'injunction' (for the lack of a better word) against a foreign nation-state is a form of lawfare; but to see it as the ONLY form of lawfare is just blind. It takes a degree of cognitive dissonance to claim that you are defending democracracies while being critical of the use of lawfare by other nation states. I think Kant theorises that liberal nation-states will never be at war with each other. I think he's wrong. Lawfare and its sibling, tradefare (which I just made up!), are the only two kinds of warfare that liberal democracies *can* wage against each other. America certainly uses international law to force countries to make large concessions to them in their trading agreements. I mean, the power of review they have over the 51st State (Australia) after the Free Trade Agreement.

I'd even go further and argue that lawfare is made possible by liberal democracies - because direct forms of warfare are actively discouraged by the construction of liberal democracies... kinda. Kant was very against conscription and believed that liberal democracies should not have large standing armies. America followed this policy right until Vietnam, after which they increased massively their standing army, and certainity the USes 'extension' of the tours of duty of those poor souls in Iraq amounts to conscription... but that's a digression. Lawfare emerges in a system dominated by liberal democracies, because its the only politically safe choice that actors - whether state, corporate or individual - have to achieve their wider goals. Lawfare is the new civil war and its just spilling over into the international realm.

To me, its just fait accompli that the United Nations would encourage the use of lawfare over warefare... thats the WHOLE POINT of the UN. One of the four purposes of the UN was "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" (Para 1 of the Charter) and it tries to encourage 'alternative dispute resolution' (hehehe) in Chapter 7. That this ADR would take the form of 'lawfare' is obvious... what other form would it take? Harsh language? To criticise the UN for encouraging lawfare over traditional warfare is an indirect attack on one of the founding purposes of the UN. Its an attack made by those who believe that the prohibition on war should be lifted. Much of the language espoused by the US and other state-actors like Australia, post Sept-11 has been constructed for that purpose... to put us in a state of perpetual unending war in order to make Article 2 and all of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter irrelevant...

Of course, the modern battlespace HAS changed and its not like lawfare is going to help stop Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. The whole problem with fourth-wave terrorism is that it its becoming 'open-source - a virtual network of unaffiliated global guerrillas. The neo-con warriors are struggling to grasp this new matrix of conflict. While they see that lawfare certainly WON'T work against transnational networks, they are failing to see that neither will traditional counterterrorist methods.

But, transgressing, that won't stop lawfare becoming the modus operandi for civil wars fought in and between liberal democracies. After all, as the terrorists disaggregate themselves, liberal democracies are becoming increasingly ruled by corporations (in the encyclopedic sense of the term).

Or something like that.

eLearny ja eLin

Gotta learn me up some eLin.Check out the results of a skilled colourist grading varicam footage using AE and eLin.

From this

to this:

Wow!

- From ProLost: "Why the hell would you use a visual effects compositing plug-in to colour grade your HD short?". Piccies are from the short One Weekend A Month (dir: Eric Escobar, 2004) which just screened at Sundance. They're used WITHOUT permission, so I'll takm em down if asked.

NB: It looks like he's managed to selectively defocus the background some more. No bokeh, so its probably just a slight blur, rather than any kind of edge-detection-min-max-blur... and he's done a vignette. I love vignettes. Fucking looks hot tho! I hope the acting and story is as good... though I sure it is, given it screened at Sundance and judging by the trailer.

As an aside, I am trying to be in the habit of asking people 'how were the performances?' when they come off a shoot. When people ask me how a shoot went, I usually try to talk about them [the performances] rather than the visuals. Most peeps
normally asks 'how does the footage look?' or 'how did it look through the lens'. and the answer is almost always 'hot'. Which is almost given. There are LOTS of talented image-makers on a set, but not that many talented performance-makers (usually just the actors). Asking and talking about performances post-shoot really gives one a sense of the shoots vibe, for better or worse... Perhaps that's why people ask 'how does it look?' cause the answer is KNOWN and doesn't challenge anyone.

BTW go read hdforindies.com. Always worth reading! But in particular, its post some first hand impressions of the Panavision Genesis - probably the first 'next gen' of HD cameras. Y'know, the HD Cameras that are REALLY going to give film acquisition competitions aesthetically (and indirectly emotionally) wise although not necessarily logistically.

McNipple

-- McNipple by Casey Weldon. Courtesy of Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting

Possibly the lamest track I have ever written

Written back in late 2002 for some reason or another. I wanted to make a cheesy 80s pop song. I should add some vocoder to it.

Hopefully this will work as a Podcast too!

If you wanna download the file directly, it can be gotten here.

UPDATE: It did work. Yay me! Or, more importantly, yay feedburner!

RSS 2.0 Feed

I've now created a RSS 2.0 feed of this blog, in preparation of (perhaps) podcasting. I was using atom before (and that is still going to work for whoever - if anyone - uses it), now I'm using RSS 2.0.

If you have an aggregator then point it to: If not, then get one! Syndication is going to take over the web.

Totalitarianism is the new black

When told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three American high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees.

Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

“These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous,” said Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study. “Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.”

The students are even more restrictive in their views than their elders, the study says. When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did…

It was also clear that many students do not understand what is protected by the bedrock of the Bill of Rights. Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It’s not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can’t…

-- Courtesy of Warren Ellis

Commentary:Well, what can I say? If you really want control over people, then you have to make them give it to you willing. No, not give - offer. Control is when people offer you their freedom. [Kinda like Russian and their communist nostalgia]

... and it seems that the unending 'war on terror' (itself a euphemism for a state of perpetual war) is causing just that to happen. I don't think its a conspiracy either. As I quoted from Steve Jobs (!) earlier... conspiracy is optimistic. The sad reality is that people are only getting what they want.

"Please take my freedom! No, seriously, I don't need it! Take it. Here, have my money too".

Date Rate Calculator

AJA have released a free data rate calculator for OS X.

Enter frame rate, format (including bit depth), frame size, audio sampling rate and bit depth and the program calculates the amount of storage required for a given amount of footage.

While it is intended for IO users, it can be used without their hardware attached. This is unlike Blackmagic Design's awesome Disk Speed Test, which requires BMD's hardware to be installed to run (which is very frustrating). Go Aja!

Highly useful.

Originally linked to by the Point, an interesting podcast on "Macs... Final Cur Pro/Post Production... Audio"

plus cá change, plus le méme chose

US Encouraged by Vietnam Vote by Peter Grose, New York Times, Sep 4, 1967

via John Robb's Weblog.

...a man has more genes in common with a male chimpanzee than with a female human being...

-- Richard Posner, paraphrasing Larry Summers (the president of Harvard) in "Larry Summers and Women Scientists" - a rather interesting discussion of some controvserial comments made by Mr Summers.

Interesting, in light of a discussion a few of us had with the Producer of the C.K. TV pilot [which we shot over the weekend] while we were enjoying post-shoot, um, games [Connect 4 and Boku. (! Lame = us )]. Jimmy Fenton's [the 1st AC] girlfriend, Rachael, got into the Digital Media course at UNSW and is considering a career in either mograph or compositing. Antigone, the Producer, suggested that Rachael may have a good chance of getting into either field regardless of her abilities because posties might enjoy have a pretty girl working with them. I suggested that her prettiness would be secondary to her abilities cause in high level post skill is everything... if you make a mistake, then the whole team takes the blame ("You're fucking up my movie!").

Soon, a slightly heated (actually quite tepid) debate emerged about the overall male-dominated nature of the film industry, specifically (camera) crew, and the differences between male-dominated and female-oriented sets. Antigone 'put it out there' that it was due to a kind of subtle misogyny in the film industry and speficially in the camera department. Dave Sattout, the soundie, and I thought it may be due to the fact that being on a film set is somewhat like being on a building site. That the actual *work* of being on a set appeals to men more than it does to women, for whatever reason that may be. Being crew is a caveman thing but with cameras rather than clubs. Whether that's a chicken or egg thing is open to debate. I mean, thinking about it, few of the women I know 'in the industry' actually work on set. Maybe I just have a small circle of friends?

Curious to what others think.

Iraq Elections:

Here's are some questions I have been asking myself.  What is the role of elections if the state is in failure?  If the elections bring in a new government that can't revive the state, what will that mean?  We need to remember that this election is going to be a demonstration of the value of democracy.  A failed demonstration would have negative consequences. 

-- John Robb's quick analysis of the Iraq election.

The comments on his site are worth reading (as his site generally)

Art should be free!

because people with day jobs tell us that art on the net should be free anyway.

-- Warren Ellis, in his insightful analaysis of 2004.

P.S. People from PixelCorps are linking to this blog, but I'm not sure *what* they're reading or why they're being linked her. Details appreciated.