This is a classic video (circa 1948) on how the market economy works.

I’ve cleaned up the website a little bit, and have added a new section that will collect reviews. You can see the new page here. The graphic below shows how the reviews are structured.

Here is an example of the last five reviews I have uploaded (click on the [+] symbol to see the drop-down blurb):

<?php starred_review_badge(5, all); ?>

So far, the categories I’ve included are: Books, Movies, Shows, Software, & Hardware. I might add “travel” as a category, but we’ll see how it goes.

More pics from the Europe trip are up - this Time from Athens. See the Gallery here.

We spent three days in the capital - and it was very very hot.

It is amazing how young the city is - all the buildings were built in the 70’s, and all the residents seem to be born in either the 70’s or 80’s. Young people from all across Greece come to Athens to find work. The nicest part of town is known as Plaka, while the rest of the city is known for being very grey and haphazard. There are a few relics of the architecture that used be present in the town, before it was all torn down in the 70’s (don’t have any picture, sorry).

You’ll also notice our pictures from the Acropolis, and accompanying museums - very spectacular as you’re likely aware. One surprise was how much mass Hercules has - he really is jacked.

Hostage

To get a sense of greek culture - there is a movie you may want to see: Hostage - It shows how Greeks approach life - and how well it contrasts with the Albanian approach.

Here is a summary of the movie:

One morning, a young man boards an intercity bus on its daily run to Thessaloniki in northern Greece. He hijacks the bus at gunpoint and takes seven hostages. He turns out to be a 25-year-old Albanian immigrant and his demands include a big ransom and safe passage back to his homeland. In no time at all the hijacking is being transmitted live on national television. For the next 20 hours a wild and at times bleakly comic chase ensues through northern Greece, the bus at the head of a convoy of police cars, television crews, desperate relatives and bystanders. And all the while, the bus is getting closer and closer to the Albanian border… Constantine Giannaris’ gripping film is based on a true story.

There are two movies playing that I would recommend: Hotel Rwanda, and Million Dollar Baby.

Hotel Rwanda

I’m a big fan of Don Cheadle (he was great in Traffic as well, which was my favorite drug movie) and he does a convincing job in this film. Also was impressed by Sophie Okonedo who played an entirely different character from the first time I saw her (as a prostitute in Dirty Pretty Things - which was also an excellent film).

Overall, I felt that that the movie was very moving despite the obvious omision of much of the brutality that actually did occur. However, I thought that by avoiding showing grotesque violence, the director was able to avoid any distractions from the human story. Violence has definitely been cheapened by Hollywood, and I think he made smart decision by not creating a film that sickens you with its gore.

On the other hand, over 800,000 people were brutally slaughtered, and, as some of my friends agree, by not showing violence, you don’t show what really happened.

Related to this film is the book Shake Hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda. I haven’t read it yet, but probably will - There was also a CBC documentary released in conjunction with the book.

Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood is on point.

90% of what he has produced in the last 15 years has been gold (except for the brutal, brutal white hunter, black heart).

Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman are excellent as would be expected.

The performance of Hilary Swank was especially impressive, because she was able to convincingly represent an athlete. This is harder than you would expect (One of the worst examples is Matt Damon in Bourne Supremacy, where he goes for a jog on the beach, and looks like he’s just had a colonoscopy - there’s no athlete in the world that runs like that, they should have got someone to teach him how to run). She must have trained like a madwoman, because she is jacked in the movie.