Beneath the Peak

I’ve been stockpiling documentaries for those all-too-common stretches when there is nothing watchable on television here. Fortunately there’s a lot of interesting material available free on Google Videos.

Over the past couple of nights, I’ve seen three worthwhile documentaries: Control Room; This Film is Not Yet Rated; and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.

Control Room is a multi-award-winning documentary that examines Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Iraq war. While it doesn’t shy away from portraying the American military’s missteps, Control Room also shows how many of Al Jazeera’s staffers have trouble reconciling their Arab identities with their role as journalists. The producer who scorns the United States — but plans to send his kids to school there — is particularly telling.

This Film is Not Yet Rated is an investigation of the MPAA’s secretive rating processes. If you’ve ever wondered why one film is rated “PG” and another is rated “R,” or what the commercial implications of those ratings are, this is definitely worth a look. Directors John Waters (Hairspray) and Matt Stone (South Park) feature, as do examples of censored materials.

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism sets out to demonstrate how the Australian-turned-American and his media empire are singlehandedly ruining American journalism. Since Moveon.org was one of the organizations behind Outfoxed, don’t expect “fair and balanced” coverage: Outfoxed uses many of the same techniques that it criticizes Fox for employing. One standout segment (at around the 35 minute mark) shows Jeremy Glick — an antiwar protestor whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks — being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. Anyone preparing for a hostile interview would benefit from watching that segment, if nothing else.

We’ve just ordered a second printing of Landed, which continues to sell well.

Unsurprisingly, most of the sales have been in Hong Kong. But we’ve also had orders from as far afield as Japan, Germany, Indonesia and Australia.

Technorati Tags: Landed, expatriate, Hong Kong, real estate, Property, books

George Carlin, the American comedian responsible for the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” has died.

Carlin was funny, topical and he had a passion for the language that shone through in his work. And he loved to puncture the egos of religious, PC and political windbags.

Lots of his material is available online, including “Life is Worth Losing” which starts with a five minutes of cliches — I’m an alpha male on betablockers… I have love child who sends me hate mail — woven into a brilliant monologue.

He’s a staple on Khaha.com, and he’ll be missed.

Update: Psychology Today has an interview with Carlin that was conducted a few days before his death.

I was one of the speakers at the Smart investment conference on Saturday, and learned something interesting along the way.

In launching Landed, I’ve spoken in large and small conference rooms, a 150-seat restaurant and even a private bar. In each case, I was the center of attention while I was speaking.

That changed at Saturday’s event, which was held in the seventh floor exhibition hall of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The hall is one big room, with a high ceiling, AV displays blaring, delegates coming and going, and exhibitors pitching their products. There was also a second person making a presentation while I was speaking, and the stage layout positioned the loudspeakers between me and the audience. The upshot was that — between the background noise and the lack of reflected sound — I couldn’t hear myself while I was speaking.

Fortunately, I was comfortable with my material. But I can imagine how disconcerting it would be to deliver an unfamiliar speech without being able to hear yourself.

All the more reason to know your material cold and do a site check before you speak.

…will be officially launched on Tuesday.

I’ve been using Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 for the last couple of days and like it. It’s noticeably faster than FF2, and the only drawback has been the lack of computability with some of my favorite add-ons, but this is a minor problem. Updated add-ons are being released by the day, and many of the existing ones can be made to work with RC3.

Full points to the folks at Mozilla. Firefox — and Thunderbird — just keep getting better and better.

I’ll be speaking at the SMART Investment and International Property Expo at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on June 21. Admission is free. Details here and here.

In the US, a carbon-neutral luxury airline is getting ready to launch. The gilded faucets, on-board masseuses and loofah scrubs sound particularly good.

Read all the way to the end, though, for the terms and conditions.

I’ve started researching and writing my second book.

Yesterday, I went searching for a mortgage broker in Japan, whose web page I had stumbled across last week but neglected to bookmark.

Do you have any idea how many hits you’ll get if you Google Japan mortgage broker? About 497,000. If you limit the search to English-language sites with a .jp domain, you get about 30,000 hits.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The vast majority of those hits are not from actual mortgage brokers — they’re from comment spam on blog posts like this one.

The Internet is so full of “mortgage broker” spam that it’s nearly impossible to find references to real brokers. I know of three Tokyo-based ones, in fact, and they were buried so far down in the search results as to make it pointless to even look.

Maybe Google should add an “ignore old blog comments” option to their advance search service.

And now, for my next amazing feat, I’m going to Google “Viagra” and see what happens…

You can now read an extended sample of Landed on Google Books.

Where, exactly, does Susan Sarandon get off saying that if McCain wins she’s going to move to Canada or Italy?

Forgive my impertinence, but has she applied for immigrant status in either country? She may be surprised to discover that not all Italians or Canadians share her political views. Or are standing by to welcome her with open arms.

Why the opinions of people like Ms Sarandon (or Sharon Stone, for that matter) warrant media coverage is a mystery to me.