It is difficult to imagine the world back when it was so much larger and New South Wales was not just a state of Australia, but the entire known southern extent of empire and before one sailed over the edges of the world and dropped off the face of the Earth. Hughes does a tremendous job of doing this though, and making one realize what a terrifying prospect it must’ve been being transported, ostensibly reprieved from the gallows in London, to be shipped across the face of the world to its farthest extent to be slave to an assigned landowner. How the idea of Van Diemen’s Land, and the myths around its horrors could strike terror into the heart of even the most hardened criminal. Transportation fundamentally skewed the character of the development of Australia up until the gold rush in in the 1950s removed any terror of being sent Down Under.

Interestingly though, what comes out of the portrayal is that while some hardened offenders were removed from England’s shores, by far the vast majority of people who came here were transported for minor offences which, due to the unbelievably harsh Victorian laws of the time which made a capital hanging crime out of almost anything, were out of all proportion to their severity. Still, though the leg iron and the lash and corvée labour set the tone for the country from the First Fleet till the gold fields. Not to mention the terrors of the severest of penal colonies at Port Arthur and Norfolk Island. Frightening gulags beyond all humanity whose job was to grind souls rather than reform.

Also, even more fascinating to me are the things which I just didn’t know about Australia’s origins in general. How Transportation came about, the fact that criminal labour was essentially slave labour, the complete genocide of the Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land (in fact, the horrifying and terrible history of how the indigenous population was treated throughout transportation), the fascinating stories of the sometimes bizarre personalities, now venerated in the names of roads, towns, streets and buildings, who laid the foundations of the original colony and how things such as whaling and sealing were fundamentally more important than sheep raising to the initial colony, as well as just the general picture drawn of England as a colonial possessor and the distinction between nation building and a penal colony for the people living here. I tell you, it is a fascinating read (and I do wonder how many Australians even know these things about their own country).

Interestingly, for England, the System was supposed to do four things: sublimate, deter, reform and colonize. While it did reduce the criminal population in England, it could not remove the socio-economic conditions which made Britain so horrible (even today ) and so there was a steady stream of convicts to transport. Deterrence became less and less of an issue as the colony became more independent and a ticket of leave became a better chance than it was in England (hell, my own parents left England for much the same reasons) and up until the gold fields made Oz a a shiny beacon of hope for many. Reformation it could argued was perhaps making Australia the most successful penal experiment in the history of the world as people taught new trades and working off their debt to society made good on their ticket of leave and bent themselves to their own lives and in the low incidence of recidivism once people were expiated. And colonize it did, as the land filled out the the “jail of infinite space” slowly filled to become a dazzling land and the nation it is today.

A wholly incredible book and something I think everyone who is Australian or new to these shores should read.

And there couldn’t be a much better choice of first movie for me to see there. Zombieland is actually a pretty fantastic little indie film about a group of people who band together after the zombie apocalypse. It’s funny, bizarre, extremely well-scripted and quirky and heaps of fun to watch. Not to mention extremely quotable after seeing it.

Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee is inspired and you just so know he had a blast with this one, especially goofing around with Bill Murray.

So,

1. Go watch Zombieland if you haven’t already. If you have, favourite quote in the comments, please.
2. Go get tickets to the Moonlight Cinema in Centennial Park. If you get Gold Grass seats you get a reserved beanbag chair on the amphitheatre proper and a nice glass of wine to chill you out before the show

Absolutely incredible performance from Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa. God, it must be so fun to play bad guys with that kinda script material. And, I still have to admit I’m always kinda surprised at how good Brad Pitt is as a character actor.

Pretty good story, but a little too similar to the plot lines in Maria Full of Grace for its own good. Still, pretty solid rental.

It’s an interesting book. I, as always, love the way the man can tell a story and suck you in. He basically divides becoming an outlier into three different facets. You have to be smart, you have to work hard and you have to have (and capitalize) on opportunities that present themselves.

There are caveats of course.

It doesn’t matter how smart you are actually, or at least how much smarter you are than other people after a certain point. I found this one of the more fascinating positions in the book. What matters is that you’re smart enough. That basically, once you’ve managed to secure the smarts to get yourself through a post-secondary education, you’ve got the smarts to be an outlier. The break is at about 120 or so, I believe he said. Interesting. And also an excellent explanation of why smarter != more successful all the time.

Success means hard work. Everyone Gladwell studied worked hard. But true mastery, the difference between being an outlier and just making it seems to be that true mastery requires about 10,000 hours of practice. And ti’s practice that makes the difference. There is a clear bias from Gladwell that the stars just end up practicing more whether they be programmers, lawyers, musicians or athletes. Practice, it seems, really does make perfect.

The most interesting part though, and the one I try to avoid putting down to pure luck, is the idea that quite often, some of the most successful people merely had opportunities that others simply didn’t. A perfect confluence of time and circumstance that gave them the ability to rise in their respective roles… from the bias towards hockey stars to those born in the first part of the year, to computer billionaires that went to schools where computers were installed earlier than anywhere else, to lawyers that were forced to go into certain types of practice that then became valuable and profitable, Gladwell does weave an interesting case for being born under lucky favourable stars.

Still, it is a pretty easy, comfortable read. Your only problem after reading it is that you think you should be working on those 10,000 hours of mastery for something (and getting a little luckier).

These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we fucked up the end game.

I think the only disturbing thing about the film is the way the film kind of flippantly treats the way various nations were manipulated into providing arms to this struggle, with obviously no interest in the actual Afghans themselves even if they try and make it seem like Wilson cared about that in the end.

Def best film I’ve seen on a plane in a while.

Except for the special effects, a total write-off. Didn’t even make sense that machines would war this way.

Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Well, at least the female leads were attractive. Plus, the background for at least half the movie was Hong Kong, which is kinda cool when you’re flying towards it.

Sean Connery and Caine are two rogue, mustered ex-soldiers of the British Army in India who set off for Kafiristan (an actual place in the Hindu Kush once upon a time I was surprised to find out) to gun run and conquer the natives and come back with a ll the wealth such an endeavour would bring.

However, after a time Connery starts to go native after he is seen as the returned son of Alexander and has delusion of grandeur in civilizing the nation and being seen as an equal amongst the other monarchs of the earth (most notably, of course, Queen Victoria). Of course, his masquerading a god is eventually undone and the Kafiris kill him and crucify (though later release) his partner in crime who carries the tale (and Connery’s head) back to Kipling to prove the tale true.

It’s a great old-time and old fashioned story, not a little for the sheer hutzpah and over the top political incorrectness of the characters who probably fairly accurately portray (or caricature) the imperial conceitedness of the British at the time as well as of Kipling’s own (reported) lack of respect for the non-British subjects the Raj and other British imperial ambitions were “civilzing.” Anyhow, great film to watch and sucks you in surprisingly fast for an old adventure picture.

The storytelling was a bit more stretched than either Lock Stock or Snatch but I still enjoyed it, even if it was a bit more cliched (mostly with the stuff Ritchie created) and set iyself up for a Tarentino-esque part II.

Really, when I break it down in my mind he’s talking about belonging. Where do you belong really when you’ve been a part of all these places and they’ve been a part of you ?

And that ultimately, all this wandering is really just ultimately the search for home.

There’s definitely some interesting ideas I can identify with. I know myself that I’ve found some places I’ve lived to be loose, ill-fitting and uncomfortable while others have felt like a well-tailored suit that has complemented me handsomely.

Strangely, I’d expected his writing to be a bit more of a celebration of those with a la carte supra-nationalities, but for some reason, other than some kind words about global cities like Toronto where he sees this huge embrace and recognition of multiculturalism, I found his writing tinged with a certain kind of exile’s loneliness and melancholy. A low mournful tone of a pull across the cello’s strings that is majestic and deep but, for all its beauty somewhat sad and alone.

What you do get out of the book, besides a faith in the growing multicultural value of the world despite the dislocation it is increasingly causing for its inhabitants, and a bit more of compassion for the life of the exile (even those living within their own country) is the reassuring sense that, if this book has resonance with you, your experience is not unique and you’re really not alone.

Some classic scenes in here : Lee high kicking the park sign, the nunchuka, the wavey hand thing in his boss showdown with the Russian guy, and of course, the polishing of that signature fighting style of his. Gotta love it.

Submitted for your approval :

To its credit, the book actually deals with the problem companies have always had of hiring the best talent they can and goes over the idea of the puzzle as an employment test. Interestingly, the book also reviews the origins of testing for employment in general and in particular, the origins of the IQ test (which fascinatingly is how the modern HR department evolved – basically the administrative arm for administering IQ tests.).

The other most useful thing was the section on how companies shouldn’t hire which is probably the most valuable part of the book. Especially in the race for talent these days and in how you are going to keep it and how your corporate culture works, was a great little section. If you are looking for a job though, there is a nice section on how you should try to answer these sorts of questions if you’re interviewing somewhere that likes posing these things.

I do love the puzzles included though. Some of them which are very good and I’d love to incorporate them where they make sense into our own hiring to get an idea of how someone thinks and whether they have the right sort of mindset for some of the jobs (ie. a Fermi estimation, a design question etc.).

Also, I’m really happy that I did very well on most of the puzzles so figure, at least in a non-pressure cooker environment, I probably would have got the job. (my own interview with Google notwithstanding).

So, I’m not really sure why I liked Angels and Demons so much. I’ve never really been particularly fond of Tom Hanks as an actor (cept for Castaway/Seul au Monde) so that’s usually a big tick in the minus column for me.

For me though, there was some incredible personal resonance from my personal history about the entire film since a church-to-church run across Rome looking at the beautiful statues, particularly of Bernini was how I first experienced the place myself with my crazy ex-girlfriend who was doing her PhD in Renaissance Art History. And you have to love the Eternal City for its beauty, its history and the amazing people that live there. The film definitely loves Rome as a backdrop to the city even though it occurs in the Vatican.

So, I’m going to have to say I enjoyed this a lot more than Star Trek even though the two friends I went with gave it a “meh” rating.

But it’s just wrong with Star Trek. Don’t ask me exactly why but there is something decidedly off about messing with an origin myth of such epic proportions.

It’s like changing the starting point of the story from “Once upon a time” to “Once, when a ship from the future travelled back and created a new alternative timeline…” And c’mon, all the bad Star Trek episodes that involved time travel as a cheap plot device weren’t that great. Why rehash that ?

What it does give though is an entirely new slate for the new Star Trek franchise to play with. I imagine the sequel is already in the works. A totally changed universe where the balancing power played by Vulcan is gone and there’ll be loads more opportunities for exciting space battles.

I have to admit I loved the art direction on the film and the way they still made the sixties-esque designs be reminiscent of the old Star Trek while still seeming futuristic.

For me, Kuniyoshi has always been about the heroic mythology and ancient tales of Japan and China. The larger than life samurai, thieves and bandits, and monster slaying tales that wove Shinto and Buddhist gods, government censorship skirting, symbolism and tales of high adventure. Beautifully coloured and exquisitely detailed prints masterfully executed in woodblock and then printed for consumption by the popular imagination of the day. So, especially for the masha-e prints, I went to the RA’s Kuniyoshi exhibit with AS.

The exhibit has, besides an amazing collection of his most famous warrior prints, a stunning amount of his best triptychs, which were (much like his “crazy pictures”) a virtually unique invention of Kuniyoshi. One particularly good example is the vertical triptych portraying a penitent under a waterfall over three panes graced by a boddhisatva, vertically stacked, with only a rock and the water in the mid panel. It is a fantastic triptych though.

For breadth (and in case you don’t like samurai), there are a number of his geisha, landscape and actor prints, though for me, I found these much less interesting than the illustrated exploits of famous stories and near-mythology disguised as political and social commentary.

Which is actually one of the most interesting things I learned (despite an entire year of Japanese history and several months focusing on the ukiyo-e period where it was never mentioned); how Kuniyoshi was often commenting on modern political or cultural issues and subverting censorship blocks put in place by the Tokugawa government of the day. The Tokugawa shogunate was very sensitive to Hideyoshi (Japan’s second great unifier) who had risen from humble origins to become shogun, so there was a ban on the mention and representation of samurai from the “warring states” (sengoku) period before the Edo period.

The most amazing thing though, when you’re actually looking at the prints and if you’re familiar with any of the cultural products coming out of Asia these days, is the almost directly visible lineage between these woodblock prints and the illustration techniques and modern manga and anime books and films from Japan. Not only techniques, but visible tropes seem to flow in an invisible, yet obviously unbroken line most obvious from Kuniyoshi but present from the works of Hokusai and others during this period.

The exhibit was totally packed though, so get there early or, if you can, go on a weekday. The exhibit space is small (same space as the Chola Bronzes exhibit) and the only thing I can really fault it for is having people chock-a-block in it

Favourite lines in the film :

Striker: Do it for your country.
Logan : I’m Canadian.

Anyhow, was much fun to be all Canuck up in the cinema whenever there was a Canada slug for location or when they had the flag waving. Seriously, man… don’t mess with us Canucks. We don’t want to mess you up, but we will if we have to. Or you’re like evil. Cause we’re, you know… Canadian, eh ? And, um… just like Wolverine. The whole frikkin’ country.

Oh, and spot of the evening to movie buddy CG who spotted Canadian poker legend Daniel Negreanu as one of the poker players at the table when Logan meets Gambit. Excellent cameo.

I enjoyed the film, but can’t say if it was unfaithful or apocryphal to Wolverine origin stories from the Marvel universe. So, please don’t comment or send me mail if it was. I really have no idea. The movie was fun from what I know of the X-Men films. In fact, much better than all of them I felt. If you liked the X-Men movies, you’ll more than likely like this.