Black Coffee (Deprecated)

revised...Market as Oracle

I was forwarded the following Bloomberg news article today:

Pentagon `Reevaluating' Mideast Futures Market plan

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military said it's
reconsidering its plan for a worldwide on-line futures market to
help it predict events in the Middle East.
A statement issued late today said the Pentagon ``will
continue to reevaluate the technical promise of the program
before committing additional funds beyond fiscal year 2003.''
Just hours earlier, two Democratic U.S. senators held a
press conference to demand cancellation of the project, which
would allow traders to bet on the likelihood of events ranging
from the overthrow of a government to the collapse of an economy
or the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
``Clearly, this is morally wrong,'' Oregon Senator Ron Wyden
said on Capitol Hill in Washington. Senator Byron Dorgan of North
Dakota called it ``the most Byzantine thing I have ever seen
proposed by a federal agency.''
The Pentagon requested $3 million for the project in its
fiscal 2004 budget. The Senate said no; the House said yes. The
budget is now before a conference committee of both chambers. If
the Pentagon doesn't end the project, ``we have to find a way in
conference,'' Dorgan said. ``This is a hare-brained scheme.''
The Policy Analysis Market is part of a Pentagon effort to
anticipate terrorist attacks. The market's Web site says traders
can register starting August 1 with trading to begin Oct. 1.

`Small Research Program'

The market is to be managed by the Pentagon's Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. DARPA spokesman John
Jennings said the agency was caught off-guard by the senators''
press conference.
DARPA's ``statement regarding the future'' of the program
said there still are ``a number of major technical challenges and
uncertainties'' facing this ``small research program.''
``Chief among these are: Can the market survive and will
people continue to participate when U.S. authorities use it to
prevent terrorist attacks? Can futures markets be manipulated by
adversaries?'' it said in its four-paragraph statement.
The Pentagon planned to ask for $5 million for the program
in fiscal 2005 on top of the $3 million requested in fiscal 2004.
The statement left unclear whether any of this money is still
sought, and a phone call to Jennings for clarification was not
immediately returned.

`How Would You Feel?'

Wyden and Dorgan said the market was a terrible idea.
``How would you feel if you were the king of Jordan and
learned that the U.S. Department of Defense was creating a
futures market in whether you're going to be overthrown,'' said
Dorgan, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The Web site for the Policy Analysis Market cites
``Overthrow of Jordanian Monarchy'' as an example of the sort of
event traders might speculate on. Others include Arafat's
assassination and the likelihood of a North Korea missile attack
on the U.S.
``PAM will focus on the economic, civil, and military
futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each,''
according to the ``Concept Overview'' on its Web site.
``The issues represented by PAM contracts may be
interrelated'' and traders can ``structure combinations of
futures contracts,'' it says. The market ``will be active and
accessible 24/7 and should prove as engaging as it is
informative.''
Dorgan didn't see it that way. ``Futures markets almost
always relate to a commodity in this country,'' he said.
``There's not a commodity here. It's wagering.''
Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was
scornful of the project.
``They have this notion about the predictive capabilities of
intelligence,'' he said. ``We think it's absurd; we think when
you look at what happened in 9/11. You ought to go on the basis
of real evidence from the real world. They have these ideas about
markets and predictive capabilities which are more of fantasy
land.''

--Tony Capaccio in the Washington newsroom (202) 624-1911 or
acapaccio@bloomberg.net. Editor: Schmick

Story illustration: To review DARPA Policy Analysis Market Web
site type http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/

It's a shame this tiny project has become a political/budget fight.

First, why are two senators making a capital case over $3 million, when the entire US 2004 Defense Budget request is $399.1 billion? That only accounts for 7.5 ten-thousandths of one percent of the total budget.

Secondly, it's (unfairly) made to look absurd as part of this politically motivated ambush. In fact, the government has funded projects to achieve these same goals since the 1960's.

I've no interest in thinking about politics, let alone writing about them. But I am chronically interested in markets, and this looks like an interesting and sophisticated one.

But first, I think it's important to understand that this idea stems from a line of research that began during the Cold War.

The Delphi Method

For the past several decades the government has struggled with ways to "produce a tool in which a group of experts could come to some consensus of opinion when the decisive factors were subjective, or less knowledge-based."

In the 1960s the RAND corporation developed the Delphi Method.

As quoted in the desription: "Delphi is particularly appropriate when decision-making is required in a political or emotional environment, or when the decisions affect strong factions with opposing preferences. The tool works formally or informally, in large or small contexts, and reaps the benefits of group decision making while insulating the process from the limitations of group decision-making; e.g., over-dominant group members, political lobbying, or "bandwagonism". "

Certainly matters of the Middle East fall into the "political and emotion environment" that involve "strong factions with opposing preferences."

So this is a justifiable problem to tackle.

The Market Method

It's also conceivable that using a market is a reasonable way to attack it. Without getting into details, the Delphi method is quite regimented and procedural. Markets, in their apparent chaos, theoretically have always priced in all available, useful knowledge held by anyone, not just a board of "experts".

Furthermore, some of the problems of a group-decision making process (over-dominant members, political lobbying, and "bandwagonism") tend to be cured by the market -- bad or irrational choices lead to bad consequences and good choices lead to good consequences. It's terribly, awfully, painfully fair.

The project is working towards integrating lots of opinions and knowledge into the best possible single, unambiguous opinion. That doesn't sound loony, does it?

WWW.POLICYANALYSISMARKET.ORG

When I originally started writing this blog entry, I didn't realize that this market was already being developed. I thought it was just a research paper. No! It turns out it's a live electronic market that allows trader registration starting August 1, and begins live trading October 1. Furthermore it appears that it will be a cash-settled market -- no 'mock book bullshit' here!

The site only provides enough details to be titillating.

Contracts will be settled by "observable events" on a quarterly basis. EG. "The Jordanian Monarchy falls by Dec 31st 2003" or "No US forces remain in Iraq by September 30, 2004." The contract specification is very summary, but I assume there is a fuller definition that covers all the yucky exceptions.

That there are several periods for each contract means the market will have a structure, and that means trading and arbitrage opportunities, which means a good market.

Another very interesting, and I believe unique, characteristic of this market is the ability to trade products of two different contracts. In the example given online, you would be buying or selling one of the four combinations of: "The Jordanian Monarchy Falls" and "Iraqi Regime crumbles after 1 month of hostilities". The idea is that if you only have good knowledge of one of those interelated topics you can still express your expert opinion while hedging yourself against your blind spot. The market keeps the the odds of these four possible outcomes always summed to 1.

This is quite an interesting concept. The Delphi results are good for doing things like rank ordering preferences. But looking at the shape of the futures curves, the volatility of those curves, and the spreads between contracts could paint a very toned picture of the market's "best opinion." It needs to be, questions about the middle east are far more complicated than deciding for which of four public health centers to cut funding.

I'm quite interested to participate in this, just to experience how it works/doesn't work. Whether the DARPA part of it survives or not remains to be seen, but fortunately some good companies also back it, including The Economist and Net Exchange. Hopefully even if it loses government funding, commercial funding will still be available.

===

Wednesday, July 30th update.

Dead
So the project is absolutely dead. I was shocked by the hew and cry of the public and media over this. Get the impression maybe this was aimed more at John Poindexter than anything else.

The thing that suprised me is how everyones' attention was fixed on a basically ludicrous argument -- that this market would somehow incentivize a terrorist army making millions for themselves by buying futures and then assasinating world leaders.

First, I think the whole idea of derivative-trading mercenary assassins is ludicrous. The terrorists already have plenty of far less ostenatious business schemes running.

But if you insist, terrorists wanting to enrich themselves by driving current events, they wouldn't be using an exchange like this. How much money, open-interest, could there possibly be in this exchange, compared to something like the New York Stock Exchange or the International Petroleum Exchange? I'll tell you the answer: SQUAT.

If you can kill the Saudi Royal family, believe me, the price of oil futures will make you more-than-rich. There is no need to to be trading tiny "Decision Information Markets."

Back when I started my career in oil, the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scheme was just being negotiated I remember a particular (particularly odd?) consultant consistently asserting that Saddam was manipulating the negotiations and headlines so that his gnomes in Zurich Banks could expand his fortune trading oil futures.

So this idea is nothing original, it already goes on, and this whole project is a total tempest-in-a-teapot.

Post Mortem
Another thought about this market is, "why is this exposed to the public at all? It's the academics, politicians, military, and industrialists who would have anything to add, anyway, not John Q. Public who only reads Time magazine."

It occurred to me that that was the whole point of the market. In allowing anyone to participate, small slivers of knowledge from obscure places would otherwise be ignored.

In the Delphi method, yes, only some "inner circle" types are going to participate. Now yes, they know much, much more about the topic of Iraqi-Jordan relations than the average citizen. But where the Delphi method loses out is when a Coptic-Christian emigre from Iraq, living in Dearborn Michigan, who has cousins in Jordan, hears an incredible slice of news from his relatives that provides good insight into the situation.

This is where the market shines -- it allows this obscure, useful-once-in-a-lifetime guy to enter the market, and by entering the market, his tiny information contribution enters the universe of collective opinion forming.

That's the magic of the market. Unfortunately this whole research project got off to a very clumsy start.

Tokyo Train Station Public Bath

I don't have any interest in japanese anime, but Bugmaster posted a short item on Japanese Cultural Terminology, which included a section on Public Baths. I found this interesting because during my trip to Tokyo early this month I spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon at one in the basement of the Tokyo Train Station.

I had started off the day with King headache from a big time the previous night. Down one level, to Basement 1, enter the lobby, take off your shoes, and stuff them into free lockers. Take the key from there and proceed to the receptionist, who presents you with a steel box. Into that goes your shoe locker key, watch, wallet, phone, and other valuables. Then in very plain and open view she slides the box back into its cabinet, locks it, and returns you a key that is molded into a heavy rubber watchstrap similar.

Now to the next mission. Enter the locker room and change into a pair of universal sized silver spandex bicycling shorts. Now when I say "universal size", I mean "universal size." I ate a lot in Tokyo, so maybe I was closer to 160lbs than normal, but regardless, I was wearing, snugly, the same size shorts one of my colleagues was also snugly wearing, except he tops 280lbs, probably more.

Once we're all dressed in our spandex, it's into the next chamber. The room is 100 feet deep, and lined with tiny washing stations two feet off the ground. In front of each station is a small stool. The idea is you sit on the stool, in front of a mirror, and wash up with a spray hose, various soaps, combs, and scrubbers. One of the many civilized features of Japanese bathrooms is that the hot water valve actually has a temperature setting, so you dial in exactly what temp you like. I find 47C just nice.

Of course here is where I run into my Daily Yakuza. Every day, at least once I encountered the Yakuza, and my trip to the Public Bath was no exception. In this instance it was guy, probably 60 years old, sitting on a bench covered in the very stereotypical flower tattoos, umistakeably a Yakuza member.

After you wash up, theoretically you hang out in the sauna for a while. When I walked into the large wooden sauna room, the digital readout on the wall read 60C, and fifteen japanese guys were ?happily? watching golf on what must be a very robust TV. I could stand that room for about two minutes, the time it took for me to burn my feet on the shockingly hot wooden floor.

I ran the hell out of there (I am sure we seemed like weenies to the Japanese) and into the Jacuzzi wing. There was the traditional giant, hot whirlpool, bubbling and steaming away. Of course, since this was the public bath, it also had another pool nearby. This one is absolutely still and clear. Why? It's the pool that stays perhaps one degree above freezing. It's an amazingly terrifying feeling to have the water be so cold your entire chest seems to convulse and spasm. My tolerance for that was on the order of two-seconds. I was the only one who cared to plunge into it. The last time we all tried one, my colleague's glasses fell off while he was spasming and I had to plunge back in and fish around the bottom trying to find them. It was the closest thing to being a Navy SEAL I'll ever experience.

After you finish up jacuzzi'ng the next mission is to run a gauntlet of old women (45-75 years old?) who man a series of tables in an open room. They throw you down on the tables, and in pairs, use stiff scouring pads, soapless brushes, to scrape the living hell out of your skin. It's quite invigorating, and the huge deluges of hot water they pour over you is remarkable. My colleagues reported that near the end, the Japanese women presented them with a huge, wet pile of dried skin they had scraped off them. I (fortunately) did not receive this present, but even then, my skin felt as if anything not absolutely anchored to me had been torn off and rinsed away.

So now we're soaking wet, scrubbed raw, standing in our Spandex. They usher us into perhaps the most demeaning gauntlet of all -- changing room number two. Here we're to dry off, and change into some cotton shorts and a robe. In practice, this is also a chance for these 65-year old women to stroll and range around us, ostensibly distributing towels and robes, but also not-very-subtlely checking out our (considerable, of course) endowments. They were about as discrete as a whack in the head. None of us spoke Japanese, but we knew damn well they were all carrying on and laughing at us. I suppose this was somethign of payback for the amount of leering we'd been guilty of for the prior several days of our trip.

The next hour+ is a very strong and thorough massage that practically puts you to sleep. It was scores better than the nasty, oily ayurvedic massage I had in Kerala.

At the end, it's up for a therapeutic tea and perhaps cigarette in the TV room, plopped down on a big Barca Lounger. When you have had your fill of that, you change back into your clothes and exit the basement of the Tokyo Train Station tender, limber, and invigorated.

Sonny Black Announces "Black Stallion"

Sonny Black has established a reputation as Los Angeles’ premiere designer and builder of dungeon furniture and equipment. He's an artistic woodworker and designer of fetish interiors who ambitiously creates, full time, the most beautiful and well constructed BDSM apparatus. Shipping bondage tables, cages, slings, horses and custom devices all over the country, Sonny has equipped top play-spaces and professional facilities in the U.S.

The "BLACK STALLION" (spanking horse), one of the most popular items, has been repeatedly described as the ultimate in comfort, durability, and style by top names in the BDSM scene.

Beveled Glass Cupboard -- Program 1506

Hosted by master carpenter Norm Abram, who is legendary for his woodworking skills, The New Yankee Workshop has guided millions of viewers through the hands-on process of furniture making.

Norm has been perfecting his woodworking skills since he was a boy, when he made wooden toys for his sister. Since then, he has also perfected the craft of teaching and inspiring others to make beautiful creations from wood. Working in a 936-square-foot workshop, Norm completes a typical show in two days. He does all the work himself, using an assistant only for cleanup and finishes. Each episode in the series offers step-by-step instructions for building furniture and other woodworking projects. A co-production of Morash Associates, Inc. and WGBH Boston, the series airs on PBS and HGTV stations.

This jewel of a display cupboard will provide attractive storage for any bathroom. The top of the cabinet, with its beveled glass panels and adjustable shelves, is a perfect place to display attractive objects in a protected space. The display top sits on a closed cabinet for more useful storage accessed by means of a flat paneled door. Painted a glistening white and conveniently sized for limited space, this project is a winner.

Photos prove death of Uday, Qusay Hussein: US

DUBAI (Reuters) - Televised images of the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons shocked many Arabs on Friday, who said it was un-Islamic to exhibit corpses, however much the brothers were loathed.

Arab and international networks showed the bodies identified as Uday and Qusay, laid out at the makeshift airport morgue, their faces partly rebuilt to repair wounds.

"Although Uday and Qusay are criminals, displaying their corpses like this is disgusting and repulsive. America claims it is civilized but is behaving like a thug," Saudi civil servant Saad Brikan, 42, told Reuters in Riyadh.

Another civil servant Hasan Hammoud, 35, said: "America always spoils its own image by doing something like this. What is the advantage of showing these bodies? Didn't they think about the humanitarian aspect? About their mother and the rest of their family when they see these images?"

The brothers died on Tuesday after U.S. forces lay siege to the villa in northern Iraq where they were hiding.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he ordered their bodies to be shown to convince frightened Iraqi's that Saddam's reign was truly over.

Spokesman: Minnelli splits with hubby

NEW YORK (AP) -- Liza Minnelli and David Gest, who were married last year in a star-studded ceremony, have separated, Minnelli's spokesman said Friday.

Spokesman Warren Cowan said he could provide no other details.

Minnelli and Gest wed in March 2002 with best man Michael Jackson briefly carrying the bride's train. Elizabeth Taylor served as maid of honor.

Hundreds of fans lined Fifth Avenue to watch guests including actors Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins and David Hasselhoff, TV newswoman Barbara Walters and KISS band member Gene Simmons arrive.

Gossip columnist Liz Smith called the nuptials, Minnelli's fourth, "the kissiest wedding" she's ever seen.

Various things...none worthy of a full article

Ferrari GT 360

So my colleague recently bought a Ferrari GT 360 Modena. I'll spare you all the trite and typical carrying on about it's insane performance and how truly wicked and evil it looks up close. It's everything you read in magazines, without hyperbole. All I'll mention are my two observations...

Testing some new Blog Functionality

So this afternoon Matt and I were talking about our Outback trip. The subject of logging came up. The best trip logs are written as close to the action as possible. The longer you wait, thinking "oh, I'll write this up when I get back" or "I'll glue together all these weird newspaper clippings once we fly home", the less likely you are to do it, and the more likely you are to forget interesting micro-details that make this sort of thing interesting in the first place.

With that in mind, I said it would be nice if we all were able to do logging directly on the laptop we'll bring along, and then eventually dump it to the Blog. My only idea was some half-baked "make a local copy of MoveableType on the PC and use that."

Sounded like a lot of ugliness for not much gain. Occam's solution was emacs. Just to have everybody write up text files and later convert those into blog entries.

But Serendipity struck! I checked the sixapart website to find out what's new with MoveableType. Lo and hehold, it talked about this program Zempt, which allows you to write blog entries from a windows client, offline. Then it syncs everything up for you.

This is exactly what we want!

This blog entry is actually being written with Zempt. It bootstrapped itself together quite nicely and took almost no configuration. I'll play around with it somemore and see how well it works. It did complain that I was using an old version of MoveableType (not version 2.6) Maybe I'll upgrade. I don't think the upgrade has anything particularly wonderful -- some more powerful, abstract notion of filters, but that is about it.

Twilight

Weather Underground gives all sorts of interesting telemetry about a town, not just temperature and rainfall. To avoid punishing 120-degree days in the Outback, we are going during the Australian winter. However, since it's winter, there is less daylight. How much daylight? This is something Weather Underground answers.

But too thoroughly.

It lists four different types of "twilights"

                                  sunrise                sunset

Actual Time                7:15 AM CST     6:06 PM CST 

Civil Twilight               6:51 AM CST     6:30 PM CST 

Nautical Twilight          6:23 AM CST     6:58 PM CST 

Astronomical Twilight   5:56 AM CST     7:25 PM CST 

Moon                          10:40 PM CST     10:06 AM CST 

So what are all these different kinds of twilight specifications and which one do we care about?

The navy can tell us.

Civil twilight is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening when the center of the Sun is geometrically 6 degrees below the horizon. This is the limit at which twilight illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished; at the beginning of morning civil twilight, or end of evening civil twilight, the horizon is clearly defined and the brightest stars are visible under good atmospheric conditions in the absence of moonlight or other illumination. In the morning before the beginning of civil twilight and in the evening after the end of civil twilight, artificial illumination is normally required to carry on ordinary outdoor activities. Complete darkness, however, ends sometime prior to the beginning of morning civil twilight and begins sometime after the end of evening civil twilight.

Nautical twilight is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening, when the center of the sun is geometrically 12 degrees below the horizon. At the beginning or end of nautical twilight, under good atmospheric conditions and in the absence of other illumination, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but detailed outdoor operations are not possible, and the horizon is indistinct.

Astronomical twilight is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening when the center of the Sun is geometrically 18 degrees below the horizon. Before the beginning of astronomical twilight in the morning and after the end of astronomical twilight in the evening the Sun does not contribute to sky illumination; for a considerable interval after the beginning of morning twilight and before the end of evening twilight, sky illumination is so faint that it is practically imperceptible.

Here's another way to visualize the day:

sunset
EECT (end-of-evening civil twilight)
EENT (end-of-evening nautical twilight)
EEAT (end-of-evening astronomical twilight)

MIDNIGHT

BMAT (beginning-of-morning astronomical twilight)
BMNT (beginning-of-morning nautical twilight)
BMCT (beginning-of-morning civil twilight)
sunrise

So it sounds like Civil Twilight is the least dark and there is still enough light that you could run around and navigate and find things on the ground. After that, it gets dodgy. Futhermore, it is impossible to move around w/o artificial light between EENT and BMNT.

This time of year, approximately thirty minutes separates each of the sunset zones in Alice Springs. I imagine this buffer contracts as the days get shorter and gets longer as the days get longer. But maybe I'm full of it.

Ling makes it sound like Astronomical Twilight doesn't occur in Norway this time of year. I checked Weather Underground, and they don't even list sunset/sunrise for Trondheim. Don't know if that's because the calculations don't work, or literally the sun never dips below the horizon ?

Under Construction

Thanks to the Bugmaster's trail-breaking, I've been able to start experimenting with some software that makes photogalleries a bit easier to manage here. This is strictly a prototype, but it doesn't hurt to browse.

MoveableType Upgrade

I think MoveableType is really excellent software -- well-written, parsimonious, powerful, robust.

I have only two complaints...

1) The templates are a bit non-robust -- there are a number of hacks necessary to make them render on normal browser configurations. Outback2003 even still has some problems for 31die's browser. I'd like to find a really rock solid template and css stylsheet to work from.

2) There isn't much functionality to support photo display. It's possible to upload photos and have a thumbnail generated, but that's about all.

I can survive with both these problems. There have been a few upgrades already, but I was holding out, waiting for MoveableType Pro. The authors mentioned adding photo support (though when I emailed to ask them what it would be, they were vague and noncomittal) and I assume the templates might be better.

I thought MT Pro was due out this summer, but I haven't heard much about it lately. I emailed SixApart to ask. I received the following semi-discouraging reply:

Michael,

We're looking at a late summer development schedule for MT Pro, so you
probably wouldn't see a final, production-ready release until Fall. If you
need to deploy before the September-October timeframe, I would recommend
using Movable Type along with some of the extensions available at
mt-plugins.org to create the functionality you need.

I hope those two choices are adequate for your needs, and we appreciate your
consideration of Movable Type and Movable Type Pro. Good luck with your
project.

Anil

So.... it seems indefinitely delayed. Assuming everything slips, this won't be ready till Christmas.

Ok, so what to do?

1) Search out some better templates, or more hacks.
2) Work on setting up JAlbum

KAPs of our Innocence

As I occasionally do, I spent this evening picking through cardboard boxes sloppily crammed with bundles of photo negatives. I would like to bring it to some order, but the photos arrive far faster than they get sorted. I did a very crude categorization of the photos I took between 1999 and 2002. One of the categories was Kite Aerial Photography.

Below is one of my favorite shots, scanned at 4000dpi, cropped and adjusted, and ultimately reduced in resolution and size. Still looks pretty sharp. Also, I post a zoom-in which demonstrates how much detail the scanner can actually pull up from this scratched negative. (Thank God for the Clone Tool and Healing Brush)

The funny thing about these photos is that they are among the best we took in our many flights, but actually, the rig was a version 1.0 model, with no aiming system and some really kludgy gearing.

The photos were taken along the Pacific Coast, south of Half Moon Bay. 31die always liked to take the backroads from Palo Alto, over the hills, to the coast.

This Sounds Wild

In recent years, we have successfully organized self-driving tours as below:

Speaking of the Yakuza...

Tunnel Art at the Esplanade

Late last week the market was incredibly slow and I was incredibly bored. Although I detest it, and have jotted down pages of notes about why it's such a lousy arts center, I visited the nearby Esplanade Arts Center. On the way back, in one of the underground tunnels that link the building to the subway, I finally saw some decent art.

There were several artists presenting along the long hallway. Emily Chua Hui Ching claimed the most wall space, and justifiably so, because hers was the only body of work that wasn't the typical buffoonery the Esplanade fobs off on ignorant Singaporeans.

Mostly she showed ink drawings. Admittedly some of it, especially the pencil sketches, came across as disorganized doodle rubbish, but the bigger pieces, particularly the five panel ink + coffee watercolor had a very pleasing aesthetic quality. Even some novelty art, produced by recirculating patterns through a Xerox machine was quite nice, bonding the other, stronger works.

Emily must be a very focused and deliberate girl, because that's the only way someone could finish the tedious marker work she did in several pieces. Somehow the monotony-with-noise-variations she creates are very compelling to look at.

My favorite pieces (most were unnamed) were

Back from Tokyo

I got back from Tokyo a few nights ago. It was a great trip. I have to say that India and Tokyo have been my favorite Asian destinations in seven years here. They're the richest cultures with the most color and life.

Before I went, I was quite agitated to compose a full itinerary for my four days there. I wanted to make sure I squeezed every drop from the trip.

In practice, the commuter friction was so high that there was way more to do than I could ever accomplish in a meager four days there. The taxis are enormously expensive (seemed like every trip was at least $20USD), basically forcing you to use their train/subway system.

I was staying at the absolutely brilliant (and spanking new) Grand Hyatt, right in the middle of Roppongi. This is a premier location and right along some of the bigger subway lines.

Although the actual distances aren't that far, it took a long time to commute because the subway network is truly labrynthian. Many lines intersect at different stations, arriving and departing on different levels, stretched across vast undeground stations. Exits might be more than a quarter of a mile apart, and at times it's necessary to exit the station and reenter it through a different door to get to your target. (Well, at least it was for me, maybe not a more knowledable commuter) Every trip involved a lot of backtracking and map reading. If any city deserves a strong urban GPS with sophisticated mapping/routing software, it's Tokyo.

So what did I do? My biggest achievement was my photography and reconnaisance at Tsukiji Fish Market. I am absolutely fascinated by the place. I definitely want to go back for a more serious shooting session. Everything else I did either involved trying to find my way around the subway system or involved the Yakuza.

Admittedly, I know next to nothing about Japan, but what little I did see suggests that (at least in Tokyo) the Yakuza (the Japanese organized crime) is a very visible niche in Tokyo society. It wasn't nearly as furtive as I would imagine the average Mafia to be.

My (ignorant) interpretation of things is this: Tokyo is incredibly cramped and congested. People seem to go overboard being polite and assiduously following the cultural mores. But on reflection, it's not 'going overboard', because if Tokyo was anything less than extremely polite and sensitive to others, it would be an absolute intolerable hell hole.

So how does the Yakuza fit into all this? Japanese society is very clearly organized. It has been however decided that the Yakuza serves some role in this social structure. So as long as they stay in their special pigeon hole and observe whatever mores are expected, they're left alone.

In Japan I felt like the government didn't want to destroy the Yakuza, they just want it to stay in its niche. Compare this to America, where the FBI truly wants to exterminate the Mafia. Yes, neither can achieve this, but the interesting difference is the desire in American law enforcement and the apparent non-desire in Japanese law enforcement.

I'll end this first entry with this teriffic story from |\aj, another guy on the trip:

So I went to a bar, "Wall Street", in Tokyo. I was having a drink and ended up chatting with a big American guy. Turns out he was a former Green Beret (he sported the tattoos to prove it) who instructed hand-to-hand combat. After he retired he became a second-tier studio wrestler in the WWF.

Somehow he attracted the attention of the Yakuza, who recruited him to Japan to compete in a submission wrestling circuit. So his life now is spent alternating three weeks in LA with his wife and child and three weeks in Japan wrestling for his Yakuza keepers. (Be all that you can be!)

But where it got interesting was when two big dudes came in, beckoned over this Green Beret fellow, and challenged him to some arm wrestling. Green Beret is a monster and he whipped both fellows handily. Thinking it a friendly wager, he had turned down the money he'd won from them, and returned to his station on the bar.

Some minutes later a guy came over, worried, and pointed out to the Green Beret that the two guys he had beaten were actually members of the Russian Mafia. (It wasn't clear what the Russian Mafia does in Tokyo, but I doubt it is wholesome) Somehow he had gravely insulted them (either by beating them in the first place or perhaps not accepting the money he had one) and there was imminent trouble.

So Green Beret tells the messenger to explain to the Mafiosi that the Green Beret is sponsored by the Yakuza.

Apparently this cowed the Russians, because moments later we're drinking shots of vodka sent over by the now-respectful Mafiosi.

Excellent story and totally true.... If standing in a Tokyo bar at 3AM with a Green Beret in the hire of the Yakuza, while drinking neat vodka paid for by Russian Mafiosi isn't straight out of a William Gibson story, I don't know what is.

The only way I'm going to outdo |\aj is if I score a liquid nitrogen thermos full of pituitary gland extract or something...

Tsukiji Sample Platter

I just got back from Tokyo yesterday night. I have fifteen rolls of film, a small notebook full of stories, and an urge to get it all published. Unfortunately, it's already 0100, so there is only time to post a very rough sampler.

Almost all my photos were taken at the Tsukiji Fish Market. The market, famous for its giant tuna auction, was an amazing place. I'm in a giant hurry to get back there to burn lots more film and find out some of the background story on how this incredibly efficient and busy place operates.

Frozen tuna auction

Fish buyers' bidding gallery. These guys were bidding on something other than tuna.

Just a small sample of the scores of tuna being marketed each day. Notice the freeze-fog at ground level.

It's not just tuna being sold. Tons of other seafood is marketed everyday.

Monopods

I told Stas he should get a tripod for his digital camera. It will make his macro photography even better than it already is. In conversation, the subject of monopods came up, and both RogerDoubleYou and Stas asked how a monopod is used and what it's good for. (And when I held it like Moses, was the camera body actually higher than my head?)

For street photography applications, the utility of a monopod is greater than one third the utility of a tripod. In fact, it probably approaches two thirds in some situations.

Unextended monopod

Extended monopod

Ballhead pivot mounts to top of monopod. Camera, bolted to the gray metal plate, solidly clicks into the ballhead

How do I use it? For example, I am in the Tsujiki fish market in Tokyo. The light level is incredibly poor and I'm using a 100-400mm telephoto lens. The monopod immediately removes the Z vector from my shaky hands. In fact, it has a dampening effect on the X and Y vectors as well. If I concentrate hard, my two legs and the monopod make a pretty convincing tripod. If I am clever and climb halfway up the staircase in the middle of the market, I can wedge the monopod leg up against the wall of the staircase, pinning it with my leg, and I get a more stable platform. The result? I was shooting 400mm at 1/6, 1/10 shutter speed (way way slower than the minimum recommendation of 1/lens-length)) and the combination of monopod and the lens' image stabilizer was producing acceptably sharp images.

At the Finke Desert Race, only partially extended, sitting on the hood of my Land Cruiser

How else have I used it? Since it has a ball head (I'm glad I bought a ballhead instead of the traditional three-lever, three-axis deals), I could tighten it down only mildly, and have a really smooth, stable base with which to pan all the race cars blasting by on the Finke desert race.

It's a lot easier to be dashing around a crowd, around a race track, over 400lb frozen tuna with a monopod than it is with my big, heavy tripod. It's also probably slightly less conspicuous in a crowd of unfriendly Japanese fish traders than a tripod.

In selecting your N-pod, make sure you get one that has levers to lock the sliding legs in place, not thumbscrews. The thumbscrews on my Manfrotto Tripod are 1) a nuisance that slows me down a LOT 2) tend to get some oxidation or corrosion which makes them stiff.

As I said earlier, I'd get a ballhead. It's easier to work with.

Review of Paper and Ink Sets

Epson 'Photo Paper' (S041255)

100x150mm paper described as 'Glossy Photo Paper for low cost, high quality digital snapshots. Printing with the 'Photo Black' ink cartridge, telling the print driver it's "Glossy Paper -- Photo Weight" and printing for Quality, not Speed.

The results sucked. The bronzing was overwhelming. At certain angles I can almost make the entire image disappear. Colors were not strong and contrast limited. Highly not recommended

Price was $11.20SGD for 20 sheets.

Tokyo Agenda

So Thursday night I fly to Narita Airport for a four-day weekend in Tokyo. Since it is a short trip and I am not encumbe*cough* accompanied by anyone, namely Ah-Ling, it occurred to me that I can plan my excursions with exactly me in mind.

Having never been to Tokyo, my first (complimentary) thought about the place is the wired, futuristic, over-the-top, cyber-world of a William Gibson or Neil Stephenson book. Dirt, money, speed, electronics, villainy.

So now my hurried goal is to figure out a list of interesting sites along this Gibson/Stephenesque theme, both to experience and photograph.

Item One is to buy radio gear for our August trip through the Outback. That will involve going to Akihabara District. This is a pretty common tourist destination.

Item Two is also a common tourist stop (unfortunately) and at first you might not appreciate its connection to the Gibsonesque genre. It's the Tsukiji Fish Market.

Q: Why is this cool?
A: Because I love watching interesting physical markets.

Q: Why is this connected to Neil Stephenson or Wiliam Gibson?
A: Because an efficient market has more energy, excitement, and money involved than almost anything. Nothing pushes mankind into the future faster.

Being a good soldier, doing my research I grudgingly admit finding a very useful guide to photographing the market on photo.net. Now I have some idea of the logistics and the filming conditions.

Item N But now I am stuck. I need to figure out some more things to see while there, and I don't have much time to plan. I was given a hint that the term 'Otaku' might lead to some of the interesting futuristic cultural stuff I'm looking for.

Any advice?