Need to know today’s Zombie Threat Level? Then this site might come in handy.

Ah, Wanchai should be safe tonight.

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How old is your brain? Since this site is in Japanese, I wasn’t quite clear on the instructions for this game and scored 37 years old the first time, which ain’t too bad. Once I understood the rules, I scored 25. Is there any scientific basis for this? Buddha knows.

(The screen will display several random numbers for one second. Then the screen clears, the numbers are replaced with circles, and you have to click on the circles in ascending order of the numbers previously displayed.)

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You watching Mad Men? (If you’re not, you should – it is clearly the best written show on American TV at the moment.)

If you are and you want to live your life like Don Draper, submit your questions to What Would Don Draper Do?

23. Dear Don Draper, I was thinking about getting the 3G iPhone. Thoughts?

Stop thinking about it as a phone with a touch screen. Start thinking about it as a way to touch each other.

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I don’t care what anyone else says. I think this is a contender for Worst Movie Title Ever. (Just announced: theme song to be sung by Jack White and Alicia Keys. Hasn’t history proven that singing the theme song in a Bond movie is a career-killer?)

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George Lucas has been talking releasing a 3-D version of the Star Wars movies. And an Indiana Jones 5 movie. He officially ran out of ideas about 25 years ago. Someone stop him before he destroys all our happy movie memories!

Ah, thank you!

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So Cuil? Not. Everyone likes the idea of them having images associated with the search results. Helps if the images associated aren’t randomly chosen. Still a few bugs in the system.

From The Independent, via Rebecca Mackinnon:

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will launch an inquiry into internet censorship in China after accusations that Beijing was failing to live up to its promises guaranteeing unrestricted online access.

Furious reporters are finding that their internet access is inadequate. Attempts to use the network to access the website of Amnesty International, which has just released a damning report on human rights in China, proved fruitless yesterday.

There was also an embarrassing moment for the Chinese when one journalist whipped out his laptop at a news conference to show how sites including the BBC’s China service fell foul of the Great Firewall of China. Suggestions that it was a technical problem were laughed off.

China has promised to allow the 20,000 accredited journalists the same working conditions they enjoyed at previous Games.

The IOC’s press chief, Kevin Gosper, said he would investigate any apparent efforts to interfere with the reporters doing their jobs.

All taken care of, right? Ahhhhh, not so much.

From the NY Times today:

The Chinese government has confirmed what journalists arriving at the lavishly outfitted media center here have suspected: contrary to previous assurances by Olympic and government officials, the Internet will be censored during the upcoming Games.

The International Olympic Committee quietly agreed to some of the limitations, according to a press official, Kevin Gosper, the Reuters news agency reported. Mr. Gosper told Reuters on Wednesday that he had only just learned of the agreement. Sandrine Tonge, the I.O.C. media relations coordinator, said the organization would press the Chinese authorities to reconsider the limits.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened on Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan succession, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

A government spokesman initially suggested the problems originated with the site hosts, but on Wednesday, he acknowledged that journalists would not have unfettered Internet use during the Games, which begin Aug. 8.

…

In the past, both the Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee have suggested that the 20,000 journalists covering the Games would have full Internet access. As recently as two weeks ago, Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic committee president, proclaimed to Agence France-Presse: “For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”

I love that next to last paragraph above, so typically China – lie about it as long as you can.

Basically, China promised the IOC everything it asked for. And then it reneged on all those promises because the Olympics are a week away and what is the IOC going to do about it? I mean, what is a promise anyway, just words, right? Why were there so many people who didn’t want China to get the Olympics? Why are there so many people hoping the event is a colossal failure?

But the one thing you can’t call China is “stupid.” They knew what they were doing all along. If anyone comes out looking stupid from all this, it’s the idiots running the IOC who get that tag, for believing whatever they were told and for not having proper safeguards in place in case covenants were broken, as they clearly have been, over and over and fucking over again.

Incidentally, here is Amnesty International’s statement on the censorship:

In reaction to the IOC statement, Mark Allison, East Asia researcher for Amnesty International said: “The International Olympic Committee and the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Olympic Games should fulfil their commitment to ‘full media freedom’ and provide immediate uncensored internet access at Olympic media venues. Censorship of the internet at the Games is compromising fundamental human rights and betraying the Olympic values.

“This blatant media censorship adds one more broken promise that undermines the claim that the Games would help improve human rights in China,” said Mark Allison.

Expect the Chinese government to either keep quiet or blame westerners for meddling their internal affairs. And Lee Kuan Yew from his pulpit in Singapore will once again sermonize about how western democracy and freedoms don’t apply to Asia.

Here’s a link to the Amnesty Report, People’s Republic of China: The Olympics Countdown – Broken Promises.

With the Olympics less than two weeks away, it is time to assess progress made by the Chinese authorities to improve human rights in line with their own commitments made in 2001 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose Beijing to host the Games. Regrettably, since the publication of Amnesty International’s last Olympics Countdown report on 1 April 2008, there has been no progress towards fulfilling these promises, only continued deterioration. Unless the authorities make a swift change of direction, the legacy of the Beijing Olympics will not be positive for human rights in China.

……

In fact, the crackdown on human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers has intensified because Beijing is hosting the Olympics. The authorities have stepped up repression of dissident voices in their efforts to present an image of “stability” and “harmony” to the outside world. This has resulted in the detention and imprisonment of those who wish to draw attention to the other side of the picture, which includes human rights violations perpetrated in preparation for the Games.

…

The IOC’s diplomatic, non-public approach on human rights cases and issues does not appear to have yielded significant results. International pressure from other governments for human rights reform has also been insufficient, sending a message that it is acceptable for a government to host the Olympic Games in an atmosphere characterised by repression and persecution. The danger now becomes that after the Olympic Games these patterns of serious human rights violations may continue or intensify with even less attention paid by the international community than has been the case so far.

I ain’t watching this shit, I ain’t buying tickets, I ain’t buying souvenir merchandise.

Only if your definition of “Truly Asia” is “racist and corrupt.”

I don’t think I can begin find the words that express my disgust for current events in Malaysia. And no, it’s not just because my (second) ex-wife is from there – my ex remains fiercely in love with the country of her birth, even though she’s left it, and I’ve never really been able to understand why. There is so much bigotry and prejudice there, so much corruption in the government

Perhaps if Malaysia was a shit hole, then I wouldn’t much care. But it’s a beautiful country with great cities, amazing spots to visit like Cameron Highlands and Penang, some of the most delicious (and cheapest) food in the world. But it’s run by a bunch of thugs and goons who hide behind religion to enact laws that make 40% of its population into second class citizens.

The almost simultaneous scandals with Najib and Anwar and the differences in how they are being handled speaks to the utter venality of the troglodytes in charge of the country.

Anyway, no one in the world seems to care that much. I rarely see this in the NY Times, never see it in the SCMP. I’m sure there are many bloggers covering this, though I only see regular coverage in two of the sites I follow.

There is of course great current coverage over in Asia Sentinel, starting with this recent post:

It is about time for Malaysia to drop the charade. Attempting to convict opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim of forcible sodomy is an embarrassment in contrast with the completely ignored and much more serious allegations linking the deputy prime minister to the execution-style murder of his reputed former girlfriend.

and also:

Malaysia’s Najib Ducks a Court Appearance

Besides allegations that Altantuya was the lover of both men, the case has raised additional concerns of corruption. The Mongolian woman was the translator on a controversial transaction in which Malaysia, with Najib as defense minister, paid €1 billion for French submarines, netting a company tied to Abdul Razak US$111 million in “commissions.”

Bringing Najib to Malaysia’s Witness Stand:

The government’s response to this affidavit has been most disappointing. It not only failed to set up an independent panel to probe the contents therein as required in any country with rule of law, but not even the police or the prosecutors have shown any seriousness to investigate these alarming revelations. And now the latest, a flat rejection by the court to entertain Karpal’s motion through concerted objection by all participating legal officers who have sworn to uphold the law – prosecutors, defence lawyers and the judge.

Were The Anwar Sodomy Charges Faked?

The doctor who examined a 23-year-old male aide allegedly sodomized by Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim found no evidence of tearing or scarring that would indicate penetration, according to a medical report leaked to local journalists.

Anwar Arrest Looms in Malaysia

Barely two days after a medical report surfaced that appeared to clear opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim of sodomy allegations made by a former aide, a news Web site aligned with Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi declared that “police have completed their investigations” and will soon charge Anwar over the allegations.

Talkin’ About My Revolutions, a Singapore based blog/ezine that’s primarily about music, also gives frequent coverage to their neighbors to the north. Yeah, okay, Malaysia and Singapore haven’t exactly been best pals in the last forty years. Still, when you think about it, how fucking low has Malaysia gotten that they have succeeded in making the government in Singapore look good? (TAMR coverage is via posting excerpts from other blogs – I’ll link to the TAMR site and you can follow the links from there.)

Tale of Two Medical Reports

I am a goverment doctor in the rank of consultant working in hospital Kuala Lumpur. I know personally the doctors who examined Saiful on that day -28 June 2008.

The so called medical report mentioned in the NST is a fabrication or imagination by the UMNO paper. There is no such medical report submitted to the polis yet.

When examine Saiful, the specialist could not find any signs of Saiful being sodomised. Saiful was very cheerful, unlike real sodomised patient who will usaually very sad and disturbed. Saiful was subsequently admitted to the ward and observed for a day. He was completely well in the ward and not emotionally disturbed.

Doctor on the Run

The doctor’s report says it very clearly. Saiful was never sodomised, either by Anwar or anyone else. If so, Raja Petra Kamarudin of Malaysia Today asks: “Why is the government still pursuing the case against Anwar? And why are they looking for the doctor who has now gone underground with his whole family?” The medical report was first leaked on Malaysia Today and was subsequently spread by bloggers. After the Malaysia Today exclusive, the site was down for a period of time on July 28, 2008 – one cannot rule out the possibility of an online attack.

Listening to Starfish by The Church today. One of my all time favorite albums. I remember seeing them at the Bottom Line in NYC in 1990 when this album came out. Killer freaking show. I had good friends working at Arista Records at the time and they told me later that the band was sitting backstage before the show, well aware that the audience was packed with industry types, and determined to go out and show them that they were the best band on the planet. And that night, they did.

Anyway, here’s the lyrics to side 1, track 1, Destination. No freaking idea what this song’s about but always liked the “It’s not a religion” bridge and after yesterday’s and today’s record fucking pollution combined with Buddha-awful heat, the last verse seems kinda appropriate.

Our instruments have no way of measuring this feeling
Can never cut below the floor, or penetrate the ceiling

In the space between our houses, some bones have been discovered,
But our procession lurches on, as if we had recovered.

Draconian winter unforetold.
One solar day, suddenly you’re old.
Your little envelope just makes me cold,
Makes destination start to unfold.

Our documents are useless, or forged beyond believing.
Page forty-seven is unsigned, i need it by this evening.
In the space between our cities, a storm is slowly forming.
Something eating up our days, i feel it every morning.
Destination, destination.

It’s not a religion, it’s just a technique.
It’s just a way of making you speak.
Distance and speed have left us too weak,
And destination looks kind of bleak.

Our elements are burned out, our beasts have been mistreated.
I tell you it’s the only way we’ll get this road completed.
In the space between our bodies, the air has grown small fingers.
Just one caress, you’re powerless, like all those clapped-out swingers.
Destination, destination.

What were the skies like when you were younger? There were these little fluffy clouds ….

Following my post on the new search engine, I enjoyed this piece by John Paczkowski, who not only knocks them down a few pegs for their poorly chosen name but also discovers that if you do a search at cuil for “cuil” – well, you’d think they’d show up in the first page of their own result set, but nope, they don’t. Oops.

Meanwhile someone over at CrunchGear discovered that if you make a mistake in typing cuil and accidentally type culi you end up at an Italian porn site.

I still like their privacy policy and also their approach to displaying result sets, but clearly there’s more work to be done there.

One of the comments to this previous post was:

That used to bug me on the jailbroken version, too.

I think it might be that it now knows that +852 9… and 9… are the same, hence gets confused because it doesn’t know which of the two to display.

Before adding a third variation, I’d delete the second variation and leave only the +852 one, and try again.
Seems to work for me.

Thanks Fab for the suggestion. I tried it, going through my phone book and having just one entry with +852 for all HK contacts.

This afternoon I received 2 SMS’s in quick succession – one from my gf, one from my helper. The former displayed the name just fine. The second had just the phone number with 852 but no +. So it seems to me that I’m getting different results based on people calling me from different networks? Frustrating!

Like others, now that I’ve filled my iPhone up with apps from the App Store, I’m seeing a noticeable lag time when switching screens or bringing up apps. On Saturday, the Bloomberg app crashed my phone, causing a reboot.

Needless to say, this was not my experience with my old iPhone and I certainly hope Apple is working on OS updates to address this.

Cuil launches today. They claim to index 3 times more pages than Google and there are lots of former Googlerites working here.

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. The Internet has grown. We think it’s time search did too.

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

I don’t know how to pronounce “cuil.” (I’m sure someone will comment on that.) I can barely spell it. Will the odd (to me) name put a brake on their mass acceptance?

From TechCrunch:

Much of the secret sauce of Cuil is in the way they index the web and handle actual queries by users. Both are costly to scale, and Cuil claims to have found a way to massively reduct those costs. That allows them to run the search engine a lot cheaper, even at Google-scale should it ever reach that point. By some estimates, Google spends a billion dollars a year to run the back end infrastructure of it’s search business.
…
Cuil is experimenting with a new type of search interface as well. Results are shown in three columns and contain an image and more summary text than existing search engines. In addition to refinement by category, Cuil will recommend related searches via tabs across the top of search results. A search for New York, for example, also has tabbed results for recommended refinements like New York Times, New York City, New York Yankees, etc.

Perhaps most important of all:

Cuil also says that they will put user privacy at the top of their business objectives. User IP addresses are not recorded to their servers, they say, and cookies are not used to associate a computer with queries. The data is simply dumped as it is created. That means user data cannot be turned over to others…

Side note: I did a search for “hongkie town.” My result set only yielded other links to this blog, no pages from this blog itself, until I turned safe search off. Huh!

Sobleizer thinks that they’re not in it for the long haul, that they’ve launched to prove their new search technology and hoping to get bought by Microsoft.

Went to see the Batman movie for the 2nd time last night. My friend wanted to see it and I could have shown her the halfway decent pirate copy I’d downloaded but in this case thought the movie was good enough that she should see it on the big screen first. Not that screens in Hong Kong are exactly big.

I did want to go see the Imax version, but for the next week, the only seats available for night time shows are front row. One of my staff actually took a day off so he could take his kids to see it on the Imax screen during the day time. We went to Times Square.

Dark Knight grossed $76 million in its second weekend in the US. So now it’s not just the largest opening day and opening weekend ever, it set a record for making US$300 million in ten days. It’s still rolling out internationally and it looks set to become one of the top ten grossing films of all time. It ain’t perfect but it is extremely good for a movie adapted from a comic book.

About 20 minutes before the end of the film, a woman sitting across the aisle from me started playing with her Crackberry. You couldn’t help but notice the bright light in the dark theater. And then she dropped it. The floor under the seats is completely smooth and on an angle, so it slid forward about 3 rows. She finally got her boyfriend/husband to call the number so it lit up and started flashing under someone else’s seat and she could find it. Not too distracting.

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Over at work, where any distraction would be an improvement, an interesting collection of subject headers on spam emails trying to get my attention. Some of the better ones include:

• Apple nosedives on Jobs’ death
• First pictures of Pitt and Jolie’s babies
• Guy Ritchie declares marriage “over”
• Latest twist on gay marriage policy
• McCain diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
• New Osama video aired
• Osama caught sodomizing lieutenants
• President Bush legalizes gay marriages
• UFO sighting in downtown NY
• [video] Hillary Clinton is hangin tough

and of course

• Cant Believe I Anal Fucked My Girlfriends Sister
• Cherry Peitite (sic) Gets Fucked Hard By Her Friend
• Gorgeous blonde violently fucked doggystyle
• Hot lesbian slut gets punished by her girlfriend for fucking another guy!
• Young newlywed teen couple fucks for cash while they get filmed

Yes, I know, the above five lines are going to mean that this blog will end up in the result set for some unusual searches.

Standing in my garden, watching the storm come in, felt like slow motion. The winds were whipping up everything, trees and bushes swaying like lumbering monsters, the Sai Kung sea all whitecaps as the boats were speeding for shelter. Then the lightning, very distinct bolts coming down very close to the house. After ten minutes, the rain came. And it’s coming down in buckets.

The good news is, the surge suppressors I bought after the last storm are working!

Start of a new regular feature here? Don’t know, we’ll see.

One thing I’ve noticed on the weekly Amazon lists is that most of the top sellers – including advance sales for upcoming releases – are TV series. This of course points to just how weak theatrical releases were in the first quarter of this year. The end of September is when the hot summer releases will start rolling out, starting with Iron Man. Amazon lists 527 new releases for July 29th; which ones have caught my attention?

Rolling Stones – Shine a Light – Martin Scorsese revolutionized the concert film in 1976 with The Last Waltz by hiring top cinematographers to man the cameras and lighting the stage for film instead of for a concert. Now he’s back with this film of a Stones charity gig at the 3,000 seat Beacon Theater in New York City. Special guests include Bill Clinton, Jack White and Christina Aguilera. Haven’t had a chance to watch the entire thing but the bits I’ve watched are really good.

Dark City – Directors Cut – I’m not familiar with this film starring Kiefer Sutherland and William Hurt, but it seems to have something of a cult following.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay – Overall I found this weaker than the first film in the series but it still had enough laughs to make it worth watching. The producers have just announced a deal to make H&K3.

Doomsday – The third film from Neil Marshall, who gave us Dog Soldiers and Descent. I guess he likes the letter D. Watched this yesterday. Very derivative and yet a pure adrenaline rush. As in the past two films, a small group of people go on a journey, get attacked, most of them die. But this one combines bits of Aliens, Escape from New York, Road Warrior and many others. Rhona Mitra is yummy and the supporting cast includes Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell and a souped up Bentley. Who would have thought that future punk rocking marauders would enjoy Adam & the Ants?

Tai Chi Master – Dragon Dynasty in the US (the Weinstein’s label for releasing Asian films) is giving this 1993 Jet Li/Michelle Yeoh film the deluxe 2 disc treatment. Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping, this is one of the few Jet Li movies I can’t recall seeing, so I’ll probably go for this.

Inglorious Bastards – As you probably already know by now, Tarantino’s next film will be a remake of this 70’s WWII exploitation film starring Fred Williamson. This is getting the deluxe treatment – 3 discs including a soundtrack CD – the extras include a conversation between Tarantino and director Enzo G. Castellari.

Surfwise – a documentary about a doctor who dropped out of the medical profession to go surfing. His nine children received no education at all, resulting in a very odd family, to say the least. Said to be both amusing and quite sad.

Young and Restless in China – documentary about 9 young professionals coping with life in China in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics.

last but certainly not least …. Best of Hooters – Special Collectors Edition.

New to Blu-Ray this week – Top Gun, Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, War Games, Lost Boys