The Steal and Hot Damn at the Fighting Cocks in Kingston. 1st January 2009. Poor quality sound video after the break as well as the photos.
Iranian elections, number analysis
I’m catching up on stuff which I’ve noted down before and thought “Damn, that’s interesting – must share that with people.” This is one of those things which you read and feel both impressed and depressed by. Pretty persuasive evidence from the Washington Post that the Iranian elections were rigged, from looking at last digit analysis.
This may seem strange, because these digits usually don’t change who wins. In fact, last digits in a fair election don’t tell us anything about the candidates, the make-up of the electorate or the context of the election. They are random noise in the sense that a fair vote count is as likely to end in 1 as it is to end in 2, 3, 4, or any other numeral. But that’s exactly why they can serve as a litmus test for election fraud. For example, an election in which a majority of provincial vote counts ended in 5 would surely raise red flags.
Why would fraudulent numbers look any different? The reason is that humans are bad at making up numbers. Cognitive psychologists have found that study participants in lab experiments asked to write sequences of random digits will tend to select some digits more frequently than others.
Full article here.
Teenage Treats Vol. 1
Ok, as this is the first in what (should be) a series of 10 posts on this topic, here’s a brief cover note about the Teenage Treats series of compilations and what I’ve managed to find out about them. They’re a series of bootleg compilations that came out on Xerox Records between 1997 and 2000. They get their name from a song by The Wasps that’s on two of the compilations, and they’re mainly focussed on the power-pop/mod side of things, and only stuff from the UK. Some of them were limited to about 100 copies each, and I believe are all well out of print.
I first came across them by downloading a torrent of five different albums off Punktorrents after thinking the description sounded worth a shot. Absolutely blew me away, and I tried to track down the other five albums, with no joy. In the end, a gentleman in Canada was kind enough to supply me with rips of the remaining five. Anyhow, given how much I love these, and how difficult I found it to find the remainder of them, I thought it’d be a good idea to stick them up here. I’ll be trying to find out as much information about each band featured, and anything else they put out.
So anyhow, onto Volume 1. Actually came out in 1998 at the same time as Volume 5 from what I’ve read, but I’ll put it first for the sake of running order.
Why yes, this certainly needs a remake.
I managed to miss the originally, but Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is remaking a European film I quite enjoyed.
He’s remaking Let The Right One In.Let’s just have a quote from that article.
An executive at Overture Films asked him to take a look at a then-unreleased Swedish horror film, “Let the Right One In,” a hauntingly touching film about a lonely 12-year-old boy who realizes the kind girl who moved in next door is a vampire.
“I was just hooked,” Reeves recalled recently. “I was so taken with the story and I had a very personal reaction. It reminded me a lot of my childhood, with the metaphor that the hard times of your pre-adolescent, early adolescent moment, that painful experience is a horror.”
He saw a pre-screen of the original film, and decided he wanted to remake it. A pre-screen. The film wasn’t even in the bloody cinemas, and he decided he was going to remake it. You can’t really make it up. Where’s there to go to next – Hollywood putting out ‘re-imaginings’ before the original comes out?
Poster from IO9 after the break.
Hard Skin at the Grosvenor in London
Hard Skin, The Stupids and The Shitty Limits at the Grosvenor in London. 19th December 2008. Yes, it’s the Christmas show. That’s how far I’ve got with photos!
Last Reality Show at the Cowley Club in Brighton.
The Shitty Limits, Mob Rule and Reality (last show) at the Cowley Club in Brighton. 8th December 2008.
Southport and The North Pole in Brighton
Southport and The North Pole at the Fighting Cocks in Kingston. Got there too late for Serf Combat, and missed the headliners. Down purely to my weakness with fruit machines.I’m just getting used to using WordPress and Gallery combined, so there may be changes to the way things get laid out here, themes and the like.
One vote never changed anything…
I’m sick of this.
I’m sick of this excuse for not taking part in an election.
I’m sick of this method people use for shirking responsibility in the democratic process.
I’m sick of this when people are shocked that extremists succeed when the majority do not vote.
So here’s a breakdown on the amount needed to make a change in the European Elections in the UK, by region.
The Daily Mail’s review of Watchmen
This despicable trash will find an audience among sad sociopaths, deranged pseudo-intellectuals and brutalised, immature men of all ages. I just hope that there aren’t enough of them to make it a hit. If there are, God help cinema.
I quite enjoyed it (link).
Vanity Fair on the Icelandic economy
There’s a rather good article here.
Yet another hedge-fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets.
(via mefi)