It appears that, as long as the referee does not spot the offending action, the players have carte-blanche to undertake any illegal action of their choosing. And FIFA… Well, they usually are not bothered – especially when a protest is brought by a lowly football country such as Ireland. Perhaps if it had been Germany versus France – things by now would have turned out differently.

We can draw a number of conclusions from the recent re-appearance of the ‘Hand of god:’
1. Players are permitted to use their hands in controlling the ball. The proper procedure for this is for a team member to obstruct the view of the referre, or to distract the referee.
2. Game rules are of no value. If you cannot win the game by the rules, then you can win by cheating. We might as well have no game rules and do away with the referees.
3. FIFA is not fit to govern football.
4. Players, especially stars, no longer have any respect left for the game.

Personally I would have rather seen Ireland than France in the finals. I am old fashioned of course, and still believe in the best teams going through. They used to say that the (foot)ball is round, and that on any given day, you couldn’t be certain who would win. It made the game exciting to watch. Nowadays I can hardly watch a football game without getting disgusted at the players’ antics, discussions of huge sums of money, etcetera, etcetera…

I believe that the time has come to institute a salary cap, and also to do away with FIFA. Perhaps we need an NFL style commissioner based approach. Everytime I watch American football, I am not only impressed by the violence of the play, but also by the skill and professionalism of the players. Whatever system they set up, it is working folks! Let’s snag it, and put enjoyment, and the spirit of competition back into football (i.e. soccer).

My father once remarked that one of the challenges he saw facing him was the task of finding measures to protect a company from its own management – in particular, from the tendency of management to become self-serving. With the increase in inter-temporal liquidity, that is, the availability of complex (and damning) financial instruments, and the laxity of accounting and regulatory standards, it has become quite easy for management to engage in exploitative ‘creaming’ practices, while securing their own ‘backs’ through human resources ‘checklists.’

The astute reader will have already picked up on where I am going… Coming back to our job descriptions. The pattern that has been emerging is one of reversals. In particular, the least significant part of a job gets paraded as the most significant part, while the most significant aspect of the job becomes relegated to the least significant position.

For example, looking at a Design role knowledge of CS4 becomes more important than creative skill. I once knew a designer who used Photoshop 3 while everybody else was using CS. Photoshop 3 has only one level of undo! Yet his designs were top notch. Imagine him looking for work now…

Alternatively, for a developer’s role, knowledge of ‘Drupal’ may be touted as absolutely essential, while systems analysis or problem solving skills go unmentioned…

The benefit of using a ‘checklist’ approach, of course, is that it gets management off the hook – whether a company performs of not becomes irrelevant – the record will always indicate a satisfactory checklist.

Do all companies act like this? Of course not, there are still a few companies left, that rather than relying on static checklists, are willing to assess quality and potential. These are the companies that are genuinely interested in their employees. And, I dare say, these are the companies, that are in touch with the nature of their own business.

When everything gets reduced to the stock market and investment returns, there is the risk of forgetting, or even not caring, about what a company does – the services it provides, or the goods it produces. In other words, there is the risk of forgetting how those investment returns are being generated in the first place.

Granted, with the present lax accounting standards, it is quite easy to cook the books, and overvalue a company – but still, even then, sooner or later, the piper will come and want to see the real goods. So perhaps it is time to get back to providing real goods and services…

We are talking about the great JSC Svetlana valves – in particular about the 6L6GC Winged-C variety. And, there are four of them, since we need four matched ones.

Beware: The Svetlana brand name in the U.S. is owned by an entirely different company, and you will not be getting the original production at all. So if you live in the US or Canada, make sure you are asking for JSC Svetlanas. According to Watford Valves, they are the “best clean sounding current production 6L6GC made to day.”

I have put these into my good ole’ ValveKing 100, and they have brought the thing to life. When you want valves, you gotto go Russian!

Here they are in situ, purring happily away:

And… here is another wicked sample of Russian graphic art:

Both in terms of visual and written content, the British approach tends to be the most baroque and rococo – with lavish embellishments and dressings vying to spin a yarn of exclusivity. The British approach tends to be highly conceptual, focused on spin, and geared towards mental massage.

Of course, the U.K. does not possess an indigenous and endemic web design school. What we witness in the UK is the extension of the printing craft and industry into the web medium. Consequently in the UK, the web medium carries excess print-baggage.

The origins of the desire to be exclusive could be coming from the glaring disparity between the abject and despicable poverty on the one hand, and the gluttonous exclusive royal glamour on the other. The UK is where Marx wrote Das Kapital. In Victorian UK, the extreme disparity between rich and poor probably created a desire for belonging to the ‘exclusive’ – albeit be it, for the poor, only an escape into a fantasy world. Nice ornamental designs could have served as a means for escape.

The UK approach has been successful at transplanting print designs to the web medium. This is no easy feat. The web medium is and remains in essence antithetical to print. The differences between print and web media are well documented, and constitute the ’101′ of any web design course in the US. But in the UK, if you talk about the difference between web and print, you are likely to get many injurious looks.

In recent years, with the advent of Web 2.0, UK web design has been moving towards the US approach, and it will be interesting to see how the UK web design approach will respond to accommodate its print background as well as the newer US ideas.

Baseball, has become a unique part of US as well as Japanese culture, and provides a very entertaining alternative to the often cryptic, and dare I say odd looking game of, yes, you guessed it! Cricket.

Baseball is a game of numbers, statistics, and probably one of the most difficult and technical sports games to master (sorry, cricket). Yes, baseball is a game of numbers and statistics, of averages, streaks, maximums, and minimums. However, baseball arithmetic has its own logic. Some might even claim that baseball arithmetic lives in left field.

In baseball, it is quite possible to have a “full count,” a “double play,” on occasion a “triple play,” the bases can be “loaded”, a series can be “swept,” and you can have, say a “1-2-3 8th…”

Statistics are also kept on other interesting baseball phenomena – one of which is that of flies. There are many kinds of flies in baseball. Consider the “fly ball,” the “sacrifice fly,” the “lazy fly,” and my favourite, the “foul fly!” Perhaps, rather than flies, I should say “flyes.” But I would not want to start another debate on baseball grammar, such as the one that has befallen our old friend RBIs.

Baseball is not without its dangers. Batters may get hit by pitches. On occasion, the audience may suffer as well: just the other day I watched in disbelief as the batter swung his bat, which, with immediate effect, left his hands and proceeded to fly on a parabolic trajectory straight into the audience, hitting a small hapless boy on his head – fortunately he was OK. However, he required much comforting from his bemused as well as concerned mother. But all in all, unlike the snarling soccer crowds, baseball fans tend to be good-humoured.

I would like to thank the present gratuitous cable ESPN coverage for providing the sights and sounds, which have inspired this article.

I have often wondered how the Americans have managed to be so successful at TV. I think the colour gamut of NTSC is slightly different. Something one might notice when applying broadcast-safe colours for example. They have got show business figured out. TV, and… the easy-chairs and couches with built-in fridges, or easy chairs, which actually help you get up! Yes, these strange inventions do exist.

In our profession, why do we  consistently single out IE (i.e., Internet Explorer) for all the ills that befall the flesh of our beautifully crafted designs? Is it because, as designers we are Mac based, and regard the Windows camp with ‘camp’  suspicion, or, it is because, we are making not a wild but a valid observation – one which is based on the facts and track record of IE?

After years of experience in the profession, I am inclined to consider IE as the worst browsing platform ever developed. If Microsoft were not the monopoly that it is, chances are IE would not have survived for as long as it has. So what is the big problem with IE? Is it that it is buggy? Perhaps… Is it that it is ‘embedded’ into Windows? Possibly? Is it that it is insecure and easily exploited? Likely so… But the main problem with IE is that it flaunts W3 standards in favour of its own Windows interpretation, which has been inconsistent, arbitrary and variable.

Indeed, in the hands of Microsoft, IE became an unwitting tool in the battle for Internet supremacy. Thanks to the Open Source movement, aided by smart revenue-raising anti-monopoly fines, and by IEs own lack of quality, Microsoft did not succeed. But along the way, plenty of damage in the form of decreased progress and increased cost has been exacted, and continues to be exacted. While waiting for the next version of Windows, the one that will fix “all Windows woes and bring about enlightenment,” I cannot help but think: “Here we go again…”

About 6:20, the stage PA started belting out a fine variety of canned and tinned sounds that could almost have been live. I had my back to the stage – and wondered whether the band had arrived. So I swiveled around on my bar stool and appraised the stage-side developments. I spotted a bar assistant fiddling with the PA and then retreating hastily. The couple of well-mannered blondes who were sitting at the table immediately behind me synchronously eyed my crotch, and I wondered whether I had left my fly open. After discreetly re-assuring myself that I was in proper decorum, I continued to watch the stage for a while, and eventually turned back to resume my reading of an excerpt from Gulliver’s Travels.

At around 7:10pm, all hope having faded of catching some early evening live tunes, having finished my little literature handout, and growing weary of waiting, I decided to call it a day. I took in a deep breath, exhaled, put on my jacket, double checked my crotch and the blondes, and then with a calm smile made my way to the door.

• Theocracy – defined by ‘cultivated stupidity’ – in that god and religion are equated.
• Absolutocracy – defined by ‘cultivated idiocy’ – in that real suffering is denied.
• Meritocracy – defined by ‘cultivated intelligence’ – in that the human condition is seen at face value, and amends are instituted accordingly.
• Corruptocracy – defined by ‘hubris’ – in that people act as if they were beyond human, conscience, and natural law.

While not entirely sequential, the four phases do appear to follow a cyclical pattern. And we should not be surprised to see a resurgence of  theocratic emphasis during times of hubris. What is interesting, however, is that apparently the Meritocratic phase cannot, under present paradigms of governance, be sustained. And, that under the present paradigms, we get one ‘growth’ phase – that of Meritocracy – to three ‘stagnative’ phases. The engine of human civilisation, is indeed in need of a tune-up.

What is the matter with our present paradigms of governance, and why are they so inefficient? I believe that the answer lies in our treatment of religion and spirituality – and that the present religious institutions almost entirely lack the openness and tolerance required to set up the moral and ethical guidance mechanisms necessary for a governance paradigm-shift into a sustainable Meritocracy.  They don’t got the juice.

Looking at Western civilisation, we have not yet achieved religious recognition of the equality of gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other belief structures. These issues, which seem straightforward from a spiritual point of view, continue to escape our Western religious institutions. Of course, any belief structure which is not willing to recognise the fundamental premises of equality and tolerance, becomes by definition incompatible with Meritocracy – and there is nothing like disillusionment that can breed hubris. So in addition to separating church from state, we will likely need to separate god from religion – and this may go a long way to create a state of spiritual affairs that can contain and guide our human affairs – without spirituality itself becoming entangled or enticed in governance and politics.

I have not dealt with the severe issues that arise in a Corruptocracy – issues such as illegal wars, expenses scandals (all within the rules, of course), massive financial robbery, indeed rape, of our unborn children, the slow but systematic destruction of our environment, lack of co-operation and lack of genuine leadership. Indeed, I m not sure that these issues can be addressed directly. Hence, in this article I have focused on the fundamental flaw that our Western civilisation currently suffers from – namely an outdated religious system that appears incompatible with Meritocratic standards. I think far more guidance and containment can be achieved from a genuine spiritual approach – after all any rule or law can be flaunted, and if you are wealthy, you can do it in style, and still arrive at your second home in time for dinner. But why do it in the first place, if your conscience is telling you otherwise?

Women were conspicuously absent in this movie. Sure there were the five that covered all the bases: an old lady, a pregnant woman, a 5-6 year old girl, the fighter pilot, and the cyberdyne computer girl. But their total screen time was miniscule. Let’s just say that the female artists appearing in this movie  will not be winning an oscar for best supporting actress anytime soon. Having had women feature prominently in all of the Terminator movies – this was certainly a boy’s affair… In my opinion, to the detriment of the franchise. I do have a thing against leaving half of the planet’s population out of the picture…

On another note, it is now official: the monkeys at Fox have decided to ax Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles – probably the most intelligent and exciting Sci Fi TV series of the last five years. But it had some major flaws: it was an intelligent show, raising important questions about humanity and being human. And as we know, monkeys do not necessarily like to think! On top it, it had an immaculate visual language, and featured women prominently – using the sci-fi platform to promote openness, self-reflection, and perhaps giving us a dark glimpse of where we could end up – if we fail to curb the excesses of ‘super-capitalism’.

Sure, our monkey friends have washed their hands off the affair – it was the ratings, they chant… Sure, of course it was… “Wanna buy some waterfront property in Miami?”  Well, it probably had to do with their conservatism – or shall we say reactionary-ism… Ironically enough, super-capitalism undermines the open nature of our democracies and leads to an insiduous move towards the authoritarian branch of the J-curve – more on this topic can be found here. No wonder our democracies are beginning to feel unstable. But I am starting to digress… However, if you read this article, please drop Fox a line, or some bananas, to let them know that they have made a poor choice. Thanks.