Leftovers again. What movie/TV show of the 70s and 80s is least in need of a remake? The Omen? The Poseidon Adventure? Planet of the Apes? King Kong? Battlestar Galactica?

How about Clash of the Titans? CoTT itself was an unimaginative attempt to cash in (with a silly mechanical owl) on the fantasy/sci-fi bonanza started by Star Wars. (Even though it was done by Ray Harryhausen--a man who was doing swords and monsters while Lucas was still applying to film school.)

Part of the solution, or part of the problem?

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel--now chief of staff to President Barack Obama--who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation's mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration's pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.

Emanuel's Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his
political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret
either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his
money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and
Wall Street that have fueled the nation's current economic mess.

(Via Taranto)

Sado-masochistic rituals of the professional class: the conference. You endure the inconveniences of air travel in the early 21st century; you breakfast on bagels, melon fragments, and mediocre coffee; you enter the meeting room, and--promptly take out your Blackberry and start texting.

It is a commonplace that many people are nervous about speaking in front of crowds. Where are these shrinking violets at professional conferences? I have never, ever sat through a presentation where the presenter's nerves caused them to come under the allotted time. Everyone, no matter what their oratorical skill, goes a powerpoint slide too far.

Traffic. Driving from La Casa to the Princess today I passed at least four road construction projects. I'll believe the state is out of money when the orange traffic control signs disappear.

Last year after spring break rush hour traffic was a dream. This year there is no noticeable drop, and it might be even a little worse. Of course last year gas prices were about double what they are now. Markets do work.

Two things that make a father say, "Sure I'll stay home with the baby!'

1. Potty trained.

2. The Noggin channel.

Rule by the Well-Insulated.

(From Good Morning Silicon Valley)

New research out of UCLA suggests that what we call intelligence has a lot to do with processing speed, that processing speed is related to the effectiveness of the insulation on our neural wiring, and that the quality of that insulation appears to be genetically determined, although to varying degrees in different parts of the brain.

In a research project run by Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University in Atlanta, subjects were asked to make a financial choice between an immediate and certain payment or a chancy but higher paying lottery. Brain imaging showed that, absent outside influence, the evaluation process activated the circuitry associated with risk-reward calculations. But when subjects were first given advice on their decision purportedly by an economics professor and adviser to the Federal Reserve, the brain activity indicating critical evaluation disappeared. "I think this explains a lot, if not everything, about the current market situation," said Berns.

Hope and Change.

I hope we don't change into this...

Hungary, a nation of 10 million, has three million pensioners. Besides writing checks for regular retirees, the government gives special benefits to accident victims, the disabled, military and police veterans, mayors, widows, farmers, miners and "excellent and recognized" artists. The average Hungarian retires at 58, and just 14% of Hungarians between 60 and 64 are working, compared with more than half of Americans.

...

Hungary has run fiscal deficits for years to pay for social programs, and
its annual tab for pensions now surpasses 10% of its gross domestic product. The
government had sold bonds to finance these outlays. In October, investors
stopped buying them. The International Monetary Fund provided an emergency
bailout so Hungary could pay its bills. But many international investors have
pulled out of Hungary, sending the country's currency tumbling and darkening its
economic outlook.

Found stuff...

On Good Morning Silicon Valley:

Why advertising is failing on the Internet.

Universal newsreels on the net.

From the Gray Lady:

Sweden Says No to Saving Saab, a National Icon

From the blog of Barack Obama's teleprompter

Confidentiel : Barack Obamaa écrit à Jacques Chirac

The Gordon Brown thing, the Special Olympics thing, and now this. Frankly I expected him to be a little more suave.

El Gringo Movie Mania!

I finally saw Pinocchio for the first time. While it imparts an important anti-tobacco message, Gepetto's bizarre collection of clocks and the movie's unsympathetic portrayal of cetaceans force me to give a cautionary rating.

Twilight. Another caution to all dads: your teenage daughters will not appreciate one little bit lame vampire jokes done with a Bela Lugosi accent.

The nice thing about living in a small, landlocked city like El Mirage is that it limits the ambitions of the local politicians: no water parks, no trains, no mega-garages for mega-malls. So I'm disappointed when I have to read something like this.

The sad thing about moving back to Phoenix is that during my workout at the Y I will have to look out the window at the giant fishnet and think, "I'm paying for that."

Kids don't play "economic development director;" universities aren't known for their economic development programs; when I was heavily into this stuff I searched high and low, back to front for some theoretical or empirical work to lend some hint of science to the field. Instead, it seems mainly to revolve around fads, specious analogies, buzzwords, and flashy powerpoints.

And bits of folk wisdom like "Glom onto every source of sales tax revenue you can find." After all, what is the rationale of Glendale's gerrymandered city limits if not to surround every mall and ballpark west of I-17.

So I'm disappointed to read El Mirage's economic development director say: We are stable and financially secured now, but if we cannot grow in some meaningful way, we will decline."

Was Talton right? Are our city leaders so lacking in imagination that they can see no way to a higher standard of living except through continual development?

The article was disappointing, but the comments (14 pages!) were scary. Apparently, there are dozens of who have nothing better to do at 1:00 am than read the Republic's web site and append their semi-literate, vulgar, and mean-spirited comments. And these people look down on El Mirage! Hey, the only thing worse than living in El Mirage is living next to you guys.

Beach Reading. I've read the books by Cornelius Ryan and Stephen Ambrose, among others, and I've seen The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan, but I've never had a clear picture of exactly how a near disaster at Omaha Beach was turned into a solid foothold on Nazi-occupied Europe. Essentially it seemed that everybody was just getting shot to hell until Robert Mitchum or Tom Hanks stormed ashore, knocked out a key German position, and then on to Berlin!

Balkoski's two books provide the clearest account I've read or seen (almost company-by-company) of what happened on the two American beaches. Now I just need to find similar books on the British/Canadian beaches.

In his book on Utah, B. makes an interesting point about Montgomery. Even though he has been criticized has being a careful planner to the point of timidity, he is responsible for two of the most daring Allied operations on the western front: the airborne assaults behind the Normandy beaches and in Holland. It may be that the success of the former encouraged Monty to attempt the latter.

The book on Utah also jolted loose a factoid that had been sitting in the back of my mind: the American airborne assault took place behind Utah beach; which makes the plot of Saving Private Ryan even more preposterous. A patrol leaving Omaha beach to find a paratrooper from the 101st had just as good a chance of running across Adolf Hitler or the Lindbergh baby.

Start the revolution without me, the internet is down.

The students behind the occupation of a NYU student center cafeteria saw their protest end quickly this afternoon when, after university authorities disabled the students’ Internet access, they no longer could access their blogs to update their demands.

And another cautionary note of technological dependence.

Declarations of apocalypse flooded the Internet during a global Gmail outage that lasted a few hours. Some of the panic seemed to be contrived or tongue-in-cheek, but some of it also seemed like genuine terror, judging from the tweets and cries of "Gfail."

It's easy to poke fun at the gravely Gmail-dependent, but it's also a reminder that most of us are increasingly tied to the cloud. In California, the outage happened during the time most people were asleep. (Except the insomniacs who were tweeting about it.) But in London, it started at 9:30 a.m., which meant a loss of three or four hours of productivity. Google Apps were down, too, so the businesses that rely solely on Google's Web-based word processor and spreadsheets were out of luck.

Both from GMSV.

For the past couple of issues my alumni newsletter has become a venue to promote the books of, well, alumni. I wonder if they'll cover this guy's book.