Essay: "The Modern Professional Class"

I saw the movie “Margin Call” recently and I thought that it was very good.  The cast was strong (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany) and the story did a good job of encapsulating the financial crisis without a) being confusing; or b) excessive exposition.  But more than that, it seemed to capture some part of the essence of the modern professional class, of which I was a humble member for a number of years. 

Essay: "Stand By Your Phone"

Faithful readers will recall that I recently wrote that I needed a new telephone.  Specifically, I acknowledged that I should probably get an iPhone but admitted that I was not sure that I could bring myself to so.  Well, I finally got my new phone last week.  After briefly considering all of the four major smart phone options (Windows, Blackberry, Android and Apple) I eventually settled on the Nokia Lumia 900, running Windows 7.5.  The main reason for my decision was that the Windows Phone was the only one I had no experience with, and I was curious to give it a try.

Essay: "Regrets"

The greatest disservice done to our generation was that we were told we should do what we were “passionate” about. It’s not our parents fault; they were trying to be nice. They may also have been trying to make up for the mistakes of their parents, or the regrets of their own lives.

Review: "The Grey"

Picture a movie where members of a group of characters are picked off one by one. You already know how it will go, don’t you? The viewers will grow to identify with one or more characters, and those ones will probably make it through the movie. Surely, in any case, they won't all die. That’s just depressing, and people don’t like depressing movies, so they don't often get made.

Essay: "The Difference Between Being Addictive and Good"

When people talk about the quality of a work of narrative art (whether a book, a show, a film or a video game) they often talk about how addictive or compulsive it is. I played it for 8 hours straight, they’ll say, or we watched a whole season over the weekend, or I couldn’t put it down. The recently released Diablo 3 has been called “the most addictive video game of all time.” This is meant as praise, I suppose, although it’s interesting that “addictive” is obviously not seen as being an attractive quality in most other circumstances.

Likewise, when people criticize a work of art, they often talk about how it lacked this quality, how it was boring or tedious. World-weary reviewers take pride in saying they found The Da Vinci Code dreadfully boring, that they were immune to its charms.  In other words, that it did not work on them.

There seem to be remarkably few people who believe that a work of art can be both addictive and dreadful, but that’s what I’ve come to believe.  Works of art aren’t addictive because they’re very good. They're addictive becasue they're designed to be that way.

Essay: "Avon contra Stringer - Part Two"

Last week we discussed Proposition Joe's arrangement with Marlo, where Marlo provided muscle and Joe hooked him up with good drugs.  Now just think, in the context of organized crime, how ridiculous that is.  What would be Joe's recourse if Marlo refused?  A lawsuit?  If you rely on the other guy for the muscle, then you will only have the “connect” as long as he lets you keep it.

Essay: "Avon contra Stinger - Part One"

Spoiler alert! The Wire is the best show ever and this blog post assumes you’ve watched all five season.

When you rewatch great television, what was unpredictable seems inevitable. That’s the hindsight bias. When try to predict the future, we’re bombarded with information, some of it pointing one direction, some in others. When we look back and try to explain the past, the information that pointed towards what actually happened looms very large. That’s why we’re so good at forgetting how bad we are at making predictions.