Crossing Over - The New News Print Normal.

"...the FT is the first newspaper to have “crossed over” by amassing more digital subscribers than print ones. As of February, the respective numbers were  316,000 to 286,000..."

From paidContent

The FT has “crossed over” to become a digital business — but can anyone else replicate that feat?

Of Rates and Things.

Felling a Coconut Palm.

These are a set of photos originally published as a slide show on my Jux blog, of which there is a link above ↑ under 'The Jux Blog'.

The comments below the pictures are from the originals.

This tree was about 20 meters high or about 65 feet. To put this into perspective: the usual height of a single story in a building is 15 to 20 feet; so this tree was about 4 stories high.

About three Stories Up:  No rope, except the one tied to the crown to make sure the first cut section falls correctly.

Chop That Trunk! Holding on with one hand, still about 15 meters up. And note that's not an axe just an ordinary machete.

A Long Way Down: Actually he's checking to see if his assistant has re-tightened the guide rope.

Going...

And Going....

Gone!

Look No Hands! The next, middle section, still about 15 meters up.

One to Watch: The Skin I Live In

"There are several genres nimbly folded into “The Skin I Live In,” which might also be described as an existential mystery, a melodramatic thriller, a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza. "

from Manohla Dargis's New York Times Movie Review

A Beautiful Prisoner Lost in Almodóvar’s Labyrinth

Daughter on the Edge

That was an interesting year, 2001. Only it was the next one that blew everything away. So forget 9/11.

Dark night over the Carpathians, looking down onto the the white snow covered place. Safe in our business-class dinner world. Wondering, and sure that all was good down below. 

More fool you.

At the edge of the world, with feeble contact via that machine. We were connected in 2002, so why weren't they? Why did I have to leave that device outside just to get a that txt? That Txt! 

Five words that hope for you, were a throw away for the sender.

 So much for fucking hope.

Back to the city on the lake. Back via the lake front. 

Looking out the taxi window at how grand it was. Looking out at how better it was. Looking out at the grayness of the snow covered mountains that suddenly looked do dull.

And you kept it up for nine months.

Nine months! 

Until the day it did not happen on that Dark Days, Clear Nights time.

A Day in Time

Image via WikipediaIf they are right or wrong I really don't care as one day we will break the speed of light barrier and we will hit the stars.

Ever upwards and onwards is the human way. Life is pre-programmed to survive:

Moving down, layer by layer through the circles of Dante's biological hell, you'll discover that the Valley isn't one system of life but dozens, stacked and stratified, as distinct from one another as the deep-sea zones of earth. Some of them are lively, raucous, lit by soft constellations of fungal lanterns and bioluminescent critters. Other layers are silent as library cloisters, where one instant of clumsiness can bring death from a hundred lurking sources.

from Queen of the Iron Sands by Scott Lynch

see Speed of Light

Box Fire Nights

They come, whirling up from the Southern Ocean, round and round to eventually punch the East Coast with a ten degree tempreture drop, and the famous understated 'Southerly Change'.

Just when you thought spring had arrived.

More fool you, or rather more fuel you. It'a back to heating time. Back to the box fire. Come on. Light it up or you'll freeze when the Southerly races through.

Back to the box. The fire box of heat.

Netflex and the Death of DVD's

You as I was saying that this blog was going to get more personal and along comes this analysis for the Netflix split by Gizmodo. Now the really interesting point Brian Barrett, the author of the post makes in summing up is:

Or maybe we spend the next decade using Qwikster as a series of data points, watching DVD vital signs wane until eventually the format flatlines.

This is the logical conclusion to this business of "shiny little frisbees".

The only people who don't know the shiny frisbee market is over are the main film companies. They will hang on like grim death, suing their customers just like the record companies until there are none left.

As for the publishing industry....

see Why Netflix Just Cut Itself in Half

Moving on or Backwards To Go

I have finally got around to updating the second page on this blog, Early Edge Files. They are a series of blog posts written when I first came to New Zealand in 2004 and 2005.

These posts are of course of a much more personal nature than the new related 'link' posts that have characterised the "Back to The Edge' blog.

The latest post 'Fox Bat Central' prodded me to complete the second page. It's content may well become the norm on this blog.

Fox Bat Central

You stand on Central platform at the end of yet another 110 call day. Looking over to the skyline to where the mountains lie.

The creatures flap in the twilight that's shot through with deep, dark blue and silver as dusk hits the tracks.

As you wait for the train.

They fly so high. They endlessly wheel and dive.

You believe they are roosting birds.

Huh!

They are giant Fox Bats, alive in Sydney's evening darkening sky.

They show the way it was, little knowing that it would soon be over and their Garden Island home would be no more.

MKR and Scripted Remarks

In the interests of a peaceful home front existence I have been watching and following the Australian cooking competition My Kitchen Rules.

Leaving aside my consternation with the complete Anglo Saxon obsession with cooking TV shows and programs, an obsession that most Europeans find bewildering, it never ceases to amaze me just how scripted the contestant's off stage (sorry off kitchen) remarks can be.

• "If we don't cook better than (whoever), then will get knocked out" - remarks made in a knock out cook out.
• "I am really nervous about the next stage of the competition" - another remark made in the knock out part of the competition.
• "You must produce your best plates yet! Otherwise you will be eliminated! - remark by one of the judges in the knock part of the competition.

Once you focus on these off kitchen remarks it becomes increasingly obvious that they were all written by the show's script writers.

Another example of the way popular so-called reality shows are dumbed down to eliminate all spontaneity and leave nothing to chance.

Suez Shipping Indicator

"The average increase in the total weight of cargo passing through the canal was 5.7% in the three months to July, down from 9.5% in December. Making a simple forecast based on the past few months' data suggests that world GDP will fall from 3.8% in the first quarter to 3.3% in the second quarter"

from The Economist Daily Charts

Which reminded me that it was a while since I had looked at the Baltic Exchange Index.

So here it is, and it not not reflecting the same trend.

Watch these charts, as they say.

Bistrot Brocante Underground

"La boutique d'Eva Pritsky a une double personnalité : sage comme une image la journée, elle se transforme la nuit en troquet clandestin. Pour une soirée qui déraille, c'est à Ménilmontant qu'il va falloir grimper. "

où ca?

Eva Pritsky, bar-brocante. 

5, rue d'Eupatoria, 75020 Paris, Métro Ménilmontant 

Tel : 01 44 62 20 69 

Ouvert du mardi au samedi de 17h à 2h

from My Little Paris

see Bistrot brocante

Gaza: A Real Underground Economy

Image via WikipediaFascinating.

Real business rules!

"Some smugglers have installed tracks and electric carts to ferry supplies. And they are refreshingly free of red tape and expensive taxes. The tunnels bring fuel to Gaza at a fifth the cost of Israel's prices, along with a plentiful if somewhat dubious supply of medicines, drugs and Viagra."

from The Economist's Baobab blog

see The burrowing business

'Your Economy Sucks!' - Doghouse on the Downgrade

This is great!

from THEDOGHOUSEDIARES

Shopping for Free or Looting in London

"As I got closer to the Debenhams store, I passed hooded figures nonchalantly going the other way with arms full of booty. More and more people passed me with their grabbed sportswear and electrical goods. One young guy, who looked about 15, stopped to throw a couple of tracksuits to a girl he fancied from the pile he was struggling to carry. I looked at the faces of the looters and didn't see anger, hatred or even a desire for justice. These were just opportunist young people, looking as if they having the time of their lives."

from Coffee House The Spectator Blog

see When the underbelly roars

Original article image

Youth Unemployment, the UK Riots and The Jasmine Revolution

"The underlying causes of the rioting are difficult to say with certainty but one key fact must be considered: youth unemployment."

So writes Michael Goldfarb in GloblaPost via Salon.com

The Jasmine revolution, rapidly fading from the collective memory, started in Tunisia due to very similar circumstances.

Difficult to really compare these two sets of civil disturbance, yet it is an undeniable fact that you cannot keep not employing your young men, and then expect them to sit around and enjoy doing nothing.

see Why London exploded last night

Original Salon.com article image

London Burning

"Cops battle new riots across London"

from The Sun

other images from the Sun see 

London Burning

Uday Hussein: "The Devil’s Double"

"Playboy, murderer, and sadist extraordinaire, Saddam’s elder son left no shortage of people with horror stories to tell in his wake. Yet for Latif, the trauma of his encounter with him was uniquely personal, one that still haunts him every time he looks in the mirror. For back in 1987, after noticing his striking likeness to Saddam’s son, Iraq’s secret service picked him to be Uday’s “fiday”, or body double, a job that involved becoming the living, breathing copy of the nation’s greatest hate figure."

by Colin Freeman's review in The Telegraph

see Saddam's demon seed

Dadaab Kenya: They Starve We Watch

Pictures from the biggest refugee camp in the world

from The Economist blog Baobab

see Hunger in the Horn of Africa for the full picture set.